Iceman16 said:
Vagabond was fighting Confed guards, not Border Worlders.
Of course, silly me. I was getting confused with that whole side-switching thing. But same difference, either way.
Dragon1 said:
Modern Marines do alot more than just shipboard security and establishing beach heads, but in the Terran Confederation, as today, surface operations would be primarily be executed by the General Infantry or some form of 27th century mech-infantry force; the Army.
Modern Marines don't really do shipboard security anymore, as the need to repel a massive boarding attempt is pretty remote. Security is mainly taken care of by the sailors on board, not marines. Also, I might take issue with the use of the word beach head, seeing how a modern "beach head" these days might be hundreds of miles inland.
Anyway, those are just minor quibbles. What I really wanted to respond to was the idea that Confed would need a 'general infantry' or an army of some kind... there's absolutely no evidence for one, which is pretty odd for an organization that, if it exists, must be pretty darn huge. If the army were small (small being relative, of course), then the marines could take over the job completely, which is what I think has happened.
Consider the need for grunts in a space war. You have guys to protect ships and conduct assault operations against space targets, all of which falls under the marine area of expertise. You have assaults against defended planets; again, a marine function.
Meanwhile, what does the army specialize in? The operation of major combat systems in a land war, mainly. Arguably, protracted ground operations are extremely unlikely, and the game designers tell us as much with the description of the Battle of Repleetah: The only reason it went on as long as it did was because there was no "decisive space strike". You can argue about the effectiveness of air power, but the assumption appears to be that ground combat capabilities are superfluous with the power and precision you can project from space. Major ground combat systems like tanks would be sitting ducks against WC-era fighters (which we see pretty clearly in WC3 and WC4).
So any ground force needs to be tightly integrated with a space component, or it''ll be doomed to destruction in a matter of weeks at best (a figure that comes from Action Stations). This is, in fact, precisely the doctrine pioneered by the marines, who have a long history of using combined arms (air, land, sea) and joint tactics, and still do it best.
Another thing the army does better than the marines is logistics. Marines travel light and can be resupplied from the sea or by helicopter, but the army has a well-developed system for hauling supplies over land ("an army marches on it stomach"). In fact, while in the marines the idea is that everyone is first and foremost a rifleman (or riflewoman), large parts of an army are usually devoted to logistics and other support personnel who don't have a primary function in fighting, often up to 50%.
Now, since combat takes place on the surface of a planet, the resupply distance is essentially just the few hundred miles from orbit to the ground and back, which is pretty much nothing. So, essentially, operations over the whole surface of a planet are essentially within easy reach of the "amphibious" force. This means resupply isn't nearly as much of a problem, as long as space superiority is maintained. (And if you don't have space superiorty, you're screwed anyway.)
As I mentioned in another thread, a war among planets is more like a war among islands (as in WW2's Pacific theater). The marines were a much more significant factor in that part of the war than in Europe, which was a much more continental form of warfare.
