The Future of the Marine Corps Reserve

Professional growth and readiness

Proposal: Implementing Enhanced Professional Development Opportunities for Marine Corps Reservists

By enhancing the capabilities of the Marine Corps, the reserves play an essential part in U.S. military strategy. Through providing a pool of trained and disciplined personnel, they support active-duty forces during times of need. This was demonstrated during Operation IRAQI FREEDOM, where Marine Corps Reserve units were called upon to deploy and serve alongside active-duty Marines. Borrego’s research highlights that “the Reserve contributes significantly to overall military readiness and effectiveness.”1 However, the path to promotion is obstructed for part-time Marine Corps Reserve, notwithstanding their achievements. Several important parts of the current policy need to be changed, as we have discovered after surveying the relevant literature and government sources. Based on Borrego’s quantitative research of the career affiliation choices of “US Marine Corps Active Reserve Officers,” Marine Corps Reserve personnel are more likely to be happy and remain in the Service if they have the opportunity to improve professionally.2 Meyer Jr. demonstrates that training and development strategies are crucial by dissecting the Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps Program and how it includes the 38th Marine Corps Commandant’s Planning Guidance.3 This article offers a different point of view by suggesting a thorough revision of the Marine Corps Reserve Administrative Management Manual. Professional development opportunities may greatly enhance reserve Marines’ ability to advance in their careers, prepare for operations, collaborate effectively with colleagues from other areas, and grow as leaders.

Directive to Challenge: Marine Corps Order (MCO) 1001R.1: Marine Corps Reserve Administrative Management Manual

The part-time structure of the Marine Corps Reserve often makes it difficult for members to participate in substantial professional development opportunities. To ensure the Marine Corps Reserve flourishes, professional development must be reimagined. To accomplish this goal, the directive MCO 1001R.1, the Marine Corps Reserve Administrative Management Manual, needs to be updated. Despite its goal of simplifying and managing reserve support unit administration, MCO 1001R.1 has unintentionally reinforced an outdated approach that fails to address the unique issues of part-time reservists. Research shows that “reservists have unique professional development requirements, and the traditional military strategy of developing generals and flag officers may not match these objectives.”4 This is because the current policy may neglect reservists’ ongoing training and education.

These professional development restrictions may affect Marine Corps Reserve personnel’s devotion and morale too much to overlook. According to Lehmann and Kerg’s essay, “The Marine Corps Reserve is most effective when its members possess a wide variety of talents.”5 However, the current system does not actively encourage or facilitate cross-functional collaboration; thus, reservists may not have enough opportunities to develop a wide range of skills. Due to this weakness, the Marine Corps Reserve could struggle to adapt to evolving operational demands quickly. The directive’s focus on administrative procedures potentially overshadows reservists’ individual development plans (IDPs). The IDPs include professional aspirations, skill gaps, and training requirements. They boost military-relevant motivation, job satisfaction, and skill development. The planned method outlined by Meyer Jr. inspired the notion of IDPs, which may help reserve members achieve their professional goals and overcome skill shortcomings.

Rationale for Change:

Offering robust professional development opportunities enhances the career progression and satisfaction of Marine Corps Reserve personnel.6 Providing avenues for skill development, leadership training, and career guidance strengthens motivation, encourages retention, and promotes the overall longevity of the Marine Corps Reserve. According to studies, professional development opportunities help reserve members advance in their careers and find contentment. Borrego states that “active reserve officers choose jobs based on opportunities for professional advancement.”7 Jackson et al. underlined that professional development was critical for military generals and flag commanders.8 Career counseling, leadership training, and skill development improve motivation and retention.9 Relevant job training increases reserve Marines’ happiness and motivation to serve. Lehmann and Kerg state that professional development is an essential factor in reserve staff retention.10 Professional development may also improve Marine Corps Reserve operational readiness. Griffith and Ben-Ari state that the operational and training readiness of reserve soldiers is critical to overall military preparedness.11 Professional development enables reserve Marines to keep the skills and knowledge required to make the Marine Corps Reserve prosper.

Reservists may learn new skills, keep up with industry best practices, and respond to changing operational needs by investing in professional development. Well-rounded reservists with broad skill sets and current knowledge improve Marine Corps Reserve operational readiness and mission performance. The Marine Corps Reserve uses operational preparation and flexibility to justify its operational decision, stressing the necessity for professional development to train reservists for changing military activities.

Reservists require skill development, industry best practices, and operational agility to achieve their objectives. Their diverse skills and current knowledge boost Marine Corps Reserve operational flexibility and preparation, improving mission performance. Jackson et al. state that “the rise of US military generals and flag commanders supports the argument.”12 Training in flexible leadership adjustment is emphasized in the research. The suggested adjustment places a strong emphasis on leadership development as capable leaders increase military operational preparedness and adaptability.

Marines in the Individual Ready Reserve (IRR) check into an IRR musterto ensure their information is up to date in the case of receiving recall orders for augmentation into the active component of the total force. (Photo by LCpl David Intriago.)

Professional development programs let reservists from different fields communicate, progress, and network. The Marine Corps Reserve’s restructuring rationale stresses cross-functional teamwork. According to this theory, seminars, workshops, and inter-specialty training may encourage cross-functional cooperation in the Marine Corps Reserve. These learning and networking opportunities may improve the unit’s effectiveness and reservists’ careers. Lehmann and Kerg found that the Marine Corps Reserve needs varied talents.13 By emphasizing professional advancement, the suggested modifications will encourage reservists from different fields to work together. These changes are part of a more significant attempt to build a collaborative learning area that fosters cross-functional understanding by expanding technical certifications and leadership courses.

Specialist leadership programs teach Marine Corps Reserve leadership. Decision-making, communication, and people management skills may help reservists mentor junior Marines, enhance unit dynamics, and achieve mission goals. Leader development initiatives may help senior leaders flourish and train future leaders.14 Members of the Marine Corps Reserve may improve their ability to mentor others and increase their leadership development by offering chances for focused growth. Additionally, cohesiveness within the unit depends on strong leadership, especially in high-stress operational conditions. Successful communication is a prerequisite for successful leadership.15 By providing leadership development courses that place a high priority on good communication, the Marine Corps Reserve can make sure that reservists can communicate effectively while under pressure. Additionally, by encouraging a culture of mentoring and shared learning, leadership development may enhance favorable unit dynamics. Meyer Jr. points out that “reservists may assist younger members, build relationships, and share knowledge via leadership development programs.”16 These programs include mentorship programs, which connect new leaders with experienced ones.

Proposed Changes

Implement IDPs for each Marine Corps Reserve member, similar to active-duty personnel. These IDPs should be developed in collaboration with reservists, identifying their career goals, skill gaps, and training needs. The IDPs should serve as frameworks for planning and tracking professional development activities throughout a reservist’s career. Individual development plans may help reservists set goals and track progress. Borrego demonstrates that military personnel with career goals and a strategy are happier and more likely to be retained.17 The Marine Corps Reserve may ensure IDPs meet reservists’ aims and promote professional progress by including them. Using IDPs to coordinate and manage professional development improves Marine Corps Reserve training. Training programs must match corporate objectives.18 Individual development plans may relate developmental goals to a group’s mission readiness. Col Seth M. Milstein argues that the Marine Corps Reserve’s commitment to learning and development supports the proposed change.19 Considering each reservist’s needs shows IDPs’ commitment to individualized development. Platoon commanders use standardized forms to organize counseling sessions and create action plans with Marines. Scheduled follow-ups monitor these SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound) goals and training objectives. Documentation updates and evaluations provide constant input, helping Marines improve professionally and meet mission goals.

The other policy change strategy is to increase Marine Corps Reserve training by offering advanced and specialized courses. Work with active-duty units, business partners, and educational institutions to provide reservists leadership, technical, and specialist skill training. Advanced and specialized training from the Marine Corps Reserve may improve unit readiness and reserve abilities. Working with active-duty military may provide reservists access to resources and talents not available in the reserve. Foreign military training and development may boost relevance and quality. Industry experts and educational institutions may teach reservists civilian-demanded technical skills. Meyer Jr. recommends connecting military training to civilian professions and issuing industry-recognized certificates to help reservists transition.20 Industry experts and educational institutions help reservists transition military skills to civilian careers by providing industry-recognized credentials.

Mentorship programs are another proposed improvement. The proposed change would center on Marine Corps Reserve mentoring programs. This program gives younger reservists the chance to learn from and collaborate with veteran commissioned officers and staff non-commissioned officers. This initiative may help reservists create mentoring links while serving their nation. The proposals emphasize mentoring as a customized professional development technique. Mentoring programs match less experienced reservists with more experienced ones. Mentors help with job advancement and morale. Mentorship fits this leadership development model by pairing less-experienced reservists with more experienced leaders. Mentors for Marine Corps Reserve troops are generally assigned based on experience and competence. Regular meetings, clear communication, and goal-oriented talks foster relationships. Formal mentoring programs provide reservists with continuing assistance and professional growth. This change attempts to maximize the quantity of training opportunities and resolve scheduling conflicts for part-time reservists. According to Hayashi and Pfannenstiel’s analysis of the Marine Corps Systems Command contracting workforce competency assessment, technology plays a significant role in enhancing worker competence.21 The recommended virtual platforms, which use technology to provide reservists with readily available and flexible training options, corroborate this point of view. The Marine Corps Reserve’s commitment to lifelong learning, as mentioned in Col Seth M. Milstein’s “Thinking Bigger: Global and Revolutionary Over Regional and Evolving,” lends credence to the proposed change.22 Reservists have continual access to resources for professional development via virtual platforms, which encourages a culture of lifelong learning.

2d Battalion 24th Marines conducts Integrated Training Exercise 3-26 to generate combat readiness and ensure the reserve component provides critical strategic depth to the total force. (Photo by Cpl Van Hoang.)

Honoring the Marine Corps Reserve’s civilian talents and certifications may help them succeed professionally and enhance their reserve capabilities. A program to recognize civilians’ transferable abilities may help the reserve promote lifelong learning. This will encourage reserve members to choose civilian employment. Jackson et al. state that “recognizing and rewarding non-military competence is essential to building a diverse and competent officer corps.”23 The reserve may attract more candidates by recognizing civilian skills. The Service can create a more diversified and productive workforce and maximize reservists’ skills by incorporating civilian credentials and experience into reserve training and development programs. Borrego shows that reservists may advance in their careers by being acknowledged for their civilian skills connected to their military service.24

Performance Measurement

Marine Corps Reserve initiatives will be measured by key performance indicators for skills and knowledge, preparedness for operations, cooperation across departments, and leadership effectiveness. The monitoring approach will concentrate on reservist participation and completion rates. This will be in planned professional development programs using civilian skills recognition and virtual training platforms. These initiatives succeed when popular and complete. Reservists who get civilian certificates and abilities will be extensively monitored for advancement, promotions, and professional growth to assess the usefulness of external credentials. By examining preparedness, deployment, and mission goals, key performance indicators will assess the Marine Corps operational readiness. Commanders and peers will evaluate reserve leadership and cross-functional collaboration via performance assessments and surveys. Reservists’ opinions on career advancement, professional growth, and civilian skills applied to military duties will be qualitative key performance indicators.

Conclusion

The report proposed various Marine Corps Reserve measures to improve professional development, operational preparedness, interdepartmental cooperation, and leadership. Recognition of civilian credentials, virtual training platforms, cross-functional teams, and leadership development programs is suggested. The Marine Corps Reserve must improve civilian skills to be ready and successful in a more complex operational environment. The policy’s effectiveness in improving professional growth and operational preparedness was critically assessed. The investigation concludes that reservists’ civilian skills may improve Marine Corps Reserve preparedness and effectiveness. The recommended treatments may improve self-improvement and cross-functional teamwork, increasing the Marine Corps Reserve budget return on investment. Active duty and reserve leadership must work together to implement these ideals in the Marine Corps Reserve. The Marine Corps’ capacity to adapt to new trends and technologies will determine program success.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

>Sgt Amir, a 23-year-old reservist, currently serves as the Assistant Legal Chief at 6th Communication Battalion, Headquarters Company in Brooklyn, NY. He possesses a Bachelor of Science in Leadership with a concentration in Interdisciplinary Studies, a Master of Science in Homeland Security with a concentration in Leadership, and is currently pursuing a Doctorate in Business Administration at Trident University. Along with his dedication to continuous learning, he also has a strong desire to educate and assist others.

Notes

1. A. L. Borrego, Honor, Courage, and Varying Forms of Commitment: A Quantitative Study into the Career Affiliation Decisions of United States Marine Corps Active Reserve Officers (University of Baltimore, 2020). 

2. Borrego, Honor, Courage, and Varying Forms of Commitment. 

3. D. W. Meyer Jr., Implementing the 38th Commandant of the Marine Corps’ Planning Guidance into the Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps Program (2020). 

4. Kimberly Jackson et al., Raising the Flag: Implications of US Military Approaches to General and Flag Officer Development (Washington, DC: RAND Corporation, 2020). 

5. C. G. C. Lehmann and M. B. Kerg, “A Response to Maneuverist #19,” Marine Corps Gazette (2022). 

6. Meyer, Implementing the 38th Commandant’s Planning Guidance. 

7. Borrego, Honor, Courage, and Varying Forms of Commitment. 

8. Jackson et al., Raising the Flag. 

9. Meyer, Implementing the 38th Commandant’s Planning Guidance. 

10. Lehmann and Kerg, “Response to Maneuverist #19.” 

11. James Griffith and Eyal Ben-Ari, “Reserve Military Service: A Social Constructionist Perspective,” Armed Forces & Society 47, no. 4 (2021): 635–660. 

12. Jackson et al., Raising the Flag. 

13. Lehmann and Kerg, “Response to Maneuverist #19.” 

14. Jackson et al., Raising the Flag. 

15. Seth M. Milstein, “Thinking Bigger: Global and Revolutionary over Regional and Evolutionary” (2023). 

16. Meyer, Implementing the 38th Commandant’s Planning Guidance. 

17. Borrego, Honor, Courage, and Varying Forms of Commitment. 

18. Meyer, Implementing the 38th Commandant’s Planning Guidance. 

19. Milstein, “Thinking Bigger.” 

20. Meyer, Implementing the 38th Commandant’s Planning Guidance. 

21. S. Hayashi and A. Pfannenstiel, Analysis of Marine Corps Systems Command Contracting Workforce Competency Assessment (2021). 

22. Milstein, “Thinking Bigger.” 

23. Jackson et al., Raising the Flag. 

24. Borrego, Honor, Courage, and Varying Forms of Commitment.

A Letter from LtGen Leonard F. Anderson IV, Commander, Marine Forces Reserve and Marine Forces South

Since 1916, the Marine Corps Reserve has served as an indispensable component of our Nation’s combat power—mobilized in every major conflict from Belleau Wood to the streets of Fallujah. Today, that legacy continues with a force that is structured, scalable, and globally engaged.

On August 29, 1916, Congress passed the Naval Appropriations Act, officially establishing the United States Marine Corps Reserve. This year, we celebrate our 110th anniversary. For over a century, the Citizen-Marine has been a cornerstone of our national defense, stepping away from civilian lives, families, and careers to answer the nation’s call. Throughout our history, Reserve Marines have consistently answered the most fundamental question that defines our Corps: “Can people count on you?” They answered it at Belleau Wood, Iwo Jima, the Chosin Reservoir, Hue City, Fallujah, and Helmand Province.

As we mark this milestone, it is important to reflect on where we have been, but it is absolutely critical that we focus on where we are going. The Marine Corps Reserve is no longer just a “break glass in case of emergency” strategic fallback. We are a vital, deeply integrated operational force executing planned, predictable rotations across the globe. This evolution provides our Marines with a clear horizon for deployments and delivers a more ready, scalable, and lethal force to our Combatant Commanders. In fact, next year we will approach having ten percent of our force forward deployed, the most significant level we have seen since 2013, and the demand from the Joint Force continues to grow.

This increased operational tempo is made possible by the unique, asymmetric advantage we bring to the fight: our civilian acumen. The modern Reserve Marine is a dual-hatted professional. The same Marine operating as a cyber warfare specialist on a drill weekend is often a cybersecurity architect for a tech firm during the week. We see this immense value daily within our Civil Affairs teams, intelligence specialists, and advisor companies. They leverage their real-world experience to navigate complex networks, build regional partnerships, and solve problems with a breadth of expertise that simply cannot be replicated by military training alone.

The future of warfare is increasingly complex and driven by rapid technological change. To meet this reality, we are modernizing concurrently with the Active Component. There is no “Active Corps” and “Reserve Corps,” there is only the United States Marine Corps. We fight as one, and we must train and equip as one. Whether our formations are destined for the First Island Chain or supporting missions in domains like space and cyber, they must have the exact same next-generation systems as their active-duty counterparts. Furthermore, we are aggressively harnessing technology internally, utilizing an AI task force to better predict readiness and manage the immense talent within our ranks.

Having lived the life of a Reserve Marine for over two decades, I understand the unique pressures of balancing a civilian career, military duties, and family. Ensuring our dispersed force and their families have the support they need is not a secondary effort; it is a critical component of our readiness. Initiatives like the USMCR Connect app are helping bridge the gap, keeping our families informed and supported no matter where they live. But no matter how much technology advances, we must never lose our commitment to “Brilliance in the basics.” Success will always rely on well-led, highly disciplined Marines who trust the person to their left and right implicitly.

To the Marines and Sailors of the Reserve Component: Your dedication to balancing your lives to serve this nation is the very definition of character. You provide our Corps with a surge-ready, combat-credible capability at a fraction of the cost, proving that we are a force of consequence.

Happy 110th Birthday to the United States Marine Corps Reserve. Be proud of the legacy you have inherited and remain relentlessly focused on the future we are building together.

Leonard F. Anderson IV Lieutenant General, U.S. Marine Corps Commander, Marine Forces Reserve And Marine Forces South

The Hidden Engine of Strategy

Interpersonal trust in the Pacific War and its implications for the modern ROK-U.S. alliance

Histories of the Pacific War tend to focus on industrial production, technological competition, and the clash of operational plans. These factors mattered. But they do not fully explain why some decisions moved quickly and boldly while others were paralyzed by institutional friction, or why an alliance that defeated Japan in four years planted the seeds of a Cold War that lasted four decades. This article argues that interpersonal trust among commanders and heads of state was a decisive variable at both levels. Where trust existed, it overcame structural dysfunction and accelerated strategy. Where trust was absent, deception took its place, and the results were costly in ways that went well beyond the immediate military situation. These lessons speak directly to the Republic of Korea (ROK)-U.S. alliance today, where the human dimension of coalition warfare remains as important as any weapons system or command arrangement.1

MacArthur and Halsey: Trust as an Operational Accelerant

The most serious organizational weakness in America’s Pacific War was the absence of a unified theater commander, a deficiency that historians have attributed directly to “service interests and personality problems.”2 The Joint Chiefs maintained this arrangement deliberately, arguing that parallel commands offered operational advantages, but the costs in coordination were real. The Southwest Pacific Area under GEN Douglas MacArthur and the Pacific Ocean Areas under ADM Chester W. Nimitz operated as parallel commands, each guarding its resources and vision. The Army wanted to liberate the Philippines and sever Japan’s southern supply lines. The Navy wanted to drive through the Central Pacific toward Formosa. Neither Service was willing to subordinate its forces to the other.3

One factor that prevented this institutional stalemate from becoming operational paralysis was the personal relationship between MacArthur and ADM William F. Halsey. Thomas Alexander Hughes, in his authoritative biography Admiral Bill Halsey: A Naval Life, offers an important corrective to the popular image of Halsey as a simple, aggressive brawler. Hughes reveals a commander of genuine interpersonal sophistication who understood that coalition effectiveness depended on personal credibility as much as on formal command arrangements.4 Halsey was among the very few senior naval officers who could work effectively under MacArthur. ADM Thomas C. Kinkaid, who commanded the Seventh Fleet, was another.5 But it was Halsey whose relationship with MacArthur carried the deepest personal dimension, largely because both men shared a professional identity shaped entirely by military service.

MacArthur’s trust in Halsey was earned through specific operational behavior. At Guadalcanal and throughout the Solomon Islands campaign, Halsey repeatedly put his carriers at risk in support of Army and Marine ground operations. This stood in contrast to the Navy’s general preference for preserving fleet strength. When the two met in Brisbane in April 1943, MacArthur was struck by Halsey’s willingness to fight for a shared objective rather than protect his Service’s institutional interests.6 Their partnership provided essential coordination between two commands that had no formal mechanism for cooperation.

That trust produced a concrete strategic result in September 1944. Halsey’s Third Fleet conducted preparatory air strikes across the central Philippines and found Japanese air defenses far weaker than intelligence had projected, a result of severe Japanese aircraft losses earlier in the campaign. Halsey recommended bypassing the planned invasion of Mindanao entirely and striking directly at Leyte, compressing the timeline by two months.7 MacArthur was at sea and observing radio silence when the recommendation arrived. It was LTG Richard K. Sutherland, MacArthur’s chief of staff, who accepted the recommendation on his behalf and immediately notified the Joint Chiefs that the command was prepared to execute the Leyte operation with a target date of 20 October.8 The Joint Chiefs approved the proposal on 15 September. An approved operational sequence covering several months was set aside in a matter of days.

The mechanism worth noting here is not simply that Halsey provided timely intelligence. It is that MacArthur’s headquarters acted on it without hesitation and without calling for a staff review. Sutherland did not treat the proposal with the inter-Service suspicion that pervaded Washington. He could move at that speed because the trust MacArthur had built with Halsey over two years of shared operations had become embedded in the command itself. It was not a personal relationship between two commanders alone that produced this result. It was an institutional culture of trust that those two commanders had created together. No organizational directive could have replicated it.

The partnership survived its most severe test at the Battle of Leyte Gulf in October 1944. Halsey, detecting a Japanese carrier force approaching from the north, took his entire fleet in pursuit and left the San Bernardino Strait unguarded. The Japanese Center Force passed through and nearly destroyed the landing force’s escort carriers before withdrawing.9 It was a serious operational error, and historians have debated Halsey’s judgment on this point ever since.10 What is notable is that MacArthur did not call for Halsey’s relief, and their cooperation continued without interruption through the end of the war.11 The trust they had built over two years was resilient enough to absorb a major mistake. This points to something often overlooked: interpersonal trust does not simply accelerate good decisions. It also provides a buffer when decisions go wrong.

Grand Strategic Failure: Roosevelt, Truman, and Stalin

At the grand-strategic level, the Pacific War offers the inverse lesson. The absence of genuine trust among the Allied principals produced a war termination at maximum violence and established the adversarial foundation for the Cold War. Tsuyoshi Hasegawa’s Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan reconstructs these dynamics with exceptional care, analyzing the final months of the war as a three-way competition in which each party was calculating against its allies as much as against Japan.12

President Franklin D. Roosevelt believed that personal diplomacy at the summit level could achieve what formal institutions could not. As Frank Costigliola argues in Roosevelt’s Lost Alliances, Roosevelt was convinced that cultivating a personal relationship with Stalin would allow the United States to manage Soviet behavior in the postwar world.13 At Yalta in February 1945, acting on this conviction, Roosevelt accepted substantial concessions to secure Soviet entry into the Pacific War: rights at Dairen, the Chinese Eastern Railway, southern Sakhalin, and the Kuril Islands. He trusted that the relationship would provide a check on Soviet ambitions that the treaty language could not.

It was not a personal Relationship … It was an institutional culture of trust that those two commanders had created together. 

The concessions were real and lasting. The relationship was not. Stalin was a calculating realist who honored commitments precisely as long as they served Soviet interests. Roosevelt’s faith that interpersonal warmth could substitute for structural guarantees was, in the end, a form of strategic naivete. The Yalta concessions gave the Soviet Union a legitimized framework for extending its influence across the Far East, and nothing in the personal relationship prevented Stalin from using it.14

The situation changed when Harry S. Truman assumed the presidency in April 1945. Truman distrusted Stalin and was determined to prevent Soviet expansion in Asia. The Trinity nuclear test during the Potsdam Conference in July transformed his strategic calculus. With an atomic weapon available, the United States no longer needed Soviet intervention to force Japan’s surrender. Soviet entry now represented a liability, since it would give the Soviet Union a basis for participating in the occupation of Japan and a foothold in East Asian affairs.

Hasegawa’s central argument about the Potsdam Proclamation deserves particular attention.15 Truman and Secretary of State James F. Byrnes knew that Japan’s moderate faction was seeking a negotiated peace and that their minimum condition was a guarantee of the imperial institution. Truman and Byrnes deliberately left any such guarantee out of the Proclamation, knowing that Japan would reject terms that left the emperor’s fate unresolved. The rejection would then provide the political justification for using the atomic bomb before Soviet forces could enter the war. This was not a failure of communication. It was a calculated move directed at Japan and, implicitly, at the Soviet ally.

Stalin was running a parallel calculation. The Japanese government was requesting Soviet mediation to open negotiations with the United States, hoping to avoid unconditional surrender. Stalin and Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov maintained deliberate ambiguity, keeping Japan from seeking a separate peace while Soviet commanders moved over a million soldiers into position for the invasion of Manchuria.16 Stalin’s central concern was that the war might end before Soviet forces were ready to claim their share of the postwar settlement.

In August 1945, these strategies collided. Truman authorized the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on 6 August, in part to force Japan’s capitulation before the Soviets entered the war. Stalin abrogated the Neutrality Pact and launched the Manchurian invasion on 9 August. The second atomic bomb fell on Nagasaki the same day.17 Hasegawa argues that it was the combination of these blows, not either one in isolation, that broke Japanese resistance. The leadership had relied on Soviet neutrality as a diplomatic lifeline. When that option collapsed at the same moment as the atomic attacks, the conditions sustaining continued resistance were simultaneously destroyed.

The deeper lesson is not about whether the atomic bomb was the right decision. It is about what the whole sequence reveals. Three allied nations fighting a common enemy were simultaneously deceiving one another about their real objectives. No genuine trust existed among them at the level where it most mattered. The competitive logic driving those deceptions survived intact into the postwar order and became the direct foundation of the Cold War.

Implications for the ROK-US Alliance

The ROK-U.S. Alliance was built on a different kind of foundation. During the Korean War, the performance of Gen Paik Sun-yup and the ROK First Division at the Pusan Perimeter left a lasting impression on American commanders. Paik’s personal courage under fire and the demonstrated reliability of his troops in defensive positions along the Naktong River convinced GEN Douglas MacArthur, GEN Matthew B. Ridgway, and MG Edwin A. Walker that their Korean counterparts were genuine combat partners.18 That judgment translated directly into institutional outcomes. The KATUSA program, and ultimately the 1953 Mutual Defense Treaty, were downstream consequences of trust earned in combat rather than negotiated in conference rooms.

The alliance has evolved considerably since 1953, and the challenges it faces today are different in character. The Combined Forces Command now operates across multiple domains and functions within a broader Indo-Pacific strategic architecture. The command systems are sophisticated, but a recent analysis published in Military Review raises a concern that the Pacific War cases help contextualize.19 The digital liaison teams that historically enabled real-time data sharing between U.S. and ROK commands have been reduced for force management reasons. In contingency scenarios, U.S. commanders may find themselves dependent on telephone reports from Korean liaison officers, a communication method from 1950, inside a 21st-century headquarters. The gap between technical capability and human connectivity creates a genuine operational risk.

The MacArthur-Halsey dynamic offers a useful analogy. That partnership worked because it was built through shared operational experience, including a crisis. Halsey arrived in the South Pacific Area during one of the most difficult periods of the Guadalcanal campaign, and it was precisely his willingness to fight through that crisis, to commit his forces aggressively when the situation was most uncertain, that convinced MacArthur his partnership was worth sustaining. When Halsey made his Leyte recommendation, MacArthur did not need to evaluate the proposal from scratch. He already knew Halsey’s professional judgment and trusted his instincts from two years of operational experience together. That prior relationship allowed the decision to move at the speed the situation required. Without it, the same proposal would have generated institutional friction and delay. The same logic applies to combined operations today. Large-scale field training exercises, officer exchange programs, and sustained unit partnerships are not merely readiness activities. They are the mechanisms through which the trust needed for fast, effective combined action is actually built.

The documented experience of the 3rd Cavalry Regiment’s combined training with the 136th ROK Infantry Battalion shows how this investment pays off in practical terms. Joint training events produced measurable improvements in command post integration and procedural coordination.20 These activities suffered during the COVID pandemic and the diplomatic pressures of the 2018–2019 period. Restoring them should be treated as a strategic priority rather than a training preference.

MajGen Kyle Ellison, commanding general of 3d MarDiv, and the commander of the 6th Brigade, Republic of Korea Marine Corps conducting battlefield circulation at Baengnyeongdo Island, Republic of Korea, 25 March 2026. The visit increased shared situational awareness of the Northwest Islands and strengthened the alliance. (Photo by GySgt Antonio Campbell.)

The author writes from direct experience with this problem. As a combined training officer at Headquarters, Republic of Korea Marine Corps, he planned and coordinated a sustained portfolio of combined and multinational exercises: KMEP and Ssangyong on the Korean Peninsula, and overseas exercises including Talisman Sabre in Australia, RIMPAC in Hawaii, Cobra Gold in Thailand, and Kamandag in the Philippines. What those experiences made clear is that the operational value of combined training cannot be captured in readiness metrics alone. Every planning cycle, every coordination friction worked through at the staff level, every night spent in the field alongside counterparts from another Service or nation, deposits something that cannot be manufactured in a crisis. It deposits familiarity, and familiarity is the precondition of trust. The officer who has planned an amphibious exercise with an American counterpart, argued through a logistics problem with him, and seen how he responds when things go wrong, carries something into a combined headquarters that no exchange of liaison reports can replicate. The exercises are not overhead. They are the investment that makes the alliance real.

Conclusion

The Pacific War was decided by industrial production, logistics, and military skill, but its most consequential turning points were shaped by the quality of personal relationships among the people making the decisions. The trust MacArthur and Halsey built through two years of shared operations allowed MacArthur’s headquarters to compress a two-month operational sequence into a rapid decision. Roosevelt’s misplaced confidence in Stalin yielded lasting strategic costs. Truman’s distrust of Stalin, combined with Stalin’s own calculations, produced a war termination at maximum destruction and established the adversarial framework that defined the next half-century of international relations.

The author writes from a relevant vantage point. As a Korean officer currently enrolled in the Marine Corps University Command and Staff College at Quantico, he works daily alongside officers of the United States Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps, as well as officers from United Nations Command force-providing nations. The professional relationships taking shape in these classrooms are not incidental to the curriculum. They are among its most durable products, and they confirm what the historical record suggests: an officer who already knows how his counterpart thinks will perform differently in a combined headquarters than one who meets him for the first time when the crisis begins.

For the ROK-U.S. Alliance, the practical implication is straightforward. The alliance motto, We Go Together (Katchi Kapshida), describes a form of strategic capability that no treaty provision or technology can replace.21 The officers who train together, work through tactical problems together, and develop genuine confidence in each other’s judgment are the ones who will make the Alliance function when it matters most. Sustaining that human dimension, through consistent training, cultural exchange, and officer-to-officer relationships, is not a secondary concern. It is the hidden engine of strategic success.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

>Maj Kong serves with the Republic of Korea Marine Corps.

Notes

1. U.S. Army, The Army Human Dimension Strategy (Washington, DC: Department of the Army, 2015), 3. 

2. Stanley L. Falk, “Interservice Rivalry in the Pacific,” U.S. Army War College Paper (Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army War College, 1986), 1, https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA528913.pdf. 

3. Ibid., 2. 

4. Thomas Alexander Hughes, Admiral Bill Halsey: A Naval Life (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016), 213. 

5. Gerald E. Wheeler, Kinkaid of the Seventh Fleet: A Biography of Admiral Thomas C. Kinkaid (Washington, DC: Naval Historical Center, 1995), 255–258. 

6. Hughes, Admiral Bill Halsey, 219. 

7. Trent Hone, Mastering the Art of Command: Admiral Chester W. Nimitz and Victory in the Pacific (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2022), 267–268; Samuel Eliot Morison, History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, vol. 12 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1958), 13–15; National Defense University Press, “Movement and Maneuver at Leyte, October 1944,” accessed March 6, 2026, https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Media/News/News-Article-View/Article/4193655/movement-and-maneuver-at-leyte-october-1944. 

8. Ronald H. Spector, Eagle Against the Sun: The American War with Japan (New York: Free Press, 1985), 430. 

9. E. B. Potter, Bull Halsey (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1985), 291. 

10. Hughes, Admiral Bill Halsey, 256. Hughes argues that Halsey’s decision, though operationally flawed, reflected a coherent offensive philosophy rather than simple recklessness. 

11. Cassidy, “General of the Army Douglas MacArthur,” 38. 

12. Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), 3. 

13. Frank Costigliola, Roosevelt’s Lost Alliances: How Personal Politics Helped Start the Cold War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), 201. 

14. Hasegawa, Racing the Enemy, 44. 

15. Ibid., 155. Hasegawa demonstrates that Truman and Byrnes deliberately omitted any guarantee of the imperial institution from the Potsdam Proclamation, knowing Japan would reject the terms. 

16. Ibid., 107. 

17. Ibid., 238. 

18. Paik Sun-yup, From Pusan to Panmunjom (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 1992), 27. 

19. John A. Bonin, “Mission Essential: Rebuilding the ROK-US Combined Forces Command,” Military Review (November–December 2022): 50. 

20. U.S. Army, “Tactical Interoperability through Combined Training: A KRF Story,” accessed March 6, 2026, https://www.army.mil/article/286709. 

21. Combined Forces Command, “CFC Underlines Ironclad Commitment during Ceremony,” accessed March 6, 2026, https://www.pacom.mil/Media/News/News-Article-View/Article/3584546.

Colonel John Ripley

Medal of Honor worthy in service and in life

The most important Marine Corps leadership principle is set the example. Any leader of any organization must demonstrate and enforce the values of the organization. I pray constantly to have the strength to set the example for my Marines and sailors because they deserve a leader who upholds the standards they maintain. We are blessed to have countless examples of Marine Corps leaders who demonstrated our values across our history. There are many airmen, sailors, and soldiers who did the same. One Marine often left off the common lists of Marine Corps legends who may be the best example of all is Col John Ripley.

John Ripley is one of the greatest of the many storied heroes in the history of the Marine Corps. His name and his actions should stand among those of Dan Daly, John Basilone, and Baldomero Lopez. His legacy remains unfairly judged and reduced for unnecessary political reasons. We must cement Col Ripley’s legacy in the hall of our grandest heroes by finally awarding him the Medal of Honor. Col John Ripley deserves this award not only for his heroic actions in Vietnam but for his example of leadership to all future Marines and citizens.

The President may award, and present in the name of Congress, a medal of honor of appropriate design, with ribbons and appurtenances, to a person who, while a member of the naval service, distinguishes himself conspicuously by gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty: while engaged in an action against an enemy of the United States; while engaged in military operations involving conflict with an opposing foreign force; or while serving with friendly foreign forces engaged in an armed conflict against an opposing armed force in which the United States is not a belligerent party.1

Few men in the history of the world have distinguished themselves by gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of their lives above and beyond the call of duty like John Ripley.

Col Ripley’s most famous act of heroism took place in Dong Ha, Vietnam, where he single-handedly delayed the North Vietnamese Army from advancing to Saigon.2 Then-Capt Ripley demonstrated extraordinary fitness and courage while climbing across a bridge to destroy the structure. This act meets all qualifications of the Medal of Honor and epitomizes the setting the example leadership principle. Ripley continuously exposed himself to enemy fire, established an effective demolition system to successfully destroy the bridge, and coordinated indirect fire to further limit the communist advance.3 He further demonstrated his commitment to his mission and to the South Vietnamese people while safely escorting a mother and daughter out of the impact area.4 Ripley’s heroism saved countless lives that day and provided valuable time for the South Vietnamese people to find safety before the eventual North Vietnamese success in the war. His actions personified the selfless, courageous, and lethal traits forever ingrained in the Marine Corps and deserve the highest honor in return.

The excuses for Col Ripley’s award vary. The author of An American Knight, Norman Fulkerson, suggests the Medal of Honor was evaded by Ripley due to a late report of the heroic event.5 I do not read any aspect of the U.S. Code to include a statute of limitations on awarding the Medal of Honor. SFC Alwyn Cashe received the Medal of Honor sixteen years after originally earning a Silver Star for his heroics while saving soldiers from a burning Bradley.6 Cashe’s award provides precedent to look back at Ripley’s Navy Cross for an upgrade. President Biden recently awarded seven Medals of Honor for service member actions during the Korean and Vietnam Wars, further advancing the precedent established with SFC Cashe.7 I also hear in conversation how Ripley’s efforts at the Dong Ha Bridge did not represent the political aspirations of the administration trying to withdraw from Vietnam. The political goals of politicians do not change the impact Ripley had during the battle, and those goals do not lessen the incredible acts performed that day. The reason for Col Ripley’s lack of recognition may be political now but likely not following the event. I was not alive when John Ripley saved thousands of innocent lives while leading the destruction of communist forces, so why he was not awarded the Medal of Honor 30 years ago is impossible for me to answer. I can, however, assess the current political climate and determine the reasons John Ripley does not have a Medal of Honor still today.

Col Ripley testified to Congress in 1992 on the potential integration of women into combat roles within the U.S. military, and subsequently provided insight on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell in 1993. His positions are controversial but rooted in his undeniable experience and were unquestionably intended to protect the high standards and effectiveness of his beloved Marine Corps. Col Ripley’s positions on female and homosexual integration are the reasons his legacy remains restricted in public view and the reasons he does not have the Medal of Honor. I do not argue for or against his positions, although I will always maintain that any American of any background who can shoot, move, communicate, and lead with moral intentions in defense of our people and our Constitution is welcome on any team of mine. Those positions, like the political aspirations of an administration in the 1970s, do not change the heroics John Ripley displayed in Vietnam. It is time to move beyond any agenda and award Col John Ripley the Medal of Honor.

The best parts of John Ripley’s story and life will continue to have positive impacts on Marine and naval leaders regardless of his Medal of Honor status. His actions at Dong Ha are immortalized in Memorial Hall at the United States Naval Academy. The display of then-Capt Ripley scaling the bridge and the grand painting of Col Ripley adjacent to the statue remains one of my favorite locations to visit. The monuments and memorials of heroes like Ripley, John Paul Jones, and Chester Nimitz serve as the best beacons of leadership in the Naval Service. His efforts in combat are only some aspects of Ripley’s leadership that we must continue to admire for generations.

John Ripley’s reputation as a Christian, a husband, and a father is also Medal of Honor worthy.

One of the most difficult things to do as a Marine is to balance the role of service member with the important duties as a husband and father. The same challenge applies to women as a wife and mother, often more challenging when it comes to nurturing children. It is even more impressive to maintain the high standards of those positions while also upholding the values of your religion. The Marines I look up to most embody the same balance John Ripley led his life with. Col Ripley maintained undivided commitments to Christ, his family, and his country, all while performing some of the most incredible acts of combat and sacrifice in history. His performance in these arenas of life serves as a guide of what is possible, what is righteous, and what the true character standard is for leaders of our Nation’s sons and daughters.

John Ripley’s success in each of these arenas also serves as a reminder of how to best lead our Marines and sailors. Our Marines and sailors will struggle to balance these roles, just as I do, and I am sure just as Col Ripley did, even if his teams never noticed. The challenge for leaders is to support that balance while maintaining the standards and ensuring mission accomplishment. Another challenge is to push back against the glorification of risky behaviors like drinking and loose sex. These are difficult conversations to have with our Marines and sailors, especially those without families, but conversations we must continue to have as leaders. Our Marine Corps must culturally reject the ideas that Marines must drink heavily, have sex with lots of women, cover our bodies in tattoos, and ride around in the fastest cars and on the toughest motorcycles. Those behaviors and actions do not make you a bad Marine at all, but they also should not be viewed as the traits required to be a good Marine either. Our Service should instead highlight and reinforce being great husbands and wives, great fathers and mothers, great brothers and sisters, both at home and within our formations, and the best stewards of support to our communities. We should go to the ends of the earth to highlight our Marines and sailors who sacrifice time and effort for each other and for their families. Col Ripley’s example of leadership is the perfect balance of fierce warfighting proficiency and relentless family and community support. His example is what we should all strive for and is another reason his record deserves the accompaniment of the Medal of Honor.

If you are a young or new leader, maybe a team leader or platoon commander, Col John Ripley’s life can provide the best recommendations to lead: Set the example, establish a standard for your unit, then hold yourself and your Marines accountable to that standard. Setting the example is critical because, without that example, it is impossible to expect the same from your team. The do as I say not as I do leaders are the most toxic and most dangerous among our teams. Be the guiding beacon you want your team to follow. Setting the example directly feeds into establishing the standard for your unit. Buy-in to the standard greatly increases when the leader lives it and when the team decides on the standard together. The standard should be conditions-based and agreed upon by the team, which leads to trust and accountability throughout. The example from the leader and the agreed standards of the team forces the team to stay on the same page and maintain accountability. When one member falters, which will happen often, the other team members will lift them up and get everyone back on track. Col John Ripley spent his life maintaining a tremendous standard and lifting all those around him up. His example and his standards reinforce the best leadership traits of the Marine Corps, and his actions are worthy of recognition, with or without the Medal of Honor. We can never forget Col Ripley’s example and must continue to honor his legacy forever.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

>Maj DiPietro serves as an Information Operations Planner on the Joint Staff.

Notes

1. U.S. Code, Title 10, Armed Forces, chap. 567 (2010).

2. N. Fulkerson, An American Knight (Spring Grove, PA, 2011).

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid.

6. “Medal of Honor: Sergeant First Class Alwyn C. Cashe,” U.S. Army, https://www.army.mil/medalofhonor/cashe.

7. Josh Boak, “Biden Awards the Medal of Honor and Medal of Valor to Military Heroes and First Responders,” Associated Press, January 3, 2025, https://apnews.com/article/medal-of-honor-valor-biden-e8d2d59496ed61facf5866b1bd6d4220.

In Congress Assembled

John Adams and the forging of the Continental Marines

“A navy is the most essential resource of the nation. Without it we can do nothing decisive. With it everything honorable and glorious.”
–John Adams, 1775

“The Marines did not arise by chance. They were deliberately shaped as part of a naval system that Adams had envisioned from the beginning.”
—Edwin Simmons
The United States 
Marines: A History

The story of the Marine Corps often begins at Tun Tavern, but the institution that Marines entered in late 1775 was shaped long before the first recruits assembled in Philadelphia. The Congress of late 1775 was a place defined by urgency and fatigue. Delegates worked in cramped chambers, debating the shape of a military establishment that did not yet exist. It was in this atmosphere of uncertainty that Adams pressed for disciplined maritime forces, including a body of Marines that could project resolve at sea.

The qualities he championed in those early months bear striking resemblance to the expectations placed on Marines today, revealing that many modern attributes of the Corps can be traced directly to his early leadership decisions. Its foundations were laid in Congress by leaders who saw that a new nation required disciplined maritime forces. No member of Congress contributed more to this work than John Adams. His leadership, influence, and insistence on naval preparedness created the political and institutional structure from which the Marines emerged. The early Marine Corps was not only born of recruitment at Tun Tavern but from the strategic vision of John Adams in Congress assembled.

Adams entered the naval debates in October 1775 with characteristic urgency. The Journals of the Continental Congress show him as one of the most active members of the temporary naval committees formed to draft rules, select officers, acquire ships, and establish the essential components of a maritime force.1 His participation was not symbolic. Day after day, he pushed military matters forward in a Congress still struggling to secure funding and define a strategy for war to include constructing and sustaining an Army and a Navy, with an organic Marine Corps. Adams demonstrated that the Marine Corps was conceived as part of a broader effort to create American power at sea during an hour of national fragility.

Earlier that fall, Adams had supported the Articles of War for naval forces, legislation that emphasized order, accountability, and the disciplined conduct of officers and enlisted personnel.2 This legal framework created the doctrinal foundation into which Marines would fit. Marines were designed as disciplined shipboard infantry who enforced order during daily operations and fought at the decisive moment of boarding. Adams helped establish Marines as integral to naval discipline and combat rather than as ornamental additions to naval vessels.

Adams’ writings reinforce this understanding. In his autobiography, he reflected that naval force was “a matter of necessity” for a nation that lacked the geographic depth and strategic depth of Europe.3 Necessity, in Adams’ mind, required structure, discipline, and professional forces capable of contributing to the survival of the Republic. His writings emphasize that enthusiasm and courage, though valuable, were insufficient without institution-building. These writings reveal a statesman who believed that disciplined military institutions were essential to national survival.

Beyond his committee work and personal writings, Adams played an essential role in shaping the earliest leadership of the Continental Marines. Committee notes suggest that Adams studied officer rolls with unusual care, asking pointed questions about experience and character even as ships waited in port for Marine detachments that did not yet exist. These early decisions were made under pressure, with Congress urging vessels to sea long before their organizations were fully formed. Adams understood that the character of the first Marines would depend heavily on the character of the officers who led them; he approached these selections with a seriousness that reflected the stakes of the moment.

Adams supported the appointment of Samuel Nicholas as the first Marine officer and worked with the Marine Committee to establish expectations for officer conduct, training, and readiness.4 He believed that officers must embody both discipline and republican virtue, a view consistent with his broader philosophy that military institutions must reflect national character. His attention to leadership selection helped shape the professional identity of the Continental Marines in their earliest months. In this way, Adams ensured that both the structure and the spirit of the first Marines reflected the disciplined character he considered essential to American arms.

Historians have long recognized these contributions. Charles A. Smith’s work on Marines in the Revolution highlights how Congress conceived Marines as both shock troops and guardians of discipline aboard ship.5 This matches the logic of Adams’ arguments in committee, which consistently emphasized combat function and organizational order. Marines were placed in key positions where discipline and close-quarters fighting determined shipboard success. This demonstrates that Adams’ vision shaped the Marines’ earliest operational identity.

James Thompson’s study of the Continental Marines reinforces this theme. Thompson notes that Marines were expected to serve as boarding specialists, sharpshooters, and disciplined infantry capable of enforcing order in the chaotic confines of an eighteenth-century warship.6 These expectations were not accidental. They reflected the structure Congress approved and the professional standards Adams supported. Adams ensured that Marines were conceived as practical contributors to naval operations rather than hypothetical constructs.

Merrill Lindsay offers further evidence. His examination of Marines during the period from 1775 to 1815 shows that Marines served as the backbone of discipline at sea, enforcing order, preventing mutiny, and preparing for the violent moments when ships closed for hand-to-hand combat.7 Their presence increased naval effectiveness far beyond their numbers. This confirms that the roles envisioned for Marines aligned with Adams’ broader intent to build a disciplined and effective maritime force.

Edwin Simmons, former Director of Marine Corps History and Museums, explicitly credits Adams for shaping both the Navy and the Marines. Simmons notes that Adams’ influence was so strong that he can be considered a principal architect of the Naval Service.8 Simmons’ analysis reflects the view that the Marines did not emerge spontaneously but were part of a deliberate institutional design. Simmons’ scholarship affirms Adams’ leadership in creating the Marine Corps as part of a coherent naval system.

John Ferling’s broader biography of Adams adds further detail. Ferling writes that Adams stood out among delegates for his persistent insistence on professionalization, even when the Congress was distracted by crises and competing priorities.9 Professionalization meant developing institutions that could endure past immediate battles. Ferling demonstrates that Adams viewed Marines as part of this effort to create a disciplined national force capable of sustained resistance. Ferling’s analysis highlights Adams’ leadership in shaping a durable military identity for the young Republic.

Christopher McKee’s study of early American naval leadership deepens this understanding. McKee observes that Adams’ influence ensured Marines were integrated into the ethos of the Naval Service, not merely its organizational chart.10 Marines were placed where discipline, moral character, and combat readiness intersected. Their presence communicated expectations about order aboard ship and contributed to the identity of the early Navy. These historical assessments highlight the practical consequences of Adams’ early design decisions.

Adams’ influence on the early Marines extended beyond organization and leadership selection to the operational expectations placed upon the force. During committee deliberations, he consistently argued that American naval power must include a disciplined body of shipboard infantry capable of decisive action in close combat and prepared for expeditionary operations.11 Historians have noted that early operations were not improvisations but reflections of a deliberate effort to build a maritime fighting force that could project American resolve.12 Adams helped establish the expectation that Marines would serve as disciplined, expeditionary infantry whose actions at sea and ashore would express the character and purpose of the new nation.

Taken together, these sources illustrate a consistent pattern. Adams exercised leadership through clarity of purpose, institutional design, and a commitment to disciplined republican military power. Five qualities stand out. Adams:

• Demonstrated strategic clarity during a period of institutional uncertainty. John Adams understood that the nation could not simply improvise maritime strength. He pressed Congress to establish a clear purpose, legal structure, and disciplined organization from the beginning. His ability to define what was essential at a moment when institutions were fragile ensured that the Marines were created with intention rather than by accident.

• Enabled the integration of Marines into the naval system as disciplined fighters and ambassadors of order and discipline. Adams did not see Marines as separate infantry placed on ships for appearance. He saw them as essential to the fighting system of the early Navy. They maintained discipline, secured the decks, and provided the decisive force in close combat. This created a unified maritime fighting structure rather than a collection of unrelated parts.

• Embraced and fostered a commitment to professionalism grounded in civic responsibility and moral seriousness. Adams believed that a military force in a republic must reflect the values of the people it protects. He emphasized discipline, accountability, and integrity as foundational expectations. The early Marines, therefore, embodied a standard of principled service that matched the republican ideals of the new nation.

• Promoted a design for institutional endurance far beyond the immediate needs of the Revolutionary War. Adams did not create structures that would simply carry the Nation through a single conflict. He consistently argued for enduring institutions that would shape American maritime strength in the future. His choices gave the early Marines an institutional identity that was built to last and not merely to serve one moment in time.

• Championed a belief that the identity of the Marines must be rooted in republican virtue as much as battlefield function. To Adams, Marines were not only warriors at sea or ashore. They were representatives of American purpose and character. Their discipline and conduct were intended to reflect the Nation itself. He shaped a Corps whose identity fused civic virtue, readiness, and disciplined service into a single expression of national commitment.

These leadership qualities helped shape a Marine Corps identity that endures to the present day.

As the Marine Corps looks across 250 years of service, Adams’s leadership offers enduring relevance. Marines today serve in environments that require clarity of purpose, integration across joint and combined domains, and professional conduct that reflects national values. Adams’ work in 1775 demonstrates that these expectations are not modern impositions but foundational characteristics of the Corps. The values Adams embedded in the early Marines remain core elements of the institution today.

The Marines who served under the framework Adams helped craft fought across the Atlantic, Caribbean, and coastal waters of North America. They enforced discipline, protected officers, manned boarding parties, and shaped traditions that persist in modern Marine culture. While Tun Tavern remains the symbolic birthplace of the Marine Corps, the institutional birthplace lies in Congress, shaped by leaders who built a disciplined naval service during the opening months of the Revolution. The Marine Corps was forged not only on the quarterdeck but in the halls of Congress, where Adams helped define its character.

Seen in this light, Adams’ leadership deserves renewed recognition. His arguments, committee work, and writings contributed directly to the formation of a Marine Corps designed to serve a disciplined maritime nation. Adams’ fingerprints remain visible in the disciplined character of the Marine Corps from its earliest days to the present.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

>Col Dunne retired in 2024 after 31 years of service. He served as an Operational Planner and later as a Service-level Planner, focused on future-year resourcing, development of future capabilities, and the integration of emerging concepts across the FMF. He has been a frequent contributor to the Marine Corps Gazette and continues to study future operating environments and future conflict.

Notes

1. Journals of the Continental Congress, October–November 1775, Library of Congress, https://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lwjc.html.

13 October 1775: Congress forms a committee “to prepare a plan for armed vessels,” and Adams is listed among its members.

30–31 October 1775: The Naval Committee reports recommendations on fitting out vessels, selecting officers, and establishing administrative rules; Adams participates directly in these debates.

5 November 1775: Congress debates and refines the Articles of War applying to seagoing forces, the discipline framework into which Marines would be inserted.

9–10 November 1775: While the resolution text does not list sponsors, Adams was involved in the same naval committee work that preceded the authorization of two battalions of Marines.

Late November–December 1775: Multiple entries show Adams involved in continued officer selection, ship acquisition, and naval governance through the end of the year.

2. Rules for the Regulation of the Navy of the United Colonies, November 28, 1775, Naval Records Collection, Record Group 45, https://www.history.navy.mil.

The 1775 Naval Rules establish a legal regime centered on order and discipline. The introductory sections emphasize obedience, chain of command, punishment for disorder, and conduct becoming naval forces (the exact environment in which Marines were meant to enforce discipline).

The Articles define Marines as shipboard enforcers of discipline. Though not always explicitly named, Marines fall under “officers commanding soldiers on board” and are referenced in sections about enforcing order and managing arms during engagements.

The Articles describe shipboard battle procedures in which Marines’ roles are implied. Sections on boarding, repelling boarders, and security at the gun decks align directly with the roles Congress determined for Marines as shock troops.

The Articles formalize accountability and punishment, a hallmark of Adams’s influence. Adams’s committee work repeatedly emphasized accountability through uniform codes of law. These 1775 Articles reflect that approach: strict regulation, structured punishment, and clear expectations.

The 1775 Rules show early codification of the professional ethos Adams demanded. They embody the professional, disciplined “sea service” Adams advocated in his letters and autobiography, reinforcing the argument that Marines were not ornamental, but doctrinally essential. 

3. John Adams, Autobiography of John Adams, vol. 3, Adams Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, https://www.masshist.org/publications/adams-papers.

Adams emphasizes the necessity of discipline over raw enthusiasm. He writes that courage alone does not sustain armies or navies; structured law, institutions, and discipline are required.

Adams links military organization to republican survival. His writings stress that without disciplined, principled institutions, the new Republic risked collapse under the pressure of war.

Adams explicitly ties naval and maritime readiness to broader national endurance.
He argues that maritime forces must be professionalized, regulated, and morally grounded to secure independence.

4. John Ferling, John Adams: A Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).

Adams believed that the quality of officers would determine the character of the new American forces.”

He took a special interest in the appointment of officers to the naval committees, insisting that only men of proven judgment and probity should be entrusted with command.” Adams viewed the establishment of proper leadership not as “a detail but as a matter of national survival.”

In his correspondence and committee work, he left no doubt that he considered “discipline and moral character the foundation of a republican military.”

5. Charles R. Smith, Marines in the Revolution (Washington, DC: Marine Corps Historical Division, 1975).

Marines as disciplinarians aboard ship: “The Marines were stationed at points where their steadiness and discipline could best control the crew and maintain order.”

Marines as boarding and close-combat troops: “In battle they were expected to lead boarding parties or repel the enemy in the desperate moments of close combat.”

Congressional conception of Marines as integral to naval combat: “Congress clearly intended the Marines to form the disciplined infantry element of the naval service rather than serve as mere ornament.”

6. James Thompson, The Continental Marines (Washington, DC: Marine Corps Historical Division, 1976).

Thompson describes Marines drilling with muskets, pikes, and small arms specifically for fighting in the confined spaces of naval decks.

Further, Thompson emphasizes that Marines were stationed at control points on ships to enforce order and protect the command structure.

7. Merrill L. Lindsay, The American Marines, 1775–1815 (Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2023).

Marines as the “discipline backbone” of shipboard life: Lindsay describes Marines as the stabilizing presence aboard Continental and early U.S. warships, positioned at control points to enforce order and prevent disruptions in the chain of command.

Marines prepared for “the decisive shock” of boarding actions: Lindsay highlights their role as trained close-combat fighters ready to lead or repel boarding efforts in the violent moments when ships locked together.

Marines’ disciplined routines enhanced naval readiness: Lindsay notes that Marines’ drill, musketry practice, and constant presence raised ship-wide readiness levels far beyond what their small numbers suggested.

Marines’ presence reduced risk of mutiny and instability: Lindsay explains that Continental and early U.S. naval officers relied heavily on Marines to maintain stability among heterogeneous crews.

8. Edwin H. Simmons, The United States Marines: A History (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1974).

Simmons, a former Director of Marine Corps History Division, explicitly credits Adams for shaping both the Navy and the Marines. Simmons notes that Adams’ influence was so strong that he can be considered a principal architect of the naval service.

9. John Ferling, John Adams: A Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).

Adams’s relentless focus on professional institutions: Ferling emphasizes that Adams consistently pressed Congress to adopt structured, disciplined military norms instead of ad hoc, volunteer-based practices.

Adams as the leading advocate for naval preparedness: Ferling explains that Adams viewed maritime power as strategically essential and pushed the Congress into serious naval action.

Adams’s view of disciplined forces as expressions of republican virtue: Ferling describes Adams’s conviction that a republic required disciplined, morally grounded military institutions.

Adams’s leadership amid congressional distraction and crisis:  Ferling highlights that while others were pulled toward short-term threats, Adams kept returning to long-term institutional building.

Adams’s wartime thought linked discipline directly to survival: Ferling shows how Adams believed that only a structured, disciplined force (including Marines) could withstand the pressures of war against Britain.

10. Christopher McKee, A Gentlemanly and Honorable Profession: The Creation of the U.S. Naval Officer Corps (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1991).

McKee describes the early naval officer corps as shaped by congressional expectations for order, professionalism, and discipline. He notes the Navy’s structure was deliberately developed, reflecting the values promoted by leaders such as Adams.

McKee discusses the integration of Marines into naval command culture. He indicates that Marines were placed within the naval hierarchy as symbols and instruments of shipboard discipline and martial ethos.

McKee highlights Adams’s influence on committee decisions that shaped the fabric of naval leadership.
He notes that Adams set expectations for the moral character and conduct of officers, which extended to Marine detachments.

McKee’s treatment of “honor” and “gentlemanly” conduct reinforces the idea that Marines formed part of the moral backbone of early sea service. He explains that naval discipline required both officers and Marines to embody republican virtues.

McKee frames the early Navy as a coherent moral and organizational system rather than a loose collection of ships. This supports the claim that Marines were woven into the identity of the service, not simply attached ad hoc.

11. Allan R. Millett and Peter Maslowski, For the Common Defense: A Military History of the United States of America, 3rd ed. (New York: Free Press, 2012).

“Adams and his colleagues on the naval committee envisioned a maritime force that included disciplined shipboard infantry, essential for boarding actions and maintaining order at sea.”

“Congress accepted Adams’ logic that naval operations required a corps of soldiers permanently attached to ships to enforce discipline and provide shock action when ships closed.” 

“The Marines, conceived alongside the Navy, were structured to give American ships the close combat capabilities that Adams believed decisive in naval warfare.”

12. Jon T. Hoffman, U.S. Marine Corps: A Complete History (Quantico, VA: Marine Corps Association, 2002).

The seizure of Nassau in March 1776 stands as the first amphibious assault in American history and demonstrated the aggressive spirit expected of Continental Marines.”

“Nicholas’ Marines conducted themselves with the discipline Congress had envisioned when it created the Marine Corps the previous November.”

“The operation reflected a clear understanding that Marines were more than shipboard guards. They were intended for offensive maritime employment.”

“The raid served as early proof that the Marine Committee’s concept for Marines had operational merit.”

1989 Every Marine a Rifleman; 2029 Every Marine a Commando

Making it an unfair fight

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).

11. “United States Marines: Our True Competitive Advantage- Expounding our Capability.” 

12. “21st- Century Marine Corps’ Commandos: Why We Need Them and How We Get There.” 

13. Gen David H. Berger, Talent Management 2030 (Washington, DC: November 2021).  

14. Jeremy Carter, “Talent: We Do Not Need It Eleven challenges to Talent Management 2030,” Marine Corps Gazette 108, No 11, (2024).

15. “21st- Century Marine Corps’ Commandos: Why We Need Them and How We Get There.” 

16. “United States Marines: Our True Competitive Advantage- Expounding our Capability.” 

17.  Jeremy Carter, “Divest of Drill; Invest in Discipline: Evolving our Initial Training to meet the Demands of Modern Warfare,” Marine Corps Gazette (Accepted).

18. “United States Marines: Our True Competitive Advantage- Expounding our Capability.” 

19. See https://trueperformancerealization.com.

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).

21. “United States Marines: Our True Competitive Advantage- Expounding our Capability.” 

22. Ibid. 

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). 

24. A Concept for Stand-in Forces.

25. “United States Marines: Our True Competitive Advantage- Expounding our Capability.” 

The Industrial Battlespace: Manufacturing and Maneuver

During the brutal assault on Tarawa in World War II, Marines faced nearly insurmountable odds. The beach was heavily fortified, enemy fire poured down from all directions, and the Marines’ landing craft were slow, vulnerable, and difficult to maneuver. Casualties mounted as Marines scrambled to disembark. The lessons learned from this chaotic operation were pivotal in shaping future amphibious assaults, with one of the most significant being the urgent need for faster, more effective means of troop deployment. The experience of Tarawa reinforced the importance of rapid mobility and adaptability in ensuring the success of future operations.

Though not directly involved in the Tarawa landings, 1stLt Victor “Brute” Krulak recognized the need for change after witnessing the difficulties Marines faced during these early amphibious assaults. He advocated for modifications to the Higgins boat, a shallow-draft landing craft that revolutionized amphibious warfare by enabling Marines to quickly and safely reach the shore under heavy enemy fire, including the addition of a bow ramp. This adaptation, which allowed for quicker disembarkation and reduced exposure to enemy fire, became a key innovation in improving the efficiency and safety of amphibious landings. Krulak’s intellect and determination to adapt to battlefield realities are prime examples of how rapid innovation can drive success on the battlefield.1

This story of the Higgins boat, its evolution, and its impact on amphibious assaults ties directly to the principles of maneuver warfare, the Marine Corps’ approach to warfighting. Maneuver warfare is about achieving speed, flexibility, and decisive action through decentralized decision-making. It is the ability to make fast, effective decisions at the lowest tactical levels, allowing for rapid response and sustained operational tempo. The principles of maneuver warfare are not only ingrained in our doctrine but are woven deeply into Marine culture, from leadership development to battlefield execution. World War II demonstrated that victory depended on the ability to generate and sustain tempo through industrial strength. Today, that same contest has shifted from mass production to speed of adaptation, where the ability to rapidly develop, integrate, and field capability determines advantage for Marines in contact.

The industrial base is not just support; it is maneuver space. Every decision that shortens the path from concept to contact, whether in contracting, engineering, training, or sustainment, creates operational tempo for Marines at the point of friction. With the establishment of Portfolio Acquisition Executive Marine Corps (PAE Marine Corps), the Marine Corps is advancing how it integrates and delivers combat capability across the force. This shift reflects a deeper reality: acquisition is not a supporting function, it is a warfighting function that directly influences speed, tempo, and advantage in conflict. Within this construct, PAE Marine Corps serves as the focal point for delivering capability to the force, aligning resources, requirements, and execution to generate combat power. Supporting this effort, Marine Corps Systems Command (MARCORSYSCOM) is evolving into a critical force provider, responsible for developing and sustaining the acquisition workforce and enabling the broader enterprise. Together, they operate where strategy meets execution, where decisions about technology, talent, and resources directly shape tactical tempo and battlefield outcomes. Gen Alfred M. Gray Jr.’s reminder, “it doesn’t cost any money to think,”2 remains the moral compass for this enterprise. It underscores the critical importance of intellectual rigor, where every decision, from selecting new technologies to negotiating contracts, begins with thoughtful analysis. In a fast-paced acquisition environment, leveraging creativity and foresight ensures we stay ahead of adversaries, maintaining operational readiness and sustaining the edge that our warfighters need.

As Commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen Gray oversaw the establishment of Marine Corps Research, Development, and Acquisition Command (now MARCORSYSCOM) in 1987. His vision to streamline the acquisition process, directly involve the operating forces in identifying deficiencies, and establish clear lines of authority, responsibility, and accountability laid the foundation for how the Marine Corps delivers combat capability. That same mindset continues to shape today’s evolution, as the Marine Corps refines its acquisition enterprise through the establishment of PAE Marine Corps, reinforcing a more responsive and integrated system aligned with its warfighting philosophy.3

China’s Strategic Vision: Long-Term Patience and Technological Superiority

It is essential to analyze the United States’ leading adversary and competitor to gauge our efforts in the acquisition realm. 

At the heart of China’s current strategy is a focus on long-term goals and patient ambition. The Chinese leadership, particularly under Xi Jinping, has articulated a clear vision for 2049, when China plans to assert itself as the dominant global superpower. This vision is underpinned by a military modernization program that spans multiple decades and draws heavily from Sun Tzu’s principles of warfare. Sun Tzu emphasized the importance of winning without direct confrontation, suggesting that the true art of war lies in outmaneuvering the enemy strategically before physical combat is necessary.4 In modern terms, this has manifested in China’s use of economic and geopolitical tools, such as the Belt and Road Initiative, to exert influence globally while simultaneously building up its military capabilities.

Sun Tzu’s strategy of deception, “When able to attack, one must seem unable; when active, seem to be inactive; when near, make the enemy think you are far away; when far away, seem to him to be near,” has guided Chinese military thinking and aligns closely with their incremental, often covert, approach to military modernization.5 China’s emphasis on stealth, long-range missiles, and cyber warfare reflects a strategy of attrition and gradual dominance, focused on eroding the United States’ power in a way that makes direct confrontation unnecessary until the time is right.

China benefits from its highly centralized control over both military and economic policy. This centralized approach allows for a unified vision across all domains of national power, military, economic, and political, making it easier for China to direct resources toward its goals and make steady progress on long-term projects like hypersonic weapons, artificial intelligence, and cyber capabilities. The United States, by contrast, faces a fragmented decision-making process, with budgetary priorities driven by political infighting and local interests. This disjointed approach can undermine efforts to maintain a consistent, long-term strategy.

Furthermore, China’s strategic vision is reflected in its ambitious goals for technological independence and its reduced dependency on foreign technologies. Although challenges remain, particularly in advanced sectors like aerospace and AI, China’s investment in indigenous innovation continues to grow, fueled by both state-directed efforts and market incentives. This shift toward self-reliance has been a critical element of China’s defense modernization strategy, as it aims to avoid the vulnerabilities associated with foreign supply chains.6

As China progresses in its military modernization, it continues to leverage its unity of effort, translating strategic vision into action. The Chinese military, armed with both cutting-edge technology and a long-term strategic outlook, is preparing to challenge the United States’ position as the world’s leading superpower. The Chinese approach to warfare is holistic, incorporating not only traditional military capabilities but also cyber, space, and economic tools to shape the global order.

The Nature of the Industrial Battlespace

Today’s competition reaches beyond conventional military power, extending into global supply chains, data networks, and material science, all contested domains. China’s dominance in rare earth elements and permanent magnets, controlling the vast majority of global processing capacity, illustrates how economic leverage can become a strategic weapon. When export controls tighten on critical materials like advanced semiconductors and rare-earth metals, operations slow before first contact, delaying systems and halting production lines. From a maneuver perspective, this is an attack on tempo at the strategic level.7

History is instructive. Interwar Germany galvanized industry to align with a concept of fast, combined-arms operations; standardizing components and prioritizing production that sustained tempo. The United States did the same at scale in World War II through the War Production Board and the Office of War Mobilization. Those efforts fused doctrine, industry, and logistics so that operations could be maintained at speed. In contemporary terms, this is the difference between sustaining precision warfare and reverting to attrition when inventories and production lines cannot keep pace. As Col Michael Wyly, a leading expert in military strategy and doctrine and one of the original proponents of maneuver warfare, has observed, wars are expensive; when a nation exhausts its capacity to produce advanced munitions and smart weapons at scale, it risks being forced to fight in a communication-degraded environment with non-precision munitions.

Industry as Maneuver Partner

Industrial resilience should be seen as a key part of warfighting readiness. Programs that depend on single-source suppliers, foreign refiners, or limited materials should identify these risks early and plan for backup sources or co-production with allies. Using digital tools like supply-chain dashboards and predictive analytics can help spot potential problems before they become critical. The Service’s Artificial Intelligence Strategy highlights using data to improve sustainment and make smarter decisions to keep operations moving smoothly under pressure.8

Industry is therefore not a roadblock, but terrain to be maneuvered upon. Successful examples already exist. Rapid counter-unmanned aircraft systems kits delivered through partnerships with small manufacturers, using other transaction authorities-based competitions and fleet feedback, illustrated the model: concurrent engineering, quick learning cycles, and tranche deliveries. The acquisition enterprise must design for adaptation, leveraging modular open systems architecture (MOSA), common interfaces, and standardized approaches so upgrades can be fielded without complete redesign.9 Industry’s responsibility is to provide maneuverable solutions that allow this adaptability to occur and not locked-down proprietary solutions that require the programs to start over at the beginning of each new contract.

Message to the Fleet

To the Marines in the fleet: The role of the Marine Corps acquisition enterprise is not separate from yours; it is part of the same maneuver system. Through the integration of capabilities under PAE Marine Corps, everything we do is focused on ensuring you have the right tools to execute your mission. Your feedback, from training to deployment, shapes the systems delivered to the force. The faster you communicate your needs, the more quickly the enterprise can respond. The faster equipment is fielded, the faster you can fight, and that depends on your continued partnership. Your involvement in requirements definition and early feedback loops ensures that you receive what you need faster and more effectively. When you are on the front lines, your readiness is our mission. Together, we ensure that technology and innovation do not just stay ahead of the fight, they stay ahead of the enemy.

Conclusion

Every generation of Marines must rediscover maneuver warfare in its own domain. While the character of war continues to evolve, the nature of war remains constant, defined by friction, uncertainty, and the contest of wills. For today’s force, that domain extends beyond the battlefield to the factories, laboratories, and data streams that sustain the fight. Within the Marine Corps acquisition enterprise, and through the integration of capabilities under Portfolio Acquisition Executive Marine Corps, ideas born in the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab and requirements validated by Combat Development and Integration are translated into realities in the hands of the fleet.

If maneuver warfare is about creating advantage through tempo, then our generation’s task is to restore industrial tempo, ensuring the nation never loses the ability to fight smart because it cannot produce at speed. The charge for the acquisition enterprise is clear: think boldly, act decisively, and deliver the capabilities Marines need to fight tonight and in the conflicts ahead.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

> SgtMaj Heider is the Marine Corps Systems Command Sergeant Major.

Notes:

1. David Vergun, “Junior Marine Played Vital Role in D-Day Success,” Department of War News, May 30, 2024, https://www.war.gov/News/Feature-Stories/Story/Article/3787398/junior-marine-played-vital-role-in-d-day-success. 

2. Alfred M. Gray, Grayisms: The Wisdom of General Alfred M. Gray, USMC (Quantico, VA: Marine Corps University Foundation, 1990). 

3. “The Brain of the Marine Corps,” Marine Corps History (Summer 2020), Marine Corps University Press, https://www.usmcu.edu/Outreach/Marine-Corps-University-Press/MCH/Marine-Corps-History-Summer-2020/The-Brain-of-the-Marine-Corps_. 

4. James P. Micciche, “The Art of Non-War: Sun Tzu and Great Power Competition,” War Room, March 18, 2021, https://warroom.armywarcollege.edu/articles/non-war. 

5. James McBride, Noah Berman, and Andrew Chatzky, “China’s Massive Belt and Road Initiative,” Council on Foreign Relations Backgrounder, 2023, https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/chinas-massive-belt-and-road-initiative. 

6. U.S. Geological Survey, Mineral Commodity Summaries: Rare Earths (Reston, VA: U.S. Department of the Interior, 2024); see also U.S. Department of Defense, Industrial Base Assessments on Critical Materials. 

7. U.S. Marine Corps, USMC Artificial Intelligence Strategy (Washington, DC: Headquarters Marine Corps, 2024). 

8. Ibid.

9. Defense Acquisition University, “Using Industry Best Practices to Improve Acquisition,” Defense AT&L, May–June 2018.

Acquisition Is Warfighting

Arming the acquirer to forge a decisive edge

The Core Problem: Forced Dependency and the High Cost of Waiting

It is a familiar and frustrating story: a multi-million-dollar weapon system that is key to a unit’s survival is rendered inert by a problem the unit has the skills to fix—but not the permission or knowledge to do so. Marines, trained to be self-sufficient, are reduced to customers waiting for a service call. On the battlespace, this waiting robs them of what makes them dangerous: their initiative, adaptability, and the ability to keep fighting when everything goes wrong.

The Mandate: Acquisition as a Warfighting Function

To eliminate this scenario of forced waiting and dependency, a new mandate from the Secretary of War gets directly to the point. This urgency is a direct response to a rapidly shifting global security landscape, where the resurgence of near-peer competition and the pacing threat of technologically advanced adversaries means victory will be decided by speed, resilience, and adaptability. The directive has fundamentally reshaped the landscape of military acquisition, redoubling focus on a single, uncompromising objective: delivering a decisive edge to the war-fighter at the speed of relevance. The directive, “Transforming the Defense Acquisition System into the Warfighting Acquisition System,” is more than a change in name; it is a seismic shift in philosophy. It declares that acquisition is not a support function, but a war-fighting function, critical to deterring our adversaries and winning the Nation’s battles. For the Marine Corps, this means treating an acquisition contract as a weapon. It requires arming the acquisition workforce, empowering the maintainer, and unifying our efforts for a decisive edge.

This transformation directly addresses the systemic challenges the Secretary of War identified that have historically hampered progress. For the Marine in the field, these challenges have manifested in tangible, mission-impacting ways: delays in fielding urgently needed capabilities, extended downtime for critical equipment, and a costly over-reliance on contractor support that cannot keep pace with operational tempo.

The core principles of the new War-fighting Acquisition System are simple and direct: instill a warrior ethos in the acquisition workforce, inject a relentless focus on speed and urgency, and empower those responsible for delivery to make and own their decisions. Every process, board, and review must now justify its existence by proving it directly supports accelerating capability to the FMF. We will no longer treat barriers in contracting and acquisitions as administrative hurdles but as a direct operational risk to mission success.

Marine Corps Systems Command’s Strategic Response: Equipping an Unrivaled Fleet

Answering this call to treat acquisition as a warfighting function, Marine Corps Systems Command unveiled its 2025–2032 strategic plan serving as the command’s roadmap. In the plan’s opening message, BGen Tamara L. Campbell, Commander of Marine Corps Systems Command, outlines a vision for “Equipping an unrivaled, future-focused Fleet Marine Force, powered by a dedicated acquisition workforce.” She further states, “The future threat is ever evolving, and we must be prepared to modernize our approach and processes to meet and defeat that threat.” This modernization enables the continuous adaptation of our warfighting capabilities to ensure Marines can forge an unfair fight and win. Marine Corps Systems Command is focusing on key areas of program management, process improvement, partnerships, and talent management to accelerate the delivery of lethal, agile, and ready capabilities. For Marine Corps Systems Command, the Secretary of War’s mandate is not just a new requirement to be met but a confirmation of the path it is already on—a path dedicated to ensuring that every acquisition decision directly contributes to combat power.

The Ownership Imperative: Forging Self-Sufficiency

Putting this warfighting mandate into action, Marine Corps Systems Command is focusing on its approach to contracting, intellectual property, and system maintenance. For a Marine in a contested environment, the legal jargon of a contract is a distant concept until the way the contract was written impacts mission success and survival. Marine Corps Systems Command’s new Product Support Strategy policy addresses this reality, which transforms acquisition strategy into a direct lever of combat power by ensuring the Marine Corps truly owns the systems it fields. Strengthening contractual rights in the acquisition of a system means a Marine can make necessary repairs or modifications to the system to sustain combat power instead of relying on a contractor to do so at additional cost and/or delay.

To make this a reality, the era of accepting unnecessary “vendor lock”—where the Marine Corps is denied the technical data and intellectual property rights to repair its own equipment—must end. While we respect our industry partners’ need to protect their commercial interests, dependency on a sole-source vendor creates a critical warfighting vulnerability that we can no longer accept. Doing so means navigating a complex legislative environment where established intellectual property laws, designed to protect innovation, can inadvertently hinder battlefield readiness. This necessary shift has, predictably, sparked debate, but the acquisition and sustainment communities will need to continue to drive for expanded data rights and technical data packages required to leverage advanced manufacturing, ensuring our systems remain lethal and sustainable in any environment.

… the Marine Corps is arming its acquisition workforce with the authority, tools, and analytical capabilities …

Marine Corps Systems Command’s Product Support Strategy order also makes it clear that failing to secure intellectual property and data rights is no longer an acceptable risk. The order is a direct response to the battlefield costs of ignoring this risk: degraded readiness, atrophy of organic maintenance skills, uncontrolled cost growth, and reduced lethality. The policy mandates that we must prioritize the “maximum integration of organic supply and maintenance capabilities while leveraging the Joint Logistics Enterprise’s capabilities, where appropriate,” shifting the focus from slow, outsourced repairs to swift, organic sustainment performed by uniformed Marines at the point of need. This reinforces the warfighting ethos of self-sufficiency and ensures that core maintenance competencies are honed, not lost.

For the acquisition community, these updates formally shift sustainment from a costly afterthought to a core design requirement. Program managers and the acquisition workforce now have the blueprint to integrate the product support analysis activities into the systems engineering process from the beginning, using analytical rigor to develop reliable designs and affordable support plans. This codifies an “own, not rent” philosophy, ensuring that systems fielded to the FMF are both highly capable and sustainable, which in turn builds a more resilient, self-sufficient force.

Arming the Acquisition Workforce: Empowering the Fleet

To turn policy into battlefield advantage, the Marine Corps is arming its acquisition workforce with the authority, tools, and analytical capabilities needed to execute the Secretary of War’s vision. This empowerment is being driven through three key lines of effort: restructuring leadership for integrated decision-making, providing tactical tools for smarter contracting, and embedding a data-driven mindset for sustainable systems. A cornerstone of this empowerment is how the Marine Corps is currently standing up a Portfolio Acquisition Executive for Marine Corps ground equipment. The Portfolio Acquisition Executive will be the single accountable commander for delivering warfighting lethality, moving beyond the simple management of program performance—breaking down the traditional, inefficient coordination between individual programs. This structure will empower the Portfolio Acquisition Executive to make rapid, integrated decisions that accelerate outcomes and provide a decisive edge, shifting the focus from managing programs to delivering a unified warfighting solution. For the FMF, this means receiving systems designed to work together from the start, creating a cohesive and far more lethal capability on the battlefield.

To complement this empowered leadership with practical tools for execution, Marine Corps Systems Command is also launching a dedicated site within its Logistics Knowledge Center. Previously, the workforce lacked streamlined access to the specific contractual language required to secure intellectual property and enforce sustainability goals. This new initiative solves that problem by providing a centralized repository of critical contracting language, data item descriptions, and additional toolkits and resources providing the tactical knowledge to write to write stronger contracts that secure data rights and break vendor lock where appropriate. The impact on the Marine in the field is direct: the technical data needed to repair their equipment will be available at the point of need, dramatically increasing self-sufficiency and reducing mission-crippling downtime.

The third piece of this empowerment strategy is embedding a data-driven mindset. To that end, Marine Corps Systems Command is further empowering the workforce with its updated Reliability-Centered Maintenance policy and handbook. The Marine Corps has traditionally relied on maintenance that is either reactive or based on fixed schedules, resulting in unnecessary work and unexpected equipment failures. Reliability-Centered Maintenance provides the data-driven analytical engine to create smarter product support strategies, determining the most efficient maintenance based on a system’s reliability and operating context. This policy is the catalyst for moving toward a predictive model using Condition-Based Maintenance Plus when the process determines the need for it on a particular system. For the acquisition workforce, Reliability-Centered Maintenance provides the analytical proof needed to build intelligent, affordable sustainment plans from day one. For the Marine, this translates to higher equipment availability and reliability, allowing maintainers to focus their efforts where they are most needed.

The Secretary of War’s mandate has set the clear, uncompromising direction: acquisition is warfighting.

This combination of empowered leadership, tactical tools, and analytical rigor is a force multiplier. The Portfolio Acquisition Executive provides the strategic why, the Logistics Knowledge Center delivers the contractual how, and the Reliability-Centered Maintenance policy provides the analytical proof. Together, these initiatives arm the workforce with the strategic authority, tactical precision, and data-driven justification needed to break down institutional barriers and deliver fully sustainable warfighting solutions. This ensures that the systems fielded to the fleet are not just collections of parts, but integrated, reliable capabilities designed to be owned and dominate in the battlespace, fulfilling the promise of a truly self-sufficient force.

Conclusion: Forging an Unfair Fight

It is this self-sufficiency that ultimately forges the unfair fight. The Secretary of War’s mandate has set the clear, uncompromising direction: acquisition is warfighting. Within the Marine Corps, this is an operational imperative. We must see our contracts as the first weapon sent downrange, engineered from the start to forge an unfair fight in our favor.

If the Marine Corps wants to win in austere conditions, we cannot merely field capabilities; we must be able to own it, repair it, sustain it, and fight with it indefinitely, even when the logistics tail is thin, contested, or cut entirely. That is how we preserve tempo, maintain lethality, and ensure the FMF remains truly expeditionary—not just in doctrine, but in execution.

Yet, for all the progress being made, we must recognize that the journey has just begun. The hard part starts now: the daily act of implementation, of changing a culture and holding ourselves accountable to these new standards. Success will not be measured by the documents we publish, but by the contracts we award, the data we secure, the deliverables we accept, and the speed, lethality, and self-sufficiency we deliver to the FMF.

The acquisition professionals of the Marine Corps are postured for this challenge, ready to prove—in the words of the Secretary of War—that in acquisition, just as in combat, “speed wins and speed dominates.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

>Mr. Bond is a prior Marine Corps Logistics and Intelligence Officer and the Product Support Director at Marine Corps Systems Command, where he has worked since 2010. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

Forging Decision Dominance with an Artificial Intelligence (AI) Warfighting Teammate

A Transformative Journey for Marine Aviation

The character of war is changing, and the speed of decision making has become the critical axis of victory. To maintain its edge, Marine Aviation is embarking on a transformative journey—an evolution, not a revolution—to accelerate its operational tempo to machine speed. Marine Aviation’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) Strategy is a comprehensive plan to embrace, equip, and enhance the force by integrating cutting-edge AI and machine learning (AI/ML) into aviation sustainment, maintenance, and operations. This effort complements broader modernization initiatives outlined in the 2026 Marine Aviation Plan and supports the Service’s transition toward a more data-centric and data-informed force.

The problem is a familiar one: a reactive culture in maintenance and supply, labor-intensive manual processes, and disconnected data systems that hinder readiness and the ability to sustain distributed aviation operations. Marine Aviation’s AI Strategy tackles this head-on, aiming to shift the enterprise from a reactive posture to a predictive, data-informed force capable of generating sustained combat power on demand.

The Vision: Meet “Agent Alfred”

At the core of the transformation is Agent Alfred, an AI-powered warfighting teammate that integrates seamlessly into a Marine’s workflow. Named in honor of Alfred A. Cunningham, the first Marine Corps aviator, this AI agent serves as a pathfinder, starting with back-office tasks and progressively earning its place in more complex and critical environments. By rapidly synthesizing large volumes of operational, maintenance, and logistics data, Alfred enables Marines and commanders to make faster, more informed decisions in increasingly complex operational environments.

“Agent Alfred.” (Photo provided by authors.)

The vision for Alfred is not to replace Marines but to augment them. As described in the initiative’s foundational documents, Alfred is envisioned as a multi-modal, ambient, contextual, and emergent teammate. Automating repetitive, data-heavy tasks frees Marines to focus on what humans do best: critical thinking, leadership, and complex problem-solving. The end state is a force where AI-driven decision support is ubiquitous—operating in the ready room, on the flight line, in the field with our enablers, and ultimately in the cockpit.

The Blueprint: Initial Lines of Operation

The theory of victory for Marine Aviation’s AI Strategy is to sustain combat readiness and increase lethality by transforming the aviation enterprise from a reactive system into a predictive, data-informed force capable of generating combat power at the speed of modern warfare. This strategy is broader than any single initiative. The lines of operation (LOO) described below represent the initial focus areas where AI-enabled capabilities can begin delivering immediate operational value while the broader strategy continues to mature across the aviation enterprise.

• LOO 1: Dynamic Aviation Supply. This effort aims to transform the logistics footprint from a reactive system to one that anticipates demand. By leveraging AI to analyze historical data and operational tempo, we can forecast the need for parts and resources.

• LOO 2: Predictive Maintenance. This approach focuses on moving beyond the current reactive maintenance culture. Instead of fixing aircraft after a component fails, AI will analyze a longitudinal history of aircraft behavior to forecast failures before they occur. The failure prediction allows maintenance officers to proactively schedule what is typically unscheduled maintenance ahead of detachments and cross-country movements, or in conjunction with phase maintenance, reducing maintenance hours and increasing readiness.

• LOO 3: Optimized Operations. This LOO focuses on using AI to enhance every facet of operational planning, from optimizing daily flight schedules to managing pilot training. Artificial intelligence will provide commanders with data-informed insights to accelerate and improve decision making.

• Future LOOs. Additional development efforts for aviation workflows will be added iteratively as technology improves and appropriate use cases expand to areas such as enhanced maintenance staffing, improved command safety, and other future use cases. The intent of all such efforts is not adoption of technology for technology’s sake, rather they are part of our deliberate approach of adopting a digital data culture advancing our decision-making advantages at speed. 

The Rollout: A Phased Approach to Integration

The implementation of Marine Aviation’s AI Strategy is a deliberately phased, iterative journey, designed to build trust and demonstrate value at each step.  The approach ensures that technology is adopted in a way that enhances, rather than disrupts, existing processes.

• Phase 1: Aggregate Data. The initial, foundational step focuses on identifying, accessing, and cleaning maintenance, supply, and operations data from the myriad of disparate systems where it currently resides. The outcome is clean, analysis-ready data, the essential fuel for any AI system.

• Phase 2: Apply AI. With aggregated data, we can begin applying AI algorithms for analysis. This phase involves creating the predictive capabilities central to the vision, such as forecasting part demands and identifying aircraft likely to experience component failures. This provides the data-informed insights necessary for dynamic aviation supply and predictive maintenance.

• Phase 3: Ensemble AI Tools. The final phase integrates these individual AI tools into a comprehensive, user-friendly solution. The goal is to deploy Alfred on a common compute platform, creating a comprehensive operational planning tool that provides a holistic view of aviation operations, from sustainment and maintenance to staffing, ultimately yielding improved readiness with the capacity for future growth of other agentic workflows.

Together, these phases enable Marine Aviation to transition from fragmented data environments to an integrated decision-support ecosystem that improves readiness forecasting and operational planning. This rollout will begin with Alfred assisting with low-risk, high-impact “back-office” tasks in the ready room, such as drafting training plans and flight schedules. Alfred will “earn its quals” by demonstrating value and reliability. From there, its capabilities will expand to the flightline, assisting maintainers with failure predictions and parts tracking to the field, where it will act as a collaborative planning partner in complex, distributed exercises. This crawl-walk-run methodology ensures a smooth, effective, and trustworthy integration of a powerful new teammate into the MAGTF.

Machine learning has multiple applications. (Photo provided by authors.)

Marine Aviation’s ability to generate and sustain combat power has always depended on the ingenuity and professionalism of its Marines. Marine Aviation’s AI Strategy builds upon that foundation by providing Marines with the tools necessary to operate at the speed of modern warfare. By integrating AI/ML into aviation sustainment, maintenance, and operational planning, Marine Aviation is creating a more predictive, data-informed enterprise capable of supporting distributed aviation operations and enabling faster decision making. This evolution ensures that as victory becomes a race of decision making, Marine Aviation is not merely keeping pace but setting the pace, delivering lethal effects for the Marine on the ground at the speed of relevance. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

>Ms. Elizabeth Ruggles is an Aerospace Engineer.  She is currently assigned as the AI/ML Integration lead for the Deputy Commandant for Aviation.

>LtCol Carlson is a UH-1Y Pilot. She is currently assigned as the Aviation Strategy and Plans Officer for Headquarters, Marine Corps Department of Aviation.

2026 AVPLAN

Balancing crisis response with modernization for the future fight

“Aviation provides the lion’s share of killing power on the battlefield … we must maximize this critical MAGTF capability.”
—39th Commandant of the Marine Corps, 2026 Marine Aviation Plan

The Commandant’s directive is both affirmation and mandate. Marine Aviation is not a supporting arm of the MAGTF; it is the principal source of combat power that enables maneuver, sustains distributed forces, and delivers decisive effects across the battlespace. In an era defined by contested logistics, precision fires, and persistent sensing, maximizing this capability requires more than platform modernization alone. It demands a deliberate balance between sustaining crisis response readiness today and transforming the Aviation Combat Element (ACE) for the fight of tomorrow.

The central challenge facing Marine Aviation is unchanged but increasingly complex: we must remain ready to fight tonight while modernizing for the future fight. The 2026 Marine Aviation Plan (AVPLAN) deliberately balances these imperatives by sequencing modernization without sacrificing crisis response capacity. It operationalizes distributed aviation operations (DAO) as the central warfighting concept and aligns platforms, sustainment, data, and talent management. The result is a more survivable, more distributed, and more lethal ACE that remains combat credible today and prepared for the future.

Balancing Readiness and Modernization

Readiness remains Marine Aviation’s most important measure of success. The 2026 AVPLAN reinforces funding and prioritization of sustainment, flight hours, and training to ensure mission-capable aircraft, proficient aircrew, and expeditionary enablers are ready to respond to global contingencies. A global presence remains essential for deterrence and crisis response. Modernization efforts described in the AVPLAN are deliberately sequenced to avoid creating capability gaps during platform transitions.

This balance also requires disciplined risk management as we integrate new technologies and operational concepts. The Safety North Star, “26 in 26,” establishes a measurable commitment to reduce Class A through D mishaps by 26 in fiscal year 2026. Readiness and safety are inseparable. As we modernize the enterprise, brilliance in the basics, strict adherence to standards, and engaged leadership remain foundational to sustained combat power.

At the same time, the character of warfare demands transformation. Strategic competition, contested logistics, complex sensing networks, and precision fires require a more agile and distributed aviation enterprise. The 2026 AVPLAN positions modernization as a readiness enabler rather than a competing priority. Through Project Eagle, initiatives are aligned across three Future Years Defense Programs (FYDPs) to ensure coherence, affordability, and operational relevance.

The accompanying figure illustrates this deliberate balance, which depicts Marine Aviation’s progression across successive FYDPs. It shows how platform transitions, sustainment modernization, and next-generation capabilities are sequenced to preserve today’s crisis response capacity while accelerating transformation for the future fight. The visual reinforces the plan’s central premise: Marine Aviation must remain combat credible now while deliberately building the Next Generation ACE required for tomorrow.

2026 AVPLAN lines of operation. (Figure provided by author.)

Aviation Ground Support: The Backbone of DAO

A defining shift in the 2026 AVPLAN is the full elevation of aviation ground support (AGS) as the seventh function of Marine Aviation. While the 2025 plan expressed intent to codify AGS doctrinally, the 2026 AVPLAN institutionalizes AGS as the backbone of DAO. Expeditionary fuel distribution, airfield damage repair, forward arming and refueling points, and resilient aviation logistics are decisive capabilities rather than supporting enablers. This shift strengthens the ACE’s ability to persist and generate combat power from austere and dispersed locations. By aligning AGS modernization with platform transitions and digital interoperability initiatives, the 2026 AVPLAN ensures sustainment capabilities evolve in parallel with operational concepts.

Transforming Sustainment: From Reactive to Predictive

The 2026 AVPLAN marks a fundamental evolution in aviation sustainment philosophy. Where the 2025 plan emphasized traditional sustainment and incremental supply chain reform, the 2026 plan integrates predictive maintenance, dynamic aviation supply, and optimized operations as core components of a transformed sustainment system. These initiatives anticipate readiness trends, reduce downtime, and increase aircraft availability across distributed environments.

The figure illustrates this transformation through three deliberate lines of operation (LOO): LOO 1, Dynamic Aviation Supply, shifts the enterprise from reactive resupply toward demand forecasting, reduced logistical footprint, and resilient distribution networks capable of supporting distributed operations. LOO 2, Predictive Maintenance, leverages AI-enabled data analysis to anticipate component failures, reduce maintenance hours, and increase readiness. LOO 3, Optimized Operations, integrates maintenance, supply, and operational data into a unified decision-support framework that improves scheduling and planning. Together, these lines of operation move Marine Aviation from a reactive sustainment culture toward a proactive, predictive, and data-informed enterprise aligned to the demands of the future fight.

The challenge is balancing crisis response and modernization in a fiscally constrained environment. (Figure provided by author.)

Decision Advantage and AI/ML Integration

Decision advantage is foundational to success in distributed operations. The 2026 AVPLAN elevates artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) from conceptual discussion to an active modernization effort. Artificial intelligence/machine learning initiatives are now integrated into aviation decision-making processes, consolidating enterprise data, and enhancing operational visualization.

Through decision-centric aviation operations, Marine Aviation seeks to sense, process, share, and act faster than any adversary. The AI/ML-enabled tools reduce cognitive burden on commanders, provide predictive readiness insights, and enable faster, more informed decisions. Data architecture, sensing networks, and Digital Interoperability/MAGTF Agile Network Gateway Link integration receive significantly greater depth in the 2026 AVPLAN, reflecting the increased emphasis on networked warfighting and kill-web integration.

This approach transforms data from an operational byproduct into a decisive warfighting capability. By integrating digital tools across maintenance, logistics, and operations, the ACE strengthens its ability to rapidly close kill webs and operate effectively in contested, denied, and degraded environments.

Platform Modernization and Future Force Design

Platform modernization in the 2026 AVPLAN is more detailed, sequenced, and explicitly aligned with DAO requirements. The Tactical Aircraft Transition Plan advances F-35 integration while deliberately sequencing the sundown of legacy platforms to prevent capability gaps. The CH-53K transition continues, alongside modernization of the MV-22, H-1, and KC-130J fleets. Digital upgrades, survivability enhancements, and expanded unmanned capabilities further strengthen operational flexibility.

The unmanned aerial systems enterprise grows substantially, with increased focus on collaborative combat aircraft and manned–unmanned teaming. Platform roadmaps are tied to distributed operations and kill-web integration rather than being viewed as isolated modernization efforts. Additionally, the 2040+ future force design is more clearly articulated, providing a long-term vision for the Next Generation ACE beyond the immediate FYDPs.

This deliberate sequencing ensures modernization remains coherent and operationally grounded. It aligns resources, capability development, and concept evolution across the aviation enterprise, reinforcing that transformation is cumulative and strategically synchronized.

Marines Remain Our Decisive Advantage

Despite the emphasis on digital integration and advanced platforms, the 2026 AVPLAN underscores that Marines remain the decisive advantage. Mission readiness depends on properly manned, trained, and equipped Marines who execute with discipline and initiative. Talent management, instructor quality, technical training, and leadership development are priorities to sustain world-class aviation professionals.

As new technologies emerge, the plan deliberately aligns subject-matter expertise with these capabilities. Immersive training environments and standardized best practices empower maintenance professionals, aircrew, and support personnel. A culture of trust and a team-of-teams approach strengthens integration across squadrons, wings, and headquarters elements.

Modernization without leadership is fragile. The 2026 AVPLAN reinforces that technology enhances, but does not replace, disciplined Marines capable of exercising judgment in uncertainty. By investing in people alongside platforms and data systems, Marine Aviation ensures its competitive advantage endures.

Conclusion

The 2026 AVPLAN represents the maturation of Project Eagle from strategic blueprint to operational execution. Distributed aviation operations is no longer emerging; it is central. The AGS is no longer aspirational; it is institutionalized and recapitalized. Additionally, AI/ML is no longer conceptual; it is embedded in sustainment and decision-making processes. Platform modernization is sequenced across FYDPs and tied explicitly to distributed warfighting requirements.

Through this deliberate balance, Marine Aviation ensures it remains combat credible today while building the Next Generation ACE required for the future fight. The 2026 AVPLAN and Project Eagle provide the roadmap to do both, strengthening the MAGTF’s principal source of combat power and ensuring that the lion’s share of battlefield lethality remains firmly in the hands of Marine Aviation.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

>LtCol Carlson is a UH-1Y Pilot. She is currently assigned as the Aviation Strategy and Plans Officer for Headquarters, Marine Corps Department of Aviation.

A Letter from the Deputy Commandant for Aviation

The Aviation Combat Element (ACE) is the most lethal arm of the Marine Air-Ground Task Force. As such, Marine Aviation remains in high demand as proven multiple times over the past year. From the Middle East to Africa to the Western Pacific and closer to home, Marine Aviation remains highly requested by the Joint Force and we remain ready.

Our core challenge moving forward is daunting but clear—we must simultaneously balance the readiness demanded for today’s crises with the urgent need to continue to modernize our equipment, training, and procedures to meet tomorrow’s threats. The recently released 2026 Marine Aviation Plan, nested within Project Eagle, serves as our strategic blueprint for delivering that balance while ensuring the ACE not only remains combat-credible today, but also fully prepared to defeat the adversaries of tomorrow.

A central theme of our 2026 Aviation Plan is our decisive shift toward Distributed Aviation Operations (DAO) to enhance our survivability and lethality in contested environments. Foundational to this is the elevation of Aviation Ground Support (AGS) to the seventh function of Marine Aviation, a long-overdue recognition that our ability to sustain operations from austere, expeditionary sites is the very backbone of the distributed fight. DAO is not just a change in tactics; it is a fundamental change in how we think about generating combat power and will challenge all elements of the MAGTF to execute at scale. 

The concept of Decision-Centric Aviation Operations (DCAO) underpins our plan. We will harness data and artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to make faster, smarter decisions than our adversaries. We will incorporate it in all we do on the flightline, at the MALS, in the S-shops, and eventually in the cockpit. This effort is fully aligned with Project Dynamis and will allow us to integrate aviation seamlessly into the larger MAGTF and Joint Force.

While we invest in next-generation platforms and cutting-edge technology, we reaffirm that our people remain our decisive advantage. Our Aviation “TEAM” will be our guiding principle that calls on us to: Take Care of our Marines, Execute the Basics with Brilliance and Precision, Attain and Maintain our Readiness, and Mitigate Risk in everything we do.  It also demands that we relentlessly pursue improvement. Innovation—what I refer to as “More Cowbell”—is not optional. It is the expectation that every Marine, Sailor, and Civilian looks for better ways to fight, sustain, train, and lead. Cowbell is not about recognition; it is about improving your position and, if replicated, improving our entire TEAM. We will continue to encourage and reward those who find ways to improve our processes, enhance readiness, and sharpen our combat edge.

That same commitment to disciplined improvement must also define how we approach risk and safety. We will protect our aviation assets through a campaign entitled “26 in 26,” which aims to reduce our Class A through D mishaps by 26 in fiscal year 2026 through education, engaged leadership, and ruthless adherence to standards and procedures. This focus on safety is inseparable from our professional obligation to “Execute the Basics with Brilliance and Precision.”

This edition of the Marine Corps Gazette offers us a unique opportunity to focus on the “A” in MAGTF to expand our collective knowledge of the air domain—regardless of specialty. I hope the articles herein will ignite spirited discussions in ready rooms, in the field, and aboard ship about how we get better every day and where we need to go in the future.  

In conclusion, by transforming our aviation sustainment model, deliberately sequencing our modernization efforts, and relentlessly focusing on the development and well-being of the individual Sailor and Marine, we are building a more lethal, resilient, and data-driven ACE. This will ensure Marine Aviation remains ready to generate decisive combat power to fight and win whenever the Nation calls.

Semper Fidelis,

William H. Swan
Lieutenant General, U.S. Marine Corps
Deputy Commandant for Aviation