Think, Act and Operate Differently

Our nation faces its most significant threat to national security in generations. China’s relentless military modernization and expansion has disrupted the Indo-Pacific region and threatens American interests, those of our allies and partners, and the overarching global order. Other actors seek to further destabilize the globe, adding to the continually growing and evolving challenges we face. The requirement for us to answer the call—every call—necessitates a unique mindset among all of us, one that can deal with multiple, disparate, even seemingly unrelated yet subtly connected events that require agility in thought and action. Logistics remains a common thread throughout these varying warfighting scenarios and often drives what we can and cannot do.

Logistics breathes life into strategy, and the changing character of war means we must think differently about delivering logistics readiness to the Fleet Marine Force (FMF). We must acknowledge that sustaining the force throughout the next conflict will require many changes from our previous twenty-five years of combat to stay ahead of China’s pacing threat. These changes must be viewed through the lens of all warfighting functions—logistical readiness is not just the purview of logisticians; it requires a whole of Marine Corps commitment. This will require hard decisions to balance optimizing our current capabilities with the need to develop and apply new capabilities as force offerings to Combatant Commanders. In doing so, we ensure our logistics and installations capabilities are fully integrated with the overall Force Design plan and we provide combat credible forces to serve as effective deterrents and, if necessary, will undoubtedly prevail in conflict.

Our 39th Commandant believes that innovation keeps us ready—and I agree with him. Real innovation begins with your courage to vocalize and actualize your recommended solutions to our challenges. Innovation helps optimize current capabilities and develop new approaches against today’s problem sets to mitigate risk and increase lethality. The Marine Corps Gazette is a perfect forum for this discourse. To remain relevant in a modern fight, we need to be a modern force—our Corps needs your thoughts, voices and action to keep us most ready when our Nation is least ready.

I owe a huge thanks to all contributors. I personally read every submission and am exceptionally grateful for the tremendous commitment, thought, and time they took in drafting their respective articles. Each one was superb, and I wanted to publish all, but we had to make hard choices. The articles address many Fleet Marine Force requirements necessary to enable our Marine forces to provide relevant and credible combat forces. Critical topics such as intelligence, artificial intelligence and information systems, advanced manufacturing, the Marine Corps Global Positioning Network, health and mortuary services in a contested environment, and building installation resilience are examined in detail. Other equally valuable topics are addressed in the on-line edition of the Gazette, and I recommend those as well. The mandate to “Think, Act, and Operate Differently” is more than a tagline; it defines how we approach the multitude of challenges we face. The time to act is now.

Stephen D. Sklenka
Lieutenant General, U.S. Marine Corps
Deputy Commandant for Installations and Logistics

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