Marines
Marines (or naval infantry) are military personnel generally trained to operate on both land and sea, with a particular focus on amphibious warfare.
Historically, the main tasks undertaken by marines have included raiding ashore (often in support of naval objectives) and the boarding of vessels during ship-to-ship combat or capture of prize ships.
Crewmen could sign on as naval infantry (called Marinus), rowers/seamen, craftsmen and various other jobs, though all personnel serving in the imperial fleet were classed as milites ("soldiers"), regardless of their function; only when differentiation with the army was required, were the adjectives classiarius or classicus added.
That corps participated in the conquest of Byzantium (1203–1204), later officially called "Fanti da Mar" (sea infantry) in 1550., Venice also had dedicated naval expeditionary corps of naval infantry recruited primarily from Dalmatia from the local population called the Oltremarini (overseas troops) [7] Later, Spanish King Carlos I assigned the naval infantry of the Compañías Viejas del Mar de Nápoles (Naples Sea Old Companies) to the Escuadras de Galeras del Mediterráneo (Mediterranean Galley Squadrons) in 1537, progenitors of the current Spanish Navy Marines (Infantería de Marina) corps, making them the oldest marine corps still in active service in the world.
Because of this, exact one-word translations for the English term "marines" do not exist in many other languages (with the notable exception of the Dutch word marinier).
[citation needed] Marine units primarily deploy from warships using boats, landing craft, hovercraft, amphibious vehicles or helicopters.
SWADS is trained for the role of naval infantry and it consists of elite soldiers specially chosen form the national armed forces branches.
The Royal Cambodian Navy created a force of 2,000 marines in 2007 known as the 31st Naval Infantry Brigade[13] Canada had a history of participating in amphibious operations such as the Normandy landings and the Allied invasion of Sicily.
Even though Canada does not have a marine corps, it has units that can carry out Marines-type operations, such as an amphibious-operations trained company of the 3rd Battalion of the Royal 22nd Regiment, JTF2 that specializes in combat diving and amphibious reconnaissance, the Naval Tactical Operations Group that specializes in maritime interdiction, and the Naval Security Team that can provide force protection for amphibious forces.
Specialized in amphibious assaults, the corps is built around four detachments based along Chile's long coasts at Viña del Mar, Talcahuano, Punta Arenas, and Iquique.
As they were all dissolved during 2000s, a new naval infantry company, ~160-strong (Satnija mornaričko-desantnog pješaštva) was formed again in 2018 as a part of the Navy Flotilla and is located in Ploče.
They are tasked with providing security in the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz, as well as conducting anti-piracy missions to assist Iranian ships.
The Iraqi Navy is a small force with 1,500 sailors and 800 marines designed to protect the shoreline and inland waterways from insurgent infiltration.
The Navy ceded most of its riverine responsibilities to the Army, reducing the size of the marine force, and deploying them back aboard ships where they play a vital role in drug interdiction and boarding of suspect vessels in territorial waters.
They were deployed mainly to the Arakan and Tenasserim areas, and to the Irrawaddy delta, to assist in counter-insurgency operations, but also performed other security duties.
The Corpo de Fuzileiros, meaning literally "Corps of Fusiliers”, is the Elite Infantry and Special Forces unit of the Portuguese Navy.
It is located in Babadag, Tulcea County, and was formed on 29 November 1971 as the 307th Marine Infantry Battalion for the defence of the Danube Delta and Romanian Black Sea shore.
Their red trouser stripes mark the Infanteria de Marina as part of the Royal Household Corps and were given by Charles III to the marines in reward for their fierce defence of the Castillo del Morro of Havana, Cuba, in 1762.
[29][30] The Fouj Al-Mughawayr Al-Bahir (فوج المغاوير البحر meaning "Marines Regiment") is a unit based in Latakia Governorate.
Its mission is to "enlist and direct its units in order to form the disembarking force and/or support of amphibious or special operations; executing naval safeguarding and environmental policing, as well as actively participating in the national development".
The Vietnam People's Navy maintains a naval infantry force (Vietnamese: Hải quân Đánh bộ; 海軍打步).
[34] For several centuries, the Byzantine navy used the descendants of the Mardaites, who were settled in southern Anatolia and Greece, as marines and rowers for its ships.
In the 1260s, when emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos rebuilt the navy, he recruited the Tzakones (settlers from Laconia) and the Gasmouloi (men of mixed Greek-Latin descent) as special marine troops.
The Qing dynasty‘s Beiyang Fleet of the Imperial Chinese Navy maintained a small naval infantry force which at its height reached the size of 300 marines.
[41] The IJN’s land forces maintained several combat units: The role of Ottoman naval infantry originated in Orhan's conquest of the Karasi Beylik and the capture of its fleet.
The last raised units were the Ta'ifat al Ru'sa (corsair captains militia) recruited from among the North African Arabs and indigenous Berbers.
The Soviet Navy had a number of small battalion-sized naval infantry and coastal defence units that mostly served in the ports and bases before the Second World War.
Squadron General and Captain Diego Fernández de Medrano stood out in the front line during the conquest of Terceira Island in 1583.
This tradition went back no later than the Annam Protectorate of Tang dynasty when the governors built boats and trained marines to fight off pirates and invaders.
The 12th Naval Infantry Brigade (12. brigada mornaričko desantne pješadije) of the Yugoslavian Navy of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia consisted of 900 to 2,000 men in three battalions.
