[papermill]

They are formidable platforms for sure, but you aren't claiming any territory with 1600 marines against a major country with millions of troops like china.

1600 marines could hold territory against a bunch of ill-equipped and unorganized terrorists or insurgents. But 1600 marines ain't holding territory against any major state military.

[PopeDotNinja]

1600 marines could occupy the heck out of a non-trivial amount of land. The thing to keep in mind is that it's not like the USS Wasp would show up on a beach of some million person, do an amphibious assault in it's own, and then get an Insta message from the other armed forces saying "we're gonna be late, still playing Fortnite because no parents lol". Military campaigns are ridiculously large, complex, and coordinated. It's not a one ship operation (unless you watch The Last Ship).

[linuxftw]

With air support, 1600 marines could probably seize any city on the planet. The key is, strike first and hard before the enemy has time to mobilize. Destroying their comms, they'll have no way to repel them, because aside from the people fleeing on foot, the enemy's central command will be completely unaware that an invasion took place, only that they're being attacked.

This is exactly what happened with war in Iraq. The enemy was completely unable to mobilize.

Naturally, if the enemy is already in a war-time posture and already mobilized, you can't employ this tactic for any city, but it might be enough to seize a port or other piece of strategic infrastructure (such as an air field).

[u10]

1600 Marines even with air support is not enough to seize a city (by reasonable definition). Sadar City and Fallujah show that even asymmetric Opfor can provide a serious threat.

Of course this is different when conducting maneuver warfare such as the initial invasion of Iraq in 03, still took 250,000 troops 3 weeks to claim 'victory'.