Neller tells troops “there’s a war coming”
According to the Washington Post, General Robert Neller the Marine Corps commandant, told Marines supporting NATO operations in Norway that “there’s a war coming” and he predicted that there is a “big ass fight” on the horizon;
Neller and other Corp leaders told the force they should be prepared for a change in their peacetime mission, should the need arise. In particular, Neller predicted the Pacific and Russia to be the focus of any conflict in the future outside of the Middle East, Military.com reported.
“Just remember why you’re here,” Sgt. Maj. Ronald Green told the troops, according to the military news site. “They’re watching. Just like you watch them, they watch you. We’ve got 300 Marines up here; we could go from 300 to 3,000 overnight. We could raise the bar.”
The remarks made by Marine Corps leadership follow the release of the new administration’s National Security Strategy which highlights the global goals of China and Russia to undermine US security interests.
It is unclear to what extent [Neller’s] comments were indicative of an actual war to come or merely meant as a pep talk for troops stationed far from home over the Christmas holiday. A spokesman for the general did not immediately respond to questions sent by email Saturday.
Category: Marine Corps
Funny, but this parallels a statement made last week by a senior Army NCO who works closely with senior staff. He told us that we wouls likely be involved in a major conflict next year unless something changes. It sounded more like North Korea to me, but the NCO was very vague.
*would ^^
I see no benefit to either Russia or China in engaging in a conflict against the USA. China is a major trading partner with the USA. We can bring all our stuff home and put them out of business. They should know that.
I agree with FM2176, that this sounds more like North Korea than anything else, and that’s considering how that obnoxious beached whale in Pyongyang behaves all the time.
People are unaware of the business ventures we have with Russia especially Exxon. It will be NK if anyone.
I agree.
There was a report a week or so ago that the Rocketman now has an engine that will send a missile to the UK. A few weeks ago, the Russians successfully sent a test missile from their eastern base to a test range on the Pacific coast of Siberia. (It all belongs to Russia….)
I’m concerned that the Fatman will attack the South as a distraction before he really aims elsewhere.
He might, but he knows that a nuclear strike anywhere would give the US and allies the justification to retaliate with overwhelming power in all domains.
Bingo. China needs us a lot more than we need them, and we both know it.
Not saying you’re wrong (because you’re not), but a thing to remember about Red China is that they’re leadership generally thinks farther ahead than ours. Our regime changes every 4-8 years. Theirs is in place for life. If they get it into their heads that they can push us militarily into a position that’s more advantageous to them in the long run, don’t doubt for a second that they’ll start shooting. Just look at their naval buildup in the last fifteen years. The navy they already had could project power just fine to all the various disputed sand bars in the western Pacific. The fleet they’re in the process of trying to build is one that could cross the Pacific. It’s a fleet built to fight offensively against ours. They wouldn’t build it if they didn’t at least consider using it. Add to that the established fact that they wouldn’t be too concerned with casualties, since they have a billion-plus pool to replace them from, and might even welcome having fewer mouths to feed. They might not be as batshit reckless about it as the midget pedophile Mao was when he said he wouldn’t mind being nuked, but they have long since demonstrated the value their regime placed on human life: an expendable resource that’s easily replaced.
Again, you are right, but the question is whether or not they see it that way. It wouldn’t be the first time somebody started an ill-advised war.
in the west we use chess as a metaphor for strategic thinking. China’s National game is Go. Unlike chess, where single pieces can move across the board and win the game in a few moves, the opening stages of Go can be 50 moves. It is a game of slowly shaping the environment and building influence.
https://fas.org/man/eprint/lai.pdf
And yet when you look at the capabilities of their carriers versus ours, the projection isn’t nearly as menacing.
They’re TRYING to build a Navy that can project power. Despite recent events, ours has about 100 extra years experience and a lot more capabilities than anyone else.
I’d be more concerned with PLA land-based aircraft than anything the PLN can currently muster. Once outside their range, it’s still pretty much our game.
Our idea of power projection is different from theirs. And while we clearly have the superior carrier capability, they are looking at other ways to neutralize them- and we are looking at ways to counter that.
I agree that the land based aircraft are a major threat, but I am also concerned about over the horizon missile systems and swarming drones.
Again, you’re certainly not wrong. All I’m saying is that it’s risky to assume they see it the same way.
They wouldn’t spend money on their blue-water fleet like they have been if aggressively engaging the US Navy wasn’t what they had in mind for it. Not saying it’s what they *will* do, but the fact that they want those cards in the deck and are stacking it accordingly bears concern.
The Chinese have already projected power 1000 miles south to the coast of Malaysia and to within spitting distance of the Philippines and Vietnam. Without the system of bases that we have it is doubtful they can project power much farther, and they undoubtedly know that.
Then again, what is the definition of “project power”?
China has a border with Vietnam. Spitting distance is an understatement.
If you ain’t training like “there is a war coming”, why the hell bother training at all? Go to college and get your Masters degree instead.
Exactly.
I would add that even if the good GEN is wrong about the timing for the next war, there is undoubtedly a war coming at some point, so we better train for it.
There is nothing worst than a peace time Army that is not expecting a war.
And yet we still find ourselves in that position about 4-5 times every century, at least.
“There is nothing worst than a peace time Army that is not expecting a war.”
Kasserine Pass?
Task Force Smith?
Speaking of Task Force Smith ( Faith) I saw a great Documentary on their heroic fight at he Chosin.’
They were chewed up horribly and shattered by the Chi-Coms.
Unfortunately they were maligned as incompetent at best and flat out cowards at worst.
The Marines, who were able to fight it out of the area and maintain unit cohesion were the golden children, and the soldiers simply weren’t the fighters the Marines were. A Navy Chaplian went as far as writing a blistering article that called the Army Units and leadership cowards.
The Documentary pointed out that he Soldiers East of the Chosin had indeed fought it out with the Chinese, often to the last bullet. They were hung out to dry by their superiors and by the time they were told to pull back the Reds chopped them up, blocked the roads and disabled vehicles. They did have a single Marine FAC, who called in numerous strikes, but it was no where near enough. They had no Tanks ( the Company that was sent to join them was cut off and turned back miles away) and not enough Artillery to make a difference.
The Marines might have been able to do more for them, but the Army refused to surrender OpCon to the Marines until it was too late.
It didn’t help that the first impression that the Marines ( and the public) got of Task Force Smith were the frozen broken groups of men, most of them with frostbite and wounds, who straggled in with nothing left.
Edit, Task Force Smith was the battle of Osan, Faith was Chosin, two separate incidents. Smith was at the beginning of the war
Everything I’ve seen and read said that the Soldiers east of Chosin really did the best that could be done in an extremely shitty situation.
The Marines on the west side of the lake had a few things going for them that the Army on the east side didn’t. They had high ground. They also had Chesty Puller and Kurt Chew-Een Lee.
The Marines deserve every honor they get for Chosin, but the others get a lot of undeserved hate. I sure as hell wouldn’t have wanted to be freezing my ass off on Fox Hill surrounded by 10,000 Chinamen trying to kill me, but I think I would have enjoyed being in RCT-31’s ill-fated truck convoy even less.
Nothing quite like needing to point out the obvious to those whose job it is to be prepared at all times to fight the next war, wherever it might be. Then again, perhaps his fellow Marines were not the actual target of his remarks.
Be calm, be polite but have a plan to kill everyone or something like that.
Everyone here should first read the National Security Strategy, written mainly by HR McMaster. https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/NSS-Final-12-18-2017-0905.pdf We could have war in both places- a very plausible scenario is war in Korea leads to war in Europe. This makes more sense if you look at it globally, from a macro scale. Who are the players, and what are their interests. North Korea wants to preserve the regime and end sanctions, in that order. In their view, to do that they need nuclear weapons that create an existential threat to enemies in the region and a catastrophic threat to the US. Russia wants NATO out of Eastern Europe, especially the Baltics. They are doing that primarily through information operations on two fronts: Eastern Europe and the US. Their intent is to discredit the US and NATO and make countries like Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, etc, reconsider their alliances. We can’t prevail in two major conflicts simultaneously- we can’t win/hold win any more. Russia knows this. If we have conflict in Korea and don’t win very quickly, Putin could take advantage and roll West. We would wake up in the morning with a changed European landscape. China is not interested in war, especially one that involves a nuclear exchange in Korea. However, they want to maintain what they see as the proper historical balance in the region- which means they have a ‘One China’ policy wrt Taiwan. We want them to stay out of it or even provide aide during the inevitable humanitarian crisis. None of these players are crazy. KJU acts rationally in the context of his worldview. Calling him crazy doesn’t help in the analysis- we would treat a non rational actor very differently. The thing that concerns me, aside from the generally heightened tensions, are the way a Trump has attacked NATO and talk of a preemptive strike on North Korea. You may be enjoying the Russia probe hijinks- but Not as much as Putin. Every twist and turn undermines our reputation in the world, and every statement downgrading NATO makes that coalition weaker. A preemptive strike in Korea, especially a nuclear… Read more »
Red Devil,
Wow. You started your analysis in then right direction, then made a weird Z turn.
What in the world makes you think that:
1) The US will preemptively strike NK with, wait for it, NUKES!
2) President’s Trump criticism of NATO is not designed to shake up NATO and get its members seriously considering the threats looming from the East?
3) Fat Kim dat Turd is an irrational player because his worldview is not based on reality but on his own skewed pseudo historical perspective.
Bottom line, you cannot pretend to be a ball of light and understand NK. They make rational decisions based on their irrational perception of reality which by definition make them irrational players.
1. I listen whenever a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee talks about war plans: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sen-lindsey-graham-says-new-north-korea-tech-advances-make-preemptive-war-more-likely/
I was surprised, because this was the first time I heard preemptive strike placed on the table.
2. Trumps criticism was designed to get him elected. If you think he had a plan much beyond that you haven’t been paying attention. That’s why he changed his stance: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/04/12/trump-on-nato-i-said-it-was-obsolete-its-no-longer-obsolete/?utm_term=.8cb5d21e1369
3. His worldview is his worldview. We don’t really know if he believes that he is a godlike being with incredible powers, or if he and the regime just use that propaganda to stay in power. I suspect that he knows e didn’t really learn to drive at age three and that he does in fact have normal bodily functions requiring him to use a toilet.
It doesn’t really matter. What matters is that he has done everything you would expect him to do to maintain the regime and stay in power. The West actually reinforced his actions by giving in to him every time he made a threat.
Calling him a madman is fun, and it relieves you of the requirement to actually think about the problem, but it doesn’t really help us solve the problem
Si vis pacem, para bellum
To be a credible deterrent, we must not only build the force, but also ensure it is fully trained and prepared for war. This is clear, forceful language- as Ten Bears would say “ There is iron in your words of death for all Comanche to see, and so there is iron in your words of life. No signed paper can hold the iron. It must come from men. The words of Ten Bears carries the same iron of life and death”
From the National Security Strategy:
“The United States must retain overmatch— the combination of capabilities in sufficient scale to prevent enemy success and to ensure that America’s sons and daughters will never be in a fair fight…”
“…We must convince adversaries that we can and will defeat them—not just punish them if they a ack the United States. We must ensure the abil- ity to deter potential enemies by denial, convinc- ing them that they cannot accomplish objectives through the use of force or other forms of aggres- sion…”
‘the Pacific………..’
China is resurrecting Japan of the ’30s and
it began a long time ago.
Chinese are now as they have always been
thieves and liars.
Dad was embedded with the China Marines in Shanghai in the 30s. Much later we were stationed in Taipei (Navy Headquarters Support Activity)
and he remarked: “They have not changed since
Shanghai. They are still, thieves and liars and will look you in the face while they do it”
His job had a lot of contact with them.
global power projection = orbital weapons platforms.
EM, Kinetic, *other*
* grab a big rock, point it towards place X –
from orbit is the only way to be sure…
Wait until we give some anti tank weapons to Ukraine next year. Things may change for the worse or better who knows but it should change non the less..
WRT North Korea, I’m still not convinced that they have a reliable, DEPLOYABLE two-stage (thermonuclear) weapon (or to use examples from our own testing history, even if they can build a kind of “Ivy Mike” that doesn’t mean they have the ability to build a “Castle Bravo.”)
(Note also that Ivy Mike was ~ 10 MT and Castle Bravo was ~15 – these were the two largest devices the US ever exploded – and AFAIK none of Kim’s bombs have done better than about 50kt or 1/20th of 1 MT.)
A modern thermonuclear weapon is an incredibly complex machine, if any one of hundreds of components fails to operate in exactly the right way, the entire device will fail. The result could be anything from a half-assed fission explosion to a mere chemical explosion and while that would scatter extremely dangerous radioactive material over a large area, it wouldn’t have the impact, either physically or psychologically, that an actual nuclear detonation would.
In order for NK to be a real threat they have to be able to produce (a) a reliable, deployable thermonuclear weapon, (b) have a reliable delivery system (IOW one that won’t break up mid-flight) and (c) an accurate enough targeting system that they could hit, at the very least, a large city-type target. While (c) is not that tough to do, I’m not sure they could really accomplish (a) and (b) any time soon.
Seems to me the primary value of NK nukes is in their expected deterrent effect. Kim wants to convince the Western world he has deployable nukes so that we won’t consider an invasion of his country, but the thing about deterrents is that if you have to actually use it, then that means the deterrent has failed.
“…none of Kim’s bombs have done better than about 50kt or 1/20th of 1 MT.”
No, he did detonate a 500KT (1/2 megaton) in September this year. It was an underground explosion that generated a 6.3M seismic event and did so much damage to the underground test site that the the mountain had landslides and threatened to completely collapse.
He has the capability to produce these weapons one at a time, but not the industrial capacity to do so.
The failure of North Korea to launch an attack on the US is their dependence on coal burning cast iron missiles, paddle wheel aircraft carriers and bi-planes with unbalanced propellers and poorly designed timing gears that lead to shooting off their propellers when firing their mounted muskets.