Structure, force and capability comparison of China's and US Marines

The US Marine Corps is often talked about essentially representing a separate army within the US military. Indeed, on paper, it's a huge military force, with over 200,000 troops, when reservists are included. The Marine Corps has historically been tasked with one of the toughest missions imaginable, taking enemy shores and islands. While powerful, the US Marine Corps has gotten a powerful competitor in the form of Chinese naval infantry units. But crucially, what would be the equivalent of the Marine Corps in China has sometimes been misunderstood. Their numbers have also been rising over the years. So today, Binkov will show just how the US Marine Ground Force lags behind the Chinese one. Amphibious landings are complex operations which require secure communications. Secure internet communication is also paramount, and PIA, Private Internet Access VPN, which is sponsoring this video, provides just that. 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And there's a 30-day money-back guarantee. So give PIA VPN a try. Back to our video. The US Marine Corps is separate from the US Navy, but both of those services fall under the Department of Navy. Almost 180,000 troops are part of the active service Marine Corps today, with another 34,000 being reservists. The marines are trained for amphibious assaults. While army troops too could try to perform some of those, that's not their intended role, and the units are not configured to do such assaults. Of course, amphibious assault is not the only task the marines are all about. Still, we will make it the primary task in this video. A small confession is in order. This video is really about who has more trained troops and ground equipment ready for amphibious assaults. If one wants a true apple to apple comparison with the Chinese forces, one first needs to find a common denominator. Reserve units are nice and all, but they're less trained. And for Chinese reserves there's simply no precise data out there. Sure, there's a lump figure for the entire military, but there's no way of knowing how many of those were trained for amphibious assaults. On the other hand, out of the 180,000 active service US marines, several tens of thousands are part of the aviation component. What's left is 144,000 troops. There's also always a bunch of various personnel outside the units actually going near combat. Talking about the ground forces, major unit types in the marine corps are logistics and support regiments, artillery regiments and infantry regiments. Regiments are further divided into battalions of various kinds, and battalions will be the sort of common denominators for comparison with Chinese forces. Active service maneuver battalions number 8 of the artillery kind, 24 of the infantry kind, 8 of the recon kind, and 3 of the amphibious vehicle kind. While there were also three combat engineer battalions, those seem to be disbanding. Just like armor battalions sporting Abrams tanks were once active, but have since been retired, in 2020. There are also some three dozen logistics battalions, and a single special forces regiment. Infantry battalions number some 950 troops on average, artillery and logistics battalion number 600 troops. Adding in the 1500 strong special ops regiment and those recon and amphibious vehicle battalions, the grand total of the US marine corps comes out to some 61,000 troops meant to directly maneuver around on the battlefield, be it in combat or supporting combat logistically. So what about the Chinese? Years ago, the media would usually say the Chinese military had some 20,000 personnel in its marine corps, then in the span of just a few years, its marine corps grew to some 40,000 personnel. So what changed? Did China manage to train and form additional units in such a short time period? No. China always had more units trained for amphibious assaults, but most of those were part of the army, not the navy. So what happened is that some of those army units, both amphibious assault and coastal units, got regrouped. Some ended up in the newly expanded marine corps. But at the same time, quite a few of those army amphibious assault units remained. So China has, in fact, a parallel system with two service branches featuring units trained for and equipped for amphibious assaults. They use and train on the same navy ships and exercises. They even use a lot of the same equipment types, like the same model of seagoing combat vehicles. The Chinese organization of marine type units is a bit different. The US marines use fairly large battalions, packed with support subunits and added outside units for extra firepower. Those are supported by aviation and their navy ships, and serve as a wholly independent unit, called the Marine Expeditionary Group. Chinese battalions are not meant to go to battle on their own, as they barely have any support within them. Instead, both the navy marines and the army's amphibious assault units are configured in brigades. In fact, those Chinese brigades are generally equipped with heavier and more capable weapons than the US marine units. The differences between the two are fairly small. Marine brigades use somewhat lighter vehicles. For example, their air defense systems are manpad class ones, while the army's units use HQ-17s, which are TOR-like medium range tactical systems. Perhaps the biggest difference isn't the composition of the combined arms battalions themselves. Army's battalions are all the same. All of the vehicles used are amphibious, and are mostly based on the Type 05 vehicle. The marine battalions are different. One of their battalions is meant to be transported by helicopters, so it is in fact very light infantry. The two mechanized infantry battalions use similar vehicles as the army, but use fewer assault gun vehicles, and use fewer vehicles in total. The marines also have one battalion of wheeled vehicles which, while amphibious, aren't really meant to go into the sea. The artillery pieces in both army's and navy's brigades are self-propelled guns, which are, again, amphibious. The US Todd guns do feature larger caliber tubes and can outrange the Chinese guns. The latter, however, compensate with being more mobile, both in the sea and on the ground, offer some armored protection, and require a smaller crew. The US also uses self-propelled multiple rocket launcher vehicles, which the Chinese navy marines lack completely. The army does use some such systems, but theirs are smaller and have a shorter reach. Neither the US nor Chinese MRL systems are amphibious. US marine infantry battalions are, on their own, just light infantry, without vehicles or heavy weapons. Of course, when war plans require them, those battalions will be given motor vehicles and even armored amphibious assault vehicles. That being said, even when configured to their heaviest, such US battalions will still lag behind the firepower of Chinese battalions. Not all infantry companies within those US battalions have the same amount of training for using different systems. For example, out of the three infantry companies, one will be trained more heavily towards air assaults, meaning being flown in by rotorcraft. One will be trained more for insertion by small rubber boats. And one will have more training to use the assault amphibious vehicle. That does not mean, of course, that all battalions can't be inserted by rotorcraft, or AAVs. US battalions certainly do not have any heavy weapons organic to them. They have some small caliber man-portable mortars and ATGMs, but that's about it. The heavier equipped units are specialized battalions. Mostly for recon, now that the have gotten rid of their tanks. Their light armored recon battalions use LAV-25 vehicles, which, while somewhat amphibious, aren't really seagoing. But do come in in several variants, including vehicles with mortars, vehicles configured with anti-tank missiles, and vehicles sporting 25mm guns. Some battalions use AAVs and even the new ACVs as organic assets. AAVs come equipped with upgunned weapon stations, sporting a 50 cal machine gun and a 40mm grenade launcher. That being said, those are still really glorified armored personnel carriers, as they lack proper sights and long reach weapons. A quick digression. Despite being brand new, the ACV in its current incarnation doesn't bring that much more to the table than the decades old AAV vehicles it will replace. The expeditionary fighting vehicle was supposed to be the high tech replacement, but it got cancelled due to development and cost related problems. Chinese amphibious assault vehicles in their infantry transport variant sit somewhere between the EFV and ACV. They have a medium caliber gun, but they can't afford as much armored protection. They can carry less than half the number of troops, too. On the other hand, they're much faster while on the sea than the current US vehicles. Anyway, as said, the one area where US marines do outgun their Chinese equivalent is artillery. Such artillery battalions usually come with 3 to 4 firing batteries. One usually has the HIMARS MRL, which can fire GPS guided projectiles out to 80 kilometers away. And can even fire a single large GPS guided missile out to 300 kilometers away. Others come with M777 Todd howitzers, which can also fire GPS guided Excalibur rounds when those are available. It is not known if the Chinese artillery uses guided rounds. While Chinese arms makers do advertise various even smaller caliber satellite guided rockets and 120mm mortars for export, there's simply no information on whether the Chinese military procured such systems. Still, the overall number of big hardware pieces in all of the US marines' units is smaller than in their Chinese counterparts. And they're still, on average, not as well equipped. They're lagging behind most indirect fire support guns. To be used against fortified positions or enemy vehicles which aren't tanks. If, for example, all the marine infantry battalions would be configured so that two thirds of their combat companies are manning AAVs and that one third uses LAV-25 vehicles, the US Marine Corps would have the following combat hardware. Comparing that inventory to one of China's Army and Navy's amphibious brigades, the discrepancy is obvious. The only aspects where US Marines hardware numbers are competitive are APCs and multiple rocket launchers. But while US AAV vehicles are more numerous, they also have weaker armaments and sights. Even if one would add the US Marines reserve battalions, while not adding any reservist units to the Chinese, the US units would still lack all of the assault guns, all the air defense units, and would still lag behind in the number of artillery pieces. When it comes to actual personnel numbers in combat battalions, the comparison doesn't look as great for the US side, on the country. The personnel figures could also be adjusted for special forces. The US has a small regiment worth of those, while the Chinese marines have a brigade. But even that doesn't really allow for an apples to apples comparison. Because the two sides have logistics units set up differently. And that's where it becomes quite murky. While the US Marine infantry battalions are made to be self-sufficient, Chinese ones are not, so the US battalions have over 200 personnel in logistics and support units. Chinese battalions are mostly devoid of logistics troops as they rely on brigade level support. Each brigade has another 2000 personnel in command and support. Of course, there are other logistics units, even outside these. Both in China and in the US. US marines operate some three dozen various logistics and support battalions inside support regiments. Each of those may have roughly 600 personnel. Counting in various command, communications, medical and other units, US support may approach 30 thousand personnel. The Chinese army too has separate logistics brigades and other support units, but trying to deduce how many of those would support the landing forces would be nearly impossible. It's also plausible that other non amphibious army brigades support the landing forces. However, those are likely to be second echelon forces, not really disembarking onto a contested beachhead. What's therefore easier to calculate is this. Counting just the combat troops within all the battalions without the support units. In that case, the personnel numbers for the US infantry battalions drop. As the Chinese support personnel is organized mostly outside the combat battalions, their adjusted tally would not really drop. So, in the overall scheme of things, it's not just that the Chinese navy marines, when combined with their army marines, have more ground based firepower. But they also have somewhat more actual troops meant to do maneuvering combat or provide firepower. Of course, overall capability is not made up of just the number of combat troops. Nor even the number of large guns within those marine units. Naturally, many, many other factors influence capability. Just to mention one, the US Marine Corps has a few hundred combat planes and hundreds of rotorcraft under its direct command. China's navy marines have a single brigade with transport helicopters, supporting their units. China's army marines rely on the overall army helicopter inventory, as well as on the army's attack helicopters. And both services have to rely on their navy and air force for air support. But all that is beyond the scope of this video. Any war that will rely on amphibious assaults will, in reality, depend on many other factors. Which will make all these numbers a bit less relevant.