Preparing for 2033

Assessing where quantum can strengthen the stand in forces

Stand-in forces were conceived to solve a demanding operational problem: How to persist inside an adversary’s weapons engagement zone while continuously contributing to fleet and Joint Force operations. Success requires more than survival. Stand-in forces must find without being found, navigate when familiar positioning systems are degraded, exchange trusted information across contested networks, and make timely decisions despite surveillance, deception, electronic attack, and uncertainty. These are enduring operational challenges. The technologies available to address them will change, but the challenges will remain.

Quantum technologies offer increasingly credible opportunities to strengthen several of these functions. Advances in precision sensing, timing, navigation, communications security, and computing are progressing toward military applications, but their relevance should be judged by the operational problems they help solve rather than their scientific novelty. For force developers, the important question is therefore not simply what quantum technologies can do, but where they can enhance the capabilities future stand-in forces will require. This article examines four such challenges: finding without being found, navigating without GPS, communicating without compromise, and deciding faster without deciding poorly.1

The year 2033 provides a deliberate force development horizon. Decisions made now about experimentation, education, acquisition, and operational concepts will shape what Marines can employ seven years from today. This article therefore assesses where current evidence supports action now while distinguishing among technologies according to their scientific maturity, engineering progress, and prospects for military adoption by 2033. The argument is not that quantum will solve the challenges facing stand-in forces. It is that selected quantum technologies are sufficiently mature and operationally relevant to warrant focused Marine Corps experimentation and investment now.2

Operational Challenge 1: Finding Without Being Found

The defining characteristic of stand-in forces is not simply that they operate inside an adversary’s weapons engagement zone, but that they persist there while contributing to fleet and Joint Force operations. Their value depends upon sustaining maritime reconnaissance, preserving target custody, and supporting decision making while complicating an adversary’s ability to detect, classify, track, and target them. Reconnaissance and counter-reconnaissance are therefore continuous, mutually supporting functions. The challenge is not merely to survive forward, but to find while making the adversary’s effort to find increasingly difficult.

That contest is becoming more complex. Potential adversaries can integrate satellites, unmanned systems, passive radio frequency collection, cyber reconnaissance, commercial remote sensing, and information fusion into reconnaissance strike architectures capable of correlating signatures across multiple domains. A stand-in force cannot therefore rely upon defeating a single sensor or remaining invisible. It must manage and, when advantageous, manipulate its physical, electromagnetic, cyber, and human signatures while continuing to collect, correlate, and communicate information useful to the fleet and Joint Force.

Quantum-enabled precision measurement can strengthen this contest by improving what a distributed force can sense and how precisely it can determine where and when an observation occurred. Quantum clocks, inertial sensors, gravimeters, magnetometers, and emerging atom-based electromagnetic sensors exploit quantum phenomena to measure time, acceleration, rotation, gravity, magnetic fields, and electromagnetic energy with exceptional precision. These capabilities can improve positioning, navigation, and timing when GPS is degraded; increase the accuracy with which distributed sensors and observations are geolocated and synchronized; and expand opportunities for passive sensing.3 Integrated with conventional sensors and existing reconnaissance architectures, they can increase confidence in weak or ambiguous observations without requiring stand-in forces to expose themselves through additional active emissions.4

The operational advantage is cumulative rather than revolutionary. A distributed stand-in force operating under emissions control could maintain more accurate navigation and synchronization during GPS disruption, correlate observations from dispersed sensors with greater confidence, distinguish patterns from isolated reports, and preserve target custody longer. Quantum sensing will not make Marines invisible or eliminate uncertainty. It can make persistent reconnaissance more precise and resilient while reducing dependence on external signals that an adversary can jam, spoof, or exploit. The challenge is reciprocal: increasingly sensitive quantum sensors could also improve an adversary’s ability to detect stand-in-force signatures, reinforcing the importance of signature management, deception, dispersion, and mobility in the reconnaissance /counter-reconnaissance contest. For a force attempting to find without being found, those advantages matter.

For force developers, the implication is straightforward. Quantum sensing and precision measurement have advanced enough to warrant focused experimentation—now. Recent military developments reinforce that judgment as quantum timing and sensing move from laboratory demonstrations toward field trials and, in selected cases, production quantities. The objective should not be to replace existing reconnaissance systems, but to determine where quantum clocks and sensors can increase the resilience, precision, and persistence of the reconnaissance architecture Marines will require in 2033. Continued progress in size, weight, power, ruggedization, and integration will determine which technologies become expeditionary capabilities, but waiting for complete technological maturity before experimenting would surrender valuable time to learn how to employ them.5

Operational Challenge 2: Navigating Without GPS

Stand-in forces cannot persist inside an adversary’s weapons engagement zone without trusted positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT). Movement, sensor geolocation, logistics, target reporting, precision fires, and synchronization all depend upon knowing where forces are and when events occur. For decades, GPS has provided much of this capability, but future operations must assume periods of degradation, denial, deception, or deliberate nonuse. The challenge is therefore larger than navigating without GPS. Stand-in forces must preserve sufficiently accurate PNT to maneuver, synchronize distributed operations, maintain target custody, and contribute reliably to fleet and joint force operations.

Adversaries can attack that confidence through jamming, spoofing, cyber operations, and attacks against space-based capabilities, while emissions control may constrain a force’s use of external signals. The consequences extend beyond navigation. Position or timing errors can degrade sensor correlation, target location, precision fires, logistics, and the commander’s confidence in operational information. Resilient PNT therefore requires an architecture that can draw upon multiple independent and complementary sources rather than depend upon continuous access to any single system.

Quantum timing and inertial sensing can make this PNT architecture significantly more resilient. Advanced atomic clocks can maintain precise time for longer periods without external synchronization, while quantum inertial sensors measure acceleration and rotation with sufficient sensitivity to reduce the positional error that accumulates as an inertial navigation system operates without external updates.6 Combined with conventional inertial systems, terrain and celestial navigation, signals of opportunity, and periodic trusted GPS access when available, these capabilities can extend the time a distributed force operates confidently without relying upon vulnerable external navigation signals.7 For stand-in forces, that means more than knowing where they are. More resilient PNT improves the ability to geolocate observations, synchronize dispersed sensors and formations, preserve target custody, maneuver under emissions control, and integrate accurately with fleet and Joint Force operations.

For force developers, the objective should not be to replace GPS. Instead, the Marine Corps must build a PNT architecture that continues functioning when GPS does not. Quantum clocks and inertial sensors are sufficiently mature to warrant focused Marine Corps experimentation toward that objective now. Important engineering challenges remain, particularly size, weight, power, environmental sensitivity, and integration into expeditionary systems, but current development programs demonstrate credible progress toward deployable capabilities.8 By 2033, the advantage may not be a “quantum navigation system.” Rather, it may be a stand-in force that can operate longer, with greater confidence and fewer external dependencies, when an adversary expects the loss of GPS to impose paralysis.

Operational Challenge 3: Communicating Without Compromise

Stand-in forces derive much of their value from contributing timely, trusted information to the fleet and Joint Force. Distributed reconnaissance, target custody, and maritime campaigning require information to move great distances among sensors, commanders, and shooters. Yet every transmission can create vulnerability. Radio-frequency emissions may reveal friendly locations, communications can be intercepted or disrupted, and degraded networks can isolate distributed forces when their information matters most. The challenge is therefore not maximizing connectivity. It is exchanging trusted information while minimizing the signatures and vulnerabilities created by remaining connected inside an adversary’s weapons engagement zone.

That tension will intensify as adversaries improve electronic warfare, cyber operations, signals intelligence, and electromagnetic sensing. Stand-in forces must therefore communicate selectively while protecting the confidentiality, integrity, authenticity, and timeliness of the information they exchange. Predictable network behavior, unnecessary transmissions, or excessive data can increase both the electromagnetic signature of a distributed force and the available opportunities to disrupt or exploit it. Communications discipline and emissions control remain fundamental, but the underlying information architecture must also become more secure and resilient.

Quantum technologies can strengthen the information architecture in several ways. Post-quantum cryptography (PQC) provides the clearest near-term opportunity. Post-quantum cryptography uses new mathematical algorithms designed to resist attacks from both conventional and future quantum computers and can be incorporated into existing digital networks without requiring quantum communications hardware.9 Quantum-enabled timing can improve synchronization across distributed networks and sensors, while quantum random number generators can provide high-quality randomness for cryptographic applications.10 These technologies do not make transmissions undetectable or prevent electronic attack. They strengthen the security and integrity of the information moving through networks that Marines must continue to protect through sound communications discipline.

For force developers, PQC presents a different challenge from many emerging technologies because transition is already underway. The National Institute of Standards and Technology finalized its first post-quantum cryptographic standards in 2024, and U.S. policy directs federal systems toward quantum-resistant cryptography. Recent NATO analysis similarly identifies migration toward post-quantum cryptography as an operational requirement for protecting future command and control architectures and preserving interoperability across allied networks.11 The Marine Corps therefore does not need to predict whether quantum will affect communications security by 2033. It needs to prepare for a security architecture already changing because of that prospect. Experimentation should focus on integrating quantum-resistant security, resilient timing, and other mature quantum-enabled capabilities into distributed communications while preserving emissions discipline and interoperability. For stand-in forces, communicating without compromise will remain impossible in an absolute sense. The objective is more practical: exchange the information necessary to fight while denying an adversary unnecessary opportunities to detect, disrupt, deceive, or exploit the force.

Operational Challenge 4: Deciding Faster Without Deciding Poorly

Information possesses little operational value until it informs a decision. The preceding challenges help stand-in forces understand the environment, preserve trusted positioning, navigation, and timing, and exchange trusted information. Commanders must turn those advantages into decisions, often under severe time pressure and against adversaries employing deception, cyber operations, and electronic warfare. The challenge therefore is not simply deciding faster. It is deciding faster without deciding poorly.

That task becomes harder as distributed sensors, unmanned systems, commercial data, intelligence reporting, and networked command and control generate more information than commanders and staffs can readily absorb. Adversaries can compound the problem through deception, manipulated information, and deliberate overload. Decision advantage therefore depends not upon processing everything, but upon identifying what matters, testing assumptions, evaluating alternatives, and transforming trusted information into action before opportunities disappear.

Quantum computing offers a less mature but potentially important contribution to the challenge of making better decisions within compressed timelines. Its most credible military applications by 2033 are unlikely to involve quantum computers accompanying stand-in forces or replacing commanders. Rather, quantum and hybrid quantum-classical computing may begin supporting specialized analytical problems at reach-back, fleet, joint, or enterprise levels. Optimization, logistics, scheduling, simulation, and resource allocation are among the problem classes being investigated because some become extraordinarily difficult as the number of variables and possible solutions grows.12 As quantum systems begin to demonstrate validated computational advantage on selected problems, the remaining military question is whether that advantage can translate to operationally relevant applications. If it can, quantum methods could eventually allow staffs to examine alternatives that are too computationally demanding to evaluate within useful timelines today.13

For stand-in forces, the value would reside in the resulting analysis rather than the location of the computer. Quantum-assisted optimization could eventually help supporting staffs examine sustainment routes, allocation of scarce resources, force positioning, or other complex alternatives and return better options to commanders operating forward. Current Navy research also illustrates that progress toward useful quantum computation will depend not only on hardware, but on algorithms that reduce the computational resources required to solve selected problems. This would not make command automatic or remove uncertainty. Nor does current evidence justify assuming quantum computing will outperform advanced classical computing across military problems by 2033. Its potential lies in improving selected analytical processes where computational complexity constrains the speed or breadth of useful analysis.

For force developers, that uncertainty argues for experimentation rather than waiting or exaggerating what quantum computing can deliver. The Marine Corps should identify operational problems whose computational characteristics make them plausible candidates for quantum or hybrid methods, establish classical benchmarks, and test whether emerging systems produce useful advantage.14 By 2033, quantum computing may remain primarily a supporting capability rather than a tactical one. That distinction does not diminish its potential value. A better option delivered to a commander in time to act can create operational advantage regardless of where the computation occurred.

Preparing for 2033

Stand-in forces were conceived to persist inside an adversary’s weapons engagement zone while continuously contributing to fleet and Joint Force operations. Doing so requires Marines to find without being found, navigate when GPS is unavailable, exchange trusted information across contested networks, and make sound decisions before opportunities disappear. Technology alone will not solve these challenges. But technology can materially improve the ability of Marines to meet them, and current evidence indicates that selected quantum capabilities can contribute.

The evidence also supports different levels of confidence. Quantum sensing, precision timing, resilient positioning and navigation, and post-quantum cryptography are advancing along credible paths toward greater military application through 2033. Quantum computing remains less certain, but its potential contribution to specialized optimization and analytical problems warrants experimentation. The implication is not that the Marine Corps should pursue quantum indiscriminately. It is that force developers should identify the capabilities with demonstrated operational promise, test them against demanding military problems, and invest where experimentation demonstrates meaningful advantage.

That work should begin now. The capabilities available to Marines in 2033 will reflect decisions about experimentation, acquisition, education, doctrine, and operational concepts made years earlier. Waiting for quantum technologies to mature before determining how Marines might employ them would surrender the time needed to experiment, fail, adapt, and integrate those that prove useful. The Marine Corps does not need certainty about the quantum future to act. It needs sufficient evidence to recognize opportunity and the institutional discipline to turn promising technology into warfighting advantage.

Preparing for 2033 begins now.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

>Col Dunne (Ret.) is a recently retired, three-decade Marine. This article was inspired by his personal experience, having twice undergone the unusual transition from second-in-command to interim first-in-command, and back to second-in-command. It was further informed by his recent work supporting the Chief of Staff Association and their examination of leadership transitions in higher education and its application across professions.

Notes

1. National Quantum Initiative Advisory Committee, Quantum Networking: Findings and Recommendations for Growing American Leadership (Washington, DC: National Quantum Initiative Advisory Committee, 2024); Quantum Economic Development Consortium, Quantum Technology for Securing Financial Messaging (2024); and National Institute of Standards and Technology, “NIST Releases First 3 Finalized Post-Quantum Encryption Standards,” August 13, 2024. Collectively, these sources demonstrate that quantum technologies are advancing unevenly across sensing, networking, communications security, and computing, supporting an operational assessment by capability rather than treating “quantum” as a single technology. 

2. U.S. Government Accountability Office, Science & Tech Spotlight: Quantum Sensors, GAO-25-107876 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Accountability Office, January 2025), 1–2. The GAO identifies quantum sensors as “the most mature form of quantum technology” and notes that they can improve measurements of time and position, potentially enabling navigation when GPS is unavailable or degraded. At the same time, GAO cautions that reliability, cost-effectiveness, technology transfer, workforce limitations, and access to specialized components remain obstacles to broader deployment. These distinctions reinforce an important force-development point: Quantum technologies should not be treated as a single capability progressing toward maturity at a common rate. Sensing and positioning, navigation, and timing applications may present nearer-term opportunities for experimentation and transition, while other quantum applications remain on different and generally less certain developmental trajectories. 

3. Michael Saywell et al., “Quantum Sensor for a Future Navigation System,” Science Advances 10, no. 20 (2024); U.S. Department of Defense, “DOD Should Focus on Short-Term Goals in Quantum Science,” March 12, 2020. Saywell and colleagues demonstrated a cold-atom inertial sensor designed around navigation requirements, while the Department has specifically identified quantum clocks, inertial sensors, and magnetometers as nearer-term priorities for precision timing and navigation. Together, these developments support treating quantum-precision measurement as an emerging military capability rather than a purely theoretical application. 

4. John Kitching, James P. Shaffer, and Dmitry Budker, “Atom-Based Quantum Sensing of Electromagnetic Fields,” Optica 12, no. 12 (December 2025): 2008–22, https://doi.org/10.1364/OPTICA.569334; Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, “Manufacturing Technologies for Rydberg-Based Atomic Sensors (MANTRAS),” SBIR/STTR Topic DPA26BZ03-DV011, 2026. Atom-based sensors can detect electromagnetic fields across broad frequency ranges, while DARPA is pursuing ruggedized, low-size, weight, and power Rydberg-based systems for wideband radio-frequency sensing. These developments suggest potential applications in passive electromagnetic reconnaissance and spectrum awareness, although laboratory performance does not establish expeditionary military utility. The sensing advantage is also reciprocal: The GAO identifies the potential use of quantum sensors to detect stealth technologies. U.S. Government Accountability Office, Science & Tech Spotlight: Quantum Sensors, GAO-25-107876 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Accountability Office, January 2025), 1–2. For stand-in forces, both opportunities warrant experimentation before 2033: what quantum sensors may allow Marines to detect, and how increasingly capable adversary sensors could affect friendly signature management and counter-reconnaissance. 

5. Dongyoun Cho, “From Sea Trials to Series Production: The Uneven Rise of Military Quantum Sensing,” International Institute for Strategic Studies, September 7, 2026; Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, FY 2026 President’s Budget: Research, Development, Test & Evaluation, Defense-Wide, vol. 1 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Defense, 2025), 97; U.S. Department of Defense, “Multi-Service Team Wins $45 Million Research Award to Pursue Quantum-Based Precision Targeting,” June 13, 2023. DARPA’s H6 program is developing a small, low-power, deployable tactical clock intended to maintain precise timing without GPS, with realistic environment demonstrations planned in FY 2026. Separately, the Department’s CLAWS effort is investing $45 million to transition quantum-related technologies toward precision military applications. Recent military developments provide additional evidence of movement from laboratory research toward field experimentation and production. IISS reports distributed Royal Navy trials of cold atom timing under simulated navigation disruption and a U.S. order for 125 optical atomic clocks. These programs provide concrete evidence that miniaturization, deployability, and military integration are active engineering objectives, not merely projected requirements.

6. Michael Saywell et al., “Quantum Sensor for a Future Navigation System,” Science Advances 10, no. 20 (2024); Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, FY 2026 President’s Budget: Research, Development, Test & Evaluation, Defense-Wide, vol. 1 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Defense, 2025), 97. Quantum-inertial navigation seeks to exploit highly sensitive measurements of acceleration and rotation to reduce inertial drift, while DARPA’s H6 program is developing a small, low-power tactical clock capable of maintaining precise time without GPS. These efforts address two principal sources of PNT degradation during extended periods without trusted external updates. 

7. Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, DoD Positioning, Navigation, and Timing Science and Technology Strategy (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Defense, 2025), 8–17; U.S. Department of Defense, “AUKUS Defense Ministers Meeting Joint Statement,” December 1, 2023. The Department’s PNT strategy emphasizes resilient architectures built from complementary technologies rather than a single GPS substitute. The AUKUS’s Resilient and Autonomous Artificial Intelligence Technologies and Quantum Positioning, Navigation, and Timing initiatives provide additional evidence that defense organizations are actively pursuing quantum sensors as components of GPS-resilient navigation architectures. 

8. Dongyoun Cho, “From Sea Trials to Series Production: The Uneven Rise of Military Quantum Sensing,” International Institute for Strategic Studies, September 7, 2026; Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, FY 2026 President’s Budget, 97; and Saywell et al., “Quantum Sensor for a Future Navigation System.” Laboratory sensitivity alone does not produce an expeditionary capability. Current programs increasingly emphasize smaller systems, reduced power requirements, robustness, and operation outside controlled laboratory environments. Recent military trials provide additional evidence of that progression. IISS reports Royal Navy testing of distributed cold atom timing across ships, shore radars, and rebroadcast nodes while simulating navigation signal jamming and spoofing, as well as U.S. programs moving selected quantum timing devices toward production quantities. Those engineering efforts and operational developments support experimentation now while also cautioning against assuming that every demonstrated quantum sensor will be suitable for distributed Marine operations by 2033. 

9. National Institute of Standards and Technology, “NIST Releases First 3 Finalized Post-Quantum Encryption Standards,” August 13, 2024; National Institute of Standards and Technology, FIPS 203: Module-Lattice-Based Key-Encapsulation Mechanism Standard (Gaithersburg, MD: National Institute of Standards and Technology, August 2024); National Institute of Standards and Technology, FIPS 204: Module-Lattice-Based Digital Signature Standard (Gaithersburg, MD: National Institute of Standards and Technology, August 2024). Unlike quantum-key distribution, PQC does not require quantum hardware or dedicated quantum links. It replaces vulnerable public-key algorithms with mathematical schemes designed to withstand attacks by both classical and quantum computers, making migration possible within existing network architectures. 

10. National Institute of Standards and Technology, “NIST Chip Generates Quantum Random Numbers at Record-Breaking Speed,” April 15, 2025; Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, FY 2026 President’s Budget: Research, Development, Test & Evaluation, Defense-Wide, vol. 1 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Defense, 2025), 97. Quantum random-number generation derives unpredictability from quantum processes rather than deterministic algorithms, while advanced atomic clocks can preserve precise timing when external synchronization is degraded. These capabilities address cryptographic entropy and synchronization, respectively; neither substitutes for secure radios, low-probability-of-detection waveforms, or emissions control. 

11. National Security Memorandum 10, “Promoting United States Leadership in Quantum Computing While Mitigating Risks to Vulnerable Cryptographic Systems,” May 4, 2022; National Institute of Standards and Technology, “NIST Releases First 3 Finalized Post-Quantum Encryption Standards,” August 13, 2024, and Nakul Nayyar and Matthias Rößler, “Quantum Technologies for NATO Air and Space Power: Military Risks, Operational Implications, and the Imperative for Allied Action,” Joint Air Power Competence Centre Journal, no. 42 (September 2026). The NSM-10 directed migration toward quantum-resistant cryptography, and NIST’s finalized standards moved PQC from research toward implementation. Ongoing NATO analysis further identifies PQC migration as an operational requirement and emphasizes the challenge of maintaining interoperability as legacy, hybrid, and quantum-resistant systems coexist across allied networks. The relevant force-development question is therefore increasingly how and when to integrate quantum-resistant cryptography, rather than whether such a transition will eventually be necessary. 

12. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Quantum Computing: Progress and Prospects (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2019), 69–106; Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, “Quantum Benchmarking Initiative,” 2025. Quantum computers approach computation differently from classical machines and are not inherently faster for every problem. Optimization, simulation, and related problem classes remain important research areas, but practical military utility depends upon demonstrating computational advantage on problems of operationally relevant size and complexity. 

13. Simon Martiel et al., “Sampling Hard Circuits with Verifiably High Fidelity,” arXiv:2607.25941 (July 28, 2026); Eyal Leviatan et al., “Resolving Structure in Prethermal Floquet Dynamics with Precision Quantum Computation,” arXiv:2607.24937 (July 27, 2026). Recent experiments provide increasingly credible evidence that quantum processors can perform and validate selected computations beyond the practical reach of leading classical methods. These results are important demonstrations of computational advantage, but they do not establish operational advantage for military optimization, logistics, targeting, or decision support. For the Marine Corps, the relevant question is therefore not quantum advantage in the abstract, but whether quantum methods can produce useful, timely, and trustworthy results for operationally relevant problems better than the best available classical alternatives. 

14. Meaningful evaluation of quantum computing requires comparison against the best available classical methods, not merely demonstration that a quantum processor can execute a problem. This standard becomes more difficult as quantum systems enter regimes where exact classical verification is itself computationally impractical. Recent experiments have addressed this problem through techniques including error-detected fidelity certification, controlled error mitigation, comparison across quantum hardware platforms, and continued benchmarking against competing classical approaches. See Simon Martiel et al., “Sampling Hard Circuits with Verifiably High Fidelity,” arXiv:2607.25941 (July 28, 2026); IBM, “Quantum Advantage Tracker: The Race to Advantage,” February 23, 2026, and Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific, “Navy Researchers Release Groundbreaking Software, Slashing Quantum Computational Costs by as Much as 99%,” September 1, 2026. The Navy’s QGeo research further illustrates the role of algorithm design in reducing quantum computational costs, although such efficiencies do not themselves establish operational advantage. For military experimentation, problem selection, classical benchmarking, and result validation should therefore be treated as inseparable requirements. A quantum approach should be considered operationally valuable only when it produces a useful and trustworthy result for a relevant problem better, faster, or otherwise more effectively than the best practical classical alternative. 

Operation EPIC FURY and Four Lessons for the Marine Corps’ SIF and EABO Concepts

Lesson 3: Ability Organization

I

n October 2025, Gen Smith endorsed the 2025 Force Design Update, emphasizing the added capabilities the Marine Corps has achieved over the last six years. Specifically, Gen Smith notes the Marine Corps’ advances in kinetic fires, finding and fixing the enemy, expeditionary manufacturing, ground-based air defense, the Light-Marine Air Defense Integrated System, installation and organic counter-small unmanned aerial systems.1 While the Marine Corps has made great strides in a short period on a reduced budget, Gen Smith emphasizes that “Force Design is not an endstate but a journey.”2

When it comes to Operation Epic Fury (OEF), we see that these capabilities did not cause noteworthy acknowledgement from our highest military leadership (Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth; Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen Dan Caine; Commander of Central Command, ADM Brad Cooper) over 38 days of major combat operations (MCO). The first two lessons that we must learn from OEF are that the Marine Corps must preposition its forces and that these forces must be lethal.3 The third lesson is that the Marine Corps must create abilities, not mere capabilities. This article will discuss the framework of being an ability organization, rather than a capability organization. 

Why Capabilities Do Not Equal Abilities

Capabilities do not equal abilities. For example, on 23 October 1983, a suicide driver detonated a vehicle-borne explosive in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 231 U.S. service members­—220 of whom were Marines.4 The Marines on watch were instructed to be in Condition 4 for their individual rifles (i.e., no magazine inserted, no round in the chamber, bolt forward, weapon on safe).5 Despite these Marines being capable of engaging the enemy with their issued rifles, they were not able to engage the threat. As stated, “increasing their capability, whether through enhanced equipping, training, or education, would not change the death toll and destruction on 23 October 1983, as they lacked the ability to be lethal due to the lack of permission to be in Condition 1 with their rifles.”6 

Another decisive example of creating capabilities rather than abilities is the Marine Corps’ lack of Joint Force (JF) integration in the 1980s. Specifically, during the evolution of the U.S. military in the 1980s, Army Rangers created lasting, meaningful relationships, where the Marine Corps deliberately did not. In the 1980s, the Army created its elite counter-terrorism unit.7 In that same time period, Joint Special Operations Command started being formed.8 The Army Rangers created professional relationships with both the elite counter-terrorism unit and Joint Special Operations Command.9 The early relationships facilitated the Army Rangers’ integration into Operation Eagle Claw (1980) and Operation Gothic Serpent (1993). “To this day, these professional relationships enable the US Army Rangers’ missions to be at a higher tier (i.e., of greater strategic and national relevance, higher priority targets) than the Marine Corps’ infantry, Marine Corps’ Force Reconnaissance, and Marine Corps Special Operations Forces units.”10 

Regardless of how much organic Marine Corps capability is created with our modernization efforts, without creating abilities, we are limiting our role to the JF, military campaign, and overall strategy.11 Thus, we must strive for abilities, not capabilities, as we transform our formation. This concept is most notable in enacting our Stand-in Forces (SIF) and Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations (EABO) concepts.12 The next sections will demonstrate this concept in greater detail. 


What is a Capability


Capabilities can be simply explained as the interplay of equipment and technology combined with training and education.13 Capabilities are further influenced by the inputs of proficiency, availability, quantity, quality, and existence.14 To be concise, Table 1 portrays the definitions related to capability based on previous works, while Table 2 has been modified from previous works, with it relating to force protection capabilities in OEF.15

What is an Ability


The first step to creating an ability is to create the capability. Thus, the Marine Corps should continue to advance its capabilities with the intent to create abilities. As stated, “rather than striving to be a capability organization, we must drive to become an ability organization. The concept of becoming an ability organization is critical as the USMC transitions to execute concepts such as SIF and EABO.”16 


“Whereas capabilities should be viewed as dependent, abilities should be viewed as relative and can be defined as the relationship of possessing a capability combined with the permission to achieve stated objectives, with the needed relationships, while combining friction (i.e., physical, mental, external, and self-induced).”17 Figure 1 depicts a flow chart to determine if one has an ability. Furthermore, Table 3 (modified from previous works) demonstrates that capabilities are not enough, which is why we must drive to create abilities.18

Provided the Marine Corps creates a high capability (highly equipped, trained, and educated), the next step to create an ability is to gain the optimal permissions to unleash the capability. During OEF, Secretary Hegseth publicly stated several times that maximum permissions were granted to the JF, which enabled over 13,000 strikes during 38 days of MCO.19 Gaining the optimal permissions is critical for the Marine Corps’ operational leaders to fully unleash our potential of SIF and EABO.20

Relationships, as demonstrated in Table 3, are critical for creating and maintaining an ability. Gen Smith states the Marines of III MEF “will act as the JTAC [Joint Terminal Air Controller] of the Joint Force, sensing, making sense, and communicating to the rest of the Joint Force with an ‘any sensor, any shooter’ mindset.”21 However, our SIF forces were not at the Strait of Hormuz and therefore did not preserve the shipping route that impacts the global economy. 

To our strength and detriment, we are notoriously Service-isolated.22 The MAGTF is the “principal organization for all Marine Corps missions across the range of military operations,” with its key feature being its expandability.23 As every Marine is taught, each MAGTF can harmonize all seven warfighting functions independently, which enables the Marine Corps to conduct operations self-sufficiently. However, our self-sufficiency can facilitate our Service’s isolated culture.

Figure 1: Flow chart to determine ability. (Figure provided by author.)

Milan Vego believes that “the main prerequisites for success in littoral warfare are suitable and diverse platforms, weapons, and sensors; robust command organization; close cooperation among friendly forces; air superiority; well-developed theory; and sound doctrine.”24 Vego states that “littoral warfare requires the closest cooperation among the Services.”25 In 2021, Gen Berger stated that SIF “will be positioned forward, shoulder-to-shoulder with our allies and partners, leveraging all-domain tools as the eyes and ears of the fleet and joint force.”26 In 2023, Gen Berger stated that the Marine Corps will enable kill webs for the joint and combined forces.27

Thus, to fully realize SIF and EABO, we must break our Service-isolated culture.28 However, for SIF and EABO, we should not view joint warfare at the geographic combatant commands or theater special operations commands with planners, liaison officers, and staff personnel.29 For our SIF and EABO concepts, we should view joint warfare down to the smallest unit possible.30

As we modernize, we must deliberately seek out Joint Force interdependence, interoperability, and integration (JF-I3). Our JF-I3 must be at the tactical level and ensure resilient and redundant pathways to close joint kill webs. Our JF-I3 should be directed to enabling the joint F2T2EA (Find, Fix, Track, Target, Engage, and Assess) cycle in critical littoral terrain. 

Lastly, when creating an ability, it must be resilient to friction, including physical, mental, external, and self-induced friction. Factoring in friction when creating an ability is critical. Accordingly, we must plan for friction relative to the dilemma posed by the pacing threat.31 Throughout OEF, Iran demonstrated a large storage of one-way attack unmanned aerial systems and ballistic missiles. However, we know the Chinese Communist Party has a greater and more capable magazine depth. 

Conclusion

The Marine Corps has made great strides in increasing its capability since Force Design 2030 was published in 2020. However, these added capabilities did not enable the Marine Corps to create notable effects in OEF over 38 days of MCO. Furthermore, doubling our current capabilities would not have changed our effectiveness in OEF. Thus, we must increase our abilities, which is the interplay of possessing the capability with the needed permissions and optimal relationships, while being resilient to all forms of friction. This is critical as 2030 is only 43 months away at the time of this writing. 

The first two articles of this series discussed the first two lessons to be learned from OEF: the need for the Marine Corps to preposition its forces and the need for these forces to be lethal. This article discussed the need for us to create abilities, not mere capabilities. The last article will discuss the final lesson to be learned; specifically, we must be a prepositioned, lethal, and able force at optimal capacity. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

>Maj Carter is currently serving as a Marine Raider 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 currently active in the human performance community, is a reviewer and editor for three different human performance journals, recently earned his fourth master’s degree, and is the President of True Performance Realization (trueperformancerealization.com). For free, accessible information on human performance, the reader can see: trueperformancerealization.com/journal.

Notes

1.Gen. Eric M. Smith, Force Design Update 2025 (Washington, DC: Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, October 2025). 

2. Ibid. 

3. Jeremy Carter, “Major Combat Operations Against Iran from 28 February–7 April 2026: Four Lessons for the Marine Corps’ Modernization Efforts” (master’s thesis, Air Command and Staff College, Maxwell Air Force Base, AL, May 2026). 

4. Irene Loewenson, “40 Years after Beirut: How the Bombing Still Haunts the Corps Today,” Marine Corps Times, October 23, 2023, accessed May 7, 2026, https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/your-marine-corps/2023/10/23/40-years-after-beirut-how-the-bombing-still-haunts-the-corps-today. 

5. “Marine Barracks Beirut 1983 Bombing Defense Department Report,” Paperless Archives, accessed May 7, 2026, https://safe.menlosecurity.com/doc/docview/viewer/docN890CAF60DDDF57f52f87bce59293e4f9a4316f095c3435cbd727da105537bfd3fc78da9705f8. 

6. Carter, “Major Combat Operations Against Iran.” 

7. Eric L. Haney, Inside Delta Force: The Story of America’s Elite Counterterrorist Unit (New York: Random House Publishing Group, 2004). 

8. Sean Naylor, Relentless Strike: The Secret History of Joint Special Operations Command (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2015). 

9. Dick Couch, Always Faithful, Always Forward: The Forging of a Special Operations Marine (New York: Berkley Publishing Group, 2014). 

10. Carter, “Major Combat Operations Against Iran.” 

11. Jeremy Carter, “The Need to Become an Ability Organization: A Novel View of Capabilities versus Abilities,” Marine Corps Gazette 109 (2025): 18–21. 

12. Ibid. 

13. Ibid. 

14. Ibid. 

15. Ibid. 

16. Ibid. 

17. Ibid. 

18. Ibid. 

19. “Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Air Force Gen. Dan Caine Hold a Press Briefing (Transcript),” U.S. Department of War, April 8, 2026, accessed April 12, 2026, https://www.war.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/4454648/secretary-of-war-pete-hegseth-and-chairman-of-the-joint-chiefs-air-force-gen-da. 

20. Carter, “Major Combat Operations Against Iran.” 

21. Ibid. 

22. Jeremy Carter, “The Marine Corps’ Maginot Line? A Lack of Joint Force Interdependence, Interoperability, and Integration: A Solution for Stand-In Forces,” Marine Corps Gazette (accepted for publication). 

23. Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, MCDP 1-0: Operations (Washington, DC: Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, 1997). 

24. Milan Vego, “On Littoral Warfare,” Naval War College Review 68, no. 2 (2015). 

25. Ibid. 

26. Gen. David H. Berger, A Concept for Stand-In Forces (Washington, DC: Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, December 2021). 

27. Gen. David H. Berger, Force Design 2030 Annual Update (Washington, DC: Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, June 2023). 

28. Carter, “Major Combat Operations Against Iran.” 

29. Jeremy Carter, “OPERATION EPIC FURY from 28 February–7 April 2026: The Marine Corps Was Not Needed—Lessons for SIF and EABO,” Marine Corps Gazette (October 2026): WE1– WE7. 

30. Ibid. 

31. Carter, “The Need to Become an Ability Organization.” 

How to Fail in Command

A pro guide to what NOT to do…

One of the nice things about being a colonel is that people are interested in what you think (or pretend to be). I am occasionally asked by young officers the secrets to a successful command tour. I am careful with this since most advice I have received over the years is closer to nostalgia than specific, well-thought-out guidance, but one piece of advice I always give is to read. Over years of reading, I have come across many gems and been exposed to the very best thinkers and their work. For someone embarking on a career that emphasizes decision making and human interaction, one of the best thinkers I have come across is Charlie Munger, one half of the famous leadership duo that ran Berkshire Hathaway for decades. One of his most famous speeches—given at the 1986 Harvard commencement—was called “How to Guarantee a Life of Misery,” where he provides a surefire blueprint for lifelong wretchedness and despair. In that spirit, and in the words of Charlie, let us invert. Instead of providing my highly personal, idiosyncratic, and nostalgic advice for success, I will offer you—the aspiring, sitting, or soon-to-be commander—a simple, bulletproof course of action for guaranteed failure. If you diligently follow these nine practical steps, I can promise you a command tour that is painful, ineffective, disappointing, and even embarrassing. If controlled flight into terrain is your goal, these principles, when diligently applied over time, will get you there.

1. Treat Higher Headquarters as the Enemy

If you want to guarantee your command tenure is unsuccessful, first ensure your vision and intent are truly your own and do not consider your boss’ goals and objectives. This will make sure you are out of alignment right from the start. View your commander’s intent not as guidance but as a vague suggestion to be ignored. Your boss has priorities, but they are dull and uninspired. You, on the other hand, have brilliant ideas. The key is to make your boss’s priorities secondary to your own. Devote your best people and prime resources to the projects that interest you while paying only lip service to the tasks you have actually been assigned. Pay yourself first, as they say. This creates constant friction (think Clausewitz) within the organization and ensures you are working at cross-purposes with the overall effort. Withhold all bad news; what they do not know cannot hurt you. Communicate as little as possible, and when you must, be cryptic and defensive. This guarantees that when you inevitably need support, you will not have it, and when higher command makes a decision, it will be based on a complete ignorance of your reality—an ignorance you have so carefully cultivated.

Small things add up over time. Nothing is as maddening as having to pull information about everything, especially when you have the sense that your subordinate units are not being completely forthcoming. Once distrust seeps into a relationship, everything else becomes more difficult. Also, make sure your boss knows who owns what —your gear, your Marines, your time, your mission … Not theirs. Perhaps the best part of this approach is that you will never get the benefit of the doubt, ensuring failure.

2. Never Go to Bat for Your People

When one of your Marines is in trouble, or a good opportunity appears on the horizon, choose to view your Marine and their issue as an administrative burden, not a leadership responsibility. When a difficult choice must be made between defending a subordinate and appeasing a superior, always choose the path of least resistance. (I know this one might be in contrast with the previous point, but this is a really effective technique.) Championing your people requires the expenditure of your hard-earned political capital—capital that you may need for yourself someday. To ensure failure, hoard this capital. Your Marines will quickly learn they are on their own, fostering the healthy distrust that is essential for mission failure. Act as if awards are a zero-sum game and every medal you approve is coming off your chest. Do not fight for resources or the tools and means necessary to improve conditions (equipment, gear, schools and training) and never, ever say thank you—the Marines are just doing their job after all. The best part of this one is that you do not have to advertise. Your Marines will see this quickly and spread the word on your behalf.

3. Focus Your Efforts Down and In

The units to your left and right are not your partners; they are your rivals in the great game of resource allocation and credit-seeking. Hoard information. Refuse to share assets. See any request for cooperation as a zero-sum attempt to diminish your command. Building impenetrable silos around your unit is a surefire way to guarantee that in a crisis, you will face it utterly alone. Have you ever heard the old proverb, if you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go with friends? You want to go fast. Do not ever contact your adjacent company, battalion, or squadron commanders. They are not doing or learning anything valuable or worth your time and attention. Make sure you learn your own lessons all the time—never benefit from their experiences. This will ensure you all are making the same mistakes, in parallel, and no one is able to get ahead. Do not ever conduct coordinated training events and ensure any request for assistance from another unit is met with one of these answers: I am too busy with my own priorities; You need to submit a feasibility of support request, or I would like to, but I have not been tasked with this. This last one has the added benefit of ensuring things proceed through a byzantine staffing process where many different organizations get a chance to say no and your headquarters gets a chance to put their spin on it. Your peers have nothing to teach you; your experiences are unique to you. Do not waste your time learning their lessons. Go out and make your own mistakes.

4. Have Low Standards and Be Inconsistent in Enforcing Them


High standards and clear expectations are the enemy of mediocrity. This prescription has two parts: Never set the bar too high, and whatever you do, do not be clear or consistent about what you expect. High standards are a problem because, in this business, people generally want to do well and, if given something to strive for, will usually accomplish it using various creative and innovative solutions. You can see how this could be a problem if failure is the goal. There will always be those in your organization who want nothing more than for today to be exactly like yesterday. Those are the people you should cater to. Listen carefully to the naysayers, and especially those who will have to change, do more work, or have something to lose if you disrupt the status quo in search of achievement. The high achievers and strivers will never be satisfied, so do not try. Keep your unit mired in the present. Things have always been done this way and should continue to be done the same way. Any new initiative will bring with it dozens of unintended consequences. Are you sure you are ready for everything that goes along with improving how you operate? Also, do not enforce your standards, and do not expect your leadership team to either. If you do communicate expectations, it is best to do it in your command philosophy, once, and never say or do anything about it again. Constant repetition, the kind that lets people know you are serious or will inspire them to change, should be avoided. 

Do not treat a mishap or near miss as something to learn from. Think of it as an opportunity to come down on someone like a ton of bricks.


Whatever you do, do not make corrections when you see something clearly out of alignment with your expectations. Corrections are unpleasant; your Marines will not like it (or you), and it is someone else’s job anyway. Some other tips regarding standards: change them frequently. The moving goalpost is one of the best techniques for this. Never provide clear guidance on what right looks like. Instead reject everything brought to you as not being good enough without saying what good means. “Bring me a rock” is another great game you can play with your subordinates if you want to keep them frustrated and confused.1

5. Do Not Think Too Much About Risk

There are two paths to failure, both equally effective. The first is to become paralyzed by risk, seeing danger in every decision, and thus making none. The second is to ignore risk entirely, substituting blind optimism and bravado for sober calculation. There are several ways to do this. Whatever you do, do not make a conscious effort to understand and manage risk. Any risk assessment effort you undertake should be instinctive, emotional, and guided by your experiences. Risk management, if you do it, should be done by action officers and planners. Never waste your time or the time of your subordinate leaders thinking about, discussing, or actively managing risk. Do not under any circumstances consult references or follow any of the proven risk management frameworks available. When you talk about risk, use vague, imprecise terms. Never be specific or quantify the risk in concrete terms. That will only scare people or embolden them. When you communicate risk to higher headquarters, ensure it is in the form of a boilerplate slide developed by an action officer at the very end of the brief developed after the majority of planning is complete. Another effective way to ensure your unit has a poor safety culture and does not manage risk well is to react badly when things go wrong. Shoot messengers, hold people accountable for slips, lapses, and errors regardless of whether there was negligence or procedural deviance. And always assign blame.

Do not treat a mishap or near miss as something to learn from. Think of it as an opportunity to come down on someone like a ton of bricks. Very effective. Do not think probabilistically about risk. Instead, dwell on graphic outcomes that are easy to imagine. Ignore everyday drivers of risk and focus on the sensational. One last point: probably the most important thing you can do if you decide you are going to manage risk is to decide in advance what you want to do, then carefully select the evidence and indicators you consider in your risk assessment. They should tell you your chosen course of action is best and contains an acceptable level of risk. Ignore any evidence to the contrary; it will only get in the way of getting what you want.

6. Run Bad Meetings

A big part of your time in command will be spent in meetings. If you want to fail, ensure that time is wasted. Do not treat meetings as an opportunity to learn about your organization and do work. Instead, treat them as hollow rituals where everyone is focused on looking good rather than solving problems. Meetings are a superb tool for wasting your organization’s most precious resource: time. The first and most important step in preventing good meetings is to not have an agenda. If people are not sure what the meeting is for, you cannot accomplish its purpose. Everyone should have different views of what the meeting is about.

Treat any new or dissenting view as an affront to your identity and values … Never change your mind and never consider anyone else’s opinion if it differs from yours.

Do not require people to be prepared for the meeting either. In fact, they should be unable to prepare if you have taken the first step and they are not sure what the meeting is really about. In an ideal situation, people should not even be sure if they need to attend. Do not have a clear goal, and whatever you do, do not specify deliverables and timelines. Any goal should be vague and shapeless. Concrete outcomes, razor-sharp milestones, and specific due dates will prevent you from accomplishing your goal of running bad meetings. Do not under any circumstances publicly assign one person the responsibility of assigning a task and for heaven’s sake, never tell them exactly what is due and when. When you are executing meetings, ensure everyone is mainly focused on looking good and saying the right things. Everyone should agree on everything all the time, and no one should ever offer a dissenting view. How else could groupthink take hold if you allowed people to speak their minds from a position of psychological safety?

7. Ignore the Details. Be a “Big Picture” Leader

One of the best ways you can ensure failure in command is by being a “big picture” leader who treats the details of execution like the unimportant and trivial minutiae they are. You think outside the box and should not waste your important time dealing with the box’s contents or the realities of roles and functions. Do not demand and ensure your team masters the specific and concrete actions necessary to take a plan from concept to action. Instead, rouse the troops with bland platitudes like, NCOs (noncommissioned officers) need to lead from the front, while talking about brilliance in the basics without explaining exactly what that means. Speak often about how good squads make good platoons, and good platoons make good companies, but never say how or why. Never immerse yourself in timelines or how an event will be supervised. Always assume the right people with the right qualifications will be on hand to oversee training. Never make any effort to confirm the plan is any good, or is understood, or has been handed off to the executors, or that they know what to do. Assume all gear and equipment is functional, calibrated, has updated preventive maintenance checks and services, and is approved for whatever it is you are doing. When it is time to launch an operation, let it just launch itself. People should just assume that, since the mission was approved at the confirmation brief, the conditions exist, whether it be on the ship, in the air, at sea, or on the objective, for the mission to succeed. Do not ever slow down your unit’s mindless momentum as it barrels ahead, stopping to check if the situation is ripe for safe, successful execution. If you do stop and check, you might have to make an unpopular decision, in public, that will create more work for everyone and possibly expose holes in your own guidance and intent. It is always better to assume everything will work out, and if it does not, rationalize away your bad decisions and blame someone below you. Involvement with details is beneath someone of your standing and should be ignored if you want to fail in command.

8. Never Learn Anything New or Allow Yourself to Be Coached

You were selected for command; therefore, it is clear you have nothing to learn from anyone, especially your Marines. Furthermore, everything your unit is doing and will do is unique, unprecedented, and exceptional. Make sure you come up with every new idea. Everything that goes on in your unit must have either originated with you or have your explicit approval. Treat any new or dissenting view as an affront to your identity and values. In public, you must never be wrong. Never change your mind and never consider anyone else’s opinion if it differs from yours. Saying things like, I have never considered that, or, that changes how I think about this, will only make your subordinates think you value their input, that you are still learning, or that when facts change, you change your mind.

Your goal should be to win everything all the time. Prove you are the smartest person in the room and always right. This will make your Marines unwilling to offer anything new, cause them to second guess their own knowledge, and make it harder for your staff and commanders to work together effectively. Also act as though nothing whatsoever has changed since you were a platoon or company commander. The gear, the training, the regulations, the threat are all the same. Do not let those with the benefit of recent schooling or operational experience sway you. Your worldview should be crystallized in amber like those mosquitoes in Jurassic Park. This will prevent you from having to change, adapt, or admit you are wrong.

9. Make Yourself the Center of Every Decision and Approval Authority for Everything

Always ensure you are the only one in your unit with the authority to make decisions. This principle applies across several settings and circumstances: it works in garrison, in training, and in combat. Your goal should be for everyone in your unit to never act without being told specifically to do so. One effective way to accomplish this effect is to react negatively to any independent effort not specifically ordered by you that does not progress perfectly. The zero-defect mentality is your ally in this effort. People should be more afraid to do the wrong thing and bring down your wrath than they are of not solving problems or avoiding crisis. An additional benefit of this is the additional time even simple actions take. This works in combat too. Ensure all decisions must move from the tactical edge back to you through unreliable comm pathways. Your goal should be self-imposed latency. Even if the decision makes it back from the frontline to you and back again, the decision may be late and overcome by events—in other words, irrelevant—making the whole effort a waste of time and energy. This has excellent long-term consequences as well, as your people will lose any sense of personal agency, drive, or desire to excel. Remember: You know best and only your way of doing business will work.

There you have it. Nine simple prescriptions. Follow them in a rigid and unyielding manner, and you will achieve a level of failure others can only dream of. Or, if you are a person of perverse intellect, you might consider what would happen if you did the exact opposite. The choice, as they say, is yours.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

>Col Niedziocha is a career MAGTF Officer and currently serves as the Expeditionary Warfare School Director. He has commanded platoons, a company, an infantry battalion, and the 31st MEU.

Notes


1. “Bring me a rock” is one of my favorites. It goes like this. Leader: “Bring me a rock.” Subordinate: “Here it is” (produces rock). Leader: “I wanted a flat rock. That one is round.” Subordinate: “Here you go” (produces round rock). Leader: “That is dull. I wanted shiny.” Subordinate: Getting tired of this, finds a round, shiny rock. Leader: “That is a sedimentary rock. I wanted an igneous rock.” You see where this goes. Hysterical.

MAGTF – Next, Part I

A blueprint to restore MAGTF credibility (Part 1 of 2)

“I suppose, the future of the Corps lies within itself, because, however large or small its problems are, nobody else is going to find solutions to them.”

—LtGen Victor H. Krulak, USMC (Ret)

The Marine Corps stands at a strategic crossroads, caught between the imperative to modernize for a high-end future conflict and the immediate, non-negotiable demand to serve as the Nation’s premier crisis response force. Since 2020, Force Design has generated bold, necessary course corrections to prepare the Corps for a peer fight in the Indo-Pacific. With flat budgets and a ticking clock, the Service had to divest legacy systems to underwrite meaningful, timely investments in future capabilities at an appropriate scale. In the hard-knocks, zero-sum reality of time and resources, this exchange naturally incurred exposure to hazard, which time and circumstances have now unmistakably revealed. Modernization has introduced strategic risk, trading proven, near-term readiness for long-term concepts that have yet to mature as fielded solutions at scale. Compounding this challenge are persistent and systemic shortfalls in amphibious warship availability that have severed the crucial link between readiness and relevance. Forward-deployed MAGTFs—a traditional symbol of American resolve—have become scarce. For the Joint Force—eyeing acute geopolitical tension on many fronts—this scarcity means fewer immediately employable options, longer response times, and ad hoc sourcing during crisis. This is not a future risk; it is today’s reality.

Uncorrected, this trajectory threatens to fracture the Corps’ crisis response identity and diminish its strategic utility. The security environment gives no quarter; it is defined by accelerating change, the democratization of disruptive technology, and the return of great-power competition at pace. Adversaries now integrate precision fires, space, cyber, and information capabilities to contest every domain and compress decision cycles. To remain the Nation’s force-in-readiness, our Commandant has called the Corps to rebalance modernization with readiness to fight and win tonight’s crisis.1 This requires ruthless prioritization of trade-offs that improve our ability to deter and respond to crises now while continuing to develop, test, and field the capabilities needed tomorrow.

This article offers a practical, FMF–informed blueprint to thread this needle. Focusing on a five-year horizon, it outlines five pragmatic, achievable modernization imperatives that fuse the demands of readiness with the promise of modernization.2 A second, follow-on article—“MAGTF-Next: Posturing with a Purpose (Part 2 of 2)”3—confronts the growing gap between where Marines are needed and where they are available due to amphibious shipping shortfalls. It proposes a new force employment model to create an unbroken chain of integrated sea- and land-based expeditionary forces. While leaders develop a long-term solution, this model argues for a sustainable blend of forces using strategically located littoral pivot points to provide a persistent, responsive, and credible forward presence. Together, these articles frame a coherent blueprint to restore MAGTF crisis response credibility and ensure the Marine Corps remains what the Nation requires: a responsive, relevant, expeditionary force-in-readiness that delivers the Joint Force options at speed and scale.

Performance Over Promises: A Call to Action

The Marine Corps has long embraced bold reform, but history demonstrates that not all innovation produces battlefield advantage.4 In World War II, the Corps experimented with elite Raider battalions, parachute regiments, and other specialized units. While born of vision and often backed by political enthusiasm, most of these special units were disbanded, proving unsustainable or redundant when the war demanded scalable, balanced, combined arms combat power.5 That lesson is worth heeding today, and we must ask: are we preserving combat credibility or repeating history by trading near-term capability for long-term, unconfirmed promise? T.R. Fehrenbach’s uncomfortable indictment of post-World War II unpreparedness remains a stark warning: we must prepare for “this kind of war”—messy, limited, and brutal—not the one we prefer.6

This challenge is not new. During the early Cold War, critics argued that nuclear weapons rendered amphibious operations obsolete. The Corps responded by defining its value in the “in-between” crises below the nuclear threshold, providing presidents with scalable, ready forces when atomic weapons were unusable and heavy Army formations too slow. “At a time when the other services became increasingly specialized, the Corps thrived by being generalists, fighting for an increased role in every type of military operation, no matter how small.”7 Today’s parallel is uncanny. Replace nuclear weapons with precision-strike or hypersonic missiles and drone swarms, and the same dilemma emerges. The lesson endures: crisis response relevance requires credible, flexible options in the gaps where exquisite technological capabilities fall short.

Relevance demands intellectual honesty: future war will not be surgical or rapidly decisive—and it will not be solved by technology alone. This is why, as retired LTG H.R. McMaster warns, strategists often fall prey to four fallacies: (1) the “Vampire fallacy” that technology alone delivers victory; (2) the “Zero Dark Thirty fallacy” that elevates tactical raids to the level of strategy; (3) the “Wild Kingdom fallacy” of overreliance on proxies; and (4) the “RSVP fallacy” that America can simply opt out of messy ground conflicts.8 War’s political and human dimensions are immutable. Modernization must be grounded in this reality, delivering a MAGTF that is not only technologically advanced but also resilient and agile, masterfully balancing mass and precision to impose decisive dilemmas on any adversary.

The following five imperatives provide that path forward: (1) assure decision dominance; (2) operationalize information; (3) forge effective Marine-SOF (special operations forces) partnerships; (4) elevate O-6 MAGTF command elements to deliver Joint HQ core capabilities; and (5) design MAGTFs that are balanced, forward, and flexible.

Each of these initiatives addresses tensions the Corps will face over the next five years:

Readiness vs. Modernization—ensuring today’s MAGTFs can fight tonight while integrating tomorrow’s capabilities at a pace the force can train to and employ.

Presence vs. Survivability—sustaining forward deterrence and crisis response without assuming permissive environments or guaranteed access.

Mass vs. Precision—regenerating scalable, combined-arms lethality while exploiting data, autonomy, and precision tools to multiply and compound battlefield advantage.

Speed vs. Sustainability—optimizing deployment cycles and surge capacity without outrunning staying power, authorities, or flexibility to adapt.

Technological Diffusion vs. Adoption—navigating the gap between the rapid pace of technological innovation and the capacity to effectively integrate, train for, and employ these capabilities across the force at scale.

While emerging technologies promise transformational impact, the challenge remains ensuring they are not only fielded but also adopted effectively at the right levels of command. This demands an emphasis on organization, doctrine, and readiness implications in the face of evolving threats. The five imperatives that follow minimize these tensions through deliberate, achievable actions. They fuse modernization with readiness, ensuring our MAGTFs remain ready, resilient, and responsive across the competition continuum.

I. Assure Decision Dominance: Out-Sense. Out-Think. Out-Fight.

To win in the modern battlespace, Marines must sense, decide, and act with initiative and greater tempo than any adversary. This requires assuring decision dominance: the ability to sense, make sense, and act faster and more effectively than an adversary, enabling commanders to seize and maintain the initiative under any conditions. Assuring this capability requires a decisive edge in command and control (C2) built on resilient networks, accelerated decision-making, and disciplined execution in denied, degraded, intermittent, or limited (DDIL) environments. The Joint Force’s aspirational goal of Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control sets a strategic vector, but the Corps cannot afford to wait for others to achieve and implement this concept. We must act now. Assuring decision dominance centers on three efforts.

First, we must integrate data ecosystems to eliminate stovepipes—linking sensors, shooters, and decision-makers into a coherent kill web. Today’s MAGTF command, control, communication, and computer systems remain fragmented, forcing operators to fuse data manually. Solutions like Maven Smart System demonstrate what is possible, combining disparate data streams into a single interface accessible at all echelons. By fielding systems that automate data fusion, we can accelerate situational awareness from the pace of analogue processes to the speed of digital operations.

Second, we must empower AI and human-machine teams. Artificial intelligence should accelerate—not replace—human judgment. Properly employed, AI-enabled tools can process vast data streams to detect patterns and recommend courses of action, compressing the commander’s Observe-Orient-Decide-Act loop. John Boyd’s decisive element was Orientation—the uniquely human capacity for sense-making amid uncertainty.9 Artificial intelligence sharpens this capacity, allowing machines to do what they do best (process data) while Marines focus on what only they can deliver: ethical judgment, adaptation, and initiative. This deliberate balance ensures technology enhances, rather than erodes, the bias for action and decentralized decision-making that is the battle-proven hallmark of maneuver warfare.10 Without this critical balance, we risk becoming slaves to our systems rather than masters of our own intellect, initiative, and enterprise.

Third, we must build resilient denied, degraded, intermittent, or limited communications. Adversaries will target our networks; accordingly, our C2 architecture must be redundant, self-healing, and capable of graceful degradation. This means fielding hardened, adaptive networks and, critically, training command elements to operate in isolation via mission command. By integrating data, empowering human-machine teams, and hardening communications, we will build a MAGTF C2 architecture that functions at machine speed yet remains guided by disciplined human judgment, allowing us to out-sense, out-think, and out-fight any adversary.

II. Operationalizing Information: From Function to Fight

Modern conflict is decided as much in the cognitive domain as on the physical battlefield. From Ukraine to Gaza, adversaries continue to prove that information—not just firepower—can dictate tempo, perception, and legitimacy.11 The MAGTF must therefore treat information as a weapon. This requires unifying information-related capabilities—such as cyber, electromagnetic spectrum operations, deception, and communication strategy—under a single, coherent command, trained to fight in the information environment with the same rigor we apply to fires.

A core challenge is organizational. Currently, information-related capabilities remain stove-piped across staff channels, frustrating the single battle concept and complicating authorities. Two organizational models offer a path forward. One model is a dedicated information combat element, a fifth MAGTF element that consolidates information forces under one commander. This would clarify ownership and ensure information operations are planned and executed with purpose. The alternative model is an enhanced, integrated command element that embeds information specialists within the existing staff, synchronizing effects via established processes. A recent debate over the efficacy of MEF Information Groups (MIGs) highlights the urgency of this choice. Critics argue MIGs have become “tactical holding pens” lacking the authorities and tempo to be effective; proponents contend MIGs are the essential nucleus of a true information maneuver arm that has yet to be matured.12

The Marine Corps must experiment aggressively with both models. Regardless of the final design, our mindset must shift. We must plan offensive and defensive schemes of maneuver in the cognitive and electromagnetic realms with the same discipline and scrutiny we impose across the physical air, land, and sea domains. Advantage in future conflicts will accrue to the side that best exploits the information environment. This is warfare at the speed of light, and the battle is already underway.

III. Forge Effective Marine-SOF Partnerships: Team Early, Integrate by Design

Success in strategic competition and crisis demands persistent, purpose-driven cooperation between MAGTFs and SOF, moving beyond episodic collaboration to habitual integration. Pairing conventional and unconventional forces, what Sun Tzu termed Cheng (the overt, orthodox, anchoring force) and Ch’i (the hidden, the unorthodox, unbalancing force), creates dilemmas no adversary can easily solve.13 The MAGTF embodies the Cheng—delivering balanced combined arms power, sustainment, and the ability to hold terrain. Special operations forces represent the Ch’i—providing precision access, unique influence, and low-signature options. Effective integration begins with mission logic. By aligning purpose-built MAGTF and SOF teams against theater-specific problems, the Joint Force gains credible, lower-risk options. This requires three concrete actions.

First, we must establish interoperable planning, targeting, and command, control, communication, and computer architecture. Unity of effort depends on shared data and networks. Rather than merely deconflicting operations, integrated processing, exploitation, and dissemination teams and common standing operating procedures will enable both forces to plan and strike on a shared battle rhythm.

Second, we must codify SOF integration into MAGTF pre-deployment training cycles. Any MAGTF-SOF integration must be a mission-essential task that is rehearsed in training and evaluated as a core competency—not a bolt-on, ad hoc, untested liaison function.

Third, and most important, we must build trust through shared purpose, not just proximity. True interdependence is forged through repetition, shared risk, and mutual respect cultivated through deliberate exchanges, joint professional military education, and integrated training. Field-grade leadership is decisive in bridging the cultural gaps between SOF’s emphasis on small-unit autonomy and the MAGTF’s focus on scalable combined-arms synchronization. When deliberately designed and habitually rehearsed, this partnership delivers a lethal, agile, and adaptive joint team capable of seizing the initiative and imposing devastating Cheng and Ch’i dilemmas.

IV. Elevate O-6 MAGTF Command Elements to Deliver Joint HQ Core Capabilities

Credible crisis response is measured in hours, not weeks. When the Nation calls, combatant commanders need a headquarters capable of integrating joint, interagency, and coalition elements immediately. The Joint Force, however, rarely has a fully operational joint task force (JTF) headquarters postured to respond at the onset of a crisis. The O-6-level MAGTF command element is purpose-built to close this gap. It is forward and capable of commanding across domains.14 The only thing missing is institutional recognition and certification of these elements as joint-ready core staffs.

This is not an aspirational concept but a proven requirement, validated in practice. During Operation Noble Obelisk in 1997, the 22nd MEU(SOC), commanded by a Marine colonel, was designated as the JTF commander and successfully led a noncombatant evacuation of over 2,500 people from Sierra Leone. The MEU command element served as the nucleus of the JTF, integrating Army Special Forces, naval assets, and interagency partners.15

To institutionalize this capability, the Corps should begin with three steps. First, we must design a tailored joint mission essential task list specifying the tasks an O-6 MAGTF command element must perform as an initial joint headquarters. Second, we need to institute a formal certification, verification, and validation process—modeled after U.S. Special Operations Command’s framework—to train and validate select MAGTF headquarters against joint standards in rigorous exercises. Third, Marine Corps component commands and the Service itself must deliberately promote these certified headquarters to combatant commands, ensuring they are visible, trusted, and integrated into theater campaign plans. This modest adjustment provides combatant commanders a credible C2 option in the crucial opening hours of a crisis—buying time, preserving initiative, and reaffirming the Corps’ role as a force that not only leads the way but stands ready to command.

V. Forward, Flexible, Formidable: Reclaiming Operational Reach

Operational reach is not defined by platforms alone but by foresight—the ability to preposition, sequence, and maneuver before a crisis ignites. Declining amphibious warship readiness and constrained strategic airlift demand that we mature a third force presentation model: dynamic force employment. This complements the traditional ARG/MEU model and our rotational deployments, enabling the Corps to project credible combat power without exclusive reliance on dedicated lift. It rests on three lines of effort.

First, operationalize access. The United States maintains a vast network of basing, access, and overflight agreements. We must transform these from diplomatic paperwork into executable options—identifying usable nodes, logistics corridors, and cooperative security locations that enable rapid maneuver. As naval strategist Wayne Hughes argued, “the home team has the advantage” in littoral warfare.16 We systematically develop a home team advantage abroad by building relationships, honing familiarity, and exercising access.

Second, enable the fly-in echelon. Forward stocks enable rapid deployment from home stations. By smartly prepositioning modular, mission-tailored sustainment kits and equipment, we allow MAGTFs to arrive light and begin operating within 24–48 hours. This scales the logic of our larger Maritime Prepositioning Force for the tactical realities of great-power competition, equipping smaller, distributed units for immediate crisis response.

Third, build mobility fluency. This is the MAGTF’s ability to plan and move by any mode—maritime, air, or land—at speed and under friction. It requires mastery of the Joint Deployment and Distribution Enterprise, proficiency at reception, staging, onward movement, and integration, and the expertise to leverage commercial and host-nation contracting. Campaigns are fundamentally a series of movements; mobility fluency determines who gains and maintains campaign tempo.

Together, these three efforts create a force that arrives fast, gets to work immediately, and endures—ensuring the Corps remains the right force, in the right place, at the right time.

Conclusion: Performance Earns Confidence

The Commandant’s call to balance modernization with crisis response is a clear-eyed directive in the face of two stark realities: the degradation of near-term capability (to invest in ongoing modernization) and persistent shortfalls in amphibious warship readiness. The five imperatives outlined here are not a menu of options but an integrated, achievable blueprint to restore MAGTF crisis response capability while advancing Force Design. They are complementary reforms that bolster MAGTF balance, flexibility, and resilience. Assuring decision dominance, operationalizing information, forging Marine-SOF synergy, certifying O-6 headquarters for joint command, and building a more flexible force are practical, realistic efforts that build on our Corps’ enduring strengths: task organization, disciplined initiative, and the indomitable fighting spirit of our Marines.

Ultimately, our Corps’ credibility in the eyes of the Nation and its value to the Joint Force will be measured not by aspirational concepts, but demonstrated results under the real-world pressures of competition, crisis, and combat. By rigorously aligning our modernization efforts with these operational realities, the Marine Corps will remain not only relevant—but indispensable.

Notes

1. Eric M. Smith, “Maintain Momentum,” FRAGO 01-2024, Commandant of the Ma-rine Corps, April 2024, 2, https://www.cmc. marines.mil/Portals/142/Docs/CMC39/FRAGO_01_2024.pdf (“By Balancing Crisis Response and Modernization, we will align and synchronize our Force Design advance-ments, while remaining unwavering in our commitment to persistent, global forward pres-ence and our Marine Expeditionary Units”); Eric M. Smith, “Statement of General Eric Smith, Commandant of the Marine Corps, as Delivered to Congressional Defense Commit-tees on the Posture of the United States Marine Corps,” written statement submitted to the U.S. House Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Defense, 119th Cong., 1st sess., May 14, 2025, 23, https://docs.house. gov/meetings/AP/AP02/20250514/118229/HHRG-119-AP02-Wstate-SmithE-20250514. pdf (“Force Design modernization plans for the active and the reserves balance the need to maximize ‘Total Force’ lethality and capacity during a period of increased risk while optimiz-ing resource allocation”).

2. This article provides a surface-level intro-duction to these imperatives, which are de-veloped in significantly greater depth in a de-tailed, thoroughly researched report prepared by the Marines and sailors of the 26th MEU titled MAGTF Next: A Primer. The Primer is currently unpublished but will be available in a future edition of the Gazette.

3. Marines and Sailors of the 26th MEU. “MAGTF-Next: Posturing with a Purpose (Part 2 of 2),” Marine Corps Gazette, November 2026: 14–17.

4. Kendrick Kuo, “Dangerous Changes: When Military Innovation Harms Combat Effectiveness,” International Security 47, no. 2 (Fall 2022): 84, https://direct.mit.edu/isec/article/47/2/48/113546/Dangerous-Changes-When-Military-Innovation-Harms. Kuo warns that “military innovation is more dangerous than is generally acknowledged” and that, un-der the pressure of expanding commitments and shrinking resources, a military service may make “desperate gambles on new and relatively untested capabilities,” cannibalize traditional capabilities, and ultimately discover that it has “overspecialized in the new capability to its own detriment.” He further argues that this danger is greatest when a “commitment-resource gap” emerges—that is, when growing security commitments outstrip shrinking re-sources. See Kuo, 49, 54–57. His central warn-ing is that innovation is a tradeoff: what a force gives up in structure, doctrine, and proficiency may matter as much as what it gains.

5. This lesson is drawn from a historical review of specialized Marine Corps units in World War II, including the Raider and Parachute Battalions, which were ultimately disbanded in favor of standard, more scalable infantry formations. See Charles L. Updegraph Jr., Special Marine Corps Units of World War II (Washington, DC: Historical Division, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, 1972), PCN 19000413200.

6. Amos C. Fox and Franz-Stefan Gady, eds., Multidomain Operations: The Pursuit of Battlefield Dominance in the 21st Century (Howgate Publishing, 2026), 164; see T. R. Fehrenbach, This Kind of War: A Study in Unpreparedness (New York: Macmillan, 1963), 656: Fehrenbach details the United States’ na-ïveté and complacency after World War II and the harsh reality of a major ground campaign it was forced to fight without notice or adequate preparedness. U.S. superpower status did not deter conflict, nor did technological superior-ity assure a prompt, decisive victory. Rather, the Republic of Korea was saved by a grueling and, at times, precarious land campaign fought to a stalemate by the traditional instruments of combined arms.

7. Aaron B. O’Connell, Underdogs: The Mak-ing of the Modern Marine Corps (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), 234–35.

8. H. R. McMaster, “Discussing the Con-tinuities of War and the Future of Warfare: The Defense Entrepreneurs Forum,” Small Wars Journal, October 14, 2014, https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/discussing-the-continuities-of-war-and-the-future-of-warfare-the-defense-entrepreneurs-foru.

9. Ian T. Brown and Frans P. B. Osinga, Snow-mobiles and Grand Ideals: John Boyd’s Vision for Thriving in Chaos (Quantico, VA: Marine Corps University Press, 2025), 50–59, https://www.usmcu.edu/Portals/218/Snowmo-biles%20and%20Grand%20Ideals_web.pdf.

10. John T. Hoffman, “On the Horns of Our Own Dilemma,” Marine Corps Gazette, No-vember 2001: 42.

11. Joseph D. Levin, “Lessons on Public-Facing Information Operations in Current Conflicts,” Military Review, March–April 2025, 20, https://www.armyupress.army. mil/Portals/7/military-review/Archives/English/MA-25/Information-Operations/Information-Operations-UA.pdf; Matthew Slusher, “Lessons from the Ukraine Conflict: Modern Warfare in the Age of Autonomy, Information, and Resilience,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, May 2, 2025, https://www.csis.org/analysis/lessons-ukraine-conflict-modern-warfare-age-autono-my-information-and-resilience.

12. This debate is captured in recent articles by Dan Burns, Ray Gerber, Ian Fletcher, and Benjamin Jensen. Dan Burns, “Kill It or Fix It: Why Marine Corps Information Warfare Has Failed after a Decade of MIGs,” Information Professionals Association, August 20, 2025, https://information-professionals.org/kill-it-or-fix-it-why-marine-corps-information-warfare-has-failed-after-a-decade-of-migs; Ray Gerber, “Killing the MIG Is the Last Thing We Should Do,” Information Professionals Association, September 7, 2025, https://information-professionals.org/killing-the-mig-is-the-last-thing-we-should-do; Benja-min Jensen and Ian Fletcher, “Blinding First, Striking Fast: Why the Marine Corps Needs Information Groups,” War on the Rocks, October 13, 2025, https://warontherocks.com/blinding-first-striking-fast-why-the-marine-corps-needs-information-groups.

13. Sun Tzu, The Art of War, trans. Samuel B. Griffith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963), 42–43; U.S. Marine Corps, Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication 1-3: Tactics (Washington, DC: Headquarters, U.S. Ma-rine Corps, July 30, 1997), 46–47 (“Comple-mentary forces—the idea of fix-and-flank—are an important way of gaining advantage. The idea behind complementary forces is to use our forces as a nutcracker. We seek to crush the enemy between two or more actions. … Sun Tzu described this concept as the cheng and the ch’i. The cheng is the more direct, obvi-ous action. It fixes the enemy. The ch’i is the unexpected or extraordinary action. It is the bid for a decision, or, as we call it today, the main effort. These two actions work together against the enemy. The two actions are inseparable and can be interchangeable in battle; the cheng may become the ch’i”).

14. While readers may instinctively envision the command element of a MEU afloat aboard a three-ship ARG, the reality of the Nation’s amphibious-warship readiness has made this traditional force-presentation model scarce and inconsistent. The Marine Corps neverthe-less retains options to maintain ready, forward forces despite the enduring paucity of amphibi-ous warships. The concept proposed here—joint-ready MAGTF command elements—is not limited to traditional afloat command ele-ments aboard three-ship ARGs. In addition to MEUs, forward-deployed command elements from Special Purpose MAGTFs (SPMAGTFs) or Alert Contingency MAGTFs (ACMs), pos-tured ashore at littoral pivot points or afloat on amphibious or nonstandard shipping, can provide key command-and-control nodes avail-able to the Joint Force as capable headquarters, buying time and options in the critical opening phase of a crisis.

15. William M. Kennedy, “Operation Noble Obelisk: An Examination of Unity of Effort” (graduate paper, U.S. Naval War College, February 5, 2001), 9, https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA389782.pdf; James A. Burch, “Forward from the Sea . . . Intelligence and the Untold Story of Operation Noble Obelisk” (graduate paper, U.S. Naval War College, May 5, 2000), 17, https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA382009.pdf.

16. Paul Westermeyer, ed., The Legacy of Ameri-can Naval Power: Reinvigorating Maritime Strategic Thought—An Anthology (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2019), xv (Wayne P. Hughes Jr. discussing his seminal work, Fleet Tactics and Naval Operations).

Close Combat

A U.S. Marine Corps legacy

Close combat occurs at the distance of a bayoneted rifle and is measured in feet rather than yards and in seconds rather than minutes. It is a calculated situation to be in rather than avoided and should be prepared for in a realistic manner. For Marines, this occurs when they locate, close with, and destroy the enemy by fire and maneuver and repel his attacks by fire and close combat (the job of the infantry for those who do not know it). With every Marine considered a rifleman, use of close combat includes the whole of the Corps as well. The 20th and 21st centuries provided a series of wars that saw the continued need for basic fighting skills for armed and unarmed combatants, and skills for non-warriors given little time and training to prepare.

The subject of this introduction is skill-at-arms developed by the Marine Corps, addressing those that are sub-tactical, that is, not requiring fire and movement or team effort but related so closely they are inseparable. I will examine some noteworthy individuals who made contributions to the Marine Corps’ close combat legacy. These are the classics: Biddle, Fairbairn, Sykes, Stavers, Styers, O’Neill, and Applegate. This is not to assign them cause or effect, as institutions and situations were critical, as well as the efforts of those who made it work at the unit level. The same holds for doctrine, the written records consulted, used to provide a chronological framework. Other contributors have been acknowledged, including Marines Robert L. Carlin, Tom L. Curtis, Richard E. Hanley, William A. Kengla, James M. Masters, J.N. Swearingen, and Walter R. Walsh. Marines who benefited from this wartime instruction included martial artists such as Donn F. Draeger and Robert W. Smith. These time-honored methods are practical and still valid for the purposes intended. Here are solutions to close combat. Try them; they work.

Anthony J. Drexel Biddle

Anthony J. Drexel Biddle was born in Philadelphia, PA, on 1 October 1874. He was married to Cordelia R. Bradley and lived in Philadelphia with his three children, where he died on 27 May 1948. Biddle’s legacy to Marine Corps close combat is essential background for those interested in “our style of fighting.” One way or another, all others were associated with the dean of Marine close-quarter combat instructors, Tony Biddle.

Biddle was an enthusiastic close-combat proponent between the First and Second World Wars, a socialite and sportsman of the “Christian athlete” style. He worked as a reporter and was an amateur boxer who sparred with well-known champions of his day like John L. Sullivan, Jack Johnson, Bob Fitzsimmons, “Kid” McCoy, “Philadelphia Jack” O’Brien, and George Carpentier.

Before America entered World War I, Biddle organized a military training corps of about 1,600 members that had instruction in close combat from the renowned William J. Herrmann. As a Marine reserve captain during World War I, Biddle served as a bayonet instructor at Port Royal, SC, adapting his style from boxing techniques. To meet bayonet thrusts, Biddle admonished, “You have to stop them all and make yours count.”1

Among those trained at Parris Island in 1918 was William A. “Ironman” Lee, who drew Biddle’s attention because “I happened to be the top pistol and rifle shot in our platoon.”2 Lee recounted that his later survival as a jungle fighter with Lewis B. “Chesty” Puller’s mobile gendarme company in Nicaragua with 36 ambushes and “50 to 100” close combat incidents was due in part to his expert marksmanship and knife fighting techniques honed by Biddle. Another well-known student was Marine reservist and boxer Gene Tunney.

Individual combat training and combative sports (shooting, fencing, boxing, wrestling, riding) were the focus of close-combat efforts for Marines from the turn of the century. There was strong European classical influence and even some Asian martial arts impact by World War I. Biddle’s background as a sportsman fit this mold and was reflected in his instruction to others. After a stint overseas and a return to Quantico, VA, Biddle was released from active duty as a major.

After the “War to End All Wars,” the Marines took part in peacekeeping, police actions, and small wars that put a premium on personal fighting abilities. This inspired Biddle to continue studying bayonet, sword, knife, club, and hand-to-hand fighting. Biddle’s daughter wrote that he traveled to Hawaii to learn jujitsu, and this eventually led to William E. Fairbairn in China. She recalled that by “the time he got back home, he was familiar with the numerous forms of defendu and judo.”3 This continued with Fairbairn’s visit to the States in 1925 to promote his Defendu and with Biddle’s trips to Shanghai with Bible-school obligations. However, Biddle and Fairbairn’s different approaches and personalities did not lead to collaboration, even though they were aware of each other’s efforts. Biddle felt Fairbairn provided a defense against the various Chinese and Japanese blows and holds.

Biddle was recalled to active duty for a time in 1928 as an instructor at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, where he prepared exhibition teams in bayonet, boxing, and “rough and tumble” fighting. He also instructed a generation of Marine officers at the Philadelphia basic school. Biddle’s reputation grew as he became well known from staged exhibitions of bayonet, knife, savate, and jujitsu fighting. He was considered a noted instructor of individual combat by the Marine Corps and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, despite the practical limits of techniques based more on reputation than results. In 1937, Biddle published Do or Die, as a supplementary manual “for those whose duties may lead them into a ‘tight spot’.”4 That year he again went on active duty at Quantico, VA, with mandatory retirement from the reserves in 1938.

At the start of World War II in 1941, the 67-year-old Biddle once more taught bayonet, knife, and hand-to-hand combat at Quantico, Parris Island, and San Diego. Though past his prime, his students spearheaded close-combat efforts for World War II. In 1943, he left active duty, commended by the Secretary of the Navy, who noted “a most generous giving of your time and energies.”5 His Do or Die manual was reprinted by the Leatherneck Association in 1944.

The Marine Corps felt he was “an internationally known swordsman for over 50 years, and considered the nation’s most distinguished master of the arts of jujitsu, sword, bayonet, and dagger fighting, served with the Marine Corps in both world wars demonstrating to newer Leathernecks the art of hand-to-hand combat.”6 Biddle’s critics questioned the usefulness of what was taught and his flamboyant approach, but later others, such as Stephen Stavers and John Styers, took what he presented and made it work for a majority of Marines in combat and hopefully for those who still need these skills.

The Shanghai Connection 

LtCol William E. “Dan” Fairbairn (1885–1960) arrived in the Far East in 1901 from England with the Royal Marine Light Infantry. After service in Korea, he joined the Shanghai Municipal Police (SMP) in 1907. Fairbairn served as a constable, drill instructor, and firearms trainer. He eventually supervised the SMP armory, training, and reserve unit (riot squad). With these duties, he pioneered the use of ballistics, gunfighting, and close combat training, and what has been termed police special weapons and tactics. As he put it, “I was in police work in the Orient for 30 years. We had a tough crowd to deal with there, so you had to be prepared to beat every trick in the book.”

A noted collaborator was Maj Eric A. “Bill” Sykes (1883–1945), a professional hunter, Colt and Remington Arms salesman, and special police sergeant who ran the SMP sniper unit. Their approach evolved from practical experience that included some 2,000 fights over a period of 12 1/2 years in which 666 were shooting affrays resulting in 260 criminals killed, 193 wounded compared to 42 police killed, 100 wounded; with Fairbairn and Sykes present at over 200 of these.

Fairbairn recalled that “When I organized and trained riot squads for the Shanghai police I developed a system of fighting out of the methods that got results.”7 He went on to say, “In modern warfare, the job is more drastic. You’re interested only in disabling or killing your enemy. That’s why I teach what I call ‘Gutter Fighting.’ There’s no fair play; no rules except one: kill or be killed.”8

Between 1927 and 1940, American Marines, sailors, and soldiers were stationed in a turbulent Shanghai to protect American lives and property in an early example of international peacekeeping. This small war served to provide laboratory experience and expertise that would later be used by Marines and others in the larger crucible of World War. The arrival of the Americans provided the opportunity for Fairbairn to further refine his methods, this time in a military context with the Marines, taught “at my own hands.”9

Later known as Fearless Dan or the Shanghai Buster, the Marines knew Fairbairn as Delicate Dan and the Deacon. Two Marines who worked with him were Lts Samuel S. Yeaton and Luther S. “Sam” Moore. Yeaton met Fairbairn in 1931 and continued the relationship through the next two years with a shared interest in self-defense. In turn, he introduced Moore, who was another shooting enthusiast. Moore and Yeaton had gone to the U.S. Naval Academy together and were both on the Marine Corps Shooting Team, and Yeaton was also with the Shanghai Marine pistol team that dominated the Far East.

Activities centered on the Yangtsepoo armory and resulted in several exchanges and experiments with Fairbairn, his son John (with the police special branch), Bill Sykes, and the armorer Nicholas Solntsteff. The Marines and Fairbairn “swapped ideas and fighting methods” such as competitive marksmanship, boxing, and Mexican knife fighting, according to Fairbairn researcher Peter Robins. They addressed technical areas—armored vests, shields, holsters—and a prototype of a fighting knife in 1932.10 O’Neill stated that Lee-Medford bayonets were used to provide the stock for blades that were then worked by the armory staff to Yeaton’s requirements.

By 1935, Fairbairn was assistant commissioner for the reserve and training branch. Another Marine who worked with him was 1stLt Samuel G. Taxis, and both of them instructed large numbers of Marines and police in knife and unarmed fighting in the mid-1930s. Head of the regimental boxing team, Taxis was also a student of Biddle, took his Shanghai experience back to America, and passed it on to other Marines.

A direct relationship existed with Marine riot companies in Shanghai and the SMP’s reserve unit. Typical situations included intimidation through flag marches, show-of-force with street formations, and mob disruption with tear gas and baton charges—deadly force was an available last resort. Fairbairn’s riot squad used a 5-man entry team, backed up by snipers, tactical vehicles, a 14-man rifle squad, and a 46-man street formation. One riot company commander, Capt Wallace M. Greene, Jr., worked to find the optimum combination of men and weapons to allow for flexible but effective employment. Drawing on Capts Evans F. Carlson and Merritt A. Edson’s experience in Central America, Greene organized his riot company around four-man teams.

For all his promoters, Fairbairn also had detractors who considered him narrow, domineering, and egotistical. The relationship with the Marines was not always trouble-free. For example, in one incident, a Marine officer (Greene) punched a Chinese constable, and Fairbairn pressed for a court-martial—but Greene was exonerated and later commended for this action. Fairbairn’s unorthodox methods were not accepted by a prewar Marine Corps that valued boxing, wrestling, fencing, marksmanship, drill, and parade turnout as conventional military skills. The Marine’s Walla Walla newspaper mentioned no armed or unarmed defense, despite covering all manner of contact sports and competition.

The British military left Shanghai as the war in Europe began, while Americans remained there a little longer. By the time the war in Europe was well underway in 1940, Fairbairn and Sykes had returned to the United Kingdom from the Far East. Both were picked by the War Office as army instructors for the Home Guard, special forces, and intelligence services; later Fairbairn served with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in the United States.

Marine Capts Greene and Samuel B. Griffith (who translated Mao Tse Tung’s Guerilla Warfare while in China) went to the United Kingdom in 1941 to observe the British commando program, including close combat training at the special training center. Their report to the Secretary of the Navy in January 1942 influenced decisions to form similar American units, the Marine Raiders and Army Rangers. Other Shanghai Marine veterans commanded special raider and parachute units that later served as cadres for division combat forces.

As early as February 1942, Fairbairn and Sykes’ shooting techniques were shown in the 1st and 2d MarDivs. Individual American servicemen and the first Army Rangers actually underwent training in Scotland. The Marines used field firing as taught in Shanghai in the extensive training of its special parachute and Raider battalions and fielded its version of a fighting knife on the Fairbairn and Sykes pattern.

Stephen Stavers

Marine Corps close quarter combat instructor Stephen Stavers was born 13 November 1916 in New York City. Stavers attended Columbia University and was active in sports and as a sportswriter for The New York Times. He joined the Marine Corps Reserve in 1940 and was commissioned a second lieutenant in February 1941.

Like the “Three Sams” (Moore, Yeaton, Taxis), Stavers was trained in close combat by Col Biddle, who considered him to be “one of the three most proficient instructors in the United States armed forces.” In 1942, Stavers set up an individual combat school at New River, NC. This school put together the quick shooting, bayonet, knife, club, unarmed combat, conditioning, and swimming curriculum used by Marines throughout World War II. He improved on existing techniques and helped the Army infantry school revise its bayonet instruction.

Course principles stressed the attack. Doctrine expounded striking from as far out as possible, as quickly as possible, and with the best weapon available. Training was based upon conditioned reflexes through intensive practice “so that aggressiveness becomes instinctive and fighting responses become automatic.”11

One area of interest for Stavers was knife fighting that used the Marine’s Bowie-style Ka-Bar knife in “a slashing attack … with the knife pointing forward in a loose, flexible manner, the blade flat, and the cutting edge forward.”12 Because a smart, appropriately trained knife fighter could take on an unskilled bayonet fighter, mixed weapons techniques were taught that pitted the knife against another knife, a bayoneted rifle, or club, as well as unarmed opponents.

Stavers left New River in June 1943 and went on to establish the close combat course at Camp Pendleton, CA. Part of these duties included arranging demonstration conferences for then-Maj Fairbairn and his system of “gutter fighting.” At these, Fairbairn was introduced as “a friend of the old 4th Marines.”13 During training sessions, Fairbairn noted that he learned the Biddle principles of knife fighting in Shanghai from the Marines—the Three Sams again.

Stavers was a central figure in developing the fighting skills found here. In the seabag of history available on Marine close combat, Stavers updated Biddle’s pre-war methods and established the basis for Styers’ efforts after the war. Stavers was made captain and was assigned overseas. He was killed in action on 18 September 1944 with Headquarters Battalion, 1st MarDiv during the landing on Peleliu.

By that time, Shanghai and Raider veteran LtCol Sam Griffith was commanding Officers Candidate School in Quantico. Preparing leaders for combat required the same training given at Camp Lejeune and Camp Pendleton, resulting in the comprehensive Course of Instruction in Combat Conditioning (NAVMC 3660) published by the Marine Corps Schools in 1944. This manual provides all the close-combat lessons learned by Marines to that point in the war.

John J. Styers

John Jasper Styers was born on 6 April 1917. He was married to Marie F. Styers and lived in New York City. Styers enlisted in the Marines in 1935. During this time, he was a student of Col Biddle. Throughout his subsequent career, Styers passed these teachings on to other Marines as an individual combat instructor. Styers left active duty in 1939 and entered the reserves. He went back on active duty on 12 November 1943 and was a corporal with Headquarters Company, 5th Service Battalion, 5th MarDiv when it landed on Iwo Jima in February 1945. He was wounded in action, and after six months of hospitalization returned to civilian life on 11 September 1945.

Styers began a period of intensive research and analysis in developing more effective fighting techniques and training procedures. His instruction was based on what the Marine Corps taught as individual combat: bayonet, knife and club, unarmed fighting, “snap” or “quick” firing of small arms, and combat conditioning exercises. He realized the value and necessity of individual combat training and the need for a better method to instill confidence in the fighting man.

Styers’ determination and his enthusiasm for his subject eventually resulted in a course which he conducted at Camp Lejeune and other Marine, Air Force, and Army bases. More than 50,000 service personnel of all ranks received instruction in the close combat technique he refined. In May 1952, through the efforts of Leatherneck magazine editor Karl Schuon and photographer Louis Lowery, Styers published Cold Steel, which documented these techniques of close combat for a new generation of Marines. Styers covered the bayonet, knife, stick, unarmed combat, and knife throwing. The publisher noted: “Cold Steel is a recipe for death; use it wisely!”14

Styers’ experience and observation determined that the age-old practice of using the bayonet primarily as a pike left much to be desired. The principles advocated were designed for simplicity and naturalness of action, resulting in maximum confidence in the Marine in a minimum amount of time.

His technique of knife fighting was a product of American heritage. Styers did not borrow the methods used traditionally by other nations. He followed the development of the legendary James Bowie and Biddle in evolving what is “probably the deadliest knife fighting technique in the world.” Styers found the stick or club was useful in an emergency and for traditional law enforcement. He covered the versatility of this easily acquired weapon. Personal contact with the enemy when unarmed results in a fast, deadly action. Here again, simplicity of application and effectiveness of results were emphasized. Man’s natural weapons are described, vulnerable targets on the opponent are designated, and simple and effective methods of applying these natural weapons on the target are defined.

Writer Arthur Wise used Styers as an example of the modern technique of fighting with the single-edge knife that originated in America during World War II for “special forces and commando operations”15 and was still regarded as an important part of training for such troops. “Styers and [Sgt A.] Prizzi show that in competent hands knife-fighting is undoubtedly an art.”16 A new edition of Cold Steel was reprinted and available in 1974. It was this edition that prompted author William L. Cassidy to examine the knife-fighting renaissance that developed with Biddle and Styers. While presenting no new facts, Cassidy put Styers’ efforts in context with others and the Biddle school, which treated knife fighting as an extension of sword fighting.

Dermot O’Neill and Rex Applegate

Two other noteworthy close combat experts will be mentioned; both were Army soldiers and came into the Marine Corps picture after World War II: LtCol Rex Applegate and Maj Dermot O’Neill. It was these two that completed the Shanghai connection to the Marine Corps.

Dermot O’Neill was born 21 March 1905 in Dublin, Ireland. He died in the United States on 11 August 1985 and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery. He served in the Shanghai Municipal Police and was a sergeant in the riot squad. Here he learned close combat fighting and shooting firsthand from Fairbairn and Sykes. O’Neill was later at the British Embassy in Tokyo, Japan, as part of its security detail.

When World War II began, O’Neill wound up with the coordinator for information (later Office of Strategic Services, the OSS) on the intelligence side of the organization. He went from there to the Army in June 1943 to the 1st Special Service Force (the Devil’s Brigade) as a close combat instructor and commanding officer’s bodyguard. O’Neill remained in the Army until February 1946, leaving as a major with several combat decorations. This was followed by a career as a police instructor for the U.S. Government with various foreign aid programs. In the course of this, a version of O’Neill’s close combat instruction was adapted in 1966 by the Marine Corps.

Rex Applegate was born 21 June 1914 and died 14 July 1998. He lived most of his life near Scottsburg, OR, and was survived by a wife and two daughters. At the time of his passing, he was a director of the National Rifle Association, inducted into the Cutlery Hall of Fame, and named an Outstanding American Handgunner. Applegate’s reputation is from his position in the development of close combat that stretched across more than half a century. He brought forward the methods of World War II, preserved them through the Cold War, and continued to make them available where others have come and gone. This was with doctrine, equipment, and the unselfish desire to prepare America’s fighting men (and women) for the moment of truth. No account of Marine close combat would be complete without considering someone who was neither a Marine nor directly connected to the Corps until recently.

Applegate grew up in the western gun culture and experienced a few bar brawls in his early days. When World War II began, he was a military police officer in Washington state, later moving to counterintelligence work in California. In March 1942, he was assigned to the Office of Strategic Services and sent by special orders to the District of Columbia. Applegate was tasked by Gen William (“Wild Bill”) Donovan to learn all there was about armed and unarmed close combat and teach it to OSS novices.

Working at Area B in Maryland, Applegate soon met up with British lend-lease instructor Fairbairn and went on to the United Kingdom for more direct experience with the commandos and the Special Operations Executive. There he met Fairbairn’s partner Sykes. Returning to the United States, Applegate was assigned to the Army Military Intelligence Division to set up a close combat program at Camp Ritchie, MD, based on what he had learned from the OSS and the Special Operations Executive.

After the war, Applegate moved to Mexico and continued making a living from mayhem, selling riot control equipment throughout Latin America. He returned to the United States in the 1960s to meet demands closer at home. Throughout his career, he has been the most lucid proponent of the Shanghai methods of Fairbairn and Sykes, beginning with the 1943 edition of his Kill or Get Killed, a manual of close combat, manhandling, and riot control techniques for the police and the military. Though few Marines were directly trained in these methods, the availability of this information has been used since World War II to supplement the dwindling level of instruction provided by the Corps up to the last decade.17

Lost Legacy

Despite demonstrated need, the Marine Corps departed from the proven World War II approach during the Cold War, weakening its techniques by 1957 with NAVMC 1135-AO3, Bayonet Fighting and 1146-AO3, Hand-to-Hand Combat. Both these systems were swayed by the growth of Asian martial arts and sports in the American armed forces. In turn, these were superseded in 1965 with FMFM 1-1, Marine Bayonet Training that adapted Dr. Armond H. Seidler’s bayonet fighting system. Seidler was convinced the Biddle system was unnatural and would be abandoned in combat. In 1966, FMFM 1-4 (proposed), Hand-to-Hand Combat prescribed O’Neill’s close combat methods. O’Neill’s approach included offensive-defensive movements including blows, kicks, falls, and take downs. Neither Seidler or O’Neill’s systems integrated the use of other weapons or firearms.

With this apparent close combat void, Biddle, Fairbairn, Sykes, Styers, O’Neill and Applegate were all cited by one side or the other as authorities for their chosen course of action. Sometimes these claims had value; in others, the analysis of actual techniques proves them misleading. The discussion led to looking to the past for needed solutions. In January 1990, the Marine Corps Combat Development Command reprinted Fairbairn and Sykes’ Shooting to Live as FMFRP 12-81 because “The volume presents an excellent review of standard techniques and some unorthodox methodology in the use of the pistol. Firing positions, loading, unloading, the building of combat ranges, known-distance ranges, types of holsters, and the wearing of pistols are delved into with great clarity and precision.”18 It was recommended for those Marines who were tasked with pistol training and marksmanship. China-veteran Gen Wallace M. Greene, Jr. recalled that Fairbairn’s system of pistol training and shooting was entrenched in the Shanghai Municipal Police “where it was picked up by many members of the 4th Marines who were on duty there at the time. In fact, this method, modified so as to apply to all hand-held weapons, was later used by several Marine units during the Pacific campaigns.”19

In September 1991, Marine Corps Combat Development Command went further with the republication of Applegate’s Kill or Get Killed as FMFRP 12-80 because “[a]t last there is one volume which speaks to the subject of unarmed combat (offensive and defensive), combat use of weapons, disarming the enemy, handling prisoners, the handling of mob/crowd disobedience, the use of chemicals in such situations, and how to establish a professional riot control unit. Every unit involved in these tasks should have a copy.”20 However, neither Fairbairn and Sykes or Applegate’s publication formed a basis for official instruction. For example, Maj Kelly McCann, a special operations training group instructor, cited Styers, Fairbairn, and David Ben-Asher as background for Marine thinking on hand-to-hand combat. These techniques “had a jujitsu base, a throwing and striking type of fighting,” concluding that “the only dirty fight is the one you lose.”21

Around this time, the Marine Corps opted for a more complex martial arts-based approach despite the availability of a relevant Army system (FM 21-150, Combatives, Washington, DC: Headquarters, Department of the Army, 1992). Originating with GySgt William (“Bill”) Miller’s judo and recruit depot background, it was an initiative at odds with previous experience and contemporary research. In 1993, the Marine Corps adapted the linear in-fighting neural-override engagement (LINE) program (FMFM 0-7, Close Combat). In an article on the LINE system, MSgt Ronald S. Donvito stated that “There is very little about it that is original. The close combat techniques of Fairbairn, Applegate, Sykes, Styers, Biddle, and Echanis have been thoroughly researched and tested, and the best of each taken and modified.”22

The complexity and difficulties in practice with the methods provoked a counter response both inside and outside of the Corps by those claiming the same legacy. Former Marine and martial arts instructor Robert C. Kasper asserted that “The Marine Corps hand-to-hand instructors of World War Two were trained in a system based on the teachings of Lieutenant Colonel William E. Fairbairn … who developed his system of combat from his 30 plus years of practical experience in the roughest seaport city this world has ever seen.”23 Another instructor, John Kary, believed a synthesis was needed of the “simple, effective methods of past masters like Fairbairn, Applegate, Styers, and Biddle.”24 According to former Marine and conflict analyst Morgan H. Norval, “It is the most advanced development of the World War II methods, and would be ideal for use by the military.”25 They, and others, believe that proven techniques should be the core of any Marine self-defense and close quarters combat system.

Antagonism to the LINE system resulted in further program revision in 1999 to create what was known as the Marine Corps Close Combat Training Program (MCRP 3-02B, Close Combat). Its chief proponent was MSgt Cardo V. Urso, who stated: “As the training progresses, we add martial culture.”26 Of note, neither Stavers nor the available Marine Corps World War II close combat references (including training films) were ever considered. A renewed look at these proven methods was to fill that void and provide some reality by which to test the techniques of others, for example, a reprint of NAVMC 3660 under one cover as Combat Conditioning by Paladin Press. Sometimes you have to go back to go forward. What the Marine Corps practiced before was still available. It did not require additional schools, instructors, or ranks to prove its worth if applied with the same focus and commonsense that the Marine Corps uses for other areas of military skill.

Despite renewed interest in close combat over the last decade, by 2000 the Corps was still undecided on which way to turn for expertise with this bedrock proficiency. The Commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen James L. Jones, directed the aggressive development of a martial arts program to include a belt system. To be emphasized are battle skill orientation, use of the bayonet, knife, weapons of opportunity, and unarmed combat. It is felt that the renewal of close combat classics would provide support in finding a suitable approach that would benefit the Marines who need it most. Meeting this challenge by 2001 were LtCol George H. Bristol and MSgt Urso. The result is the present Marine Corps Martial Arts Program (MCO 1500.54, 2002) now in its 25th year. 

Conclusion

The theory and practice of individual fighting has common origins in technology, physiology, psychology, and necessity. The animal world relies on the hunt and kill; fight or flight. Man as a tool-using animal has progressed beyond this with the use of the fist, club, knife, and gun. With regional variations, this progressed from fighting to ritual and sport, whether one looks East or West for examples, but close combat does not involve equals in size, strength, skill, and numbers. It is not a match, duel, or contest to win—it is just a situation to survive. It is the only alternative to certain death, injury, or capture.

Like fire and maneuver, close combat is used to position oneself to your opponent’s disadvantage, to kill or be killed. Techniques are for trained personnel, using qualified instructors, practiced with coaching, and the realization that any system provokes specific counter moves. Remember that proficiency in close combat is not an end in itself; it is just one portion of an individual’s total arsenal—the biggest continued failure is splitting firearms from armed and unarmed physical instruction. Benefits are also in two parts: mental confidence and technical ability.

Provided is the background of the sources of this legacy. A review of the World War II background should provide a yardstick of real experience that carried Marines through the greatest conflict of the 20th century. These skills were taken from the classroom and refined on Pacific battlefields against a trained and ruthless adversary who did not hesitate to resort to the grenade, bayonet, or sword. This is not an appeal to ritual for tradition’s sake, but a call to get real about basic battlefield skills—to kill or be killed.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

>Mr. Melson retired as the Chief Historian, Marine Corps Headquarters and University. He was trained in the Seidler and O’Neill methods of close combat in use during the Vietnam War.

Notes

1. Albert Arsenault, “Colonel Biddle and the Bayonet,” Marine Corps Gazette, March 1983, 21.

2. William A. Lee, Oral History, Marine Corps Historical Center, n.d.

3. Cordelia D. Biddle and Kyle Crichton, My Philadelphia Father (New York: Pocket Book, 1963).

4. A.J.D. Biddle, Do or Die (Washington, DC: The Leatherneck Association, 1944).

5. Headquarters Marine Corps, “Colonel Anthony J. Drexel Biddle, USMC (Retired),” MCHC, 1948;  Paul Hicks, “Fabulous Fighter,” Leatherneck, September 1948, 16–19, 54–56.

6. Headquarters Marine Corps, “Colonel Anthony J. Drexel Biddle, USMC (Retired),” 1948;  Robert Roman, “Do or Die: The Hollow Legacy of A.J.D. Drexel Biddle,” Warrior, February 1983, 40–43.

7. William E. Fairbairn, “OSS Shock and Riot Police,” June 1943, National Archives and Records Administration.

8. William E. Fairbairn, Get Tough! (New York: Appleton-Century, 1943); William E. Fairbairn, William E. and Eric A. Sykes, Shooting to Live with the One Hand Gun (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1942).

9. Hal Bergman, “The Deacon Deals in Death.”  Leatherneck, June 1944, 50–51.

10. Kelly Yeaton, Samuel S. Yeaton, and Rex Applegate, The First Commando Knives (Williamstown: Phillips Publications, 1996).

11. Stephen Stavers, “Individual Combat Course,” 1943 (GRC);  Stavers, “Snap Shooting,”  Infantry Journal, December 1944, 30;  Stavers, “Hip Level Quick Fire,” “Hip Level Quick Firing,” n.d. (GRC).  

12. Stephen Stavers, “Weapon of Last Resort,” Marine Corps Gazette, June 1944, 61;  Stephen Stavers and Louis B. Rutte, “Bayonet Fighter,” Infantry Journal, January 1944, 44–56.

13. Hal Bergman, “The Deacon Deals in Death,” Leatherneck, June 1944, 50–51; “A Marine Lieutenant,” New York City Mirror, 24 August 1942, n.p. Marine Corps Historical Center;  “Bayonet Expert Killed by Sniper,” n.d. Marine Copers Historical Center).

14. John J. Styers, Cold Steel (Washington, DC: Leatherneck Association, 1952).

15. Arthur Wise, The Art and History of Personal Combat (New York: Graphic Society, 1972).

16. John Styers and Karl Schuon, “Cold Steel—The Bayonet,” Leatherneck, January 1952, 40–49; Styers and Schuon, “Cold Steel—Knife Fighting,” Leatherneck, February 1952, 48–57; Styers and Schuon, “The Stick,” Leatherneck, March 1952, 46–54; Styers and Schuon, “Knife Throwing,” Leatherneck, April 1952, 56–60.

17. Rex Applegate and Charles D. Melson, The Close Combat Files of Colonel Rex Applegate (Boulder: Paladin Press, 1998); Rex Applegate, Combat Use of the Double-Edged Fighting Knife (Boulder: Paladin Press, 1993); Rex Applegate, Kill or Get Killed (Boulder: Paladin Press, 1976).

18. William E. Fairbairn and Eric A. Sykes, Shooting to Live with the One Hand Gun (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1942).

19. Wallace M. Greene, “The Employment of the Marine Rifle Company in Street Riot Operations,” Marine Corps Gazette, March 1940, 49–53, 62; Greene, “Shanghai 1937,” Marine Corps Gazette, November 1965, 62–63; Greene, “The Quick or the Dead,” Marine Corps Gazette, August 1984, 67–72; Greene, “Fire Team–Comrades in Battle,” Marine Corps Gazette, December 1984, 62–78.

20. Personal Communication, MCHC, 1998–2000.

21. Personal Communication, MCHC, 1998–2000.

22. Personal Communication, MCHC, 1998–2000.

23. Personal Communication, MCHC, 1998–2000.

24. Personal Communication, MCHC, 1998–2000.

25. Personal Communication, MCHC, 1998–2000.

26. Personal Communication, MCHC, 1998–2000.

The Currency of Competition

Operationalizing information sharing in the Pacific

The Defining Paradox of the Indo-Pacific

In the vast and increasingly complex waters of the Indo-Pacific, the Marine Corps Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Enterprise faces a defining paradox. As the United States continues its strategic pivot toward great-power competition, the Pentagon’s official rhetoric consistently highlights a single, absolute truth—we will not fight alone. We herald our unmatched network of allies and partners as our greatest asymmetric advantage against rising regional adversaries. Yet, the real-world lethality of these alliances hinges entirely on a capability we too often treat as an administrative afterthought rather than an operational weapon, namely foreign disclosure.

To put it bluntly, military professionals rarely view foreign disclosure, the legal and technical apparatus for sharing classified military information with foreign partners, as attractive or exciting in the wardroom or the planning cell. People widely perceive it as a swamp of paperwork, a domain of cautious lawyers and bureaucratic delay. However, in the unforgiving reality of day-to-day competition and potential conflict, this often-overlooked and often-misunderstood requirement is critically significant.

In the gray-zone skirmishes and contested waters of the South China Sea, competition is not a theoretical construct but a daily, grueling reality. As Beijing deploys its massive maritime militia, coast guard, and People’s Liberation Army Navy to unilaterally redraw maritime borders, the Marine Corps responded by reshaping its operational posture. Under the banner of Force Design, we have moved away from heavy-footprint legacy structures toward agile, highly lethal stand-in forces. These small, low-signature units operate persistently inside an adversary’s weapons engagement zone, serving as an effective deterrent to China’s actions.

Yet, these advanced tactical concepts suffer from a systemic vulnerability because they operationally depend on host-nation access, support, and combined action. If our tactical networks cannot instantly share what our forward-deployed sensors see, we hold a lightning bolt we cannot throw.

As the Marine Forces Pacific (MARFORPAC) command foreign disclosure officer, I have watched this dynamic play out across successive operations, exercises, engagement activities, and other military investments. Our partners and allies are hungry for actionable, releasable intelligence products, particularly targeting data. The difference between a cohesive, integrated coalition operation and a pair of disconnected, parallel efforts, which essentially represents the difference between a go and a no-go, often hinges entirely on our ability to share information in a timely, meaningful way.

The Foreign Disclosure Problem from the Pacific Perspective

Over the past year, MARFORPAC’s intensive operations schedule and other military investments yielded critical lessons regarding our information-sharing architecture. The most successful interoperability efforts occurred when we did not treat foreign disclosure as a checklist item to be considered only during the mission but instead integrated it into the operational planning cycle from the very beginning.

Modern military concepts require American forces to maintain warm-start readiness, allowing them to transition from peacetime competition to active crisis at a moment’s notice. This readiness, however, is a dangerous illusion if our information-sharing pipelines remain completely cold until the shooting starts. Recent operations demonstrate that maintaining a baseline flow of releasable threat intelligence during routine periods builds the technical and procedural pathways required for crisis operations. To make this readiness real, the military must actively push for standing, pre-authorized disclosure frameworks that allow operators to bypass administrative friction and push critical data to partner forces in real time.

To understand the high stakes of this digital bottleneck, one must look at the day-to-day coordination required in places like the Bashi Channel or the waters surrounding Scarborough Shoal. Consider a scenario where a Marine Littoral Regiment deployed to Northern Luzon utilizes advanced organic sensors to track an adversary surface combatant moving aggressively through sovereign territorial waters. The tactical sensor-to-shooter loop is primed. The Marine units have the coordinates, but the firing platforms that sit in the immediate vicinity belong to our Philippine allies.

In a peer conflict, we will measure the margin of victory in seconds. Yet, under our current architecture, that critical targeting data must ascend through a labyrinth of classification authorities, passing from theater commands to national agencies, before authorities can make a release determination. By the time operators electronically apply the “releasable” stamp, the target has moved, the tactical window has slammed shut, and we leave a sovereign ally vulnerable. This is not a failure of technology or courage, but a failure of disclosure policy.

This is especially critical when it comes to joint targeting. As the Marine Corps fields advanced, long-range, multi-domain sensing capabilities, commanders must remember that collecting data is only half the battle. If we identify an adversary threat but cannot legally or technically share that targeting data with the host-nation forces sitting in the same weapons engagement zone, we fail to leverage the full weight of our alliances. Our partners consistently ask for releasable targeting products. Providing this data builds immediate trust, enhances combined coalition lethality, and drastically complicates adversary decision-making by presenting a unified front.

Redefining Multilateral Operations at BALIKATAN

These dynamics were clearly visible in BALIKATAN, one of the largest, longest-running, and most consequential military training events in the Indo-Pacific. Derived from the Tagalog word meaning “shoulder-to-shoulder,” BALIKATAN is an annual exercise that serves as the cornerstone of the U.S.-Philippine military alliance. As the organization conducting the event, MARFORPAC bears direct responsibility for the planning, integration, and execution of this annual event and for ensuring that future iterations of the event remain operationally relevant.

The rapid evolution of BALIKATAN perfectly mirrors the shifting security demands of the theater. What began as a strictly bilateral, unclassified training event between the United States and the Philippines has transformed into a highly sophisticated, multilateral engagement where forces actively share classified military information and coordinate complex operational maneuvers.

During the 41st iteration of BALIKATAN, more than 17,000 personnel from the United States, the Philippines, Australia, Canada, Great Britain, Japan, France, and New Zealand integrated operations across land, air, sea, space, and cyberspace. The event culminated in a high-end maritime strike where allied forces successfully sensed, targeted, and sank a decommissioned target vessel in the West Philippine Sea. It was a stunning display of combined fires. Yet, the true breakthrough of the event occurred not in the live-fire zones, but at the negotiating table. On the sidelines of the event, U.S. and Philippine defense leaders signed a historic new fifteen-year Communications Interoperability and Security Memorandum of Agreement. This landmark agreement provides the critical technical and legal framework to secure our shared networks and streamline the flow of sensitive data. It represents a massive step forward, but a signed memorandum is merely a permit to build. Operational forces must still execute the difficult work of constructing, maintaining, and normalizing those information pipelines daily.

Executing at this level of complexity requires any U.S.-Philippine coalition to fully operationalize under the auspices of the bilateral Mutual Defense Board-Security Engagement Board, which remains the cornerstone of U.S.-Philippine military coordination. It demands that we actively share information under established bilateral frameworks like the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA) and the newly updated Communications Interoperability and Security Memorandum of Agreement.

Crucially, as the United States scales this multilateral environment, it must also support the Philippines as it builds similar bilateral security agreements with mutual partners, ensuring they can operate under equivalent security standards. If coalition forces cannot seamlessly navigate these disclosure pathways during the planning phases, they cannot expect to execute jointly when conflict begins. BALIKATAN is no longer just a training event; it is the real-world crucible where we test, refine, and prove combined information-sharing systems.

Overcoming Institutional and Workforce Gaps

Despite these hard-won operational successes, the military continues to contend with institutional friction. An inherent, systemic hesitation remains within the national security apparatus to share tactical and operational intelligence. While we must protect sensitive sources and methods, excessive over-classification and administrative inertia represent severe operational risks.

This structural friction is deeply rooted in an institutional psychology that treats classification as a shield against personal and professional risk. While policy strictly limits the NOFORN (No Foreign Nationals) caveat to protected intelligence sources and methods, a risk-averse culture within the Pentagon and theater headquarters often defaults to restrictive markings as the path of least resistance. Opting not to write for release avoids additional administrative burdens or legal reviews and carries zero career risk. Conversely, navigating the complex foreign disclosure process imposes heavy administrative overhead, and a single procedural oversight resulting in an unauthorized disclosure constitutes a major security violation with career-ending consequences. Thus, the current system penalizes the effort to share intelligence while incentivizing the bureaucratic safety of isolation. The strategic cost of this asymmetry is staggering. While information sharing must always align with mutual operational objectives, defaulting to over-classification simply to avoid administrative risk degrades the shared battlespace. When we hoard data, we blind the partner forces operating alongside us. Ultimately, choosing bureaucratic safety over information sharing cripples the combined lethality required for operational success.

To overcome this cultural hesitation, the Marine Corps must transition from treating foreign disclosure as an additional duty or a temporary collateral assignment and instead invest in and professionalize it as a core warfighting enabler. This transition requires a fundamental shift in how the Service manages its disclosure workforce.

First and foremost, the Service must prioritize the creation, funding, and rapid filling of dedicated civilian disclosure billets. Relying on transient military personnel or dual-role intelligence officers to navigate the incredibly complex legal and policy landscape of international disclosure rules creates massive friction. Civilian foreign disclosure officers provide the continuity, expertise, and long-term institutional relationships that rapid military rotations simply cannot match. Civilian leaders also can engage and coordinate over time with peers in our sister Services and in the Departments of War, State, and other intelligence community member organizations to shift national disclosure policy in ways that recognize the evolving threat landscape, enable warfighters to partner effectively and rapidly, and still minimize operational risk.

The consequences of our current workforce vacancies are stark. At Headquarters Marine Corps, the Plans, Policies, and Operations foreign disclosure program manager billet has sat completely unfilled for over a year. When critical, strategic-level leadership vacancies persist at our Service headquarters, the resulting policy and guidance backlog paralyzes execution at the theater level. We cannot champion concepts like integrated deterrence and coalition warfare in our public relations campaigns while leaving our primary information-sharing management positions vacant behind closed doors.

A Way Forward for the Joint Fight

To remain both a vital enabler for the future fight, Marine Corps intelligence must adopt a proactive, professional framework for information sharing. This path forward requires immediate, synchronized action, beginning with fully funding and filling civilian disclosure billets at all major commands, with immediate priority given to the critical vacancy at Headquarters Marine Corps. Simultaneously, the Service must reform its training pipeline to institutionalize write-for-release principles among intelligence analysts. Ultimately, an intelligence product that cannot be shared with the coalition partners fighting alongside us loses its tactical value the moment it is drafted.

Operationalizing this shift demands a fundamental overhaul of formal instruction and tactical deployment models. At the Marine Corps Intelligence Schools and during MAGTF training, analysts must master the physical mechanics of writing for release. They must learn to structurally divide their products, segregating sensitive, U.S.-only sources and methods into restricted annexes while preserving the actionable, tactical core in a highly releasable main body. Beyond the schoolhouse, the Service can no longer confine foreign disclosure officers to the air-conditioned headquarters of theater commands. The Marine Corps must embed qualified disclosure professionals directly within the MEUs and Marine Littoral Regiments operating at the tactical edge of the first island chain. When a regiment deploys to Northern Luzon, the local commander should not have to rely on a reach-back request to MARFORPAC in Hawaii to share critical maritime domain awareness data. The authority and the expertise to disclose tactical information must sit at the forward edge, where commanders make decisions and forces bear the risk.

To fully operationalize this capability, the Marine Corps must dismantle the institutional silo that treats foreign disclosure as strictly an intelligence-centric function. Foreign disclosure is inherently an operational requirement, and sequestering it as a mere intelligence support task is a strategic mistake. The Service must embed foreign disclosure officers directly into core operational and future planning efforts, specifically within the Operations, Future Operations, and Plans and Policy divisions. Positioning these experts alongside targeting and collection management cells from day one is essential. When disclosure professionals actively participate in drafting operational concepts, rather than serving as reviewers called in at the eleventh hour, they proactively align international agreements with operational intent. This ensures campaign plans are shareable by design. Finally, commanders must leverage major exercises and events like Balikatan to continuously stress-test technical and legal pipelines under existing security agreements. This rigorous rehearsal guarantees that the flow of data is fast, reliable, and battle-tested long before a crisis occurs.

In the Indo-Pacific, U.S. forces and regional partnerships operate in a constant, aggressive environment. Controlling the narrative and maintaining a competitive edge requires empowering allies with actionable, timely intelligence. Foreign disclosure operations are not administrative red tape; they represent the critical mechanism that translates raw intelligence and operational concepts into coalition lethality. Ultimately, the Joint Force must view information sharing not as a policy compliance task, but as a vital warfighting enabler that directly supports all operations and a weapon we must employ to win.

The Price of Relevance

Divesting legacy capabilities to win the stand-in fight

2026 MajGen Harold W. Chase Essay Contest: First Place

The Marine Corps stands at an institutional crossroads it has visited before—and repeatedly chosen the comfortable path. Force Design 2030 was supposed to break that habit. It did not finish the job.1 The Corps shed its tanks, reduced infantry battalions, and reorganized into Marine Littoral Regiments, but it retained systems that belong to a prior era: towed artillery, Light Armored Vehicle (LAV) units, an Amphibious Combat Vehicle (ACV) procurement line that perpetuates the logic of the platform it replaced, aging CH-53E Super Stallions, and an F-35 procurement posture built for a different strategic context. The result is a Corps caught between two identities—too transformed to fight the last war well and not transformed enough to fight the next one decisively.

The solution is structural. The Marine Corps must divest all towed artillery, all LAV units, 50 percent of its planned ACV procurement, one hundred F-35B/C airframes, and the remaining CH-53E fleet—and reinvest those savings into unmanned-aerial vehicles (UAV), intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) platforms, loitering munitions, autonomous ground systems, CH-53K procurement, and expanded MV-22 capacity. This is not a proposal to make the Corps leaner for economy. It is a proposal to make it lethal in the one fight that defines institutional relevance: the stand-in fight.

The 2022 National Defense Strategy elevated the People’s Republic of China as the pacing threat.2 The operational implication is unambiguous: the Marine Corps must be capable of operating inside the weapons engagement zone—forward, distributed, and lethal—before a conflict formally begins. This is the stand-in fight. It is characterized by long-range precision fires, electromagnetic competition, small, distributed nodes that are survivable precisely because they are mobile and austere, and the ability to deny an adversary the sea control it requires to project power.3 A towed howitzer battery cannot win this fight; neither can a column of LAVs, nor an amphibious vehicle designed around the assault doctrine the Corps has been walking away from for 6 years, nor a 30-year-old heavy-lift helicopter sustaining distributed forces across a contested island chain. If the Corps cannot resource the force that the fight demands, it will not win it, and if it cannot win it, it is not the force the Nation needs.

The Case for Divestiture

Towed Artillery

The M777 155mm Howitzer is a tactically capable system rendered operationally irrelevant in the stand-in environment. Its signature is detectable by People’s Liberation Army ISR assets. The Marine Corps operates approximately 350 M777s across fourteen active batteries, consuming hundreds of millions in annual operations and maintenance funds.4 The HIMARS provides longer range, greater precision, and superior survivability through dispersion—and it already exists in the force. Divestiture of all towed artillery is not a reduction in fires capability. It is a rationalization of the fires portfolio around systems that can actually survive.

Light Armored Vehicles
The LAV-25 was designed for reconnaissance and economy-of-force in a joint maneuver context. In the stand-in fight, that context does not exist. The LAV’s reconnaissance function is better performed by unmanned aerial systems at a fraction of the logistical cost.5 Its direct fire role is modest and increasingly redundant against a peer adversary with anti-armor assets that outrange the 25mm cannon by orders of magnitude. The Corps should divest the entire inventory.

Amphibious Combat Vehicles
The ACV 1.1 was procured as the replacement for the Amphibious Assault Vehicle—a platform the Corps rightly retired as Force Design 2030 moved away from ship-to-shore assault under fire.6 The ACV does not escape the same conceptual trap. A 50 percent procurement reduction—approximately 102 vehicles—preserves residual capability for permissive environments while liberating nearly $900 million for systems the stand-in fight actually demands.

F-35 Procurement Reduction
The F-35 is a maintenance nightmare—and that is not hyperbole. The Director of Operational Test and Evaluation reports the F-35 carries an average of more than 800 open deficiencies per aircraft, with mission-capable rates that have chronically lagged program targets.7 Sustainment costs rank among the most expensive in the joint inventory.8 The Corps is not buying lethality with every additional airframe. It is buying complexity, maintenance debt, and readiness drag. One hundred fewer airframes, at approximately $135 million per jet, redirected into UAVs and ISR platforms, produce the unmanned ecosystem the stand-in fight demands at a fraction of the sustainment cost.9

CH-53E Retirement
The CH-53E is not operationally mature—it is old. At an operating cost exceeding $17,000 per flight hour, its maintenance burden is substantial.10 Its retirement is an engineering inevitability. The policy choice is whether to manage that retirement deliberately—tied to CH-53K fielding—or wait until readiness rates force the issue.

The Fiscal Case

The argument for divestiture is arithmetic. Table 1 presents approximate savings across the five-year defense program. Table 2 shows the proposed reinvestment allocation. The UAV and ISR investments represent the core of the argument: unmanned systems in Ukraine have demonstrated that persistent ISR, loitering munitions, and drone-delivered effects have fundamentally changed the calculus of contested operations.11

The Reinvestment Imperative

Unmanned ground vehicles and loitering munitions extend the Corps’ logistics, reconnaissance, and direct fire capacity without adding to the human signature that distributed forces must manage. They are cheaper per effect than manned aviation, harder to target than traditional artillery, and scalable in a way that large platforms are not. The Corps that masters distributed precision fires through unmanned systems will hold a decisive operational advantage. The Corps that does not will struggle to survive the first 72 hours of a contested maritime fight.

Vertical lift is the connective tissue of the stand-in force. The CH-53K King Stallion nearly triples the external lift capacity of the CH-53E, with a digital architecture that dramatically reduces the maintenance burden.12 The MV-22 Osprey remains the stand-in force’s primary medium lift solution, and its ability to rapidly reposition Marines across vast maritime distances is without peer. Investing in both is not a hedge. It is the direct enabler of distributed operations.

The Cost of Doing Nothing
Force Design 2030 identified the direction. It did not mandate the velocity. In the absence of structural divestiture, legacy systems will continue to consume operations and maintenance funding, aviation enterprise bandwidth, and the institutional attention that should be focused on the stand-in fight. The Corps will arrive at the next conflict partially transformed—capable enough in the old ways to generate activity, but not capable enough in the new ways to generate decision. The People’s Liberation Army does not share this problem. It is building the force it intends to fight with, not the force it is comfortable sustaining.

The Politics of Preservation

Every argument in this essay is operationally sound, fiscally defensible, and strategically necessary. It will not matter. None of these divestitures will happen at the scale proposed. The reason is power—the machinery of institutional politics that no planning document has ever overcome.

The Marine Corps is not a rational actor. It is a coalition of constituencies—each built around a platform, a community, or a legacy. Towed artillery is a branch, a career path, a collection of colonels who sit on promotion boards, and a network of contractors with district-level congressional representation. The LAV community will not consent to its own obsolescence. The ACV is the Corps’ most public symbol of staying amphibious in an era when the Navy is increasingly unwilling to risk a hull inside the weapons engagement zone.

The F-35 is the most powerful example. It is a program of record that employs tens of thousands of Americans across 45 states. The Marine Corps could declare tomorrow that it needs only 240 F-35s instead of 340, and within a week, the Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee would receive phone calls from every affected district. Within a month, a bipartisan letter would land on the Commandant’s desk. Within a quarter, the language would appear in the National Defense Authorization Act prohibiting the reduction. The Marine Corps does not control its own force structure. It controls a recommendation. Congress disposes.

This is not corruption. It is the system functioning as designed—and that is precisely the problem. The defense budget is not a strategy document. It is a jobs program, a political hedge, and a series of compromises dressed in strategic language. Until the Corps is willing to tell a three-star general that his community no longer exists or tell a committee chairman that the factory in his district is no longer relevant, the divestitures will remain intellectual exercises.

There is a deeper political reality: the Marine Corps’ identity is itself a political constituency. The Corps sells itself as the force that is “first to fight,” the institution that does more with less. That identity requires visible modernization but also the appearance of stability. No Commandant wants to be remembered as the one who “broke the Marine Corps” by stripping away platforms that generations have bled on. The fear of that legacy—of being attacked by retired three-stars, of a hearing titled “Are We Gutting the Corps?”—is more powerful than any threat matrix from the Indo-Pacific.

The tragedy is that the political calculus is backward. The Marine Corps will not be judged by history for divesting LAVs or reducing F-35 buys. It will be judged for what it did with the years it had. If it arrives at the next fight with an amphibious tractor designed for a Navy that will not close the beach, a light armored vehicle that cannot survive against peer anti-armor, a logistics helicopter that cannot sustain distributed operations, and a fighter fleet that consumes the budget without generating mission-capable rates—that will be the legacy. That will be the indictment.

The political system will not save the Marine Corps from itself. The Marine Corps must decide whether it wants to be saved.

Conclusion

Divestiture is not defeat. It is discipline—the willingness to make hard choices about what the force must become, rather than preserve what it has always been. Towed artillery, LAVs, excess ACV procurement, surplus F-35 airframes, and aging Super Stallions are not the foundation of the stand-in force. They are the weight that prevents the Corps from becoming one. The Marine Corps should shed that weight—deliberately, aggressively, and without apology—and invest the proceeds in the systems that will enable it to contest the maritime environment, sustain distributed forces, and deliver precision effects at range.

The Corps that wins the stand-in fight will be mobile, distributed, unmanned-capable, and sustained by lift assets that can keep pace with its operational concept. The Corps that loses it will look precisely like the Corps that chose comfort over consequence at the programmatic crossroads.

Relevance is not inherited. It is earned—and the price is divestiture.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

>Mr. Fasone is a former enlisted communications Marine who served in the First Gulf War with the 13th MEU and the evacuation of the Philippines and Somalia with the 15th MEU. He also considers himself to be an amateur military historian.

NOTES:

1. U.S. Marine Corps, Force Design 2030 (Washington, DC: Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, March 2020), https://www.marines.mil/Portals/1/Docs/Force%20Design%202030.pdf. 

2. U.S. Department of Defense, 2022 National Defense Strategy of the United States of America (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Defense, October 2022), 4–8, https://media.defense.gov/2022/Oct/27/2003103845/-1/-1/1/2022-NATIONAL-DEFENSE-STRATEGY-NPR-MDR.PDF. 

3. Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, Commandant’s Planning Guidance (Washington, DC: Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, July 2021), https://www.cmc.marines.mil/CPG; and Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, Tentative Manual for Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations, 2nd ed. (Washington, DC: Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, May 9, 2023), https://www.marines.mil/Portals/1/Docs/230509-Tentative-Manual-For-Expeditionary-Advanced-Base-Operations-2nd-Edition.pdf. 

4. U.S. Marine Corps, Marine Corps Total Force Structure Review, FY2023; Department of the Navy, Department of the Navy Budget Estimates, Fiscal Year 2023 (Washington, DC: Department of the Navy, 2022), https://www.secnav.navy.mil/fmc/fmb/Pages/Fiscal-Year-2023.aspx; and Department of the Navy, Department of the Navy Budget Estimates, Fiscal Year 2024 (Washington, DC: Department of the Navy, 2023), https://www.secnav.navy.mil/fmc/fmb/Pages/Fiscal-Year-2024.aspx. 

5. U.S. Government Accountability Office, Marine Corps Modernization: Actions Needed to Improve Management of Force Design 2030 Initiatives, GAO-22-105230 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Accountability Office, April 14, 2022), https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-22-105230. 

6. Department of the Navy, Department of the Navy Budget Estimates, Fiscal Year 2023 (Washington, DC: Department of the Navy, 2022), https://www.secnav.navy.mil/fmc/fmb/Pages/Fiscal-Year-2023.aspx; Department of the Navy, Department of the Navy Budget Estimates, Fiscal Year 2024 (Washington, DC: Department of the Navy, 2023), https://www.secnav.navy.mil/fmc/fmb/Pages/Fiscal-Year-2024.aspx. The ACV 1.1 program of record includes 204 vehicles at approximately $8.6 million per vehicle. 

7. Director, Operational Test and Evaluation, FY2022 Annual Report (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Defense, January 2023), F-35 Joint Strike Fighter section, https://www.dote.osd.mil/Portals/97/pub/reports/FY2022/other/2022DOTEAnnualReport.pdf. 

8. U.S. Government Accountability Office, F-35 Aircraft Sustainment: DOD Faces Challenges Sustaining a Complex Weapon System, GAO-23-105816 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Accountability Office, March 23, 2023), https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-23-105816. 

9. Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller), Selected Acquisition Report: F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Defense, December 2022), https://www.esd.whs.mil/Portals/54/Documents/FOID/Reading%20Room/Selected_Acquisition_Reports/F-35_DEC_2022_SAR.pdf. Unit Recurring Flyaway cost for the F-35B: approximately $135.8 million in FY2023 constant dollars. 

10. Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, Deputy Commandant for Aviation, Marine Corps Aviation Plan 2023 (Washington, DC: Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, 2023), https://www.aviation.marines.mil/Portals/11/Documents/AVPLAN2023.pdf. CH-53E cost per flight hour: $16,000–$19,000 depending on depot induction rate. 

11. Stacie L. Pettyjohn and Hannah Dennis, Drone Warfare in Ukraine: Key Takeaways (Washington, DC: Center for a New American Security, January 2024), https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/drone-warfare-in-ukraine-key-takeaways. 

12. Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, Deputy Commandant for Aviation, Marine Corps Aviation Plan 2023 (Washington, DC: Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, 2023), https://www.aviation.marines.mil/Portals/11/Documents/AVPLAN2023.pdf. The CH-53K provides an external lift capability of 27,000 pounds compared to 16,000 pounds for the CH-53E.

Audit Readiness Is a Warfighting Discipline

Sustaining readiness

The Marine Corps has now done something no other military Service has done: It has successfully passed three consecutive financial audits. That achievement deserves recognition, but it should not be treated as the finish line. Passing an audit is hard. Sustaining audit readiness effectively and economically is harder.

The purpose of this article is not to celebrate the accomplishment alone. The more important task is to discuss what must be done now to sustain it. The Marine Corps should treat its clean audit opinion not as an annual financial-management event but as a continuing measure of institutional discipline. The Corps has proven that it can meet the standard. The challenge now is to make that standard routine, durable, and affordable.

The Marine Corps does not exist to pass audits. It exists to fight and win the Nation’s battles. However, that truth does not make audit readiness secondary, optional, or merely administrative. It makes it more important. A force that cannot account for its money, equipment, supplies, obligations, facilities, and supporting business processes cannot fully know its readiness. It may still fight bravely. It may still improvise. It may still overcome. Marines have always done that, but courage and improvisation are not substitutes for disciplined stewardship.

In a contested world, with constrained resources, aging systems, growing demands, and rising public scrutiny, the ability to account for what we have, where it is, what condition it is in, and how resources are being used is not a financial-management concern alone. It is a warfighting concern.

Audit readiness is often described in the language of accountants, auditors, internal controls, findings, corrective action plans, and financial statements. That language has its place, but it is not the language that will sustain institutional commitment across the Marine Corps. Marines need a clearer frame. Audit readiness is visible evidence that the institution can govern itself, trust its information, protect its resources, and support commanders with disciplined execution.

That is a leadership issue.

Why Sustainment Matters

The Corps’ third clean opinion changes the conversation. The question is no longer whether the Marine Corps can pass an audit. It has. The question is whether the Corps can keep passing without relying on extraordinary effort, incurring excessive costs, or applying temporary pressure.

That distinction matters. Many organizations can surge for an inspection. Fewer can build habits that make inspection success almost inevitable. A surge approach may produce the needed records, reconciliations, explanations, and evidence for a particular year. It may require intense command attention, contractor support, late nights, manual workarounds, and heroic effort by financial managers, logisticians, supply Marines, information technology specialists, and supporting staffs. That kind of effort may be necessary to get across the line the first time. It is not a model for indefinite sustainment.

The Marine Corps should not aspire to pass the audit by annual mobilization. It should aspire to be audit-ready every day.

Audit-ready every day means that the routine work of the institution produces evidence of accountability. Records are created the first time correctly. Systems reflect reality. Property is recorded and controlled. Obligations are supported. Corrective actions address root causes. Weaknesses are known before external auditors identify them. Leaders monitor risk through ordinary battle rhythm, not through emergency meetings after a finding appears.

That is why sustainment must be effective and economical. Effective sustainment protects the clean opinion. Economical sustainment protects readiness by reducing the cost of maintaining it. The Corps should not have to choose between audit readiness and operational readiness. Properly understood, they reinforce one another.

Why Audit Matters to Marines

Audit readiness matters because accountability matters. Marines understand accountability instinctively. Weapons are counted. Gear is inventoried. Serialized items are tracked. Ammunition is controlled. Orders are documented. Readiness is reported. Maintenance is recorded. Supply status is monitored. Commanders do not accept vague answers when lives, missions, and equipment are at stake.

The same principle applies to the broader business systems that support the force. Money, contracts, inventory, facilities, transportation, pay, procurement, maintenance data, and property accountability are not abstractions. They are part of the combat support system. They determine whether Marines receive what they need, when they need it, where they need it, and whether senior leaders can make timely decisions and resource allocations based on reliable information.

A clean audit opinion is not the mission. It is evidence that important parts of the institution are working as intended. It tells Congress, taxpayers, commanders, and Marines that the Corps can account for public resources and use them in ways that support national defense. Conversely, losing a clean opinion after earning it would signal something deeper than a paperwork problem. It would suggest that processes weakened, data became less reliable, systems drifted apart, controls stopped operating effectively, or leaders lost sight of institutional risk.

That should matter to every commander.

The Marine Corps has always prided itself on doing more with less; however, doing more with less requires knowing what less actually means. It requires accurate information, disciplined processes, and trustworthy systems. Waste, duplication, poor data, delayed payments, unsupported inventory records, and unreliable reporting consume resources that should support readiness. They also erode trust.

Public trust matters. Congressional trust matters. Taxpayer trust matters. Trust is not maintained by slogans. It is maintained by visible competence. In an era of fiscal pressure and intense scrutiny of federal spending, the Department of War cannot assume that public support will remain unaffected by repeated failures to account for resources. The Marine Corps has created a powerful counterexample. It must now protect that example.

For Marines, the issue is even more direct. Audit readiness supports readiness because reliable information supports command. If leaders cannot trust the data, they cannot fully trust the decision. If systems do not reflect reality, commanders must compensate with workarounds, manual checks, extra labor, and local knowledge. Those workarounds may keep the organization moving, but they are costly, fragile, and difficult to sustain.

Audit readiness is therefore not merely compliance. It is an institutional test of whether the Marine Corps can align resources, processes, systems, and accountability in support of warfighting.

The Problem is Not Effort

The Marine Corps’ achievement reflects many years of effort by Marines, civilians, and supporting partners (many of whom were not at the finish line celebrations). Financial managers, logisticians, supply professionals, contracting officers, information technology specialists, commanders, and staffs all contributed. Much of the work was difficult, tedious, and unglamorous. It required correcting records, stabilizing systems, documenting processes, answering auditor requests, strengthening controls, and recreating a culture that took accountability seriously.

That work should be respected, but effort alone is not the measure of success. The measure now is whether the Corps can reduce the amount of extraordinary effort required to maintain the result. That outcome is a leadership obligation.

A clean opinion that depends on brute force is vulnerable. It can be sustained for a time through pressure, money, and manpower, but eventually the cost becomes unacceptable. Leaders rotate. Priorities compete. Contractors depart. Manual workarounds grow stale. Fatigue sets in. The organization begins to treat the audit as an annual burden rather than as evidence of daily discipline.

The Corps and its leaders must resist that drift. The Marine Corps knows the difference between temporary compliance and institutional discipline. Temporary compliance appears when inspection is near. Institutional discipline is present when no one is watching. Temporary compliance depends on pressure. Institutional discipline depends on standards, training, accountability, and leadership.

Audit readiness must become an institutional discipline. That means leaders must never treat an audit as an annual external event and must continue treating it as a continuous measure of process health. The annual audit cycle will create formal milestones, but the work that matters occurs every day: recording transactions correctly, maintaining accountable property records, enforcing supply discipline, using standard processes, fixing root causes, monitoring risk, and ensuring that systems reflect reality.

The goal is not perfection. No large organization operates without error. The goal is reliable control over the processes that matter most. Leaders must know where weaknesses exist, why they exist, what risk they create, who is responsible for correction, and whether corrective actions are producing results. All risks cannot be treated equally; some matter more than others.

That is ordinary leadership. It is not exotic. It is not reserved for comptrollers. It is command responsibility applied to the business processes that sustain the force.

Organizing for Success

The Marine Corps and the Department of War understand unity of command in operations. Goldwater-Nichols strengthened joint warfighting by clarifying authority, improving coordination, and organizing the operational force around unified command structures. The lesson was not that coordination is useful. The lesson was that complex missions require clear authority, clear responsibility, and aligned execution.

The business side of the Department has not fully absorbed that lesson. Audit readiness crosses functional boundaries. It touches logistics, financial management, contracting, acquisition, information technology, human resources, supply, maintenance, and operations. No single staff section can solve it alone. Weaknesses often appear at the seams between organizations: a feeder system that does not align with an enterprise system, a supply process that does not produce reliable records, a contract action that is not properly documented, a property record that cannot be supported, or a corrective action that addresses the symptom but not the cause.

Vertical organizations still struggle with horizontal problems. If audit readiness is treated as a financial-management problem, the institution will eventually underperform. Financial managers can coordinate, report, advise, and help lead the effort, but they do not own every process that affects the audit outcome. A supply process may create the record. A contracting process may create the obligation. An IT system may hold the data. A pay system or real property account can matter. A commander may own the operational risk. A financial statement may merely reveal the weakness.

That is why unified governance matters. The Marine Corps does not need a new bureaucracy. It does need clear authority, disciplined governance, and empowered leadership over the cross-functional processes that affect audit readiness. Someone must be responsible for integrating effort, especially information systems, across functional lines, setting priorities, enforcing milestones, resolving disputes, monitoring corrective actions, and ensuring that process owners do not push problems onto someone else.

This is especially important in systems modernization. Enterprise resource planning systems, feeder systems, inventory tools, data platforms, and local workarounds must be governed as part of a coherent operating model. Technology will not fix undisciplined processes. Automation applied to bad data only moves bad data faster. Artificial intelligence, analytics, robotic process automation, and dashboards can help, but only if the underlying processes are clear, standardized, and enforced.

The Corps should view audit readiness as part of institutional command and control. Leaders need dashboards that show where risk exists. They need reliable data from authoritative sources. They need recurring governance forums that solve problems rather than admire them. They need a disciplined process and skill set for root cause analysis, not just lists of corrective actions. Many resources have been wasted in the audit journey due to poorly applied root cause analysis, resulting in corrective actions being misapplied. Consequences are needed for missing milestones, and recognition is needed for sustained performance.

Without that leadership structure, the organization will continue to rely on heroic effort. Heroic effort is admirable in combat. It is a poor substitute for disciplined management in recurring institutional processes.

Audit Ready Every Day

The desired end state is simple: audit-ready every day. Audit-ready every day does not imply that Marines become auditors. It means the Corps builds habits that make accountability routine. The organization knows the standards. Processes are documented and followed. Records are created the first time correctly. Weaknesses are identified early. Corrective actions are prioritized. Leaders review performance regularly. Systems are simplified where possible. Training is tied to actual responsibilities. Contractors are held accountable for results. Commanders understand how business processes affect readiness. And increasingly in the future, artificial intelligence will be effectively governed.

An audit-ready culture requires a clear narrative from senior leaders. The message should be simple: audit readiness is about operational readiness, resource stewardship, and institutional trust. It is about making sure resources entrusted to the Marine Corps are visible, controlled, and used for their intended purpose. It is about ensuring that leaders can rely on information when making decisions. It is about protecting the credibility of the institution.

That message must be repeated without jargon. Marines are not inspired by technical accounting terms and resist superficial slogans. They require an understanding of the mission relevance of the work. They deserve to know what right looks like, what their role is, and what happens when standards are ignored.

Training is central. The Corps must train senior leaders, commanders, staff officers, staff non-commissioned officers, and civilian process owners on the basic connection between audit readiness and operational effectiveness. This does not require turning leaders into technical specialists. It requires giving them enough understanding to ask better questions, detect weak answers, enforce standards, and sustain command attention.

The most important questions are straightforward. Do we know what we own? Do we know where it is? Do our systems reflect reality? Are our processes standard and repeatable? Do we know our weaknesses before outside auditors find them? Are root causes accurately identified? Are corrective actions solving root causes? Are leaders reviewing progress? Are contractors delivering measurable results? Are audit requirements built into daily work?

Those questions are not accounting questions. They are leadership questions.

Economy Is Part of Readiness

Sustainment must also become more economical. The Corps should not need to buy the same result every year through extraordinary manual labor. The purpose of maturing audit readiness is to lower the cost of maintaining it.

Economy comes from disciplined processes, better systems, clearer ownership, smarter contracting, stronger training, and fewer surprises. It comes from fixing root causes instead of symptoms. It comes from eliminating unnecessary variation. It comes from replacing spreadsheet heroics with reliable data flows. It comes from holding contractors accountable for outcomes, not activity. It comes from using small business innovation, automation, analytics, and artificial intelligence, where those tools reduce labor and improve accuracy.

Economy also comes from accepting that not every weakness is equal. Leaders must prioritize. Some deficiencies create a serious risk to readiness, decision-making, public trust, or the clean opinion. Others may be less consequential. A mature organization does not chase every issue with equal intensity. It identifies the risks that matter most, assigns responsibility, and follows through.

This is where command judgment matters. Sustaining audit readiness economically requires leaders to distinguish between what is merely untidy and what is dangerous. It requires the courage to stop funding duplicative systems, retire bad processes, enforce standards, avoid highly customized enterprise resource planning systems, and hold organizations accountable when they choose local convenience over enterprise discipline.

The Command Responsibility

The Marine Corps should place audit readiness where it belongs: within the broader discipline of command responsibility.

Commanders are responsible for readiness, discipline, resources, risk, and mission accomplishment. They are responsible for creating the conditions in which Marines can succeed. They are responsible for knowing whether the organization is performing to standard. Audit readiness is one way the institution tests whether those responsibilities are being met in the business processes that support the force.

This does not mean commanders personally manage every transaction or system. It means they set expectations, assign responsibility, demand reliable information, and ensure follow-through. They make audit readiness part of the battle rhythm, governance, inspections, training, and performance assessment. They refuse to accept preventable confusion as normal. They insist that records match reality.

The Marine Corps is leading and has an opportunity to lead by example in audit sustainment. It has passed three audits. It has demonstrated that disciplined stewardship can be part of Marine Corps culture. Now it must show others that the achievement can be sustained without permanent surge conditions or unsustainable cost.

That shift will not be achieved by slogans, one-time campaigns, or year-end pushes. It will be achieved by leaders who are trained to understand why audit readiness matters, to organize for success, to enforce standards, to invest in training, to simplify systems, and to make accountability routine.

The Marine Corps does not pass audits to impress auditors. It passes audits because Marines deserve reliable support, commanders deserve trustworthy information, Congress deserves confidence, and the American people deserve and expect disciplined stewardship of the resources they provide—especially from their Marines.

So, audit readiness is not separate from warfighting. It is one important measure of whether the institution is ready, trustworthy, and disciplined enough to sustain warfighting at scale.

The Corps has proven it can pass. Now it must prove it can sustain. That is why audit readiness belongs in the commander’s business, and that is why the topic belongs in the Marine Corps Gazette.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

>Col Clifton served five decades with the Marine Corps on active duty and as a civilian Marine. He retired from active duty in 2001 as a Colonel and in 2022 as a Senior Executive. He served in positions in artillery, logistics, as an Afghan Advisor, financial management, and as a Senior Executive to the commanders of Installation and Logistics Command.  

Leading Adaptation at the Point of Friction

What the Expeditionary Warfare School learned by integrating artificial intelligence

Military organizations often assume adaptation requires resources, expertise, or institutional direction. In reality, adaptation rarely begins under ideal conditions. New technologies emerge faster than doctrine; operational requirements evolve faster than policy; adversaries innovate while organizations debate. The challenge for leaders is not simply identifying what needs to change but creating conditions that enable adaptation before certainty arrives. The Expeditionary Warfare School’s (EWS) integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into planning for academic year (AY) 2026 provides a useful case study in how leaders can enable adaptation in the operating forces.1

In the early summer of 2025, EWS had planned to introduce only a single 90-minute lecture on AI and had no plans to develop hands-on AI opportunities for students. However, as increasingly capable commercial AI models became available throughout 2025, the gap between the EWS curriculum and what students needed to succeed in the operational forces post-graduation widened rapidly. The EWS needed to adapt to meet the needs of the students and their gaining units. By February 2026, students and faculty were using AI-enabled analysis, applications, tools, and agents during the school’s culminating amphibious planning exercise. Most notably, EWS students built the tools themselves with no additional staff and no budget.

Despite EWS’s success in integrating AI into planning, the most important lesson from the experiment was not technological. The EWS’s experience reinforced a familiar historical reality: Military advantage belongs to organizations capable of adapting responsibly before formal doctrine, policy, or certainty arrives. Professional military education institutions such as EWS remain essential because they develop leaders capable of adapting responsibly when no clear roadmap exists, and because they provide a proving ground for ideas without the same risks of life and treasure faced by operational units. The EWS’s example offers lessons for any leader facing an adaptive problem, particularly on how to set conditions that enable rapid adaptation. Leaders must articulate a clear purpose, establish responsible risk parameters, unleash and inspire initiative, ensure mastery of the basics that underpin the adaptation, and harden the unit’s resolve to endure through adaptation despite uncertainty and setbacks.

Purpose (Vision/Intent)

When the faculty and staff were developing the curriculum for the 2026 academic year, the plan was simple: Introduce students to large language models, discuss how artificial intelligence might influence the character of war, and move on with the curriculum. As with many PME discussions surrounding AI at the time, the school intended to expose students to the concepts rather than to make them practitioners. However, over the summer of 2025, agentic warfare and the rapid development of commercially available AI models changed the environment. It became clear that students needed hands-on experience in planning with AI-enabled tools before returning to the FMF, their Services, or their home countries, so as not to be left behind. After all, EWS is a “doing” school—theory about AI would not be enough to prepare students for their next assignments.

As a result, by August 2025, the Director of the Expeditionary Warfare School, Col Christopher Steele, directed that AY 26 EWS students plan with AI tools by the spring planning exercise in February 2026. He identified a clear end-state that initiated EWS’s effective adaptation to incorporate AI into the curriculum. While the method of adaptation remained unclear, having a key leader provide a vision for the future was a critical first step.

The second critical step in defining the purpose of incorporating AI into the EWS curriculum was to determine exactly what problem AI could solve for students. At EWS, students execute several demanding planning exercises designed to develop MAGTF officers proficient in the Marine Corps Planning Process. These exercises require significant coordination, information management, staff integration, and product development. In operational units, many of these responsibilities are distributed across larger staffs with dedicated support sections. At EWS, small student groups must accomplish the same intellectual work with far fewer personnel.

Across the curriculum, the director and faculty determined that the enduring problem at EWS was that time spent planning was increasingly focused on production rather than on thinking, communicating, and developing shared situational awareness. Students often spent disproportionate amounts of time formatting products, consolidating and organizing information, building diagrams, creating planning outputs, or recreating routine staff processes. These tasks mattered, but they consumed time otherwise available for analysis, wargaming, and decision-making.

Artificial intelligence—specifically generative AI and large language models—appeared to offer potential advantages to buy back a precious resource: time. These advantages accrue not because AI could automate commanders’ decisions or negate the responsibility of planners but because it could reduce production burdens that were crowding out critical thinking. Once the problem AI could solve was clear, faculty could more easily understand how to integrate AI into the curriculum and guide students in building AI-enabled tools that supported planning. Leaders must provide and clarify the purpose to enable effective adaptation.

Risk (Policy/Boundaries)

The next hurdle in adapting the EWS curriculum to incorporate AI concerned the level of acceptable risk the faculty and students could assume. No EWS faculty members possessed deep technical expertise in AI development. There was no budget item to rapidly onboard qualified instructors. There was no increase in infrastructure to enable student AI experimentation. The longest government shutdown to date temporarily stunted formal AI-agent development initiatives at Marine Corps University. However, EWS could not wait for solutions to emerge and lacked the budget to purchase a commercial solution, even if one had existed at the time. Instead, the faculty had to manage and communicate the risks of the adaptation and effectively leverage their on-hand resources.

Once it became clear that EWS needed to develop AI-enabled tools, apps, and agents without external support to achieve the EWS director’s intent, the faculty designed an all-volunteer, credit-producing elective for students to build AI agents or tools.2 The faculty designing the elective faced a challenge familiar to many leaders when integrating emerging technologies. Excessive restrictions would stifle experimentation, while too few restrictions risked creating unsafe or irrelevant solutions. The EWS faculty needed to clearly articulate boundaries for tool development to ensure sensitive data was protected and that the tools created would improve the learning outcomes for all students.

Faculty guidance to students on the type of tool desired was intentionally broad. Students were to use AI to solve real planning problems relevant to military planners in an amphibious operation. The faculty did not restrict what commercial tools could be used to create the AI agent or tool. The constraints of the elective were equally clear. The tools needed to use only unclassified data and be accessible with a free account to maximize students’ opportunities to use them. Most importantly, the tool had to remain operationally relevant to planning in the FMF.3

While no AI expertise existed among the faculty yet, EWS faculty deeply understand the planning process, the educational objectives for the culminating exercise, and joint all-domain operations. Together, the staff had hundreds of years of combined experience planning complex military operations. The staff relied on their strengths in planning, rather than expertise in AI, to mentor students in developing AI tools relevant to planners. The faculty, with their expertise, could provide mentorship and oversight on the applicability of tools to the planning process, but not train students how to build AI tools. To overcome this lack of technical instruction, students had to rely on their own initiative, teaching themselves the necessary skills to use commercially available AI models to generate customized tools.

These boundaries and the articulation of acceptable risk during adaptation helped ensure that students’ work remained applicable and reduced confusion or hesitation among students. The EWS students adapted rapidly because faculty created enough freedom to experiment while maintaining clear limits on classification, operational relevance, and responsible use. If policy is unclear, leaders must provide supervision, guidance, and clear left-right limits for adaptation.

Initiative

Despite broad guidance and the lack of available instruction on AI tools, 23 students volunteered for the AI elective, approximately 10 percent of the AY 26 EWS class. All the students committed significant personal time beyond normal academic requirements for the elective. Thirteen of them completed the elective and produced working AI-enabled planning tools. Their personal investment of between 10 and 80 hours beyond the already demanding course load demonstrates initiative above and beyond expectations.

The students’ AI-enabled planning solutions far exceeded the EWS staff’s expectations. In one month, the students developed fifteen concepts ranging from custom generative pre-trained transformers to planning support applications and information management tools. With feedback from the faculty and their peers, the students who completed the elective produced ten tools that were operationally viable enough to integrate into general planning exercises, and particularly the EWS capstone amphibious planning exercise.4 One student-developed tool reduced the hours required to produce command-and-control diagrams to between 20 and 30 minutes. Critically, the reduction in production time fundamentally changed the planning discussion itself. Instead of presenting a single command-and-control option to the commander because time constraints limited further refinement, planning teams could now generate multiple complete options and compare their strengths and weaknesses.

Another tool dramatically improved the speed and detail of logistics planning by consolidating sustainment calculations and identifying friction points planners might otherwise overlook during compressed timelines. A separate agent rapidly generated firing solutions based on available munitions, target parameters, and probability-of-kill calculations, allowing fires planners to evaluate multiple engagement options faster than manual calculations permitted.

The EWS’s most valuable adaptations came from students willing to experiment, iterate, and solve problems without waiting for perfect guidance. But what they produced was not just automation or delegating tasks. The value was the restoration of time to think within the planning space and an opportunity for fellow students to consider AI-enabled inputs for the first time. The tools created by the elective forced faculty and students to evaluate how and when to use AI to enhance their critical thinking, expose bias, or offer ideas they might not have considered otherwise. Once unlocked, the students’ initiative produced outstanding results. Leaders must inspire subordinates, foster a climate of curiosity, and recognize and encourage their people to unleash their creativity and innovation.

Mastery (Expertise)

As students innovated approaches to AI-enabled planning, one lesson became apparent: Adaptation without expertise risks creating polished dysfunction. The EWS students who deeply understood planning produced better AI-enabled tools because they could identify flawed assumptions, doctrinal inconsistencies, and operationally dangerous outputs quickly and efficiently. The inclusion of AI in planning did not reduce the importance of expertise at EWS. Instead, it revealed that using AI, coupled with expertise, is essential.

One of the clearest observations from the elective was that AI-assisted planning was only as effective as the student’s expertise. Students with deeper planning proficiency consistently achieved better results because they could rapidly identify hallucinated information, weak assumptions, and doctrinal inconsistencies. Experienced planners understood what “right” looked like before engaging the technology. Those planners recognized when tools were useful and when they were confidently wrong.

Students with weaker planning fundamentals often struggled to recognize degraded outputs. In some cases, AI-generated products appeared polished and tactically plausible while containing subtle but operationally significant flaws. This created a dangerous temptation: confusing polished outputs with sound analysis.

The most successful teams in the elective combined students who were technically curious, tactically proficient in their military occupational specialty, and possessed a strong foundation in planning process expertise. By the start of the elective, students had already learned the Marine Corps Planning Process with “iron sights” before attempting to enhance planning with AI tools. Because of their baseline mastery of the planning process, students could rapidly identify errors in the tools’ outputs and then modify prompts, inputs, or tool functions to improve performance. What emerged was not simply technological experimentation. It became a case study in the importance of expertise as a baseline for effective adaptation. It is a leader’s responsibility to know what expertise exists within the organization, to seek staff input, and to ensure the right expertise is applied to the problem.

Endurance

The inaugural AI elective at EWS did not demonstrate that AI will replace military expertise or automate planning. It demonstrated something more important and more uncomfortable. It demonstrated that future military advantage belongs to organizations capable of adapting rapidly and responsibly before institutional certainty arrives. The EWS AI initiative survived because students and faculty continued adapting despite limited expertise, no dedicated funding, and repeated setbacks. The lesson for leaders is to maintain the course while allowing in-stride shifts in execution to maximize organizational strengths.

The challenges of incorporating AI education into EWS increasingly resemble the broader operational environment facing the Joint Force: incomplete guidance, rapidly evolving technology, compressed timelines, institutional ambiguity, and adversaries adapting in real time. No perfect solution existed. No mature doctrine explained exactly how to proceed. Adaptation occurred anyway because the problem’s operational relevance was obvious. That lesson extends well beyond AI and PME.

The challenge facing the Marine Corps is not simply learning how to use AI. It is developing leaders capable of exercising judgment and leading adaptation while technology changes faster than doctrine, policy, or institutions can comfortably absorb. The EWS experience demonstrated that AI increased the premium placed on experienced planners capable of evaluating outputs, recognizing flawed assumptions, and exercising military judgment. Professional military education remains essential because it develops the expertise, judgment, and leadership required to adapt responsibly before those lessons must be learned in combat. The organizations that adapt fastest will not necessarily be those with the most resources or the most advanced technology. They will be those led by leaders who understand where friction exists and create conditions that allow their people to overcome it.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

>Maj Aich is an Intelligence Officer currently serving as a faculty member at Expeditionary Warfare School. She previously served as the Military Adaptation and Innovation Course Director and as a Faculty Advisor at Expeditionary Warfare School. 

Notes

1. The EWS is the Marine Corps’ 41-week resident career-level PME school for up to 250 Marine, joint service, and international company-grade officers. 

2. Maj Jessica Aich, Course Director for Military Adaptation and Innovation, and Dr. Kirklin Bateman, EWS Dean of Academics, led the elective. 

3. Dr. Kirklin Bateman and Jessica Aich, AY26 Expeditionary Warfare School Elective: AI Agents Syllabus, (December 2025).

4. The EWS executes a six-week amphibious planning exercise titled Pacific Guard in the spring semester. Teams of up to 32 students form MEU, Marine Littoral Regiment, and Amphibious Ready Group staffs and plan against a Chinese-based adversary in the Pacific Command area of responsibility. The exercise includes a non-combatant evacuation, an amphibious assault, and amphibious defense, and a rapid planning exercise for foreign humanitarian assistance and a small-scale amphibious raid. 

Author’s Note: The views expressed are the author’s own and do not reflect official policy or positions of the Marine Corps, DOD or U.S. Government. During the preparation of this work, the author used AI to improve the readability, clarity, and structure of the article.

The Marine Corps War College’s China Warfighting Initiative

Preparing joint all-domain officers for the greatest threat

As the Marine Corps University Joint All-Domain Officer (JADO) program was taking shape, another effort was coming to fruition: the China Warfighting Initiative (CWI). For several years before JADO, the Marine Corps War College’s (MCWAR) administration held discussions about the establishment of a Marine Corps China center, an organization meant to centralize the training and education of Marines on China and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). It became clear that to build JADOs, Marine Corps University would need a way to train against a joint all-domain threat: China. The plan was already in place, and the time was right for the China Warfighting Initiative.

The China research centers at Marine Corps University’s sister war colleges—including the China Aerospace Studies Institute at Air University, the China Maritime Studies Institute at the Naval War College, the China Landpower Studies Center at the Army War College, and the Center for the Study of Chinese Military Affairs at National Defense University—were used as models when the Marine Corps War College (MCWAR) formally established the CWI in 2025.1 At its inception, direct support to the JADO program became codified into its mission statement:

The China Warfighting Initiative will ensure that the Marine Corps develops the necessary expertise to confront the PRC threat at every level—strategic, operational, and tactical. Its mission is to enhance understanding of China to inform military planning, operations, and decision-making, while supporting senior leadership through timely, actionable research and analysis on China-related issues. By integrating China-focused education and research into the Marine Corps University curriculum, particularly in support of the Joint All-Domain Officer (JADO) program, the initiative will ensure that officers, many of whom will serve in joint task forces operating in the Indo-Pacific, possess a deep contextual understanding of both the threat and the operational environment. This effort is critical for countering PRC aggression against the United States, its allies, partners, and interests.2

The CWI’s various lines of effort can be summarized as building scholarship on the Chinese military and enhancing JADOs through professional wargaming. Through these goals, the CWI will integrate further into the JADO curriculum and play a critical role in building a robust threat picture against which JADO students can plan. However, this is just the start. As the initiative grows into a full-blown center, we hope to expand our support to the broader Corps.

Building Scholarship on the Chinese Military

The key goals of the CWI are to build scholarship on the People’s Republic of China and the People’s Liberation Army across MCU and directly support the JADO program. Scholarship includes education and research on the PLA to create a baseline and build substantial actionable knowledge for students and the broader community.

In terms of education, while there are elements of what one would think of as classic China classes, such as grand strategy or the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), our real focus falls at the high tactical and operational level of the PLA. The impetus for this focus is best summed up by MCWAR Director, Col Andrew M. Kelley’s vision about how the CWI can improve the combat readiness of the Corps. In one of the initial meetings for the stand-up of the CWI, Col Kelley relayed a story about his personal experience in junior professional military education. It was the height of the Cold War, and most junior officers were steeped in Soviet operations and order of battle. There were even posters of the operational laydown of Soviet forces stuck to the back of bathroom stall doors across the Corps.3 Such rudimentary, but important, learning mechanisms helped U.S. Cold Warriors easily recount the makeup of a Soviet motorized rifle regiment formation as it is deployed.

While not the same era, nor the same competitor, Col Kelley envisions bringing a similar level of awareness and knowledge of the China threat across the Marine Corps and the broader force, not only just in the event of conflict, but to deeply understand how the PLA operates in competition as well. As MajGen Patrick Teague, then defense attaché to Beijing, once remarked during a “China Way of War” class, it took decades to build the talent base of Kremlinologists that provided the insight into Moscow during the Cold War, and that for a potential China threat, we are only beginning to build that deep talent pool.4 These ideas are the tenets of the CWI’s educational efforts to build cohorts of Marines (and other students across the U.S. Armed Services, and our allies and partners) mature in their understanding of the CCP’s thinking on grand strategy, and how the CCP employs the PLA across the spectrum of conflict to achieve its political objectives. And, yes, CWI has also created a poster available to Marines that includes a translated, templated laydown of a combined-arms brigade as drawn by PLA academics for training.5 The author leaves it up to Marines on where they choose to hang that poster.

At Marine Corps University, CWI China-focused education takes the form of specific classes and courses built into schools’ curricula, supporting professional enrichment lectures, and a designated China Scholars program. At Expeditionary Warfare School, customized lectures built into the core curriculum on the PLA’s strategy, operations, and tactics provide the backdrop of the threat for the Expeditionary Warfare School’s operations afloat exercise. In these lectures, the CWI provides an overview of Chinese grand strategy and the PLA to frame the problem, and follow-on lectures include a deep dive on PLA operations vis-à-vis Taiwan and the operational and tactical level of PLA warfighting. At Command and Staff College, the CWI provides an intensive elective on Chinese grand strategy and the PLA. The elective is structured according to Chinese definitions of Comprehensive National Power, which is a key metric for great-power competition. The first half of the elective examines each aspect of Comprehensive National Power in detail from the viewpoint of the CCP. During the second half of the elective, students study a handbook on PLA operations and the tactical details of different PLA campaigns, including the landing campaign. The Command and Staff College course culminates in a role reversal exercise, meant to expand the students’ critical thinking. In this exercise, students adopt the lens of a mid-grade CCP or PLA leader and provide strategic or operational actionable recommendations to higher-echelon leadership. The exercise forces students to break the blue lensing of their analysis of the PLA.

At MCWAR, the educational focus of the CWI is on building an understanding of the strategic culture of China and how specifically the military component of comprehensive national power is being strategically modernized. Students analyze CCP decision making, PLA military developments, advanced technology in the PLA, military thinking, and PLA operations. A global competition and conflict wargame augments the lectures and seminars as part of the MCWAR Joint Warfighting curriculum. The games stress-test the U.S. strategy against thinking adversaries as laid out by the National Security Strategy. In these wargames, both the director and deputy director of the CWI serve as advisors for student teams playing as China. For MCWAR students, the mix of education and practical exercises helps to prepare them for their future leadership roles in geographic combatant commands and for how to address China in competition or in conflict.

Specifically, for joint all-domain operations programs, the CWI provides classified briefings and lectures on China that dive into the operational realities of the Indo-Pacific and the major military campaigns that the PLA aspires to execute. Details and examples drawn from experience with the operating forces and planning cells in the Indo-Pacific support these lectures and help ground the JADO students in understanding the terrain and capabilities with which they must contend. In addition to the classified classroom instruction, JADO students receive a threat library and proprietary translations of PLA operational training documents to further enhance their understanding of the threat. The CWI is working with Marine Corps Intelligence Activities and other elements of the intelligence community to develop additional classified curriculum for students within the JADO track and across Marine Corps University.

Marine Corps University students from other schoolhouses can also apply to participate in the China Scholars program. The MCU China Scholars program is a highly selective university-wide cohort of students who engage with senior thought leaders in the PLA studies community in small group, closed-door sessions. Students gain world-class knowledge about the PLA across domains from expert-level guest speakers. In addition to sessions with the CWI leadership, the academic year 2026 (AY 26) cohort heard from Mr. Daniel Peck (former executive director of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission and former OSW senior director for China Policy), Dr. Brendan Mulvaney (current director of the China Aerospace Studies Institute), and Mr. J. Michael Dahm (noted analyst, former assistant U.S. Naval Attaché in Beijing, and former senior naval intelligence officer for China in the Office of Naval Intelligence). Each of the speakers has considerable military and research experience dealing with China and the PLA, and many have served tours in the attaché office in Beijing. The AY 26 cohort of students also engaged in an afternoon of tabletop exercises focused on strategic and operational decision-making against China and the PLA.

Figure 1: China Warfighting Initiative translation of a PLA combined-arms brigade deployment template.6

In addition to the meetings and tabletop exercises, each cohort of China Scholars engages in a personalized year-long research project on the Chinese military, with the intent to produce a research paper of publishable quality. Students receive one-on-one mentoring in their writing process and access to the CWI threat library to conduct their research. Each year, the CWI’s China Military Studies Review and other publications select papers to publish. In particular, the research project provides students with the opportunity to develop deep expertise in one aspect of the Chinese military that they can carry forward into their next operational billet. While the research project tends to culminate in a research paper, there are other options available depending on the student’s interests. The JADO students who participate in China Scholars are exceptionally strong in this regard and can tailor their research as they see fit. One such student undertook a year-long translation project on newly acquired Chinese wargames. In his research, he picked apart and detailed, through personal translation, the multi-domain capabilities, scenarios, and the military thinking of a professional Chinese wargame. In the process, he has become one of the foremost U.S. experts in the game system and will be teaching the MCU Wargaming Directorate his lessons learned from analyzing the game.

Figure 2: China Warfighting Initiative translation of a landing campaign operational graphic.7

Finally, on the research front, the CWI has established a dedicated journal for the study of the PLA, the China Military Studies Review. The journal, published by and available through the Marine Corps University Press, provides a consolidated venue for building new scholarship on Chinese military strategy and PLA operations. While the China Military Studies Review caters toward articles by practitioners and researchers in the broader community, students across the Department of Defense’s professional military education enterprise are encouraged to submit their research on the PLA for consideration. This type of professional journal encourages broader engagement in the pursuit of scholarship while still maintaining rigorous academic standards through a detailed peer review process.

Wargaming

In addition to building scholarship, the CWI is also deeply involved in wargaming at Marine Corps University. As previously mentioned, the CWI acts as a strategic backstop for MCWAR wargames involving China and broadly across the schools’ various wargames. The CWI also works closely with the MCU Wargaming Directorate to develop and maintain a China Battle-book for the Operational Wargame System (OWS) as well as to advise about and adjust scenarios that are USPACOM-focused. The China Battle-book includes an as-accurate-as-possible unclassified order of battle for the entirety of the PLA, from which wargamers using OWS can create their own China-based scenarios. The CWI wargaming support also includes enemy course of action development for the School of Advanced Warfighting, which School of Advanced Warfighting students have used as a red team test for their artificial intelligence planning agents. As the CWI develops and wargaming becomes more integrated into MCU curricula, we plan to develop a distinct China red team capability drawing from the community of PLA experts to provide high-fidelity representations of PLA capabilities for students to train against.

In academic year 2027, the CWI will also enhance the wargaming component of the China Scholars program. The CWI will run a series of China-focused scenarios using OWS to better enhance the students’ understanding of the PLA order of battle and operations in the Pacific. Students will have the opportunity to exercise joint all-domain operations at the operational level either against or as the PLA.

Forging Ahead: Support to the Force

As the JADO curriculum continues to develop, so will the China Warfighting Initiative as a key supporting effort of the program. Through cutting-edge education and research on the PLA, the CWI will enhance the operational effectiveness of the broader force and train JADO students against a true joint all-domain threat. Furthermore, as the CWI expands into a full China center, it will increase support to operating forces outside of the university. As of now, the CWI has supported the 3d MarDiv, elements of Headquarters Marine Corps, the Expeditionary Warfare Training Group, Atlantic, Twentynine Palms, the Marine Reserve Advisory Company Alpha, and other groups of Marines through China-related education and wargame support. In the future, this support will continue so that we can provide in-house China expertise to those Marines who need it but also to learn from those Marines about the operational needs and critical questions facing the geographic combatant commands. Support to the operating forces is also a win for Marine Corps University, as the CWI team can bring their experience back to the students. The founding of the CWI in March 2025 acted as a significant step forward for the Marine Corps role in the Department of Defense’s China Center ecosystem. As we continue to refine and augment the China element of the JADO program and expand our educational reach in the community, the China Warfighting Initiative will become a key component of training Marines to prevail in combat against our greatest threat.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

>Mr. Rice serves as the China Military and Political Strategy Subject-Matter Expert at the Marine Corps War College (MCWAR) and the Deputy Director of the MCWAR China Warfighting Initiative.

Notes

1. BGen Matthew Tracy, “Meeting Remarks,” (Marine Corps War College, Brute Krulak Center for Innovation, 2024). 

2. “China Aerospace Studies Institute,” Air University, accessed June 26, 2026, https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/CASI; “China Maritime Studies Institute,” U.S. Naval War College, accessed June 26, 2026, https://usnwc.edu/Research-and-Wargaming/Research-Centers/China-Maritime-Studies-Institute; “China Landpower Studies Center,” Strategic Studies Institute U.S. Army War College, accessed June 26, 2026, https://ssi.armywarcollege.edu/CLSC; “Center for the Study of Chinese Military Affairs,” Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University, accessed June 26, 2026, https://inss.ndu.edu/Centers/Center-for-the-Study-of-Chinese-Military-Affairs.

3. Marine Corps War College, Marine Corps War College China Warfighting Initiative Charter, March 2025.

4. Col Andrew M. Kelley, “Meeting Remarks,” (CWI Stand Up Meeting, MCWAR, 2025).

5. MajGen Patrick Teague, “China Way of War,” (lecture, U.S. Army Pacific, 2024). 

6. Note: For Marines or readers who are interested in acquiring this poster, please reach out to Marine Corps University Press or use the graphic accompanying this article.

7. Ding Bo and Luo Xianhui, Operational Graphics Guidelines, (Beijing: Lantian Publishing House, 2019), 409.

>Author’s Note: The views expressed are the author’s own and do not reflect official policy or positions of the Marine Corps, DOD, or U.S. government.

The Classroom Is a Battle Lab

Connecting the schoolhouse to the fleet

A Marine Corps classroom should be an intellectual crucible and a proving ground. Students should leave seminars with more than a few pithy reflections and historical insights. Training and Education 2030 directs the force to learn from exercises, wargames, and live-force experimentation as part of a broader modernization effort.1 Students should gather around a map, shifting as they argue about positions of advantage and alternative schemes of maneuver made possible by emerging technology. Assumptions should bleed under the pressure of feedback loops from wargames, forcing students to re-evaluate operational art and design. Students should emerge with practiced judgment, the habit of testing ideas against adversary adaptation, and the confidence to revise a plan when the situation changes. That process requires reconceptualizing the classroom as a battle lab: educational forums where military professionals connect their study of war to major military problems of interest to the fleet, like the widespread use of practicum and project-based learning in higher education.

The familiar classroom rhythm of reading, discussing, and writing remains necessary, but they require a focal point in the form of a practicum connecting students to real-world military problems. A practicum is a supervised college or university course that allows students to apply classroom theories to actual, on-the-job professional practice. For the profession of arms, that practicum is a battle lab. A seminar on Corbett should help students frame maritime campaigns in support of analyzing a classified fleet problem. A course on operational art should force them to build, test, and defend a campaign concept linked to a major operations plan in a manner that helps planners consider branches and sequels. A discussion of a Marine Corps doctrinal publication, such as MCDP 1, should help them wrestle with uncertainty, friction, and initiative inside a future littoral fight, for example, when designing future exercise requirements for Balikatan. A battle lab gives students a controlled venue to build hypotheses that larger experiments can refine. It gives the schoolhouse a way to contribute without pretending that a seminar can replace the fleet, the Warfighting Laboratory, or a combatant command staff.

This design changes the way students experience professional military education (PME). They read with a purpose because the next session may require them to apply the idea and brief senior leaders. They are more deliberate in their research and writing because a sponsor may read the product. They conduct more disciplined debates to sharpen their ideas because a wargame or red team will punish weak assumptions. The classroom becomes a place where Marines learn how knowledge travels from books to actual military decisions.

Professional military education should connect the classroom to the fleet through structured practicums that force creative problem-solving. Marine Corps University (MCU) has a history and recent practice of making the battle lab a defining feature of its approach to education. The question becomes how to scale it while preserving core features of the curriculum, such as the study of military theory, history, and strategy, and adding a new focus on immersing students in classified instruction linked to joint all-domain operations. Establishing this balance is critical as students must enter the battle lab with a sufficiently developed analytical grounding.

An Old Marine Corps Idea

In 1929, Col James Carson Breckinridge published “Some Thoughts on Service Schools” in the Marine Corps Gazette. He argued for schools built around criticism, experimentation, original thought, and broader intellectual engagement with the changing character of war.2 The vision aligned with key ideas from education philosophy at the time championed by William James and John Dewey, centered on pragmatism and experiential learning.3 This approach emphasized the need to apply knowledge to problems rather than centering a seminar around theoretical instruction or historical cases alone.

The interwar Marine Corps Schools turned that vision into institutional practice. Under Breckinridge, the schoolhouse shifted its attention toward advanced base operations and the amphibious problem. The curriculum changed, and faculty contributed to doctrine. Breckinridge treated criticism as a professional virtue. The interwar schools treated a concept as something to test against geography, adversaries, ships, logistics, and tactical detail. They also created a community of practice: students, instructors, doctrine writers, and operating forces shared a problem and worked through it over time. At one point, the senior course closed so instructors could help develop the concepts the force needed. The episode deserves attention because it shows a schoolhouse operating as part of the force development system. The Marines who later executed amphibious campaigns in the Pacific inherited ideas tested, argued, and refined in schools as well as in the fleet.4 That combination of critique, experiment, and community is the core of the battle lab.

The analogy has limits, but the pattern matters. The interwar Marines faced uncertainty about naval warfare, amphibious operations, and the future operating environment. Today’s Marines face a different set of problems: precision fires, dense sensor networks, adversary reconnaissance-strike complexes, degraded communications, cyber and information warfare, unmanned systems, and AI-enabled staff work. This change is why MCU is inserting joint all-domain operations (JADO) into the curriculum.5

This new focus on JADO intersects the evolving role of battle labs at MCU. Between 2014 and 2024, the Gray Scholars program connected student research teams, faculty, and external partners around contemporary military challenges, including dense urban terrain, Arctic operations, manned-unmanned teaming, human-machine collaboration, expeditionary logistics, artificial intelligence, and amphibious operations.6 The work teams of students and faculty directly supported Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) work on Mosaic Warfare and force design.7 Initiatives like the TECOM (Training and Education Command) Warfighting Society and Fight Club—a collaboration among MCU, Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory, the former U.S. Army Futures Command, and the 75th Innovation Command—used wargaming to explore the changing character of war and expose vulnerabilities in future concepts.8 More recently, the School of Advanced Warfighting (SAW) supported major experiments to integrate AI into military planning and sent students to work on classified problems in support of the fleet.9 These examples point to a larger proposition: the schoolhouse can receive hard problems from the force, expose them to disciplined inquiry, and return better questions, competing solutions, and officers trained in the process.

Defining the Battle Lab

A battle lab is a curriculum-linked practicum built around military problems that combines five elements. First, it has a sponsor, a live operational question, or a realistic future problem. Second, it aligns with student learning outcomes. Third, it uses a structured method, such as campaign analysis, wargaming, red teaming, operational design, data science, staff planning, and/or AI-enabled decision support, among other tools. Fourth, it produces an artifact that can be critiqued, revised, and delivered. Fifth, it includes structured reflection, allowing students to examine how they framed the problem, selected evidence, challenged assumptions, and made decisions under uncertainty.

A battle lab also has a rhythm. Students frame the problem, collect evidence, identify assumptions, generate alternatives, test those alternatives, receive critique, revise, and produce a final artifact. The instructor acts as coach, methodologist, and professional skeptic. The sponsor supplies friction: real constraints, classification boundaries, operational demand, and an audience with a stake in the answer. The result is education through disciplined use. Students learn by doing and then learn again by examining how they did it. A schoolhouse battle lab operates much like the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory but at a smaller educational scale. The Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory plans, executes, and analyzes concept-based experiments, reporting findings for further testing and review.10 A battle lab uses students and faculty to expose assumptions, test concepts, and build judgment before an idea becomes doctrine, a requirement, or a plan.

The interwar Marines faced uncertainty about naval warfare, amphibious operations, and the future operating environment. 

The educational theory behind practicums reinforces the point. David Kolb’s experiential learning model describes learning as a cycle of concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization, and active experimentation.11 Donald Schön’s work on the reflective practitioner shows why professional education must teach people to think in action while confronting uncertain problems.12 Education theorists John Seely Brown, Allan Collins, and Paul Duguid connect practicums to what they call “situated cognition” and the idea that knowledge is tied to the activity and culture in which people use it.13 Cindy E. Hmelo-Silver’s research on problem-based learning shows how students develop flexible knowledge, problem-solving skills, self-directed learning, collaboration, and reflection by working through ill-structured problems.14

Four Battle Lab Models

Reconceptualizing the battle lab inside the classroom typically takes one of four forms. The first is the seminar-linked map exercise or tabletop exercise. This model is the easiest to insert into existing curricula, because the design can be simple. Students receive a problem statement, a map, a force list, a time limit, and a set of adversary assumptions. They develop options, brief them, and then watch an instructor or red team stress the plan. The after-action review asks what they assumed, what evidence mattered, what changed under pressure, and what the sponsor should study next. In one or two seminar periods, students practice problem framing, and sponsors receive a range of hypotheses. A seminar on expeditionary operations can become a noncombatant evacuation problem in a missile-threatened littoral. A class on command and control can become a tabletop exercise on degraded communications and AI-enabled staff support. A session on deception can become a multi-domain feint problem. Students move from discussion to decision. Sponsors see several approaches from officers with different operational backgrounds.

The model puts a heavy premium on the faculty. Instructors need to build external networks and deep relationships to identify and scope a problem appropriate to a two-hour session in the classroom. That often requires faculty to spend significantly more time on the front end to understand the problem and turn it into a seminar design aligned with the curriculum objectives and student learning outcomes.

The second model is the course-linked enduring problem. It is the strongest form because students have time to move from exposure to competence. A course can be organized for several weeks or months around one sponsor problem. Readings, classified briefings, methods instruction, workshops, wargames, design reviews, and final products can all point toward the same question.

The course-linked enduring problem model also applies to campaign design. School of Advanced Warfighting students have worked with U.S. Africa Command problems to develop alternative campaign designs and options for operational activities and investments while using data science and red teaming to refine their approach. Students learn to ask how a campaign is supposed to work, what indicators would show progress, and which assumptions are vulnerable to adversary adaptation. They must define objectives, identify mechanisms, build indicators, and explain why a given force package creates an advantage. This activity is where history and theory matter. They give students analogies, warnings, and vocabulary, but the practicum demands judgment. At the same time, combatant command planners see a broad range of options for augmenting their campaign plans.

Future naval force design offers another enduring problem. Currently, SAW is collaborating with the National Commission on the Future of the Navy to analyze alternative fleet structures.15 Students are building custom AI agents that analyze hybrid fleets and the future of amphibious operations. This model creates a feedback loop. Students learn about key emerging concepts like the Navy’s hedge strategy and tailored unmanned forces designed to augment carrier strike groups.16 Commissioners and senior leaders in the Naval Service can see how professionals think about key capability gaps.

These issues are ideal for a course-linked battle lab. Students can divide into teams studying the future of amphibious operations, hedge forces, hybrid fleets, contested logistics, and alternative maritime campaigns. Each team can use common assumptions, compare force packages, run map exercises, and identify implications across the DOTMLPF-P spectrum (doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership and education, facilities, and policy). The result is a structured body of campaign analysis instead of disconnected papers.

Artificial intelligence agents should be part of this model as planning architecture, not used as a shortcut to prettier slides. Students can build workflows that collect evidence, compare courses of action, track assumptions, generate red-team questions, summarize doctrine, and identify capability gaps. Tools such as n8n allow students to build custom workflows from the bottom up. The educational value comes from configuring the tool, checking its sources, understanding its failure modes, and deciding where human review belongs.

… the planning sprint. A sprint pulls students out of the normal classroom rhythm for a week to a month to support a live or near-live problem.

The third model is the planning sprint. A sprint pulls students out of the normal classroom rhythm for a week to a month to support a live or near-live problem. The advantage is relevance. Students encounter incomplete information, classification limits, stakeholders, time pressure, and the friction that disappears in clean classroom cases. They learn that operational art is a disciplined way of making choices under constraint.

Planning sprints requires timing. Students need enough of the program behind them to contribute. Faculty need enough control to convert the sponsor requirement into an educational event. The sprint should end with two products. The sponsor gets a decision brief, branch plan, campaign analysis, wargame design, or options paper. Students get an after-action process that examines problem framing, evidence, assumptions, recommendations, and critique. The sponsor gains disciplined inquiry. Students gain practice under pressure.

Sprints also teach humility. A live problem rarely honors the boundaries of a syllabus. A student team may discover that the decisive issue is an authority, a partner, a sustainment problem, a data gap, or a political constraint. Those discoveries are educational gold. They show officers that planning is a social and institutional process as much as an intellectual one. The battle lab gives faculty a way to capture that lesson and connect it back to theory.

The fourth model is directed research. This is the oldest model and most in need of redesign. Topic lists age quickly. Sponsors rotate. Students select questions late. Papers arrive after decisions have moved on. The stronger model is networked directed research. Faculty curate the questions, identify sponsors, align methods, schedule touchpoints, and deliver products to people able to use them.

The Gray Scholars’ prior work on urban conflict offers the model. In 2015, students partnered with multiple defense organizations studying the future of urban warfare. Students spent the year conducting individual research but meeting as a group to compare findings and debate ideas. The papers were published as an edited volume entitled Complex Terrain: Megacities and the Changing Character of Urban Operations. The directed research effort became a professional contribution because it had a cohort, a common problem, faculty guidance, and a publication pathway.

The next step is to align master’s theses and campaign analysis papers with major institutional problems. Degree-granting programs at MCU can organize student work around future joint maritime campaigns, alternative force structures, unmanned systems, contested logistics, and campaign effectiveness. Students can analyze the performance of different force designs and identify DOTMLPF-P requirements. The outcome should be a portfolio of professional research, sponsored products, and publishable ideas.

Making Battle Labs Work

Treating classrooms as battle labs works when the institution provides five conditions. First, battle labs require faculty capacity. A meaningful practicum demands more than a clever scenario. Faculty must understand the operational problem, know the sponsor, teach the method, protect academic standards, and translate student work into usable outputs. This work requires scholar-practitioners who remain current on doctrine, adversary adaptation, technology, joint concepts, and fleet problems. Faculty development should include wargame design, red teaming, campaign analysis, data literacy, AI workflow design, and attending military courses that ensure currency with emerging concepts and capabilities.

Second, battle labs require time. A sponsor problem arriving two weeks before execution can produce a useful event. An enduring battle lab needs months of design. Students need readings, method instruction, sponsor interaction, analytic tools, and opportunities to revise. The faculty need time to align the problem with learning outcomes. As a result, battle labs need to be built into the curriculum, not treated as additions.

A calendar full of events can still produce little professional development if students never connect their decisions to theory, evidence, and critique.

Third, battle labs require methods. Battle labs should teach campaign analysis, wargame design, red teaming, statistics, source evaluation, force package comparison, and risk assessment. The best problems are those that immerse students in problem-solving techniques that help them grow as professionals. Students should not be treated as free labor. Rather, student growth must be as important as the products they produce for sponsors.

Fourth, battle labs require assessment. Sponsor satisfaction is one measure. Student learning is the decisive measure. Faculty should assess whether students framed the problem clearly, used evidence responsibly, identified assumptions, compared alternatives, adapted under critique, and communicated decisions. A university battle lab should maintain a small set of common standards: every project needs a learning objective, a sponsor or problem owner, a method, a product, an assessment plan, and a releasability plan. Those standards create quality control across different schools and programs. They also protect faculty and students from a common failure mode in innovation work: activity without learning. A calendar full of events can still produce little professional development if students never connect their decisions to theory, evidence, and critique.

The Way Ahead

The Marine Corps should make battle labs a standing feature of MCU. The portfolio should include seminar-linked exercises, course-linked enduring problems, planning sprints, and networked directed research. The sponsor network should include the FMF, Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory, combatant commands, the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office, DARPA, the Navy staff, joint organizations, and commissions studying future force structure. The network should produce curated problems with classification guidance, desired outputs, faculty leads, and clear alignment with educational objectives.

Marine Corps University should also build a battle lab calendar. Early in the year, students can learn methods and run short map exercises. Mid-year, they can work on enduring course problems that require design, analysis, and revision. Later in the year, they can conduct planning sprints or synthesize directed research. This sequencing respects the learning curve. It also gives sponsors predictable windows for engagement and gives faculty enough time to build rigorous products.

Col Breckinridge understood that Service schools should cultivate original analysis. The interwar Marine Corps Schools showed that education could contribute to doctrine. Gray Scholars showed that students can help the force think through emerging problems. Recent AI planning experiments show that PME can test how new tools change staff work. The battle lab brings these strands together.

The Marine Corps needs PME that teaches Marines to test ideas before doctrine catches up. It needs classrooms where students argue with history, apply theory, use data, interrogate AI, design campaigns, challenge assumptions, and write for the profession. The classroom should connect to the fleet and remain protected for education. It should be intellectually serious and practically useful. A battle lab gives PME that balance. It is where Marines practice adaptation before the next war demands it.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

>Dr. Jensen is the Frank E. Petersen Chair at the Marine Corps University and a Professor in the School of Advanced Warfighting as well as the Executive Director for the National Commission on the Future of the Navy. 

Notes

1. U.S. Marine Corps, Training and Education 2030 (Washington, DC: Headquarters Marine Corps, 2023), https://www.marines.mil/News/Publications/MCPEL/Electronic-Library-Display/Article/3276167/training-and-education-2030.

2. J. C. Breckinridge, “Some Thoughts on Service Schools,” Marine Corps Gazette 14, no. 4 (December 1929); Benjamin Jensen, “The Classroom Is a Battle Lab: Using Professional Military Education to Usher in a New Era of Algorithmic Warfare,” Task & Purpose, March 6, 2024, https://taskandpurpose.com/opinion/classroom-battle-lab-algorithmic-warfare. 

3. Pham Thi Kien and Bui Xuan Dung, “William James’s Pragmatism in Educational Theory: A Comprehensive Theoretical and Practical Analysis in Contemporary Educational Contexts” Pragmatism Today 16, no. 1 (2025), https://www.pragmatismtoday.eu/summer2025/William-James-Pragmatism-in-Educational-Theory-A-Comprehensive-Theoretical-and-Practical-Analysis-in-Contemporary-Educational-Contexts-Pham-Dung.pdf; Frank Riga “Pragmatism – John Dewey” in B. Akpan and T. Kennedy (eds), Science Education in Theory and Practice (Springer, 2020), https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/88549162/978-3-030-43620-9_16-libre.pdf. 

4. Michael E. Doyle, “More Effective Education and Training,” Marine Corps Gazette, August 15, 2024, https://www.mca-marines.org/gazette/more-effective-education-and-training.

5. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joint Campaigns and Operations, Joint Publication 3-0 (Arlington, VA: Department of Defense, September 10, 2024), Appendix D; Nicholas E. Bixby “Joint All-Domain Operations (JADO): The Maneuver Concept for Future Conflict,” Over the Horizon Journal (November 22, 2024), https://othjournal.com/2024/11/22/joint-all-domain-operations-jado-the-maneuver-concept-for-future-conflict. 

6. Benjamin Jensen, “Diverging from the Arbitrary: The Gray Scholars and Innovation in the U.S. Marine Corps,” War on the Rocks, August 1, 2018, https://warontherocks.com/diverging-from-the-arbitrary-the-gray-scholars-and-innovation-in-the-u-s-marine-corps.

7. Benjamin Jensen and John Paschewitz ,“Mosaic Warfare: Small and Scalable are Beautiful,” War on the Rocks, December 23, 2019, https://warontherocks.com/mosaic-warfare-small-and-scalable-are-beautiful. 

8. Benjamin Jensen, “Welcome to Fight Club: Wargaming the Future,” War on the Rocks, January 4, 2019, https://warontherocks.com/welcome-to-fight-club-wargaming-the-future; Benjamin Jensen, “TECOM Warfighting Club,” Marine Corps Gazette, June 2019, https://www.mca-marines.org/wp-content/uploads/TECOM-Warfighting-Club.pdf; Von Lambert and Tyler Quinn, “Wargaming Lessons from Exercise Sea Dragon,” War on the Rocks, January 7, 2020, https://warontherocks.com/wargaming-lessons-from-exercise-sea-dragon. 

9. Benjamin Jensen and Dan Tadross, “How Large-Language Models Can Revolutionize Military Planning,” War on the Rocks, April 12, 2023, https://warontherocks.com/how-large-language-models-can-revolutionize-military-planning.

10. Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory, “Experiment Division,” accessed May 16, 2026. https://www.mcwl.marines.mil/Divisions/Experiment.

11. David Kolb, Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development (Prentice-Hall, 1984).

12. Donald A. Schon, The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action (New York: Ashgate, 1983).

13. John Seely Brown, Allan Collins, and Paul Duguid, “Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning,” Educational Researcher 18, no. 1 (1989): 32–42.

14. Cindy E. Hmelo-Silver, “Problem-Based Learning: What and How Do Students Learn?,” Educational Psychology Review 16 (2004): 235–266.

15. Mackenzie Eaglen, Filemon Vela, and Benjamin Jensen, “The National Commission on the Future of the Navy: The Time is Now,” Breaking Defense, January 21, 2026, https://breakingdefense.com/2026/01/the-national-commission-on-the-future-of-the-navy-the-time-is-now.

16. Sydney J. Freedberg, “Navy’s New Hedge Strategy Calls for Tailored Unmanned Forces to Augment Carriers,” Breaking Defense, January 28, 2026, https://breakingdefense.com/2026/01/navy-hedge-strategy-carriers-drones-caudle; Bryan Clark and Dan Patt, Hedging Bets: Rethinking Force Design for a Post-Dominance Era (Hudson Institute, 2024), https://www.hudson.org/defense-strategy/hedging-bets-rethinking-force-design-post-dominance-era-bryan-clark-dan-patt; Bryan Clark, “One Size Doesn’t Fit All: Building U.S. Navy Hedges Against Rising Threats,” Sea Power Magazine, December 8, 2025, https://www.hudson.org/defense-strategy/one-size-doesnt-fit-all-building-us-navy-hedges-against-rising-threats-bryan-clark. 

17. Benjamin Jensen and Henrik Breitenbach, eds., Complex Terrain: Megacities and the Changing Character of Urban Operations (Marine Corps University Press, 2019).

>Author’s Note: The views expressed are the author’s own and do not reflect official policy or positions of the Marine Corps, DOD, or U.S. Government.