American Marine Corps

With the industrialization of warfare in the 20th Century the scale of landing operations increased; thus brought with it an increased likelihood of opposition and a need for co-ordination of various military elements. Marine forces evolved to specialize in the skills and capabilities required for amphibious warfare. The word marine was originally used for the forces of England and the United States, and exact one-word translations for the term do not exist in many other languages. Marine units primarily deploy from warships using helicopters, landing craft, hovercraft or amphibious vehicles.

In addition to their primary role, Marine troops are also used in a variety of other naval roles such as boarding operations, ship, naval port security riverine operations. Typically, foreign equivalents are called naval infantry or navy infantry or coastal infantry. In French-speaking countries, two phrases exist which could be translated as marine: troupes de marine and fusiliers-marins; similar pseudo-translations exist elsewhere, e.g., Fuzileiros Navais in Portuguese. The word marine means “navy” in many European languages such as Spanish, Dutch, French, Italian, German, Swedish and Norwegian.