From Force Design To Force Drift: The Challenge Facing the 40th Commandant

When the 40th Commandant of the Marine Corps takes office in 2027, he will inherit a Marine Corps struggling to define its role in the Nation’s defense and a force that is neither adequately manned nor equipped to meet the demands of diverse combatant commanders and their increasingly complex theaters. For eight years, the Nation's Corps of Marines has wrestled with a fundamental question: is the Corps a regional force-in-waiting, a global force-in-readiness, or some combination of the two? The uncomfortable reality is that the capabilities needed to implement any of these competing visions do not exist today, either in the operating forces or in the depth of support necessary to respond quickly and effectively to combat and contingencies in “every clime and place.”  

That failure was a fatal flaw. For a Service committed to a concept-based approach to requirements determination, getting the operational problem wrong at the outset undermined everything that followed.  An operating concept establishes the intellectual framework for determining capabilities the Service must possess, such as requirements for doctrine, organization, training and education, equipment, leadership, and facilities and support. If the concept is flawed, it will create an unsuitable force, even if an integrated and disciplined combat development process is followed.

The 38th Commandant approved and implemented a flawed operating concept (Force Design 2030, now just Force Design) that transitioned much of the Marine Corps from a globally focused task-organized force to a regionally focused purpose-built force.  This concept was developed in isolation and secrecy, without input from the operating forces, schoolhouses, and brights minds throughout the active and retired Marine Corps community.  In doing so, he put the Marine Corps on a trajectory that has resulted in diminished relevance across the spectrum of conflict. 

To his credit, the 39th Commandant - - who has steadfastly professed his support for Force Design in biblical terms as a “righteous journey” - - recognized the damage done to combined arms, resiliency, and global response.  He has made several needed but largely incremental and disjointed adjustments to Force Design to restore capabilities and capacity necessary for the Marine Corps to remain a credible combined-arms force and responsive component of the joint force. For example:

The senior leadership has portrayed these “adjustments” to the original Force Design 2030 plan as epiphanies from a "campaign of learning."  There is another, less flattering interpretation: these changes are an acknowledgment that the Marine Corps got fundamental capabilities and requirements wrong because it failed to follow an integrated, disciplined combat development process. 

The clearest example is the concept for the Stand-in-Force, where the Marines intend to disperse small, isolated, and widely separated units throughout the First Island Chain of the Western Pacific.   The Service remains committed to this approach despite the absence of acceptable means – either today or in the future – to deploy, redeploy, or logistically support those units during combat.  The long-delayed and largely aspirational Landing Ship Medium will not solve this problem.  This slow, essentially unarmed commercial vessel is not survivable inside the Chinese Weapons Engagement Zone during hostilities. 

The inadequate approach of the Campaign of Learning will not fix the underlying problems of force drift, which will soon fall to the 40^th Commandant.  Among other exigencies, he will face the overriding challenge of organizing, training, and equipping the Marine Corps for the sureness of an uncertain and increasingly dangerous future.  To meet this Title X, United States Code mandate, he must: develop an operating concept that better defines the role of the Marine Corps in national security than Force Design and build a combat development process capable of translating that concept into needed capabilities. Failing to do both will risk committing the Marine Corps to four more years of rudderless drift. 

Brigadier General Jerry C. McAbee (U.S. Marine Corps, ret.) is a career artillery officer.  He served three years as the Chief of Staff for the Marine Corps Combat Development Command.  His last assignment was Deputy Commander, U.S. Marine Corps Forces, Central Command.

image: U.S. Marines with 3rd Marine Division observe Mount Suribachi during a professional military education opportunity on Iwo Jima, Japan, Sept. 28, 2026. The PME served to educate, build esprit de corps, and commemorate the service members from the Battle of Iwo Jima, honoring their legacy, and ensuring their stories are preserved for future generations. (U.S. Marine Corps photo illustration by Lance Cpl. Emily Bos)