Gazette Article Topic: Future Force Design & Modernization

Legislative action to speed innovation

Under constraints in current programming and budgeting processes, the Marine Corps cannot match adversaries’ speed of innovation in today’s rapidly changing, technologically advancing environment. Many complain that the biggest problem with the Corps’ budget is it is too small. A bigger problem is that legislative requirements prevent us from properly allocating funding to new, emerging technology that advances capabilities. The Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution (PPBE) Process is how the Marine Corps plans for, requests, allocates, and spends the funding received from Congress. The Marine Corps must seek legislative reform in the programming and budgeting process to facilitate more timely acquisition of emerging technologies to remain competitive with adversaries. Many service members and civilians in the DOD recognize problems in this process. After a recent commission on PPBE reform, some in Congress now recognize the problem, too. It is a long, drawn-out process full of inefficiencies and restraints that create waste. Our Nation’s adversaries do not face these same bureaucratic hurdles in resource allocation and subsequent acquisition of goods. They have governments that try to facilitate the building of more lethal forces with modern technology. Because they have governments who try to streamline these processes instead of inadvertently hampering them, their military forces will be technologically superior to ours if we do not move to effect change now.

There are steps the Marine Corps can take with Congress to enact changes that facilitate innovation and allow the Corps to allocate resources more appropriately. Change like this requires transparency with Congress and continued good stewardship of taxpayer dollars, but the payoff will provide flexibility in resource allocation and a dramatic reduction in wasted funding.

The Marine Corps and DOD allocate resources against requirements through the PPBE process. The Marine Corps uses the Planning, Programming, Budgeting, Execution, and Assessment (PPBEA) Process. Because this article draws heavily from DOD policy and discussions at the congressional level, it will refer to the process as the PPBE Process. 

The full PPBE Process is typically a three-year cycle that begins with the Deputy Commandant for Combat Development and Integration (DC CD&I) conducting strategic and capabilities planning based on authoritative strategies at the national, departmental, and Service levels as well as the Commandant’s guidance. This is followed by the programming and budgeting phases, where funds are more specifically tied to requirements that support necessary capabilities. The process, for this article, ends in the execution phase when we spend congressionally appropriated funds against the requirements we began planning for years ago.1

The current process allows for civilian oversight of DOD spending through congressional control over the defense budget. It has permitted Congress to look at DOD needs as a whole and align resources to best support national security. At least, it has best supported national security in this manner up until the technological revolution we’re experiencing. A significant problem in this process is that to conform to this process the Marine Corps must begin identifying requirements three years before the year of execution. By the time the year of execution arrives, the technology looks completely different than it did during the planning process, and we have insufficient flexibility in realigning funds toward emergent requirements that did not exist during the planning phase. Thankfully, many of the shortfalls in the current process have already been identified.

The National Defense Authorization Act of Fiscal Year 2022 called for the creation of a commission to evaluate the PPBE Process. The commission identified many issues with the current process that prevent it from supporting the DOD and national security in the current, ever-changing environment. Some of the issues identified are that it takes too long to distribute funds, it is challenging to make modifications or upgrades to current assets, the process makes Services slow to react to new threats, new starts are prohibited under a continuing resolution (CR), and the speed of innovation is slowed.2 During the planning portion of PPBE, DC CD&I aligns strategies and guidance to capabilities that will support this guidance.3 However, “the budgets presented to Congress and what is appropriated cannot be tied easily to the overall defense strategy since the budgets are presented to Congress in terms of appropriation title and agency … rather than by capability areas.”4 There is a misalignment between how the Marine Corps plans and how Congress resources those plans. This misalignment, and many other issues identified in the commission’s final report, cannot be remedied without widespread legislative and procedural change. However, there are more minor modifications to the current process that the Corps can work with Congress to change while we wait for more far-reaching action. Before looking at these less sweeping changes, it is worthwhile to look at how our adversaries approach resourcing their military forces to get the full picture of the problems we face. 

Our adversaries do not face the same bureaucratic hurdles as our own. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) intentionally creates competition for the benefit of the People’s Liberation Army and increases its bargaining power with corporations in the defense industry.5 The CCP has split and merged defense industry corporations several times in the past to better foster innovation in technology and try to overcome its very different set of hurdles regarding military procurement.6 Based on U.S. values, the CCP’s example does not provide a model worth emulating. China’s government does not have the checks and balances in place that the United States does to prevent this kind of abuse of power. 

It is also worth mentioning that the system the CCP is implementing has not yet been effective in producing the desired results. None of the widespread reforms the CCP implemented have yet to get to the root of the procurement problems faced by their military, and the more current military-civil fusion it is implementing is focused more on research and development and less on procurement.7 For that reason, this brief comparison is not intended to be alarmist in nature. It is intended to show the sharp contrast to that of the U.S. Government, whose multi-year budgeting process and strict restrictions on funds availability drastically slow down military innovation. 

On 20 March 2024, the Commission on PPBE Reform presented its findings and recommendations to the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Service. While some committee members viewed the findings favorably and realized the need for reformation in the PPBE process, there was also strong pushback and harsh criticism. The DOD was criticized for overspending, failing to track where its money went, and never having passed an audit. However, it was noted in the hearing that the Marine Corps is the only branch of the DOD to receive an unmodified audit opinion.8 Due to the size of the DOD’s budget and other governmental departments that also feel like they desperately need additional funding, it is no surprise that the DOD’s inability to account for taxpayer dollars is preventing Congress from giving its military more flexibility to seek innovative solutions to modern problems in preparation for a peer-to-peer conflict. 

Based on the feedback received from the Senate Armed Services Committee, the Marine Corps should seek legislative change allowing branches within the DOD that have passed the audit to receive benefit from some of the recommendations in the committee’s final report. This allowance requires transparency and open communication between the Marine Corps and Congress. The Marine Corps’ clean audit opinion goes a long way toward displaying transparency and building trust with Congress. We have proven that we can account for taxpayer dollars while adhering to applicable laws and regulations. 

The committee’s final report contained 28 recommendations to Congress, many of which would streamline acquisition, reduce waste, and permit innovation. Many of these recommendations need to be implemented in the entire DOD or they are simply not feasible. These changes will likely take years to come to fruition, assuming they do at all. The Marine Corps may already find itself engaged in the next conflict by this time and will have missed out on years’ worth of opportunities waiting for Congress to effect change to the PPBE Process. However, some recommendations could realistically be applied to only portions of the DOD and could be contingent upon a clean audit opinion. Congress can grant branches that receive an unmodified audit opinion greater flexibility in managing financial resources provided they can maintain their unmodified opinion. 

The Marine Corps receives funding through appropriations, which provides funds for a specified time based on the length of appropriation. Military Personnel (MILPERS) and Operations and Maintenance (O&M) funds are single-year appropriations, which means they must be completely used by the end of the current fiscal year and are no longer available for use after 30 September of each fiscal year. Many Marines are likely familiar with the end-of-year funds dump, in which all the funding that was set aside at various levels for emergent requirements or additional budget cuts during the year of execution is hastily spent on whatever requirements can still be executed at the end of the year, regardless of the priority or capability provided. While it is necessary to ensure funds are available for emergent requirements, it goes without saying that this is an inefficient use of funding and a waste of taxpayer dollars. The commission recommended that the DOD should be allowed to carry over five percent of its Military Personnel and O&M funding each year. This would enable branches to maintain a reserve for unexpected end-of-year bills, short-notice permanent change of station orders, and overseas medical evacuation needs without potentially wasting that money at the end of each fiscal year.9 Instead, those funds could be carried over and applied to needs that more directly contributed to supporting warfighters and enhancing capabilities. This is the first recommendation from the commission that Marine Corps leadership should ask for Congress to implement immediately based on a clean audit opinion. Because the Corps has proven it is a good steward of taxpayer dollars, let us further stretch those dollars by carrying over five percent of these single-year appropriations. 

Below-threshold reprogramming (BTR) allows the Marine Corps “to realign, within prescribed limits, congressionally approved funding” without congressional approval.10 The BTRs are important since the year of execution in the PPBE cycle happens years after planning for that year began. Undoubtedly, unexpected requirements will arise that were not resourced by Congress. The committee’s final report made several recommendations regarding BTRs, one of which is to increase BTR thresholds.11 This is a relatively minor adjustment for Congress to implement, but when coupled with other recommendations in the committee’s final report, it will probably take years to implement. The Marine Corps should ask Congress to immediately permit BTRs up to the threshold recommended in the commission’s report. 

Continuing resolutions have become a painful and standard part of every fiscal year. Annual appropriations bills, which provide our funding for the new fiscal year, are supposed to be signed into law by 1 October of that year. The CRs were created as a safeguard to provide temporary funding until the new year’s budget can be signed, but they have turned into an expected norm for every year. Unfortunately, expecting them does not do anything to mitigate the consequences of them. “Standard CR prohibitions on new starts and increased production quantities delay the start of innovative new programs and the acquisition of essential capabilities.”12 Based on some of the comments in the hearing on the commission’s final report, it is unlikely Congress will be quick to remove all the restrictions in CRs, but some allowances can be made. Congress should allow new starts and increased production quantities during a CR for military branches that have and maintain an unmodified audit opinion. 

These changes would not only help the Marine Corps foster innovation but also allow us the flexibility to more properly align taxpayer dollars to higher priority requirements. They would also incentivize a clean audit opinion in other branches of the military and the DOD, which benefits Congress and all taxpayers. These changes will not solve all the Marine Corps’ problems in the PPBE Process as it relates to acquisition and proper resource allocation, but they will help. They are also realistic. Congress has acknowledged these problems exist. Because the Marine Corps has set itself apart from the rest of the DOD by proving it can pass an audit, it should seek Congressional relief from these known, documented problems.

The current PPBE process is too slow-moving to support the war‑
fighter in today’s rapidly evolving environment. Current policy is allowing technological advances to outpace the DOD while our adversaries are actively trying to capitalize on these advances. The DOD has not received a clean audit opinion and that is hurting us. This is understandable because the DOD, as the largest piece of the government’s budget pie, owes it to the people we serve to be good stewards of their dollars. The Marine Corps must lily pad off our unmodified audit opinion and work with Congress to seek relief from bureaucratic constraints in the PPBE process, or we will be outpaced by technology and our adversaries.

>The author’s bio was not available at the time of publication.

Notes

1. Commandant of the Marine Corps, MCO 7000.1, Marine Corps Planning, Programming, Budgeting, Execution, and Assessment Process, (Washington, DC: August 2022).

2. Commission on Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution Reform, Defense Resourcing for the Future (Arlington, VA: 2024).

3. Marine Corps PPBEA Process.

4. Defense Resourcing for the Future.

5. Yoram Evron, “China’s Military-Civil Fusion and Military Procurement,” Asia Policy 16, No. 1 (2022).

6. Ibid.

7. Ibid.

8. Hearing to Receive Testimony on the Final Report of the Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution Reform Commission: Hearing before the Senate Committee on Armed Services, 111th Congress, (2009), https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/hearings/to-receive-testimony-on-the-final-report-of-the-planning-programming-budgeting-and-execution-reform-commission.

9. Defense Resourcing for the Future.

10. Department of Defense, Financial Management Regulation, Volume 3: Budget Execution–Availability and Use of Budgetary Resources, Chapter 6: Reprogramming of DoD Appropriated Funds (Washington, DC: 2000).

11. Defense Resourcing for the Future.

12. Ibid.

Design precedes development as the architect precedes the engineer

Force design is a critically important process for any military to ensure it is ready and able to preserve deterrence and meet the test of the next conflict should it occur. The Joint Staff defines force design as “a process of innovation through concept development, experimentation, prototyping, research, analysis, wargaming, and other applications of technology and methods to envision a future joint force.”1 Importantly, this definition describes force design as a continuing process of innovation; it is an infinite game.2

Currently, there is a great deal of attention on force design and modernization across the DOD given the rise of multiple peer adversaries.3 It has been especially prominent in the Marine Corps since 2019 when the 38th Commandant made it a centerpiece of his commandancy in his Commandant’s Planning Guidance. Given this Marine Corps focus on Force Design, and the author’s familiarity with these efforts, this article will use the Marine Corps as an exemplar to discuss force design processes and recommend force design best practices applicable to all components of the Joint Force. Thus, the subject addressed herein is the process of Force Design, rather than any specific instantiation of force design. The central idea is that Force Design is the logical first step of a larger force modernization process whose functions (force design, force development, force employment) must be performed concurrently and not sequentially as the current joint doctrine implies.4

Joint Force Development and Design and Historical Analogs
The CJCS Instruction 3030.01A, Implementing Joint Force Development and Design, outlines the processes and responsibilities for Joint Force Development and Design (JFDD) and describes three lines of effort: Build the force, educate the force, and train the force. 

The Joint Operating Environment (JOE) document describes future challenges, providing a shared appreciation of the threat across the department. Developing this shared vision is foundational to all subsequent steps to build, educate, and train the force. For this reason, JFDD would be better described as threat-based and concept-informed vice the CJCSI 3030.01A formulation describing the JOE as setting the conditions “for effective concept-driven, threat-informed capability development for DoD.”5 Calling out distinctions between concept-informed/concept-driven and threat-based/threat-informed may seem overly pedantic, but the distinctions have significance beyond semantic nitpicks as will be discussed later. This is especially so in the case of the Marine Corps, whose force development process describes a “concept-based” approach that places even more emphasis on concepts than the CJCSI-prescribed “concept-driven” joint process.6 

Whether the JFDD process is threat-based and concept-informed vice concepts-driven/-based and threat-informed is, in important ways, analogous to the early 2000s shift away from threat-based planning when Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld replaced this Cold War-era process with Capabilities-Based Planning (CBP).7 While it is true that JFDD-related concepts are developed using specific scenarios against specific adversaries, the subsequent reduction of these concepts to lists of concept-required capabilities as the next step in the JFDD process encourages these disaggregated data to be viewed and resourced as individual capabilities rather than a system of systems that has many interdependencies. The Joint Force is a system of systems, not a simple aggregation of collected parts, and thus requires a holistic system view when defining force designs and associated capability resourcing. A line-item view created by reductive textual analysis of concepts of varying quality and relevance yields lists of capabilities and gaps functionally equivalent to the now-discredited CBP.

An insightful 2015 article in U.S. Naval Institute News provided a
retrospective assessment of the shift to CBP fifteen years after its inception. The author explains the importance of the shift to CBP by contrasting it to the Army’s 1981 threat-based AirLand Battle doctrinal reset that was developed to counter the Soviet Union. The author explains how in CBP, the by-then moribund USSR was replaced by a generic near-peer threat that “has no connections to any geography, culture, alliance structure, or fighting methodology. That adversary has no objectives, no systemic vulnerabilities, and no preferred way of fighting. Instead, the enemy is a collection of weapons systems that we will fight with (presumably) a more advanced set of similar systems, in a symmetrical widget-on-widget battlefield on a flat, featureless Earth.”8 The article then describes how problematic such an approach is because it divorces force modernization from all the particulars necessary to develop the ways and means of a coherent system to defeat an adversary. 

Geography always matters, as does weather, allies and partners, access, specific technical parameters of competing weapons systems, force posture, mobility, sustainment, and network resilience. The impact of the loss of these critical design considerations in the force development process was then amplified by two decades of focus on countering terrorism. This shift caused the department to lose focus on emerging peer threat ecosystems, even while entities such as the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Office of Net Assessment were warning about the challenges of a revanchist China.9

Additionally, CBP encouraged military planning to shift focus inward vice on the enemy, thus allowing institutional preferences to prevail over war-winning imperatives. In theory, CBP could result in a Joint Force that is so dominant that it overmatches any adversary with its superior technology and operational acumen, but in practice, this is not the case. Throughout this era, science and technology investments provided a patina of innovation, and while it did yield improvements in force protection against improvised explosive devices, the real focus of the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Services, and more importantly, the real money, was on developing the next better version of existing marque capabilities such as 5th-generation tactical aircraft vice uncrewed systems (drones, collaborative combat aircraft); better-towed tube artillery vice a healthy mix of self-propelled tube artillery, rocket artillery, and loitering munitions; geostationary military satellites vice large constellations of low earth orbit micro-sats, and large surface combatants vice a hybrid fleet incorporating uncrewed surface and subsurface vessels.

The most important contribution of the 2018 National Defense Strategy was the unequivocal shift back to threat-based planning. Subsequent joint doctrine such as CJCSI 3100.01 Series, Joint Strategic Planning System, CJCSI 5123.01 Series, Charter of the Joint Requirements Oversight Council and Implementation of the Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System, Manual for the Operation of the Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System, and the previously quoted CJCS 3030.01A all made improvements to how the Department approaches planning, requirements development, and solutions development. But, as with any complex process highly dependent for success on external factors, adjustments, and improvements must be continuous given the changing nature of threats, technologies, budgets, and strategies. 

From Time-Sequenced to Logically Sequential, Temporally Concurrent
CJCSI 303.01A describes three timeframes from the present: Force Employment (0–3 years), Force Development (2–7 years), and Force Design (5–15 years). While it is obvious that any process takes time, and therefore emerging capabilities will manifest further in the future than employing today’s forces, the three epochs described in the CJCSI are unhelpful and potentially detrimental. 

First, the Russo-Ukraine war has demonstrated that such a time-specific process cannot work. Forces must be designed and redesigned in important ways in the near future, and the inability of a force to do so means defeat. 

Second, at the most fundamental level, this sequenced construct fails. Logically, Force Design comes first (architectural design), then the force is developed to fit the design (like a house is built to an architect’s blueprint), and then it is employed (like a house is lived in). The underlying logic of the Joint Staff’s tripartite timeframes is that the acquisition process takes time and therefore Force Design manifests in the most distant epoch. But if we care about what we need to do to win tomorrow, we must focus on Force Design first just as someone building a house hires the architect before hiring the home builder. 

The forces being employed today were subject to force design in the past, but in most cases, the too-distant past, and this is why there is so much consensus in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and Congress on the need for acquisition reform.10 It is also inordinately focused on traditional long-term program acquisition when, increasingly, opportunities exist for software upgrades to existing systems and the purchase of more advanced non-developmental capabilities (e.g. FPV drones) is possible. 

It is critical that designers, developers, and operators maintain a continuous dialog to ensure healthy feedback loops for rapid adjustment to processes and plans. The current time-dependent characterization serves as an implicit segmentation that discourages interactions among designers, developers, and operators and thus compromises essential feedback. Too often, combatant commanders (CCDR) and operating force emergent requirements are diminished by force designers and developers because these components are “just focused on today.” In the past, there was some justification for this argument, given the glacial evolutionary trajectory taken by all Services, but it is simply not true today. The CCDRs and forward-postured operating forces are increasingly conversant in both current and future adversary capabilities. In the past, when adversaries were decades behind us in fielding capabilities, a CCDR asking for contemporary countering capabilities was to ask for incremental changes; this is not the current circumstance. Now, when forward-postured forces ask for capabilities to counter existing and near-term adversary capabilities, they are asking for capabilities that are often far in advance of currently planned capabilities in the acquisition pipeline. This makes all the difference and is a key reason why the joint doctrine on timing and sequencing needs to be re-examined.

Concept-Driven or Concept-Informed
In describing the execution and implementation of JFDD, CJCSI 3003.01A states, “Concept-driven, threat-informed, capability development begins with a vision of the future operating environment that guides the DOD through a campaign of learning to identify the capabilities required to achieve the objectives established in national strategic guidance.”11

Concepts are extremely important elements of Force Design, but they are not the first thing, nor are they the most important. Vision comes first, and since force development processes and the systems they produce are sensitive to initial inputs, flaws in vision can have cascading negative effects on final outcomes. It is important to get the first thing, the main thing, right first. As Einstein said, “If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I would spend the first 55 minutes determining the proper question to ask, for once I know the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than five minutes.” 

Force Design is more deductive than inductive (as a recursive intellectual exercise, it will inevitably have elements of both). Experience and professional judgment allow us to have a vision and then a hypothesis. This tentative vision, which describes the desired attributes of the future force (objective force) needed to solve a specific military problem, is the vital spark of creation: the first thing. 

Concepts are useful because they pull together desired attributes into a coherent whole that describes important elements of the larger warfighting system and aids the progression from an impressionistic vision to the refined blueprint. 

Current concepts are of varying quality and utility. They are certainly useful but also quite imperfect. Given this reality, basing Force Design on these concepts cannot help but lead to a flawed force design if we use textual analysis of these concepts to determine requirements per the Joint Capabilities Integration and Development Systems. Deconstructing concepts to transliterate them from conceptual think pieces to mechanistic lists, and then by rote, converting these lists to gaps and then requirements, is bound to lead to confusion amongst force developers and solution developers as the logical warp and woof of force design are shorn from the process, just as CBP did in the early 2000s. Additionally, flawed concepts do not get better through abstraction. 

Of course, lists can be quite useful, but we do not need a concept to generate a list. It would be surprising if the authors of concepts did not start with a list in their minds first and there is nothing wrong with this. Concepts are useful for their consilience of information into a narrative that can deliver shared wisdom while also stimulating further creative thought. 

The problem with lists is what bureaucracies do with them. They are often an excuse to reduce a complex cognitive task into manageable parts, which can be useful, but this is not a way to build a fit-for-purpose war‑
fighting system—it is simply a way to understand an already formed system. An architect does not take a pile of materials and build a house from what is in the pile. An architect uses education, experience, and knowledge of materials to build a plan. Mechanical engineers add greater detail to the blueprint to describe its internal systems and piece parts. If force designers are the architects, then force developers are the mechanical engineers, and both should be informed by concepts, not an abstracted list of those concepts’ key points.

Figure 1 offers a notional process flow for Force Design while emphasizing the centrality of the force designer and his cognitive processes.

In sum, Force Design should be concept-informed and not concept-driven. Force designers produce conceptual frameworks for force developers to define system particulars—not simple lists. 

The most valuable conceptual work is derived by focusing a concept on a very specific scenario believed to be likely. This requires concept developers to understand more than good storytelling and understand applied warfighting. If we were to develop a range of concepts/concepts of operation for all supported combatant commands across the spectrum of competition and conflict, we would possess a robust playbook for likely challenges at the level of detail necessary to describe and build a system. Critically, this approach would require articulation of not just material requirements but also non-material requirements such as training, organization, facilities, logistics, tactics, techniques, and procedures, etc. 

A concept supports thought and creativity and loses its purpose when subjected to Derridean deconstruction. Force designers are architects, while force developers are mechanical engineers, and both use concepts to maintain the purpose of and vision for the objective force. 

Those involved in Force Design should be informed by the complete range of concepts relevant to their military problem and focus on using this knowledge to develop the concept of operations in narrative form and graphically in an operational view.12 This ensures a systems view that maintains priority for a functional warfighting system versus the current process’s proclivity for devolution into a “one-to-N” list of preferred capabilities with no guarantee they will cohere into a functional warfighting capability that can be fielded. Such lists are also susceptible to manipulation at various levels of the chain of command by those advocating for their special interests whether part of the system architecture or not. 

Case in Point: Marine Corps Force Design
A system comprises three fundamental elements: a purpose or function, system elements, and interconnections. In current process parlance, this is analogous to mission, capabilities, and interdependencies. This means Force Design is about system development—a combat system.

While biological evolution demonstrates that chance combinations of chemicals and energy can lead to complex lifeforms, we should not expect a warfighting system to emerge from the muck and mire of lists, technology, and capabilities, given that acquisition processes are, thankfully, somewhat shorter than biological evolutionary time horizons. 

To achieve speed of relevance, we must rapidly create a system, test it, modify it, and test it again. Fortunately, military professionals have the benefit of specialized knowledge, which, when combined with past and ongoing Force Design efforts, enables them to jump ahead evolutionarily to an imperfect but fully formed vision for a future war‑
fighting system through deductive reasoning. Conversely, over relevant time horizons, gaps and capability lists will not coalesce into an objective force (system of systems) inductively—an overarching vision is required because we are looking for something new, unencumbered by traditional approaches and existing capabilities. A creative step of system definition, through Force Design, is required to guide force development. 

Because the Marine Corps has evolved incrementally since World War II, there has been little attention paid to Force Design as the focus of the combat development process of this era was on buying a newer version of existing platforms. Force structure changes during this period were the subject of a parade of force structure working groups, force organizational review groups, and integrated process teams, with many of their recommendations not being implemented due either to lack of resources or to subsequent redirection from leadership. 

This historical experience demanded little in the way of force design and mostly required finding ways to improve existing capabilities, such as a better truck, HMMWV, AAV, etc. For decades, the Marine Corps Combat Development and Integration Command (CD&I) focused predominately on the ground combat tactical vehicle strategy because that is where Service-defining capabilities were thought to lie, and except for aircraft, it was where the most expensive platforms resided. 

Unfortunately, this was to the exclusion of upgrading our artillery systems to move beyond towed artillery to self-propelled. There was also inadequate investment allocated to Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance, and installations. There was substantial discussion about this, but funding was subordinate to the vehicle strategy. These decisions placed the Marine Corps in a situation where organic sensing and fires were inadequate for peer conflict. The 37th Commandant, Gen Neller, recognized the problem in his 2017 Posture Testimony, which stated unambiguously that “the Marine Corps is not organized, trained, equipped, or postured to meet the demands of the rapidly evolving future operating environment.”13 

Force design must be a core competency for any organization charged with force modernization and development, or we will find ourselves in a circumstance, yet again, where Gen Neller’s testimony will ring true. Currently, the Marine Corps’ combat development organization (CD&I) lacks dedicated force designers and instead relies upon ad hoc process teams, study groups, and organizational reviews to produce the vision and the attributes for an objective force. This lack of dedicated force designers all but guarantees that the nuances of the proposed design developed by an ephemeral ad hoc group will be inadequately translated and implemented by force developers, having been lost in the translation from vision to concept to list.

Recommendations
Amend Joint and Service Process Documents

Both the order and the temporal descriptions in the CJCSI should be reconsidered to reflect the logical progression of force development: Force Design, Force Development, and Force Employment. In addition to changing the order of activities, the arbitrary timeframes should be eliminated as they are not accurate and simply reinforce the flawed conception that Force Design only manifests in the distant future. As discussed, this is no longer the case in an environment where software-defined capabilities and commercial, non-developmental solutions are an ever-increasing portion of the warfighting system. 

Joint doctrine should make explicit that force design is threat-based and concept-informed vice concept-driven and threat-informed, and reemphasize the centrality of the JOE and related threat assessments. Threat documents should be unambiguously defined as the starting point for Force Design. 

Force designs must be consistent with the Analytic Working Group principles and standards wherein they must be detailed enough to be tested through wargames and experimentation. Thus, force designs can be thought of as testable hypotheses. Importantly, the joint doctrine is explicit that wargaming, experimentation, and analysis are crucial to shaping Force Design. These activities do not validate a design; rather, they contribute to an iterative process of improvement. For the Joint Force, the Joint Warfighting Concept guides organization, training, and equipping, and Service designs should clearly reflect how they fit within the Joint Warfighting-informed Joint Force.14

Best Practices

Concept required capabilities derived from concepts are insufficient for force development purposes. As CJCSI 3030.01A states, “CONEMPs are the most specific of all military concepts and contain a level of detail sufficient to inform the establishment of programmatic requirements.”15 Thus, even with the existing joint doctrine, Force Design derived from operating and functional concept required capabilities is inadequate. If lists are made to aid in understanding and communicating, they must be placed in context and not allowed to become the main thing. 

The Army has a force management occupational specialty (FA 50) that encompasses force development, force integration, and force generation. Officers are selected for FA 50 around their eighth year of service to attend a fourteen-week qualification course, and are expected to pursue subsequent education throughout their career.16 The Army also has a Futures Command headed by a four-star general in Austin, TX. The Marine Corps has made no investments in focusing and professionalizing its future force to the extent the Army has, and the results speak for themselves. The Army is implementing the fundamental aspects of Marine Corps Force Design (formerly Force Design 2030) at speed and scale and, one might argue, beating the Marine Corps at its own game.17 Of course, from a non-parochial perspective, the Army’s successes should be celebrated as they are making the Army more capable and relevant for the future fight. Go Army! All Services should learn from the Army and consider professionalizing the force design and force development workforce. 

Force Design Professionals
Force Design is not a product, it is a process—a creative process, and it is the first step in force development once threats and challenges have been identified. At the outset of the Marine Corps’ Force Design 2030, this first step was performed by an ad hoc group because there was nobody dedicated to force design. Given this lack of force design professionals, when the Provident Stare (the name given to the initial Force Design 2030 planning group) organization was handed off to the Deputy Commandant CD&I, CD&I had to proceed over subsequent years with a continuing string of ad hoc integrated product team efforts focused on pieces of the overarching design developed during Provident Stare. This structurally exposes the process to discontinuities and confusion given the lack of continuity in those doing the design and development. If Force Design is a continuous process and not a one-off effort, then Services should all have dedicated force designers educated, trained, and experienced in the art and science of designing a force. Gen Berger and other senior leaders recognized that existing capability portfolio management processes were suboptimal for a design effort requiring discontinuous change given they are the product of the historical, incremental approach to force development. 

Given Force Design’s centrality to force development, and the inherent need for continuous adjustment, force design should be an organic core competency. 

In the Marine Corps, this could be accomplished by converting existing capability portfolio managers (CPMs) (active-duty colonels) to force designers. Force Design focus areas might include sense/influence, communicate, command, move, shoot, protect/defend, sustain, and support, each overseen by a force design colonel (Figure 2). As an option, these elements could be grouped into design groups should a different rank/command structure be desired. These design groups would be configured as follows:

• Knowledge (K-DG): Sense/Influence; Communicate; Command.
• Fight (F-DG): Move; Shoot; Protect/ Defend.
• Enable (E-DG): Sustain; Support. 

Alternatively, rather than form separate design groups, the aforementioned groupings could simply be viewed as “caucuses” amongst the force designers, which in practical terms could be used to plan travel and briefings when all force designers cannot attend or should other reasons so dictate. Such an informal grouping could enhance synergy between force designers that have especially strong interdependencies. 

All relevant domains would be addressed in each of the design groups with the biggest difference being that Aviation would be fully integrated, versus the special relationship that now exists between CD&I and Deputy Commandant for Aviation (DCA) where the Aviation CPM is effectively a liaison for DCA vice an integral part of the requirements process. Currently, DCA determines requirements and provides solutions to the Aviation CPM. If deemed necessary, an aviation-focused design group could be added, but other CPMs would still approach their design activities in all domains, including air. The multidomain battlefield requires force design that is conceived in all domains. 

For the Marine Corps, the criticality of naval integration suggests that adding a Navy captain as a ninth force designer would be beneficial. This individual would provide connectivity to OPNAV staff and Numbered Fleet Headquarters. Given the current direction of the Army, an Army force designer would also be a logical addition, and a SOCOM force designer would be helpful as well. 

Force designers would work together daily as an integrated team like the civilian concept of scrum where a multi-disciplinary team works together to produce a new product. Battle rhythm and daily routine would be very similar to the Marine Corps’ School of Advanced Warfighting with research, seminars, and supporting analysis culminating in the development of a blueprint for the Objective Force, a narrative description of the doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership and education, personnel, and facilities attributes of the envisioned force. A supporting brief would be available to general officers and others to ensure consistent messaging on the desired Marine Corps of the future. 

On a yearly cycle, all operating and functional concepts would be briefed by the owner or author of each respective concept. This would reinforce concepts as a major component of Force Design’s intellectual foundation. Guest speakers from National Defense University, Marine Corps University, and local think tanks would be regular calendar events. 

Travel to exercises, experiments, wargames, other Service Futures Commands and force design entities, and industry partners would occur monthly. Force designers need to be imbued with a sense of the possible through extensive outreach to operating forces, other Services, industry, and academia. The Marine Corps Warfighting Lab would provide regular updates on insights drawn from their wargaming and experimentation activities.

Force Developer Professionals
Force development follows force design and is guided by a Force Design blueprint. Marine Corps Deputy CPMs could be redesignated as force developers. The current senior/subordinate relationship between CPMs and deputy CPMs could continue with the new force designer/force developer construct since close coordination will be required to translate the force attributes described in the Force Design blueprint into formal requirements or problem statements (for problem-based acquisition). Force developers would run the Capabilities-Based Assessment process. 

Force developers would focus exclusively on requirements and problem statement development. Solutions would best be accomplished by solution developers under a single roof to benefit from multi-disciplinary expertise and enhanced situational awareness given the proximity and integrated processes within a separate solutions directorate. Force developers would work in close coordination with solution developers to continually refine requirements while force development and solution development benefit from creative tension caused by the clear separation of responsibilities. This increased specialization also allows more time for each to perform their respective tasks.

Notionally, force developer portfolios would map directly to the eight force designer portfolios and would address the following:

• Sense & Influence: Intel, C-Intel, Cyber, all domain sensors, space, information.
• Communicate: Space, terrestrial, military/commercial C4.
• Command: Command Relations, Authorities, Componency, Joint/Combined integration.
• Move: Ground, air, and sea mobility.
• Shoot: Air, ground, lethal, non-lethal, kinetic/non-kinetic, cyber.
• Protect/ Defend: Air, ground, cyber.
• Sustain: Organic and theater logistics.
• Support: Ground, Air, Sea installations, war reserves, supply, maintenance.

Solutions Development Professionals
For the Marine Corps, solution development is done within multiple organizations including the Combat Development Directorate, the Warfighting Laboratory, Systems Command, and Training and Education Command, among others. Solution refinement would be an iterative process involving structured interactions between requirements and solution developers. Over time, a separate solution-focused directorate, headed by a senior executive or brigadier general, would develop a cadre of solutions professionals who understand Joint Force, industry, and technology opportunities and will be equipped to steer solutions through the optimal acquisition pathway. 

Conclusion
As stated above, Force Design is first and foremost an act of creation. It involves the assimilation of historical and personal experience, missions, threats, technologies, concepts, concepts of operation, strategic guidance, Joint Force concepts and capabilities, and especially CCDR (customer) demand. The cognitive assimilation of multi-variate and complex knowledge to derive a coherent system capable of performing desired functions is where systems thinking and force design thinking coalesce into a vision of an objective force. 

As a continuous process, Force Design requires dedicated force designers to adapt designs in response to changing threats and opportunities. Each Service has an advanced career-level school for operational planning like the Marine Corps’ School of Advanced Warfighting. A force design division within CD&Is Combat Development Directorate would provide an analogous environment to develop Service-level strategic planners and prepare colonels for increased responsibilities as general officers serving as deputy commandants and in commands such as the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab and Marine Corps Systems Command and various joint assignments. The traditional ad hoc approach to the assignment of senior leaders worked in an era of incremental change, but the increasing complexity of the modern battlefield and the associated technical aspects of capabilities development require a more professionalized approach to senior leader talent management. 

While not the focus of this article, force development processes beyond the CBA process should be explored to streamline and speed up the development of requirements and the crosswalk of requirements to a dedicated Solutions Directorate that maintains an initial bias toward joint solutions. 

While the foregoing recommendations, in their specifics, are focused on the Marine Corps, the fundamentals of force design and force development are applicable across the department:

• Force development should be threat-based. The JOE and related threat assessments are the foundation upon which force development is conducted.
• Force development should be concept-informed. Concepts are important narratives that describe pieces of the overarching warfighting system, but they are, by design, tentative and not comprehensive. 
• Force design, force development, and force employment are concurrent, not sequential, processes.
• Force design is a creative mental process accomplished heuristically—it is not a dissection of capabilities described in incomplete and evolving concepts. Concepts are just one input among many. 
• Joint Capabilities Integration Development System needs to be benchmarked against a conflict like the Russo-Ukrainian War and its ability to deliver a hellscape-like set of capabilities as defined by COMINDOPACOM, ADM Paparo. If it cannot deliver against these tests at the speed of relevance, it should be replaced. 

Force Design is the locus of innovation and the architect of force development; we must evolve our processes and organization and professionalize the force design workforce to do it well. 

>LtCol Williams is a Fellow at Systems Planning and Analysis and provides strategy and policy support to the Deputy Commandant, Combat Development and Integration.

Notes

1. Department of Defense, CJCSI 3030.01A, Implementing Joint Force Development and Design, (Washington, DC: October 2022).

2. James Carse, Finite and Infinite Games (New York: Free Press, 2013).

3. Congressional Research Service, Defense Primer: Geography, Strategy, and U.S. Force Design, (Washington, DC: December 2024).

4. CJCSI 3030.01A, Implementing Joint Force Development and Design.

5. Ibid. 

6. Headquarters Marine Corps, Force Development System User Guide, (Washington, DC: April 2018).

7. Donald H. Rumsfeld, “Transforming the Military,” Foreign Affairs, May 1, 2002, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2002-05-01/transforming-military.

8. Col Michael W. Pietrucha, “Capability-Based Planning and the Death of Military Strategy,” USNI News, August 5, 2015, https://news.usni.org/2015/08/05/essay-capability-based-planning-and-the-death-of-military-strategy.

9. Thomas Mahnken, Net Assessment and Military Strategy (Amherst: Cambria Press, 2020). 

10. Government Accountability Office, DoD Acquisition Reform: Military Departments Should Take Step to Facilitate Speed and Innovation, (Washington, DC: December 2024). 

11. CJCSI 3030.01A, Implementing Joint Force Development and Design.

12. Department of Defense, DoD Architecture Framework Version 2.02, (Washington, DC: August 2010).

13. Senate Committee on Army Forces Posture of the Department of the Navy, “Statement by General Robert B. Neller before Senate Committee on Army Forces Posture of the Department of the Navy,” June 15, 2017, 115th Congress. 

14. CJCSI 3030.01A, Implementing Joint Force Development and Design.

15. Ibid.

16. Department of the Army, Dept of Army Pamphlet 600-3-25, Force Management Functional Area, (Washington, DC: April 2024).

17. Jen Judson, “US Army Deploys Midrange Missile for First Time in Philippines,” Defense News, April 16, 2024, https://www.defensenews.com/land/2024/04/16/us-army-deploys-midrange-missile-for-first-time-in-philippines

MARSOC and Force Design

Modernization and force structure efforts for the Army resulted in plans by the U.S. Army Special Operations Command to make cuts that would account for the entire size of the Marine Special Operations Command (MARSOC) if applied by the Marine Corps.1 The Marine Corps, however, has made significant transformational efforts elsewhere with Force Design 2030, and the value of MARSOC has continued to provide a significant benefit to both the U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) and the FMF. Marine Special Operations Command is highlighted as a key capability of the Stand-In Forces (SIF) concept in the 39th Commandant’s Planning Guidance (CPG), “The unique capabilities contained within the MAGTF paired with the special operations capabilities of our Raiders forms a modernized warfighting capability with the agility and lethality capable of gaining and maintaining advantage from inside the [weapons engagement zone (WEZ)].”2 

Marine special operations companies (MSOC) like Marine littoral regiments (MLR) provide value at the Service level through their ability to sense, make sense, and communicate with the Joint Force. Marine Special Operations Command units offer theater special operations commands a unit of action for employment toward strategic, operational, and campaign objectives. Marine Special Operations Command additionally produces specialized human capital for the Marine Corps outside of Special Operations Officers, MOS 0370, and Critical Skills Operators , 0372, by training, manning, and equipping USSOCOM unique Special Operations Capability Specialists (SOCS), 8071, that subsequently integrate back to FMF formations. Furthermore, MARSOC leverages special operations-peculiar funding from USSCOM through Major Forces Program 11 to rapidly acquire unique capabilities to support real-world operations and preserve the force. By sustaining the integration of joint kill webs between MSOCs and the other joint SIF units, prioritizing manning through Manpower and Reserve Affairs, and driving modernization, the Marine Corps will continue to use MARSOC as a worthwhile investment as outlined by the 39th Commandant to fight and win today and set conditions to win in the future.

The problem of mature kill webs and a combined Joint all-domian command and control is not new to the Joint Forces’ efforts of modernization or USSOCOM. It is an effort where MARSOC plays a critical role, as highlighted by the 39th CPG, “Marines in the Stand-in Force, critically bolstered by our MARSOC Raiders, are the tip of the spear of the entire Joint and Combined Force.”3 Marine Special Operations Command and FMF units routinely participate in various operations, activities, and investments (OAI) in the first-island chain and throughout the globe to train against Joint Force objectives. Operations, activities, and investments like Exercise Balikatan—an annual exercise between the Philippines and the U.S. military designed to strengthen bilateral interoperability, capabilities, trust, and cooperation—demonstrate combined joint kill webs that culminate in real-world sink exercises at key maritime terrain in the first-island chain.4 The OAI further provides MARSOC units at the MSOC level to train and integrate adjacent to emerging transformational units of the Joint Force like 3d MLR, the U.S. Army 1st Multi-Domain Task Force, and Joint certified headquarters from the Marine Corps such as I MEF and 3d MarDiv, III MEF, FMF Pacific, as well as Joint headquarters from I Corps and 25th Infantry Division. Moreover, it can be stated that the problem of combined Joint all-domian command and control and kill webs, easily traced to the history of USSOCOM during Operation EAGLE CLAW, will continue to require investment and integration across the Joint Force to succeed and win during great-power competition.5

The 39th CPG states, “Ironclad discipline is the currency of our Corps. Ruthless adherence to standards is what makes us special as a Service.” This discipline and affinity toward ruthless adherence to standards and mission accomplishment are why Marines subsequently make another choice to start a journey toward a career or tour at MARSOC. Unlike the deployable units of Navy Special Warfare, Navy Special Warfare Task Groups, the MSOCs of MARSOC are enabled by a detachment of SOCS, who are special operations qualified by the Marine Raider Training Center or Marine Raider Support Group.6 The SOCS MOS has its unique pipeline based on its specialization of logistics, intelligence, communications, or fires. These Marines serve anywhere from three to five years at MARSOC before returning to the FMF. The value of a tour at MARSOC provides these SOCS unique, but operationally relevant experience that seamlessly translates to assignments at III MEF or other SIF units. A SOCS trained for intelligence gains all the skills necessary to sense and make sense for an MLR headquarters or MEU. A SOCS trained for communications can seamlessly bolt onto a task unit from a MEF Information Group or provide communication to contested logistics for a littoral logistics battalion. Manpower and Reserve Affairs must continue to assign a prioritized staffing goal at MARSOC units while incentivizing tours for Marines and those SOCS post-MARSOC to spread the knowledge and experience across the FMF. The tours at MARSOC must elevate to the equivalent of FMF by precept for career officers and Subsequent-Term-Alignment-Plan Marines to ensure talent does not transition from the Service or create an unnecessary demand for curtailed tours from a SIF unit as outlined by the Commandant to remain competitive for advancement and promotion.

A final unique characteristic of MARSOC as a part of the SIF is the ability to tap into special operations-peculiar funding for operational and training modernization, experimentation in command, control, communications, computers, cyber, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and targeting, and Preservation of the Force and Family programs. The unique funding and access to USSOCOM continue to enable greater modernization for training and operational effects with FMF and other Joint SIF units as seen during the Service-Level Training Exercise and at forward-deployed locations. The command, control, communications, computers, cyber, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and targeting advancements and experimentation continue to align with FMF advances whether the touchpoints and engagements are through wargaming or implementation of assets in support of live, virtual, or constructive training at a newly established Special Operations Training, Exercise, and Simulation Center at Stone Bay, Camp Lejeune, NC, that shares similar capability to sites hosted by Marine Corps Tactics and Operations Group or Marine Corps Logistics Operations Group. Furthermore, the expansion of Preservation of the Force and Family resources have served as a model to carry over to FMF units to maintain and sustain career-long readiness. The 39th CPG states, “No single issue is more existential for our Corps than recruiting and retaining high-quality Marines.”7 Marine Special Operations Command sustains this critical effort while efficiently employing SOF-peculiar resources to accomplish the assigned USSOCOM missions as well as providing benefits to the Service.

Manpower and funding will remain a constant for all the military services like the unchanging nature of war. For the Marine Corps, it must remain a priority to man, train, and equip MARSOC units like MLRs as both serve as the critical stand-in forces for competition and conflict. For the SOCS and those that are assigned to MARSOC, Manpower and Reserve Affairs must ensure stable and continuing careers like those in the FMF. The value of MARSOC remains that they are Marines first, and special operations are what they do. Like all SOF units, the resourcing of MARSOC by the Marine Corps will allow them to fight and win both now and in the future while upholding the Special Operations Forces Truth that Competent SOF cannot be created after emergencies occur.8

>Maj Fultz is an Infantry Officer serving as the Battalion Executive Officer for the 1st Marine Raider Support Battalion. He has served in all three divisions with a most recent tour with the Stand-In Force at III MEF Command Element and 4th Mar.

Notes

1. Cole Livieratos, “Cutting Army Special Operations Will Erode the Military’s Ability to Influence the Modern Battlefield,” War on the Rocks, January 9, 2024, https://warontherocks.com/2024/01/cutting-army-special-operations-will-erode-the-militarys-ability-to-influence-the-modern-battlefield.

2. Gen Eric Smith, 39th Commandant’s Planning Guidance, (Washington, DC: September 2024).

3. Ibid.

4. Embassy Manila, “Philippine, U.S. Troops to Kick Off Exercise Balikatan 2024,” U.S. Embassy in the Philippines, April 17, 2024, https://ph.usembassy.gov/philippine-u-s-troops-to-kick-off-exercise-balikatan-2024.

5. Special Operations Warrior Foundation, “Operation Eagle Claw,” Special Operations Warrior Foundation, September 2024, https://specialops.org/operation-eagle-claw.

6. Joint Special Operations University Center for Engagement and Research, Special Operations Forces Reference Manual, 5th Edition (MacDill Air Force Base: November 23).

7. 39th Commandant’s Planning Guidance.

8. Joint Special Operations University Center for Engagement and Research, Special Operations Forces Reference Manual, 5th Edition (MacDill Air Force Base: November 2023).

Balancing readiness and modernization

Divisions between the Marine Corps and Navy, divestments for Force Design 2030, and a rapidly rising China have created a situation that threatens the ability of the Marine Corps to be able to complete its mission. While Force Design 2030 is still in the transition phase, the Marine Corps needs to find a way in the here and now to be able to respond to a diverse array of potential threats, vastly increase its cooperation with the Navy, and be able to meet the needs of the country as its premier force in readiness. 

At the start of the Ukrainian-Russian war in 2022, European Command asked for a Marine Corps Amphibious Readiness Group (ARG) to deploy to Europe to be a deterrence to the aggression that was rapidly unfolding. However, the Marine Corps was unable to fulfill that request. The ARG—comprised of USS Kearsarge (LHD-3), USS Arlington (LPD-24), and USS Gunston Hall (LSD-44)—were unable to be deployed until a month after they were asked to, with the latter ship still arriving later than the first two due to maintenance issues.1

Even more recently, the Commandant of the Marine Corps testified that the Marines were unable to send a crisis response force to Turkey after the disastrous earthquake because we did not have the ships, saying, “We didn’t have a Marine Expeditionary Unit, a MEU, nearby that could respond … I owe the Secretary of Defense, the President—we Joint Chiefs owe them options … all the time. Here, I felt like the best option, we couldn’t offer them because we have the Marines and the equipment and they’re trained, we didn’t have the ships.”2 Here, the Commandant is explicitly admitting that the Marine Corps has fallen short of the Nation’s expectations of them.

These two cases are concerning symptoms of a larger problem at bay in the Marine Corps and the Navy—and they hold clues about the readiness of our Service to counter the rising threats in both Europe and the Indo-Pacific region. Without a doubt, the MEU and the ARG are the core of the Marine Corps’s capability. These allow the Marine Corps to be the President’s crisis response force, a capability none of the other conventional Services have. A great example of everything offered by the MEU is in 1983 when a MEU headed to Beirut diverted halfway through its journey and conducted an invasion of Grenada to help save American students. Immediately after, they proceeded directly to Lebanon, where they assisted in humanitarian operations.3

The flexibility and versatility offered by the MEU, to rapidly transition from one mission to the next seamlessly, is the great strength of the Corps. But the Marine Corps can be the Nation’s crisis response force for one reason: American sea power. Marines embark on Navy amphibious assault ships, land on beaches using Navy LCUs and LCACs, and conduct flight operations off Navy flight decks using Navy landing officers. Thus, American sea power and the ability of the Marines to project power requires having the requisite number of ships. Without them, Force Design 2030 simply cannot take shape.

The threats facing this country are modern and rapidly evolving. President Xi has instructed his country’s armed forces to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027, with some reports indicating that they could invade as early as 2024.4 Yet, the equipment the Marine Corps needs to counter a potential conflict is not operationally ready, and the Navy and Marine Corps are at an impasse as to who should provide it for them. The end product of Force Design 2030 creates a lighter, more mobile, faster responding Marine Corps capable of operating as a stand-in force inside the enemy’s weapon engagement zone.5

However, Force Design 2030 only works if they have the ships to do so. Divesting our tanks and reorganizing our artillery, aviation, and infantry to meet the needs of the coming threats are correct. However, this requires the Navy to have ships that are both practical and survivable in a contested area to bring Marines to the fight. For the last twenty years, the Marine Corps has been in sustained land combat, operating well away from the littoral zone in two landlocked countries. Those who criticize Force Design 2030 fail to see that the last twenty years of sustained land conflict have driven this divide between the Marine Corps and the Navy, and now we see the result of that. As such, the partnership with the Navy has been eroded and summarily forgotten in many regards.

There is now a divide between what the Marine Corps needs and the priorities of the Navy. This is illustrated in the fact that the number one item on the fiscal year 2023 budget request of the Marine Corps is amphibious warships, yet amphibious landing ships are being retired faster than they can be procured. Landing Dock Ships (LSDs) are on track to be entirely out of service by 2027. Additionally, the Navy has stated that the San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock-32 (LPD-32) would be the last LPD produced and they would be ending that line of ship, a line which was initially expected to go until LPD-42.6 The former Commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen Berger, stated that the requirements of the Marine Corps is 31 amphibious assault ships, whereas this current plan to end the line of LPDs and LSDs would bring that number down to 25 in the coming years, leaving the Marine Corps at least 6 ships short of being mission capable.7 Obviously, the Navy must make budget choices, and rightly so. The nuclear navy, including our submarines and carriers, rightly takes many resources and financing to acquire and maintain. However, the Navy should also understand that their relationship with the Marine Corps is symbiotic; it is not a zero-sum game.

Money invested in the Marine Corps is not necessarily money lost for the Navy. The Navy is not simply driving the Marines across the ocean and dropping them off on an island to conduct independent running operations. The actions the Marine Corps will be taking will help to protect naval shipping, including providing bases on which to refuel, and provide a defense in depth that will serve to protect our biggest naval assets like our carrier fleet. From the expeditionary advanced base operations handbook itself,

In order to enhance the speed of deployment and minimize infrastructure and logistical support requirements, Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations (EABO) will exploit passive defenses to the degree prudent and practical. Dispersion, decoys, cover, camouflage, and concealment will all be maximized to preclude effective enemy targeting of EAB-hosted assets.8

We see incredibly similar messaging that mirrors this within the Marine Corps’ own warfighting doctrine, MCDP 1, where it says, “We avoid enemy strength and focus our efforts against enemy weakness with the object of penetrating the enemy system since pitting strength against weakness reduces casualties and is more likely to yield decisive results.”9

This is exactly what EABO is intended to do. The nature of warfare has changed. With the onset of 21st-century weapons such as hypersonic (carrier killer) missiles, an aircraft carrier anywhere within that weapons’ engagement zone presents an inviting target. Operating inside that weapons engagement zone, we seek to disrupt the enemy’s system and out cycle the enemy—with the goal of avoiding taking casualties ourselves and inflicting maximum casualties on the enemy. China itself has even taken notice of this, admitting that the EABO concept will create, “a dense, multi-directional intersecting kill zone over large areas west of the island chain.”10 This EABO concept will help to navigate and hopefully avoid a potential war of attrition in the South China Sea where instead of trading an aircraft carrier for an aircraft carrier, our naval forces can cycle at a higher tempo and outmaneuver the adversary before becoming targets themselves. 

This begs the question, how can the Navy and Marine Corps team better cooperate to achieve mission readiness while meeting both the needs of the Marine Corps as well as all the other needs of the Navy? Eastern Europe is already at war, and as such, the timeline to become mission-ready is rapidly dwindling. Training in the Navy and Marine Corps must change to reflect the cohesion necessary in the coming fight. Expeditionary advanced base operations create a web of information, which is shared continuously between Marines, ships, satellites, aircraft, and commanders to better shape the battle space. However, this requires new tactics, techniques, and procedures, which means the Navy needs to understand Marine Corps capabilities and the Marine Corps needs to understand Naval capabilities, specifically, ship-related capabilities. The Navy cannot support the Marine Corps if they misunderstand our capabilities, and likewise, the Marine Corps cannot provide the Navy with the intelligence and data that they will need if we do not understand the operational requirements—in other words: the how we fit into the bigger picture. Currently, at The Basic School, hands-on training with the Navy is limited to an amphibious exercise, which is one day in Norfolk, VA. However, the interaction is limited to LCACs, LCUs, and LSDs. If we are expected to be integrating extensively with the Navy, however, it would be beneficial for young Marine officers to also be exposed to and learn the capabilities of Naval warships, such as cruisers and destroyers, as well all types of other amphibious assault ships.

In short, we need to know what the Navy needs to complete its mission. They should also have a deeper depth understanding of how those forces are employed, and how they work to support amphibious operations. This would allow young officers to get a better understanding of what the future battlespace may look like. Additionally, a majority of our guest speakers have all been Marine Corps generals and officers. If we are a naval force in readiness, then more Navy officers need to be included in these discussions so we can ask questions, and therefore better learn from them, and they learn from us. Joint interactions allow us to better understand each other capabilities and missions, which help to drive cooperation.

Lastly, The Tentative Manual for Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations should be required for reading and discussion at The Basic School and concepts from that should influence the curriculum at MOS schools, especially the schools that are highly impacted by this, such as logistics, artillery, infantry, intelligence, and air defense. The bridge between the Navy and Marine Corps needs to be seamless for Force Design 2030 to work as intended, and as officers at The Basic School, at the very least we can do our part to make sure that happens.  

This transition zone is both an exciting and a dangerous time for the Navy and Marine Corps. The less time spent in this area of transition, the better. Just like in the transition from the offense to the defense, we are at our most vulnerable if we spend too long in this phase. If China closes its shipping lanes tomorrow, if Russia starts to drop bombs on Poland, or if Iran decides to flex its nuclear muscle, does the United States have the ability to respond? These questions must be answered, and if necessary, a hard look in the mirror must be taken. This response will require intestinal fortitude in the highest level of leadership. It will require admitting in front of Congress, the Nation, and most importantly, our fellow Marines that our force is not yet ready. The reputation of the Marine Corps was not given to us just by being Marines. It has been earned over many generations, and any time that we do not live up to that reputation we disrespect those who came before us and gave the highest devotion to duty. From the lowest level to the highest, there must be a sense of urgency in fixing these current issues of our operational shipping capability, and our lack of Navy/Marine Corps team mentality so that we give our Marines and our sailors the best to survive and win on the 21st-century battlefield. If we do not, the next force design’s lessons will only be written in blood by the failures of this one.

>1stLt Smith is a Student Naval Aviator currently assigned to Training Squadron 2 (VT-2) Doerbirds at NAS Whiting Field. He graduated from the University of Arizona in 2021 and graduated from The Basic School in May 2023.

Notes

1. Mallory Shelbourne, “Marines Couldn’t Meet Request to Surge to Europe Due to Strain on Amphibious Fleet,” USNI News, April 26, 2022, https://news.usni.org/2022/04/26/marines-couldnt-meet-request-to-surge-to-europe-due-to-strain-on-amphibious-fleet.

2. Conor M. Kennedy and Scott E Stephan, “The PLA Is Contemplating the Meaning of Force Design,” Proceedings 149, No. 4 (2023).

3. Gary Wilson, William A. Woods, and Michael D. Wyly, “Send in the Marines? Reconsider Force Design 2030 Beforehand,” Defense News, Defense News, August 22, 2022, https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/commentary/2022/08/04/send-in-the-marines-reconsider-force-design-2030-beforehand.

4. John Culver, “How We Would Know When China Is Preparing to Invade Taiwan,” Carnegie: Endowment for International Peace, October 3, 2022, https://carnegieendowment.org/2022/10/03/how-we-would-know-when-china-is-preparing-to-invade-taiwan-pub-88053.

5. Gen David H. Berger, Force Design 2030, (Washington, DC: 2020). 

6. “Marines Couldn’t Meet Request to Surge to Europe Due to Strain on Amphibious Fleet.”

7. Ibid. 

8. Art Corbett, “Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations (EABO) Handbook Version 1.1,” Marine Corps Association, June 1, 2018, https://www.mca-marines.org/wp-content/uploads/Expeditionary-Advanced-Base-Operations-EABO-handbook-1.1.pdf.

9. Headquarters Marine Corps, MCDP 1, Warfighting, (Washington, DC: 1997).

10. “The PLA Is Contemplating the Meaning of Force Design.”

An unmanned platform for sea denial

The Marine littoral regiment (MLR) has been lauded as a stand-in-force capable of conducting sea denial operations.1 However, the MLR’s ability to close self-contained sea denial kill chains currently is overly reliant on distant, resource-constrained naval and joint support. To remedy this problem, this article advocates the MLR obtain an unmanned air platform for target acquisition in organic sea-denial operations. First, this article will review the operational context and define the constraints of both landbased and naval aviation in supporting the MLR. Next, it will describe the MLR’s current capabilities and advantages in expeditionary advanced base operations (EABO). Lastly, the article will propose the capabilities needed for an unmanned platform to support MLR sea-denial operations, provide a use case, and considerations for its adoption. 

Operational Context
The source of alarm for American military power in the Western Pacific is China’s anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) system, a sheaf of sea, air, and landbased ballistic and cruise missiles extending outward from the Chinese coast, and at the heart of China’s A2/AD system is a recognition of the American way of war. As the Chinese Communist Party and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) witnessed the overwhelming defeat of Iraq in the Gulf War via precision munitions and advanced communication technology, a new strategy was necessary to prevent a similar defeat in a future campaign for the PLA historic objective: Taiwan. This consisted of a military build-up of rocket forces, air forces, and long-range scouting capabilities to strike U.S. forces in forward locations where it can build up combat power or the sea lanes that transport said combat power. Today, American bases in the Western Pacific fall under the looming threat of over 4,000 missiles that can impose significant costs to American air and naval forces alike.

Landbased Aviation Constraints
The PLA’s A2/AD poses a significant threat to landbased aviation in the Western Pacific. If hostilities broke out, the PLA could launch a variety of missile systems at airbases, damaging or destroying hangars, runways, aircraft, and vital supplies like fuel and ordnance.2 Landbased aviation in the Western Pacific would be hard-pressed to provide support without the necessary facilities and logistics to support them. Furthermore, joint aircraft, including Marine Corps aircraft, are tasked via the air tasking cycle, a joint 72-hour process of assigning, allocating, and apportioning all aircraft to support varying missions within a joint operations area, which makes them susceptible to competing missions. Air Force, Marine Corps, and Army ISR aircraft will be responsible for more than just missions in support of the MLR. 

Distant support is also dubious. The Air Force boasts a considerable long-range ISR and bomber force—both of which could theoretically support the MLR’s sea denial operations. However, most long-range ISR and bomber aircraft are stationed in the United States, and without forward basing, would face similar constraints. For example, in a Taiwan contingency, B-52s launching from the CONUS were calculated to suffer a severe sortie generation loss of only one sortie per aircraft every 48 hours.3 Extrapolating the challenges to other continental aircraft, the sortie generation rate would not be high enough to reliably depend on for persistent surveillance; additionally, these aircraft would also need to support various missions that would further limit available sorties to support the MLR.

Naval Aviation Constraints
In modern naval operations, the aircraft carrier has been the striking and sensing arm of the Navy while surface combatants have provided close-in defense of air and subsurface threats for the carrier. With the PLA’s A2/AD system able to target ships and aircraft from 1,000 miles to over 3,000 miles,  and due to the quantity and variety of missiles, A2/AD would pose a serious threat in wartime that the carrier strike group must mitigate.4 To do so, the CSG must sail between 1,000 to 1,500 nautical miles away from the Chinese coast, where the variety of anti-ship missiles declines from six variants to only two—the H-6-bomber launched YJ-12s and landbased DF-26s—and subsequently reducing the total number of missile systems capable of targeting it to within a manageable threshold of the CSG’s air defenses.5 As a consequence, naval aviation suffers and constrains the MLR in receiving necessary support for its sea denial mission. 

The Navy’s special mission aircraft are essential to multiple kill chains which is their fatal flaw vis-à-vis the MLR.6 The E-2D is a carrier-launched early warning and control aircraft that can detect and track air targets as well as conduct wide-area surface searches. In this capacity, it acts as the eyes of the carrier to scout for air and surface threats, and it also networks ship and airborne sensors into a singular picture through the Cooperative Engagement Capability. With a common air picture, the Cooperative Engagement Capability enables ships and aircraft to fire at a target with high-quality data consolidated from various radars, which increases accuracy, range, and reaction time.7 Assigning the E2-D to a mission outside of its doctrinal use, like supporting the MLR, would jeopardize the survivability of the carrier and the wider fleet; additionally, its few numbers means the loss of even one, whether by enemy fire or poor tasking, could be catastrophic. The P-8 is the Navy’s primary means of locating submarines by deploying sonobuoys, launching weapons, and collecting and synthesizing track data from various sources. Like the E2-D, the P-8 is too few and exquisite a collections platform to risk far forward of the fleet. Unlike the E2-D, the P-8 is a landbased aircraft, so it will launch from airfields more distant than carrier-based aircraft drastically impacting its sortie rates. Consequently, the P-8 will be hard-pressed to support both the fleet’s and the MLR’s sea denial operations. The E-2 and P-8’s central roles in multiple kill chains make them indispensable, and unreliable for support to the MLR. 

The Navy also operates the MH-60R to support sea-control and sea-denial operations. The rotary-wing platform is designed to provide detection and targeting of submarines and ships for the CSG. As a rotary-wing platform, however, the MH-60R is designed for close-in sensing and striking of surface and subsurface threats and thus has limited range to support any operations outside a certain diameter around the carrier—if the CSG were even willing to part with its vital support. Although as a vertical take-off and landing aircraft it would fit well in expeditionary advanced base operations, it supports up to twelve mission sets, which already would spread the numerous aircraft across the fleet thin.8

The Navy and Marine Corps’ tactical aircraft (TACAIR), specifically the F/A-18 and F-35C, face the most intensive constraints. As the primary means of conducting anti-surface warfare, TACAIR sorties will be spread thin supporting the CSG’s degradation of A2/AD. Tactical aircraft missions will vary from defending against H-6 bombers and DF-26s, finding and striking PLA surface combatants, and escorting high-value airborne assets to combating PLA carrier aircraft, straining the support available to the MLR. Tactical aircraft that could support the MLR will not be responsive and extremely costly. Due to the distances that the CSG will operate at, TACAIR would be required to conduct a three-to-six-hour sortie to support operations in the first island chain. The length of the sorties requires tanker support, fixed loadouts, more maintenance, strained and tired manpower, and more that the Navy must contend with in their own sea control efforts. The MLR will require higher fidelity intelligence to justify TACAIR assuming such risks.  

MLR Sea Denial and Its Constraints
As a stand-in force, the MLR is expected to disrupt the adversary through reconnaissance, counter-reconnaissance, and sea-denial operation in the littoral environment in support of a maritime campaign. For fires, the MLR can organically employ the Naval Strike Missile from EABs and command and control multi-domain fires and effects via the MLR’s Alpha Command, which consists of a Fire Support Coordination Center, the LAAB’s Fires and Air Direction Center, an Intel operations center, the Regimental S-3, and regimental commander. Within the Alpha Command, the Fires and Air Direction Center can control and coordinate air support for long-range surface strikes while employing distributed tactical air control elements and air defense systems and sensors, like the Marine Air Defense Integrated System and the TPS-80 groundbased air surveillance radar. The EABs prove resilient to A2/AD for two reasons: survivability and resources. Relative to air and sea, and due to the vegetation, dense population centers, and complex topography of the FIC, the littorals prove challenging for radar, electro-optical/infrared (EO/IO) sensors, and space sensors to find targets.

When finding ground targets, radar platforms face multiple challenges. When radar energy is scattered by objects other than its intended target, also known as clutter, the radio wave can be attenuated, meaning the waves are scattered or absorbed in such a way that reduces the intensity of the wave and, as a consequence, the quality of the information gleaned.9 At sea, attenuation can be caused by weather effects like fog, rain, clouds, dust, and more.10 In the littorals, the clutter would be two-fold, with weather effects as well as vegetation, man-made infrastructure, topography, and more that could further attenuate radar energy.11 For high-frequency fire control and targeting radars, higher frequencies suffer more attenuation, which complicates finding a target and receiving track-quality data to fire with.12 The amount of clutter in the littorals offers a unique opportunity for EABs to conceal themselves from radar systems and remain resilient against adversary targeting. Littoral clutter also offers considerable concealment from EO/IO sensors. Electro-optical/infrared sensors benefit from lower altitudes to generate higher quality imagery to satisfy identification requirements, and—due to the dense environment of the littorals—EO/IO-equipped aircraft will have to descend to altitudes that will expose them to the LAAB’s layered air defenses. Once detected, an EAB can reduce their signature to avoid detection, employ decoys, engage the aircraft, displace to an alternate position at the first available opportunity, or a combination therein. 

Despite their ubiquity, satellite observation is still a resource-intensive undertaking. Most remote sensing satellites orbit in a sun-synchronous orbit. Sun-synchronous orbits are polar orbits that pass overhead any given place on the earth’s surface at the same local mean time daily. This makes the satellites’ flight paths and on-station times not only predictable and momentary but also limits the area that can be surveilled, particularly in a region as vast as the Pacific. Additionally, military surveillance satellites are built with target sets in mind. For example, the Jianbing Ocean surveillance program of the Yaogan satellite series is designed to collect electromagnetic emissions of aircraft carriers like aircraft launches, communications transmissions, and radar emissions.13 As subsets of the PLA’s remote sensing satellites are designed with specific targets in mind, the breadth of targets that they are optimized to observe is limited and restrains the quality and quantity of observation that the PLA can employ against U.S. forces, including the MLR. Much like other sensors, with signature management and mobility, the MLR can defeat such systems.   

It is unlikely that the MLR will be able to defeat adversarial ISR wholesale—and that is part of the appeal. One of the critical functions of joint fire support is to synchronize and optimize very limited resources, and although adversary A2/AD is robust, it too must adhere to similar tenants.14 If enough EABs occupy the first island chain capable of firing on Chinese air, surface, and subsurface forces while multiple Carriers steam across the Pacific to do the same, the PLA is faced with a dilemma: which target is the priority? Whichever answer the PLA chooses exposes them to resource constraints in targeting the other. For example, if they prioritize reconnaissance efforts in finding expeditionary advanced bases, using a combination of radar systems, reconnaissance aircraft, and satellites to target them, they now have fewer resources to employ against the Navy. By drawing Chinese attention and resources toward the first-island chain, stand-in forces bind targeting resources that may otherwise be used against naval and air forces, granting them critical maneuver and decision space. To do so, the MLR must pose a credible threat, of which its sea denial kill chains are the crux. Yet, due to competing missions and lower sortie generation rates, the MLR will need to meet higher intelligence requirements to justify support for its kill chains, which due to the reliance on external ISR support from the exact forces the MLR is supporting, will prove difficult. Thus, the credibility of the MLR hinges on acquiring an unmanned aerial platform capable of vertical take-off and landing, equipped with a surface search radar, link-16 capabilities, electro-optical/infrared sensors, and with the option to deploy sonobuoys. 

Capabilities
An MLR intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance asset, herein referred to as “the asset,” would be a boon for both the MLR and the larger Joint Force and enable the MLR to organically fulfill its sea-denial mission. First, the asset must fit within the logistical framework of the MLR. To do so, it must be capable of vertical take-off and landing to operate from dispersed EABs as well as naval vessels ranging from full-scale amphibs to smaller ships like the landing ship medium. As an unmanned system, the logistics requirements and operations costs would be lessened. In a cost comparison, unmanned platforms were cheaper on average than manned platforms in both acquisition costs and flight cost per hour by 200 million dollars and 60,000 dollars, respectively.15 Cheaper operations and acquisition costs allow additional funds to be allocated to procuring more systems and preserving sustainable maintenance cycles. However, the asset must not carry armaments. If the asset were equipped with armaments, its logistics chain would become needlessly cumbersome, adding specialized personnel, equipment, and ordinance that would slow down its operations and bloat the MLR’s logistics footprint. 

For the asset to support the MLR in command and control of multi-domain fires, it requires multiple sensors and communications capabilities, primarily a surface search for mobile targets at sea. Once the asset paints a target with its radar, track data is generated and then can be transmitted via Link-16 to Alpha Command, where the track can be analyzed to discern the category (merchant or combatant), type (patrol or destroyer), and class (Renhai or Luyang) of the targeted ship.16 The track data generated from the asset’s radar can also prove useful in anti-submarine warfare by detecting surfaced submarines. If a surfaced submarine is detected with the asset radar, it can force the submarine to dive prematurely or be at risk of being targeted while transmitting the track data to a higher-echelon asset, like a P-8 which will have a more holistic ASW picture.17 With sonobuoys equipped, the asset can rely on cueing from the P-8 or its surface search radar to deploy sonobuoys in maritime chokepoints and likely transit lanes of submarines. 

With EO/IO sensors, the asset can confirm intelligence requirements set by the Target Engagement Authority, which is “the authority and responsibility to engage targets [that] rests with the [Joint Force Commander] responsible for the operational area.”18 With EO/IO sensors, the asset can provide the MLR with the positive identification requirements necessary to conduct a strike that includes the ship hull, name, and flag.19 Due to the asset’s maneuverability and speed, it can gain vital proximity to the target to glean such information while simultaneously forcing the target to divert air defense and reconnaissance resources to target the asset rather than other friendly forces.20 In tandem with the asset radar, the asset’s EO/IO sensors satisfy positive identification requirements for strike coordination, which with high enough situational awareness and trust, could encourage the TEA to delegate to a lower level, which would doubtlessly accelerate MLR kill chains.21 

The capability that binds the asset, the Alpha Command, and the Joint Force together is Link-16, a jam-resistant, high-capacity data link that disseminates radar, sonar, electronic warfare, and other positioning data to users.22 With a Link 16-terminal, the asset can push track data generated from its radar and pull track data from other Link-enabled sensors, like F/A-18s, F-35s, naval ships, and more—ensuring reliable access to a theater common operational picture (COP) for the Alpha Command. The asset can not only ensure access to the theater-level COP for the Alpha Command but also to the MLR’s other Link-enabled EABs beyond the Alpha Command’s line-of-sight by acting as a node to not only disseminate awareness but also to ensure the economic use of force by deconflicting fires for friendly forces.23

The combination of the asset’s capabilities, the radar, EO/IO sensors, and Link-16 would support the prerequisites for the MLR’s anti-ship missile fires to launch. Through the radar, the asset generates primary targeting data, identifying the type of ship, its class, location, and other relevant targeting data. Leveraging its maneuverability and speed, the asset can gain vital proximity to the target and employ its EO/IO sensors to confirm the information as well as glean more. All the while, the Alpha Command is processing the sensor data received via Link-16 while it simultaneously populates on a theater-level COP for the Joint Force’s situational awareness. At this juncture, the TEA decides to engage the target with the MLR’s anti-ship fires in combination with joint missile fire. Once target engagement is approved, the Alpha Command can relay the targeting data received by the asset either via a J-series message to launch platforms and their Fires Direction Centers have a Link-16 terminal or through a K-series message on the Advanced Field Artillery Tactical Data System. The Fires Direction Center can conduct the necessary checks and gunnery to launch the Naval Strike Missile while the Alpha Command conducts the air and waterspace deconfliction for the missile’s flightpath. Once both are confirmed and cleared, the Alpha Command provides approval to launch. While the asset is still on station, it can provide target updates to inbound missile salvos, if necessary, as the high-quality track data it generates allows network-enabled missiles to adjust course until they reach a certain radius from their aimpoint that they can detect and target on their own, otherwise known as a kill radius.24 During the engagement, the asset can provide a means to assess effects that would inform the TEA’s divert or abort decisions. After the engagement, the asset can continue to monitor to assess effects and support reattack decisions.

Once the engagement is completed and the desired effects achieved, the asset can either continue to monitor, repeating the above targeting cycle for follow-on targets, or return to base. With either a Group 3 or Group 4 unmanned platform, the asset could monitor throughout the MLR’s zone of fire with an eight-to-ten-hour loiter time, making it available for multiple missions within one on-station window. However, once an MLR asset has landed and completed its tasking for the day, if acquired in sufficient quantity, another can take its place. With enough platforms, the asset could support 24-hour operations, which will likely be necessary in the scale of conflict envisioned in the Western Pacific.

Conditions
It is well known in scholarship that the intersection of technological employment and force employment, onset by new organizational approaches, pays dividends for increases in military power, and the asset is no different.25 To profit from this dividend, the MLR must form a Littoral Scouting Squadron (LSS) under its command. This LSS would be task-organized in similar fashion as the MEF’s VMU Squadrons, purpose-built to operate and maintain the asset while training the requisite personnel in its unique employment and mission. With access to adjacent Battalion-level staffs, the LSS would have access to a myriad of experts, from Air Command and Control and Air Ground Support in the LAAB to the Fires expertise in the LCT. This creates a coherent kill chain organic to the MLR: The LSS to sense, the LCT to shoot, and the LAAB to connect them. Alternatively, the asset could be operated and maintained at the regimental S-2, provided they have the manning and training available to effectively operate it. If feasible, adopting an existing platform, like the Navy’s MQ-8 or similar platform, would shorten the learning curve for the MLR by reducing procurement costs and tapping into a well of established operational experience. This structure provides the Joint Force a holistic option for organic and external sea-denial kill chains that alleviate the distance and resource constraints that the current MLR structure would suffer from.  

Conclusion: Sense and Make Sense
Anti-access/area-denial imposes extensive costs on forward basing and ships alike, leaving naval and air forces to fight their way into a Western Pacific conflict under such challenging conditions that ready ISR support to Stand-In Forces will be strained. Without the asset, the MLR will be unable to complete its own sea-denial kill chains, and with it, the MLR can sense and make sense of its own battlespace. The marriage of the MLR’s mobility and survivability and the asset’s scouting capabilities, the PLA is placed in a resource and targeting dilemma that makes for a credible and lethal threat. 

>Capt Costello is an Air Support Control Officer and Chinese Foreign Area Officer. He is currently stationed at the American Institute in Taiwan on In-Region Training.

>>Capt Muniz is an Air Support Control Officer and Weapons and Tactics Instructor. He is currently in the Individual Ready Reserve.

Notes

1. Mallory Shelbourne, “Balikatan 23 Features New Marine Littoral Force in First Major Joint Exercise,” USNI News, April 12, 2023, https://news.usni.org/2023/04/12/balikatan-23-features-new-marine-littoral-force-in-first-major-joint-exercise.

2. Chris Dougherty, “Buying Time: Logistics for a New American Way of War,” CNAS, April 13, 2023, https://www.cnas.org/press/press-release/buying-time-logistics-for-a-new-american-way-of-war.

3. Ibid. 

4. China Power Team, “How Are China’s Land-Based Conventional Missile Forces Evolving?” China Power, September 21, 2020, https:/chinapower.csis.org/conventional-missiles/; and Lawrence “Sid” Trevethan, “The PLA Rocket Force’s Conventional Missiles,” Proceedings, April 2023, https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2023/april/pla-rocket-forces-conventional-missiles.

5. Dmitry Filipoff, “Fighting DMO, Pt. 8,” CIMSEC, May 1, 2023, https://cimsec.org/fighting-dmo-pt-8-chinas-anti-ship-firepower-and-mass-firing-schemes.

6. Kamilla Gunzinger, “Scale, Scope, Speed & Survivability: Winning the Kill Chain Competition,” fix, track, target, engage, and assess—that enable planners to build and task forces for combat operations. The U.S. military has long relied upon its superior ability to rapidly close kill chains against adversaries. This advantage is now at risk. China has developed countermeasures to obstruct or collapse U.S. kill chains, which could lead to combat failures that have devastating, long-term consequences for the security of the United States and its allies and partners, https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json} Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, May 3, 2023, https://mitchellaerospacepower.org/scale-scope-speed-survivability-winning-the-kill-chain-competition.

7. Naval Sea Systems Command Office of Corporate Communication, “The Cooperative Engagement Capability,” Navy.mil, October 14, 2021, https://www.navy.mil/Resources/Fact-Files/Display-FactFiles/Article/2166802/cec-cooperative-engagement-capability.

8. Naval Air Systems Command, “MH-60R Seahawk | NAVAIR,” NAVAIR, n.d., https://www.navair.navy.mil/product/MH-60R-Seahawk.

9. Ibid.

10. Zaha Ria, “Basic Radar Principles and General Characteristics,” Academia, n.d.,

https://www.academia.edu/23718962/CHAPTER_1_BASIC_RADAR_PRINCIPLES_

AND_GENERAL_CHARACTERISTICS.

11. Stephen Biddle, Military Power: Explaining

Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006). 

12. Ibid. 

13. Henk Smid, “An Analysis of Chinese Remote Sensing Satellites,” The Space Review, September 22, 2022, https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4453/1.

14. Department of Defense, JP 3-09, Joint Fire Support, (Washington, DC: 2019). 

15. Congressional Budget Office, “Usage Patterns and Costs of Unmanned Aerial Systems | Congressional Budget Office,” Congressional Budget Office, June 2021, https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57260.

16. Department of Defense, MTTP for AOMSW, (Washington, DC: 2008). 

17. Michael Glynn, Airborne Anti-Submarine Warfare: From the First World War to the Present Day (Philadelphia: Frontline Books, 2022).

18. JP 3-09.

19. MTTP for AOMSW.

20. Dmitry Filipoff, “Fighting DMO, Pt. 7,” CIMSEC, April 17, 2023, https://cimsec.org/fighting-dmo-pt-7-the-future-of-the-aircraft-carrier-in-distributed-warfighting.

21. JP 3-09.

22. Northrop Grumman, Understanding Voice and Data Link Networking, (San Diego: Northrup Grumman, 2014). 

23. JP 3-09.

24. Herzinger and Doyle, Carrier Killer: China’s Anti-Ship Ballistic Missiles and Theater of Operations in the Early 21st Century, (Everett: Helion and Company, 2022).

25. Michael Horowitz, The Diffusion of Military Power, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010). 

Training opportunities in Alaska

The former Commandant of the Marine Corps (CMC), Gen Berger, released guidance to the Marine Corps with the publication of Training and Education 2030. The publication directs the Marine Corps to discover new venues for training that support every clime and place: “Training must be focused on winning in combat in the most challenging conditions and operating environments. Going forward, we need to explore options and leverage opportunities to train Marines in every clime and place.”1 Alaska was identified as a location requiring further exploration, and the document asked what the Marine Corps’s options are for expanding unit and Service-level training into Alaska to utilize existing multi-domain capable training ranges and venues.2 Sending Marines to Alaska has been discussed many times over the years. The Army acquired a cold weather training facility in Alaska called the Northern Warfare Training Center in Black Rapids, AK. China’s recent airspace breach over the United States started in Alaska with a high-altitude balloon equipped with surveillance antennas and optics. Russia and China conducted combined training near Alaska. First reported by the Wall Street Journal, there were eleven Chinese and Russian ships off the coast of Alaska in August of 2023. The inability of the Navy and Marine Corps to stage, train, and deploy rapidly to Alaska is a strategic gap in the Pacific for the Navy and Marine Corps.

Gen Neller, the 37th CMC, tried to explore Alaska as a future training venue for the Marine Corps. In a December 2017 interview with Military.com, Gen Neller confirmed that the Marine Corps was “exploring ways to add an Alaska location to the currently limited array of options for cold weather training.”3 Gen Neller said, “The one thing Alaska has now is land and space. [The Army has] put a lot of money into their training facilities up there, so we’re looking at how we can take advantage of that … particularly in line with mountain operations and cold weather.” Alaska provides locations to launch and recover an amphibious ready group in the Pacific. Alaska also provides an alternate location to displace in the Pacific away from the island chains in case of a conflict. Alaska supports the focus on the Indo-Pacific and gives robust locations for units operating in the Pacific to train such as the Joint Pacific Alaska Range Complex (JPARC).4

A Better Mountain Warfare Training Center
SgtMaj Daniel E. Mangrum authored an article published by the United States Naval Institute in March 2019 titled, “The Marine Corps Needs a Better Mountain Warfare Training Center.”5 In the article, SgtMaj Mangrum discussed the limitations of the size of the Marine Corps Mountain Warfare Training Center (MCMWTC). “Limitations include the Corps’ inability to accommodate MEB-level exercises and constraints on training with mechanized vehicles and combined-arms live fire. The Service has tried to supplement MCMWTC training by sending Marines to other Service installations, such as Camp Ethan Allen in Jericho, VT, or Fort McCoy in WI. These locations do not fully mitigate the limitations, however, thereby denying Marines the large-scale quality training they must have.”6

Alaska is not just for cold weather training. The airspace that Alaska provides can support testing of many weapons systems, with limited aircraft traffic. This kind of airspace offers an opportunity for training with missiles. The Marine Corps is buying medium-range missiles, and Alaska’s airspace provides multiple options for testing and training with these missiles. In 1957, the Army transferred all its cold weather training to Alaska. The schools included the Arctic School, Arctic Indoctrination School, and Cold Weather and Mountain School. Training throughout the 1950s and 1960s  was tailored to the individual. Then, in 1963, the Army determined it would be more beneficial for units to participate in cold weather training and redesignated the U.S. Army Northern Warfare Training Center.7 In 2016, Senator Sullivan of Alaska discussed with CMC Gen Neller the future possibilities for Marines to train in Alaska. A Marine himself, Senator Sullivan provided opportunities for Gen Neller to speak to the local Alaskan population and evaluate various locations for future training opportunities.8

Better Training for Norway
Recent experiences from Marines on the rotational force to Trondheim, Norway, have reported that the training work-up for operating in Norway was lacking enough opportunities to fully prepare Marines for the cold weather. A Marine staff non-commissioned officer reported to Military.com that his unit did not have the opportunity to train at the Marine Corps Mountain Warfare Training Facility before deploying to Norway. The Marine’s unit was the first unit to participate in the Norway deployment rotation.9

Dr. Njord Wegge with the Norwegian Defence University College discussed critical security concerns for Norway in 2021 at the Arctic Symposium hosted by the Marine Corps University. The mission statement for the Arctic initiative at the Marine Corps University states, “The Arctic is a region undergoing major changes, and those changes have local, regional, and global impacts. The Arctic has long been a theater of strategic competition. At the same time, the region is marked by decades of cooperation.”10 The mission statement of the Arctic Strategic Initiative states,

The MCU Arctic Strategic Initiative (ASI) was established to create a network of relevant scholars and institutions and facilitate student research in order to generate increased understanding of the nature and challenges of Arctic security for students and faculty at MCU, and to support the Marine Corps and its role in U.S national security.11

Dr. Wegge listed security concerns for Norway such as Norway’s geographic location to Russia, NATO expansion including Sweden and Finland joining NATO doubling the distance of the NATO border to Russia, the use of F-35 aircraft by Norway, and P-8 integration with submarines around Norway. Challenges of operating in cold weather include but are not limited to, soldiers, sailors, and Marines knowing different methods of staying warm to survive, maintaining batteries and electronics in cold weather, cold weather logistics and resupply, and surviving beyond the grid in cold weather to name a few. Norway serves as the Western flank of Russia and Alaska serves as the Eastern flank.

How do Marines train to be the connecting force for U.S. Army forces coming ashore in the event of a Russian invasion of Norway? The answer is training in Alaska. Marine forces in Norway are just as much a stand-in force as the Marine littoral regiment is in the Pacific. On page one of the Tentative Manual for Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations, the CMC tasked the force, “Between now and 2023, we will need to test and refine the ideas in this volume to give new formations sufficient guidelines for applying their new capabilities effectively to accomplish their missions.”12 The Tentative Manual for Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations is intended to be “a foundation for expansion into formal naval doctrine.”13 The development of naval doctrine takes time but units are experimenting across the Marine Corps and one such unit is doing so in Alaska.

What Happened in Alaska?
Recently, an MV-22B squadron conducted a training detachment at Bryant Army Airfield in Anchorage, AK. Alaska was a test of the unit’s ability to operate in extreme cold weather and conduct expeditionary advanced base operations. This exercise was in preparation for conducting proof of concept training for expeditionary advanced base operations planned later in the year for Key West, FL, and the Bahamas.

The unit planned the movement from Marine Corps Air Station Miramar through the West Coast of the CONUS, Canada, and terminated in Anchorage at Bryant Army Airfield. The unit executed through the United States and Canada with little issue but as the unit approached Prince William Sound, AK, and crested over several remaining ridge lines before descending below a cloud level to maintain visual meteorological conditions the unit and flight found itself in a weather phenomenon not found in many areas of the world except the Arctic. The temperatures were below freezing, and the flight was avoiding instrument meteorological conditions to prevent ice from building up on the aircraft. South of Boulder Bay, AK, the micro-climate began to change rapidly. A wall of frozen clouds began to close around the flight of aircraft. The division found itself enclosed in clouds with 13,000 feet of freezing clouds above it. Extreme micro-climates, such as the climate the squadron was flying into, are a phenomenon found only in a few areas in the world. The pilots in the flight were unfamiliar with operating in this type of climate. The exposure to the micro-climate and the actions taken as a result spurred discussions about how to plan for such environmental conditions. Micro-climates found in Alaska provide for greater training and improved tactical proficiency in any clime and place.

The flight safely landed at an unplanned austere runway as the visibility rapidly reduced to less than one-half mile. Landing on the unimproved runway, the flight crews began discussing whether the local villagers would welcome the Marines. The aircraft shut down and the crews started gathering the equipment to secure the aircraft. Stepping out of the aircraft, a local village member met the crew. After a few minutes of talking, one of the senior pilots rode on the back of a quad all-terrain vehicle to the local school building. The local village member unlocked the building and helped with turning the boiler on for hot water. After touring the building, the pilot was back on the all-terrain vehicle heading back towards all the aircraft that had landed on a small dirt strip and parked on the unimproved aircraft ramp. The island had limited cell phone reception and only one service was providing cell phone reception in the area. Those who had cell phone coverage were able to make calls to notify different agencies that we had made an unscheduled landing on a small island south of Anchorage. The size of the footprint was about a platoon’s worth of Marines. The Marines did not have much food on the aircraft and collaborated with the local villagers to help feed the Marines while using the school building. The weather continued to be less than the minimum needed to launch for the next several days. The local village was extremely supportive, brought food, and allowed the Marines to continue staying in the school gym while waiting for the weather to clear.

The division of aircraft was low on fuel. Planning for the follow-on flight included finding the closest location to receive fuel that would support the division of aircraft. The closest fuel location did not have enough fuel in the fuel trucks to support the fuel required for all three aircraft. Pilots on the flight knew several Air Force pilots at the local KC-130 aerial refueling squadron and called to see if they would be able to aerial refuel the flight after launching from the intermediate fuel location to meet the minimum fuel requirements to recover to Bryant Army Airfield. The Air Force launched to support. After taking the remaining fuel at the closest refueling location, the flight departed to rendezvous with the Air Force refueling tanker. Following receiving fuel, the flight continued to Anchorage.

The MV-22 aircraft in the division did not have functioning anti-icing capabilities, which is common in the MV-22 community. H-1 helicopter platforms cannot fly in icing conditions. Similarly, the CH-53 has limited anti-icing capabilities and cannot fly in icing conditions. All constraints that pose challenges when operating in cold environments. Contingency planning becomes crucial and vertical lift becomes a requirement when needing to land as weather changes rapidly. Consistently operating in an environment that requires systems that combat cold weather further incentivizes investment in cold weather capabilities not only for aircraft but for all systems and weapons. It would be easy to focus only on aircraft anti-ice capabilities, but operating in this environment presents multiple challenges to overcome tactically and operationally.

The Northern Edge
To optimize training, the Marine Corps would need to find new locations for restricted live-fire training. “The Joint Pacific Alaska Range Complex (JPARC) is comprised of approximately 65,000 square miles of available airspace, 2,490 square miles of land space with 1.5 million acres of maneuver land, and 42,000 square nautical miles of surface, subsurface, and overlying airspace in the Gulf of Alaska.”14 The JPARC supports joint large-scale exercises such as NORTHERN EDGE. One of the standout evolutions of NORTHERN EDGE is the number of high-end experiments and demonstrations conducted. This in conjunction with virtual training could expand the scope of current Marine Corps training capabilities.

The two after-action reports for NORTHERN EDGE 2021 on the Marine Corps Center for Lessons Learned SharePoint came from Marine Air Control Group 38 and Marine Aerial Refueler Squadron (VMGR) 152. VMGR-152 discussed the requirements for coordination ahead of NORTHERN EDGE 2021, requirements that would not be as necessary with a permanent Marine Corps training facility. “The detachment did not reach out to Marine Forces Pacific (MARFORPAC) about planning for NORTHERN EDGE until six months prior to the exercise.”

At this point, the initial planning conference had been conducted and the MARFORPAC lead planner decided to bed down the KC-130s in Cold Bay, AK. Concerns over the lack of maintenance support at Cold Bay were brought up to the MARFORPAC planner and a request to move the detachment to either Eielson or JBER (Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson) was made in December 2020. The detachment did not get confirmation that their bed down would be at Eielson AFB until March 2021. It was discovered that none of the logistics support requests submitted to MARFORPAC over the preceding three months had been forwarded to the Air Force. This caused the detachment planner and officer in charge (OIC) to conduct all the logistics maintenance support requests within 60 days of arrival to Eielson AFB. VMGR-152 highlighted that, “the JPARC range complex is heavily used for training (by the Air Force and Army) and requires significant lead time to ensure that desired range space, emitters, and (smoky surface to air simulators) are scheduled and secured.”15 Marine Air Control Group-38 covered an extensive list of planning constraints and execution milestones in their after-action report.16A permanent presence of Marines in Alaska would provide improved planning, better coordination, and improved proficiency with cold weather logistics, communications, operational planning, and tactical execution for units.

The Marine Corps needs more repetitions in Alaska and the Arctic, and planning evolutions continue to experience friction due to shortfalls in knowledge of planning requirements for cold-weather environments. Is it time for the Navy and Marine Corps to invest in Alaska to fill this strategic gap?

Notes

1. Headquarters Marine Corps, Training and Education 2030, (Washington, DC: 2023).

2. Ibid.

3. Hope Hodge Seck, “Marines May Go to Alaska for Cold Weather Training,” Military.com, February 18, 2023, https://www.military.com/daily-news/2018/02/18/marines-may-go-alaska-cold-weather-training.html.

4. United States Army, “Joint Pacific Alaska Range Complex Reference Card,” JPARC, n.d., https://www.jber.jb.mil/Portals/144/units/JPARC/PDF/JPARC-Fact-Sheet.pdf.

5. Daniel E. Mangrum, “The Marine Corps Needs a Better Mountain Warfare Training Center,” Proceedings, March 2019, https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2019/march/marine-corps-needs-better-mountain-warfare-training-center.

6. Ibid.

7. United States Army, “Northern Warfare Training Center,” Army.mil, November 13, 2018, https://www.army.mil/article/170432/northern_warfare_training_center.

8. Zachary Hughes, “Could the Marine Corps be Coming to Alaska?,” Alaska Public Media, July 25, 2016, https://www.ktoo.org/2016/07/25/marine-corps-coming-alaska.

9. “Marines May Go to Alaska for Cold

Weather Training.”

10. Marine Corps University, “Arctic Strategic

Initiative,” Marines.mil, n.d., https://www.usmcu.edu/Research/Arctic-Strategic-Initative.

11. Ibid.

12. Headquarters Marine Corps, Tentative Manual for Expeditionary Advance Base Operations, (Washington, DC: 2019).

13. Ibid.

14. “Joint Pacific Alaska Range Complex Reference Card.”

15. Marine Corps Center for Lessons Learned, Marine Aerial Refueler Transport Squadron 152 After Action Report for Northern Edge 2021, (Quantico: 2021).

16. Marine Corps Center for Lessons Learned, Marine Air Control Group 38 After Action Report for Northern Edge 2021, (Quantico: 2021)