Quote of the day

Posted By Thomas E. Ricks Thursday, March 11, 2010 - 12:41 PM Share

Good inter-service trash talking from a Marine named "Headhunter":

Now don't get me wrong, I like SEALs. I find them very entertaining and tasty with lots a hot sauce for flavor of course. I did get tired of their lack of navigation and ground combat skills but they are pretty good in the water and welcome to it. So I gave them the benefit of the doubt on that one cuz I know that sometimes the things you hear about are on purpose. Plus, that's their story and they're sticking to it.

Tambako the Jaguar/flickr

EXPLORE:MILITARY

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TYRTAIOS

7:01 PM ET

March 11, 2010

Tinker Bell was a ferry too!

SEALs not good at land nav beyond the high water mark, eh?

Ok, bring it on you guys in the Teams, but remember to leave moms and apple pie out of it! : )

TYRTAIOS

7:15 PM ET

March 11, 2010

Opps, that's fairy : )

TINTIN

7:36 PM ET

March 11, 2010

Any Marine or soldier who

Any Marine or soldier who worked with the SEAL sniper platoons in Ramadi 2006 or Sadr City 2008 would disagree pretty strongly about those ground combat skills.

ERIC_STRATTONIII

7:39 PM ET

March 11, 2010

Total BS

I have never seen so much BS in my life, I challenge that "Devil Dog" to go to Land Warfare phase of the SEAL ULT and see what it is like for the East Coast, they are far ahead of ANYTHING the Marines do. 5 weeks, full night live fire on NODs for days on end. Hmmm..it must be why MARSOC is going to Navy Breacher, Sniper, Free Fall, etc...Typical whine by the JV squad ;) . Oh, on Somalia, the guys that got caught on the beach were Force Recon Marines in front of all those cameras with the head scarves, etc.. nice try though, the SEALs never got seen when they went in, go check it out and make sure "Head Hunter" knows too, the truth is a terrible thing at times.
"Head Hunter" is upset that he gets Army hand me downs for kit and knows that he will always be a distant third or second at best ;)

TYRTAIOS

9:41 PM ET

March 11, 2010

OOH-RAH!

Wowser! Otter takes Headhunter to the mat.

How come there was no mention of a certain Marine Force Recon unit rescuing a SEAL team on Grenada who kind'a got themselves surrounded at the governor's residence - well they sort'a rescued them - OOH-RAH! : )

ERIC_STRATTONIII

10:11 PM ET

March 11, 2010

lol

That was not a rescue, it was a relief!! ;)

JPWREL

1:39 PM ET

March 12, 2010

ERIC_STRATTONII, thanks for

ERIC_STRATTONII, thanks for the response! You likely new I was grinding my teeth on Headhunters ludicrous remarks but decided to remain unperturbed and mute.

HUNTER

7:51 PM ET

March 11, 2010

Just one more argument

....for a one single Defense Force.

I love the Army traditions and all that jazz - heck I even value some of the other forces traditions. But this kind of stuff is just nonsense, counterproductive nonsense at that.

I always wonder at how much we really spend on redundant training, admin and logistics networks etc in the 4 major services? Sure throw the Coasties in there. Or 37 different uniforms (exaggerated but not by much).

Someday, someday I say...pow straight to the moon.

ERIC_STRATTONIII

8:04 PM ET

March 11, 2010

Hunter

I have to disagree with you on that one, Big Army and Big Navy stifle innovation and outside the box thinking enough as it is, we need an elite shock light infantry (The USMC), the Army used to have a version in the Airborne but since PC and the introduction of women to the Army Airborne School it is a joke and now the 82nd is simply Infantry who jump instead of guys who went through a 3 week selection course after a harsh boot and AIT (that are both a bit of a shadow of what they used to be). I think the Air Force should go back under the Army as the Army Air Coprs and the Navy/Marine Team is fine the way it is, with the exception that they should allow Marines to go to BUD/S and get rid of MARSOC, a big part of the reason for the duplicate schools are due to lack of billets and refusal to expand the amount of classes per year, so people are not going to wait.

THAEMCEE2

5:42 PM ET

March 12, 2010

seals and recon/marsoc

hey eric, you are right about force recon guys getting cought on camera inserting into somalia, HOWEVER you couldnt be farther from the truth about marsoc attending navy seal sniper, breaching or freefall schools...i will say that for a period of about 4 months, we did send guys to the freefall school in san diego(including myself)...but sniper school? cmon the marine corps has the best snipers in the world, everyone knows that...why would we send marines to the navys sniper school? we wrote the books on sniping...as for breaching, that is incorrect as well...we have been making breachers since force recon has been around in the 70s...
but lets not turn this into a who's dick is bigger contest...the only things we can go off of are combat...we all are on the same damn team anyway
everyone keeps loosely interchanging marsoc and force/recon...let it be known that marsoc is not force recon or recon...they did gut most of the force guys to make special ops teams, however marsoc has now become overrun with regular infantry guys...recon still has its presence, but eventually the marine corps will overrun marsoc, since they know everything, and recon will die out...or at least from marsoc...marsoc does some good things, but we were better off in recon batalions and force companies...the marine corps ruined marsoc...they didnt even use the concepts or ideas from the initial test unit to go into socom, detatchment 1, nor did they use the men who were in or lead the unit, col. bob coates...its a shame...you will start to notice a lot of good guys getting out and going to other units or just completely seperating themselves from the marine corps, because of this....

ERIC_STRATTONIII

7:12 PM ET

March 12, 2010

THAEMCEE2

MARSOC has billets at ALL NSWG2 Schools, they get allotments to all of them, they can still go to the USMC Sniper and our school and do, I would re-check that if I were you, saw the billets and had MARSOC guys in the schools, so I would go back and research that or my eyes were mistaken ;) It is a new thing but they go to NSWG schools, Force Recon does not, MARSOC does, how they determine the billets I do not know. The USMC did screw up by not making it (MARSOC) a closed loop or taking a lot of what Force Recon had set up over the years but I have to say the guys I have seen so far are pretty squared away.

OTHERSIDEOFTHECOIN

8:03 PM ET

March 12, 2010

redundancy

Why there even is a MARSOC continues to baffle me.

The Navy's sof element has been and will continue to be the SEALS - all junk talking aside. Force Recon seemed to be doing just fine under the old org chart. Seems to me, Corps culture got stood on its head with the creation of this entity.

ERIC_STRATTONIII

9:28 PM ET

March 12, 2010

Money is the simple answer

MARSOC falls under SOCOM now and unlike Force Recon who was always under funded they (MARSOC) are finally getting the toys, funding for training and travel that all SOF Groups under SOCOM get. The cutbacks are coming in the DoD and SOCOM looks to be one group whose funding will actually increase. It is all about the money. Also, MARSOC is more akin to doing what the Army SF does, lots of FID and acting as a Force Multiplier is one of their primary jobs. I think they should have just opened up BUD/S to Marines, heck Coast Guard can go to BUD/S now, but the USMC balked at the idea of letting the Marines go to BUD/S.