Is the US Marine Corps the world's elite military branch?

Answer 1

The Marines are probably the most elite "BRANCH"

But nothing compares to a unit owned i believe by the department of the Army that is so top secret it is only known as "The activity." There is a book out about this unit but the author found it very difficult to get information about this unit because the government declared disclosing information about it illegal. The book is "killer elite."

Yes! Of course being a former Marine myself, I might be somewhat biased.

Yea dude, your biased. I would say the answer is probably the SEALS, but it may also be the SAS, Green Berets, or Delta Force.

None of those are military branches, good job. The U.S. Marines are the best at what they do.

Ok listen here ppl....the Marines are indeed the most ELITE "branch" the Seals are NOT a branch they are a specific force. or Division if you will. also SAS is a British Counter-terrorism unit...Green berets are the elite of the army. Marines are the most elite you get till you get into special forces Seals, Rangers, Delta force, etc.

I'm a former marine who saw combat in the Nam '67-'69 and while serving in the FMF for 10 yrs. I trained with NATO Allies as the Royal Marines and French Legionaires. In Nam we received jungle training from Aussie SAS, we fought with ROK marines and RVN marines against communist forces. Marine Recon, SEALS, Rangers and Green Berets we worked with in my 3 tours in the bush. Each one of these units have a different mission and are trained accordingly. The RMC total only a few thousand and being trained as commandos their training is longer and more comprehensive that a marine grunt in an infantry regiment, man for man they are better trained in the respect that being a smaller organization they train longer and in many combat environments whereas a young marine assigned to an infantry regiment in the FMF would have to spend years of service to be exposed to such training. I wasn't Force Recon but became jump qualified with 10 jumps to earn gold wings and volunteered for training maneuvers that our FMF Force Recon had with the RMC back in the early 70's. The hit point of the exercise ended with night parachute jumps then a 20 mlle force march to the finish line finalized with a marksmanship contest. The RMC incurred less injuries from the jump and beat us by about 9 minutes or so to the finish line in the force march but after a day off we met them on the rifle range. I can't remember the model of the rifle they used but it had a long barrel. All of the Recon marines and myself had joined when qualification at the range was done with the M14 and not one of us shot lower than shape shooter and most as I shot expert. We out shot them at the 100, 300 and found out that they didn't have to qualify at the 500 yd. range and it showed for their score there was dismal. We admired their professionalism and ability to soldier hard but they gave us respect for most of us were combat decorated and had at least 1 purple heart where only a few of them had seen action in Malaysia. Their sergeants were old guys ours as I was in my early 20's.

The French Foreign Legion is another tough and better trained fighting force for the same reason as the RMC is, they're trained as commandos and being a smaller force their training standards are more stringent which makes them superb soldiers in field craft and brutal force marches but could use USMC PMI's to upgrade their marksmanship skills.

In combat in Nam Korean marines were some bad ass sob's even when wounded they'd advance crawling just to stay in the fight and the VC and village peasants feared them more than us for they hated communist and to them if a chink wasn't with them they were against them. Their hand to hand combat training is brutal for its full contact and the pain of the blows teaches you not to get hit but they are so great comrades in arms and I'm glad they are our allies. In Nam the Vietnamese peasants let you know who they respected for they would say, "When army come many VC come but when marine come no VC VC de de mau (leave)". Each infantry unit, in my opinion, has a demon of war assigned to it and this demon installs itself in the collective force as their determination and fighting spirit. There are military units that are superbly trained to be effective in their destructive skills as each units listed as elite are and maybe trained more extensively than the USMC but none have the fighting prowess of that demon thats assigned to the USMC. In WWI at Belleau Wood the USMC lost more men that day than in any other battle but won the day and put fear in the most professional army in the world the German Wehrmacht by dinging them with their Springfield rifles at 700 and 800 yds.

In WWII the USN abandoned 5,000 marines on Guadalcanal without vital supplies when they thought that a Japanese naval force was coming for them, which proved to be a false report. These 5,000 untested marines had two jobs, to build an airfield and they did so using Japanese abandon equipment, surviving off Japanese rice, tins of fish and smoking Japanese stink weed tobacco and after 6 mos. of fighting they wiped out a force of 35,000 season Japanese jungle fighters.

At the Chosin Reservoir in the Korean War they fought a fighting withdrawal 75 miles in sub zero winter annihilating every Chinese communist division thrown at them bringing out not only their dead but equipment as well. That was the first time the Royal marines fought with the USMC and in honor of their victory and with much admiration they presented the USMC with the Bell of Canton they had captured in 1875. In Nam whenever charlie hit us he outnumbered us but in every major confrontation marine firepower saved us. At the battle of Hue the 5th marines were outnumbered by a well entrenched and determined NVA and although they'd never seen urban combat they wrote the manual for it on the job, they took the Citadel by making the NVA bow down and "dede mau" achieving a victory against the odds again. In '68 the army AirCav supported by ARVN's went into the A Shau valley to fight their way secretly into Laos but the NVA changed their minds by wiping their tails. Then the army sent in their much acclaim 101st airborne again supported by ARVN's and the same result with the screaming eagles having to leave. They learned that airborne "wolf tickets"were not enough for the tough NVA doing their job of keeping the Americans away from their supplies in Laos. Then in August '68 MACV sent in the 9th marines who wiped NVA arse all the way into Laos to destroy their vital supplies putting a limb in their strut.

Now in my opinion the SAS and SEALS are the elite of the elite. The SEALS budget for bullets is more than the whole budget from the entire USMC so they'd better be good but don't have the bragging rights that the SAS has because the SAS has earned them since WWII. These are the toughest pain loving, eat anything, resourceful, experts at laying down suppressive fire power fm's I've ever seen and I feel that they are the best professional warriors in existence today.