Marines tired of playing Army role in land wars.

• Author: Parsons, Dan
• Position: Marine Corps

Aboard the USS Kearsarge, 12 miles off the North Carolina coast, Lance Cpl. Lewis Rivera finished a cigarette and stared into the rolling Atlantic. Halfway through a four-year stint in the Marine Corps he had already experienced the stinging sand and dust of Afghanistan.

Only now was he becoming acquainted with the salty air, oily industrial odors and cramped quarters aboard an 850-foot amphibious assault ship. It was a welcome duty shift for a young Marine who had only seen service as a ground troop. If he had wanted to do that, he would have joined the Army.

"We're there to get in, kick down doors, kill who we have to kill and get the hell out," said Rivera, with 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade Weapons Company. "Everybody wants to get back out here at sea. Everybody."

That was a popular refrain among Marines bunked for two weeks in early February aboard 25 ships for Bold Alligator 2012. It was a return to sea for the Marine Corps writ large, and a test of whether it can operate effectively alongside its Navy partners and other nations.

"The whole point of the Marine Corps is to receive a call and get where we need to be," Rivera said. "We're trying to give all this stuff back to the Army. We want to be done with being used as an army."

The Marine Corps is weighed down by theater-specific equipment rushed to Iraq and Afghanistan like mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles, or MRAPs, of which the service has 3,300 in various forms.

"We don't need those any more," Rivera said. "They're too heavy and slow for what Marines are supposed to do. We are not an occupying force. That's the Army."

Still, the Marine Corps' share of the Obama administration's fiscal year 2013 budget unmistakably favors machines over manpower. While the F-35B, the Marine's version of the Joint Strike Fighter and the most expensive of the three variants, was given a green light to proceed, it cut 20,000 personnel.

The Marine Corps has an annual turnover rate of about 16 percent, Brig. Gen. Christopher S. Owens said aboard the USS Wasp.

"Statistically, that means there is a new generation of Marines every five years," he said.

With the Marine Corps set to fall from 202,000 to 182,000, that replacement rate could accelerate.

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Marine Corps leadership is fighting to avoid a brain drain brought on by attrition and a decade of ground combat.

No less than 14,000 Marines and sailors from the United States and eight other NATO militaries...