Is it useful to have some emergency forces that e.g. could get to South Korea in a day or two rather than in a month? Of course. But we aren't going to lose because we don't have a month to send ships. There isn't anybody out there who can mount that kind of threat against us.
People talk as though the end of the Warsaw Pact means now deployability is everything. The truth is only the Warsaw Pact was enough of a threat to hurt us rapidly that rapid deployability (e.g. refogger) mattered. With all the third rate dictators, we've got time to set up the sucker punch, because they aren't coming for us we are coming for them.
Does anybody stop to think about these things? No. They just get a buzzword that fits a preconceived notion and they run with it. Do they look at what we actually do, and whether it actually works, and react to those lessons? No. They force war strategies to fit their funding games instead of the other way around.
Deployable guys in Mogidishu needed back up from Pakistani armor. They'd been there for months. Marines had their own armor, but had already left, for the most part. It was army snake-eaters that were left. The 173rd sat out of the war up north. 3rd went through the strongest defenses twice as fast as the Marines went through lighter ones. In Gulf I, 24th Mech and the ACRs did the lion's share. The heavies have performed every time they've been used.
Our lighter guys are supposed to get everywhere faster. In practice, they rely on choppers instead of ground vehicles. We lose choppers to low tech arms continually, and that accounts for a high portion of our KIA. They are clearly the most vulnerable part of the force. If you must get there instantly, choppers are vital, of course - also in high country (though too high, we've found in Afghanistan, and the UH-60 can't make it). But we fly just because the stuff that can go on the ground has been left behind, despite month and year long deployments. Then they don't want tracks because of POL usage. Um, choppers don't exactly run on MREs.
But a buzzword substitutes for thought. Somebody just had the management guru brainstorm to label anything heavy as "old", and it is supposed to be useless just because that magic wand has been waved. Experience be damned, reasoning be damned. It is mindless and it will eventually get a battalion's worth of people killed. That is probably what it will take before anybody wakes up.
No? The Army's job doesn't have anything to do with the projection of land power?
(there are only 2 divisions of them)
There are four Marine Divisions, three active and one reserve.
it makes no difference which branch of service controls the lift
OK, give the sea lift to the Air Force and the airlift to the Coast Guard. Think that'll work? No? Why not? Only the Army has to beg a ride to the war. Everybody else can get there on their own.
all major wars are supplied by sea
The Army is getting out of the major theater war business and reconfiguring itself for operations other than war, peacekeeping, stability and support operations, and delivering the pizza for UN Meals On Wheels missions. The Army's likely adversaries are no longer other armies.
Nobody is going to fly it all in when a ship gets it there for a tenth the cost.
Tell that to the Airborne. Not too many ships getting to Afghanistan these days.
Does anybody stop to think about these things?
Only you have a clue. Everybody else has their head up their ass.