Archives: Gazette Magazines

By Col Thaddeus Jankowski, USMCR

Then-LTC Paul Yingling, USA, famously published “A Failure in Generalship” (Armed Forces Journal, 1 May 2007) at the height of Operation IRAQI FREEDOM (OIF), cautioning that the United States was at risk of losing a second war in a generation. Deliberately forgotten lessons from Vietnam had threatened success in OIF. Success in OIF was also threatened by leadership shortcomings far from the battlefield, occurring deep in what former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates termed the “Pentagon establishment.”

The Marine Corps’ mission is unique relative to other Services, but its support establishment is not. Mr. Gates repeatedly criticized the Pentagon establishment, including the Marine Corps portion of that establishment. Cultural precedent predicts future behavior, so the Marine Corps’ development of a new amphibious combat vehicle (ACV) capability is a worthy topic. This article presents the need for reform, addresses common counterarguments, and provides 10 guidelines required to build the next expeditionary fighting vehicle (EFV). Requirements for ship-to-objective maneuver must necessarily begin with maneuver in Quantico, else we’ll have impressive tactics but no way to execute them. Reform of the Pentagon establishment is a very important “warfighting” innovation: like it or not, the rate of technological change is increasing, and the importance of technology relative to other aspects of strategy is also increasing. Relevant amphibious forces for a combatant commander require a relevant support establishment.

Critiquing the support establishment organizational character is timely. Looking beyond OIF and Operation ENDURING FREEDOM (OEF), we seek to reset core amphibious capabilities. Even though the Corps is exemplary at counterinsurgency (COIN), COIN is not our Title 10 justification.

Now, leveraging the national pivot back to the Pacific region, we refocus on the amphibious mission. In refocusing, the Corps demonstrates some intellectual agility. But an expeditionary vision languishes as a mere hallucination if combat developers cannot realize it. The Marine Corps’ development of the ACV capability is critical in this: Marine Corps innovators must keep pace.

ACV innovation has been the charge of Supporting Establishment leaders, including generals who excelled operationally. The EFV program’s 2010 cancellation followed decades of chronic program underperformance. Outsiders unfamiliar with how Quantico really works ask how such a failure was even possible. The EFV was a top priority, and senior officers with distinguished careers were leading it throughout. What went wrong? How could the Marine Corps spend $3 billion in 30 years without producing a functioning vehicle? Is a failure of Marine generalship even conceivable? And if so, how do we make sure our next EFV-like initiative does not likewise fail? It is, after all, in the Supporting Establishment that the technology-dependent future of the Marine Corps is hatched and grown.

The EFV similarities to recent equipping debacles are compelling. Everything regarding combat development should be on the table for overhaul including organizations, their functions, recorded behaviors, and typical habits of leadership. Headquarters Marine Corps and other Marine and Joint influences warrant scrutiny. But in understanding the most problematic of the Supporting Establishment’s frameworks of thought, this discussion focuses on Marine Corps Combat Development Command (MCCDC) and Marine Corps Systems Command (MCSC).

Past As Prologue

During OIF/OEF a stark contrast existed between the performances of Marine Corps combat units and the Supporting Establishment organizations that equip them. Operating units were rightly praised for physical courage, adaptability, and foresight, while several very important Supporting Establishment decisions resulted in repeated, withering criticism for misplaced priorities and inertia. Repeated excoriations for lack of moral courage also came from the highest levels of the U.S. Government.

Throughout OIF we witnessed several high-profile cases where MCCDC/MCSC collectively failed to adequately prepare for or respond to capability gaps in the field. For example, the Marine Corps’ foreknowledge that the up-armored HMMWV would be a “deathtrap” when encountering landmines comes to mind. Alerted by experts in the 1990s who foresaw the tragic carnage that landmines would cause, MCCDC planners had no contingency plans for those vehicles. South African wheeled vehicles (from the 1970s) were even studied in 1989 at the Infantry Officer Course, right before going out to practice “hardening” a vehicle by stacking sandbags around the cabs of 5-ton trucks. If second lieutenants knew about South African vehicles in the 1980s, wheeled vehicle planners had to be aware of them. Worse, even after quantitative battlefield data was provided, the establishment in Quantico was still trying to minimize the number of MRAPs purchased irrespective of their utility on the battlefield.

Senior Department of Defense (DoD) and Congressional leadership obviously concluded that thousands were killed and wounded unnecessarily. Only an embarrassing spotlight forced MCCDC and MCSC staffs to correct armor and other neglected areas. The Naval Audit Service Report on the Marine Corps’ urgent universal needs process (28 September 2007) eventually led to a new Marine Corps order on urgent needs, forcing Quantico bureaucrats to apply at least some maneuver warfare principles to their areas of responsibility. Remember: Maneuver warfare theory does not just apply to the battlefield. Col John Boyd, USAF(Ret), also quoted Taiichi Ohno, applying Ohno’s perspectives on maneuver in business to his military theory.

Unfortunately, MCCDC has not been fundamentally reformed. The same culture that enabled unnecessary OIF casualties and the EFV cancellation appears to be intact. Organizational adjustments have evidently occurred to decrease some civilian influence, but no officers or bureaucrats have been held accountable. The same personnel continue in Quantico—those who neither foresaw the need for COIN toolsets nor exhibited moral courage to change priorities when battlefield realities were repeatedly documented for them. These permanent personnel remain in place and continue to get promoted.

With OIF at an end and OEF drawing to a close, Marine Corps Order 3900.17, The Marine Corps Urgent Needs Process (UNP) and Urgent Universal Need Statement (Urgent UNS) (Headquarters Marine Corps, Washington, DC, 17 October 2008), has lost its immediacy and bite. As with similar instances in nature where accountability and consequences are absent, the spotlight gets turned off and the problems invariably return. This is especially true whenever transient and overwhelmingly nontechnical operators are at the helm.

Counterarguments

Some dispute any assertion that leadership, vision, or execution were lacking, flatly contradicting 4 years of speeches from Mr. Gates. They repeat the traditional Marine argument that leaders who perform well operationally can perform well anywhere, including in the Supporting Establishment. They tell us leadership is a fungible character quality. A generalist is sufficient at the top, assuming that competent and honest subordinates permanently populate the staff. Marines at all levels rise to new challenges. And by placing revered general officers in charge of organizations like MCCDC, permanent personnel are energized. Technological foresight is not so difficult that retired or former officers cannot populate the MCCDC/MCSC staffs.

Supporting Establishment leaders had the opportunity to critique a draft of this article in October 2013. One identified a recent decrease in civilian influence in MCCDC. This is certainly a welcome step in the right direction, but suggests the Hydra can actually be defeated with minimal reform effort. Another leader mentioned that there are no examples herein postdating 2011, as if to suggest meaningful change in MCCDC actually has occurred since 2011. Yet, if MCCDC really has been reformed, why do calls for reform still continue? How many more calls for comprehensive, expansive change must there be in military management technology? Experience in leading change—not to mention change management literature—suggests that leading change in large organizations requires a much more fundamental overhaul.

Given the hubris in the Pentagon establishment, reformers’ critiques are reflexively discounted by officers with dubious backgrounds in technological foresight. Important calls for reform continue in 2014. Senior DoD leaders advocate fundamental overhaul. Examples: The January/February 2014 issue of the prestigious Foreign Affairs magazine featured an article by recently retired Deputy Secretary of Defense, Dr. Ashton B. Carter, entitled “Running the Pentagon Right: How to Get the Troops What They Need.” On 24 June 2014, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Resources and Plans, Dr. Christopher J. Lamb, testified before the House Armed Services Committee on very similar themes. Finally, recall the slow-burning anger in former Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates’ autobiography! Calls for reform are not just coming from one Reserve colonel.

If these minor changes were really efficacious, if these counterarguments were really plausible, the EFV would be available right now for amphibious contingencies. If they were plausible, Mr. Gates, the U.S. Congress, and DoD auditors would not have felt compelled to intervene in Marine Corps combat development and acquisition processes to insist on rapid and immediate change, to stem the rise in OIF casualties. The media would have had no incentive to dedicate an inordinate amount of time, ink, and bandwidth to report on Marine Corps casualty and combat equipping issues if they had no basis in fact.

Egregious Supporting Establishment failures not coincidentally occurred during OIF on the watches of general officers whose operational credentials were superior. Misunderstanding of technological innovation is common. Active duty officers have the same basic set of very deep and very narrow training and experience. Structural reasons in academia exacerbate this knowledge gap, a topic for another monograph.

With the recent and parallel experience of OIF/OEF as a backdrop, we can now focus on the to-date futile effort to replace the amphibious assault vehicle (AAV).

Ten Guidelines for a New ACV

We know the proverbial definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing and expect different results. The following 10 principles can guide Marine Corps officers as we consider our next attempt to replace the AAV.

Question every assumption about how to do business in MCCDC and MCSC. What did Boyd say when he took over the F–X (F–15) development program? Start with a blank sheet of paper. Start with cold air comes in the front, and hot compressed air goes out the back. Similarly, when Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication 1, Warfighting (MCDP 1) (Headquarters Marine Corps, Washington, DC, March 1989), was first published, Boyd warned senior Marine Corps officers not to let doctrine become dogma. Without reform in Quantico, we will likely make the same errors the Air Force’s F–X (F–15) program was making before Boyd got involved. MCCDC/MCSC need a multiyear, comprehensive reform program planned as carefully as former Commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen Al M. Gray, planned and executed the maneuver warfare revolution. Both crisis technology planning during OIF/OEF and deliberate technology planning experiences warrant this rethinking.

Don’t just tolerate the proven innovators—embrace them as you embrace chaos on the battlefield.

The proven military innovator is sometimes—but not always—a maverick. The innovator is a thoroughbred looking for a track to run on. He might see the world just a little bit differently than that all-too-common officer who is always yearning for his next command (to be Someone) and speaking derisively of staff jobs (to do Something). Yet it is that diversity of thought that makes him valuable—say, for example, in avoiding thousands and thousands and many more thousands of unnecessary casualties, as we all observed in OIF and OEF.

Using the innovators is often more effective.

Toolsets initiated using military innovators are usually much more effective in combat and much less expensive for the taxpayer. Consider the Higgins boat (World War II), the light armored vehicle (1980s), and the MRAP (2005–07). Consider the deliberate stalling and roadblocks placed in the way of GBOSS (Ground-Based Operational Surveillance System) (2006), or short-sheeting unmanned aircraft system requirements (2006–07). All of these examples have been variously written about in military biographies, the Small Wars Journal, and multiple internal audits. All these ideas were born outside typical Quantico innovation processes. All were resisted in varying degrees before they were embraced. Yet these toolsets all proved to be highly useful in combat.

Hold Quantico bureaucrats to the same standards of integrity that we require of officers in the field.

For example, fire anyone in MCCDC or MCSC who engages in character assassination. This is the seedy side of what it means for a retired officer to attempt to hold on to power over budgets. This tactic is not uncommon. When an officer proposes change, all too often the establishment intentionally generates fog and sows confusion as a means to keep control of budgets. Officers and civilians in MCCDC start ludicrous rumors about an individual that, once repeated, become “true.” Since the imagined “truth” is convenient, it is allowed to stand, because it serves the end of protecting existing programs. This author’s contempt for this particular tactic is grounded in direct, repeated, personal observation.

Put your innovators in charge of new initiatives like the ACV. In the late 1960s, the Chief of Staff of the Air Force did the unthinkable: He put a blunt-speaking innovator in charge of the F–X (F–15) program. Eventually Col Boyd and his circle of acolytes would build the F–16 and another aircraft that became the F–18—and yet another aircraft, the A–10. The keys to air supremacy came from this group of innovators.

We have institutionalized a pipeline of successful combat commanders—now do the same for military innovators. The establishment, by hubris and habit, makes it incredibly difficult to change anything. The innovator has to thread the needle as the perfect field officer, the perfect internal diplomat, the perfect navigator of the treacherous bureaucracy. Even then, someone in Quantico teams up with a vendor or an ally on another staff and begins a whispering campaign such as, “He’s not a team player.” Meanwhile, the accepted standards of conduct for the Quantico bureaucrat are wide. He can repeat establishment technobabble with impunity. Turn this on its head: figure out how to embrace the innovators, and make it difficult for bureaucrats to be bureaucratic.

In the late 1980s, an intellectual renaissance occurred in the Marine Corps. Gen Gray was looking for someone to help him rewrite all Marine Corps doctrine from top to bottom. He began with an outcast colonel whom a number of general officers had been systematically and deliberately suppressing for quite some time—Col Mike Wyly. Gray called Wyly home from “exile” in Okinawa and put him in a position of influence. Gray also tapped a captain—a captain!—to write FMFM 1, Warfighting (now MCDP 1). He did not assign the warfighting manual to a 1980s equivalent of a gold-plated retired colonel GS–15 with a well-worn DESERT STORM coffee mug and three DoD master’s degrees. Gray found new blood, new thinking, new ideas, new perspectives. Where would the Corps be now if former Commandants John A. Lejeune or Gray did not personally embrace LtCol “Pete” Ellis or Col Mike Wyly, respectively?

We embraced disobedience of a direct order in a recent Medal of Honor winner when lives were at stake: Apply that same logic to innovators. In other words, don’t court-martial or fire your innovators for specious reasons when larger principles—lives, limbs, combat effectiveness—are at stake. This may seem obvious, yet the AAV/EFV record ($3 billion, 30 years, no vehicle) requires underlining the obvious. The Air Force attempted to court-martial Boyd four times in his career while maintaining its treatment of him was always just. Boyd sometimes had to reach outside the Air Force to get proper reform. Similar treatment occurs today in the Marine Corps. Consider the case of the only 100-percent successful DoD whistleblower of the past 10 years. Senior Marine Corps leaders would maintain that GS–15 Franz Gayl, Science Advisor, Plans, Policies, and Operations, was granted due process after approximately 1 year on administrative leave. But any DoD officer or civilian who would consider bucking the system to advocate reform, note carefully: Gayl had to reach outside the Marine Corps to get justice. Only after the White House Office of Special Counsel got involved (7 October 2011) was he reinstated. The message from senior leaders today is no different than in Boyd’s day: If you rock the boat, you will be made to pay a severe price. You will be exiled to a remote island, accused of magically becoming a poor performer after decades of stellar performance, or quieted to a remote corner of the Marine Corps far away from innovation. That is the real lesson of Pentagon “leadership.” Careerism stems directly from the treatment Boyd and Gayl received; most officers conclude it is just not worth bucking the system. Mr. Gates liked to give speeches about Boyd and moral courage, but he never supported any of the innovators on his watch. Driving this point home, Gayl was correctly singled out for praise for his contribution to the war effort, once again by someone from outside of the DoD: On 1 October 2012 he was praised by Vice President of the United States Joe Biden during the MRAP program transition ceremony. Establishment mavens may feel like innovators bring chaos, yet do we not honor our best warriors for thriving on chaos? “Chaos” was one famous officer’s call sign.

Foster and promote officers who have technological competence. Tools are integral to warfighting, yet we teach officers to be commanders while leaving military technology to serendipity. The Marine Corps finds innovators by accident, tolerates them for a short time, and discards them, only to deliberately forget the lessons of innovation.

If a civilian in MCCDC or MCSC lacks foresight, get rid of him. Do not reward those who preside over chronically underperforming capabilities with promotions, lofty titles, awards for “foresight,” or highly prized school seats at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces. The bureaucrats who need to be replaced often fit the following intellectually incestuous profile: they retire as a major, lieutenant colonel, or colonel on Friday and come back to work at MCCDC or MCSC on Monday in a business suit, in the same building, at the same office, sitting at the same desk. As Col James Burton, USAF, taught us in Pentagon Wars (Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, 1993), intellectual inbreeding yields feeble minds.

Apply maneuver warfare principles to the Supporting Establishment. MCCDC had to be repeatedly asked for multiple years to revise the urgent technology rule sets so that they would have a meaningful “seat at the table” in MCCDC at MCSC. MarCent officers asked MCCDC several times in 2006 for major revisions to MarAdmin 045/06, Urgent Universal Need Statement Process. Major reform to urgent UNS handling was advocated via the first Lean Six Sigma project at MCCDC in 2006, but meaningful urgent UNS reform would not be fully implemented until October 2008 with MCO 3900.17, The Marine Corps Urgent Needs Process (UNP) and the Urgent Universal Need Statement (Urgent UNS) (HQMC, Washington, DC, 10 October 2008). Naval Audit Services auditors asked at least twice for MCCDC to comply with its finding to write a Marine Corps order for urgent needs in 2007 and again in 2008, and Department of Defense Inspector General auditors in 2008 were similarly involved with advocating that MCCDC reform the urgent needs process. This was all a big, multiyear bureaucratic game of rope-a-dope to protect careers and prevent changes in the MCCDC staff’s budgetary priorities for military technologies while troops went unsupported in the field: stall any meaningful change, erect every possible barrier to technological maneuver imaginable. Battalion or regimental commanders get fired for this level of performance, but it is rewarded at MCCDC as stated above. All these multiple internal reform efforts anticipated many of then-Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates’ frequent appeals to actually support the troops in combat by prioritizing toolsets needed for current wars instead of what would be proven to be poorly designed technologies for potential future wars (like EFVs). The establishment has still not internalized that maneuver warfare must apply to the support establishment too. This means the Marine Corps needs to write doctrine for technological aspects of strategy—and apply it as soon as practicable. Consider the typical staff functions at a MEF or in Marine forces. Each is aligned with an MCDP of the same title: intelligence, logistics, operations, plans, and so forth. We need an MCDP 10, Technology, that links MCDP 1, Warfighting, to two downstream orders, MCO 3900.15B, Marine Corps Expeditionary Force Development System (EFDS) (HQMC, Washington, DC, 10 March 2008), for deliberate planning and MCO 3900.17, The Marine Corps Urgent Needs Process (UNP) and the Urgent Universal Need Statement (Urgent UNS) (HQMC, Washington, DC, 10 October 2008), for crisis technology planning. This needs to be written by officers with proven technological foresight and expertise in rapid technological maneuver. Note the use of war planning terms in describing these two orders—we will need technology requirements for all contingency plans. MEFs and Marine forces will need uniformed, trained principal staff officers for technology and innovation. The MEF/Marine forces’ science advisor does no science: rename that billet “technology advisor,” reporting to the senior uniformed trained technology strategist on the general officer’s staff.

Conclusion

The prescription to build an EFV is not complex, but it is enormously difficult to do. Follow Gen Gray’s example: Bring in the innovators. Rehire the thoroughbreds. Put a new generation in charge of important technology programs. Treat them like welcome members of the team. By leveraging good ideas even from those who knew how to evaluate technological efficacy when the chips were down in a real war, the likelihood for creating an ACV vehicle that works actually increases.

The Marine Corps Gazette, as the professional journal for Marines, provides articles that may, on occasion, address topics that “keep officers up at night.” Any young officer faced with the prospect of conducting an amphibious attack in the next 20 years should lose sleep over existing Quantico establishment organizations in charge of building the next ACV. Albert Speer, the German’s chief technologist during World War II, was actually pleased when the Allies bombed his requirements and acquisition command, ridding him of unnecessary “ballast” for a few months. If LtCol Ellis were alive in 2006 he’d have had his character assassinated by twilight-tour colonels in Quantico or HQMC as someone who was difficult to work with and, well, kind of weird.

On the other hand, if we apply these lessons to the son-of-EFV effort today and begin using all our resources—even all those highly successful innovators—the Marine Corps will be much more likely to get a new amphibious troop carrier with an over-the-horizon as well as inland capability much sooner than we would otherwise.

By Maj Romeo P Cubas

The American military’s painful Vietnam War experience and the doctrinal and technological revelations of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War drew attention to its demoralized and unprepared state. It became evident that the U.S. Armed Forces required a complete overhaul in order to contend with future potential adversaries.¹ As a result, the military underwent a dramatic transformation that went hand-in-hand with a revolution in operational art. The interpretation and implementation of intellectual concepts, innovative doctrine, and novel approaches to overcoming military challenges dictated how the United States approached conflicts in the post–Vietnam War era.²

The evolving nature of war mandates that the American concept of operational art account for an assortment of enemies that will seek innovative ways to frustrate American interests. Today’s adversaries are achieving shocking levels of barbarity that challenge the traditional Western notions of war.³ Understanding the operational art renaissance of the post–Vietnam war period should prepare U.S. officials to judiciously address contemporary threats and resist the temptation to adhere to an operational art concept that is highly reliant on overwhelming force and technological dominance.

A Rebirth of Operational Art: The Immediate Aftermath of the Vietnam War

During the 1970s, operational art underwent a Clausewitzian renaissance of sorts that focused on linking successes in battle with an overall strategic purpose.⁴ This military art form has its foundations in a collection of institutional beliefs and experiences known as “doctrine.” Until the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986, the Armed Forces developed doctrine in a unilateral manner, concentrating on individual Service interests. These myopic views prevented the Services from coalescing and developing a joint campaign plan; instead, the focus was on ground combat and how to support it. Cold War doctrine limited the traditional conduct of war and restricted doctrinal innovation. The operational failures of the Vietnam War and Arab-Israeli War prompted many changes in the U.S. Armed Forces such as a doctrinal reawakening, the emergence of performance standards, institutional integration, and organizational discipline.⁵

In October 1973, Egypt and Syria conducted a surprise attack on Israel from the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights with thousands of Soviet-provided armored vehicles, air-delivered precision guided munitions, and antitank guided missiles. The Israeli Defense Force (IDF) was eventually able to counterattack and overcome the Arab two-prong assault, its heavy artillery, aerial bombardment, and advanced air defense system; however, the results of the evolving nature of combat were quite evident to Western powers.⁶ The Yom Kippur War illustrated the effectiveness of modern weapons and the gap in American warfare capabilities. As the Services downsized and refocused internally, the United States realized it needed to quickly gain parity with Soviet Union. GEN Creighton Abrams’ creation of the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TraDoc), his appointment of GEN William DePuy as its commander, and the contributions of GEN Donn Starry as TraDoc’s Armor Center Commandant and TraDoc’s second commander were instrumental to the ensuing revolutionary changes in doctrine, organization, equipment, and training.⁷ One of these changes was the 1976 edition of the U.S. Army operations Field Manual 100–5, Operations (FM 100–5).⁸

The “active defense” concept of the new doctrine accepted the Soviet’s overwhelming manpower and countered it with a system of linear defenses-in-depth and offensive flanking movements focused on destroying command and control networks and supply lines of communications.⁹ “Active defense” advocated moving forces along the battle line to prevent a breakthrough while simultaneously conducting deep envelopments to attrite the enemy. Confronting a high-tempo assault required commanders to embrace the German model of Auftragstaktik, which encouraged decentralized command, the flexibility provided by mission-type orders, and having the initiative to meet a commander’s intent.¹⁰ However, the new manual received immediate resistance due to its unsettling realities of battlefield lethality, a reliance on analytical information, and formulaic approach to war reminiscent of former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s obsession with quantitative data.¹¹ After 10 years of development and transformation, the doctrine evolved to the Air-Land Battle concept, which eventually evolved into the modern and joint conventional form of fighting known as maneuver warfare.¹²

The new operational concepts in FM 100–5 relied on the expert use of terrain, demanded rapid movement, required quick strikes, and demanded that the defender achieve target identification overmatch. The Army wanted to avoid the pitfalls of focusing on the last war and embraced its renewed doctrine by investing heavily in highly advanced acquisition programs such as the Abrams tank, the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, the Apache attack helicopter, and the TOW missile.¹³ Desiring to further break from the Vietnam era, TraDoc also set about restoring the Army’s warfighting tradecraft by identifying individual tactical tasks and associating compliance criteria to them. Within a few years, the military evaluated and enhanced tactical tasks via the National Training Center (Fort Irwin, CA) with force-on-force exercises and through the use of simulation and laser technologies.¹⁴ These initiatives improved military standards and elevated the proficiency of the U.S. military.

The Evolution of Operational Art: Focusing on the Right Threat

Nowadays, the United States continues to heavily invest in technology such as the F–35 Joint Strike Fighter, the Zumwalt-class destroyer (DDG 1000), advanced air-to-air munitions, and the next amphibious vehicle (even though its current capabilities are more than sufficient to maintain its status as the sole superpower).¹⁵ The United States can ill afford to train, equip, and sustain a military solely focused on conventional warfare like it did for Operations JUST CAUSE, DESERT STORM, and IRAQI FREEDOM, where overwhelming aerial attacks were followed by superior ground forces outfitted with the most modern technology.¹⁶ Instead of entirely new systems, investments should be made to extend the service life of perfectly acceptable and sustainable aircraft, ships, munitions, and weapons platforms. Furthermore, today’s leaders need to understand that unconventional conflict is the most likely and enduring threat.¹⁷ This does not imply that the operational concepts of the 1970s and 1980s should be neglected or that conventional threats should be ignored. Doing so would lead to a loss of institutional knowledge and result in fatal consequences.

Failure to prepare for irregular threats could repeat the failures of the Vietnam War, the Lebanon interventions of 1982–83, and the Somalia operation of 1992. In these examples, technological and military superiority were effectively offset by unsophisticated means. Guerrilla warfare, suicide bombers, and warlord-led militias understood American operational art and avoided its strengths, conducted surprise attacks, and patiently waited to exploit a moment of weakness.¹⁸ The actions of present-day radical Islamic extremists mirror those of irregular adversaries of the past 50 years. Terrorists and nonstate actors are proving that the traditional American way of war based on overwhelming force and industrial might is vulnerable to rudimentary tactics, primitive arms, and an unwavering ideology.¹⁹ The 1993 and 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, the 1998 car bomb attacks on American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and the 2000 strike on the USS Cole (DDG 67) foreshadow a dangerous future that cannot be solved with a traditional mindset. Conventional responses like cruise missile attacks or awe-inspiring air campaigns are very expensive and arguably ineffective against autonomous, resilient, and illusive opponents who blend in with the population.²⁰

Unconventional adversaries are also able to thoroughly study Western militaries and combat their weaknesses with modern state–like capabilities. In 2006, Hezbollah attacked Israel from southern Lebanon with thousands of rockets and missiles of short and intermediate range.²¹ The IDF was confronted by a highly disciplined, decentralized, and adaptive enemy that was willing to inflict and absorb attacks. As a well-organized political and paramilitary movement, Hezbollah merged its anti-Zionist ideology with guerrilla tactics and state-of-the-art technology such as encrypted communications equipment and fiber optic networks, eavesdropping and antijamming devices, human intelligence sources, armor-defeating weapons, and unmanned aerial vehicles to control ungoverned urban areas.²² Hezbollah’s successes against the IDF revealed the vulnerabilities of a superior conventional force and the dangers of a hybrid form of warfare. American civilian and military leaders should learn from recent history and realize that opponents willing to employ irregular methods can significantly threaten the Nation’s domestic and international security interests. The first step in countering today’s adversaries lies in reflecting on the very nature of operational art and accepting, as GEN DePuy did, that its associated doctrine is an evolving and fluid document, much like a French pot of soup that gets better as ingredients are added over time.²³

Conclusion

The Vietnam War, the defense of Europe, and the lessons of the Yom Kippur War heavily influenced an American renaissance in operational art. As a result of an aggressive doctrinal reformation, changes in warfighting concepts soon led to transformations in equipment, manpower, and training.²⁴ Although initially controversial, FM 100–5 was the result of an intellectual rediscovery that promoted the concept of active defense to counter potential Soviet encroachment in Europe. Subsequent versions in the early and mid–1980s espoused a more aggressive model known as Air-Land Battle, and became the foundation of the contemporary theory of maneuver warfare.²⁵ In order for this operational concept to be effective, commanders were empowered to seize opportunities, force the enemy to adapt to their own terms, and maximize their troops’ abilities.²⁶ Another critical aspect of this new style of warfare depended on units having the ability to quickly move forces to the right location and dominate the battlefield. Commanders needed their vehicles to have exceptional speed, outstanding mobility, and superior firepower.²⁷ Technological investments of the early 1970s prepared the military for a future war with investments in billions of dollars and a great deal of time and effort toward research and development.²⁸

In the current era, advanced weapons coupled with irregular forms of warfare are adding complexity to the modern battlefield.²⁹ Maintaining proficiency across the range of military operations with a large and technologically advanced force is economically unfeasible; therefore, the Department of Defense must continue evolving its operational art concepts.³⁰ However, the military must reform in a judicious manner while not jeopardizing its ability to fight and win against a near-peer conventional competitor. Contemporary threats will be adequately addressed when U.S. leaders begin to understand the operational art renaissance of the post–Vietnam era and how concepts need to evolve in order to avoid the pitfalls of past military failures.

Notes

1. Wineman, B.A., “Rebuilding After Defeat: Air-Land Battle and the U.S. Military,” course card, Marine Corps University, 5 April, 2013.

2. Van Riper, LtGen Paul K, USMC(Ret), “Operational Art and its Study,” course card, Marine Corps University, 8 August, 2012.

3. Strong, Mark A., “US Government Responses to Irregular Threats,” course card, Marine Corps University, March 22, 2013. See also Frank G. Hoffman, Conflict in the 21st Century: The Rise of Hybrid Wars, Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, Arlington, VA, December 2007, pp. 15–16; and Romeo Cubas, “Focusing on the Right Threats While Bound to Traditional Forms of Dominance: An Analysis of Irregular Warfare and the 2010 National Security Strategy,” unpublished manuscript, 15 April 2013.

4. Swain, Richard M., “Filling the Void: The Operational Art and the U.S. Army in The Operational Art: Developments in the Theories of War,” edited by B.J.C. McKercher and Michael A. Hennessy, Praeger Press, Westport, CT, 1996, p. 148.

5. Ibid., p. 148.

6. Ibid., p. 150.

7. Ibid., p. 149.

8. Ibid., p. 153.

9. Ibid., p. 151.

10. Swain, p. 152. See also Donn A. Starry, “A Tactical Evolution: FM 100–5,” Military Review, Fort Leavenworth, KS, August 1978, p. 11.

11. Swain, p. 151; Starry, p. 10.

12. Swain, p. 153.

13. Starry, pp. 2–3.

14. Swain, p. 152.

15. Cubas, Romeo, “Focusing on the Right Threats While Bound to Traditional Forms of Dominance: An Analysis of Irregular Warfare and the 2010 National Security Strategy,” unpublished manuscript, 15 April 2013.

16. Cassman, Joel F., and David Lai, “Football vs. Soccer: American Warfare in an Era of Unconventional Threats,” Armed Forces Journal, Washington, DC, 17 October 2003, p. 51; Cubas, “Focusing on the Right Threats.”

17. Cassman, p. 51; Cubas, “Focusing on the Right Threats.”

18. Cassman, p. 52; see Maj Romeo Cubas article cited in Footnote 3.

19. Cassman, p. 52; Cubas, “Focusing on the Right Threats.”

20. Cassman, p. 52, 54; Cubas, “Focusing on the Right Threats.”

21. Hoffman, p. 35; Cubas, “Focusing on the Right Threats.”

22. Eschel, David, “Hezbollah’s Intelligence War,” Defense Update, 2007, accessed at defense-update.com. See also Hoffman, p. 36; Cubas, “Focusing on the Right Threats.”

23. Swain, p. 150.

24. Starry, p. 3.

25. Wineman, p. 7.

26. Herbert, Paul, Deciding What Has to be Done: General William E. DePuy and the 1976 Edition of FM 100–5, Operations, Combat Studies Institute, Fort Leavenworth, KS, 1988, p. 34.

27. Ibid.

28. Starry, p. 4.

29. U.S. Department of Defense, 2008 National Defense Strategy, Office of the Secretary of Defense, Washington, DC, June 2008, p. 11. See also Romeo Cubas, “The United States Military’s Ability to Meet the National Security Strategy (NSS),” unpublished manuscript, 4 October 2012.

30. Cubas, “The United States Military’s Ability to Meet the National Security Strategy (NSS).”

By Capt Daniel A O’Hara

Our Commandant and his generals are right: We have a behavioral problem within the Corps.¹ The Marine Corps badly needs an awakening—perhaps just not the one our generals envision. The Corps needs to enforce its standards, but appears to be neglecting its most advantageous and most decisive one: its warfighting philosophy.

Our Corps must fully and consistently institutionalize our warfighting philosophy as our 29th Commandant, Gen Alfred M. Gray, envisioned it to be when he handwrote the following into the first copy of FMFM 1 (the predecessor to MCDP 1):

The thoughts contained here represent not just guidance for actions in combat, but a way of thinking in general. This manual thus describes a philosophy for action, which in war and in peace, in the field and in the rear, dictates our approach to duty.² (emphasis added)

This statement was then added into the final printed version. The sooner the Corps actually abides by the above statement, the more prepared it will be to face the post–Operation ENDURING FREEDOM (post-OEF) threats to our Nation and the more swiftly and decisively it will overcome the disciplinary problems its senior leaders currently wish to address (if there truly are any systemic disciplinary problems at all). This is because decentralization is best for decision-to-action in any form of conflict, including the so-called “battle for the barracks.” The “reawakening” threatens to sacrifice the tenets of our philosophical warfighting standard for the sake of the old “culture of order,” which is to the detriment of both its disciplinary and warfighting effectiveness goals.

According to the Commandant’s briefing at the General Officer Symposium, the Corps’ behavioral problem is much narrower in scope than what I have mentioned above. He cites lack of personal and unit discipline as the primary culprit, stating the following:

We see evidence of [the behavioral problem] in non-compliance and enforcement of established institutional standards, incidences of sexual assault, hazing, [driving under the influence], fraternization, failure to maintain personal appearance standards, and other areas that indicate an overall lack of leadership and discipline. . . . Where we are faltering, where we need immediate attention, is in preparing our force for the post-OEF decades that are upon us.³

The Clausewitz quote at the beginning of this article helps demonstrate how I believe the Marine Corps has failed to appropriately frame its true current problem, which all but guarantees defeat. A flawed strategy in any kind of conflict will most likely lead to failure, no matter how many operational or tactical victories are achieved along the way. The current strategy championed to reawaken the force and prepare for the post-OEF environment appears to be to attack the symptoms of a potential disciplinary dilemma while ignoring the underlying (and more important) philosophical—and dare I say, spiritual—dilemma of our seemingly ever-stronger distancing from the tenets of maneuver warfare. Yes, strong discipline and ethical conduct are absolutely vital for the force, but they should come as a byproduct of the culture created by true adherence to our warfighting philosophy (a theory based on trust in our professionals to achieve results by high-initiative, decentralized thinking guided by intent, not at the expense of it.

A recent Marine Corps Times exclusive on the reawakening quotes a number of generals and their thoughts on the Corps’ way ahead after 12 years of war.⁴ The consensus among them seems to be that the force has a serious disciplinary problem and that the way to fix it is to reinstate or reinforce “daily routine” practices that were more commonplace before the long war, thus preparing the force for post-OEF (read: peacetime) challenges. How this first determination (that the Corps has a serious behavioral problem at all) is reached is not readily apparent, but seems to be accepted as fact. I will not go to great lengths to challenge the validity of that claim here, as that would take an entire article itself, but will simply echo the Latin proverb, “Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur,” which means, “What is asserted without evidence may be dismissed without it.”⁵ To quickly summarize, it is not immediately clear whether the Marine Corps is any less disciplined now than it was 12, 23, or 37 years ago in terms of alcohol-related traffic infractions, sexual assault, hazing incidences, uniform standard adherence, or barracks cleanliness. So perhaps the identified behavioral problems in the force are starkly overestimated. Getting back to the point, even if we take for granted that the disciplinary problems are in fact worse than before the recent 12-year conflict and need immediate addressing, are the proposed solutions such as the Service uniform for duty-standers, a revamped basic daily routine, or more officers and SNCOs in the barracks between 2000 and 0400 going to actually do anything to solve those problems? Additionally, do these solutions prepare the force for what lies beyond Afghanistan?

Our commanders do not owe us explanations for their decisions. Commanders can tell the force what they want done and that is enough, then it is our duty to obey; however, in this case, our commanders have offered explanations that do not seem to resonate with the tenets of maneuver warfare. According to the previously mentioned article, the underlying theme with respect to the proposed solutions can be summarized as follows: This is what we used to do, with this nostalgia equated to “what we do and who we are” as Marines, and with imposed centralized regulations disguised as empowerment. I do not believe this approach will actually achieve the stated goals of improving discipline. Rather, the approach misses the deeper issue and guides the entire organization in the wrong direction by inherently disobeying the Marine Corps’ standard of maneuver warfare as defined in FMFM 1.

The practice of maneuver warfare depends on a culture instilled throughout the entire Service, a culture that demands initiative instead of the old blind obedience that typified antiquated attacks online and static set-piece defense. Since adopting maneuver warfare in 1989, the Marine Corps has worked to build in itself our new culture for modern battle. We created a culture that is sustained by self-discipline and can therefore function with decentralized leadership in place of the “parade field,” top-down command and control that typified 19th-century and early 20th-century war. On the modern battlefield, a culture adapted to widely dispersed operations is essential for victory. High-initiative, decentralized decisionmaking is now crucial. It is counterproductive to have one culture for battle and another for garrison. In fact, it is difficult to see how two such diverse cultures could coexist in a single organization.

Marines, after all, look sharp because they want to. They are proud of the Corps and to claim the title “Marine,” and if they are not, then that is the true leadership failure. Leaders in whom Marines truly believe do more to instill pride and discipline than a thousand inspections or spot corrections ever could. We walk upright with heads held high because we still remember the pride we felt when we marched by the reviewing stand upon graduation from boot camp or Officer Candidates School. It’s ingrained. That same high-initiative mentality must pertain in the face of any untoward conduct such as sexual assault, hazing, alcohol-related traffic infractions, or fraternization. The currently proposed solutions appear to be more about form, appearance, and familiarity than about creative assessment, end result, and trust.

Gen Charles C. Krulak, the 31th Commandant, said, “Our Corps does two things for America: We make Marines and we win our Nation’s battles.”⁶ This nicely sums up who we are and what we do, and will allow us to reach the intersection of preparing for post-OEF threats and solving disciplinary issues. Let us deal with the latter part of Gen Krulak’s statement first. Fighting and winning in war is what we do, and it should follow then that our primary focus is to get better at that calling. Now, maneuver warfare is the Marine Corps’ standard for achieving that objective—it is not the scattered thoughts of a few outliers. Maneuver warfare is the stated command culture of the organization. The demand for outstanding personal appearance and clean living spaces must support our philosophy of warfighting, not fly in the face of it.

The greatest concern of the Marine Corps’ founders’ maneuver warfare philosophy was that the Corps might revert back to being internally focused on a culture of order, rather than maintaining its focus outwardly on the enemy and on results.⁷ The current Marine Corps drawdown from Afghanistan may not be the period of rest and refit that many believe it is. The peacetime warrior’s principal task is to prepare effectively for the next war. The Nation could be involved in another significant conflict tomorrow and there is little if any evidence that a lack of televisions in duty huts and a fire watch on every floor of the barracks does anything to make the Marine Corps a smarter, deadlier, or more disciplined fighting force. In fact, these measures may simply weaken the Corps, as they send the psychological message that we do not trust our Marines as the professionals we claim they are because we refuse to adhere to our command philosophy in garrison. We do not live it. Jörg Muth, author of Command Culture (a book on the Commandant’s Professional Reading List), talks about “Auftragstaktik,” the command concept loosely defined by mission-type orders that was used to fantastic success during World War II by the German officer corps (arguably the finest in modern warfare history). Muth says, “Mission command [Auftragstaktik] cannot be ordered, it has to be taught and lived on all levels.”⁸ This sort of thing sounds much more like what we ought to be focusing on to prepare our force for the post-OEF world in terms of what we do as Marines.

Let us now turn to the discussion of who we are. Col Michael D. Wyly, USMC(Ret), sums up professionalism and its ties to “who we are and what we do” nicely when he says the following:

Lawyers would not need to go to law school and pass the bar exam if they could act in courtrooms on command of some superior lawyer who controlled them. The lawyer need turn to no one in the chaos of a fast moving court case, as he serves the cause of justice. As professionals, current in law, they can act on their own in unpredictable circumstances. So it is with the professional soldier. The profession of arms, more than any of the others, must deal with the unknown. Insurgency in Vietnam, terrorism in Beirut, and forms of warfare never before known, are still our responsibility.⁹

Col Wyly then adds the following:

Professionalism is not, in my view, the exclusive province of commissioned officers. It may have been at one time; however, this is no longer. Education, after all, is not something meted out exclusively at universities, culminating in academic degrees. Education comes through study and in our case it is the study of war such as hardly any university I know of offers. Our noncommissioned officers need it as badly as do our commissioned officers for the unique demands of modern war.¹⁰

Calls for empowerment coupled with stiff top-down regulations are empty rhetoric. Marines are generally clever and can see through that. If we truly count ourselves as professionals, does it not follow that we should provide our NCO corps the freedom and trust expected of the position? Should we not focus on their education and allow them to solve the disciplinary problem, maybe each unit in its own way, with an eye toward end state? And let it not be done with a “zero-defect” mentality. From FMFM 1:

Abolishing “zero defects” means that we do not stifle boldness or initiative through the threat of punishment. It does not mean that commanders do not counsel subordinates on mistakes; constructive criticism is an important element in learning. Nor does is give subordinates free license to act stupidly or recklessly.¹¹

There will be mistakes, but the trust built and judgment instilled will pay many times over in reducing our problems long term, both on the top deck of the barracks and on the battlefields of our next conflict.

The Commandant said, “I’m turning to my leaders at all levels to refocus Marines on what we do and who we are.”¹² This statement should mean that leaders are obsessively focused on making the force smarter, deadlier, and more prepared to deal with the full range of threats, from near-peer states to the nonstate actors we have been battling for over a decade. This means focusing outwardly on the enemy, whoever he may be, and pursuing the education and progressive command culture that will allow us to out-cycle those enemies. Leaders should be fostering the development of their professionals and treating them as such, having enough confidence in them to allow them to do in garrison what they will be asked to do on the future battlefield: solve problems independently and win, guided by intent (see the sidebar on p. 49). The framework for becoming the most effective force-in-readiness the Corps can be for our Nation is already there. We just have to live it—and never stop learning or improving upon it.

Notes:

1. Amos, Gen James F., opening remarks to the General Officer Symposium, The Basic School, Marine Corps Base Quantico, 23 September 2013.

2. Headquarters Marine Corps, Fleet Marine Force Manual 1, Warfighting, Washington, DC, 6 March 1989.

3. Amos.

4. Lamothe, Dan, “In candid conversation, generals say it’s time to fix Marine Corps,” Marine Corps Times, Springfield, VA, 1 October 2013.

5. Stone, Jon R., The Routledge Dictionary of Latin Quotations, New York, 2005 p. 101.

6. Headquarters Marine Corps, Marine Corps Reference Publication 6–11D, Sustaining the Transformation, Washington, DC, 28 June 1999.

7. Boyd, Col John R., SAF(Ret), et al., private conversation between Col John R. Boyd, Gen Alfred M. Gray, and Col Michael D. Wyly in Gen Gray’s office at Headquarters Marine Corps in 1989. Personal papers.

8. Muth, Jörg., “An Elusive Command Philosophy and a Different Command Culture,” The Best Defense, 9 September 2011.

9. Wyly, Col Michael D., Professionalism Defined for the U.S. Marines, Collection of Michael D. Wyly, Pittsfield, ME.

10. Ibid.

11. FMFM 1.

12. Amos

By Maj Jeff Dean

The recent first place MajGen Harold W. Chase Prize Essay Contest winner, titled “Air Cooperation and the Marine Corps: An alternative vision for the employment of Marine fixed-wing aircraft,” was printed in the September 2013 issue of the Marine Corps Gazette. The article’s two authors, Majs Gregory Thiele and Mitchell Rubenstein, argue that Marine aviation fails to adequately support the ground combat element, and that the Marine Corps’ current and future aircraft are ill-suited for not only counterinsurgency, but for the entire spectrum of conflict. The article also states that Marine air “has slowly degraded its ability to support ground Marines” and faces “a fight for its existence [. . .] that might not yet be apparent.” With such scathing claims, one would hope that factual evidence would be presented to back them up, yet the article is littered with weak anecdotes and inaccurate examples.

Called “Air Cooperation,” Majs Thiele and Rubinstein also proposed this vaguely fashioned concept as their solution to the problems of Marine aviation; however, the article offers very few details as to what Air Cooperation is, what its principles are, or how it is to be executed.

The majors’ article spans many somewhat disorganized topics. In an attempt to better organize a counterargument to each of the critiques and proposals offered, this article is divided into three separate topics: aircraft and equipment, people and training, and employment and doctrine.


Aircraft and Equipment

The biggest target in the Air Cooperation article is the F–35 Lightning II, followed closely by two of our current fixed-wing aircraft, the F/A–18 Hornet and AV–8B Harrier. Majs Thiele and Rubinstein complain that F/A–18s and AV–8Bs are “less than optimal” when providing close air support (CAS), and that the F–35 “will do nothing to ameliorate” the alleged degraded support to the ground commander. Their proposed solution is the Brazilian-designed Embraer Super Tucano. While bashing the F/A–18, AV–8B, and F–35, the authors also laud the OV–10 Bronco and A–10 Thunderbolt as the best aircraft for integrating with ground forces.

What is wrong with these arguments? First, the authors fail to identify specific deficiencies that exist in our current fixed-wing inventory. The only performance parameter that is explicitly mentioned is the fast airspeed and relatively short endurance associated with jet aircraft. No other supporting evidence is presented explaining why the capabilities of Marine aviation have supposedly been degraded.

It is important to acknowledge that shorter endurance is simply a byproduct of the faster airspeeds of jet aircraft (compared to turboprop or piston engine aircraft). But faster aircraft are not a limitation—they are an advantage. Faster airspeeds are required for the majority of aerial employment across the entire spectrum of conflict, where fighters face increasingly modern enemy aircraft and integrated air defense systems. But even in low-intensity conflicts, airspeed gives fixed-wing platforms much greater flexibility across the entire battlespace.

For example, compare the F/A–18 and the A–10. If both aircraft tried to fly from one end of Al Anbar Province, Iraq, to the other (approximately 300 miles), it would take the A–10 almost 25 minutes longer than the F/A–18. That excess 25 minutes directly results in a delayed response time for the ground forces. When you add the increased transit time for an A–10 to travel to and from the tanker or to and from its operating base, those delays are compounded.

This does not mean that our current aircraft are required to go fast all the time, which would increase their fuel consumption unnecessarily. F/A–18s in Iraq and Afghanistan typically hold in the exact same altitude block as the A–10s, and both aircraft average 1 1/2 hours between trips to the tanker to refuel. The F/A–18, AV–8B, and A–10 all execute attack profiles between 350 and 450 knots (approximately 400 to 500 miles per hour), and all three aircraft carry the LITENING infrared/electro-optical targeting pod, some combination of laser/GPS-guided weapons, and a cannon as a direct fire weapon; so there really is no convincing evidence that the A–10 is “a better close-support aircraft,” as Majs Thiele and Rubinstein claim. Perhaps what they are suggesting is that A–10 pilots provide better support than Marine aviators, but such a notion is preposterous (this will be explained more in the next section.

Majs Thiele and Rubinstein also argue that Marine fixed-wing aircraft should fly “lower and slower,” but if that were the case, then would not a helicopter be the best platform? After all, helicopters fly lower and slower than fixed-wing aircraft ever will, but it does not make sense to argue that fixed-wing aircraft should be more like helicopters. The Marine Corps already has many more helicopters than fixed-wing aircraft. Instead of mirroring each other’s capabilities, helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft should complement each other on the battlefield.

It is also important to address the complaints against the F–35 Lightning II, or Joint Strike Fighter. The Marine Corps is acquiring both the F–35B vertical/short takeoff and landing (V/STOL) variant and the F–35C carrier variant. Because the F–35 is still conducting both developmental and operational test and evaluation, we do not yet know all of its characteristics. Given its advanced technology, it is sure to encounter technological challenges, and its ultimate success will be determined in time. However, the arguments that Majs Thiele and Rubinstein make against the F–35 are not valid. With regard to range and on-station time, for example, the F–35 outperforms both the F/A–18 and the AV–8B. The F–35C even carries more internal fuel than the F/A–18 and AV–8B combined! But there is much more to this aircraft.

The F–35’s potential goes beyond anything in our current inventory and encompasses many functions of Marine aviation. It is a fifth-generation fighter designed for amphibious forcible entry and first-day strike capability. Many of its true capabilities remain classified. But just because the F–35 was not designed specifically for fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan does not automatically make it less capable in a low-intensity conflict. Its strengths can still be used to exploit the enemy’s weaknesses. In addition to the kinetic fire support capability, imagine a single aircraft being able to collect, exploit, and even directly attack the enemy using the electromagnetic spectrum. Every electron that the enemy transmits becomes vulnerable, the information is distributed across the network, and the kill chain is shortened significantly.

As the F–35 continues to improve, its capabilities will also increase. Think of what the F/A–18 was like back in DESERT STORM, where it carried little more than AIM–7 Sparrows and unguided bombs. Twenty years later, it is almost an entirely different aircraft with sensors and smart weapons galore. Expect the same to be true of the F–35 in 20 years, where it will inevitably remain a requirement for forcible entry against enemy air defenses and across the entire spectrum of conflict.

Last, Majs Thiele and Rubinstein suggest that “interchangeability” and “commonality of aircraft technology [. . .] will continue, until the only difference between Marine Corps, Navy, and Air Force aircraft and pilots will be the word ‘Marines’ stenciled on the bird.” This is where the authors need the biggest correction, because so many aircraft in U.S. history have been shared between the Services without this prediction ever coming true.

Table 1 shows several well-known aircraft that have been flown by at least three different Services. Though the actual amounts are too numerous to list, it is evident that through more than 100 years of Marine aviation, commonality and interoperability have existed in our aircraft. Majs Thiele and Rubinstein should note that even their beloved OV–10 Bronco was flown by 3 different Services. In fact it was our first “common” aircraft, the De Havilland DH.4, that Marine aviators broke the mold and created the first tactics, techniques, and procedures for CAS at the Battle of Ocotal, paving the way for decades to come. Why then would anyone suggest that the F–35 will somehow diminish the unique niche of Marine aviation, or that the future of Marine aviation is in jeopardy? It is also important to note that each of the aircraft listed in Table 1 performed admirably in several different functions of aviation in addition to offensive air support and CAS, disproving the notion that they are “jacks of all trades and masters of none.”

The final point concerns the recommendation for a light attack aircraft for the Marine Corps, such as the Embraer Super Tucano. While the Super Tucano does have some unique advantages, particularly its low operating costs, it is not suited for flight operations on aircraft carriers or amphibious assault ships. This is a big problem, because the Marine Corps and its aircraft are indelibly tied to the sea. Throughout the history of Marine aviation, the majority of aircraft have been operated from naval vessels (F4U Corsair, SBD Dauntless, OV–10 Bronco, A–1 Skyraider, F–4 Phantom II, AV–8B Harrier, F/A–18 Hornet, etc.). The only exception has been certain support aircraft like the KC–130. For its frontline CAS platforms, the Marine Corps needs to continue to acquire aircraft that can be operated from carriers and amphibious assault ships.


People and Training

Majs Thiele and Rubinstein also make scathing claims that Marine aviators providing CAS are “of little use,” having been merely “reduced to following a nine-line brief.” As insulting as that is, the knocks against Marine aviators do not end there. The authors also reference a separate, stand-alone document titled Air Cooperation, available at www.dnipogo.org, that labels Marine aviators as arrogant “knights on white horses” who are so apathetic that they would not even read a “book on warfare [. . .] without outside influence.”

Such comments are insulting to the core and do not accurately represent the thousands of man-hours that Marine aviators put toward training, studying, and preparing for supporting the Marines on the ground. They do not recognize the multitude of briefings, chalk talks, hip-pocket classes, and conversations that abound in squadron ready rooms regarding air-to-ground tactics. To suggest that Marine aviators are not ruthlessly ground-oriented pilots only shows the ignorance of those who would claim such a falsehood. But this counterpoint cannot be left as just an anecdotal response. Below are some examples of our rich history of supporting the ground combat element.

Led by Maj Ross Rowell, Marine aviators in Nicaragua developed the first tactics, techniques, and procedures for CAS. While fighting the Sandinistas, the Marine aviators of Marine Observation Squadron 1 also modified their own aircraft in order to perform route reconnaissance, communications relay, and casualty evacuation missions for ground forces. In World War II, Marine aviators were challenged with simultaneously defeating the Japanese both in the air and on the ground and exemplified air-to-ground employment at the Battle of Okinawa. Marine aviators were also supporting the ground combat element through Korea, Vietnam, and DESERT STORM while still achieving air-to-air kills in each conflict and performing a variety of other missions.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, the level of commitment and devotion shown by Marine aviators has been far greater than the majority of pilots in other Services. For example, Marine aviators have daily conversations with joint terminal attack controllers, forward air controllers, and ground commanders, while the Air Force A–10 squadrons do not even see the details of their missions until moments before their flight briefs. (In Iraq, some A–10 pilots would not even prepare their own mission products and kneeboard cards. Just prior to the flights, the cards were created by Air Force personnel located 600 miles away in Qatar and e-mailed to the squadrons.) On aircraft carriers, the Navy fighter squadrons spend their downtime watching movies in the ready room while Marine aviators are studying rules of engagement, friendly force laydowns, collateral damage concerns, and weapons employment considerations. During flight operations, Marine squadron duty officers maintain situational awareness of the battlespace and relay real-time information to the pilots who are flying. While airborne, Marine aviators help direct the real-time movement of tankers in order to keep the refueling platform directly overhead the supported ground unit, thus reducing or eliminating any interruption of support for those who needed it most. Marine aviators are pushing every envelope of weapons employment, airspace management, and fuel availability to squeeze every ounce of support for Marines on the ground.


Doctrine and Employment

Majs Thiele and Rubinstein allege that the overall support to ground Marines from Marine aviators has degraded in both Iraq and Afghanistan, which leads to the most important types of questions: What is our doctrine? How should Marine aviation be employed? What are we doing right? Where do we still need to improve?

First and foremost, the Marine Corps’ doctrine is maneuver warfare. There is no need to change it, rename it “Air Cooperation,” or put a new proverbial pretty box around it. Friction and uncertainty. Speed and focus. Boldness and surprise. Maneuver in time and space. Decentralized command and control. Combined arms. These are the hallmarks of our doctrine. The beauty and simplicity of maneuver warfare is that it is not limited to just the ground forces. These hallmarks apply to aviation just the same.

How does Marine aviation execute maneuver warfare? Marine aviation executes maneuver warfare by exploiting the third dimension—the vertical space above us. Aviation transforms a two-dimensional area on the ground to a three-dimensional battlespace. This involves more than just kinetic fires. In addition to dropping bombs, it also includes more capability in time and space to collect visual and electronic intelligence, attack and exploit the electromagnetic spectrum, and deny the enemy freedom of movement. When properly utilized, aviation in maneuver warfare allows the entire MAGTF to shoot, move, and communicate at a faster tempo than its enemies.

How does this concept differ from Air Cooperation? That question is difficult to answer because Majs Thiele and Rubinstein do not provide much detail on how their theory is to be executed in practice; however, the majors do offer some complaints as to how Marine aviation is currently employed, and one of the biggest is with the command and control structure.

The Air Cooperation article suggests that our current command and control is rigid, inflexible, and inefficient, implying that the air tasking order (ATO) is too antiquated to serve a useful purpose. It is important to put the ATO in context, though. The ATO cycle indeed starts 72 hours prior to the day of execution, but it is far from rigid and inflexible. The 72-hour ATO cycle is simply a planning process that can and does change all the way up to the point of execution. Some days in Afghanistan will easily have up to a dozen changes to the ATO in a 24-hour period, based on an ever-changing battlespace. Flight operations in Iraq were the same way.

One good thing about our current joint doctrine is that the preponderance of Marine aviation remains under the control of the MAGTF. This is known as the “Omnibus Agreement” in Joint Publication 1, Doctrine of the Armed Forces of the United States (Joint Staff, Washington, DC, 25 March 2013), stating that “the MAGTF commander will retain [operational control] of organic air assets.” Marines saw this doctrine in practice in Al Anbar Province and Helmand Province, Afghanistan, where the Marines maintained flexibility in controlling their fighters, tankers, and unmanned aircraft systems. There were only a few exceptions to this principle, such as electronic warfare sorties from EA–6B Prowlers and Marine squadrons attached to the Navy’s carrier air wings. Every other Marine fixed-wing squadron in Iraq and Afghanistan worked for the MAGTF commander.

The fact is that aviation assets have been and will always be a high-demand asset. There are not many times in history that military commanders have said, “If I only I had fewer aircraft on-station!” Instead, there is always a greater demand for aviation assets than can be supplied to the ground forces on a daily basis. Because the number of aircraft will rarely meet the demand, their use must be prioritized and allocated carefully. If aviators did not schedule and plan their sorties through some method (like an ATO), it would result in greater inefficiency.


Conclusion

Hopefully this article ignites some good debate, because Marine aviation requires feedback from the rest of the Corps. Are we doing things right? Are ground forces getting the support they need from Marine aviation? Where do we need the most improvement?

Any Marine Corps aviator that is worth his salt takes this role seriously, so we welcome the conversation. But whether the answer is a reinvigoration of maneuver warfare or something new like Air Cooperation, the discussion needs to be based on history and facts rather than opinions and anecdotes.


Notes


1. The U.S. Army Air Service (USAAS) existed from 1918–26 until it was renamed the U.S. Army Air Corps.

2. The U.S. Army Air Corps (USAAC) existed from 1926–41 until it was renamed the U.S. Army Air Forces.

3. The U.S. Army Air Forces (USAAF) existed from 1941–47 until the enactment of the National Security Act of 1947.

4. The A–24 Banshee was adapted from the SBD Dauntless and only suited for landbased operations with the USAAF.

5. USAAF, National Security Act of 1947.

6. The FJ Fury design was based on the F–86 Sabre and adapted for carrier operations.

By 1stLt Jordan A Blashek & Cpl John S Galloup

At some point in their careers, every Marine comes across Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication 1 (MCDP 1), Warfighting, the U.S. Marine Corps’ doctrinal philosophy for how we think about war. Indeed, by the time a Marine has reached the rank of sergeant, he has probably been required to read Warfighting so many times that he is forced to suppress the inevitable groan as the next instructor or platoon commander places it on the required reading list. Yet it is important that every Marine, regardless of rank, reads and understands MCDP 1 and the doctrine of maneuver warfare because it serves as the foundation for how we do business. Among other things, it provides a practical guide for leading Marines, a common language for tactical employment, and a particular way to think about combat, all of which makes the Marine Corps unique among Military Services.

Yet the brilliance of maneuver warfare and its relevance to the individual warfighter is lost if we cannot find a way to make the publication enjoyable (or even simply accessible) for younger Marines. The answer to this problem might lie in a popular science fiction book written in 1985 by a man who had never served day of his life in the military. Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game (A Tor Book, NY, 1977, 1985, 1991) vividly and accurately illustrates tactical principles and leadership traits that are described in MCDP 1. Easily readable and very engaging, Ender’s Game brings the theory of maneuver warfare to life, especially for young Marines who can relate better to Ender Wiggin, the young military genius and protagonist of the book, than to a German theorist like Carl von Clausewitz. In fact, Mai John F. Schmitt, the author of MCDP 1, considered Ender’s Game such a good study of leadership and tactics that he taught the book during lectures at the Marine Corps University in Quantico. With this in mind, we will use MCDP 1 to analyze the tactical and leadership lessons found in Ender’s Game to show the value in reading the two works side by side.

Set in a near future, Ender’s Game begins with a united human race on Earth engaged in a decades-long war against an insect-like race called the Buggers. After repelling the Second Bugger Invasion 70 years ago, the military has been searching for a brilliant commander to lead the human’s spacefleet against the Buggers, who nearly wiped out the human race in their last invasion. For years the military has been selecting child geniuses and training them at the Battle School through elaborate and technologically advanced wargames in order to turn them into military commanders. At the beginning of the book, Ender Wiggin is selected to attend the Battle School at the age of 6 and is immediately separated out by the instructors as potentially the most brilliant military mind ever seen, which quickly earns Ender the enmity of the other students. Tormented by the other students and challenged ruthlessly by the teachers, Ender is forced to rely on himself and a small core of loyal friends to survive and become a commander.

For the next few years Ender develops into a soldier at the Battle School by participating as part of mock armies in the battle room, a zero-gravity chamber designed to replicate different elements of combat. Through his creativity, intellect, and initiative, Endcr develops novel techniques and tactical ideas that propel him to become the best soldier and leader in the school. Given command of Dragon Army, Endcr develops his own soldiers by training them to be military thinkers rather than automatons simply executing rote formations and maneuvers. Based on decentralized command, Ender’s combat leadership style relies on mission intent and initiative-based tactics, which allows him to easily defeat other armies. Eventually, the teachers at the school begin to stack the deck against Ender in every way they can, pushing him to his breaking point. Yet, against increasingly skewed odds, Ender always manages to win using his style of maneuver warfare.

After graduating from the Battle School, Ender goes to Command School to learn to be a starfleet commander, where he becomes the student of the legendary commander Mazer Rackham. Having defeated the Buggers in the previous invasion, Mazer Rackham prepares Ender to face the alien race using a simulator that replicates starfleet combat. Ender eventually takes command of a fleet of squadrons led by his former friends and subordinates from the Battle School. While Ender believes he is simply learning on a simulator, he is actually fighting the real Buggers by controlling the human starfleet using a new technology called the Ansible, a communications device that allows him to instantly control the starships across the galaxy. In what Ender believes to be his final exam at Command School, he destroys the Bugger home world and the entire Bugger fleet, eliminating the threat to the human race.

Perhaps the greatest value in reading Ender’s Game side by side with MCDP 1 is the insight it provides into the theory of maneuver warfare. According to MCDP 1, there are two distinct styles of warfare – attrition and maneuver. In attrition, we attempt to defeat the enemy through the complete destruction of his forces. Simply put, we pit our strength against the enemy’s strength in an attempt to destroy him through superior firepower. In contrast, maneuver warfare seeks to destroy the enemy “system” by attacking enemy vulnerabilities in order to destroy the enemy’s will to resist. We seek to pit our strengths against enemy weaknesses in order to maximize advantage and exploit success. While both styles exist on a continuum and rarely ever in pure form, the styles reflect an approach to war – a way of thinking about combat and how to thrive in it.

In Ender’s Game, we find vivid examples of both styles put into practice by various armies in the battle room. In Bonzo Madrid’s Salamander Army, attrition warfare finds perfect expression in the rehearsed battle plans and mass formations that Bonzo uses to destroy his opponents. Through rigorous drilling and instant obedience to orders, the soldiers of Salamander learned to execute these complex formations and patterns in order to bring massive firepower to bear on the enemy. Even as a young soldier, Ender quickly realizes the weakness of this style, as he notes:

The well-rehearsed formations were a mistake. It allowed the soldiers to obey shouted orders instantly, but it also meant they were predictable. The individual soldiers were given little initiative. Once a pattern was set, they were to follow it through. There was no room for adjustment to what the enemy did against the formation.

Similarly, Ender is able to analyze the strengths of maneuver warfare in Pol Slattery’s Leopard Army. In its battle against Salamander, Slattery’s army uses quick and chaotic attacks in order to demoralize its enemy, who quickly forfeit the initiative and huddle together in the center of the battle room. Though both sides lost roughly the same number of soldiers in the battle, the Salamander Army “felt defeated,” ultimately allowing Leopard to achieve victory. However, while Pol Slattery has interesting ideas on maneuver tactics, Ender notices that they are still immature. His army’s movements were too uncontrolled and chaotic, resulting in unnecessary casualties and nearly losing him the battle.

Eventually, Ender receives command of his own army and implements tactical ideas and leadership principles that could have been lifted straight from the pages of Warfighting. Relying on decentralized control and initiative-based tactics, Ender develops Dragon Army into a nearly unbeatable unit, despite having the youngest and most inexperienced soldiers in the school. In the battle room, Ender leads his army by providing intent and mission-type orders, then relying on subordinate leaders to make quick decisions as necessary in order to accomplish his desired end state. By giving subordinates the freedom to exercise initiative, Ender’s army is able to take advantage of the chaotic and unpredictable nature of war. Specifically, his soldiers are able to rapidly identify opportunities and exploit advantages as the battle unfolds, in turn creating a tempo and fluidity that overwhelm the enemy’s system. Based on these qualities, maneuver warfare finds near perfect expression in Dragon Army.

Ender’s Game also provides young Marines with a clear example of two of the more difficult concepts in MCDP 1 – centers of gravity (COGs)/critical vulnerabilities (CVs) and orienting on the enemy. To defeat an enemy system, maneuver warfare relies on the related concepts of COGs and CVs. A COG is an important source of strength that allows the enemy to impose his will on us. It may be an intangible factor, such as morale, or a specific capability, such as an armor column or fortified machinegun position. A CV is a weakness in the enemy system that, if exploited, will do the most significant damage to the enemy’s ability to resist our will. Ender’s Game does a very good job of showing how these concepts can be used to fight an enemy. In his final battle against the Buggers, Ender defeats the enemy only after he successfully identifies the Bugger’s CV – their unprotected planet where their queens live. By avoiding the enemy’s COG – the massive Bugger space fleet – Ender annihilates the Bugger race by attacking the queens on the unprotected planet, eliminating their command and control system.

Similarly, as a young soldier in the battle room, Ender learns the principle that all combat is determined and decided in relation to the enemy. According to MCDP 1, “orienting on the enemy” is fundamental to maneuver warfare by focusing our attention outward rather than on our own internal procedures. By understanding the unique characteristics that make an enemy system function, we can penetrate that system in order to disrupt its operation and destroy its component parts. When Ender first enters the battle room, he quickly figures out that there is no standard orientation in the chamber because of the zero-gravity effects. So he orients himself on the enemy and determines that “the enemy’s gate is down.” By doing so, Endcr gains an advantage over everyone else for two reasons: (1) he is able to orient himself to his environment more quickly by focusing on the gate, and (2) the downward orientation places his feet toward the enemy, which creates a smaller target profile.

MCPD 1 further explains that we must try to “get inside” the enemy’s thought processes and see the enemy as he sees himself. Ultimately Ender is chosen as a military commander for his unique empathy, which allows him to understand his enemies better than anyone else. In his last battle with the Buggers, he uses this understanding of his enemy to attack the Bugger planet, a course of action he knew the Buggers had never considered possible. Yet, overwhelmed initially by the enemy’s COG, it is not until one of his subordinates reminds Ender that the enemy’s gate is down that he reorients himself on the enemy and finds their CV.

The approach we have taken in this article is that Ender’s Game serves as a valuable tool for making MCDP 1 and the theory of maneuver warfare more accessible to junior Marines. But the reality is that the leadership principles and tactical lessons contained in the novel have something valuable for Marines of all grades. We strongly recommend that leaders use Ender’s Game to teach their Marines about MCDP 1 and maneuver warfare. Often, to fully grasp a concept, we need to see it in practice, and Ender’s Game provides us with a dramatic example of maneuver warfare in action.

By Capts Aaron Brusch & Joshua Hotvet

It is fitting that Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication 1-3 (MCDP 1-3), Tactics y leads its final chapter, “Making It Happen,” with the quote at right from one of the preeminent originators of “counterinsurgency.”1 Today’s strategists and futurists firmly believe that the contemporary and future operating environment will continue to be characterized by the fluid and unscripted realities of perpetual small-scale insurgencies. If we have been reminded of anything in the past decade it is that count er insurgencies and “wars amongst the people” have always been disproportionately affected by the actions and decisions of small unit leaders. Their tactical decisions in those fleeting moments of the “irrational tenth” directly determine our strategic success or failure. As such, we need to train our young leaders – lieutenants and NCOs – in a way that develops and fosters their abilities to make correct decisions. By emphasizing training that forces them to adapt to a thinking enemy, rewards them for being agile enough to preempt that enemy, and prepares them for the nonlinear complexities of war, we will be providing them and ourselves with the tools for success.

If one were to list all of the qualities essential for a future combat leader, that list would have to include traits such as flexibility, adaptability, ingenuity, boldness, and innovation. Fortunately these all happen to be traits that the average lieutenant, sergeant, and corporal have in large supply. They are not overly tied to habits, they are often unafraid to attempt new solutions, and their lack of experience makes them extremely open to testing ideas that haven’t been tried before. However, that strength is also their weakness. That same lack of experience can often result in poor judgment and an inability to recognize telling patterns or take preventive action. Most concerning, it can result in an inability or an unwillingness to think critically about their environment. They are more likely than their seniors to miss important indicators, and they think less critically, not because they are unable or uninitiated, but rather because they are unaccustomed to thinking critically.

In the Marine Corps (and the military in general) we consistently demand decisiveness from our leaders. Given the necessary aggressive inclinations of the solid leader, we often take the old adage “any decision is better than no decision” too much to heart and incorrectly expand its scope to include “action.” While it is true that indecisiveness is the worst quality a leader could possess, there is a difference between indecision and inaction. What happens when we force the uneducated or unaccustomed to become decisive without giving them a context? In a world where junior leaders’ decisions have nonlinear effects for good or for ill, the aforementioned adage is becoming outdated at best and dangerous at worst. Perhaps it is time to recognize that there is no quality more essential to effective combat leadership than the ability to solve novel military problems, to have the flexibility to try different solutions, and to have the critical thinking skills necessary to change tacks when the initial plan hasn’t been successful. These points beg the question: how can we best sharpen adaptive thought, which will allow them to make rational decisions intuitively, or better yet, how do we help their decisionmaking move “left of the bang” by becoming more predictive and more agile?

The themes presented above are not original. Proponents of maneuver warfare have always discussed the impor tance of developing solid decisionmaking at lower levels, and none have done so better than LtCoI Michael D. WyIy and his colleague William Lind. In the watershed article, “Teaching Maneuver Warfare/’ WyIy states that our top priority must be to instill and develop military judgment in our junior leaders.2 Lind, in his Maneuver Warfare Handbook, contributes that:

Free play exercises are critical to developing initiative, imagination, and new tactics. They present junior leaders with unpredictable, rapidly changing situations just like combat. This automatically brings initiative and imagination to the fore.3

Building initiative, imagination, and sound military judgment is instrumental to successful maneuver warfare, and Lind ‘s thesis naturally leads to his conclusion that most exercises should be force-on-force free play

WyIy, Lind, and TE. Lawrence cut to the essential question of how we make decisions. Philosophers, at least as early as Plato, have described the “war between the rational mind and the irrational mind.” Malcolm Gladwell in his book, Blink, popularized the notion of the intuitive mind reflexively finding the answers before the rational mind was even aware there was a question.4 More recently, Daniel Kahneman gave the “dual process” decisionmaking process a more scientific and less anecdotal underpinning in his book, Thinking, Fast and Slow. The work is full of ideas, experiments, and cognitive biases, showing just how easily our thinking can be skewed into irrationality, but understanding the general premise says volumes for how we can train ourselves to become better decisionmakers. Quickly simplified, the author divides our decisionmaking process into System 1 and System 2. System 1 is our intuitive mind. It is quick to react to danger, it is the reason we feel unease when an environment becomes unexplainably hostile, it sees patterns, and it is automatic. System 2, on the other hand, is our conscious and rational decisionmaking process. It is slower and more deliberative. One of the work’s most basic conclusions is that System 2 often believes itself to be the main player when in fact it is a supporting actor, stepping in only when we deem it necessary; for example, at times when what we are experiencing does not fit neatly into our previous experiences or seems to defy logic. The author makes the further implication that following System 1 leads to greater miscalculations unless we are aware of these proclivities and enlist the help of our more rational mind.5 The times when we are required to enlist the aid of System 2 can largely be seen as a function of how familiar we are with a topic, conceding the point to Gladwell that in cases where we are experts, we are much more likely to be able to rely on the instinctual and reflexive to deliver a more desirable outcome.

This is all an extremely simplified part of the book’s broad thesis, but the classification should sound very familiar to many of us as it is similar to describing recognition primed decisionmaking. Further, much like recognition primed decisionmaking, System 1, our intuition, is at its best when we have strengthened it with enough “repetitions” so as to easily divine the patterns and intuitively see things that an untrained eye cannot see. All of this is to say that we need to develop this facility in our lieutenants and NCOs. They need the practice and the repetitions to strengthen their abilities to think critically against a thinking enemy.

So the question becomes: how do we best develop and implement exercises that develop these positive attributes? MCDP 1-3 reminds us that “while combat provides the most instructive lessons on decision making, tactical leaders cannot wait for war to begin their education.”6 The necessity of providing realistic training that comes as close as possible to replicating the chaos, friction, and unpredictability of combat has long been an accepted fact, and as a Marine Corps we need to relentlessly advance that goal. As Lind intimated, competition is a great motivator on its own merit, but it has the added benefit of truly forcing a Marine to outthink an enemy who he knows is attempting to outthink him. Pitting Marine against Marine in a free play environment, where the Marine is not guided by an instructor or forced into courses of action to accomplish prescribed training and readiness standards, leaves that student the freedom to attempt to find his own solution to the problem. If our end state goal is to build a group of leaders capable of agile, adaptive, and critical thought in the contemporary and future operating environment, there is nothing more experiential than going against another human being and either winning or losing on your own merit or demerits. These experiences can form a more solid foundation for future decisionmaking.

The Marine Corps’ training philosophy espouses the idea of free play exercises but limits the scope of that free play in two significant ways. First, current training models adopt free play only insofar as mission- typ e orders. After the order is given, the training unit has very limited bounds within which to work, resulting in very specific performancebased skills being trained. Second, the current approach limits free play to only one side in the given scenario; the aggressor force is invariably controlled by a central exercise coordinator who knows where he wants the scenario to go and knows everything that the training unit is planning and doing. This approach is effective for lane training-type exercises, such as Enhanced MOJAVE VlPER, where each lane is designed to evaluate the unit’s ability to perform the “right” answer, be it responding to a sniper, reacting to an improvised explosive device strike, a complex ambush, etc. While the training unit is allowed to make its own decisions (as long as it fits into the prescribed training and readiness task), it never faces an independent, free thinking enemy.

That is not to be taken as an attempt to replace the preeminence of training tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTP). Developing the understanding and ability to effectively respond to a given stimulus – basic skills and battle drills – is irreplaceable. No other training is as effective in evaluating and rehearsing specific training outcomes. However, the proposed training shouldn’t seek to replace lane training, but rather should foster a very different set of skills that complements proficiency in the basics. These two training paradigms should not be at odds. The development of critical and adaptive thought skills is as important in a low-intensity counterinsurgency environment as it is in a high-intensity battalion attack on a fortified position. The decisionmaking skills gained from true free play exercises are just as important as performance-based training and readiness manual standards. As MCDP 1-3 tells us, in these free play exercises, “leaders form and execute their decisions against an opposing force as individual Marines employ their skills against an active enemy.”7

After a training unit has demonstrated an understanding of why and how to perform certain actions, we must then push them into applying that knowledge in new ways, forcing them to take the baseline TTP and use it as it was intended to be used. Further still, a unit can train its collective skills and simultaneously train its leaders at all levels to fight a truly independent enemy. Unlike strict lane training exercises where units pass or fail by acting (or not acting) within certain bounds, an exercise in which two or more independent units are fighting without direction from a master scenario coordinator can present a realistic experience for all training units. Situations may develop of their own momentum as opposed to being planned and controlled by the exercise coordinator, opportunities can be generated and either exploited or wasted, and the training units can feel real consequences of their actions or inactions based on their enemy’s actions.

True free play is certainly not a novel approach. The 1st Tank Battalion conducted such an exercise three decades ago, pitting its companies against each other to great success. The 2d MarDiv, under then-MajGen Alfred M. Gray, conducted similar exercises in the early 1980s when maneuver warfare doctrine was first gaining traction in the Marine Corps.8 Further, the benefit of freeplay isn’t limited to the Marine Corps as evidenced by Joint Forces Command’s Millenium Challenge exercise. Combat leaders at all levels need to be able to think on their feet and make sound tactical decisions. Accordingly, free play exercises should be a part of all combat leadership schools. In addition, the Operating Forces should incorporate free play exercises of this type into their deployment workups.

As earlier articles have mentioned, The Basic School (TBS) has implemented such a training exercise in the updated program of instruction. “The War” is the culminating training event for the student lieutenants. It was designed to provide students the opportunity to demonstrate the core competencies they learned during the 6-month program of instruction. Its stated end state is to:

. . . send students to the operating forces who have been exposed to an unscripted tactical environment that better prepares them to be critical and adaptive thinkers in chaotic, complex, and uncertain environments.

The War consists of 7 days of true free play in which each student company is split in two, and each is given broad, opposing tasks and put into an area of operations that spans most of the available training areas on Marine Corps Base Quantico, with each side assisted by a TBS staff member acting as company commander. Once the missions are briefed, the students conduct all of the tactical planning and orders process and drive all of the action. The intent is that all students are fully immersed into The War experience and are solely responsible for the success or failure of their mission. When companies decisively succeed or reach culmination, they are given new, equally broad tasks to accomplish. The area of operation is large enough so that each platoon has the opportunity, depending on the plan developed by the students, to conduct every type of offensive, defensive, or patrolling operation, in the tree line and in urban environments. The students plan and execute their entire logistics plan, guided by the company commander and his student staff, and move logistics around the battlespace via a mobile section attached to each company

Instead of a master scenario event list, the exercise utilizes phases and branch plans to account for the fact that there is no timeline and the students’ actions are not dictated. Whether the students get through two tasks or six tasks is not important; the intent is that the students themselves drive all of the action and make all decisions impacting their mission. The situation is kept as realistic as possible so that the students have the ability to fully exploit any advantage they generate or one that arises on its own. Cherry picker casualties remain wounded in action or killed in action until that scenario plays out completely, and full casualty drill (triage and casualty evacuation) is demanded of the students throughout the exercise. The exercise makes extensive use of the instrumented-tactical engagement simulation system (I-TESS), which is worn by all students. The system not only tracks each student in realtime and sends the data to screens monitored by the exercise coordinators, but it also assigns casualties, assisting the observer controllers (OCs) and the exercise coordinators in rapidly understanding the battlefield environment and making necessary judgments of effects.

Finally, given the immersive nature of The War, there are no administrative breaks, and there are no debriefs until the exercise is complete. To tie the exercise together and facilitate the development of critical and adaptive thought, the exercise coordinators build and conduct a comprehensive after- action review of each war. The after- action review is built from the realtime battle log of The War made possible by the I-TESS gear and by the products built by the OCs. The OCs are specifically tasked to use whatever media they have available to chronologically record student decisionmaking and the ensuing consequences. Those products are distilled into several distinct case studies (in chronological order) and discussed in depth. For each case, the conversation starts with the most important questions. What was your understanding of the situation? What was your mission? How did you plan to generate and exploit advantage over your enemy in order to accomplish that mission? The facts of the case are reinforced by I-TESS slides that show the actual positions of each unit and by media delivered by the OCs. Each case study concludes with a discussion of why each unit succeeded or failed, and what could have been done differently. This debrief is critically important as it highlights judgments and decisions outside of a vacuum; i.e., the students are able to receive valid feedback from their adversary and truly see the battlespace through the eyes of their enemy. These conversations among the students, and the affiliated learning points in judgment and decisionmaking, represent the end state of the after- act ion review.

Detractors of this method could argue that allowing training units such an amount of freedom to essentially determine the course of their own training evolution would result in unrealistic or nonsalient training. That concern would best be addressed on three levels.

First, the exercise has to be run by competent coordinators who develop the exercise in such a way as to ensure that it remains free play for the students but not necessarily free play for the staff. However, the staff must be willing to accept that students, when given the opportunity to outthink an enemy, may also outthink a scenario. Second, it falls upon the training institution, be it school or unit, to determine when such an exercise would meet its training objectives. The ability to rapidly react to the enemy using sound battle drills and immediate action drills is irreplaceable, and entering into a free play exercise with the expectation that it will provide those skills is misguided. Finally, it follows that in the free play exercise the goal is not necessarily to mimic any particular enemy or style of maneuver. Rather the overriding goal is to provide the trainee with an opportunity to test his skills against an opposing will. This in turn facilitates the overarching goal of improving judgment and decisionmaking through experience. Training to that standard is not necessarily about imparting specific knowledge or skills, although those skills will be used and practiced during the course of training. Training to that standard is about teaching judgment and how to think.

It is essential that we tailor our training regimens to focus on decisionmaking in complex, chaotic, and ambiguous environments. Developing military judgment is just as important as developing performance-based skills from the training and readiness manual. However, unlike the collective skill sets, there are not any training and readiness standards that state: “Using mostly instinct, apply creative, agile, and adaptive thought – manifested as sound judgment – to solve a novel military problem.” The driving force behind competition and free play exercises is to facilitate an experience for the Marines that fully immerses them into a tactical problem, and then allows them to develop the situation and make decisions on their own against an independently thinking, adapting enemy. The true test of a free play exercise’s worth cannot be measured in green spreadsheet cells or by a number of checked boxes. The true test comes when those students are able to function more rapidly and outthink their enemy in the “irrational tenth.”