So, someone at the DoD re-discovered the Combined Arms doctrine?
The thing is, the US military re-tools its organization every 10 to 20 years or so, looking ahead at the conflicts to come. In the late 80s that re-tooling began and the result was methodologies that came to fruition in Iraq and Afghanistan. We take notes from past examples (see Russian occupation of the latter), examine the fight we see coming (insurgent warfare in WWII), and rebuild doctrine to fit.
The special operations groups were part of the process. While we were creating our own future enemies in the 60s and 70s (mujahideen turned into Al-Qaeda and others) we were also getting a first hand look at guerrilla warfare and how ineffective symmetric war concepts were at facing a guerrilla opponent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asymmetric_warfare
[edit]grammar![/edit]
https://www.marines.mil/Portals/59/Publications/FMFRP%2012-1...
I wish I could remember the book I read. It details things like how the one person you had to worry about at a security checkpoint was the person with all their papers in order... I want to say it was Western Africa, or a similar holding that the book centered around.
[edit] All that to say I agree with you. A self-sufficient force seems to be, by nature, multi-talented. [/edit]
[edit2] And the book, which is quite good, is "Small Wars" by a Colonel Callwell. https://www.amazon.com/Small-Wars-Their-Principles-Practice/... [/edit2]
Nah. The Corps has had plenty of opportunity to acquire the experience organically:
"During about 85 of the last 100 years, the Marine Corps has been engaged in small wars in different parts of the world." --Small Wars Manual (1940 Edition)
Running through the list of the Corps' most revered heroes... I can't think of a single one that didn't face an enemy that employed guerilla warfare tactics. Chesty Puller started out fighting an insurgency in Haiti and then Nicaragua. Before that SgtMaj Daly fought in the Boxer Rebellion. Smedley Butler fought Cuban insurgents in the Spanish–American War (later writing "War Is a Racket"). Archibald Henderson fought in the Seminole Wars...
The Corps has more experience with asymmetric warfare than the stereotypical military campaign. It also has a very long institutional memory where best practices are developed and passed down - I don't remember ever hearing somebody cite British colonialism during a period of instruction, we had our own colonialism to refer back to: the banana wars.
I'm just joking...sort of. It's usually the things that we didn't think of that bite us in the butt.
Given the random hodge-podge of software and firmware that modern military tech runs on, you're not going to see much success in building a magic one-size-fits-all virus that will spread across the entire system.