Gen Gray oversaw our Marine Corps as Commandant from 1987 to 1991. Gen Gray notoriously reinforced that “Every Marine is, first and foremost, a rifleman. All other conditions are secondary.” Our self-imposed standard that every Marine is a rifleman has served us well in countless kinetic engagements since our founding in 1775, with just one modern example being when then MajGen Mattis, commander of 1st MarDiv, stated that none of his infantry would be used to guard the supply chains of 1st MarDiv during the 2003 Invasion of Iraq (“as every Marine is, first and foremost, a rifleman”). Notably, the 1st MarDiv made it to Baghdad in 17 days, with the Pentagon’s planners expecting it would take 55 days to reach Baghdad.1
While Gen Gray in the late 1980s reinforced our ethos that every Marine is a rifleman, in 2026, every Marine being a rifleman is not enough to add to our future battlefield success. Using modern nation-on-nation conflicts between Azerbaijan and Armenia, Russia and Ukraine, and Israel and Iran as our guiding features, we see that we must evolve from every Marine being a rifleman to every Marine becoming a commando. The author argues that this is how we will fully realize the potential of Force Design 2030 and create an “unfair fight.”2 Our Marines are our competitive advantage, and we must improve our truest capability by increasing our self-imposed standards.3 Thus, each Marine must be survivable, lethal, and able to deliver outsized effects in a denied environment against our nation-state enemies. Of note, one cannot be a commando without being a rifleman, but one can be a rifleman without being a commando.
What Is a Commando
World War II is considered by many as the birthplace of modern special operations, as “The Allies needed commandos in World War II because they did not have technological overmatch or initially possess the initiative—a situation which our Corps is potentially facing with strategic adversaries.”4 Many of today’s U.S. special operations forces can trace their heritage to World War II, such as the Navy SEALs (i.e., underwater demolition teams), Army Rangers, Army Special Forces (i.e., Jedburgh Program), and Marine Raiders. Of note, a definition for a United States Marine commando has been proposed as “a Marine who is assessed, selected, highly trained and equipped, able to endure sustained hardship, and is supported by the Marine Corps to train and conduct operations deep behind enemy lines, and in areas without a defined enemy line, both in and out of uniform, with minimal guidance from their higher unit, often without higher, adjacent, or supporting units, in which their actions will have direct effects on the operational, strategical, and national policy levels of war.”5
“There are no dangerous weapons; there are only dangerous men.” —Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers
Why We Should Become Commandos?
Why should each Marine become a commando? Markedly, the concepts of stand-in forces (SIF) and expeditionary advanced base operations (EABO) are proposing this notion if we can appreciate the overlap between commandos and what the Marine Corps is asking us to become. As stated, “SIF are small but lethal, low signature, mobile, relatively simple to maintain and sustain forces designed to operate across the competition continuum within a contested area as the leading edge of a maritime defense-in-depth to intentionally disrupt the plans of a potential or actual adversary.”6 Additionally stated, “SIF impose costs on the enemy by presenting operationally relevant capabilities that cannot be ignored, even as their low signature, high mobility, dispersion, and use of deception make them difficult for an enemy to find and target.”7 The characteristics of EABO are: stand-in, mobile, persistent, low signature, integrated, and cost effective, or as stated “EABO are a form of expeditionary warfare that involve the employment of mobile, low signature, persistent, and relatively easy to maintain and sustain naval expeditionary forces from a series of austere, temporary locations ashore or inshore within a contested or potentially contested maritime area in order to conduct sea denial, support sea control, or enable fleet sustainment.”8 Simply put, the Marine Corps wants us to already be behind the enemy lines during the opening stages of conflict (i.e., commandos).
Figure 1 demonstrates that EABO and commandos possess mutual characteristics. Accordingly, emphasizing these shared characteristics in basic training (BT) and the Officer Candidate Course (OCC) would amplify our ongoing efforts to experiment with and validate EABO, and SIF within the FMF. Furthermore, applying and incorporating our lessons learned with EABO and SIF from and within the FMF into our initial training will enhance our quality of Marine. Thus, mandating the interdependence and integration of SIF and EABO into BT and OCC and vice versa increases our ability to impose our will against our adversaries.
As the Marine Corps seeks to transition to Force Design 2030 to enact concepts, such as SIF and EABO, which are centric to the idea of operating inside the weapons engagement zone (WEZ) of the People’s Republic of China, we must evolve our recruitment of civilians, our initial training pipelines (e.g. BT and OCC, School of Infantry, and basic officer course), and our sustainment training (i.e., FMF), as Marines are our competitive advantage.9 As we evolve, “we must ensure our efforts are in the right direction with both precision and speed,”10 while treating our evolution as an attack, with the phases of preparation (recruitment), conduct (initial training), and exploit (FMF).11 The emphasis of this manuscript will be to provide the rationale, justification, and suggestions for how we should evolve our initial training, specifically where civilians earn our title of United States Marine (i.e., BT and OCC). The earning of our title, United States Marine, is critical for our Corps as BT and OCC establish our identity as United States Marines, with each Marine having to pass through the test to earn a spot in our formation.
Figure 1: EABO and commando overlapping characteristics. (Figure provided by author.)
Evolving our Initial Training
A notable feature of a commando is that a commando is “an individual who is assessed, selected, trained, supported, and able to operate without control from their chain of command.”12 Talent Management 2030 states that one out of five Marines fails to complete their single four-year contract.13 Thus, we must treat our initial training as an assessment and selection.14 As the character of war changes, we must change and accordingly emphasize units of actions that are distributed, mobile, survivable, lethal, and that can generate the needed effects, which takes a higher caliber Marine, not simply more Marines. Thus, raising the standard to earn the title Marine would cause greater attrition but would make us more lethal inside the WEZ as smaller, distributed units of action that can generate effects are essential to adapting to the evolving character of war. Regarding commandos, “decentralized and small-unit action should always be the intent … especially considering a contested environment where dispersed operations provide security.”15
So, how do we evolve our BT and OCC? The first step is to divest any training that is not adding to our survivability or lethality in a denied environment. Accordingly, we should divest the amount of time we dedicated to drill. As stated, “One immediate adjustment that our Marine Corps’ leaders can enact now to make our Marines more prepared for modern conflict is to divest the amount of ceremony and drill conducted at BT and OCC,”16 as the notion of drill instilling discipline “is invalid, outdated, and dangerous to our warfighting organization.”17 “Here is the litmus test: if it does not directly correlate to lethality and survivability, we must divest of it.”18
Following divesting of non-essential tasks that do not add directly to lethality and survivability, we should simply apply the concept of less comfort; more discomfort as we evolve our initial training. For example, we should sleep less in our racks (comfort) and sleep more outside (discomfort). We should eat less in the chow hall (comfort) and eat more Meals Ready to Eat (discomfort). Rather than conduct movements during the day (comfort), we should increase the number of night movements (discomfort).
Next, we must raise our standards in all domains that add to early 21st-century warfighting performance. Within the true performance realization model, performance is impacted by the proposed seven influencers of performance (e.g., fitness, cognition, skills, abilities, leadership, will, and culture).19 As we evolve as an organization to increase our lethality and survivability, we must determine what influences early 21st-century warfighting performance to determine which standards we must raise. Fourth, replicate the WEZ (i.e., the enemy’s most dangerous course of action) whenever possible. The book 7 Seconds to Die provides us with an excellent example of what could happen to us if we fail to adapt (i.e., the nation of Armenia).20 Fifth, we must realize that not all civilians need to earn the title Marine, and attrition will occur. Moving forward, quality over quantity will be more important than ever before in our 250 years of history. Accordingly, our task organization will need to change as well. Sixth, exploit these gained levels of performance and proficiency in our follow-on schools at the School of Infantry and basic officer course, as well as within the FMF.
These six simple recommendations can be implemented immediately in 2026 and increased and refined by 2029 to make us more effective in SIF and EABO. By divesting non-essential tasks, having less comfort and more discomfort, raising our standards, replicating the WEZ, allowing attrition to occur, and exploiting the higher level of Marine at follow-on schools and the FMF, we are stepping in the direction of every Marine becoming a commando (Figure 2). “Let us not view BT and OCC as only a prerequisite to earning the title Marine, but also as the greatest opportunity in the Marine Corps, since all Marines must make the passage through these courses to enter our formation.”21
Figure 2: Six recommendations to evolve initial training to facilitate EABO and SIF from 2026–2029. (Figure provided by author.)
To the Critic
To the critic of each Marine being a commando, will each Marine be equivalent in the fitness, cognition, and skills of modern-day special operations forces? No. However, by evolving our initial training, each Marine will be more survivable, lethal, and effective inside the WEZ. Accordingly, each Marine will have greater resiliency, fitness, cognition, skills, leadership, and abilities than those currently being formed at BT and OCC, which will lead to enhanced follow-on training. As stated earlier, one cannot be a commando without being a rifleman, but one can be a rifleman without being a commando; therefore, becoming commandos raises the quality of Marines, thus the Marine Corps.
The author will leave the reader with a final question and answer. Why should we modernize our initial training? Simple. If we seek to intentionally be inside the WEZ, then we must replicate the WEZ. We must replicate being behind enemy lines, in a denied, hostile, and logistically restrained environment, while able to create effects, which is akin to the tasks, expectations, and standards of commandos. This replication of the enemy’s most dangerous course of action must start with our initial training. By training to be a commando in our initial training, we are facilitating our effectiveness in SIF and EABO inside the WEZ. Anything less than this standard is unacceptable.
Conclusion
Former Commandant Gen Gray infamously stated, “Every Marine is, first and foremost, a rifleman. All other conditions are secondary.” Respectfully, the author argues this is an incorrect statement, as every Marine is first and foremost a Marine, and the transformation from civilian to Marine is the primary task of BT and OCC. During our initial training, we emphasize becoming and being a Marine, which is why we are not called Marines until the conclusion of BT or OCC. While being a Marine is linked to being a rifleman, being a Marine is additionally associated with success on the battlefield. As the battlefield evolves, we must evolve as United States Marines. As we seek to create an unfair fight, we must realize that our Marines are a competitive advantage, not technology, mass, or anything other than our Marines.22 Thus, we must evolve our Marines to impose our will against any enemy at any time.
While Gen Gray re-emphasized that “Every Marine is, first and foremost, a rifleman,” Gen Smith, our current Commandant, states that SIF will open “the door from the inside”23 as we will be placed inside the WEZ to enable Joint Force entry. With the dilemma and threat, as well as the opportunity of being forward deployed inside the WEZ, we must evolve now. What was valid in the late 1980s is no longer valid in 2025 and beyond. While the change may seem monumental, as stated by Gen Berger, “We have been here before. Over the course of our history, Marines have often been on the leading edge of our Nation’s forward deployed forces … Marines have also embraced truly difficult operational problems and come up with solutions no one thought possible. And Marines have gone into contested areas that others feared to enter and returned victorious.”24
As stated, “What we can provide today that our other Services cannot provide, are the United States Marines. We need to raise our standards within our Corps. The Army can have its mass, the Navy can have its ships, and the Air Force can have their budget; let us have our Marines.”25 If in 1989, every Marine was a rifleman; in 2029, every Marine needs to be a commando.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
>Maj Carter is currently serving as a Special Operations Officer in MARSOC. He previously served as an Infantry Platoon Commander, Company Executive Officer, and Company Commander. Before commissioning in the Marine Corps, he was a Strength and Conditioning Coach, a Researcher in Sports Science, and a Graduate Teaching Assistant. He is still currently active in the human performance community, is a reviewer and editor for three different human performance journals, and is the President of True Performance Realization (trueperformancerealization.com).
Notes:
1. Jim Proser, No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy: The Life of General James Mattis (New York: Harper’s Collins Publisher, 2018).
2. Gen David H. Berger, Force Design 2030 (Washington, DC: March 2020).
3. Jeremy Carter, “United States Marines: Our True Competitive Advantage- Expounding our Capability,” Marine Corps Gazette (Accepted).
4. Jeremy Carter, “21st- Century Marine Corps’ Commandos: Why We Need Them and How We Get There,” Marine Corps Gazette, November 2022, https://www.mca-marines.org/wp-content/uploads/21st-Century-Marine-Corps-Commandos.pdf.
5. Ibid.
6. Gen David H. Berger, A Concept for Stand-in Forces (Washington, DC: December 2021).
7. Ibid.
8. Headquarters Marine Corps, Tentative Manual for Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations 2d Edition (Washington, DC: 2023).
9. Force Design 2030; A Concept for Stand-in Forces; Tentative Manual for Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations; and “United States Marines: Our True Competitive Advantage- Expounding our Capability.”
10. Jeremy Carter, “The Need to become an Ability Organization: A Novel View of Capabilities versus Abilities,” Marine Corps Gazette 109, No 2 (2025).
17. Jeremy Carter, “Divest of Drill; Invest in Discipline: Evolving our Initial Training to meet the Demands of Modern Warfare,” Marine Corps Gazette (Accepted).
20. John F. Antal, 7 Seconds to Die: A Military Analysis of the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War and the Future of Warfighting (Havertown: Casemate Publishers, 2022).
23. Thomas A. Walsh and Alexandra L. Huber, “A Symphony of Capabilities: How the Joint Warfighting Concept Guides Service Force Design and Development,” Joint Force Quarterly 111 (2023).
Sgt Jones is a member of a Marine littoral regiment reconnaissance team, operating deep within the adversary’s weapons engagement zone. He identifies a time-sensitive surface threat. The targeting data is perfect, captured with high fidelity, yet it remains a fleeting digital image on a single screen. To act on this intelligence requires Sgt Jones to exit one application, manually transcribe coordinates into another, and then pray that a voice call can find its way over a strained satellite link so he can verbally pass information that there was no option to enter digitally. In the precious minutes this takes, the opportunity is lost, and Sgt Jones’ transmissions have compromised his position.
This is not a hypothetical scenario; it is the central warfighting challenge of our era. It is the precise reason that Marine Forces Cyberspace Command, by direction of the Commandant, has issued the MCCE Battlespace C2 Execution Order, formally operationalizing the Marine Corps’ transition to a new way of thinking about and codifying major subordinate commands’ boundaries and responsibilities across secure, operate, and defend missions. It is the reason that the Deputy Commandant for Information published the Marine Corps Transport Strategy in 2025, and the reason that Information, Command, Control, Communications, and Computers is developing the Marine Corps Cyberspace Environment (MCCE) Convergence Strategy. We are moving beyond the theory of data-centricity and into the hard, practical work of execution.
The Problem
The problem is clear; data silos degrade operational effectiveness in a multi-domain conflict. Limited means of data transport outside the silo degrade effectiveness by creating artificial limitations within command-and-control systems. The Service’s traditional approach to acquisition and procurement of weapon systems, command-and-control platforms, sensing capabilities, and data systems has built data stovepipes into the ecosystem, where manual transcription is still sometimes the solution for passing data between systems. Proprietary hardware and software for prototypes and programs of record do not seamlessly integrate into the larger Service transport, and the data ecosystem’s slow transmission of information to speeds renders even the most exquisite sensing and engagement systems useless in denied, degraded, intermittent, or limited connectivity environments. The lag, as online gamers would call it, that this creates in the chain from sensed to targeted to engaged will only continue to degrade the effectiveness of kill webs.
The Solution
The solution is two-pronged. To enable concurrent, decentralized operations envisioned by our (not so) future operating concepts, the Marine Corps must re-architect its digital battlespace from a collection of disconnected systems into a cohesive environment where information moves across systems and enclaves at machine speed. These strategies are not static concepts; they are being actively implemented by the Service. The Marine Corps is already making this a reality through two key, interconnected strategies. The MCCE Convergence Strategy provides the blueprint for a seamless hybrid cloud ecosystem, the destination for our data and the home for our warfighting apps. The Marine Corps Transport Strategy builds the foundational highway to get it there, creating a single, agnostic transport layer to fuel the entire ecosystem with data. Together, they provide the vision to enable decision dominance.
Simultaneously, the Marine Corps must adapt its acquisition and procurement strategies to reinforce this vision. Internal progress is not enough; the Service must ensure that every dollar spent and system procured actively align to and supports a data-centric model. This will require sending a clear, consistent demand signal to our industry partners.
For Marine littoral regiment reconnaissance teams to report in real time without compromising themselves requires the Corps to remove artificial limitations within command-and-control systems. (Photo by Cpl Ernesto Lagunes)
Demand Signal for Change
The Marine Corps cannot achieve this vision alone. Efforts and progress made through efforts like Marine Corps Enterprise Network Unification, Sensing the MCCE, and other Deputy Commandant for Information and Marine Forces Cyberspace Command initiatives demonstrate the Service’s resolve. Despite this progress, the problem requires a demand signal to be sent to the Service’s industry partners. The statement is this: To achieve decision dominance and fight and win, this is what we need and this is what we will prioritize.
We need to embrace data sharing. We will prioritize and procure systems that serve as nodes within our broader ecosystem. Systems that silo their data and require additional effort to integrate into our enterprise will be at a competitive disadvantage.
We need to embrace agnostic transport. Your systems must be engineered to connect seamlessly to our unified transport infrastructure. We are building the highway; your products must be able to use the standardized on-ramp, fit in the lane, and comply with safety and operational requirements. Cars without blinkers, headlights, and seatbelts will not be allowed.
We need to compete on capability, not on data hoarding. We need applications and analytics that work together to build situational awareness and accelerate decision-making. Your competitive advantage will now be judged by how well your system shares and enriches data for the entire kill web, not by its ability to perform a single function in isolation.
Conclusion
With the principles from this statement in mind, we are moving this vision from theory to practice. The question for our industry partners is no longer about understanding our vision but about having the agility and foresight to align with its implementation. The partners who embrace their new role as application providers on a common platform will be the ones who help us deliver victory in the information-driven conflicts of the future.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
>Maj Raymond is is a Supply Officer serving his Data Systems Management Officer payback tour at Headquarters Marine Corps, Deputy Commandant for Information, Information Command, Control, Communication, and Computers.
>Maj Wleklinski is is a Cyberspace Warfare Officer and Data Systems Management Officer currently serving at HQMC, Deputy Commandant for Information, Information Command, Control, Communication, and Computers.
2025 LtCol Earl “Pete” Ellis Essay Contest: Second Place
On an early morning outside Jõhvi, Estonia, a Marine Corps light armored reconnaissance (LAR) company occupies a screen along a narrow corridor of farmland interspersed with pine forest. One hundred kilometers to the southwest, a MEU and a NATO battlegroup stage to seize key terrain across the Baltic. Bound to the road network due to heavy forest, the company pushes its eight-wheeled, 25mm armed light armored vehicles (LAV-25) forward, establishing observation posts and seeking to gain and maintain contact with the advance guard of an approaching enemy battalion tactical group. Mounted in vehicles designed in the 70s and fielded in the 1980s, the company’s mission is straightforward but unforgiving: provide early warning of enemy activity and provide decision space for higher-echelon commanders.
Within minutes, the company is in contact. Overhead, small drones loiter freely, marking positions for enemy artillery and dropping shaped charges onto the static and exposed LAVs. First-person-view (FPV) quadcopters slip under the dense canopy, striking the vehicles concealed in hasty hide sites. Enemy infiltration teams mounted on civilian all-terrain vehicles probe the screen line, dismounting to bypass the company’s fixed observation posts to sniff out routes for exploitation. What began as a classic security mission for which LAR has trained for 40 years, unspools into a disaggregated unmanned aerial system (UAS) and sensor fight for which the Marines are ill-equipped. As the fight deteriorates, radio nets clog with reports of enemy precision fires, mobility kills, and rapid attrition. The company evaporated faster than any retrograde or recovery plan could absorb.
As the firefight built ashore, unmarked commercial watercraft, part of a “shadow fleet” operating under layered ambiguity, sailed the coastal traffic patterns north of Jõhvi.1 Exploiting flags-of-convenience paperwork, Automatic Identification System gaps, and routine harbor clutter, a 30-person raid force disembarks, quickly moving inland along forest tracks to harass the main NATO supply routes. Using low-power radios, commercial quadcopters, and cached munitions, the infiltration team stages hasty ambushes, lays counter-mobility obstacles, and cues indirect fire from standoff positions. Their aim is tempo vice destruction: delay, disrupt, seed doubt. In under two hours, the LAR company is combat ineffective. Friendly vehicles are fixed, the MEU’s screen penetrated, and LAR is violently pulled into a reality its design and doctrine were never built to endure.
What happened outside Jõhvi was not just a tactical failure—it was a systems failure. It exposed the growing gap between legacy platforms and modern threats, between the doctrine we have and the fight that is already here. Additionally, it also clarified the path forward. This article proposes a restructured four-platoon LAR company: two security platoons, a reconnaissance platoon, and a fusion platoon. This practical and immediate concept bridges the gap to evolve the LAR force from a platform-bound screen line into a modern sensor-enabled, reconnaissance-integrated network. By leveraging fieldable technology and rethinking organizational structure at the company level, this model provides MAGTFs with a scalable advantage: sensing earlier, making decisions faster, and imposing costs across domains and environments. This evolution of LAR is more than a one-off fix; it reflects a broader challenge across the Marine Corps: how to adapt legacy systems and structures to meet the demands of a rapidly changing fight without waiting for the perfect solution.
The Challenge
The issue facing the Corps’ LAR community is not direction; it is velocity. The ongoing transformation within the LAR community mirrors the larger shift across the Marine Corps. Central themes include disciplined experimentation under Force Design: aggressive use of accessible, often commercial off-the-shelf technology; preparation for new vehicles and tools; and the development of concepts of employment that meet today’s tasks while anticipating tomorrow’s fight. Force Design’s message to the LAR community is unambiguous: transition from platform-centric LAR to all-domain mobile reconnaissance inside the emerging mobile reconnaissance battalion—integrating land, maritime, and unmanned reconnaissance to link sensors to shooters and build joint/combined kill webs in contested littorals.2 This shift pushes LAR into the multi-domain fight while demanding we fully embrace new ways of sensing and communicating. These shifts enable us to generate aimpoints and close kill chains without friction and redundant reachback. Layered over this is a familiar strain of insecurity about identity and purpose, an unease that has long shaped debates inside the Corps, which some (half-jokingly) call the “platypus syndrome.” Change is assumed; tempo is the test; LAR must evolve fast enough to preserve core advantages while integrating pervasive digital capability.
Much good work is already on the table, but more must be done in the near term. LtCol John Dick and 3d LAR demonstrated the value of a bottom-up approach: building organic FPV strike teams inside the ground com-bat element, training to a repeatable cue-confirm-strike drill, treating power, electromagnetic action, and airspace as fire-support problems, and deliberately using commercial tools to balance cost, sustainment, and risk.3 Maj Brent Jurmu, Maj Brandon Klewicki, and LtCol Matthew Tweedy emphasize the structural need for change: move now toward the mobile reconnaissance battalion, prioritize sensing over platform identity, organize for teaming between manned and unmanned systems, open-architecture command and control to enable any sensor to feed any shooter, and resource resilient communications, power, and logistics as combat enablers rather than afterthoughts.4 Retired Col Philip Laing’s earlier thesis reinforces this by asserting that LAR is a mind-set, not a hull. The focus must be on reconnaissance pull, tempo, deception, dispersion, and mounted—dismounted integration—while warning against let-ting the vehicle define the unit.5
A company of UTVs and LAVs occupy positions in a densely forested hide site. (Photo provided by author.)
What these contributions do not fully solve is the immediate bridge between what LAR and the MAGTF currently retain and what we need next. We require a tactical force construct that operates with legacy LAVs and available light vehicles yet delivers stand-in sensing and fast sensor-to-shooter handoffs. This includes a practical gear list, training progression, and command-and-control habits that work tomorrow morning, not just in the out-years. Additionally, we must prioritize survivability, particularly armor survivability, ensuring that our vehicles can withstand emerging threats while maintaining operational flexibility. That is the bridging solution.
The Bridging Solution
What follows is a concept of employment and equipment, validated by Apache Company’s role within 2d LAR’s Task Force Destroyer during our Baltic deployment in the summer of 2025. The concept preserves LAR’s core reconnaissance and security functions while providing a practical framework to integrate enhanced sensing, fusion, and shaping capabilities expected of next-generation formations. Drawing on recent conflicts and years of community experimentation, the design postures usable capabilities now with the equipment on hand while providing on-ramps for the force to swell additional kit to expand our force offering. The result is a highly mobile, flexible formation that leverages existing assets and tactics, creates clear on-ramps for accelerated fielding of new sensors and systems, and reduces operational risk while preserving maneuver and survivability. The design works at the company level for MEU and MAGTF requirements and scales to a three-line company battalion construct. Finally, this sensor-laden formation travels well. It nests naturally within the Joint Force and exploits the Marine Corps’ inherent strength, our expeditionary character.
How Apache 2d LAR Fights
Apache Company was organized around three complementary platoon constructs that executed concurrent reconnaissance and security. The company can cover a 20 km² land area of operations and sense more than 30 miles off the coast. In effect, Apache fielded a multi-domain, long-range sensor company and stood up company-level command, control, communications, and computing with mostly on-hand equipment. The company was reinforced by 2d LAR’s intelligence section, Marine Forces Europe and Africa, II MEF 2d MarDiv enablers, and a few proactive contract partners. This concept has been greatly influenced by the vision outlined by Dr. Jack Watling in his book Arms of the Future.6
Reconnaissance Platoon
Built on ultra-light vehicles and operating near/on the contact line, the platoon carried long-range communications, Group-1 sUAS, multi-domain sensors, and medium direct-fire weapons (machineguns and recoilless rifles). Small in signature and highly mobile, it served as the company’s contact element—confirming or denying information requirements from higher and contributing new information to feed the intelligence cycle through timely ground reporting to the fusion platoon. It executed rapid ambushes to harass, disrupt, and buy time in restrictive terrain. By trading armor for speed, the platoon consistently punched above its weight.
Security Platoon
Positioned in depth behind the reconnaissance platoon, the security platoon operated LAV-25 and anti-tank variants. It preserved the company’s freedom of maneuver by providing armored overwatch and reinforcement for the reconnaissance platoon. From a relative standoff, it employed stabilized, long-duration sensors and Group-1 sUAS to detect and track enemy axes of advance. This posture enabled us to orient killing systems without becoming decisively engaged. As the company’s backstop, it delivered the armored punch to interdict maneuver, absorb pressure, and maintain tempo.
Fusion Platoon
Operating from a suite of LAVs tailored to specific mission requirements and a small complement of utility task vehicles (UTV) for last-mile mobility and logistics, the platoon provided Group-2 sUAS, mesh communications to tie into higher headquarters, a light surveillance and reconnaissance coordination center package, and expeditionary sustainment and maintenance inherent to any LAR formation. It was also where, as Apache dubbed it, a “Reconnaissance Integration Network” was exercised: information drove decisions, and mission command stayed forward. The fusion platoon pulled feeds from the furthest-forward sensors and pushed critical data across the battalion network, working in near real time with the S-2 to turn raw detections into targetable tracks. With our company dispersed to provide significant “depth by default,” our maritime domain awareness team employed sensors, meshed with partner-nation feeds, and flew group-2 sUAS over the littorals. Fusion packaged and distributed; battalion prioritized and matched effects. The result was a rapid targeting rhythm by which reconnaissance, security, fusion, and the S-2 moved as one system.
We did uncover a few key gaps, however, in lethality and sustainment. To supercharge the next iteration, the company must leverage the full potential of our force by enhancing both capability and reach. First, field command-launch units to amplify our armored killing power, enabling faster, more agile responses to emerging threats. Expand UTV capacity for increased power generation and cargo carry, allowing for sustained operations in austere environments. Integrate additional sensors to broaden our sUAS screen and strengthen the fusion network, improving situational awareness and intelligence flow across units. Bring in the next wave of sUAS and counter-UAS tools to stay ahead of evolving threats in the air. Finally, provide access to, and training for, modernized data-driven targeting software that seamlessly connects company-level targeting with MAGTF and joint fires, ensuring precise and synchronized engagements. These enhancements would not only elevate LAR’s operational capabilities but also ensure it is an even more effective and indispensable asset to the broader mission, increasing efficiency, accuracy, and the ability to project power across the deep battlespace.
Advantage
Together, these three elements produced a survivable, organically supported company that sensed, decided, and acted at the tempo the deep fight demands; feeding higher headquarters while shaping the fight in front of it. Following the Baltic deployment, Apache stood up a second security platoon, establishing one reconnaissance platoon, two security platoons, and a fusion platoon, for a total of 31 vehicles: 20 LAVs and 11 UTVs.
This concept of employment shows how LAR can evolve from a legacy cavalry formation into a modern stand-in sensor ecosystem. It retains traditional reconnaissance and security capabilities while posturing to absorb new technology as it arrives. Light reconnaissance brings agile, low-signature sensing and harassment. Armored security preserves freedom of maneuver, provides lift and power, and delivers the kinetic punch. Fusion, as the sensor and sustainment hub, closes the sensor-to-shooter chain and keeps the company supplied and computing forward.
The outcome is a formation that can operate independently for ten to fourteen days, answer commanders’ priority information requirements in stride, and sustain operations across littoral terrain while contributing to the broader kill web. It aligns with past experimentation proposals while refocusing on the enduring tasks of reconnaissance and security. This modern formation turns today’s kit into near-term advantage.
A LAV-25 followed by a UTV make movement along a wooded corridor in the Baltics. (Photo provided by author.)
The Counter
At the tactical edge, legacy hulls with bolt-on tech are delicate. Power and computing are often the first to fail; when they do, the “sprint” stops. Edge-level processing, exploitation and dissemination and target formatting can compress time but widen risk: deconfliction with close air support; intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance; long-range fires on a tight MSR turns into information overload, and one bad grid buys fratricide. A LAV used as a node is still a hot, loud, tall target, often easier to find than to fuel. Adding maritime domain awareness to land feeds risks data overload and slower decisions, and roles blur: infantry battalions already field scouts and recon battalion owns the deep fight. Where does an LAR stand-in sensor company end and its missions begin?
This construct is built to fight through the loss of fragile links, with Group-1/2 feeds treated as temporary: valuable when up, replaceable when not. We layer sensors and plan graceful degradation, reverting to traditional methods if the network fails. First-person-view provides precision fires, task-organized and rationed by target value, with conventional fires as backup. Edge-level processing, exploitation, and dissemination safeguards ensure target packets follow rules of engagement, grid-quality checks, and restricted-operating-zone discipline to prevent fratricide. Light armored vehicles as nodes operate from defilade, acting as generators and routers before becoming targets. Endurance is key, supported by low-mobility screens, low signature-long duration observation, and pre-staged supplies. Light-armored reconnaissance is self-sustained, with maintenance, recovery, power, and logistics under armor that outranges infantry battalions. Maritime domain awareness is just another sensor lane, with priority information requirements and named areas of interest feeding into a fusion platoon, which in turn generates tracks and releasable aimpoints for higher echelons. Light armored reconnaissance and recon overlap naturally in the deep fight, but LAR is uniquely equipped to push deep and extract without relying on external lift or sustainment, supporting operations beyond a single frontage.
The stand-in sensor company concept is not a concept for the distant future. It is a working answer to today’s problem: how to turn legacy formations into lethal, relevant forces across all domains. Apache Company’s construct shows that with the right organization and fielded tools, a LAR unit can deliver the decisive advantage MAGTFs need: sensing early, striking fast, and shaping tempo in complex, contested terrain. It proves that innovation doesn’t always mean waiting on new platforms; it means rethinking how we fight with what we have. The LAR community’s evolution is a microcosm of the Corps-wide challenge: adapt fast, fight smarter, and build toward the future without waiting for the perfect solution. This is not about replacing cavalry, it is about making it and the MAGTF writ large matter in the fight ahead.
Reconnaissance platoon occupies a hide side and inserts dismounted teams. (Photo by Cpl Xavier Alicea)
Tomorrow’s Fight
Capt Ellis awoke with a start and quietly replayed the dream where his legacy company was torn apart; unprepared for the battlefield he now faced. Reality would be different. He stepped into his enhanced LAV-C2 and oriented on the sensor displays and the common operational picture. Hours before the enemy advance guard pushed toward Jõhvi, geospatial stand-off sensors flagged movement along likely avenues of approach. Tucked into hide sites with vehicles camouflaged, Apache’s reconnaissance platoon confirmed with Group-1 systems and set hasty ambushes to disrupt the axis of advance. As the column entered the kill zone, direct-fire systems killed the lead and trail vehicles, fixing the formation. At the same time, Group-2 platforms observed and adjusted long-range fires, streaming feeds to the fusion platoon and higher.
While the fight built ashore, the maritime picture stayed warm: Automatic Identification System and coastal radar returns, rapid reports, and Group-2 pay-loads over the water fed the battalion to track craft along the coast. A suspected grey-fleet vessel broke pattern north of Jõhvi; the cue moved from S-2 through fusion to the northern security screen. A UTV team maneuvered to the beach exits, found the landing sites cold, and laid obstacles and observation to deny a raid force its easy off-ramps.
Ten kilometers behind the FLOT (forward line of troops), security platoons screened in depth, watching the contact forward and reorienting on alternate approaches as the enemy tried to bypass the kill zone. In coordination with fusion, they finalized a rearward passage once reconnaissance platoon finished its harassment and shaping mission against the lead trace.
Inside the company’s architecture and surveillance and reconnaissance collection cell, Marines worked with the battalion S-2 (intelligence section) in near realtime: pushing critical data up and pulling refined intelligence down. Targets were packaged, prioritized, and effects queued for ultimate impact. At higher echelons, commanders saw rapid updates and live feeds through the shared portal. Decision cycles accelerated with expanded options made possible by a symbiotic relationship between sensors, intelligence, and higher echelon fires. In practice, the stand-in sensor construct bought time and space for follow-on forces now shifting from one area of operations to the next and shaping the fight before it fully arrived, ashore and along the coast.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Capt Marshall is the Company Commander of Company A, 2d Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, 2d MarDiv.
NOTES:
Michael Kofman and Matthew Rojansky, “Russia’s Growing ‘Dark Fleet’: Risks for the Global Maritime Order,” Atlantic Council, September 30, 2025, https://www.atlanticcoun-cil.org/in-depth-research-reports/issue-brief/russias-growing-dark-fleet-risks-for-the-global-maritime-order.
Headquarters Marine Corps, Force Design 2030 (Washington, DC: 2020).
John Dick, “From Concept to Capability–Building an Organic FPV Strike Team in the Ground Combat Element (Part I),” The CX File, July 9, 2025, https://thecxfile.substack. com/p/from-concept-to-capability-building.
Brent Jurmu, Brandon Klewicki, and Mat-thew Tweedy, “Equip the Mobile Reconnaissance Battalion Now,” Marine Corps Gazette, May 2024, https://www.mca-marines.org/wp-content/uploads/Jurmu-May24-WEB.pdf.
Philip Laing, “More Than a System: LAR as a Mindset” (master’s thesis, Marine Corps University, Command and Staff College, 2011).
Jack Watling, The Arms of the Future: Technology and Close Combat in the Twenty-First Century (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2023).
2025 LtCol Earl “Pete” Ellis Essay Contest: First Place
As a Chinese amphibious task force advances toward a narrow chokepoint in the Western Pacific, a Marine littoral regiment positions itself to deny access. Traditionally, combat engineers relied on labor-intensive minefield emplacement. Alternatively, they used scatterable systems such as the Family of Scatterable Mines, which often had unreliable timers. Both methods left hazards that outlived their purpose and slowed friendly maneuver.1
Instead, a coordinated operation unfolds. A swarm of drones—ranging from small first-person-view (FPV) platforms to larger attritable aerial and ground vehicles—launches from cover. Carrying anti-tank (AT) and anti-personnel (AP) charges, they create a precise, reversible minefield in minutes. Command and control of the operation is meticulously structured; commanders authorize deployments after thorough assessments and monitor drone movements through secure communication channels. Support drones sustain concealment and command links, ensuring continuous oversight. Commanders maintain the ability to reseed or recover mines as the fight evolves, adjusting operations dynamically in response to battlefield developments. The enemy halts long enough for fires and maneuver to destroy the force.2
What once required days is now achieved with tempo and accountability, setting the stage for new operational approaches. Drone-delivered minefields—leveraging commercial swarms, quantum navigation in GPS-denied environments, and human-in-the-loop autonomy—transform mines into adaptive tools for distributed operations.3 By imposing disproportionate costs at minimal expense to Marines, they embody asymmetric warfare and deliver the “unfair fight” envisioned by Force Design 2030.4
Background
Minefields have long shaped combat. In World War I, belts of barbed wire and mines slowed offensives across no man’s land, forcing attackers into corridors exploitable by machineguns and artillery.5 During World War II, vast mine belts were used in North Africa, where both British and German forces emplaced hundreds of thousands of mines to control maneuver across the open desert.6 These examples demonstrate how obstacles amplify combat power by channeling an adversary into predetermined kill zones.
Legacy systems carried significant costs. During the Gulf War, scatterable mines produced high dud rates—over 1,900 unexploded mines were recorded at Al Jabar Airbase sector alone, with similar patterns across six other sectors in Kuwait—leaving hazards that risked civilians’ safety and delayed reconstruction.7 In Kosovo and Iraq, unexploded ordnance likewise undermined legitimacy and fueled political backlash. To mitigate such risks, the International Committee of the Red Cross codified restrictions in Amended Protocol II of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons.8 As Marines consider innovations in mine deployment, it is essential to anticipate how humanitarian backlash could shape future rules of engagement. Building reversibility and accountability into mine warfare ensures operational effectiveness while preserving political credibility.
Recent U.S. policy shifts provide an opening. Executive Order 14307, Secretary of Defense guidance, and the revocation of National Security Memorandum 17 collectively restored authorities for drone integration and limited landmine employment.9 Together, these measures provide Marines with both the legal authority and strategic mandate to reinvent mine warfare. The challenge is to adapt these restored authorities responsibly, balancing combat effectiveness with humanitarian considerations.
Discussion
Drone-delivered minefields offer Marines decisive advantages over legacy systems. First, they provide precision and accountability. Using realtime kinematics Global Positioning System or quantum-enabled navigation, aerial and ground drones can emplace mines exactly where doctrine requires while producing digital logs that ensure accountability.14 Human operators play a critical role throughout this precision workflow, ensuring oversight and control. During deployment operations, human authorization occurs at key decision nodes, such as the initial activation of the system, confirmation of target coordinates, and upon any reseeding or retrieval of mines. This human-in-the-loop approach aligns with the emerging Department of War autonomy policy, providing reassurance to those skeptical of fully autonomous operations. In Europe, Marines supporting NATO could seed a river crossing in under an hour, delaying adversary armor long enough for fires to strike.15
Second, these minefields deliver dynamic control. Unlike fire-and-forget scatterables, drone-delivered obstacles can be armed, disarmed, and redeployed in minutes.16 This allows commanders to deny an avenue, reopen it for maneuver, and then reseed it as the fight evolves. Such reversibility ensures Marines preserve tempo while denying it to the enemy.
Third, drones enable doctrinal versatility. They can mass mines across a chokepoint to block reinforcements or cluster AT and AP mines to disrupt breaching efforts.17 This flexibility provides commanders with a scalable toolset for shaping enemy movement.
Fourth, drones create opportunities for deception and camouflage. Spray drones can obscure emplacements with terrain-colored coatings, while decoy mines generate false signatures.18 In practice, false fields force hesitation at critical moments and complicate adversary decision making.
Finally, drone-delivered minefields integrate seamlessly into the MAGTF and Joint Force. Obstacles become dynamic elements that complement fires, maneuver, and electronic warfare. Small FPV drones, such as the Neros Archer, offer an affordable near-term option for testing terrain-shaping tactics at the company level.19 By employing FPVs today, Marines can validate doctrine and reinforce the engineer community’s role as the Marine Corps’ countermobility specialists.
Technology Enablers
Civilian industries already demonstrate the feasibility of drone-delivered minefields. Drone swarms, such as those by companies like Verge Aero, synchronize hundreds of aircraft with centimeter accuracy during public light shows.20 These algorithms can be adapted for military use, enabling engineers to deploy mines with doctrinal precision. Proven swarm techniques provide Marines with an immediate advantage, eliminating the need for lengthy research cycles.
Commercial logistics proves scalability. Companies such as Zipline operate fleets of drones that navigate complex airspace and deliver payloads with precision and accuracy.21 These operations show drones can reliably carry ordnance-sized weights, providing confidence that swarms can sustain repetitive sorties in contested environments.
Artificial intelligence (AI) further enhances swarming potential. Vision-based AI allows drones to recognize terrain and optimize mine placement, while machine learning enables swarms to adapt mid-mission.22 This autonomy allows commanders to designate intent—“fix armor here” or “block this pass”—while swarms execute with minimal supervision.
Command-and-control resilience remains a decisive challenge. Army experimentation during MSPIX 2025 revealed that stacked drone swarms and RF decoys generated significant com-munication demands and integration challenges.23 Marines must learn from these lessons by prioritizing mesh networks, relay drones, and training in degraded environments. Building trust in autonomy and resilient communications will ensure these systems function under electronic warfare pressure. To mitigate electronic warfare threats, Marines will implement advanced electronic warfare training programs that simulate electronic attacks, equipping personnel with the skills to rapidly adapt and sustain operations. Regular drills will integrate electronic warfare scenarios with standard procedures, ensuring that Marines are adept at maintaining operational capability and communication integrity even when contested by adversarial electronic tactics.
Finally, quantum navigation and sensing offer a breakthrough. Recent demonstrations using magnetometers and gravimeters achieved centimeter-level accuracy without satellites, proving navigation without GPS is no longer theoretical.24 Russia and China have already been jamming and spoofing GPS in Ukraine and the Pacific, but ruggedized systems from companies such as SandboxAQ, Q-CTRL, and Infleqtion are being accelerated by DARPA and allied militaries.25 For Marines, quantum-enabled navigation ensures drone-delivered minefields remain accurate and accountable even under electronic attack.
Employment Options
Drone-delivered minefields enable doctrinally precise obstacle deployment. Using realtime kinematics Global Positioning System or quantum-enabled navigation, unmanned aerial system swarms can seed mines in fixing, turning, blocking, or disrupting patterns with each emplacement digitally logged for accountability.26 A commander could seed a river crossing in under an hour, delaying an adversary long enough for long-range fires to attrit the lead elements. Such speed and precision impose dilemmas without committing large forces.
Separate or clustered mines expand tactical flexibility. The AT mines delay armored formations, while AP mines deter dismounted infantry and breaching engineers. When clustered, these systems magnify effects, as engineers clearing AT lanes are disrupted by nearby AP threats.27 This layered approach forces adversaries to expend time and resources while Marines preserve tempo.
Reversibility provides commanders with dynamic control. Drone-emplaced mines can be armed, disarmed, and redeployed in just minutes rather than days.28 For instance, commanders have historically faced delays stretching up to 48 hours to reposition traditional mine systems. This rapid redeployment enables Marines to close a corridor to delay an advance, reopen it for friendly maneuver, and reseed it to deny pursuit. Such flexibility directly addresses long-standing criticisms of minefields as static liabilities by significantly reducing response times and enhancing operational tempo.
Drones also enable deception and counterattack facilitation. False mine-fields and decoys can create uncertainty across the battlespace, while commanders can predesignate corridors to allow counterattacks and then reseed behind them.29 These techniques transform obstacles from static hazards into adaptive enablers of maneuver.
Combat engineers must remain the primary operators of these systems. Countermobility, demolition, and terrain shaping are core engineer tasks and already own the training and readiness standards and demolition authorities.30 Anchoring these systems in the engineer community ensures doctrinal integrity and synchronization with fires. If the capability scales, a dedicated military occupational specialty for unmanned aerial system obstacles may be explored, but initial investment must remain engineer-led.
Lessons from Current Conflicts
Ukraine highlights both the utility and costs of legacy mines. Russian scatterable mines disrupted maneuver but left farmland contaminated for decades.31 Dud rates and the absence of digital control created hazards that slowed civilians and friendly forces long after combat. By contrast, Ukrainian forces adapted commercial drones to deliver precision charges against armored vehicles, demonstrating the potential of adaptive drone-enabled obstacles.32
Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020 underscored the vulnerability of static defenses. Armenian mine belts slowed Azerbaijani advances, but swarms of Turkish-supplied drones systematically destroyed armor and artillery supporting the defense.33 The lesson for Marines is clear: without adaptability and synchronization with fires, modern reconnaissance-strike complexes will render fixed minefields ineffective.
Adversaries are rapidly innovating with unmanned deception. Russia has combined decoy drones with live systems to saturate defenses, while China’s precision drones demonstrate the potential for swarm deception at scale.34 These experiments show that adversaries are already exploring the same technologies Marines must adopt, and delaying risks ceding initiative in countermobility.
Coalition partners also highlight the importance of accountability. NATO allies in Eastern Europe and humanitarian groups in post-conflict zones face heavy clearance burdens from unexploded ordnance.35 Drone-delivered minefields, equipped with digital emplacement records and remote disarmament capabilities, could alleviate these challenges, reducing political costs while enhancing alliance interoperability.
Doctrine
The Marine Corps should update MCWP 3-17, Engineer Operations, and MCWP 3-12, Combined Arms Countermobility, to codify precision, reversibility, and deception as core tenets of mine warfare. Engineer units must add scalable “drone obstacle platoons” capable of supporting MLRs and MEUs. MARADMIN 416/25, which announced the fielding of the Neros Archer FPV drone, illustrates both the opportunity and the challenge of integration—momentum toward low-cost drone employment, but also the risks of dependency and doctrine lagging behind capability.36
Organization
The pioneer battalion provides the ideal structure for experimenting with drone-delivered minefields. Its littoral engineer reconnaissance teams and littoral explosive ordnance neutralization sections are already tasked with countermobility and terrain shaping.37 Embedding drone-enabled obstacle platoons within this formation would align with its campaign of learning mandate and validate swarming minefields in littoral terrain.
Doctrine and Concept Alignment
The Maritime Terrain Shaping and Area Denial (MTS-AD) Functional Concept emphasizes that the Marine Corps is not currently organized, trained, or equipped for scalable terrain shaping.38 Drone-delivered minefields directly fulfill these requirements by providing reversible, deception-enabled, and recoverable obstacles that assure friendly maneuver.
Joint Integration
The Army is investing heavily in terrain-shaping prototypes through the Army Applications Laboratory and MSPIX. Experiments have shown that stacked drone swarms, RF decoys, and autonomous unmanned ground vehicles are viable engineering tools.39 Marines should observe and shape these efforts while avoiding redundant costs—“let the Army spend, Marines adopt”—and focus resources on doctrine, naval integration, and operational tactics, techniques, and procedures.
FPV Options
The FPV drones, such as the Neros Archer, provide a near-term, affordable method to validate terrain-shaping tactics. They can deliver explosive charges, reinforce countermobility lanes, and be integrated into Service-level training exercises. By employing FPVs now, Marines can refine doctrine, build trust in autonomy, and accelerate field adoption without waiting for larger programs of record.40
Operator Ownership
Combat engineers must remain the primary operators of drone-delivered minefields. Countermobility and demolition are core engineer tasks, and the community already owns the training standards and authorities required for safe and effective obstacle employment.41 Anchoring these systems in the engineer community ensures doctrinal integrity and synchronization with fires. If the capability scales, a dedicated unmanned aerial system obstacle military occupational specialty may be explored, but initial investment must remain engineer-led.
Training
The Engineer School curriculum should incorporate swarming, digital accountability, and AI-enabled planning. Training must include degraded communications scenarios and integration into Service-level and coalition training exercises. Reserve units, drawing on civilian drone expertise, are particularly suited to accelerate adoption.
Materiel
Attritable drones with modular mine kits should be prioritized, supported by 3D-printed components to reduce logistics burdens. A pilot program fielded in both an active-duty and a reserve engineer unit within 24 months would validate the concept and refine tactics, techniques, and procedures.42
Facilities and Policy
The Marine Corps should establish ranges for inertly emplaced drone minefields. Current executive guidance permits experimentation, but accountability and coalition releasability must remain central. Early NATO integration will ease interoperability and strengthen legitimacy.43
Roadmap
Implementation should follow a phased approach. Year 1: demonstrate commercial swarming, Year 2: equip pilot units, Year 3: integrate into exercises, Year 4: establish a program of record. Future systems must incorporate resilient command and control, deception, and reversibility as mandatory features while framing employment as compliant and humanitarian focused.
Conclusion
In the 1950s, basketball slowed until the introduction of the shot clock forced tempo and creativity back into the game. Legacy scatterable mines have created a similar problem in maneuver warfare. They are static, unreliable, and strategically costly—slowing friendly operations, creating enduring hazards, and undermining legitimacy.44 Without reform, the Marine Corps’ countermobility capability risks irrelevance in an era defined by tempo and adaptability.
Drone-delivered minefields are the shot clock for maneuver warfare. They enable Marines to emplace, camouflage, arm, disarm, and redeploy obstacles in minutes. The opening scenario illustrates the point: a Chinese amphibious force was delayed for 36 hours, then destroyed in a withdrawal kill zone. The same logic applies globally: NATO shaping Russian maneuver in Europe, FPVs denying approaches in the Middle East, or drones rapidly seeding choke-points in the Arctic.45
The Marine Corps cannot afford to lag behind adversaries already experimenting with swarms and deception. Maintaining tempo and adaptability will determine whether Marines impose costs or suffer them. Drone-delivered minefields impose disproportionate costs on adversaries at minimal expense, embodying the essence of asymmetric warfare.46 Just as the shot clock revitalized basketball, these systems will revitalize Marine Corps obstacle warfare—ensuring engineers deliver the unfair fight envisioned by Force Design 2030.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Capt Trossen is a prior-enlisted Combat Engineer Officer with over 22 years of experience in the Marine Corps engineer community, serving in both enlisted and officer capacities. He has previously served as a Company Commander in an engineer company within a Marine Wing Support Squadron and as a Company Inspector-Instructor in South Bend, IN. He currently commands Company B, 8th Engineer Support Battalion.
NOTES:
U.S. Government Accountability Office, Military Operations: Information on U.S. Use of Land Mines in the Persian Gulf War, GAO-02-1003 (Washington, DC: GPO, 2002).
David Hambling, “Mine Craft: Ukrainian Drones Add a New Dimension to Mine War-fare,” Forbes, April 3, 2025, https://www.forbes. com/sites/davidhambling/2025/04/03/mine-craft-ukrainian-drones-add-a-new-dimension-to-mine-warfare.
Army Applications Laboratory, Engineer Operations: Autonomy Cohorts and Terrain Shaping Experimentation (Austin: May 2025); and Headquarters Marine Corps, MARADMIN 416/25, Guidance for the Fielding of the Neros Archer (Washington, DC: September 2025).
Headquarters Marine Corps, Force Design 2030 (Washington, DC: 2020).
Gary Sheffield, The First World War in 100 Objects (London: Imperial War Museum, 2017).
Ian Gooderson, A Hard Way to Make a War: British and German Minefields in North Africa, 1941–43 (London: Routledge, 2001).
Government Accountability Office, Military Operations: Information on U.S. Use of Land Mines in the Persian Gulf War.
International Committee of the Red Cross, Protocol on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Mines, Booby-Traps and Other Devices (Amended Protocol II to the CCW) (Geneva: October 1996).
The White House, “Executive Order 14307: Expanding Drone Integration to Increase Efficiency and Productivity,” June 6, 2025; Secretary of Defense, “Unleashing U.S. Military Drone Dominance,” (Washington, DC: July 2025); and The White House, “Revocation of National Security Memorandum 17 on Anti-Personnel Landmine Policy,” (Washington, DC: July 2025).
Timothy L. Thomas, “Russia’s Reflexive Control Theory and the Military,” Journal of Slavic Military Studies 17, No. 2 (2004).
Staff, “China Celebrates Lunar New Year with 3D Dragon Drone Display,” South China Morning Post, February 2021.
U.S. Army, Final Report–MSPIX 2025: Deep Terrain Shaping and Remote Breaching of Obstacles (Fort Leonard Wood: Army Applications Laboratory, May 2025).
Engineer Operations: Autonomy Cohorts and Terrain Shaping Experimentation.
Military Operations: Information on U.S. Use of Land Mines in the Persian Gulf War.
David C. Isby and Charles Kamps, Armies of NATO’s Central Front (London: Jane’s, 1985).
Emma Dodd and Caitlin Welsh, “Demining Ukraine’s Farmland: Progress, Adaptation, and Challenges,” CSIS, December 5, 2024, https://www.csis.org/analysis/demining-ukraines-farmland-progress-adaptation-and-needs.
Headquarters Marine Corps, Force Design 2030 (Washington, DC: 2020).
Staff, “Operation False Target: How Russia Plotted to Mix a Deadly New Weapon among Decoy Drones in Ukraine,” Associated Press, November 2024, https://apnews.com/video/ukraine-drones-russia-aerospace-and-defense-industry-war-and-unrest-76742f121c4d-4081a87b504b1a48afc7.
Force Design 2030.
Staff, “Flight Control System,” Verge Aero, n.d., https://verge.aero.
Paul Scharre, Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War (New York: W.W. Norton, 2018).
U.S. Army, Final Report–MSPIX 2025: Deep Terrain Shaping and Remote Breaching of Obstacles (Fort Leonard Wood: Army Ap-plications Laboratory, May 2025).
David Hambling, “GPS Just Became Optional for Military Navigation. Quantum Sen-sors Are Why,” Forbes, September 2025, https://www.forbes.com.
U.S. Department of Defense, “DARPA’s Robust Quantum Sensing Program,” Defense. gov, 2025, https://www.darpa.mil/research/programs/roqs-robust-quantum-sensors.
Military Operations: Information on U.S. Use of Land Mines in the Persian Gulf War.
International Committee of the Red Cross, Anti-Personnel Landmines: Friend or Foe? (Geneva: ICRC, 1996).
Emma Dodd and Caitlin Welsh, “Demining Ukraine’s Farmland: Progress, Adaptation, and Challenges,” CSIS, December 5, 2024, https://www.csis.org/analysis/demining-ukraines-farmland-progress-adaptation-and-needs.
“Operation False Target: How Russia Plot-ted to Mix a Deadly New Weapon among Decoy Drones in Ukraine.”
U.S. Marine Corps, Marine Corps Task List (MCTL), Engineer Section (Washington, DC: 2023).
Anti-Personnel Landmines: Friend or Foe?
“Mine Craft: Ukrainian Drones Add a New Dimension to Mine Warfare.”
Michael Kofman and Leonid Nersisyan, “The Second Nagorno-Karabakh War: Lessons for Future Conflict,” War on the Rocks, December 2020.
“Operation False Target: How Russia Plotted to Mix a Deadly New Weapon among Decoy Drones in Ukraine;” and “China Celebrates Lunar New Year with 3D Dragon Drone Display.”
International Committee of the Red Cross, Amended Protocol II to the CCW (Geneva: October 1996).
Headquarters Marine Corps, MARAD-MIN 416/25, Guidance for the Fielding of the Neros Archer (Washington, DC: September 2025).
U.S. Marine Corps, Pioneer Battalion Concept of Employment (Quantico, VA: Capabilities Development Directorate, February 2024).
U.S. Marine Corps, Marine Corps Func-tional Concept: Maritime Terrain Shaping and Area Denial (Quantico, VA: Deputy Commandant for Combat Development and Integration, July 2022).
Final Report–MSPIX 2025: Deep Terrain Shaping and Remote Breaching of Obstacles.
MARADMIN 416/25.
Marine Corps Task List (MCTL), Engineer Section.
U.S. Department of Defense, “Drone Operator Career Field Development,” Defense. gov, 2025.
“Executive Order 14307: Expanding Drone Integration to Increase Efficiency and Productivity”; Secretary of Defense, Unleashing U.S. Military Drone Dominance (Washington, DC: July 2025); and Revocation of National Security Memorandum 17 on Anti-Personnel Landmine Policy.
Military Operations: Information on U.S. Use of Land Mines in the Persian Gulf War. Force Design 2030.
“Operation False Target: How Russia Plot-ted to Mix a Deadly New Weapon among Decoy Drones in Ukraine”; and “China Celebrates Lunar New Year with 3D Dragon Drone Display.”
Drones have provided significant tactical advantages to both sides during the three years of brutal fighting in the Russo-Ukraine war. So, it is not surprising that uncrewed autonomous and first-person view drones and other uncrewed platforms are being heralded as the war-winning technology of the future.1 This euphoria was magnified by Ukraine’s June 2025 Operation SPIDERWEB, which masterfully employed drones to attack Russian air bases approximately 2,500 miles from the static front.2 This led some commentators to declare that the attack was Kiev’s Pearl Harbor.3
Moreover, two authors have proclaimed that the “drone era” is a military revolution and will remove the element of fear from war.4 This is an astonishing statement given that human beings fight wars to intentionally inflict violence on others out of “greed, fear, and ideology,” making it unlikely humans will disappear from tomorrow’s battlefields.5
This article contends that drones and artificial technology (AI) will continue to transform how future wars are fought; however, technology alone is unlikely to generate the required vic-tories to qualify as the next revolution in military affairs (RMA).
Evolution or Revolution?
Drones have transformed the battlefield in Ukraine, but in an evolutionary rather than revolutionary fashion, as their impact falls short of the truly disruptive change that constitutes an RMA.6 Neither side has been able to decisively break through their opponent’s fixed, layered defenses and transition to sustained offensive operations necessary to achieve their respective political aims and “theories of victory.”7 A recent RUSI study concluded between 60–80 percent of Ukrainian first-person view, tactical drones failed to reach their target in 2024.8 Those that did were unable to destroy the armored vehicles they were trying to kill due to Russian electronic warfare jamming, poor weather, unfavorable terrain conditions, and operator error. A lack of Ukrainian artillery often prevented suppressive fires from being effectively employed with drones against Russian air defenses and dismounted soldiers protecting key targets. All told, first-person-view drones have proven most effective against enemy troops in the open. However, armies that disperse, conceal, maneuver with stealth, and deceive will likely lessen the effectiveness of adversary kill chains in the future.
… two authors have proclaimed that the “drone era” is a military revolution …
Revolutions in military affairs occur when a new technology is combined with innovative operational concepts and organizational adaptation to fundamentally alter the character and conduct of conflict.9 The RMAs dramatically increase the combat potential and military effectiveness of fighting forces relative to a specific adversary, but these three ingredients must be amalgamated before a true RMA is born.10
Revolutions in military affairs are rare occurrences—Andrew Krepinevich cites only ten since the 14th century.11 Nevertheless, premature pronouncements that a new RMA has arrived are not new. In 2004, Stephen Biddle cited six such examples: the inventions of dynamite, the machinegun, the naval torpedo, the airplane, strategic bombing, and the atom bomb.12 Biddle believed these new technologies led military thinkers of their day to overestimate the impact they would have on warfare.
This trend continues today and, on one level, it makes sense. War’s inherent brutality has long incentivized humans to seek short wars and “silver bullets” that can reduce its cost in casualties and national treasure. Moreover, the reliance on advanced technology has been a central pillar of the American Way of War since at least World War II, as the United States places greater emphasis on technology in planning and waging war than any other nation.13
Yet, in the context of the Russo-Ukraine War, drone performance has been exaggerated despite compelling evidence otherwise. Amos Fox argues that drones in protracted land campaigns, like Ukraine and Gaza, have proven strategically irrelevant given their inability to take or retake territory, hold ground, seal borders, and protect populations.14 Other studies question drone reliability and effectiveness.15 Thus, claims that drones have revolutionized the character of war deserve closer scrutiny.
Generating Leap-Ahead Combat Capabilities
As noted above, RMAs change the character of war because they generate an asymmetrical advantage in combat capabilities vis-à-vis one’s adversary. What is revolutionary is not the pace of change, but rather, the character of the change and the degree of overall improvement in military capabilities.16
Such improvement can occur absent new technology, as was the case with the 18th-century French “levee en masse” (i.e., forced conscription) that tripled the size of Napoleon’s Army in less than a year.17 It can also result from repurposing and imaginatively using old technology, as Germany did with tanks—first employed by the British in the 1917 World War I battle of Cambrai—by integrating armor with radio communications, airplanes, and mechanized infantry to generate a potent combined-arms team that became the blitzkrieg.18
Yet, it is important to acknowledge that the introduction of new technology is a key incubator that can alter the character of war, as witnessed with the precision-strike revolution that came of age in the 1991 Gulf War.19 Some three decades later, the precision strike RMA enabled the United States to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities in Operation MIDNIGHT HAMMER.20 But battlefield context matters, as it took eleven weeks of bombing from fourteen NATO nations (some 40,000 aircraft sorties flown) along with the threat of ground invasion during Operation ALLIED FORCE before Serb leader, Slobodan Milosevic, backed down.21
Coming of Age
In almost all cases, new technologies mature more slowly than military planners and operators desire. The 1972 Linebacker II bombing campaign against North Vietnam expended approximately the same number of laser-guided munitions as the 1991 Gulf War.22 The qualitative improvements that allowed the same number of munitions to be exponentially more effective than their forbearers took nearly two decades.
The same is true with ground-launched anti-tank weapons systems. What started in the late 1970s with the Dragon and family of wire-guided missile systems eventually matured into the “fire and forget” Javelin that proved so effective against Russian armor in 2022.23
… RMAs change the character of war because they generate an asymmetrical advantage in combat capabilities vis-à-vis one’s adversary.
Drones, too, have a long lineage that traces back to 1917–1918 when the British and American’s respectively, developed the Aerial Target and Kettering Bug pilotless aerial platforms.24 Yet, it was not until the Vietnam War that drones were deployed in relatively large numbers.
In sum, a lengthy maturation process ensues before new technologies, innovative warfighting concepts, and organizational adaptations successfully combine to ignite revolutionary, leap-ahead combat capabilities. This time-consuming process is not exclusively the fault of tech developers, engineers, and an unwieldy defense acquisition process. Rather, lengthy, but essential, military experimentation must also occur to provide the Services and Joint Force practical insights into how its concepts and organizational design should be adapted to effectively campaign with the new technologies.25
Maintaining Asymmetrical Advantage
The competitive asymmetrical advantages new technologies bring to warfare are fleeting. Being a “first mover” or early adopter of enhanced capabilities incentivizes competitors to counterbalance, especially if the new capabilities are widely proliferated.26
Today’s rapid diffusion of technology means smaller powers and non-state actors can easily and cheaply manufacture or commercially acquire drones, satellite imagery, global communications devices, and a host of other technologies for battlefield use. The Houthis recently demonstrated this with their drone attacks against Red Sea shipping.27 Thomas Mahnken describes this phenomenon as one of “emulation,” which will continue to erode, if not eliminate, the comparative asymmetrical advantage drones and other emerging technologies afford the U.S. military.28
When the barriers of emulation are too high, adversaries will attempt to develop countermeasures to thwart new combat methods.29 As an example, to offset U.S. firepower and mobility advantages in Iraq and Afghanistan, the enemy’s weapon of choice was the improvised explosive device (IED)—the legacy “boobytrap.”30 Decades earlier in Vietnam, the Viet Cong used the low-tech entrenching tool to turn the Cu Chi area outside of Saigon into 155 miles of underground tunnels and mini-subterranean cities to counter America’s air power advantage.31
Thus, smart adversaries will rapidly emulate or develop countermeasures to negate the asymmetrical advantages afforded by real or faux RMAs. In Ukraine, the world has watched this process play out in realtime, which makes the Russo-Ukraine conflict a revolution in adaptation war vice a universal RMA.32
Weighing the Risk of Military Innovation
Military innovation is a “balancing act between destroying traditional ways of war and creating new ones,” a gamble that risks losing more by abandoning legacy capabilities than is created with new innovations.33 Past, but flawed high-risk bets about the changing character of future wars include the development of British armored doctrine before World War II;34 the U.S. Air Force embracing the long-range nuclear bombing mission in place of close air support and air superiority competencies needed in the Korean War; and the U.S. Army restructuring itself into Pentomic formations to fight on a nuclear battlefield.35 According to Kendrick Kuo, in each case, militaries divested themselves of critical capabilities and competencies they needed in the next war.36
… prudent observers of modern war are right to question any technology being championed as a “war-winner”…
Fear of missing the next military revolution and being relegated to “second mover” status can seductively entice force planners to bet and invest in the wrong RMA. Sir Lawrence Freedman argues that Ukraine’s drone environment is context-specific and may not be germane to future battlefields that are not characterized by static front lines and slow-moving, long-range drones that have trouble penetrating well-defended targets—in need of more effective integration with other traditional military capabilities such as aircraft, armored vehicles, and artillery—to prove decisive.37 Freedman is not alone in his thinking, which makes it risky to adopt the drone tactics, techniques, and procedures from the stalemated Russo-Ukraine War as a perfect template for future conflicts.
The Pitfalls of Technological Determinism
Historians Williamson Murray and McGregor Knox believe the lessons of history demonstrate that technological superiority does not guarantee success in war.38 In World War II, U.S. materiel and technological dominance still required grueling battles across the Pacific to the Japanese homeland before an exhausted and starving adversary ultimately capitulated.39 More recently, technologically-backward states like North Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan denied the United States its war aims, notwithstanding the latter’s overwhelming firepower advantage.
Clausewitz argued that war is fundamentally a contest of human wills, which means there is more to war than simply “blowing up targets.”40 Ultimately, human factors such as leadership, training, discipline, and doctrine—not weapons—are the final arbiter of battlefield success or failure. Thus, underestimating the tenacity and staying power of a technologically inferior underdog comes with a high price tag.
Forward into the Unknown
Until the Russo-Ukrainian War ends, both sides will continue to rapidly adapt. Lessons observed during the war’s early years may provide new insights that will help inform how the United States and other nations transform their militaries for future conflicts. However, rushing to judgment about the efficacy of specific technologies in a protracted war that has no clear end in sight only impedes this learning process. Thus, prudent observers of modern war are right to question any technology being championed as a “war winner” until the war being used as an exemplar is won.
The late British historian, Sir Michael Howard, remarked in a 1973 lecture on Military Science in an Age of Peace, “that whatever doctrine the Armed Forces are working on now, they have got it wrong. I am also tempted to declare that it does not matter that they have got it wrong. What does matter is their capacity to get it right quickly when the moment arrives.”41
Hopefully, Sir Michael’s prescient words will stimulate continued sober analysis of the strengths and limitations of drones and AI on the modern battlefield. This will require some intellectual humility that we may all be wrong, including this author.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Col Greenwood is a Research Staff Member at the Institute for Defense Analyses. He was an Infantryman who commanded the 15th MEU (SOC), served as Director of the Marine Corps Command and Staff College, and completed multiple assign-ments in the Pentagon and on the National Security Council staff.
NOTES:
Tomas Milasauskas and Livdvikas Jaskunas, “FPV Drones in Ukraine are Changing Mod-ern Warfare,” Atlantic Council, June 20, 2024, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrai-nealert/fpv-drones-in-ukraine-are-changing-modern-warfare.
Kateryna Bondar, “How Ukraine’s Operation ‘Spider’s Web’ Redefines Asymmetric Warfare,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, June 2, 2025, https://www.csis.org/analysis/how-ukraines-spider-web-operation-redefines-asymmetric-warfare.
Roger Boyes, “Kyiv’s Drone Attack is a Pearl Harbor Moment,” The Times, June 3, 2025, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2025/06/02/ukraine-drone-strike-at-tack-russia-pearl-harbor/83987304007.
Antonio Salinas and Jason P. Levay, “Military Revolutions from the Spanish Tercio to First-Person View Drones,” War on the Rocks, May 15, 2025, https://warontherocks.com/2025/05/military-revolutions-from-the-spanish-tercio-to-first-person-view-drones.
Margaret MacMillan, War: How Conflict Shaped Us (New York: Random House, 2020).
Stacie Pettyjohn, “Evolution Not Revolution: Drone Warfare in Russia’s 2022 Invasion of Ukraine,” Center for a New American Security, February 2024, https://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep57900.
Thomas C. Greenwood, “Why Ukraine’s Breakthrough Operations Are So Difficult,” The National Interest, December 31, 2022, https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/why-ukraines-breakthrough-operations-are-so-difficult-207815; and J. Boone Bartholomees, “Theory of Victory,” Parameters 38, No. 2 (2008).
Jack Watling and Nick Reynolds, “Tactical Developments During the Third Year of the Russo-Ukraine War,” Royal United Services Institute, February 2025, https://www.rusi. org/explore-our-research/publications/special-resources/tactical-developments-during-third-year-russo-ukrainian-war.
Andrew F. Krepinevich, “Calvary to Computer: The Pattern of Military Revolutions,” The National Interest, No. 37 (1994).
James R. Fitzsimonds and Jan M. Van Toll, “Revolution in Military Affairs,” Joint Forces Quarterly (Spring 1994).
“Calvary to Computer: The Pattern of Military Revolutions.”
Stephen Biddle, Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004).
Thomas G. Mahnken, Technology and the American Way of War (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008).
Amos Fox, “Drones Are Game-Changing, But They Are Not the Answer to the Inherent Challenges of Land Warfare,” Small Wars Journal, August 6, 2025, https://smallwarsjournal. com/2025/08/06/drones-are-game-changing.
Jakub Jajcay, “I Fought in Ukraine and Here’s Why FPV Drones Kind of Suck,” War on the Rocks, June 26, 2025, https://warontherocks. com/2025/06/i-fought-in-ukraine-and-heres-why-fpv-drones-kind-of-suck.
Andrew W. Marshall, “RMA Update,” Memorandum for the Record, Office of the Secretary of Defense (Washington, DC: May 1994).
Williamson Murray, “Thinking About Revolutions in Military Affairs,” Joint Forces Quarterly (Summer 1997).
Mark Cartright, “Blitzkrieg: The Lightning War Tactic of Combined Arms,” World History, November 28, 2024, https://www.worldhistory. org/Blitzkrieg.
David R. Mets, The Long Search for a Surgical Strike: Precision Munitions and the Revolu-tion in Military Affairs (Montgomery: Air University Press, October 2001).
Joseph Rogers, “What Operation Midnight Hammer Means for the Future of Iran’s Nuclear Ambitions,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, June 23, 2025, https://www.csis. org/analysis/what-operation-midnight-hammer-means-future-irans-nuclear-ambitions.
Ivo H. Daalder and Michael E. O’Hanlon, Winning Ugly: Nato’s War to Save Kosovo (Washington, D.C: Brookings Institution Press, 2000).
“Calvary to Computer: The Pattern of Military Revolutions.”
Charlie Goo, “American Dragon: This Missile Launcher Turns Tanks to Dust,” The National Interest, June 30, 2021, https://nation-alinterest.org/blog/reboot/american-dragon-missile-launcher-turns-tanks-dust-188853.
John F. Keane and Stephen S. Carr, “A Brief History of Early Unmanned Aircraft,” Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab Technical Digest 32, No. 9 (2013).
Tom Greenwood and Jim Greer, “Experimentation: The Road to Discovery,” Strategy Bridge, March 1, 2018, https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/html/trecms/AD1223471/index.html.
John D. Maurer, “The Future of Precision-Strike Warfare: Strategic Dynamics of Mature Military Revolutions,” Naval War College Re-view 76, No. 3 (2023).
Alison Bath, “Navy Fired More than 200 Missiles to Fight Off Red Sea Shipping Attacks, Admiral Says,” Stars and Stripes, January 16, 2025, https://www.stripes.com/branches/navy/2025-01-16/houthis-navy-red-sea-missiles-drones-16500246.html.
Thomas G. Mahnken, “Weapons: The Growth & Spread of the Precision-Strike Regime,” Daedalus 140, No. 3 (2011).
“Weapons: The Growth & Spread of the Precision-Strike Regime.”
Jason Shell, “How the IED Won: Dispelling the Myth of Tactical Success and Innovation,” War on the Rocks, May 1, 2017, https://warontherocks.com/2017/05/how-the-ied-won-dispelling-the-myth-of-tactical-success-and-innovation.
MSW, “The Cu Chi Tunnels,” WarHistory. Com, July 15, 2020, https://warhistory.org/@ msw/article/the-cu-chi-tunnels.
Mick Ryan, “The New Adaptation War,” Substack.com, April 16, 2025, https://scsp222. substack.com/p/adaptation-war-with-mick-ryan.
Kendrick Kuo, “How to Think About Risks in US Military Innovation,” Survival, February-March 2024, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00396338.2024.2309077.
Kendrick Kuo, “Dangerous Changes: When Military Innovation Harms Combat Effectiveness,” International Security 47, No. 2 (2022);
“How to Think About Risks in US Military Innovation.”
“Dangerous Changes: When Military Innovation Harms Combat Effectiveness.”
Lawrence Freedman, “Are Drones the Future of War?” Substack.com, July 29, 2025, https://samf.substack.com/p/are-drones-the-future-of-war.
MacGregor Knox and Williamson Murray, The Dynamics of Military Revolution, (Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
Colin S. Gray, Weapons Don’t Make War: Policy, Strategy, and Military Technology (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993).
Pat Garrett and Frank Hoffman, “Maneuver Warfare Is Not Dead, But It Must Evolve,” Proceedings, November 2023, https://www.usni. org/magazines/proceedings/2023/november/maneuver-warfare-not-dead-it-must-evolve.
Michael Howard, “Military Science in the Age of Peace,” The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) Journal 119 (1974).
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).
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.
Figure 1. (Figure provided by author.)
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.
Figure 2. (Figure provided by author.)
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:
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.
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
Recent global security events have confirmed that we must accelerate preparation for contingencies. The Ukraine-Russia and Israel-Hamas conflicts are indicative of the volatile reality and delicate nature of the global security environment we currently live in. The Corps has a long tradition of achieving greater efficiency with fewer or less exquisite resources. As we prepare for potential conflicts, we must change our approach and deviate from traditional scenarios of large-scale attacks launched from the sea. The optimal advanced platforms and weapons required for the next major conflict may also not be readily available in voluminous quantities. We must embrace ingenuity and prepare to fight soon by pushing the boundaries of mature systems while creating an unfair advantage. In the words of Brad Smith, president of Microsoft, “Since the dawn of time, any tool can be used for good or ill. Even a broom can be used to sweep the floor or hit someone over the head.”1 Smith’s quote embodies how we must audaciously approach the subsequent application of solutions.
Directives and Opportunity (Who and Where) There is extraordinary transparency within the latest iteration of major fleet directives. The 39th Commandant’s Planning Guidance and the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Navigation Plan 2024 undoubtedly define the most imminent threat to the Naval Services. The CNO cautions that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is preparing for war by 2027.2 Gen Smith referenced the 2022 National Defense Strategy as an overarching directive and delineated the PRC as the primary competitor.3 The PRC remains a robustly resourced and complex aggressive global competitor. There are a variety of dissenting opinions on the U.S. military’s best counterforce response to the PRC if necessary. Overwhelming firepower is an obvious choice but an elusive retaliation plan against the PRC. However, it would be more advantageous for the Marine Corps to dissect the potency of the PRC with an alternative asymmetrical concept.
Oddly enough, the CNO’s Navigation Plan 2024 provides insight into a new prospective priority Marine Corps mission area. ADM Franchetti illuminated the complexity of the PRC’s interconnected utilization of dual-use forces such as the Chinese maritime militia. 4 As reported by the Irregular Warfare Initiative, the Chinese maritime militia employs commercial fishing vessels to engage in coordinated aggressive sea denial swarming tactics in tandem with People’s Liberation Army Navy and Chinese Coast Guard ships.5
Reports also claim that Chinese fishing vessels frequently deceive maritime transponders and falsify their identity to evade detection.6 The Chinese maritime militia has created a Blue Ocean demand in business parlance without an existing market solution.7 Problem sets, such as the Chinese maritime militia, are best neutralized with non-kinetic resources in the advent of conflict. Neither the Corps nor the Navy have openly discussed a remedy for noncombatant vessels akin to the maritime militia in the past. Therefore, the Corps should have a vested interest in locating and interdicting fishing vessels, if necessary, as part of the overarching fleet campaign in the Indo-Pacific area of operations.
“MARSOC seeks to provide the joint force with the capability to share the operating environment; illuminate adversary actions, activities, and intentions; and provide options to impose cost, both kinetically and non-kinetically, from competition to conflict.” 8
—Gen David H. Berger
Raiders of the Lost Amphibious Ready Group (ARG) (Who 2.0 and What) For the new project to succeed, the Marine Corps must depart from existing practices and create a spinout organization to support maritime reconnaissance.9 The traditional MAGTF construct has the potential for numerous friction points and competing interests. Traditionalists would say a new formation is simply a SP-MAGTF, but a familiar naming convention only deters progress. Therefore, a newly acquired Marine maritime reconnaissance platform and associated personnel should be a stand-alone formation. The force’s composition should remain as fluid as the virtues of the MAGTF but with an eye on externally proven structures.
Our reverence for partners and allies is often discussed and mentioned as a strategic pillar. However, we can apply noteworthy value from our partners and capitalize on their lessons learned. In particular, the maritime expertise of the British Special Boat Squadrons.10 In experimental form, a Raider formation can reorganize in the footprint of a Special Boat Squadrons unit and be attached to an amphibious warship. The combined new formation and designated personnel would constitute a Marine Boat Squadron. Fortuitously, the Raider Regiment already has a distinguished history of operations in the western Pacific dating back to their reconnaissance collaborations with Coast Watchers during World War II.11
Raiders inherently possess the organic training, personnel, and organizational flexibility to establish a counterforce solution to the Chinese maritime militia network problem. In execution, this would reconnect the Raiders to their Indo-Pacific roots in a modern-day naval role. The optimal initial concept of operations also needs to depart from the standard ARG. Yet, the formation can remain close to the convenient and familiar accommodations of the San Antonio-Class Amphibious Transport Dock (LPD). Contrarians would argue that MEUs are already capable of special operations, but there is a distinction between special operations forces and special operational capability certification. The variance concerns mission authorities, proficiency, risk tolerance, and funding.
The possibility of Marines operating small boats soon has quietly gained traction. The Corps has a rich history with small vessels and previously operated several purpose-built riverine boats. Recently, the Marine Corps Reserve and the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory expressed interest in acquiring small boats for experimentation.12 Initial reports indicate the small boats are for littoral operations. Nonetheless, the combination of history and recent events does not arrive at fulfilling an over-the-horizon maritime reconnaissance role. Inevitably, including a small boat over the horizon equipped with reconnaissance operators changes the completion of the ARG-MEU team. It provides a means to close in on a problem set with a reduced signature and decreased risk-to-force.
The trouble with requirements is the struggle between aspirational and operational reality. The notional small boat platform needs to be more survivable than rigid inflatable boats with the potential combat power of World War II patrol torpedo (PT) boats. The main priority must be to acquire a small boat with sufficient operational endurance and compatibility with amphibious ships. Secondly, additional arguments over increased firepower and missile systems will only obstruct and delay the acquisition of a platform. The projected acquisition of the Medium Landing Ship (LSM) in FY2025 for 268 million dollars should serve as a cautionary tale for a maritime maneuver vessel initiative.13 The appropriate small boat acquisition is feasible through rapid prototyping of mature sea-frame designs or commercial options at a fraction of the cost of the LSM.
“Take an institution, a technology, or a method that has been forgotten or discarded and appropriate it for your own purpose. Revive something from the past by giving it a new purpose or to reinterpret and bring to life old ideas, customs, and traditions.” 14
—Stefan H. Verstappen
Sea Wolf and the Ghost How much is extracted and applied from history is a matter of perspective. In recent years, the Navy has demonstrated some indifference to its small-boat history. The Navy never truly realized the MK VIpatrol boat’s potential and ultimately killed the program as a cost-cutting measure.15 The utility of small maritime platforms is a topic of great consternation and debate. In 2021, OPNAV N95 deemed the now-divested MK VI patrol boats as non-essential in wargaming scenarios due to their limited firepower.16 However, wargaming scenarios or firepower should not be the metrics that determine a platform’s holistic utility. If those were valid metrics, the landing craft utility and landing craft air cushion would have been decommissioned several decades ago. Since the Navy disestablished the MK VI program, the Ukrainian Navy has reportedly received the boats and employed them for patrols in the Black Sea.17 The Marine Corps must not repeat the same errors the Navy made with its contemporary assessment of patrol boats.
The Ukraine-Russia conflict has challenged assumptions regarding missile firepower on a microscale and demonstrated the potential value of asymmetric warfighting capabilities. Ukraine’s tactical maritime creativity and employment of small commercial unmanned sea drones are a valuable example of asymmetric weapons innovation.18 The Houthis have also aggressively improvised irregular warfare at sea with unsophisticated technology.19 In June 2024, Houthis utilized an uncrewed surface vehicle disguised as a fishing vessel to successfully execute a kamikaze attack on the MV Tutor in the Red Sea.20 Conversely, during World War II, ADM John “Sea Wolf” Bulkeley achieved significant tactical-level
success against superior opposition as commander of the experimental PT boat unit, Submarine Division Two.21 ADM Bulkeley’s PT boats were a combination of simplicity and power. Bulkeley’s PT boats were outfitted with depth-charge racks and achieved a maximum speed of 55 knots.22 Given the emergence of irregular maritime activities, the Raiders are well-positioned to apply relevant elements from ADM Bulkeley, Ukraine’s tactical victories, and present-day asymmetrical threats.
The required mature technology is already tested, prevalent, and available. The carcass of the Mark VIpatrol boatrequirespostmortem examination beyond its utility in the littoral environment focused on the conceptual supplementary intersectional platforms capable of connecting sea-based operating forces with broader expeditionary advanced base operation activities. The MK VI’s sea-frame was among its best and most relevant qualities. In particular, the MK VI’s well-deck compatibility with amphibious ships; passenger capacity; 600+ nautical mile range; and command, control, communications, computers and intelligence capabilities.23 Significant untapped potential exists in disaggregated data link interoperability and common tactical picture integration. The MK VI also left behind a codified doctrinal procedure in the Navy’s Wet Well Manual for amphibious shipping well deck interoperability to be duplicated or modified for another sea-frame. Ultimately, the specific maritime platform is less important than the collective aggregation of the essential technical systems and functionality.
Replicator and the Expendables (How) Resource pairing and optimization are the foundational pillars of the Marine boat squadron concept. It principally combines operators with a menu of full-spectrum tactical options. Operationalizing the spinout is achievable by pairing the formation with a San Antonio-Class LPD deploying independently from an ARG. An independent deployer reduces the potential of mission creep and operational friction with broader MAGTF command element priorities. Secondly, it provides the Marine boat squadron the latitude to modify the personnel footprint without conceding shipboard space to other elements. The Marine boat squadron also provides force planners with a unique deployment package.
The boat squadron and associated boat of choice are 50 percent of the prospective cumulative combat power available. The DOD is transforming the other 50 percent of the equation from aspirational to operational under the umbrella of the Replicator initiative.25 The Replicatorprogram is devoted to fieldingthousands of affordable autonomous systems across multiple domains.26
Conversely, the Marine boat squadron’s boat would make an optimal host vessel for unmanned undersea, surface, and aerial Replicatorsystems. The notional squadron can be supported by its resource agent with mature technology to conduct multi-dimensional reconnaissance or kinetic tasking. Prepackaged containerized loitering munition launchers are also a realistic option.27 The Replicatorsystems could be loaded as expendable kinetic or non-kinetic as dictated by tasking and mission authorities. The fully developed technology available from the Replicator initiative is an upgrade from the MK VI’s MK38 machinegun system and reduces the demand for permanent weight and electrical power on the host platform.
The parallels between the past and the potential future are often peculiar. The maritime guerilla tactics and ingenuity utilized by Sri Lanka’s Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) over several decades ago are a prime case study. The squadron can draw upon the LTTE Sea Tiger, the Black Tigers group’s combined conventional swarm tactics, one-way explosive fast attacks, and electronic domain exploitation.28 The Black Tigers repeatedly proved the validity and lethality of coordinated asymmetrical attacks. A well-resourced Marine boat squadron could significantly improve the LTTE’s maritime guerilla tactics via tandem manned boat and unmanned Replicatorsystem operations for various naval targets.
“We need to conceive new ideas to address the problems and opportunities that surround us—and we need to defy the odds and make ideas actually happen.” 29
—Scott Belsky
Catalysts of Change (Why) A Marine boat squadron with organic boats is a sensible and realistic choice at the tactical level. Patrol-size boats do not garner the adversary’s satellite and radar resources compared to an aircraft carrier or other higher-profile ships.30 In the same regard, skeptics often portray today’s anti-access/area denial challenge as an unsolvable problem.31 Yet, a patrol boat can serve as an appropriate tactical countermeasure under the right circumstances. Logically, a missile barrage is not the appropriate countermeasure for a patrol-size boat. The anti-access/area-denial missile threat is more likely a problem for an LSM than a patrol boat. Thus, the opportunity for Marines to influence and change behavior in the maritime environment is highly probable and available now.
The maritime domain is dynamic and replete with expansive operational opportunities for willing participants. That is why nefarious vessels continuously exploit loopholes and freely deceive maritime transponder protocols. The ships engaged in continuous deception are doing so with motive and intent. There are simply too many of these vessels operating unchecked. Recently, the Defense Intelligence Agency(DIA) released a report on Iranian weapons smuggling operations in support of the Houthis spanning nearly a decade.32 According to the DIA, the United States and its allies have successfully interdicted twenty Iranian smuggling vessels at sea.33 The most concerning aspect of the DIA report is that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force has been identified as the source provider for the now seized anti-ship and guided missiles and ballistic missile components for the Houthis.34 The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force activities leave several questions unanswered. How many other vessels are out at sea engaging in smuggling? What other state and non-state actors are involved in smuggling missiles and high-capacity weapons? Are we doing enough to solve this dilemma for the Joint Force?
A Marine boat squadron will undoubtedly change the Joint Forces’ options to surveil, interdict, or neutralize vessels as needed. A forward-deployed squadron on a maritime maneuver platform can extend the battlespace for an LPD and other warships. The operators and boats can facilitate more sea space for Navy ships to operate outside adversary missile ranges. Ultimately, the capability is dynamic enough to influence the patterns and behaviors of other vessels.
Raiders are the optimal Marines to accomplish the specialized cross-training necessary for a Marine boat squadron faster than any other entity due to their extensive pool of personnel. Moreover, the Raider screening and selection process establishes an increased baseline for the individual operator’s capabilities. In addition, Raiders are more likely to own additional exquisite, portable technical systems complementary to a patrol-style boat and Replicatorsystems. The Raiders’ inherent access to expansive resources accelerates the functionality and employability of a forthcoming Marine boat squadron deployment. Moreover, designating this task to special operations forces ultimately bypasses the cumbersome procedural obstructions of the doctrine, organization, training, material, leadership, and education, personnel, and facilities process.35
Initiating a project of this magnitude is less complicated or expensive than the alternatives. Formally funded programmatic systems too often suffer from budgetary casualties and industrial inertia. Moreover, a Marine boat squadron project does not require special policies. Instead, it requires trust that an elite organization within the Marine Corps has the experience and ingenuity to push boundaries.
>LCDR Fermin is a Surface Warfare Officer and Amphibious Warfare Tactics Instructor serving as the Operations Officer onboard USS Portland (LPD-27).
Notes
1. Brad Smith and Carol Ann Browne, Tools and Weapons: The Promise and the Peril of the Digital Age (New York: Penguin Books, 2021).
2. Chief of Naval Operations, Lisa M. Franchetti, Chief of Naval Operations Navigation Plan for America’s Warfighting Navy 2024 (Washington, DC: 2024).
3. Gen Eric M. Smith, 39th Commandant’s Planning Guidance, (Washington, DC: August 2024).
4. Chief of Naval Operations Navigation Plan for America’s Warfighting Navy 2024.
5. Umar Ahmed Badami, “Under the Radar: Weaponizing Maritime Transponders in Strategic Competition,” Irregular Warfare Initiative, January 13, 2024, https://irregularwarfare.org/articles/under-the-radar-weaponizing-maritime-transponders-in-strategic-competition.
6. Ibid.
7. W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, “Blue Ocean Strategy,” Harvard Business Review, June 6, 2024, https://hbr.org/2004/10/blue-ocean-strategy.
8. Gen David H. Berger, “Statement of General David H. Berger Commandant of the Marine Corps on the Posture of the Marine Corps,” Marines.mil, March 28, 2023, https://www.cmc.marines.mil/Speeches-and-Transcripts/Transcripts/Article/3360019/statement-of-general-david-h-berger-commandant-of-the-marine-corps-on-the-postu.
9. Clayton M. Christensen and Marc Benioff, The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail (Boston, Massachusetts: Harvard Business Review Press, 2024).
10. Samuel A. Southworth and Stephen Tanner, U.S. Special Forces: A Guide to America’s Special Operations Units: The World’s Most Elite Fighting Force (Cambridge: Da Capo, 2002).
11. Ibid.
12. Irene Loewenson, “New in 2023: Small Boats for Marine Reserve Experimentation,” Marine Corps Times, May 5, 2023, https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/your-marine-corps/2022/12/28/new-in-2023-small-boats-for-marine-reserve-experimentation.
13. U.S. Naval Institute Staff, “Report to Congress on Navy Medium Landing Ship,” USNI News, April 26, 2024, https://news.usni.org/2024/04/26/report-to-congress-on-navy-medium-landing-ship-4.
14. Stefan H. Verstappen, The Thirty-Six Strategies (Toronto: Woodbridge Press, 2017).
15. Joseph Trevithick, “Navy Confirms It Wants to Ditch Its Very Young Mk VI Patrol Boats in New Budget Request,” The War Zone, May 28, 2021, https://www.twz.com/40844/navy-confirms-it-wants-to-ditch-its-very-young-mk-vi-patrol-boats-in-new-budget-request.
16. Joseph Trevithick and Tyler Rogoway, “The Navy Wants to Get Rid of Its Nearly Brand New Patrol Boats,” The War Zone, February 15, 2021, https://www.twz.com/39240/the-navy-wants-to-get-rid-of-its-nearly-brand-new-patrol-boats.
17. Tayfun Ozberk, “Ukraine’s First Mk VI Patrol Boat Breaks Cover,” Naval News, January 26, 2023, https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2023/01/ukraines-first-mk-vi-patrol-boat-breaks-cover.
18. H.I. Sutton, “Suspected Ukrainian Explosive Sea Drone Made from Recreational Watercraft Parts,” USNI News, October 11, 2022, https://news.usni.org/2022/10/11/suspected-ukrainian-explosive-sea-drone-made-from-jet-ski-parts.
19. Howard Altman, “First Look at Houthi Kamikaze Drone Boat That Struck Cargo
Ship in Red Sea,” The War Zone, June 17, 2024, https://www.twz.com/news-features/first-look-at-houthi-kamikaze-drone-boat-that-struck-cargo-ship-in-red-sea.
20. Ibid.
21. William B. Breuer, Sea Wolf: The Daring Exploits of Navy Legend, John D. Bulkeley (Novato: Presidio, 1989).
22. Ibid.
23. Staff, “Mark VI Patrol Boat,” Navy.mil, n.d., https://www.navy.mil/Resources/Fact-Files/Display-FactFiles/Article/2173363/mark-vi-patrol-boat.
24. Steven Johnson, Where Good Ideas Come From: The Seven Patterns of Innovation (London: Penguin, 2011).
25. Christopher Woodbridge and Vic Ruble, “Scuttlebutt Ep 164: Commandant’s Planning Guidance 2024,” MCA Scuttlebutt, September 26, 2024, podcast, website, 34:57, https://www.mca-marines.org/podcast/scuttlebutt/
scuttlebutt-ep-164-commandants-planning-guidance-2024.
26. U.S. Department of Defense, “Defense Innovation Official Says Replicator Initiative Remains on Track,” Defense.gov, n.d., https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3657609/defense-innovation-official-says-replicator-initiative-remains-on-track.
27. Joseph Trevithick, “Shipping Container Launcher Packing 126 Kamikaze Drones Hits the Market,” The War Zone, June 17, 2024, https://www.twz.com/news-features/shipping-container-launcher-packing-126-kamikaze-
drones-hits-the-market#:~:text=The%20modified%20shipping%20container%20with,including%20in%20the%20maritime%20domain.
28. Naval War College, Joint Military Operations Department, and Paul A. Povlock, A Guerilla War at Sea: The Sri Lankan Civil War (Newport: Small Wars Journal, 2011).
29. Scott Belsky, Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality (New York: Portfolio, 2014).
30. Christian Brose, The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare (New York: Hachette Books, 2022).
31. Future Joint Force Development, Cross-Domain Synergy in Joint Operations: Planner’s Guide (Washington, DC: 2016).
32. Defense Intelligence Agency, Seized at Sea: Iranian Weapons Smuggled to the Houthis (Washington, DC: April 2024).
33. Ibid.
34. Seized at Sea: Iranian Weapons Smuggled to the Houthis.
2024 LtCol Earl “Pete” Ellis Essay Contest Winner: First Place
Marines, missiles, MPF boats, and the path through PRC defenses in the Western Pacific
The onset of World War II saw U.S. naval forces experimenting with new technologies to mitigate territorial advantages held by the Imperial Japanese Armed Forces. As the campaign in the Pacific unfolded, U.S. Navy and Marine Corps elements found themselves operating beyond the expanses of the open ocean, closer to coastal areas. When warships were pushed to navigate inside confined waterways, the newly developed patrol torpedo (PT) boat emerged as an unexpectedly effective capability to support maritime operations. Fast, highly maneuverable, and relatively inexpensive to build, hundreds of PT boats were organized into squadrons and deployed across the Western Pacific. They proved especially useful during the Solomon Islands Campaign, engaging Imperial Japanese Navy warships attempting to transit the narrow channels of Iron Bottom Sound.1 With their elusive speed, considerable firepower, and seemingly unescapable quantity, PT boats disrupted Imperial Japanese Navy resupply and other maritime operations. Eight decades later, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has emerged as the new competitor in the Western Pacific and seeks to capitalize on similar territorial advantages within the region. Given the ambiguity surrounding a potential conflict, U.S. naval forces may again need to leverage experimental capabilities to ensure freedom of maneuver in the Pacific.
The new era of conflict will require U.S. maritime forces to contend with traditional PRC warships and more obtrusive surface vessels. Limited means to predict the catalyst for hostilities will require U.S. forces to pull existing capabilities into the fight to achieve initial operating objectives. Small, fast, and flexible watercraft will be the key to bridging the gap between the activities of warships and vessels operating at the lower end of the spectrum of conflict. Fortunately, U.S. naval forces already possess the tools to build a capability to address emerging threats. Marine Corps stand-in forces (SIF), deployed throughout the Western Pacific, are well-postured to operate across the continuum of competition or conflict. The maritime pre-positioning force (MPF) utility boat (UB) is a small and versatile craft currently employed by the Military Sea-Lift Command. The Javelin missile, organic to designated Army and Marine Corps formations, can support offensive or defensive operations against various adversarial threats. Combining the attributes of these seemingly disparate resources will produce a uniquely suited capability to mitigate the challenges presented by intermediate PRC threats. Teams of SIF Marines, armed with Javelin missiles and employed aboard MPF-UBs, will provide the maritime component commander with a platform to disrupt PRC operations in contested waterways.
Within the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM) area of responsibility, the PRC continues to develop and employ maritime technologies to achieve an asymmetric advantage over existing U.S. naval formations. The intricate web of anti-access/area denial capabilities is designed to deny entry and prevent freedom of maneuver throughout the first island chain (FIC). Missile boats, patrol boats, and other small watercraft present significant threats to all classes of friendly vessels attempting to transit the waters of the South China Sea (SCS). Their small size, low signature, and high speeds allow for rapid approaches to warships to penetrate minimum weapons engagement zones and operate inside defenses. The ambiguous nature of purported law enforcement or other non-military vessels strains the ability to discern intent, inhibiting the rapid engagement of prospective threats. Hefty procurement costs associated with existing and emerging U.S. anti-ship capabilities render their use against smaller PRC threats inefficient. The employment of a flexible naval asset capable of responding to threats across the spectrum of conflict will be essential to defeating coordinated layers of PRC maritime defenses.
The Type 022 Houbei-class missile patrol boat is a pivotal element of the PLAN near-seas defense strategy. The low draft, top speed of 42 knots, and a combat radius of 250 km make these boats the ideal platform to conduct operations around PLA bases and occupied territories throughout the FIC. Armed with up to eight YJ-83 anti-ship cruise missiles (ASCM), they are capable of attacking ships at distances out to 200 km.2 When employed under the cover of PLA integrated air defense systems, they can extend their operating ranges and further reduce the availability of vital maritime terrain. They attack by converging on a target with multiple boats, engaging in swarm tactics to destroy a U.S. Navy warship or constrain its ability to maneuver. Defeating the presence and effect of Houbei-class missile boats will be critical to enable the successful execution of the U.S. maritime strategy in the Western Pacific.
Another layer of the PRC maritime defense is executed by the China Coast Guard (CCG). Deployed from coastal bases and other inshore locations, its primary function is to enforce maritime laws within China’s proclaimed territorial waters. The Jiangdao-class cutters, created from repurposed warships, allow for easy conversion from law enforcement operations to a surface warfare platform.3 The equipping of Zhongtao-class patrol boats with large-caliber machineguns and high-capacity water cannons further obfuscates their perceived threat level, complicating rules of engagement (ROE) and rules for use of force (RUF) decision making when responding to their activities.4 The pervasive presence of cutters and other patrol boats also represents a persistent PRC intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and targeting (ISR-T) capability. To operate undetected and freely maneuver across the FIC, U.S. Naval forces must develop the means to counter CCG patrols and other ISR-T activities.
The third component of the PRC maritime defense strategy is the China Maritime Militia (CMM). Within the SCS, CMM vessels execute a variety of grey-zone tactics to enable the achievement of larger strategic objectives. Though not an official component of the PLA, they have been employed in conjunction with PLAN and CCG vessels to reinforce territorial claims during designated operations.5 Their firepower is limited, but crews are equipped with various small arms and the hulls of their boats are constructed using reinforced steel.6 This allows for the employment of aggressive tactics against civilian or military support vessels, as they engage in overt anti-access/area denial activities to deny foreign vessel operations in disputed waterways. CMM boats can also be outfitted with radars, navigation equipment, and communications to facilitate their employment as an ISR-T platform. Interdicting CMM operations will limit the disruption to sea lines of communication, providing U.S. warships the ability to operate unmolested inside the contested waters of the FIC.
Each echelon of PRC maritime defenses presents unique challenges to traditional naval operations in the USINDOPACOM area of responsibility. The preponderance of existing U.S. Navy capabilities in the Western Pacific are designed to engage PLAN warships or operate against high-level threats. Attempts to overcome the density and volume of lethality afforded by the Type 022 missile boats would quickly exhaust the countermeasures of the deepest operational magazines. Mitigating the pervasiveness of CCG activities to limit PRC maritime domain awareness will require the deployment of substantiative counter ISR-T capabilities. Once hostilities unfold, the ambiguous nature of CMM operations will demand a measured approach to the application of the ROE and RUF to manage the potential for escalation. Addressing intermediate threats across the spectrum of conflict will be essential to the success of U.S. naval forces operating within the web of PRC maritime defenses.
Marine Corps SIF are specifically designed to operate within contested areas, conducting sea-denial operations
to disrupt the maneuver of an adversary’s naval forces.7 Forward positioned within the FIC, they represent a foundational component of the U.S. naval strategy to mitigate the presence of PRC maritime threats. When provided with a maneuverable and low-signature watercraft, SIF Marines will be able to rapidly move about contested waters within a given area of operations. Their vessels must be fast, agile, and possess a shallow draft to allow for rapid ingress and egress of low-water areas. Crew-served weapons and other small arms will provide the organic force protection capabilities needed to ensure their survivability. A moderately ranged high-explosive projectile will offer the fire support required to neutralize or destroy smaller enemy surface vessels. Equipping SIF Marines with the requisite capabilities to deliberately shoot, rapidly move, and effectively communicate will enhance their ability to degrade intermediate PRC maritime threats in the Western Pacific.
Maritime pre-positioning force utility boats are one of the best assets to support transportation requirements within coastal areas. As a component of the Improved Naval Lighterage System, they are used by the Military Sea-Lift Command to move personnel and equipment during MPF operations. With a length of just over 41 feet and a beam of 14 feet, they have a very low profile and produce a limited radar signature during the conduct of operations. Two 660 horsepower diesel engines power a waterjet propulsion system, giving these boats significant maneuverability as they reach speeds of up to 41 knots.8 Their draft of just under three feet allows for easy navigation into and out of shallow water areas. A ramp positioned at the center of the bow enables the rapid discharge of up to 10 tons of cargo, 30 combat-loaded troops, or other materials directly onto a beach.9 The characteristics of the MPF-UB make it an ideal platform to support the maritime maneuver requirements for SIF Marines within the FIC.
The Javelin Close Combat Missile System (CCMS) is the primary anti-tank weapon for the Army and Marine Corps. It is a lightweight, man-portable, fire-and-forget missile that can easily be employed from a small vessel. In the Marine Corps, they are assigned to infantry units and employed by anti-tank missile gunners. The 8.4 kg high-explosive anti-tank warhead is autonomously delivered against targets operating at distances as far as 2,500 meters.10 The reusable command launch unit enables rapid target acquisition while also providing an enhanced daytime or infrared night vision surveillance capability. The Javelin possesses the characteristics to be the desired lethal surface-fires capability for SIF Marines conducting sea-denial operations inside the contested waterways.
Combining task-organized SIF elements, MPF-UBs, and the Javelin CCMS into a single platform will create a highly lethal capability to provide the maritime component the means to disrupt PRC operations across the spectrum of conflict. These new Marine light assault missile patrol (LAMP) boats will have the maneuverability and firepower needed to engage and neutralize intermediate adversary threats in coastal areas. Their speed will allow them to rapidly close with Houbei-class missile boats and then attack them with a volley of self-guided anti-tank missiles. Their ability to outmaneuver CCG cutters and other small craft will place them in a position to interdict maritime patrol operations or disrupt ISR-T activities inside the FIC. Marine crews armed with various small arms and crew-served weapons provide the flexibility needed to contact CMM vessels, discern their intent, and engage them if determined to be hostile. When effectively organized and widely employed within SCS, Marine LAMP Boats will be able to create opportunities for Navy warships to maneuver.
This concept is not without some disadvantages, which could impede its development and limit successful implementation. Training will be one of the primary limitations to inhibit the widespread deployment of LAMP Boats. Though infantry units are already organized with anti-tank missile gunners and machinegunners, coxswains, and navigators are not widely present in any current Marine Corps formation. Leveraging the knowledge and expertise of the Navy’s assault craft units for exercises and training can increase nautical proficiency, providing time to build capacity and mature an organic capability. Survivability is another considerable challenge within the LAMP boat concept. The MPF-UB’s relatively small size and aluminum construction will make them susceptible to deck guns, surface-to-surface missiles, or other large-caliber weapons. Crews must be prepared to maximize the MPF-UB’s speed and maneuverability to evade PLAN warships and avoid potential engagements. The final challenge to the successful employment of this concept will be the requirement for maintenance. As with other surface vessels, MPF-UBs rely on daily preventative maintenance checks and services and occasional higher-level repairs to remain operational. Littoral logistics battalions with engineer equipment mechanics or the expertise of mechanics of allies and partners will provide the technicians needed to service the MPF-UB’s two six-cylinder diesel engines. This will ensure vessels remain operational and can quickly return to the station following preventative maintenance or repairs. Mitigating the identified shortfalls will facilitate the successful employment of the LAMP boat concept while remining perceptive of other challenges during maritime operations in the FIC.
Despite the apparent challenges, the numerous advantages of the LAMP boat concept encourage the maritime component to pursue further development of this initiative. Cost is one of the primary benefits, given the limited fiscal investment required to facilitate the fielding of this platform. The price for an MPF-UB is approximately $1M and an Javelin CCMS is less than $250K for the full system; less than $100K when procuring the missile only.11 This is considerably cheaper than the estimated $3M for each Block II Harpoon missile, $2M for a Naval Strike Missile, and other high costs associated with individual ASCM systems.12 Versatility is another key advantage to the employment of LAMP boats, as they can support multiple warfighting functions. The low draft, high-payload capacity, and convenient bow ramp enable MPF-UBs to perform a variety of enabling tasks during patrols. They can easily be configured to support supply delivery, medical evacuation, or other logistics functions when not engaged in offensive operations. The most significant advantage of this concept is the ability to conduct operations across the spectrum of conflict. At the high end of the spectrum, the delivery of a volley of Javelin missiles provides a level of lethality commensurate with that of an ASCM. At the lower end of the spectrum, the ability to apply ROE/RUF considerations allows Lamp Boat crews to interrogate vessels conducting grey-zone activities and classify their status as friend or foe.
Should hostilities commence in USINDOPACOM area of responsibility, the defense in depth created by PRC anti-access/area denial capabilities has the potential to inhibit the successful entry and maneuver of U.S. naval forces. Houbei-class missile boats, CCG cutters, and CMM vessels present a variety of challenges to traditional naval operations and require a new approach for a successful campaign. Though ASCMs and other exquisite weapons systems will be essential in the fight against the PLAN, their expense and long development period could result in their untimely delivery for the prospective fight. The LAMP boat concept provides the maritime component commander with an immediately available, cost-effective, and highly lethal platform to address intermediate PRC threats within the FIC. The MPF-UB has the speed and maneuverability to keep up with Houbei-class missile boats, and the Javelin CCMS warhead is more than sufficient to neutralize the threat. They are versatile enough to interdict CCG cutters and other purported maritime law enforcement boats, disrupting PRC ISR-T activities and allowing U.S. vessels to operate more freely in the contested waterways. The LAMP boats can directly respond to CMM vessels attempting to disrupt sea lines of communication or engage in maritime surveillance, applying the appropriate level of force to neutralize their effect without concern for inadvertent escalation. The LAMP boat concept will provide the means to chart a path through echelons of mutually supporting PRC defenses, opening waterways in the SCS for U.S. warships to safely maneuver.
>Col Rainey is currently assigned as the AC/S G-9 for Marine Corps Installations Command, following graduation from the National War College in June 2024. Before being promoted to Colonel, he served as a Military Police Officer and completed various assignments within FMF and supporting establishment organizations.
Notes
1. Edmund B. Hernandez, “Fifty Tons of Fury: Bring Back the Patrol Torpedo Boat,” Proceedings, September 2018, https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2018/september/fifty-tons-fury-bring-back-patrol-torpedo-boat#:
~:text=PT%20boat%20action%20during%20World%20War%20II%20is%20well%20documented.
2. Dr. Sam Goldsmith, Vampire, Vampire, Vampire: The PLA’s Anti-Ship Cruise Missile Threat to Australian and Allied Naval Operations (Canberra: Australian Strategic Policy Institute, 2022).
3. U.S. Department of Defense, Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2023: Annual Report to Congress (Washington, DC: Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2023).
4. Caitlin Campbell and Ben Dolven, China-Philippines Tensions in the South China Sea, CRS Report for Congress IF12550 (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2023).
5. U.S. Department of Defense, Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2019: Annual Report to Congress (Washington, DC: Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2019).
6. Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2023.
7. Headquarters Marine Corps, A Concept for Stand-In Forces, (Washington, DC: December 2021).
8. Staff, “Assault Craft Unit (ACU) 1: About Us,” Navy.mil, n.d., https://www.surfpac.navy.mil/Ships/Assault-Craft-Unit-ACU-1.
9. Ibid.
10. Headquarters Department of the Army, FM 3-22.37: Javelin-Close Combat Missile System, Medium (Washington, DC: August 2013).
11. Missile Defense Project, “FGM-148 Javelin,” Missile Threat, Center for Strategic and International Studies, March 21, 2022, last modified April 23, 2024, https://missilethreat.csis.org/missile/fgm-148-javelin.
12. Jack Montgomery, “The Navy Must Build More Missiles Now,” Proceedings, August 2013, https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/
2023/august/navy-must-build-more-missiles-now.
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).
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.
