Special Operations Capable (SOC)
In the past, the Marine Corps focused more on yesterday's high intensity, conventional, open "sea, air-land" battlefields, such as those expected during the Cold War. Nowadays, it has been replaced by the more probable mid- and low intensity conflicts. Missions that would require armed conflicts or humanitarian/disaster relief were conceived and many tacticians feared that the Marine Corps were trying to emulate the larger, land-based United States Army.
With counterparts from the United States Navy, Marines have the ability to be projected to any hostile area around the globe due to their maneuverability from the sea. This gives the Marine Corps the advantage over the other military branches; Marines can be deployed to a hostile situation, large or small, within short notice from the Commander-in-Chief.
Ever since the Advanced Base Force was conceived, the enhanced and inherent capabilities of the Fleet Marine Force has proven the Marine Corps operational flexibility as a unique, elite maritime force. The Marine Corps is far more capable of making the adjustments to the changing threat than any other service. Marine Corps Commandant General P. X. Kelley demonstrated capabilities of the Fleet Marine Force's, smaller forward deployed Marine Air-Ground Task Force elements.
- the Marine Corps possessed an inherent capability to perform Special Operations in a maritime environment;
- certain initiatives could be taken to enhance resident capabilities;
- advantages of optimizing the Fleet Marine Force's inherent capabilities to the National Command Authority by offering complementary its services in joint special operations capabilities.
Each Marine Expeditionary Force (MEF) has MEUs. When specifically trained and operationally qualified to perform special operational duties, they are then known as a Marine Expeditionary Units (Special Operations Capable), or MEU (SOC); designed under the battle plans of combined maritime-based ground and air elements that make up a MAGTF.
Read more about this topic: Special Operations Capable
Famous quotes containing the words special, operations and/or capable:
“Those of us who are in this world to educate—to care for—young children have a special calling: a calling that has very little to do with the collection of expensive possessions but has a lot to do with the worth inside of heads and hearts. In fact, that’s our domain: the heads and hearts of the next generation, the thoughts and feelings of the future.”
—Fred M. Rogers, U.S. writer and host of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood. “That Which is Essential Is Invisible to the Eye,” Young Children (July 1994)
“There is a patent office at the seat of government of the universe, whose managers are as much interested in the dispersion of seeds as anybody at Washington can be, and their operations are infinitely more extensive and regular.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It has come to be practically a sort of rule in literature, that a man, having once shown himself capable of original writing, is entitled thenceforth to steal from the writings of others at discretion. Thought is the property of him who can entertain it; and of him who can adequately place it. A certain awkwardness marks the use of borrowed thoughts; but, as soon as we have learned what to do with them, they become our own.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)