(Amerika) United States Marine Corps (USMC)

[Quintus Fabius]

https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/yo...rd%20Brief

The inside story of why Marine MEUs are ‘special operations capable’

QUANTICO, VIRGINIA — Any Marine who has even a passing interest in the service’s history as it ­relates to special operations knows that when the Joint Special Operations Command was formed in the 1980s it brought together existing special operators from each of the services — except the Marines.

Future authors in their own memoir-publishing company Navy SEALs Team 6 along with the ­Army’s soon-to-be Chuck Norris movie franchise line Delta Force and the lesser-known Air Force 24th Special Tactics Squadron all formed up under the ­newly-tasked command.

It would take more than a quarter-century for ­Marines to form the Marine Raiders in the heat of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and join the party.

Back in the post-disco haze of the early 1980s the Marines were “special” enough, thank you very much.

And, by the way, why would the Corps offload some of its best hard-chargers for some Army general or Navy admiral to keep all to themselves? The pit bull stays with its trainer.

But jarheads deploying today on the Marine expeditionary unit rotations across the globe might not know why they have to punch through a list of tasks predeployment so they can tag their MEU with the designator of special operations capable, or MEU(SOC).