When was the last time the Marines were legitimately relevant to warrant being an entire branch versus being another...

When was the last time the Marines were legitimately relevant to warrant being an entire branch versus being another paratrooper division or what have you?

Why do we need to spend all of that money and energy producing the VTOl variant of the f35?
Why do they need to launch aircraft off flat tops designed for helicopters, when if they actually need to use such aircraft they would have a carrier group at their disposal?

During ww2 they were supported by the navy's main carriers, and if we were to ever need the Marines to fulfill their intended role instead of being army 2, then they would have such support once again.

I say we ought to gut the marine branch of the military.

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The Marines are one of the biggest reasons the F-35 is such a godawful money pit. Buy more Cobras, you dumb fucks.

The most logical thing for the US would be either rolling the Chair Force and the Muhreens into the Army, or to abolish everything but the Navy and the National Guard. Remember, the Marines are part of the Navy, and so they would be still there in the later case. The armed forces of the USA are currently in this situation because they are supposed to both defend (American interests in) Europe and East Asia from the land powers, and also play police in third world countries. Currently the later is the main focus, which is a mistake, because instead of playing police they should just install friendly dictators in those countries and send them money and advisors. Of course, US foreign policy is dictated by competing lobbies and think tanks, and so it lacks common sense. Actually, it seems to be completely insane by the 2010s.

The marines are the ONLY relevant force of the US military.
Here's what you do.
You cut the US army, all of it.
You keep the National Guard, the Marines, the USAF, the Navy.
You still have enough combat expeditionary forces to bitchslap anyone that doesn't have nukes (which you will never bitchslap), enough reserves to actually deter any other power to do anything stupid and you save Trillions of $US per year.

The US Army is the useless part, remnant of WWII and the CW occupation of Europe.
Not the USMC.

The marines have been pointless since inception, sure having beach landing specialists is useful but that can be integrated into the navy.

How else will we deploy people who specialize in beach landings to countries that are 99% ocean such as Afghanistan?

In their capacity as a shipboard garrison/naval infantry? They haven't been relevant for a while. As the only part of the US ground forces who seem to be able to do their job and are more or less free of the poz … they're the best you have.

This is mostly accurate. Every combat video shows marines being in control of the situation to the highest degree possible while army footage always seems chaotic and without a clue as to what they're actually doing and whom they are fighting and where their targets are. They always group hug behind cover somewhere and end up firing anything anywhere. I've seen a man fire an M14 and forgetting height over bore, resulting in rounds striking the top of the roof he was trying to shoot over.
This may be due to different MOs and different tasks resulting in different situations, but anecdotal evidence I have been privy to suggests this to be fairly accurate.
Quite a few people that have served in the US Army in the past have also spoken out about this, making me think my assessment may be true.
In stark contrast to this is the fact that the Army has the highest tier commandoes and general purpose special forces available to USSOCOM. They have a really weird gap in their capability levels, it seems.
Therefore, assimilating should be done a bit more carefully, with integration of units in to the Marines wherever needed.

The best joke is that the marines were not part of the most famous landing OP the US ever committed to. Not a single marine was present in Normandy due to infighting between branches iirc.

On the issue of the F35: Marines wanted a harrier replacement. They have their own logistics, they rarely deploy these planes from the big stick ships, they are almost exclusively flown from small dirt strips and heli carriers. Integrating them in to the F35 line was, as far as front line logistics go, not all that useful. They should have split the program, giving the more maneuverable contender to Air Force and Navy, with the Marines getting the version more suitable for CAS, VTOL/STOVL with selected parts interchangeability, like engines.
I'm surprised they didn't. This would have allowed for pork for Rep.s and Sen.s from both Boeing and Lockmart.

Every single war your country has ever had was fought primarily by Marines.
Navy, Air Force, and Army were just dicking around doing fuck all, occasionally dropping a bomb or a shell in the right place.

If anything you should delete the three "real" branches and merge them under the authority of the Marines.

Or they could just train regular army infantry a little better and boom, now they are marine-level

The only reason they had to ask for that is because the Navy refuses to fly support for the Marines. Stop and pause to let it sink in just how fucking retarded that is, for one branch to refuse support to another.
The Marines never asked for it to be stealthy, supersonic, or have interchangeable parts with the two other variants. Hell, they would have been happy with an upgraded Cobra.

The people who asked for those specific features were the fucking British, not the Marines.

This. Although I'd say cut the coast guard and USAF as well, no one sane puts $100 mil planes on goddamn stationary airfields anymore. There should be:
They have a navy and air force geared to strategic effect (air superiority fighters etc), and their job is wrecking major nations from a distance. These replace the navy and much of the air force.
They have an army, navy to transport it, and air force geared to ground support, and their job is going into a country and wrecking it from within. These replace the marines with a bit more oomph in troop numbers.
These command nuclear ballistic missiles and nuclear armed bombers. They have a small army, navy and air force whose job it is to protect those assets. They're also in charge of bunkers to protect the civilian leadership, and in charge of protecting embassies abroad. They replace the parts of air force that were retarded.
These are basically a mirror image of the marines, having an army, navy and air force geared to ground support… except they exchange blue water transport ability for even greater numbers of armed forces and providing civilian population military training free of charge. The TEF can draw on them for numerical support if they need to. They replace army, coast guard, and NG.

These four forces SEF, TEF, SDF and TDF are controlled by four generals in constant contact. They each have their R&D department, and share any tech they develop.

See where I'm going with this?

Now imagine if the strategic expeditionary force refused to establish air superiority over an area that will be attacked by the tactical expeditionary force.
For what purpose? You could have all of it under a single command where the four generals are just the chief pencil pushers of their respective branches. Besides, if you want to attack a country on the other side of the world, then you need a self-contained force that would need to draw people and equipment from both your proposed strategic and tactical expeditionary forces. You'd just create rivalry between the officers from different branches and then between the branches themselves.

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This…
… and especially this. There's a fucking reason they're called "Marines", and to that point I have to concur with the OP. The Marines' role should be as special needs forces in the Navy, having a hype over the branch' names to gain independence, with whatever merits that might bring, is ultimately harmful to them if it subtracts from full naval support.

Are special forces kind of a meme? In practice they seem to be overhyped light infantry that isn't integrated into proper battalions and brigades/divisions. In other words, it seems to me that instead of having six million small teams with ridiculous names you could just take a single regiment of mountain infantry, give them some additional training, and you'd have the same thing. Expect that in an real war you could deploy the regiment in a mountain range as a single unit, or send it behind the enemy lines as "raiding force" (something between guerrilla and regular formations).

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The absolute state of US military in CY+3 makes the conflict between the Imperial Nipponese Army and Navy during WW2 look downright sane in retrospect.

You'd have to severely restrict the intake into the armed forces to do that. The difference in physical requirements for both branches (USMC and Army) is pretty significant. You can get a lot out of the right kind of training, but you can't use a .22 rimfire pistol as a howitzer.

Depends how you set them up and use them. As specialist tools used properly they can have a huge impact on the flow of a war, and all kinds of uses for 'lower intensity' i.e. black-bag shit outside of formal conflicts. When politicians get a hard on for channelling large budgets into dubious projects that would only really be 'slightly better funded infantry' then they're a waste of space.

defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2010/09/glorified-cannibals.html
defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2014/09/special-forces.html
defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2016/05/a-call-for-unified-light-infantry.html

I think the US Marines are used as much as they are because of traditional roles and power in the US Federal government. I think the President has more authority to direct the Navy (thus Marines) to combat situations where there is no formal declaration of war. With all the small conflicts and situations where there is no formal declaration against a formal nation its easier to simply send in the Marines than the regular Army.

Special forces are indeed useful and actually do exist and do have a purpose. The problem we see is that what once was a small group of the elite, best picked, best trained soldiers and police with special roles and purposes grow into something they are not.

As our German author stated in the other reply left here, if the special forces get too big, the drain of talented soldiers from the main army weakens the rest of the army by the absence of high quality soldiers bolstering units and being NCO's to lead squads and sections.

The other problem is degradation of the special units themselves due to size. The smaller the special forces units are, the less of them there are, the more critical you can be and selective you can be, only taking the VERY best of the best. SEAL's, SAS, ect., can be very high quality because there are so few of them

Once the special forces grow to too large a size there is severe and wide degradation of special forces as the only way to grow the number of special troops is to simply reduce standards to the point those standards become the same as regular troops, or closer too, or close to. Forming a crack 15,000 man division might yield a great, high grade regular standing army division a cut above the rest, but they will be not as good as SAS because they have no choice but to take men that are even a little lower. Raising a few hundred of the best of your nation yields you pure gold, raising many thousands, tens of thousands, means you will have to take a lot of lead and silver to fill out the molds, so to speak. You have an elite field division, great for fighting regular war in the field, but not quite a small elite special forces unit meant for special operations and missions.

Thus, why the 'special forces" meme comes about, "speical needs forces" because at some point if you water down the special forces they aren't special. You take a non elite unit and throw it into elite unit style operations, missions, roles, they will utterly fail and you will get a laughing stock. A high grade infantry unit full of veterans can do a lot of things, but to do what a special unit that is expert and trains nonstop for a single role like hostage rescue as well as those heavily specialized and overtrained is a good discussion to have.

Bullshit. RN actually set aside money for the F-35C in case the B never worked out. The reason they are going with the F-35B is other retardation. Stop deflecting the blame.
Horseshit. Marines constantly demand new toys and will actively refuse something just because another branch is using it.

This. Our SF used to be top-notch but they eventually got watered down by kiddies who like to play war. Note potential sour grapes because I wasn't SF neither did I try to be.

Special Forces I would say aren't a meme, since you do require specialized soldiers for certain types of warfare.

Say mountain infantry as an example, can you just send regular infantry into said environment. Yes, you can. However, having soldiers trained in the specifics of the terrain, climate and specialized equipment in engaging in said type of warfare will have a large advantage over soldiers who are not. This an example of specialization having a practical function.

It's more or less using the right tool for the right job. Is there a cultural perspective of special forces that is downright skewed? Most certainly.

How do current year US/NATO special farces compare to Waffen SS infantry brigades composed of ethnic Germans in terms of skill and discipline?

Nukes are defensive weapons, there's not much point to use them offensively. But yeah, the SEF should have a few tactical nukes.

In America at least they actually are, the president is the commander in chief. The problem is that every president since lincoln has been a walking bag of vaginas and has not LED HIS FUCKING MILITARY, so his subordinates (JCOS) have grown in power.

Yeah I'm sure that never happened.

1951

Considering that the RN has been actively trying to go back to CATO since the Falklands, was considering the Gripen, F/A-18 and even the Rafale for what was planned to be 2 Carriers you honestly think they were directly responsible for the F-35B considering Marines are more into VTOL to the point that they willingly continue to fly deathtraps? Don't talk shit Leaf. Especially when at one point the RN Carrier did not even have a ski-jump and was originally designed to accomodate the F-35C untill money mysteriously changed hands although thta is a story for another time
Marines have had far more sway in keeping the F-35B going than anyone else hell the F-35 project in general since they were the first to actually get ahold of F-35's. Do you happen to spot the (((coincidence))) here or are you trying desperately to cover up for the US Marines?

all the branches should be disbanded in times of peace as per US constitution

In todays war on terror special forces besides special training need to posses one important quality normal military can't provide. Do questionable things. Kill, abduct, torture civilians at behalf of the spooks. Be quite about it. Half of the special forces grooming is dedicated to finding such candidates, who do whatever it takes fro the greater good.

Bloating of special forces reflects expansion of the mission. Small forces can't fulfill expanded assassination's demand.

This.

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I still don't really understand the difference in function between the Marines and everyone else and I especially don't understand why they fall under the Department of the Navy.