icon

The 41st Modern Day Marine MILITARY EXPOSITION

By: Alexander G. Hetherington
Posted on September 20, 2021

UPDATE: Unfortunately, due to the increasing COVID cases in the national Capitol Region, the 41st Modern Day Marine Exposition was cancelled.

At the Crossroads of Force Design

By LtCol Alexander G. Hetherington, USMC (Ret)
The 2021 show theme, “Today’s Innovation, Tomorrow’s Battles Won” signals Modern Day Marine’s position at the nexus of the “theory and practice” of force design—the “theory” inherent in the technological possibilities pioneered by industry and the “practice” embodied by the lived operational experience of serving Marines. As the event enters its fifth decade, its function for zeroing in on what is both possible and needed for an expeditionary force in an age of digital disruption is more vital than ever to ensuring the Marine Corps retains its ability to be a worldwide overnight success in securing national security objectives in 2030 and beyond. As Major General Michael “Mike” Regner, USMC (Ret), National Chairman of the Marine Military Expositions Committee, pointed out, “the ability to shoot, move and communicate are the immutable principles of a credible expeditionary force, but the means and ends of maneuver warfare in the 21st century are challenged by the exponential characteristics of technological acceleration and increasing operational ambiguity, to which has been added a fifth domain imperative to neutralize adversary networks while defending our own. The United States Marine Corps’ ability to deter destabilizing activities is a function of generating the tempo, timing, and situational awareness to reach opportune locations with lethally superior systems that cause our competitors to reevaluate their priorities for challenging international norms and standards.”
WHERE WE HAVE BEEN: Providing Industry with a Venue to Reach Top Marine Corps Decision-Makers and Primary Users

For the past 40 years, the Modern Day Marine Military Exposition (MDMME) has been an industry forum providing Marine Corps leadership, requirements and procurement personnel, and prospective users—occupationally proficient Marines of every rank and qualification—with a preview of future possibilities for training and equipping the Fleet Marine Force. The first show in 1981, billed as the Modern Day Marine “Force In Readiness Exhibit,” took place at an auxiliary airstrip near Yuma, Ariz., with two dozen companies congregated in the open air to “discuss their products, programs and proposals with prominent decision makers who plan and carry out amphibious operations in our nation’s defense.” In 1982, the MDMME migrated across the country and was staged in various commercial facilities in and around Washington, D.C., before finding a long-term home aboard Marine Corps Base Quantico in 1991.During its first 14 years on base, the show took place at the now-demolished structure of Larson’s Gymnasium, which originally was an aircraft hangar built in the 1930s, located between what is now the modern Quantico Air Facility and the Marine Corps’ original aerodrome, Brown Field, the current location of Marine Corps Officer Candidates School. In 2005, the MDMME made the 1.5-mile move to its current more expansive and centralized location on Lejeune Field, a grass quadrangle and parade ground bracketed by Marine Memorial Chapel, Dunlap traffic circle and the iconic base headquarters building, Lejeune Hall. By 2019, the most recent staging of the live event, it had grown to 76,000 square feet of exhibit space housed in a $1.3 million “Expeditionary Convention Center” that is “deployed and redeployed” annually over a five-week period between late August and early October.

As the indispensable intersection for service-level guidance and industry solutions within the Marine Corps community of interest, Modern Day Marine expects to welcome approximately 350 exhibiting organizations and more than 10,000 attendees, 55 percent of whom will be active-duty servicemembers representing every Marine Corps occupational community, to the 41st MDMME, scheduled to take place over its traditional three-day period between Tuesday, Sept. 21 and Thursday, Sept. 23, 2021. Current exhibitor categories have expanded beyond industry manufacturers and service providers to include Marine Corps research, experimentation, requirements, acquisitions, training and education component commands, government logistics activities, academic research and technology organizations, state and local business development activities and chambers of commerce, and a diverse collection of nonprofit organizations which support the personal and professional needs of active-duty and veteran servicemembers, as well as their families, including the Marine Corps Association.

Image
LtGen Mark Faulkner, USMC (Ret), former President and CEO of the Marine Corps Association, presides over one of the many professional development events organized by MCA throughout the calendar year.

WHERE WE ARE GOING: Providing a Forum to Communicate Service-Level Messages and Institutional Priorities to Key Publics and Stakeholders That Will Support Future Force Design EffortsWhile bringing the show to the Marines has been a MDMME tradition for 30 years, during the winter and early spring of 2020, General David H. Berger, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, chartered an Operational Planning Team to evaluate the increasingly vital role of the event as a key enabler for Force Design 2030, the Marine Corps’ 10-year plan to optimize its structure and capabilities for modern operations. The most significant outcome of this Headquarters Marine Corps evaluation was the decision to move the 42nd MDMME to the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C., where it will take place from May 10-12, 2022.

Lieutenant General Mark Faulkner, USMC (Ret), former President and Chief Executive Officer of the Marine Corps Association, said the move is necessary. “While Quantico is the crossroads of the Corps, Modern Day Marine is at the crossroads of the whole of government process to plan, program, develop and deploy the layered and integrated capabilities which underpin our national security strategy and the Marine Corps’ role within it as the nation’s premier expeditionary force.”

In addition to sustaining dialogue with industry on capabilities that will catapult the Corps into the future, including long-range precision fires, advanced reconnaissance capabilities, unmanned systems, and the resilient networks which encapsulate the Marine Corps’ Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations (EABO) concept, the MDMME will become a premium venue for demonstrating to Congress and the wider Department of Defense community that major change in existing force structure and ways of doing business are needed in this era of renewed Great Power Competition. Through an enhanced and diversified lineup of presentations, structured networking activities and technology demonstrations, the event will demonstrate the advantage of persistent, survivable units that operate as a component of the Joint Force, as well as by, with, and through our allies and partners, to provide the fleet and joint force commander with a stand-in component possessing the organic mobility and dispersion to compete and deter in a future operating environment characterized by a maturing and proliferating precision strike regime.

Image
MajGen Mike Regner, USMC (Ret), serving as the master of ceremonies at the 2019 Modern Day Marine Grand Banquet.

WHERE WE ARE GOING: Providing a Forum to Communicate Service-Level Messages and Institutional Priorities to Key Publics and Stakeholders That Will Support Future Force Design EffortsWhile bringing the show to the Marines has been a MDMME tradition for 30 years, during the winter and early spring of 2020, General David H. Berger, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, chartered an Operational Planning Team to evaluate the increasingly vital role of the event as a key enabler for Force Design 2030, the Marine Corps’ 10-year plan to optimize its structure and capabilities for modern operations. The most significant outcome of this Headquarters Marine Corps evaluation was the decision to move the 42nd MDMME to the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C., where it will take place from May 10-12, 2022.

Lieutenant General Mark Faulkner, USMC (Ret), former President and Chief Executive Officer of the Marine Corps Association, said the move is necessary. “While Quantico is the crossroads of the Corps, Modern Day Marine is at the crossroads of the whole of government process to plan, program, develop and deploy the layered and integrated capabilities which underpin our national security strategy and the Marine Corps’ role within it as the nation’s premier expeditionary force.”

In addition to sustaining dialogue with industry on capabilities that will catapult the Corps into the future, including long-range precision fires, advanced reconnaissance capabilities, unmanned systems, and the resilient networks which encapsulate the Marine Corps’ Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations (EABO) concept, the MDMME will become a premium venue for demonstrating to Congress and the wider Department of Defense community that major change in existing force structure and ways of doing business are needed in this era of renewed Great Power Competition. Through an enhanced and diversified lineup of presentations, structured networking activities and technology demonstrations, the event will demonstrate the advantage of persistent, survivable units that operate as a component of the Joint Force, as well as by, with, and through our allies and partners, to provide the fleet and joint force commander with a stand-in component possessing the organic mobility and dispersion to compete and deter in a future operating environment characterized by a maturing and proliferating precision strike regime.

Image
SgtMaj Johnny Baker, USMC (Ret), 64th National Commandant and CEO of the Marine Corps League, right, reconnects with the 12th Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps, Gene Overstreet, USMC (Ret), at the 2019 Modern Day Marine Grand Banquet.

THE MDMME SPONSORS: The Marine Corps League and the Marine Corps Association—A Stable Foundation for the EnterpriseThe MDMME is the most significant annual undertaking in fulfilment of the complementary chartered missions of the Marine Corps League and Marine Corps Association, two organizations single-mindedly dedicated to the professional development, advocacy and outreach activities which support our Corps, its Marines, and the veteran community, as intended by their common founder, the 13th Commandant of the Marine Corps, LtGen John A. Lejeune, the visionary leader who is celebrated to this day as a principal architect of the expeditionary character and ethos of the Corps as we know it.

The Marine Corps League is a national organization of more than 60,000 members and more than 1,000 community-based detachments in its 96th year as the federally chartered nonprofit advocate and veterans’ service organization for the United States Marine Corps. As SgtMaj Johnny Baker, USMC (Ret), the 64th National Commandant and CEO of the Marine Corps League, said, “We are a body of citizens transformed by service to Corps and country who provide daily community examples of the values that will inspire the next generation to earn the title and cultivate the resilience imperative to the proposition of an inside force.”

In 2020, the Marine Corps Association formally joined with the MCL as co-sponsors of the MDMME. In doing so, the MCA brought its 107-year pedigree as the professional association of the Marine Corps, dedicated to leader development and recognition of professional excellence, front and center by initiating closer cooperation with Marine Corps leadership to sharpen the focus of the conceptual design, as well as the scope and quality of presentation content for the event.

“The Marine Corps Association sees the MDMME as a natural extension of its mission to support the Marine Corps in the development of collaborative, cross disciplinary Marine leaders who prioritize learning. By cultivating a desire to know, a bias for identifying gaps in conceptual knowledge, and the intellectual tools to design questions which deliver understanding, we will continue to place the future of the force in capable hands,” said Colonel Chris Woodbridge, USMC (Ret), Editor and Publisher of Marine Corps Gazette, the professional journal of the United States Marine Corps.
Editor’s note: The presentations and panel discus­sions of the 2021 MDMME will be available to view on demand through the MCA website: www.mca-marines.org. Photos courtesy of LtCol Alex Hetherington, USMC (Ret).

Author’s bio: LtCol Alex Hetherington is a retired Marine aviator, primarily serving with the squadrons of MAG-39 flying the AH-1W heli­copter. He is the show director of the Marine Military Expos, sponsored by the Marine Corps League and the Marine Corps Association.

Related Articles