[lt.america]

The real concern that underlies this is an elitist society emerging in the Corps. The Corps has been able to safeguard against this mentality even in the face of recon, but this will be a new test.

[Virginia Ridgerunner]

The Marines have realized that Special Forces are the hot commodity these days and will have first dibbs on future funding. To get in on the action and to get a place at the trough, the Corps has apparently decided to form its own special operations unit. Seems mighty redundant to me since the SEALs are supposed to have the specific mission(s) described in this article. What are they doing these days?

[opbuzz]

I don't see this as elitist.

Even the force recon guys rotate back to conventional units; it is part of the standards of training and the outlook the USMC has on continuing development of its forces.

BTW, Gen Hejlik was in the same squad as I in TBS in 1975. He may have been our class honor man. If he wasn't he was second, (and competition among brand new Marine officers is pretty keen).

When I was at SOCCENT my argument was that the USMC routinely performed five of the (then) seven special operations missions. The missions have been expanded and refined since 1990, but I still maintain the the USMC performs a greater percentage routinely then the other larger forces.

The argument stems from a general perception of SPECOPS.

Most folk consider the mission to be Unconventional Warfare and Strategic Reconnaissance. These are the glamour missions and the most important (IMHO) of the SOC missions. However these were missions that the USMC were not involve in, although they did the other missions.

The attest missions for SOC are: Direct Action (DA), Combating Terrorism (CBT), Foreign Internal Defense (FID), Unconventional Warfare (UW), Special Reconnaissance (SR), Psychological Operations (PSYOP), Civil Affairs (CA), Information Operations (IO), and Counterproliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction (CP).

My son was in ANGLICO when it was decommissioned. The next year the US needed that capability but was denied it because of force reductions. We weren't using them in peace time and conventional training could not be allowed to suffer the Clintonian cuts. They were soon resurrected.

Gen Hejlik is the perfect selection for this position. I've followed his career as the others in my class, but he has excelled, as befits his rank; many awards he has received aren't included in his bio.

But the end item is his definition of the USMC SPECOP folks:

Marine.