The ultimate Mirage III mod!

Its sad that posters here just do not remember what the cold war was like.

Sweet

Well…….Im ex Army, but I have noticed that Marines and their supporters are the most deffensive of types…….just cant stand it if you dont agree with them and wont be satisfied until you shut up. Its funny…..so easy to push their buttons!:D
But anyhow……I would say the Marines, while technicaly part of the Navy, have grown more and more independant of them in the last 20 years or so, and are now all but an independant branch of service.

Do SAAF Grippens have BVR missiles?

Sounded quite reasonable to me. Navy journals in the 80s were big into discussing operations under EMCON conditions. And the Sovs ALLWAYS trailed CVBGs with “trawlers” or had aircraft snoopers in range……..so if they werent being tracked by the task force, they werent around and it was safe to assume the CVBG was undetected.

As I understand it the USMC is a co-equal force under the Dept of the Navy, rather than the USMC ‘belonging’ to the USN. From what I can tell USMC officers hold high command positions within the CAG, rather than the USN holding all the cards and calling all the shots.

One way to look at it would be to see that there is the USMA at West Point, the USNA at Annapolis, and the Air Force Acadamy at Colorado Springs. There is even a Coast Guard Acadamy and a Merchant Marine Acad. So it really cant be said that the Marines are a “co-equal” branch of the armed forces.