Should Army and Marines (or components of) consolidate?

NO! I mean no offense to the Army but we earned our eagle globe and anchor and if you asked any Marine that question, it's almost an insult. I have nothing against the army. Each branch serves a purpose but being a Marine is a title we carry with pride. It's sacred to us. There will always be a need for the army and there will always be a need for Marines. I respect other branches but we are "the few, the proud, the Marines". To just put us in with the Army isn't how we trained and not what we signed up for. SEMPER FI

After reading the responses, I'm seeing a lot of the emotional response vs. an objective, analytical response. To some extent, that doesn't surprise me. There is not branch in our military that carries more myth and mystique than the Marine Corps. And Marines themselves are the first to buy into and push the mystique (again, not a big deal. They seemed to have learned early that PR is important. Something the Army as a whole is not as good at). However, to really answer this question we DO need to look at it analytically.

Currently Marines are structured to be medium-weight, combined arms expeditionary force that has been optimized for seaborne deployment. Expeditionary warfare is not unique to the Marines. The Army has it's own expeditionary units (82nd, 101st, Rangers) that can get to the fight faster than the Marines can. The big difference is that the Marines come with more firepower and a more robust sustainment ability (30 days vs 3 days). Also, Marines have interoperability with the Navy that is in their DNA. Their officers are trained from day 1 side-by-side with naval officers so that they are intimately familiar with naval operations. Amphibious warfare is also a stated raison d'etre by the Marines. They have essentially taken that highly specialized role as their own and become the SME's for it.

On the other side of the coin, however, beyond force structure allowing for quicker deployment and the highly specialized amphibious role, everything else the Marines bring to the strategic table is a duplication of Army capability, and not necessarily a more capable duplication. While Marines have better strategic mobility than comparable Army units, they give up firepower and protection to do it. And once they are on the ground, they don't fight much differently than a comparable Army unit. So again, this begs the question, is there much the Marines bring that the Army can't do? The cold, analytic answer is no. The Army is capable of taking over the Marine mission. Now, this would not be without some hiccups. First the, the Army would need to develop a force structure that would allow them to conduct the Marine mission. The closest we have to a "Marine-style" MAGTF is the Strykers, but even that is not a complete 1:1 mirror. We would also have to do some training changes to accomodate the amphibious mission and requirements. Finally, there would need to be more integration with the Navy at the operational level. This will require Army officers to have more and sustained exposure to naval culture and doctrine to create the level of interoperability that the Marines and Navy currently have. In short, consolidaiton is doable, but not without some significant humps to to overcome...and that is not even addressing the emotional reaction that will come about with any plans to dissolve the Corps and roll it under the Army.

I always thought Pg 1 of the US Army Survival Manual stated "Call the Marines"