The Marines Need to Evolve Back to the Future

It’s hard for senior military officers, particularly a group of them, to admit that they are wrong, but the Marine Corps' senior leadership is inching in that direction regarding its disastrous Force Design strategy. We need to make it easier for them.

In 2019, all that changed. The Commandant at the time decided to convert the Corps into a China oriented missile heavy force and abandoned much of the combined arms capability to afford the conversion. By misinterpreting the National Defense Strategy (NDS) of 2018, he divested the Corps of all of its tanks and heavy engineering equipment, much of its cannon artillery, and significant aviation assets.

The 2018 NDS focused on deterring China but in no way directed the Marine Corps to divest their ability to conduct combined arms large scale combat operations.

Many former and current marines thought this to be a serious mistake in the continuing evolution of the Corps. The result has been an intellectual civil war. Much like the reaction to the protestant reformation, the "Jesuits" of the counter-reform have caused the Corps to modify its approach.

The current commandant and his three star assistants have slowly but surely de-emphasized the reliance shore-based missiles on sand spits in the South China Sea meant to deny the Chinese naval dominance.

The concept called for an operational construct called Expeditionary Advanced Force Operations (EABO) using small units called Stand-in Forces (SIF) armed with near obsolete anti-ship missiles on the sand spits to try to sink Chinese combatant vessels.

Many senior retired marine leaders (and some active ones writing with pseudonyms to protect their careers) in the counter-reform movement have indicated a desire to go back to a more balanced combined arms force. It is becoming obvious that at least some of the active duty senior officers agree. The question is, how to do it without admitting you were totally wrong?

The answer is evolution. Slowly change EABO and SIF into more traditional missions. The Marine Corps has always had the capability to wage naval choke point warfare using missiles fired from fighter/attack aircraft. There is no need for vulnerable and logistically unsupportable marine units on isolated islands to conduct suicide missions in the South China Sea firing near-obsolete missiles. Marine Corps aircraft flying from Guam and the Philippines or Okinawa would be more effective and pose less risk than vulnerable ground based units on sand spits in the South China Sea.

If operating from disbursed expeditionary airfields on the existing territory of U.S. allies such as Okinawa in Japan and the Philippines, these aircraft could assist the Navy in sea control operations in a much safer and secure manner than the original Force Design construct. These fields could be designated as "new" EABO and the aircraft redesignated as "new" SIF. This approach would allow the Marine Corps to begin to rebuild itself into a true combined arms force capable of fighting a major conflict anywhere without the embarrassment of admitting that the original Force Design was a truly marginal idea.

The question now is how to rebuild the Corps to its pre-2019 capabilities without offending the delicate sensibilities of those who created the debacle and are still on active duty?

I have said in these pages before that a good start would be to create experimental units to begin to rebuild lost capabilities by forming test units of armor, heavy engineers, and artillery to experiment with improved capabilities more capable than those lost in the emergence of Force Design. Creating company sized experimental units in the near term would give the Marine Corps the capability to provide a Marine Expeditionary Brigade (MEB) capable of contributing to a major regional contingency.

Frankly, it will take at least a decade to recreate a Marine Expeditionary Force (MEF) capable of conducting pre- 2019 combat operations on the scale of Desert Storm or Iraqi Freedom; that is the bad news. The good news is that they will do so with state-of-the-art robotic systems armor, heavy engineers, and artillery based on lessons learned from Ukraine, Gaza, and Lebanon.

As the Marine Corps passes it 250th birthday, it has an excellent opportunity to reinvent itself into a force capable of dealing with any challenge facing our nation in the 21st century.

Gary Anderson retired as Chief of Staff of the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab. He served as a Special Advisor to the Deputy Secretary of Defense.