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> I was in the Marine Corps and every time we got to test some new piece of gear the safety officer was like "No, you can't live fire...

I thought the whole point of the Marines was to cause maximal amounts of damage. Are you implying there is a constraint on that?

But now I understand why the marines hate the navy: I had a buddy who'd been in the navy and he said they kept the kids busy by cleaning and painting everything but frequently they'd let 'em blow off steam by tossing cardboard boxes and stuff off the end the flight deck and shooting at them with the 50 cal machine guns.

We were good friends, attended MIT together, but if I thought the Navy would take many people like him I'd doubt their ability to fight a war. He was only in the navy because it would pay for school and AFAIK he managed to avoid getting any rank advancement at all. MIT requires, or used to, a lot of all nighters and he once said "I'm probably only sane with these all nighters because I did so much extra sleeping in the navy"



> I thought the whole point of the Marines was to cause maximal amounts of damage.

I thought their point was to expose themselves to maximal amounts of damage.


> I thought their point was to expose themselves to maximal amounts of damage.

I hate to be pedantic, but technically the whole point is to expose the enemy to maximal amounts of damage. Whoever that is. Anything else is incidental.


I'm referring to them being the tip of the spear, but yes, you are not wrong.


> But now I understand why the marines hate the navy: I had a buddy who'd been in the navy and he said they kept the kids busy by cleaning and painting everything but frequently they'd let 'em blow off steam by tossing cardboard boxes and stuff off the end the flight deck and shooting at them with the 50 cal machine guns.

If anything this should be why the taxpayer doesn't like the navy.


I’ve always assumed this kind of stuff is cheaper than the damage they’d cause if they were idle.




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