In reply to nickinscottishmountains:
> (In reply to scrubmunched) Interesting. Having worked with both in a pretty nasty war envirnoment, I'm impressed with both.
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> US Army are to be avoided even if you are on the same side, US Marine Corps however are highly professional and about as similar to Brtish Army Infantry as could be. Not a patch on UK Royal Marines. Royal Marines are excellent; they're not as overly self-impressed as the Paras.
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> Royals are good honest straight forward committed folk. handy in a tight situation.
I'd agree with most of the above Nick. The major difference between US Marines and ours however, is equipment and resources - This impacts on training, deployment, planning and Ops, across the board really.
I did 25 years in the British Army and served two of them in the US Army on exchange. My recollection FWIW is that The Rangers, were on the whole better than the Paras, (with who they are usually compared)and better than our RM AKA a thinking Para
) individually Rangers were just as good as our lads, but better equipped, better trained and better resourced and often more qualified in a range of useful skills.
This inevitably leads to a debate and comparison about their and our 'Special Forces' Tier 1, through to 3. I long ago came to the conclusion that it's best not to compare chalk with cheese....... They are every bit as good as our lads, but better resourced and equipped. This can lead to an over reliance on stuff rather than the individual, but if we had it (the kit) we'd be the same, believe me!
What our forces achieve in spite of a lack of resources is little short of a miracle. Because of these shortfalls we are more reliant on the 'individual'. We are probably more operationally agile than our US counterparts, but then our train set is much smaller. It isn't that the US ops don't want to be agile, it's just a big slow machine - even with digitisation and the like.
Regards,
Steve