Thursday, March 28, 2024

Is the US Marine Corps Becoming Strategically Irrelevant?

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ANALYSIS – As the Marine Corps rushes to transform itself into an uber-effective, Pacific island-hopping, missile-launching, fighting force to face the looming threat, some retired and former Marines are asking if the Corps is sacrificing its unique identity as America's premier global 911 response force.

As a proud Marine officer, I'm especially interested in this question and am hoping the answer is a resounding ‘no.'

However, the unprecedented debate being provoked by Marine Commandant General 's vision and leadership of the 21st century Marine Corps is making it tougher to answer so emphatically.

And the latest National Defense Strategy, belatedly published by Team Biden has only added to these concerns.

Our nation's combatant commanders – the generals and admirals who lead our geographic commands worldwide and report directly to the secretary of defense and the president – may be less inclined to use America's traditional force-in-readiness, if it is focused too much on supporting Navy missions in the Pacific.

As retired Marine Colonels Stephen Baird and Timothy Wills write in The Hill:

The Marine Corps has unwisely elected to cut structure and capability to achieve Force Design 2030 (FD2030) targets at a time when the demand signal from combatant commanders for flexible, balanced forces is increasing.

I have written in glowing terms about Berger's transformative vision in the past, arguing that he is right about China being our overarching threat, while still questioning some of the more radical changes, such as eliminating tanks and artillery and reducing line infantry.

And this is one of their biggest concerns. They add:

FD2030 directs significant cuts in infantry, cannon artillery, armor, engineer and aviation capabilities to self-fund smaller, lighter, more specialized forces for employment by the Navy. Nearly a third of the Corps will be organized, trained and equipped to support maritime campaigns — making them less suitable for operations in other operating environments.

I served aboard a helicopter assault ship as part of a Marine Expeditionary Unit – Special Operation Capable (MEU-SOC) on a Western Pacific deployment. As a young lieutenant, I was awed by the diverse and potent air, land and sea capabilities we could employ from that multi-ship task force.

As Baird and Wills note:

The Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) has been the force of choice for combatant commanders for nearly 40 years because of its utility, flexibility, agility and offensive “punch.” It is arguably the Corps' most successful innovation; yet its future viability is uncertain. While the current inventory of seven units will be retained in 2030, the organization, composition and deployment frequency are still to be determined.

The MEUs will be made less unique and more subservient to the Navy. And that is where my biggest concerns lie.

As they explain:

The Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations concept states: “The 2030 MEU will operate from a combination of amphibious shipping, alternative platforms and shore basing. It will not be exclusively tied to the three-ship Amphibious Ready Group.” The Marine Corps and Navy are working on a joint concept for the 2030 MEU. The traditional MEU is an infantry-centric, combined task force equally capable of operating from the sea or ashore. The 2030 MEU will have no standard task organization or table of equipment and will be optimized for maritime operations. An asset once viewed as the commanders' most versatile capability for forward presence and crisis response may become an afterthought.

The two retired Marines conclude that:

Combatant commanders engaged in great power competition will need Marine Corps forces more than ever before. A smaller, more specialized Corps will find it difficult to meet this growing demand. A Corps overly reliant on the Navy to fulfill its promises may fall victim to another “Guadalcanal moment” and become operationally irrelevant.

And these are reasonable arguments.

However, there is a counterpoint – that the Corps risks becoming irrelevant if it continues being primarily a second land army, as it has for the past 20 years, mostly detached from its original maritime roots.

And Dakota Wood, a 20-year Marine Corps veteran and Senior Defense Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation makes the case.

He notes:

Berger warned that the service risked becoming irrelevant if it did not change. He has pushed to shift the Corps' focus back to what differentiates it from the U.S. Army: amphibious operations and land operations in support of a naval campaign. These functions not only define the Corps, they are required by law.

Yet a small but potentially influential cadre of retired Marine generals don't want the Corps to move in this direction. They are actively lobbying lawmakers to block or overturn Berger's initiatives.

War often demands that services do things that are not at the top of their prescribed set of responsibilities. None has been better at adjusting to this reality than the Corps. But its success as a “second land army” came at a severe cost: it lost touch with its seafaring roots.

During 20 years of combat in Afghanistan and Iraq, few Marines gained any experience in learning the complexities of amphibious operations. The Corps did, however, gain significant weight and logistical dependency.

The Marines up-armored everything. When units used amphibious ships to land their gear in Iraq, they found they were outweighing the ship before they out-cubed it. It's never been unusual for units to run out of space for all of their boxes and equipment. But with heavily armored Humvees, blast-resistant vehicles, and even cargo trucks encased in protective glass and armored panels, units were weighing down the ships to the point of instability. This was not a good sign for a force that is supposed to be light, nimble, self-sustaining (at least initially), and able to conduct highly distributed operations in contested littoral waters.

Wood concludes:

If the Corps does not transform, it will die the death of irrelevance, useful only as an adjunct to the U.S. Army or for small, crisis-response missions like reinforcing an embassy, the type of task for which the U.S. military has other options. If the Corps does not transform, it will lose the things that differentiate it from the Army or the special operations community.

Wood makes convincing arguments but doesn't really address the relative hollowing of the MEU concept.

While I'm still broadly supportive of Berger's overall vision, I would like to see MEUs continue to be the nation's primary 911 force worldwide – and not only as a subservient part of a naval campaign against China. ALD

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.

READ NEXT: Retired Generals Openly Challenge Commandant's Dramatic Transformation of Marine Corps >>

Paul Crespo
Paul Crespohttps://paulcrespo.com/
Paul Crespo is the Managing Editor of American Liberty Defense News. As a Marine Corps officer, he led Marines, served aboard ships in the Pacific and jumped from helicopters and airplanes. He was also a military attaché with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) at U.S. embassies worldwide. He later ran for office, taught political science, wrote for a major newspaper and had his own radio show. A graduate of Georgetown, London and Cambridge universities, he brings decades of experience and insight to the issues that most threaten our American liberty – at home and from abroad.

6 COMMENTS

    • I’ve said it many times, obama destroyed our Military by getting rid of real combat leaders and replacing them with the new breed of political leaders. Eliminating the Marines is just one more of their left wing line of thinking. I would hate to see what would happen should this country get into a war where we had to defend our country from being invaded. I served in our military for 26 years, and I sometimes look at our country and I have to wonder if it was really worth it. I’m so glad I’m in my 90’s, so if it happens I won’t be around to see the destruction of our country.

  1. Obsolescence is a scary concept. The importation and the massive implementation of gunpowder rendered all castles, the bulwarks of strength during the Middle Ages. useless and irrelevant. I would see a greater electronic arm of the Marines (e.g. cyber warfare and drones, etc.) as worthy of exploring.

    • Cyber and drone warfare is more in the camp of the Space Force and the Air Force. The Army is more for sustained, offensive ground combat. The Marines are an extension of the Navy and are used in such operations as establishing beach heads and foot holds quickly, followed by the ground pounders, equipped for sustained combat. Each military branch serves specific combat functions, contributing to the success of the overall accomplishment of the mission.

  2. In peace time the Marine Corps gets out of step with reality, when war is on us we adapt and excell, but at the expense of good Marines. I can only say that I feel we have fools as civilian leaders and as some of our top military leaders. We will pay a terrible price in a new war, but the warriors will excell and the fool administrators will move to the background. I did 20 years as an infantry offices, Silver Star, Bronze Star, Purple Heart and some others. My second tour in Vietnam I took over a rifle company and got 65 new pfc’s and privates. They were not prepared for Vietnam, good men but let down by the Corps. In wars in the 90’s and 2000’s we rotated unit, trained units. Good luck and God Bless our men in the next war.

  3. The Obiden admin has almost finished castrating the military. If another country ever wanted to take on the U.S. now is the best time in history to do so.

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