Amphibious & Expeditionary Operations

The cross-Channel landing at Pevensey succeeded without opposition at the shoreline, but the subsequent battle reshaped English governance and remains a reference case for sea-based invasion in the pre-gunpowder era.

Dandolo created a regiment of ten companies distributed across several ships, which took part in the conquest of Byzantium. This standing sea-going infantry formation is regarded as the earliest organised marine corps, distinct from ad hoc arming of ships' crews.

When the emperor rebuilt the Byzantine fleet he raised dedicated marine troops from Laconian settlers and men of mixed Greek-Latin descent. This continued an earlier Byzantine practice under Basil I of maintaining a separate marine regiment for the Imperial Fleet.

Kublai Khan's Yuan dynasty launched large combined Mongol, Chinese and Korean fleets against Japan in 1274 and 1281; both were repelled, the second scattered by a typhoon remembered in Japan as the divine wind.

Seven expeditions over three decades combined diplomacy with the ability to land large armed forces at ports from Southeast Asia to East Africa, an early demonstration of sea-based expeditionary power distinct from the colonial navies that followed.

On 27 February 1537 Charles I permanently attached the Compañías Viejas del Mar de Nápoles to the Escuadras de Galeras del Mediterráneo, also styled the Tercio de Armada. These units are the direct progenitors of the modern Spanish Navy Marines, making them the world's oldest active marine force.

The Venetian marine regiment received its official designation as sea infantry. Venice also maintained the Oltremarini, dedicated naval expeditionary troops recruited largely from Dalmatia.

Portugal established a naval infantry regiment attached to its fleet, following the Spanish precedent. It ranks as the third-oldest marine corps in the world, and Portuguese marines are also listed as forming in 1610 among the earliest European marine units.

The forerunners of the Troupes de marine were raised as land forces controlled by the naval ministry, notably for operations in French Canada. They were the fourth European marine force created, after Spain and Portugal.

The first English marine regiment was raised, giving the Royal Marines their founding date and making England the fourth or fifth European state to field dedicated marines. The lineage was interrupted before being permanently re-established in the eighteenth century.

The corps was created on 10 December 1665 during the Second Anglo-Dutch War as an infantry branch of the Dutch States Navy. It was the fifth European marine unit formed, after the Spanish, Portuguese, French and English corps, and survives as the Netherlands Marine Corps.

Two years after formation, the Dutch marines took part in the attack on English shipping in the Medway. It remains the first battle honour on the Korps Mariniers' colours and demonstrated the operational value of purpose-raised naval infantry.

Marine regiments were formed for the fleet in 1702 but by 1713 had been disbanded or absorbed into the army as regiments of foot. The episode illustrates the recurring cycle of raising and dissolving marine forces before permanent establishment.

On 16 November 1705, following the establishment of the Imperial Russian Navy in 1696, several regiments of marine equipage troops were designated as naval infantry. They fought both ashore and in ship detachments, founding the Russian and later Soviet naval infantry tradition.

After earlier marine regiments had been disbanded or absorbed by the army, a standing marine force was created for direct Admiralty service. This body has an unbroken line of descent to today's Royal Marines.

Charles III rewarded the Infantería de Marina for its defence of the fortress at Havana with red trouser stripes marking membership of the Royal Household Corps. The distinction reflects the prestige marines had acquired within the Spanish naval establishment.

Formed on 10 November 1775, the corps was originally intended only to guard naval vessels during the American Revolutionary War, and was disbanded in 1783. It is the founding act claimed by the United States Marine Corps.

In the second half of the nineteenth century Australia's colonial navies formed volunteer naval infantry and naval militia brigades. With the creation of the Royal Australian Navy in 1911 they became the Royal Australian Naval Brigade, peaking at 2,817 men in 1915 before disbandment in 1920.

Gran Colombia formed marines in 1822, drawing personnel mostly from Venezuela, and dissolved them in 1829 with the federation's collapse. The unit is an early Latin American attempt at dedicated naval infantry.

Napoleon had converted the Compagnies de la Mer into line infantry regiments, but marine artillery was re-created in 1822 and marine infantry in 1831. These Troupes de marine became the main overseas and colonial forces of the French military in the nineteenth century.

A single infantry battalion founded the Argentine Marine Corps, expanded in 1880 before being merged with coast artillery into a Naval Artillery Regiment. Coastal defence responsibility passed to the army in 1898, and marines reappeared as five battalions between 1935 and 1938.

Although a marine corps was proposed in the Act and Decree Establishing a Navy of November 1835, recruitment began only after acting governor James W. Robinson urged it on 14 January 1836. The corps' duties were codified in fifteen articles passed by the Texas Congress on 13 December 1836, and over 350 men eventually served.

Created on 16 March 1861 as a branch of the Confederate States Navy, the corps was composed roughly 80 per cent of defectors from the US Marines. It shows how quickly marine expertise could be transferred by personnel rather than institutions.

As part of his naval reforms Tegetthoff dissolved the Naval Infantry Regiment and Naval Artillery Corps, noting no marines had served aboard ship for a decade. Thereafter sailors not on active warships received infantry drill and performed naval infantry duties, an alternative model to a separate marine branch.

A short-lived marine corps was added to the newly established Imperial Japanese Navy using the Royal Marines as a template. Judged unsuitable in its original form, it was disbanded in 1878, with amphibious tasks later falling to army Sea-Landing Brigades.

The Qing Imperial Chinese Navy's small marine force, at most 300 strong, fought after the formal end of the First Sino-Japanese War when the fort was attacked on 25 December 1895. It fell to Japanese troops on 29 December, showing the limits of a token naval infantry establishment.

Following the 1911 Revolution the new republic created a naval infantry force that became the amphibious branch of the Republic of China Navy. It later relocated with the government to Taiwan.

A shortage of ground forces for the Western Front led to a division of two sailor brigades and one Royal Marines brigade. It fought in the defence of Antwerp in late 1914 and then suffered heavy casualties at Gallipoli, an early large-scale amphibious campaign.

Allied forces landed on the Gallipoli peninsula against Ottoman positions and became pinned on the beaches for months before withdrawing, a failure that later shaped interwar thinking on specialised landing craft and fire support.

The battalion was created in 1919 from the crews of Estonian surface warships and based in Tallinn. It was operational only from March to June of that year.

Members of the Soviet Naval Infantry, including Baltic Fleet men who had backed the Bolsheviks, joined the 1921 rising at the Kronstadt island fortress as the Russian Civil War wound down. Soviet naval infantry brigades were later formed en masse from surplus ship crews and shore-duty sailors on Stavka orders.

Thailand's first marine battalion was formed in 1932 with USMC help, expanded to a regiment in 1940 and fought communist guerrillas through the 1950s and 1960s. The USMC again assisted its expansion into a brigade during the 1960s, and it has since grown to four brigades.

Paraguay's marine corps existed only in limited cadre form from the late nineteenth century until the final stages of the Chaco War, when a three-battalion regiment was raised. The war provided the impetus for a substantial riverine marine force in a landlocked state.

Drafted after the creation of the Fleet Marine Force, the manual set out doctrine for naval gunfire support, ship-to-shore movement and landing craft that shaped Allied practice through the Second World War.

The modern Colombian marine corps dates from these two companies, which later served in the 1946–58 civil conflict and provided volunteers for the Korean War. By the 1960s the force had grown to a battalion plus five independent companies.

A heavily fortified atoll proved far costlier to take than expected: coral reefs stranded landing craft short of the beach and preliminary bombardment failed to suppress defences, driving rapid development of amphibious tractors and more precise pre-landing fire support used in subsequent Pacific landings.

The Marine Corps sought to modernise its ship-to-shore assault capability amid persistent tension with North Korea, part of a wider push to expand marine and amphibious forces on the peninsula.

On 1 June 2025 Nigeria created a specialised rapid-response marine branch within its navy. It extends dedicated amphibious capability in West Africa.

The annual exercise expanded in scale amid continuing tension in the South China Sea, with beach landings and coastal defence serials staged across multiple Philippine islands, including locations facing contested waters.

The biennial exercise brought a larger number of partner armed forces than any previous iteration, putting landing craft, amphibious vehicles and airborne elements ashore across northern Australia alongside maritime and air manoeuvres.

Exercises held on Japanese and US training grounds practised island defence and retaking scenarios relevant to the Nansei island chain, reflecting Japan's build-up of an amphibious brigade modelled in part on the US Marine Corps.

PT PAL delivered further locally built amphibious ships to expand a fleet that supports both marine corps operations and disaster relief across the archipelago, reducing reliance on ageing foreign-built tank landing ships.

The French-built ships, acquired after France redirected a cancelled Russian order, gave Egypt's navy a helicopter and landing craft capability it used alongside Gulf and Western forces in coastal manoeuvres.

The navy moved a domestic amphibious ship programme forward after repeated tender cancellations, seeking to close a capability gap with a fleet that has relied on a single ageing landing platform dock.

Service leaders restored some infantry and ground combat capacity that earlier cuts had removed, while continuing to field Marine Littoral Regiments built around anti-ship missiles for distributed island operations.

The vessel is designed to launch fixed-wing uncrewed aircraft alongside helicopters and landing craft, a step beyond the helicopter-only Type 075 ships already in service with the PLA Navy.

The trial confirmed the ship's conversion from a stalled F-35B carrier into a drone carrier, operating a folding-wing uncrewed combat aircraft in place of the fighters Turkey was barred from buying.

On 23 May 2023 the corps ceased to be a coastal defence element of the navy and became a distinct service branch. The change followed intensive combat use during the war with Russia.

From 2019 several authors in Canadian professional military journals argued for creating an Arctic amphibious force, including adapting one to three army infantry battalions as landing forces. Canada has no marine branch, so the debate concerns whether to acquire the capability at all.

The unit formed in 2018 was the first of its kind since Japan's demilitarisation after the Second World War. It restored an amphibious assault capability absent for over seven decades.

The corps was created in November 2016, with the first intake trained with assistance from the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit of the United States Marine Corps. It became functional when six officers and 158 sailors graduated on 27 February 2017.

Established on 1 April 2014, the unit succeeded the Naval Protection Force. It restored a dedicated German maritime infantry capability.

From 2012 the battalion provided Australia's amphibious light infantry capability, though the Australian Defence Force uses no marine or naval infantry designations. Amphibious specialisation therefore rests within the army.

In 2011 the UAE Marine Battalion was absorbed into the newly organised United Arab Emirates Presidential Guard. The move placed amphibious troops within an elite ground formation rather than the navy.

The corps was created in 1993 out of a former Soviet naval infantry unit and served as a coastal defence force of the Ukrainian Navy. It marked the post-Soviet redistribution of amphibious capability among successor states.

Island-based and Pula-based companies such as Zvir and Vanga saw action relieving the Siege of Dubrovnik and in Operation Maslenica. All were dissolved during the 2000s, and a new 160-strong naval landing infantry company was raised at Ploče in 2018 within the Navy Flotilla.

On 14 April 1990 the corps was revived with about 3,600 men. It has since grown to corps size with an estimated 20,000–30,000 personnel.

At least one 600-man Batallón de Infantería de Marina was created in 1982. Comparable Salvadoran forces comprised two 600-man marine battalions and a naval commando force.

A British task force landed at San Carlos and marched to retake the islands from Argentina, despite losing ships to air attack, reaffirming that opposed landings could still succeed against modern anti-ship weapons when air defence held.

The Imperial Iranian Navy had three marine battalions at the time of the revolution; the successor force grew to 2,600 personnel in two brigades of three battalions each. They are administered by the Islamic Republic of Iran Navy Marine Command.

The South Africa Marine Corps was created as a sub-branch of the navy in 1979, primarily to protect harbours. It was disbanded in 1989 amid a major naval restructuring at the end of the South African Border War.

Raised on 29 November 1971 at Babadag, the unit defended the Danube Delta and the Romanian Black Sea shore. It became a regiment and was subordinated to the Romanian Danube Flotilla in 2015.

After decades of merger with coast artillery and reversion to battalion form, Argentine marines were given distinct corps status inside the Navy in 1968. The change consolidated an institutional home for amphibious expertise.

An 800-man naval infantry battalion was formed in 1964, followed by a second in 1967. This gave Myanmar a standing amphibious and riverine infantry capability.

Established on 12 November 1962, the force is organised with one battalion in the Amazon River region and the other on the Pacific coast. It reflects the dual riverine and maritime demands on Latin American marine units.

The new class of ship let Marines land by helicopter over undefended ground instead of massing on fixed beaches, adding vertical envelopment to the surface landing doctrine developed in the Pacific war.

The Cambodian Marine Corps began as the naval infantry of the Royal Khmer Navy, passing to the Khmer National Navy after Lon Nol's 1970 coup. Active during the 1970–75 civil war, it was effectively disbanded by the end of the Cambodian–Vietnamese War, and a new 2,000-strong 31st Naval Infantry Brigade was created in 2007.

The prime minister of the State of Vietnam created the TQLC on 13 October 1954. It was disbanded with the fall of Saigon on 1 May 1975 at the end of the Vietnam War.

Created on 7 November 1950, the corps became the country's primary force for amphibious and seaborne operations. It now numbers about 9,500 men in three manoeuvre brigades plus reconnaissance and security units.

A large tidal range and a heavily defended approach made the landing site an unlikely choice, but the operation cut North Korean supply lines and reversed the course of the war within weeks, becoming a reference case for amphibious manoeuvre.

The assault combined naval and air bombardment, airborne drops, specialised armoured landing vehicles and artificial Mulberry harbours towed across the Channel, setting the template for large combined-arms amphibious operations.