Units of Action

Intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance in the stand-in force

To implement the concepts supporting Force Design 2030 (FD2030), the Marine Corps must revise what it considers its key units of action while studying the emerging characteristics of modern warfare. Traditionally, the Marine Corps focuses on the infantry battalion and flying squadron as units of action for all basic measurements of capability and readiness. Those capabilities, however, do not provide what the Stand-In Forces (SIF) and Reconnaissance Counter-Reconnaissance (RXR) concepts need—especially during competition. They may in fact distract from the principal object of operations. Instead, in competition, infantry battalions and flying squadrons are enablers for the key capabilities of SIF and RXR: intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) collection resulting in targeting. The purpose-built SIF force performs operational-level ISR on behalf of the maritime and Joint Force: “Stand-in forces’ enduring function is to help the fleet and joint force win the reconnaissance and counter-reconnaissance battle at every point on the competition continuum. Stand-in forces do this by gaining and maintaining contact (establishing target custody and identifying the potential adversary’s sensors) below the threshold of violence.”1 The units of action for that type of activity are the platforms and teams in the Marine Corps that perform intelligence and reconnaissance collection and the cells, teams, and units that perform intelligence analysis and support to targeting. Before the Corps can close with and destroy the enemy by fire and maneuver, if that ever becomes necessary, it must locate that enemy. 

The heart of the SIF and RXR concepts is ISR collection and analytical support for targeting. The Marine Corps fields such elements today in the MEFs. The MEFs have light infantry reconnaissance teams, maritime sensor elements, counterintelligence-human intelligence detachments, signals intelligence/electronic warfare teams, meteorological and oceanographic detachments, and increasingly cyber mission elements and space capabilities. Furthermore, the FMFs have the analytical specialties to support fusion and targeting as well as the transport and encryption of sensitive compartmented information and are performing these missions. Fixed-wing and unmanned squadrons can also perform ISR under the reconnaissance mission of Marine Aviation, just as light armored reconnaissance and engineers can, but most other squadrons and battalions are enablers to these functions, and none of them have the core mission essential task to execute ISR or intelligence on behalf of the fleet or Joint Force. They could provide the transport, security, or simply the cover story for ISR units of action. 

The Marine Corps, however, does not customarily assign ISR as a main effort, much less employ dedicated intelligence assets in support of anything other than the local commander. ISR does not appear as part of the core mission essential task list (METL) for the MEU; for example, it only appears as “Plan and Direct Intelligence Operations” on the METL for the CE.2 Despite what the concepts say about providing eyes and ears for the fleet and the Joint Force, there are no tasks requiring a commander, especially a MAGTF commander, to do that. For a SIF performing RXR, however, those dedicated intelligence and reconnaissance assets might be both the main effort and the only employable force.

The FD2030 original concept evokes a force “optimized for naval expeditionary warfare in contested spaces, purpose-built to facilitate sea denial and assured access in support of the fleets.”3 This suggests that this force will perform, above all else, maritime domain awareness (MDA) by sensing and making sense of their immediate environs. For the stand-up of the 12th Marine Littoral Regiment (MLR) in Japan, the Commandant assured Congress that “this unit will possess advanced ISR capabilities as well as long-range precision fires capabilities, improving both maritime domain awareness and our ability to deter potential adversaries.”4 In competition and crisis short of shooting conflict, that description means a force with a particularly acute ability to sense and make sense: an exceptionally strong ISR force that can do all the necessary work to constantly and consistently hold potential targets at risk. Under maritime strategic doctrine, there is a direct correlation between this kind of targeting and intelligence. The principal challenge for the maritime reconnaissance force “relates to the difficulty of locating the objective accurately. It is obvious that for this kind of operation, the most precise intelligence is essential, and of all intelligence, the most difficult to obtain in war is the distribution of an enemy’s fleet from day to day.”5 

Whether employed as part of a larger formation, as in the proposed MLR in Japan, or as independent assets, the Marine Corps needs to perfect its concepts against the characteristics of the real world to see whether it can bring the capability sets together to accomplish them. For the larger formations, the Service follows a logical progression beginning with the 3rd MLR in Hawaii, inside the confines of the United States, and then proceeding to the 12th MLR in the first island chain and weapons engagement zone (WEZ) for the pacing threat envisioned—the People’s Republic of China.6 If the 12th MLR does indeed possess “advanced ISR capabilities,” it will be able to execute real-world ISR in competition and practice exercise targeting cycles in its zone of crisis action. For ISR and intelligence support to targeting, the task of perfecting against live opponents is easier than for any other participants in the targeting cycle because the possible adversarial target sets are abundant, and real-world and realtime missions can be executed short of conflict. 

Stationing in the main competition space will develop familiarity with the problem set, but it is a conflict that provides the best driver of innovation, even conflict elsewhere. “A military force wins by seeing how general principles apply to a specific situation and being creative with combat solutions.”7 ISR, while sometimes provocative, could be employed on behalf of allies, partners, or the Joint Force without engaging the rest of the force in crisis or contingency. The fusion and analysis of the intelligence collected could produce both innovation and action. “There has been no dearth of reporting on the changing character of war and the potential for disruption by new technology to alter the landscape of conflict.”8

The pacing threat also surveys current conflicts to evolve its planning to match probable warfare trends. Before the Russians began their current campaign in the Ukraine, for example, it was clear that “Chinese strategists face an economic security problem in the Malacca Dilemma, describing the threat of a naval blockade of vital Chinese sea lines of communication in the Indian Ocean.”9 China—however confrontational it has been in the Taiwan Straits and South China Sea, demonstrating tactics and procedures—is not currently at war. Another peer adversary, Russia has begun to explore new operating concepts in realtime conflict in a resource-constrained environment in the Ukraine and Black Sea. Because the war in Ukraine involves a peer competitor—Russia—that conflict would appear to provide an ideal case to inform FD2030. While it is possible that a robust classified effort is occurring, there is little public evidence that the Marine Corps is doing much more than accepting public lessons learned from Ukraine. 

With increasing multi-domain drone implications, Ukraine provides a hotbed of military innovation.10 “As drones started to be used extensively, new operational concepts started to evolve, radically transforming armed conflict. This is especially visible in the Russo-Ukrainian War, where drone usage dominates most of the highlights of the conflict.”11 Ukraine is also exercising littoral sea operations in the Black Sea, with particular success in the first few weeks of 2024 using surface drones against warships.12 Over that few weeks, a landing ship, a missile-armed patrol vessel, and a corvette were sunk by a special operations unit according to Ukraine as well as several Russian patrol craft.13 In 2022, Ukraine sank the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, the Moskva, using Neptune anti-ship missiles. Public reporting indicates that without a single warship of its own, Ukraine has sunk nearly a third of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.14 It is notable that the announcements of successful targeting have come first, and sometimes exclusively, from “Ukrainian Intelligence.”15 How this has happened, and how the targets were located and analyzed, ought to be of paramount importance to Marines, especially how the Ukrainians developed the maritime awareness through ISR to execute the actions.

There is an opportunity to support Ukraine alongside NATO allies in Europe. With another force doing the fighting, ISR from a distance and observation of procedures is still possible and best performed from a position of direct support. Ukraine also possesses a Marine Corps, organized into brigades, trained for the most part by the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Norway.16 While it is not clear that Ukrainian Marines participated at all in recent Black Sea littoral-control operations, these forces in size and formation more closely resemble the Marine Corps than the commando forces that have volunteered to train them. If Ukrainian Marines participated in Black Sea maritime operations, however, the Marine Corps has not been training them at scale through its typical units of action and so has minimal relation to the results. 

The other possibility, then, for learning from the conflict would be through participating in Black Sea MDA by employing ISR and intelligence analytical units of action. There is no public evidence of such activity by Marines. Although two-thirds of the FMF is devoted to U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, the lack of attention to a peer-competitor conflict exhibiting the characteristics of contemporary littoral warfare seems particularly striking: “In times of war, front-line practitioners are agents of innovation and change if only through necessity. Because there is no way to fully anticipate what a dynamic and evolving adversary will do in a conflict, the fog of war requires adaptation.”17 Marine force concepts appear to ignore this aspect of contemporary conflict, instead developing the force focused exclusively on a perception of a pacing threat not currently at war. 

Three current Marine Corps trends converge to generate this inattention to current crises. First, the pressure of transformational innovation that FD2030 created, especially in terms of those within the Service who stand to gain or lose, required a particularly singular rationale: that the most dangerous potential adversary translated into the requirement. Divestments in any organization result in difficult decisions, so the Corps turned to its pacing threat to justify them. Cuts, the Commandant explained, are “sizing the force for what you need, what you think you’ll be asked to do in the future.”18 The tension created by divestment resulted in a singular focus for justifications, even as the force struggled to balance its SIF identity with its accustomed crisis response identity. Something had to support the case for predictive change. The singularity of focus resulted in resource decisions that have had consequences on the global availability of Marine forces, impacting the balance of force innovation and crisis response capability. Forces involved in innovation have not been available for crises elsewhere because the SIF is meant to be a standing capability forward deployed. Likewise, surging capacity in elements of non-core units of action like ISR, targeting fusion, and intelligence analysis for a crisis elsewhere has been out of the question. 

The second issue is the stress assumed by the force when setting aside units for experimentation, continuing to maintain existing global force management requirements, the deliberate reduction of the force, and the retention problems that followed. This kind of stress leads to readiness issues when a reduced number of units attempt to respond to the same or a growing number of requirements. Intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, analytical, and targeting support Marines tend to be high-demand, low-density assets, meaning the stress to the force overall is particularly acute among these specialties. As a result, units at all echelons, but especially the MEFs in this case, seek to husband their resources to preserve readiness by avoiding non-core mission requirements. Even if the MAGTF had a METL that included performing ISR on behalf of the fleet and Joint Force (which it does not), conflicts that do not directly involve the United States or its Marines are not core requirements, however interesting the lessons from them may be. So, the MEFs avoid smaller requests, like intelligence collectors or intelligence targeting cells to support Ukraine, that seem reasonable at first but rapidly deplete high-demand, low-density specialties in the formation. 

The third issue and the key to this discussion relates directly to the example of force stress mentioned earlier: correctly identifying modern units of action, especially concerning the SIF and RXR concepts. Marine Corps thinking might occasionally extend to artillery or logistics units but never to intelligence as a unit of action. It does not think of the types of intelligence and reconnaissance collection teams who perform the key sensing tasks of the SIF and RXR as anything more than adjuncts to a local commander. The Service thinks even less of analytical and targeting teams, the groups that make sense for the SIF in RXR, as usable units of action. For this reason, the Service resists requests for support involving collections or analysis alone, viewing them exclusively as enablers for the traditional pacing units whose focus is the local commander. Other Services, however, have begun to recognize an ability to apply portions of a unit against specified problem sets outlined in requests for support. Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM) has organized echelon III and IV headquarters intelligence sections into usable Analytical Support Elements. The Analytical Support Elements of a unit can be applied to a problem set with which the remainder of the unit is not otherwise involved. Furthermore, the Army and Air Force are organized into global ISR enterprises, respectively in INSCOM and the 16th Air Force, able to both support Service units and source support globally. No such entity exists in the Marine Corps. 

The Marine Corps, then, has not manned, trained, or equipped itself to provide an ability to sense and make sense of producing MDA. The Marine Corps instead has deemphasized and subordinated its intelligence apparatus into a new information warfighting function that it has yet to fully define.19 To create new information specialties including cyber Marines, all of whom require clearances akin to intelligence specialties, the Service took the easy path of converting the intelligence structure. The Marine Corps leads no national or military intelligence programs on behalf of the DOD and so receives orders of magnitude less intelligence budgeted funds than all other Services except the Coast Guard. Fielded Marine intelligence formations fall under the MEF Information Groups with unclear lines of authority between the staff intelligence and fielded intelligence capabilities, still less between the DOD agency functional managers (Defense Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, etc) and the units. Having purchased the MQ9a Reaper Group 5 unmanned aerial system, explicitly an ISR platform as previously employed by the Air Force and U.S. Central Command, Marine public statements emphasize instead its use for command and control: “the service also plans to have a capability on their Reapers which transforms the UAVs into relay nodes for forces to communicate and receive information.”20 It is possible that this is why the Service did not buy the increased payload capability of the MQ-9b, which could have carried more intelligence collection. Only the Marine Corps has no independent director of intelligence, having combined the duties into the Deputy Commandant for Information. Even the United States Coast Guard has an Assistant Commandant for Intelligence (CG-2).21 Since the Marine Corps is the only Service that does not promote colonels into Joint O7 positions, that means that no further intelligence officers are likely to form any part of leadership for the Service in the future, clearly demonstrating Service priorities. 

The question, then, is why any warfighting combatant command would choose a Service without emphasis on intelligence to fulfill an intelligence requirement in the WEZ in the first island chain? The SIF and RXR role and mission, akin to a kind of joint tactical air controller for the fleet and Joint Force, only provides value with an organic ability to sense, make sense, and fuse and correlate data into intelligence. If the SIF merely provides command and control for sensors and fires that are not organic to it, then there is no point in placing it at risk in the WEZ. For the analogy, the only reason for a joint tactical air controller is to provide positive confirmation by direct observation. Consequently, the ISR sensing and intelligence sense-making capabilities of the SIF are critical to its potential and deterrence value. As a result, a combatant command would likely choose a Service with an emphasis on intelligence. Why would the combatant command not pick the Army, for example, whose INSCOM and multi-domain task forces practically guarantee a measure of MDA coupled with a deep ability to support fires? The Army has been conducting demonstrations of maritime fires since 2018: “The 17th Field Artillery Brigade, alongside the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force, conducted its first live-fire exercise here, July 12, during the biennial Rim of the Pacific, or RIMPAC, exercise. The Naval Strike Missile was the first to launch as a land-based asset.”22 Likewise, the Defense Policy Review Initiative caps Marine forces and reinvests them away from the first island chain (“More than half of the billions of dollars of contracting for the construction of facilities to accommodate the relocation of U.S. Marine units to Guam from Japan has been awarded”),23 the Air Force is moving fifth-generation aircraft to Kadena Air Force Base on Okinawa, which could serve as the eyes and ears as well as the fires for the fleet and Joint Force.24 

The Marine Corps requires a clarifying review to connect its operating concepts based on current events to its force capabilities. The current conflict, like that in the Ukraine, is the closest thing that military studies have to a proving ground. It is intelligence that analyzes the multi-domain operating environments in which the Service seeks to assert itself to generate the assessment that supports adapting to pertinent conditions for imminent conflict. The units of action for intelligence are the forward-deployed collectors and advanced analytical and fusion units that make meaning from the mass of data. Collectors can indeed be any Marine unit given for its main effort and standing tasks intelligence collection operations. Providing for that mission and the fusion and analysis that supports it within formations like infantry battalions only makes those battalions more formidable, especially in competition where an adversary must suspect any Marine element of providing “the eyes and ears for the Joint Force”25 at scale. While information, as a warfighting function, produces only an anomalous interplay of contradictory messages that may or may not bear on actual facts on the ground, intelligence has for its primary purpose establishing the actual facts on the ground and obscuring them from the adversary. Unlike mere information, intelligence derives meaning from raw data and information to create actionable insights in support of the commander’s decision making.26 Furthermore, intelligence is supported by a multi-agency, cross-government community, budgetary and procurements processes, and standing authorities and legal basis. The capabilities that the Marine Corps needs to emphasize above all else to achieve the vision set forth for a SIF conducting RXR are ISR and intelligence capabilities: these are the key units of action.  

The Corps, however, has spent several years de-emphasizing and drawing resources from precisely these communities. As a result, the Service at the moment possesses insufficient ISR and intelligence resources and does not consider those that it has produced to be units of action to implement its own concepts. Force Design coupled with stresses to the force has set in motion a cycle of processes that myopically focus on a version of the pacing threat provided by someone else without sufficient contemporary references to be relevant. There are several current examples of SIF performing RXR in the littorals of the world. One of them is a partner nation force at war with a peer competitor in Ukraine, but Marines are barely participating in support of that force, unlike the Army who will learn the lessons there along with the British, Dutch, and Norwegian Marines training the Ukrainian Marine Corps. 

The Marine Corps has made it abundantly clear that it prefers only to close with and destroy the enemy, not to locate the adversary in competition. If that is the case, then Marines cannot be the SIF in the WEZ performing RXR. If the Service seeks to alter course to achieve its SIF and RXR vision, then it will have to find a way to make culture-adjusting investments in ISR and intelligence immediately. Marines would need a Service-wide intelligence structure, strategy, and architecture among many other major changes. A good starting point in such a change, however, would be for the Service to recognize its basic ISR and intelligence units of action and to give its major formations the core task of performing operational ISR and intelligence on behalf of the fleet and Joint Force. 

>Col David is the Deputy Director for Intelligence Division under the Deputy Commandant for Information/Director of Intelligence.

Notes

1. Gen David Berger, A Concept for Stand-In Forces, (Washington, DC: 2021). 

2. Headquarters Marine Corps, NAVMC 3500.99, (Washington, DC: 2012).

3. Gen David Berger, 38th Commandant’s Planning Guidance, (Washington, DC: 2019). 

4. Gen David Berger, “Statement of General David H. Berger Commandant of the Marine Corps on the Posture of the United States Marine Corps Before the Senate Appropriations Committee,” Marines.mil, March 28, 2023, https://www.cmc.marines.mil/Speeches-and-Transcripts/Transcripts/Article/3360019/statement-of-general-david-h-berger-commandant-of-the-marine-corps-on-the-postu.

5. Julian Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy (Mechanicsburg: Stackpole Books, 1991).

6. Jim Garamone, “Official Talks DOD Policy Role in Chinese Pacing Threat, Integrated Deterrence,” DOD News, June 2, 2021, https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/2641068/official-talks-dod-policy-role-in-chinese-pacing-threat-integrated-deterrence. 

7. Brian A. Hester, Dennis Doyle & Ronan A. Sefton, “Techcraft on Display in Ukraine,” War on the Rocks, May 16, 2024, https://warontherocks.com/2024/05/techcraft-on-display-in-ukraine.

8. Susan F. Bryant and Andrew Harrison, “Finding Ender: Exploring the Intersections of Creativity, Innovation, and Talent Management in the U.S. Armed Forces,” Strategic Perspectives 31, (2019). 

9. Lucas Myers, “China’s Economic Security Challenge: Difficulties Overcoming the Malacca Dilemma,” Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, March 22, 2023, https://gjia.georgetown.edu/2023/03/22/chinas-economic-security-challenge-difficulties-overcoming-the-malacca-dilemma. 

10. Kristen D. Thompson, “How the Drone War in Ukraine Is Transforming Conflict,” Council on Foreign Relations, January 16, 2024, https://www.cfr.org/article/how-drone-war-ukraine-transforming-conflict. 

11. Gloria Shkurti Özdemir and Rıfat Öncel, “The War in Ukraine Has Revolutionized Drone Warfare,” The National Interest, January 11, 2023, https://nationalinterest.org/feature/war-ukraine-has-revolutionized-drone-warfare-206095. 

12. Svitlana Vlasova and Brad Lendon, “Ukraine’s Drones Sink another Russian Warship, Kyiv Says,” CNN World Europe, March 6, 2024, https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/05/europe/russian-warship-destroyed-ukraine-intl-hnk-ml/index.html. 

13. Associated Press, “Ukraine Claims It Has Sunk Another Russian Warship in the Black Sea Using High-Tech Sea Drones,” Politico, March 5, 2024, https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/05/ukraine-warship-russia-black-sea-00145037; and Newsweek, “Video Shows Moment Russian Black Sea Ships Destroyed in Naval Drone Attack,” Newsweek, May 30, 2024, https://www.newsweek.com/russia-black-sea-fleet-magura-v5-naval-drones-crimea-1906280. 

14. Lauren Frias, “Ukraine Wiped Out Nearly a Third of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet without Even Having a Real Navy, These Are the Warships Russia Lost,” Business Insider, February 7, 2024, https://www.businessinsider.com/warships-in-russia-black-sea-fleet-that-ukraine-wiped-out-2024-2. 

15. “The War in Ukraine Has Revolutionized Drone Warfare.”

16. The Ministry of Defense, “British Commandos Train Hundreds of Ukrainian Marines in UK Programme,” Gov.UK, August 21, 2023, https://www.gov.uk/government/news/british-commandos-train-hundreds-of-ukrainian-marines-in-uk-programme.

17. Nina Kolars, “Genious and Mastery in Military Innovation,” Modern War Institute, April 3, 2017, https://mwi.westpoint.edu/genius-mastery-military-innovation. 

18. Meredith Roaten, “Marine Corps Commandant Defends Equipment Divestment, End Strength Cuts,” National Defense, September 1, 2021, https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2021/9/1/marine-corps-commandant-defends-force-size-divestment.

19. There is no definition of “Information” as a warfighting function given in MCDP 8, Information—only characteristics are described. Headquarters Marine Corps, MCDP 8, Information, (Washington, DC: 2022).  

20. Aaron Matthew Lariosa, “First Marine Corps MQ-9A Reaper Squadron Now Operational,” USNI News, August 8, 2023, https://news.usni.org/2023/08/08/first-marine-corps-mq-9a-reaper-squadron-now-operational. 

21. United States Coast Guard, “Assistant Commandant for Intelligence,” United States Coast Guard, n.d., https://www.dco.uscg.mil/Our-Organization/Intelligence-CG-2.

22. Capt Rachel Jeffcoat, “Army Conducts 1st RIMPAC Joint Live-fire Sinking Exercise as Multi-Domain Task Force,” U.S. PACOM JTF Micronesia, July 25, 2018, https://www.pacom.mil/JTF-Micronesia/Article/1584462/army-conducts-1st-rimpac-joint-live-fire-sinking-exercise-as-multi-domain-task/#:~:text=The%2017th%20Field%20Artillery%20Brigade,as%20a%20land%2Dbased%20asset.

23. Frank Whitman, “Boudra: ‘We Have to Respond from Within the Theater of Operations’,” Pacific Island Times, November 16, 2022, https://www.pacificislandtimes.com/post/boudra-we-have-to-respond-from-within-the-theater-of-operations. 

24. Unshin Lee Harpley, “Kadena Adds More Stealth Fights Amid ‘Increasingly Challenging Strategic Environment’,” Air and Space Forces Magazine, May 1, 2024, https://www.airandspaceforces.com/kadena-more-stealth-fighters-strategic-environment. 

25. Eric Smith, “Statement of General Eric M. Smith Commandant of the Marine Corps on the Posture of the United States Marine Corps Before The Senate Appropriations Committee,” Marines.mil, April 16, 2024, https://www.cmc.marines.mil/Speeches-and-Transcripts/Transcripts/Article/3759255/statement-of-general-eric-m-smith-commandant-of-the-marine-corps-on-the-posture.

26. Congressional Research Service, “Defense Primer: Intelligence Support to Military Operations,” Congressional Research Service, May 9, 2024, https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF10574. 

A New Kind of Intelligence Analyst

Meeting the demands of Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations

Marine Intelligence professionals have always struggled to stay up-to-date with current developments and maintain relevancy. There is a consistent risk to the intel field of relying too much on grassroots efforts and personal talent to carry intelligence forward into tomorrow while doctrine and training focus on yesteryear’s war. Tactical intelligence traditionally focuses on establishing baselines and using intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance to detect anomalies, engage targets, and confirm or deny adversary courses of action in the battlespace. This approach is sufficient for low-intensity conflict in permissible environments, and for the past 25 years, the United States has optimized its processes through various supporting agencies. However, this has also meant military intelligence, at the tactical echelon, has not had to seriously consider the national-strategic mission their unit may be a part of and how military intelligence supports it or operates without the current level of support they are accustomed to.

With the introduction of Force Design and expeditionary advanced base operations (EABO), Marines down to the local commander level will be expected to support wider, protracted campaigns, in austere or possibly hostile areas, and across a spectrum inclusive of competition but at the other extreme involving outright conflict. Currently, Marine intelligence is not equipped or optimized to support the Naval Service as envisioned and will require these Marines at the lowest echelons to think more strategically and critically with fewer resources in their analysis to ensure that commanders and Marines can operate in these environments. Before identifying what intelligence Marines need, it is important to discuss what EABO is on paper and what EABO is de facto asking Marines to think and do. 

Expeditionary advanced base operations, as defined in the latest tentative manual, is a naval concept designed to improve maneuver, exploit control over key maritime terrain, and integrate the FMF with Navy capabilities.1 The spirit of EABO can be derived from the original EABO Handbook, which described it as an adversary-specific, cost-effective, advantage-focused concept of operations that could mitigate the risk from long-range precision fires while maintaining resilient forward forces—and thus move the Marine Corps away from relying on traditional, easily-targeted bases.2 However, another interpretation is that EABO is the enabler for larger campaigns. Supporting this approach is the nested concept of Stand-in Forces (SIF), which are forward deployed among allied and partner forces across the competition continuum. The SIF supports multi-domain awareness, information operations, and security cooperation efforts aiming to bolster partner-nation confidence and set conditions for advantage in conflict. 

Expeditionary advanced base operations are framed as an operational-level adaptation to China’s specific military threat. However, it encompasses a new approach to thinking about the crucial aspects of terrain, diplomatic, information, and even economic domains—marking the idea as more of a first step toward a geo-strategy, rather than just an operational concept. Geo-strategy has many schools of thought, but all rest on the idea that geographical factors inform and shape military planning.3 As a result, EABO requires a nuanced understanding of the key maritime and littoral areas. Expeditionary advanced base operations takes this approach in two ways: First, it is explicitly designed to maximize the use of chokepoints and the littorals, making its planning assumptions dependent on the terrain, its physical characteristics, and regional significance. For example, EABO provides a frame to understand where SIF could best operate and maximize the effect of their contribution to campaign operations across the competition continuum. Second, it assumes a certain level of austerity in its operating areas and proposes several methods in the planning process to overcome this issue. Marines may be operating in materially bereft areas devoid of much infrastructure but still must complete complex tasks as part of the overall naval commander’s campaign. 

What EABO requires of Marines, then, is ambitious. Task groups will be part of a larger interservice and multi-domain campaign, protracted and complex in its efforts to counter an adversary’s military strength or perform a variety of tasks in a minimally permissive environment—colloquially thought of as grey-zone activity. Although this campaign can be decisive, it will require interservice planning and execution at a level far more advanced than the Joint Force’s recent practical experience. Expeditionary advanced basing operations are also meant to be complemented by distributed maritime operations, a core Navy operating concept that explores dispersed, lower-signature methods of sustaining the SIF and other forces performing EABO. The littoral operations area envisioned by EABO also notes the multitude of avenues logistics may have to take to sustain units in expeditionary locations across key coastal points.4 The local commander presiding over the littoral operations area will likely find themselves in a difficult information environment. In that scenario, the commander will need to lean on military intelligence professionals. 

The requirements for intelligence support for EABO demand long-term, strategic thinking, and analysis to assist commanders in setting conditions for success across all domains of national power to enable their mission.5 Marine intelligence with SIF in these areas would need to know not only the local environment and its human terrain but how that human terrain interacts with regional, provincial, and national-level political entities, and how the implications of such actions further or hinder national strategy. This awareness is necessary to maintain access, collect relevant intelligence, and inform the wider defense and intelligence apparatus assessing the macropolitical picture. Explicitly or not, the SIF and their intel components are going to be de facto envoys of the United States. This dilemma may not appear to be an intelligence professional’s concern, but the role of intelligence in a task-organized group performing in this environment is much more complex and the Marine Corps intelligence enterprise may not be set up to easily support this. The current structure of Marine intelligence is sufficient for tactical decision making at the squad-leader level but does not provide room for serious consideration of the joint military or national-strategic mission a unit may be a part of and how their military intelligence supports it. Intel Marines may not be trained to the standard EABO tentatively asks of them and therefore cannot credibly inform the joint commander’s decision-making cycle. 

The future operating environment presents new and unique challenges to Marines. Partnering with a host nation for EABO may provide logistical advantages in remote or impermissible environments, but they are also susceptible to adversary actions beyond military means. The information environment, for example, can be exploited by an adversary to denigrate a SIF’s host nation and convince them to reduce the SIF presence, eliminate it, or redirect it away from the geo-strategic, crucial areas it was designed to operate in, effectively removing the SIF ability to serve as a deterrent. Marines on the ground may be quickly outmaneuvered by adversaries if intelligence and commanders do not understand the follow-on effects of their own actions, necessitating skills at lower echelons to hasten decision making.6 The intelligence professional supporting a SIF must understand the political risk of operating in a partner-nation territory, what the limits are on SIF operations in its borders, and how to maintain a favorable information environment. Some of these issues are further expanded on in the reconnaissance/counter-reconnaissance concept updated for Force Design.7 

At its core, Force Design, to be effective, will need the military intelligence professional to move  beyond the wars of the past two decades. With the growing role and presence of information and grey-zone warfare, the future operating environment requires intelligence Marines to add the role of geo-strategist to their portfolio. This will ultimately empower them to inform, adapt, and execute ambitious concepts—taking a more active role in intelligence preparation of the environment, rather than a passive one. The military intelligence professional in the field, supporting EABO, will more than likely be a non-commissioned officer (NCO) or staff non-commissioned officer (SNCO); therefore, these Marines must be trained, equipped, and enabled to think strategically, incorporating analytic techniques, knowledge, and expertise previously not currently associated with their grade. By better training and educating intelligence NCOs, SNCOs, and commanders, Marines at these levels can operate more autonomously in austere environments to support the wider campaign and national interests in a crisis. 

The Marine Corps could leverage the professional military education institutions at its disposal to better integrate Marines with the intelligence and policy world preemptively, and build up a deep bench of regional subject-matter expertise and technical proficiency for the future fight. For building the Indo-Pacific geostrategic expert, the Marine Corps could work with professional military education-associated research centers like the China Maritime Studies Institute or the China Aerospace Studies Institute; alternately, it could develop its own research center and mechanisms for convening outside experts. Working with academia to further intelligence training would allow the Marine Corps to better support building a deeper bench of competent and capable intelligence NCOs and SNCOs. This would be the initial step in integrating them with the fleet and intelligence community—and having them ready and equipped for tomorrow. 

>SSgt Campbell enlisted in the Marine Corps in March of 2017 from Charleston, SC. Currently stationed in the National Capital Region, he studies Strategic and Organizational Communication. 

>>Mr. Long is a Non-Resident Fellow with the Brute Krulak Center on Innovation and Future Warfare, Marine Corps University. 

Notes

1. Headquarters Marine Corps, Tentative Manual for Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations, 2nd Edition, (Washington, DC: 2023). 

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

3. Zbigniew Brzezinski, “A Geostrategy for Eurasia,” Foreign Affairs 76, No. 5 (1997).

4. Tentative Manual for Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations.

5. Ibid; and Headquarters Marine Corps, MCDP 6, Command and Control, (Washington, DC: 1996). 

6. MCDP 6. 

7. Headquarters Marine Corps, Force Design 2030–Annual Update, (Washington, DC: 2023). 

>Authors’ Note: Their views are their own and do not reflect the opinions of the Marine Corps or the DOD. 

We Are Currently in the Most Dangerous Period of Force Design 2030

Balancing readiness and modernization

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notes

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

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

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

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

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

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

7. Ibid. 

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

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

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

Positional Warfare

Prospects for Ukraine in 2024–2027

The Road to Here
Three years into the Ukraine War, it is worth recalling the breathless American and European estimates of Ukrainian collapse, including from then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley and President Joseph Biden.1 Germany and France reacted with a combination of disbelief and wish-casting. Germany wholly discounted the prospects of an invasion.2 This explains the volte-face that characterised Olaf Scholz’s Zeitenwende speech on 27 February, when per American estimates, Russian troops should have been in Kyiv.3 A serious French intelligence failure did occur, but France clearly viewed Russian aggression as a political opportunity, hence Emmanuel Macron’s high-speed dashes to Moscow.4  It is a testament to Macron’s political instincts that Macron ultimately transformed France’s strategic position, making it a crucial rhetorical supporter of Kyiv’s independence and European alignment.5 American intelligence failure was more explicable in one respect: the Russian campaign plan did very nearly succeed.6 Russia’s multi-axis assault, intelligence preparation, and country-wide air campaign were designed to overwhelm Ukrainian decision making, allowing Russian paratroopers to hold Hostomel Airport and Russian armored forces to enter Kyiv by 25 February. The Ukrainian military would dissolve into disconnected units that could be encircled and mopped up over the coming weeks, while the Russian Special Services would begin population control measures to occupy the country. Russia’s failure stemmed partly from planning complexity, much like Graf Schlieffen’s planned single-wing envelopment of French forces. Graf Moltke did weaken the right wing of the envelopment, but his moves never actually decreased German combat power on the right.7 But despite its theoretical merits, the Germans ultimately failed because of a number of friction points, primarily the need to neutralize Liege in 48 hours, conduct a high-speed advance through France on foot, and maintain momentum despite encountering battles. In the event, the third factor spoiled the operational plan. Much like Valery Zaluzhny and Oleksandyr Syrskyi assembled a defense of Kyiv after the shock of war dissipated, Joffre’s decision to drive forward and disrupt the German advance broke the battlefield theory of victory.8

Western planners should have understood the dangers of an overwrought, hyper-intellectualized view of battlefield maneuver.9 Even though Russian forces had pushed over the Irpin River, the capital remained in a defensible position, particularly since the Desna River narrowed Russian options in the east and the Dnipro prevented direct assault from the north. Moreover, absent the intelligence penetration that enabled Russia’s southern advances, there was little chance of Russian forces rapidly capturing urban areas. Hence Kharkiv, Sumy, and Chernihiv all resisted despite Russian encirclement, pressuring Russian supply lines running and forcing Russia to choose between an assault on the capital or methodical high-casualty urban combat elsewhere.10

Unsurprisingly, 2022 was a year of operational movement. Most wars begin with a movement phase. Even the World War, a partial exception, proves the rule: the Phoney War from September 1939 to May 1940 was a strategic interlude, finally broken with a rapid maneuver campaign.11 Indeed, the Wehrmacht’s Fall Gelb is also illustrative in the Ukraine case.12  Ukraine and Russia have fought since 2014 over the Donbas, generating well-constructed, multi-layered fortifications along the line of contact.13 Assaulting these locations is difficult and costly, as Russia’s combat record demonstrates: it took Russia three months to capture Severodonetsk, six months to take Bakhmut, and six months of concerted combat after a decade of war to take Avdiivka. Much like the Wehrmacht’s General Staff in 1940, the Russian General Staff generated an aggressive operational plan that bypassed positional defenses. Yet, even the World War, a supposed maneuver war, had static stretches, including German and British minefield breaching operations, Soviet-German see-saw engagements around Moscow, brutal frontal assaults against trenches in Italy, and the costly U.S.-UK punch through the Siegfried Line.14

The Ukraine War’s positional-movement dynamics are similar. Ukraine staged three counteroffensives in 2022: a limited operation in Kharkiv that broke Russia’s siege, a broader Kharkiv operation that liberated 12,000 square kilometers of territory, and a more methodical operation in Kherson that threw Russian forces back over the Dnipro. Yet, since that point, there has been little to no movement, and not for lack of trying. Russia has executed two major offensives, a winter-spring 2022–2023 offensive that sought to capture Vuhledar and Bakhmut, and the winter 2023–2024 offensive against Avdiivka and Kupyansk. Neither has resulted in a major operational change, and both have imposed enormous losses on Russian forces. Ukraine, meanwhile, launched a major offensive June–September 2023, which failed to deliver operationally significant gains at obvious cost.

Western military and security officials repeatedly anonymously criticized Ukrainian strategic and operational decision making during the 2023 offensive.15 Ukraine, of course, largely disengaged with Western advice after the opening phase of its offensive, rapidly judging after the failure of its first breakthrough attempt against Robotyne that Western advice was irrelevant considering combat conditions.16 For example, the West has never fought a war under mutual air denial, limited but prised long-range strike capacity, and the acceleration and fusion of reconnaissance-strike and reconnaissance-fires complexes, all with a mass-mobilization army. Indeed, no Western country has executed a combined-arms breakthrough operation of the type Ukraine attempted since the World War or defended against one since the Vietnam War.

What, then, are the conditions that Ukraine faces? How can the advice and support effort be better calibrated to assist Ukrainian strategic planning and operational work? What might this tell us as a diagnostic for the battlefield and European policy over the next three years?

Positional Warfare
American advice and support missions have largely failed since Vietnam and notably failed in Iraq and Afghanistan.17 In the latter two cases, the United States refused to create a military organization that actually matched tactical and strategic requirements. The United States excels at Special Operations Forces (SOF) support. In Afghanistan and Iraq, U.S.-trained SOF were, and in the latter case remain, the backbone of state combat capacity.18 Ruthlessly deployed as assault infantry with extensive U.S. enabling capabilities behind them, local SOF tactically outfought any adversary. But the issue was strategic. Absent an American-sustained support network around them, Iraqi and Afghan SOFs lose combat effectiveness. In the Afghan case, this led to the regime’s collapse: absent air support, the Afghan National Army SOF were overwhelmed once the United States ended its sustainment mission.19

We arguably see a similar pattern in Ukraine. The closest contact between the U.S. military and the Ukrainian military prior to February 2022 came in SOF training missions.20 U.S. operators have spoken since 2022 of their lack of surprise at Ukrainian success—their view of the Ukrainian military, for bureaucratic reasons, was never transmitted to higher command or to net assessment and combat forecasting teams.21

Yet, bureaucracy alone does not explain the shortcomings of American and allied perceptions of the Ukrainian-Russian military balance, or difficulties in the advice and support mission. Bureaucratic inertia matters: Western-trained Ukrainian soldiers did receive high-quality combat medical instruction, but their trainers, never having fought on a UAS-saturated battlefield, did not provide coherent tactical and operational guidance that applied to the Ukrainian battlefield.22

Understanding the gap between the American advice and support mission and the realities of the battlefield requires a return to military theory. Specifically, we need to understand the character of positional war, to which the Ukrainian battlefield has evolved, and from there, build out a series of analytical inferences and programmatic recommendations.

The recently relieved Valery Zaluzhny’s Economist piece last November offers a useful but incomplete starting point, particularly since he patterned his essay off Soviet military-theoretical models.23  His analysis centered upon the interlocking character of UAS, air defense, mines, electronic warfare, and counter-battery fire. When combined, they create a nasty problem for the attacker—dense minefields slow the attacker, persistent UAS surveillance identify attacking units rapidly while effective electronic disruption, counter-battery fire, and air defenses limit the offensive battlespace isolation. A breakthrough is possible with sufficient mass, but training and equipping that mass is difficult. Moreover, the combat power benefits of mass decline on the Ukrainian battlefield when massed forces are discovered and thereby attacked and destroyed, a reality Ukraine has amply demonstrated through its use of precision-guided munitions.

Zaluzhny’s piece is a relevant starting point because it identifies the fundamental positional logic of the Ukraine War. But Zaluzhny, to his detriment, never explicitly defines a positional war. This generates a significant difficulty since the term itself is not thoroughly defined elsewhere.

Anglo-American military thought often conflates position with attrition.  Attrition, in turn, is charged with significant negative implications. A war of attrition is often contrasted with a war of maneuver. The former is an unsophisticated slugfest akin to that of the Great War’s Western Front, in which materiel production and political resilience outweigh factors of military command.24 The latter is a model of military art, akin to Napoleon’s campaigns, in which tactical skill and aggression combine to create real examples of strategic and operational leadership.

The American bias toward maneuver over attrition is odd considering American military history. The greatest U.S. supreme commanders of the 18th and 19th centuries, George Washington and Ulysses Grant, were both masterful attritional fighters. Washington’s genius was in the retreat. While better-trained and equipped British forces won major engagements, Washington executed multiple successful retreats that preserved the bulk of Colonial forces. This was undoubtedly an attritional approach: by wearing the enemy down, Washington created the conditions for a more equitable strategic balance. Grant, meanwhile, embraced the logic of attrition. His Overland Campaign involved constant pressure on Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, compelling it to give battle multiple times in just a few weeks, ultimately locking the Confederate forces into a brutal static war they could not win. William T. Sherman, the third great general of the American tradition, fought an equally attritional war in the Confederacy’s heartland, slicing it in half and destroying its war-making capacity through his March to the Sea and subsequent Carolinas Campaign.

Moreover, the American military tradition lacks, in several fundamental respects, the concept of strategy given the United States’ commanding economic capacity. With the partial exception of the War of 1812, the United States has never engaged in a conflict from a position of structural weakness. The Confederacy did take with it well-trained officers and U.S. cotton production, but the Union’s industrial-mercantile northeast gave it a dominant advantage. Imperial Spain in 1898 was decaying. In 1917 and 1941, the United States did face significant adversaries, but America held advantages in population, industrial production, and resource wealth. Hence Franklin Roosevelt’s fundamental supposition, prior to December 1941, that ultimately American policy was simply to engage in the fight given its natural advantages.

The American strategy is, therefore, logistics, the skill of translating industrial capacity and population into combat power, and subsequently sustaining forces during engagements. This is an all-to-often neglected aspect of military science. However, it does not provide the American military practitioner with great fodder for theoretical inquiry.

The American tradition largely reaches to its German counterpart for examples of tactical military excellence. This began immediately after the World War, with the U.S. Army’s rational insistence upon debriefing German armored officers. Samuel Huntington’s The Soldier and the State solidified the trend. It takes the Prussian-German General Staff as its modern civil-military model, viewing the military officer as a professional dedicated to the rational political control of violence.25

Tactically and operationally, American military art emphasizes initiative, aggression, and the application of superior firepower and simultaneity between armor, artillery, and airpower, today coupled with cyberspace operations to collapse enemy cohesion and win a rapid, decisive victory akin to DESERT STORM or IRAQI FREEDOM. The Marine Corps equally embraced maneuver warfare and arguably drove beyond the Army’s obsession with it by the 1990s.26

This view self-evidently embraces maneuver warfare for partly self-serving reasons. Maneuver engagements are expressions of true military skill, embodied by Patton, Guderian, or Rommel—but they also keep wars short, crucial for U.S. democracy. Moreover, U.S. political authorities, per Huntington’s model, provide general objectives, while the military identifies the most rational combat solution to the problem presented. The military commander becomes capable of challenging the political leader on ostensibly objective military grounds, thereby abdicating responsibility to understand the totality of the combat environment in a manner Clausewitz would find inexplicable.

Yet, the dichotomy between attrition and maneuver, while common in American and Western military thought, is unhelpful intellectually. For one, attrition is the basic state of conflict, both from combat realities and due to Clausewitz’s friction.27 For another, the maneuver paradigm has prevented American strategists from coherently linking ends and means. By overwhelmingly emphasizing American combat methods, U.S. maneuver warfare departs from the contextual factors, political and military, that actually color combat.

The Soviet tradition conceived of maneuver and attrition rather differently. Most valuable is the work of AA Svechin, the first—and arguably the most intellectually coherent—of Soviet theorists.28 His text Strategy counterposes not attrition and maneuver, but attrition and destruction, the latter being a form of war in which the object is the destruction of the enemy’s combat capacity in direct engagements, the former being any other way of prosecuting an armed conflict. Svechin’s point is to demonstrate the limited context under which a war of destruction may be waged.

Historical comparison in military arts is difficult, hence Clausewitz’s demand that analogy should be sought from cases near in time.29 War is a political phenomenon, hence its nature is by necessity fixed, as is the nature of politics. But the character of politics, namely the organization of the political unit and the sorts of political and economic technologies employed, change over time, as does the character of warfare. The period of late 18th and early 19th century warfare thus marked the high point of the destruction approach, exemplified by Napoleon. Army size greatly expanded by the late 18th century due to changes in political technology and sustainment, but communications and transportation limits meant that tactical engagements could retain a direct link to strategy. Moreover, the 18th and early 19th-century state was personalized and post-feudal, not bureaucratic. Napoleon could win transformational victories because his enemies, as sovereigns or near-sovereigns, commanded their forces in combat, creating a direct link between the tactical and the political. This explains Napoleon’s success at Austerlitz, Jena-Auerstadt, and Wagram: in each engagement, he defeated an enemy sovereign and was, therefore, able to impose a peace. By contrast, Napoleon’s ultimate defeats from 1812 to 1815 stemmed from his inability to generate political effects from tactical victory. Borodino lacked it, while even Napoleon’s victories during the German Campaign were never overwhelming enough to achieve political reverberations. Subsequent examples of tactical engagements with direct political effect do exist, namely the Prussian victory at Koniggratz and the German victory at Sedan. But there are obvious differences between these victories and that of Austerlitz and Wagram. For in neither case did defeat lead to immediate enemy capitulation. After Koniggratz, it took Bismarck’s restraint to end the war on favorable terms. The French fought on for a year after Sedan, despite Napoleon III’s abdication.

Svechin grasped that the Great War’s brutality was a result of this loss of the tactical-political link that dominated the age of linear tactics.30 The battlespace had expanded in width and depth, through a combination of societal mobilization, advances in communications, and the advent of indirect fire artillery to necessitate an organizing principle for combat well beyond that of individual engagements. The Prussian General Staff model did provide some help, particularly with Scharnhorst and Gneisenau’s political emphasis—an approach Prussian military genius Graf Moltke the Elder missed. However, the Prussian model did not successfully provide a logic for large-scale modern combat. Svechin’s objective was to demonstrate that, rather than emphasizing a decisive point and harmonizing all efforts toward that goal, modern war would typically be a societal contest of attrition in which victory would go to the side capable of winning the final engagement, not the first one.31

Svechin’s understanding of positional warfare is couched within these terms.32 All wars have either offensive or defensive aims, which often change through a conflict, as tactical actions have strategic reverberations that compel a shift in political goals. A positional war occurs when at least one side adopts, even if temporarily, defensive objectives and digs in, creating Western Front-style layered fortification systems. Although offensives remain possible, a well-constructed defense requires excellent planning to conduct a breakthrough and exploitation operation at a high cost to the attacker. We can see this logic in action during the Soviet offensives from 1943 to 1945, when the Soviets were able to maintain the operational momentum from Kursk to Berlin through the careful management of reserves and staging of attacks, thereby preventing the Wehrmacht from reconstituting a stable defensive line.

Svechin distinguishes between two types of positional offensives, those that are conducted still under positional conditions and those that break a positional war and return it to conditions of manoeuvre. His examples for the former include some of the highest-cost battles in human history, namely Verdun and the Somme.

Transforming a positional battlefield into a manoeuvre one therefore requires immense effort and careful planning. Svechin’s analysis is instructive on the conditions necessary to prepare a positional offensive. There are two fundamental mistakes a commander can make in a positional war. First, a positional commander can reduce strategic and operational questions to those of logistics, viewing the positional fight as a contest with a static adversary that hinges upon production. Positional combat does demand a materiel focus. Yet, war is a non-linear and human phenomenon, requiring focus on far more than just materiel factors.

Second, and more dangerously, a positional commander can retain an unwarranted commitment to the offensive. Under maneuver conditions, commanders often decline the offensive, falling back to positions in the hope of making an enemy fight on unfavorable ground. This impulse, in Svechin’s view, is often taken to the extreme, although there is some good sense in it: had Lee followed it during the Gettysburg Campaign, the Army of Northern Virginia might well have retreated with its forces intact and compelled the Army of the Potomac to follow. However, under positional conditions, the scale of planning, coordination, and sequencing necessary for a breakthrough demands preparation beyond a single engagement or scrap of ground. But positional commanders rapidly become wedded to the ground upon which they fight, creating a dynamic where each side leans on the other.33

Commanders maintain positions on unfavorable ground to use them for a future offensive, even if eminently defensible territory exists just a few hundred meters behind the current front line. Limited positional offensives can succeed with proper patience and planning to unpick an enemy defensive system. But positional conditions demand the careful accumulation of resources for an ultimate offensive, with force preservation and the limitation of adversary attrition being the tactical priority.

Attrition and Decision
The Ukraine War is locked in a positional phase, with fortifications dominating the battlefield. The question, however, is whether Ukraine or Russia has any prospect of breaking the war’s positional character or whether or not the contest will continue in this manner until external political factors compel one or both parties to change their strategic calculus and accept a settlement.

Russia and Ukraine face distinct geographic problems. Viewed purely economically, and bracketing diplomatic issues and political pressure, Ukraine could accept a peace that ceded most occupied territory to Russia. Prior to 2022, Ukraine had already moved much of its industrial production away from the Donbas. Russian gains do jeopardize both Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia, but Ukraine can shift production elsewhere. Moreover, Ukraine has successfully reopened the Odesa port and expanded its rail links to Romania, reducing its reliance upon Kherson and the Azov Sea ports of Mariupol and Berdyansk.

Russia, however, cannot conclude a peace in this fashion. It lacks a wide enough land corridor between the Donbas and Crimea to maintain coherent logistics under Ukrainian pressure, as the war has demonstrated in ample fashion. In the east, it lacks an anchor for defensive lines by virtue of geographic chance, as well as sufficient strategic depth. Ideally, the Oskil and Siverskyi Donbets would anchor the line in the north, while at minimum Slovyansk and Kramatorsk would anchor the line in the center.34 Ideally, Russia would push to the Dnipro, bisecting the country and establishing that as a long-term defensive shield from Ukrainian strikes in depth. Russia requires greater territorial gains to stabilize its strategic position, or it risks—much like from 2014 to 2022—facing an insoluble strategic problem that its regime seeks to solve through conquest.

Russia has clung to the tactical offensive with the exception of Sergei Surovikin’s command during late 2022 and the summer 2023 defense in the south. Russia’s offensive results have been remarkably poor—the Russian military has lost north of 300,000 men killed and wounded, has burned through nearly all of its high-end armored vehicle stocks, and has turned to North Korea and Iran to provide it with ammunition. The difficulty is that absent a long refit period, better command-and-control structures, and improved planning, Russia will struggle to conduct and exploit a major breakthrough despite its materiel superiority.

Svechin provides two points of additional reference for commanders in a positional, attritional war. This war is undoubtedly one of attrition for Ukraine, if not for Russia, since Ukraine is incapable, for political and strategic reasons, of conducting a destruction campaign.

First, in a war of attrition, the decisive point in a post-Clausewitzean sense does not exist.  Svechin does not mean that Clausewitz’s center of gravity is irrelevant—as authentically understood, Clausewitz’s center of gravity is not a physical piece of ground, but the nexus between moral cohesion, political objectives, economic capacity, and military power.35 In an attrition campaign, it is exceptionally difficult to identify a specific decisive point, because the objective is the overthrow of the enemy’s system. Hence per Svechin, the conditions for a decisive point must be created over time.

Second, in a positional war, the most crucial element of planning and operational art is the ability to manipulate enemy reserves. Positional defenses are extraordinarily difficult to break. If they are to be broken, the enemy must be corroded over time, with his forces divided, placed off balance, and attrited cumulatively to enable a final, decisive breakthrough that transforms the character of the war into one of destruction, rather than attrition.

Prospects
2024 will be a year of defensive planning, fortifying, and attrition. Russian resources are finite, and more specifically, broader economic constraints will begin to impinge upon Russian planning. Hence a successful strategy from Ukraine and the West must use this year to build combat capacity in anticipation of actions in the future.

Russia’s strategy is to buy time and keep up pressure in anticipation of a Western unraveling. Yet, it seems increasingly unlikely that this will occur. Aid is stalled in the U.S. Congress due to a combination of politicking and moral absurdity, for which blame is unevenly but collectively distributed between the Biden administration, House Republicans, and Congressional Democrats. However, the European powers look to have finally woken up. Ukraine has secured defense pacts with the UK, France, and Germany, while Central and Eastern Europe and Scandinavia are aggressively expanding defense production. Even if the United States abandons Ukraine, expanding European support and declining American leverage make this unlikely to end the war.

Russia, however, has a ceasefire as its objective for obvious reasons. The Russian labor market is already extraordinarily tight and tightening daily with more losses in Ukraine and subsequent conscription for the war effort. Military product quality has dropped as a result. Moreover, much of Russian production is instead refurbishment from Soviet stockpiles. This is enough to keep Russia in the fight, to be sure, and an old tank or artillery piece is just as deadly if employed en masse. Yet, attrition is cumulative—additional stresses on the system will unravel it.

General mobilization in Russia would place the Kremlin in an increasingly insoluble bind, particularly in light of solidifying European support for Ukraine. Russia is unlikely to win the ground war absent a period of reorganization, planning, and stabilization. But accepting this would require reducing front-line pressure, all as Ukraine executes public drone attacks embarrassing to Putin. Hence the pressure must be maintained.  However, this will demand greater mobilization—soon, given the sheer number of casualties Russia has taken. A mobilization will lead to another round of human and capital flight, squeezing an already tight labor market, and triggering another round of inflationary pressure.36 As the rouble depreciates, Russia will find it increasingly difficult to purchase foreign supplies, military and otherwise. This raises the odds of a domestic that Russia has continuously sought to prevent since February 2022. This crisis will destroy the state if left to fester long enough, demanding that Russia either win the war, a proposition beyond its capacity or pause the war, a move within its power if the Europeans do fragment.

Ukraine, meanwhile, must execute a well-organized active defense that inflicts severe casualties on Russia, forces it into a mobilization cycle, and maintains the pressure during that cycle to expand societal stress. Avdiivka is an example of this. Ukraine inflicted severe attrition upon Russian forces during the six-month engagement, committing several brigades, including 47 and 110 Mechanised Brigades, elements of 10 Mountain Assault Brigade, and other smaller units to the city’s defense, against a dozen Russian line brigades and regiments, likely a half-dozen territorial brigades, and a variety of Storm-Z units. The extraction from Avdiivka, conducted by the 3 Assault Brigade, came at a cost, including 200 stranded Ukrainian soldiers, while the 110 Mechanised Brigade in particular took a beating. But in return, Ukraine inflicted north of 30,000 casualties on the Russians, in exchange for around 6,000 Ukrainian dead and wounded—a rate of two Ukrainian brigades to around ten Russian brigades depending upon precise combat strength and combat medicine.

A slow, methodical defense during which Ukraine cedes ground in a careful, painstaking manner is the best way to inflict this degree of trauma upon the Russian military. Yet, the issue is a political one. Ukraine will lose more ground this year, as Russia hopes to press Ukraine back to Orikhiv in Zaporizhzhia Oblast and then take it, and drive Ukraine back over the Oskil in Kharkiv Oblast. Russia will trumpet every victory, especially in the lead-up to the November 2024 U.S. elections. It is up to Ukraine and its partners, in Washington and Europe, to cultivate the political will to recognize the reality of the battlefield.

Ukraine can win a positional war—if it fights smart.

>Mr. Halem is a PhD candidate in International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science, Senior Fellow at Yorktown Institute, Senior Fellow in Defence and the London-based Policy Exchange, and Title VIII State Department Black Sea Fellow at the Middle East Institute. He holds an Master of Arts (Hons) in International Relations and Philosophy from the University of St  Andrews, and an Master of Science in Political Theory from the London School of Economics.

Notes

1. Jacqui Heinrich and Adam Sabes, “Gen Milley Says Kyiv Could Fall Within 72 hours if Russia Decides to Invade Ukraine: Sources,” Fox News, February 5, 2022, https://www.foxnews.com/us/gen-milley-says-kyiv-could-fall-within-72-hours-if-russia-decides-to-invade-ukraine-sources; and John Bowden, “Biden Warned Ukraine’s President Kyiv Could Be ‘Sacked’ By Imminent Russian Invasion,” The Independent, January 28, 2022, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/biden-ukraine-kyiv-invasion-russian-troops-b2002442.html.

2. Michel Duclos, “War in Ukraine–France Needs to Reassess its Foreign Policy Options,” Institute Montaigne, June 8, 2022, https://www.institutmontaigne.org/en/expressions/war-ukraine-france-needs-reassess-its-foreign-policy-options; Bernhard Blumenau, “How Russia’s Invasion Changed German Foreign Policy,” Chatham House, November 18, 2022, https://www.chathamhouse.org/2022/11/how-russias-invasion-changed-german-foreign-policy; Justin Huggler, “Embarrassment as Head of German Intelligence Trapped in Ukraine after Failing to Foresee Invasion,” Telegraph, February 26, 2022, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/02/26/embarrassment-head-german-intelligence-trapped-ukraine-failing; and Laura Pitel, “Robert Habeck Adds to Criticism of German Intelligence Blunders,” Financial Times, August 24, 2023, https://www.ft.com/content/cc0b1300-89fc-4df8-863b-f691e0aac758.

3. Bastian Gigerich and Ben Schreer, “Zeitenwende One Year On,” IISS, February 27, 2023, https://www.iiss.org/sv/online-analysis/online-analysis/2023/02/zeitenwende-one-year-on.

4. Maia de la Baume, “France Spooked By Intelligence Failures,” Politico, April 6, 2022, https://www.politico.eu/article/france-military-intelligence-failure-russia-invasion-ukraine; and Luke Harding, et al., “Macron Claims Putin Gave Him Personal Assurances on Ukraine,” The Guardian, February 8, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/08/macron-zelenskiy-ukraine-talks-moscow-denies-deal-to-de-escalate.

5. Office of the President of Ukraine, “Agreement on security cooperation between Ukraine and France,” Office of the President of Ukraine, February 16, 2024, https://www.president.gov.ua/en/news/ugoda-pro-spivrobitnictvo-u-sferi-bezpeki-mizh-ukrayinoyu-ta-89005.

6. See Jack Watling, Oleksandr V. Danylyuk, and Nick Reynolds, Preliminary Lessons from Russia’s Unconventional Operations During the Russo-Ukrainian War, February 2022–February 2023 (RUSI: 2023).

7. Terence Zuber, “The Schieffen Plan Reconsidered,” War in History 6, No. 3 (1999).

8. Liam Collins, Michael Kofman, and John Spencer, “The Battle of Hostomel Airport: A Key Moment in Russia’s Defeat in Kyiv,” War on the Rocks, August 10, 2023, https://warontherocks.com/2023/08/the-battle-of-hostomel-airport-a-key-moment-in-russias-defeat-in-kyiv.

9. Napoleon’s campaigns provide ample evidence of this reality, particularly his victory at Austerlitz. See Frederick W. Kagan, The End of the Old Order: Napoleon and Europe, 1801–1805 (Boston: Da Capo Press, 2007).

10. See ISW’s tactical updates, 3 March 2022–30 March 2022, for a fuller analysis of the predicament facing Russian forces in northern Ukraine.

11. Winson Churchill, The Second World War, Volume 1: The Gathering Storm (London: Cassell, 1949).

12. Ernest R. May, Strange Victory: Hitler’s Conquest of France (London: MacMillan, 2001).

13. The only English-language assessment of the Donbas War from a military viewpoint is the Ukrainian National Defence University’s assessment.  See Ministry of Defence of Ukraine, The White Book of the Anti-Terrorist Operation in the East of Ukraine, 2014–2016 (Kyiv: 2016).

14. See William Schneck, Breaching the Devil’s Garden: The 6th New Zealand Brigade in Operation Lightfoot, the Second Battle of El Alamein (DTIC, 2005), accessed via: https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADA447540. Unfortunately, the only version of this study is the linked one, which has a number of formatting errors, rather than a full-text PDF. The 300-page appendix is accessible as a PDF, but the original study is not. David Glantz and Mary Glantz, Zhukov’s Greatest Defeat: The Red Army’s Epic Disaster in Operation Mars, 1942 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1999); Ernest F. Fisher Jr., Cassino to the Alps (Washington, DC: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1993); and Charles B. MacDonald, The Siegfried Line Campaign (Washington, DC: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1993).

15. Washington Post, “Miscalculations, Divisions Marked Offensive Planning by U.S., Ukraine,” Washington Post, December 4, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/12/04/ukraine-counteroffensive-us-planning-russia-war.

16. For another example of snide criticism, see John Hudson and Alex Horton, “U.S. Intelligence Says Ukraine Will Fail to Meet Offensive’s Key Goal,” Washington Post, August 17, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/08/17/ukraine-counteroffensive-melitopol.

17. Rachel Tecott Metz, “Why Security Assistance Often Fails,” Lawfare, April 23, 2023, https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/why-security-assistance-often-fails.

18. Jonathan Schroden, “Afghanistan’s Security Forces Versus the Taliban: A Net Assessment,” CTC Sentinel 14, No. 1 (2021); and David Witty, “The Iraqi Counter Terrorism Service,” Brookings, June 2016, https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-iraqi-counter-terrorism-service.

19. SIGAR, Why the Afghan Security Forces Collapsed (SIGAR, 2023).

20. Adrian Bonenberger, “Ukraine’s Military Pulled Itself Out of the Ruins of 2014,” Foreign Policy, May 9, 2022, https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/05/09/ukraine-military-2014-russia-us-training.

21. See from the early war, Michael Lee, “The U.S. Army’s Green Berets Quietly Helped Tilt the Battlefield a Little Bit More Toward Ukraine,” Fox News, March 24, 2022, https://www.foxnews.com/politics/us-armys-green-berets-have-lasting-impact-on-fight-in-ukraine.

22. Jack Watling and Nick Reynolds, “Stormbreak: Fighting Through Russian Defences in Ukraine’s 2023 Offensive,” RUSI, September 4, 2023, https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/special-resources/stormbreak-fighting-through-russian-defences-ukraines-2023-offensive.

23. Valery Zaluzhny, “Modern Positional War and How to Win It,” The Economist, November 1, 2023.

24. Pat Garrett and Frank Hoffman, “Maneuver Warfare Is Not Dead, But It Must Evolve,” USNI Proceedings 149, No. 11 (2023).

25. Samuel Huntington, The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1957).

26. Antulio J. Echevarria II, War’s Logic: Strategic Thought and the American Way of War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021).

27. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Michael Howard and Peter Paret (trans) (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974).

28. The edition of Svechin referenced is Alexander A. Svechin, Strategy, Kent D. Lee (editor) (East View Information Service, 1992). This edition is accessible as a PDF, but unfortunately it lacks page numbers. Section titles and subtitles are cited where appropriate to provide the reader with an idea of a specific quotation, although the interested reader will need to access the text independently to find the precise passage referenced.

29. On War.

30. Strategy.

31. Ibid. 

32. Ibid. 

33. Ibid.

34. As of this writing, Russia is engaged in an offensive to throw Ukrainian forces back over the Oskil. See Riley Bailey and Fredrick W. Kagan with Nicole Wolkov and Christina Harward, “The Russian Winter-Spring 2024 Offensive Operation on the Kharkiv-Luhansk Axis,” Institute for the Study of War, February 21, 2024, https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-winter-spring-2024-offensive-operation-kharkiv-luhansk-axis.

35. On War.

36. Anastasia Stognei and Polina Ivanova, “Russia’s War Economy Leaves Businesses Starved of Labour,” Financial Times, November 9, 2023, https://www.ft.com/content/dc76f0bb-cae2-4a3a-b704-903d2fc59a96.

More Effective Education and Training

The importance of the strategic concept

Effective military education and training do not take place in a vacuum. Rather, both are elements in a force planning strategy that implements the Service’s strategic concept.1 It is the Marine Corps strategic concept that defines and drives its education and training requirements, and those requirements should determine the architecture of its schools and curriculums. 

For its first one hundred years, the Marine Corps’ strategic concept required no formal education or training. Marines “were aboard ship to protect the ship’s officers and the vessel from the crew, many of which were or might be drunkards, malcontents, thieves, arsonists, thugs and mutineers,” and “were basically soldiers detailed for sea service whose primary duties were to fight aboard but not sail their ships.”2 This Service’s force plan centered upon ships’ detachments, which sometimes were used ashore to strengthen naval landing parties. 

This changed after the Mexican War (1848) with the Marines’ primary missions altered to that of going ashore to protect American lives and property, manning ship’s guns, and quelling civil disorder. These were still missions that could be accomplished by provisional battalions and regiments organized from Marines drawn from ship detachments and Marine Barracks, but these larger landing forces required some basic training, and new officers and enlistees were joined to Marine Barracks for a prescribed initial period of instruction.

As modern steel battleships were developed, a higher technical proficiency was required of crews, requiring more extensive naval training. This led to greater Navy professionalism and less need for a ship’s guard. Generally, Navy officers began to view Marine officers as their intellectual and social inferiors, and beginning in the 1890s, an influential cadre of Navy officers tried to eliminate Marines from ships altogether.3 The reform-minded Colonel Commandant Charles McCawley, who had seen his own position as Commandant reduced in grade to colonel from brigadier general, addressed the difficulties through a major reorganization of the Corps. As part of this reorganization, all of the 50 officers joining the Corps between 1881 and 1897 were Naval Academy graduates, promotion examinations were instituted for corporals and sergeants and included “reading, writing, and the simple rules of arithmetic,” and in 1885, the Navy Department published a Marines Manual: Prepared for the use of The Enlisted Men of the United States Marine Corps, ordering its distribution to all Marines having more than one year left on their enlistments.4 At Colonel Commandant McCawley’s insistence, the distribution of this manual “for enlisted men” was also distributed to all Marine officers. 

McCawley’s restructuring continued under Colonel Commandant Charles Heywood. On 1 May 1891, Colonel Commandant Heywood created the School of Application. Heywood located the school at Marine Barracks, Washington, DC, and put it under the direction of Capt D.P. Mannix assisted by SgtMaj Thomas F. Hayes. Colonel Commandant Heywood would also introduce mandatory examinations of officers and fitness reports.5

Unlike the commissioning of only Naval Academy graduates, the creation of the School of Application, the introduction of examinations, and the publication of a Marine Manual were changes in education and training tied to a force planning strategy. Restricting new officers to the ranks of Naval Academy graduates was an early form of joint professional military education (JPME), “grounded in the justification that officers need a common basis of knowledge with each other and with others in the national security community in order to operate effectively,” a justification of JPME that continues.6 

Lacking under McCawley and Heywood was a Marine Corps strategic concept. Unwanted, disorganized, flaying, and shrinking, the Commandants struggled to maintain the Corps as a separate Service within the Navy Department. It was the 1900 Navy Board that provided the Marines with a strategic concept. 

The 1900 Navy Board, under ADM George Dewey who had claimed that if there had been 5,000 Marines with which to garrison Manila in 1898 there would have been no Philippine Insurrection, formally changed the Marine Corps’ primary mission to defending bases in the Caribbean and off the Chinese mainland—creating what became known as the advance base mission.7 In 1908, President Theodore Roosevelt, no fan of the Marine Corps, tried to isolate the Marines from the Army and Navy ships with Executive Order 969 defining the duties of the Marine Corps, in order of priority, as:

  1. Garrison naval yards and stations inside and outside of the United States.
  2. Provide mobile defense for naval bases and stations outside the United States.
  3. Man static naval base defenses outside the United States.
  4. Garrison the Panama Canal.
  5. Provide expeditionary duty overseas in times of peace.8

For the first time since the era of sailing ships, Marines had a place within the national security apparatus to develop a strategic concept that would establish the Corps’ education and training requirements for the next forty years.

Despite all efforts to reduce Marines to yard guards, the Marines focused on other missions. In 1910, the Corps founded the Advance Base School in New London and created the Advance Base Force in 1913. The following year the First and Second Advance Base Regiments conducted the first advance base exercise on Culebra. 

As the Marine Corps focused on advance base operations, its missions of defending bases in the Caribbean and expeditionary duty overseas in times of peace took on new importance. Marines were called upon to fulfill President Theodore Roosevelt’s corollary to the Monroe Doctrine to intervene in the Caribbean and Central America to guarantee European financial interests. Initially, these interventions were peaceful; however, in 1915 the nature of these interventions changed when President Woodrow Wilson offered armed intervention to the Dominican Republic government to protect it from rebels—euphemistically referred to as bandits. “The policy had thus been extended from financial supervision to the necessary control to assure the maintenance of peace.” The issue of whether such armed occupations constituted an initiation of war was resolved when it was agreed, “If you land one section of the Army that is war.” But “you can land a Sailor or a Marine and it is not considered war.”9 In that single sentence, the Marine Corps expeditionary mission was solidified.

While on expeditionary duty in the Dominican Republic and Haiti, Marine Corps education and training would further evolve with the creation of regimental schools in 1922. In addition to valuable bush warfare and counterinsurgency training, these schools also provided Marines with communication and cooperation with aircraft training, marksmanship, using bayonets and grenades, and interior guard. Officers were further instructed in using aviation, artillery, naval gunfire, armored cars, and tactics. Enlisted men lacking general education competencies were enrolled in correspondence courses initially developed by the International Correspondence School (ICS) and delivered through the Marine Corps Institute (MCI).10

A different form of expeditionary duty saw Marines joining the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) in France where, in addition to providing a Marine brigade for combat, Marines served at all levels of command across the AEF. John Lejeune commanded the Army’s 64th Brigade and three French regiments before taking command of the U.S. Second Division. Eli Cole commanded the Army’s 41st Infantry Division (First Depot Division), and Smedley Butler commanded Camp Pontanezen, a key chokepoint in the AEF’s Service of Supply. Field-grade Marine officers distinguished themselves in command and on the staffs of Army formations. Marine captains and lieutenants did the same leading Army units in combat.11

This experience, coupled with the continued Marine Corps occupation of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, shaped a new Service identity within the Corps. The Marine Corps had developed its own cadre of flag officers and had achieved success in organizing and commanding large formations. The Corps now had Marine Corps bases, independent of a naval yard or station, at Quantico and Parris Island. The Marine Corps began to think of itself as an independent Service within the Department of the Navy. To sustain this independence as a Service would require a significant shift in the strategic concept of the Corps. In January 1920, this shift in Service self-concept saw officer training moved from Parris Island and Philadelphia and formally reconstituted as Marine Corps Schools at Quantico. Also relocated to Quantico were the remnants of the Advance Base Force which had been left at the League Island Naval Yard under the command of temporary MajGen L.W.T. Waller, one of the Marine Corps’ most distinguished and colorful officers, who was too old and too incapacitated for service in France or the Caribbean. 

Initially, the curriculum of Marine Corps Schools “mirrored that of the Army’s staff school at Fort Leavenworth and the studies centered around Army doctrine, Army Organization, and Army problems.”12 With the exception of The Basic School, Marine officers were not required to attend Marine Corps Schools, and many elected to attend Army schools instead. Similarly, they could attend the Naval War College or the new Naval Aviation School, bypassing the Company Officers’ and Field Officers’ Course. Within the operating forces, Marines trained in amphibious warfare and advanced base operations with the Navy in Cuba, Hawaii, and Culebra. 

Meanwhile, the Marine Corps Schools used the Marines stationed at Quantico to enact large Civil War battles. Under the command of BGen Smedley Butler, the East Coast Expeditionary Force (formerly the Advance Base Force) conducted long field marches to enact large-scale re-enactments of Civil War battles, including Pickett’s Charge while at Gettysburg. In both field exercises and lectures, students at Marine schools were provided instruction on lessons learned in the American Revolution and Civil War.13 

For a Service whose self-concept was as an independent Service within the Department of the Navy, its education and training were lacking in both content and focus. This would change with the creation of a Division of Operations and Training within Headquarters Marine Corps, the individual scholarship of Marines such as Dion Williams, the publication of the Tentative Landing Operations Manual in 1934, and command of the Marine Corps Schools passing to James Carson Breckinridge.14

Col Breckinridge first commanded Marine Corps Schools from 2 July 1928 to 25 December 1929. Following service in China, BGen Breckinridge returned to Marine Corps Schools on 25 April 1932, with a reform agenda and the direction provided by his predecessor, the departing MajGen Commandant Lejeune:

There is a field in the conduct of war which can be properly covered only by Marines, and that is military operations connected with naval activities. Once ashore, there is no great difference between Army and Marine forces, but skillful execution of the vital operation of transfer from troopship to a safe position on the beach, of itself, justifies the maintenance of an efficient Marine Corps as an essential part of the naval establishment. 

The design of courses at the Marine Corps Schools should, therefore, have in view that the Marine Corps is not an Army but an essential part of the Navy to be employed for naval purposes and that emphasis on the education of its officers should be placed on the requirements of those purposes.15

Under Breckinridge, the curriculum of Marine Corps Schools—including its Extension School which included courses for non-commissioned officers—was revised with fully one-half of the instruction focused on advance base operations. For a time, Breckinridge closed the senior course to allow the faculty to participate in creating doctrine. In 1934, a change in the school’s course titles to the Amphibious Warfare Junior Course and Amphibious Warfare Senior Course was pushed by Breckinridge to reflect better what was being taught to Marines at Marine Corps Schools.

The Marine Corps strategic Service concept would be further refined under Commandants Russell and Holcomb as they prepared for war in the Pacific. Marine Corps training and education would continue to evolve as part of force planning. Outside of Marine Corps Schools, specialized training was taking place in aviation, the employment of supporting weapons, logistics, and fleet operations. By 1939, the Marine Corps, although understaffed, was prepared to expand quickly and conduct offensive operations in the Pacific. Its training and education programs had been an effective part of a force planning strategy that successfully implemented the Marine Corps’ strategic concept.

The five years immediately following the end of the Second World War were exhausted in various schemes for defense unification, all of which envisioned a substantially reduced Marine Corps—if such a Corps continued to exist. Even within the Marine Corps, a special board, the Advance Base Problem Team at Marine Corps Schools reported that within an atomic age of warfare, the World War II type of amphibious assault was dead. LtCol Victor Krulak, a member of The Advance Base Problem Team, said the report voiced:

a prospective military philosophy. It consists of thinking in terms of the next war instead of the last. This means starting with ideas, when you have nothing more tangible, and developing them into concepts, procedures, and weapons for the future.16

The work begun by the Advance Base Problem Team remains interrupted and unfinished.

On 5 July 1950, elements of the U.S. Eighth Army engaged the North Korean Army at Osan. By August, the Eighth Army and its allies had been pushed south into the 230-kilometer-long Pusan Perimeter. On 2 August, the First Provisional Marine Brigade, led by BGen Edward Craig, landed at Pusan, entering combat on 7 August. Marines were once again deployed as part of the Army and the work begun by the Advance Base Problem Team was interrupted.

During the Korean War, “Marine Corps Schools, Camp Pendleton and MCAS El Toro carried the main burden of training … the Schools for turning out junior officers, and Pendleton and El Toro for preparing and processing the steady flow of replacements. … By the end of the war, 60 percent of the Corps had traveled that path … Conspicuous in the Pendleton cycle was the ordeal of cold-weather training.”17

A similar scenario would take place on 8 March 1965, when the 9th MAB landed at Da Nang, South Vietnam. Again, the Marines would be placed under Army control, and a steady flow of reinforcements followed by replacements would travel through Marine Corps Schools, Camp Pendleton, and MCAS El Toro. “Two and Thru” Marines dominated the force, spending six months in training, followed by thirteen months in Vietnam and 90 days in garrison before an early release. The work of the Advance Base Problem Team was now forgotten, and its members retired.

Thirty-five years (1945–1975) of a policy of defense unification, major deployments as part of an American land army, and a continuously transitory force changed the Marine Corps Service concept. While Marines would continue to make landings in Lebanon, the Dominican Republic, Cambodia, and elsewhere, the Corps as an organization was adrift, moving away from its Service strategic concept and advance base and amphibious heritage. 

At the Marine Corps Development and Education Command, curriculums were revised to both confront and embrace these changes. At the Command and Staff College, its curriculum began to include topics “outside of its previous narrow Marine Corps and amphibious warfare focus.” Emphasis was now placed on statecraft, analysis of treaty obligations and restrictions, unified and specified commands, and the career potential of service “with departmental, combined, joint, and high-level Service organizations.”18 Envisioned as a sort of field-grade workshop, “a good portion of the student’s time will go into individual research projects, with corresponding free time for independent work written directly into the course syllabus.”19 “The Commandant of the Marine Corps also desired that the students be competitive; competitive not against each other, but against the high standards expected of a Marine officer.”20 Once again, the Corps was adrift with an unclear strategic concept, as was reflected in its training and education.

As the Marine Corps struggled to regain a Service concept other than that of the Nation’s better-prepared “second land army,” two visionary leaders were emerging. At Fleet Marine Forces Pacific, LtGen Louis Wilson was loudly arguing for modernization, insisting the Marine Corps should be a force in readiness—responsive and mobile while maintaining fast-moving, hard-hitting, seabased, air-ground task forces. In the same time frame, BGen Alfred Gray was changing Marine Corps training to emphasize large-scale maneuvers in desert and cold-weather environments. Both Wilson and Gray were redefining the Marine Corps strategic Service concept, but Gen Gray would take it the furthest, publishing a statement concerning service philosophy that became doctrine (FMFM 1, Warfighting). Warfighting provided a Service philosophy, but it fell short of providing a strategic concept for the Corps. 

While the Marine Corps likes to tie the creation of Marine Corps University in 1989 to the publication of Warfighting in that same year, Marine Corps University is actually an end-product of defense unification as expressed in the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986. Goldwater-Nichols itself was a congressional reaction to the incessant inter-Service rivalries of the previous century and the perceived military failures that were the result of these rivalries.

Goldwater-Nichols sought to replace each Service’s strategic concept with a DOD-wide, Joint Services strategic concept (“joint” becoming the operative word replacing “unified”). Much of Goldwater-Nichols focused on the effective management of military officers, and section 663 (Education) contained additional requirements specifically related to “Joint Professional Military Education (JPME).” One of these requirements was a “review of service schools’ curricula to strengthen the focus on joint matters and to ensure that graduates were adequately prepared for joint duty assignments.”21 The House Armed Services Committee panel on military education (the Skelton Panel) recommended that Phase I JPME be taught in service colleges with a follow-on, temporary, Phase II taught at the Armed Forces Staff College (AFSC).22 Congress integrated this recommendation into the Fiscal Year 1990–1991 National Defense Authorization Act  as a statement of congressional policy.23 In follow-up inducements to encourage attendance, Congress authorized the offering of accredited master’s degrees and more flexibility in follow-on assignments. Marine Corps University is a direct outgrowth of a congressionally mandated, Joint Services’ strategic concept, and funding earmarked to effect that joint concept.

Military education and training do not take place in a vacuum. Rather, both are elements in a force planning strategy that implements the Service’s strategic concept. The development of such a Service strategic concept has been hampered by two factors. The first is the extraordinary success Marine officers have enjoyed in rising to the top of the DOD unified command structure. In many ways, Marines have far exceeded their counterparts. Finding a Service strategic concept will require general officers willing to forgo the career opportunities “with departmental, combined, joint, and high-level Service organizations” Goldwater-Nichols jointness has provided in favor of leading Marines. The other factor is once again Marines have been deployed for an extended period as part of an American land army.

As the Armed Forces regroup from the decades-long Global War on Terror, the JPME concept has come under increased scrutiny and criticism. On 5 February 2019, the Secretary of the Navy announced decisions and immediate actions resulting from the department-level, department-wide, Education for Seapower study. This memorandum called for the refocusing of Navy and Marine Corps education and training on warfighting capabilities, naval war‑
fighting, and the consolidation of the department’s education programs into a single Naval University System with departmental education and student selection standards. It also directed a review of JPME with recommendations for changes to make naval JPME more relevant to naval careers and the “unique, expeditionary-centric, forward operational requirements of the Navy-Marine Corps team.”24

As has been discussed within the Gazette, controversy surrounds the formulation of a Marine Corps strategic concept and the strategic force plan to implement that concept. EABO, as a strategic concept continues to be challenged by advocates for a Marine Corps focused on extended land operations in conjunction with the Army. This focus on supporting Army operations has critics not only within the Marine Corps but also within the Air Force, Navy, and Pentagon. For the time being, this lack of an accepted Service concept and force plan makes the design of effective training and education impossible. However, this might be the proper time for Marine Corps Schools (i.e. Marine Corps University) to undertake the challenge of the 1950s Advance Base Problem Team to start with ideas, when you have nothing more tangible, and develop them into concepts, procedures, and weapons for the future. 

>Dr. Doyle was in federal service for 22 years including 9 years in the Marine Corps, resigning as a CWO2 to accept a civilian appointment within the DOD as a Supervising Academic Programs Officer. As a National Guardsman, he spent 32 months of active duty as the Operations Sergeant of a Special Forces Battalion.  Following federal service, Dr. Doyle has been employed as a university executive. His professional military education includes the Amphibious Warfare School (Extension) and the Naval War College.

Notes

1. The strategic concept is defined by the Service’s roles or purposes in implementing national policy and must answer the question: What function does the Service perform that obligates the nation to assume responsibility for its maintenance and continuation? Security, Strategy, and Forces Faculty, Strategy and Force Planning (Newport: Naval War College, 2004).

2. Allan R. Millett, Semper Fidelis: The History of the United States Marine Corps (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1939). 

3. Robert Debs Heinl Jr., Soldiers of the Sea: The United States Marine Corp 1775–1962, 2nd ed. (Baltimore: Nautical and Aviation Pub. Co. of America, 1991); and Jack Shulimson, The Marine Corps Search for a Mission, 1880–1898 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993). 

4. Contrary to an 1899 Act of Congress, with the Class of 1896 the Navy Academy refused to graduate Marine Corps officers. This would continue until 1914. See Soldiers of the Sea.

5. In January 1909, the School of Application relocated to Marine Barracks, Port Royal (now Parris Island).

6. Pauline M. Shanks Kaurin, “Professional Military Education: What Is It Good For?” The Strategy Bridge, June 22, 2017, https://thestrategybridge.org/the-bridge/2017/6/22/professional-military-education-what-is-it-good-for.

7. Search for a Mission.

8. Semper Fidelis; “Report on Marine Corps Duplication of Effort Between Army and Navy,” 17 December 1932, Gray Research Center, Archives Branch, Marine Corps University, Quantico, VA.

9. LtCol C.H. Metcalf, “The Marine Corps and the Changing Caribbean Policy,” Marine Corps Gazette 21, No. 3 (1937); and Edwin N. McClellan, “American Marines in Nicaragua,” Marine Corps Gazette 6, No. 2. (1921).

10. MCI and ICS remained important sources of education and training for Marines into the 1970s. The author of this article completed ICS’ three-year course on public accounting while an enlisted Marine, passing the qualifying exam for state licensure as a public accountant.

11. John J. Pershing, General Pershing’s Official Story of the American Expeditionary Forces in France (New York: Sun Sales Corp, 1919); and Edwin N. McCellan, The United States Marine Corps in the World War  (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1920).

12. Senior School Syllabi, Schedules, Synopsis, Regulations, Courses 19391970  from “History of the Field Officers’ School.” Source unknown.

13. Ibid.

14. See Dion Williams, “Marine Corps Training,” Marine Corps Gazette 10, No. 3 (1925; Dion Williams); “Fleet Landing Force,” Marine Corps Gazette 11, No. 2 (1926 and Dion Williams); “The Education of a Marine Officer,” Marine Corps Gazette 18, No. 2 (1933).

15. Memorandum from the MajGen Commandant to BGen Randolph Berkley, “Report of Board, Copy Attached,” 13 May 1931, “Marine Corps Schools, 193034,” folder 1. Marine Corps Research Center, Marine Corps University.

16. Marine Corps Historical Branch Interview with Col V. H. Krulak on November 18, 1953.

17. Soldiers of the Sea: The United States Marine Corps 1775–1962.

18. Donald F. Bittner, Curriculum Evolution, Marine Corps Command and Staff College, 19201988, (Washington, DC: History and Museum Division, Headquarters Marine Corps 1988). PCN 19000316900 Curriculum Evolution Marine Corps Command and Staff College 19201988 (marines.mil).

19. Ibid.

20. Ibid.

21. U.S. Congress, House Committee on Armed Services, Report of the Panel on Military Education of the One-Hundredth Congress, committee print, 100th Cong., 1st sess., April 21, 1989 (Washington: GPO, 1989).

22. Ibid. 

23. Section 1123, P.L. 101–189, November 29, 1989. This legislation was codified as a footnote to Section 663, of Title 10 United States Code.

24. Secretary of the Navy Memorandum, Education for Seapower Decisions and Immediate Actions, (Washington, DC: 2019). 

The Marine Littoral Regiment’s Missing Link

An unmanned platform for sea denial

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notes

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

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

3. Ibid. 

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

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

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

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

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

9. Ibid.

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

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

AND_GENERAL_CHARACTERISTICS.

11. Stephen Biddle, Military Power: Explaining

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

12. Ibid. 

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

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

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

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

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

18. JP 3-09.

19. MTTP for AOMSW.

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

21. JP 3-09.

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

23. JP 3-09.

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

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

Strategic Competition and Stand-in Forces

A novel view for tactical units

“The current T&E [Training & Education] system is not preparing the Marine Corps for the future operating environment.”

Training and Education 2030

The 2018 National Defense Strategy states that we are exiting a time of strategic atrophy.1 The DOD, including the United States Special Operations Command, is shifting toward emphasizing near-peer adversaries, in which we are faced with new and unique strategic problems not present during the Global War on Terrorism. As such, the Marine Corps is also rapidly evolving and transforming—using such critical documents as the Commandant’s Planning Guidance, Force Design 2030, Expeditionary Advanced Based Operations, Training and Education, Talent Management 2030, and Stand-in Forces (SIF) as guiding features to enable our transformation to meet the challenges posed by our strategic enemies.2

As stated in A Concept for Stand-in Forces, SIF: (1) “reassure the Nation and our allies and partners,” (2) “win the all-domain reconnaissance battle,” (3) “win the all-domain counter-reconnaissance battle, and (4) “intentionally disrupt adversary plans.”3 Specifically, for this article, SIF “disrupt an adversary’s plans at every point on the competition continuum.”4 While individual Marines, tactical units, or the Marine Corps are not tasked with creating strategy, the truth is that we do not expect mere tactical-level results with the SIF concept during times of competition, crisis, and conflict. Rather, we expect impacts on the operational and (preferably) the strategic level of war by our SIF units.

However, while we desire and hope for enduring strategic-level results of our SIF, we as an entity generally do not educate our tactical-level Marines on the strategic level of war or strategic competition. As stated in Training and Education 2030, “As we prepare for the future fight, we need Marines who possess the intellectual ability to out-think their adversaries,” and “the most important warfighting advantage we have is the mental and physical endurance of our Marines, and their ability to make better decisions under pressure than our adversaries.”5 Therefore, the purpose of this article is to describe and illustrate strategic competition in a novel manner for our SIF units. As stated in A Concept for Stand-in Forces (ref), “SIF also practice ‘integrated deterrence,’ which means they coordinate their activities with the joint force, interagency, and allied and partnered nations to achieve greater results than could be gained by acting alone.”6 Thus, by arming SIF with knowledge and a conceptual model on strategic competition in outside declared theaters of active armed conflicts (ODTAAC), tactical units have the potential to facilitate strategic objects to a greater extent in ODTAAC environments.

Strategic Environment
Former Secretary of Defense, Mr. Weinberger, noted that gray-area conflicts are the most likely and most difficult challenges for democracies to face.7 In 2023—with the compression of the three levels of war, in which the tactical individual is closer to the strategic level of war—tactical warfighters must recognize that gray-zone conflicts must be understood as cohesive organized campaigns that typically apply non-military measures to achieve political goals over several years to decades while remaining below the threshold of war. These campaigns are suited for the educated and trained Marine(s) due to our history in small wars (i.e., Banana Wars, combined action platoons, etc). Additionally, history clearly demonstrates that foreign militaries who are seen as a liberation force and not an occupation force, such as a surge of conventional forces, have a higher likelihood of strategic success. Regarding gray-zone conflicts, Mazaar states that gray-zone conflicts are “a pattern of state rivalry that can substitute for traditional military aggression, and which can pose serious challenges to U.S. strategy.”8

As stated by Jeffrey Record, “the United States has become a victim of its conventional military success.”9 According to Colin Gray, the U.S. war machine can be defined as: (1) apolitical, (2) astrategic, (3) ahistorical, (4), problem-solving, optimistic, (5) culturally ignorant, (6) technologically dependent, (7), firepower focused, (8), large scale, (9), profoundly regular, (10) impatient, (11), logistically excellent, and (12) sensitive to casualties.10 The 2018 National Defense Strategy of the United States of America states, “it is increasingly clear that China and Russia want to shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model … Rogue regimes such as North Korea and Iran are destabilizing regions through their pursuit.”11 Our strategic adversaries have studied our history and analyzed our strengths and weaknesses and are conducting active measures to domestically and internationally weaken the United States to achieve their national objectives.

According to Kilcullen, Chinese military strategists developed a simultaneous dual-pronged strategy; one of economic and political engagement.12 This dual-pronged strategy is in combination with their acceleration of their military competencies. This development appears to be in line with the concepts put forth in Unrestricted Warfare written by the Chinese colonels, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui. Unrestricted Warfare provides numerous examples of how non-conventional methods can be used against the United States to achieve political goals in a form of hybrid warfare.13 As stated by Hassett,

the U.S. military is insufficiently postured, trained, and resourced through doctrinal publication guidance to counter current and emerging hybrid threats in the future. Hybrid warfare will continue to serve as an effective operational concept for adversary state and non-state actors in the future.14

Thus, education and understanding are paramount for SIF during times of competition.

Strategic Competition
The principal reason for this article is to describe strategic competition in a novel way in hopes of facilitating strategic impacts in ODTAAC environments by tactical units, primarily SIF units. The terms great-power competition and strategic competition have come to be buzzwords in the U.S. military. While these words are thrown around constantly, few can define great-power competition and even fewer can define strategic competition, despite these words dominating military leaders’ meetings, plans, and actions. As stated by Miller et al., “Competition now permeates nearly every contemporary U.S. strategic document.”15 Miller et al. define competition as “the interaction among actors in pursuit of the influence, leverage, and advantage necessary to secure their respective interests.”16 Additionally, Miller et al. define influence, leverage, and advantage as being “the power to cause an effect in indirect or intangible ways,” “the application of influence gained or created to achieve an effect or exploit an opportunity,” and “the superiority of position or condition,” respectively.17 Using the framework by Miller et al., the author visually displays strategic competition using Figures 1, 2, and 3.

At the bottom of Figures 1–3, the reader can see that at the base are the competing interests of the United States (blue) and the competing interests of an adversary (red). Miller et al. define interests as “things or concepts that a nation values—those things which states seek to protect or achieve concerning each other.”18 No matter what the United States positively performs when contending in strategic competition, the adversary’s interest will likely not go away. While the number of resources put into the targeted competition in a specific region will vary with the level of interests, it is important to note that the adversary’s general interests will remain a constant over the years; thus, patience and the emphasis on playing the long game must occur in strategic competition.

We must be cautious not to default to competition as being negative or problematic, especially tactical SIF units. Rather, tactical SIF operators should look at competition as an opportunity: “Competition provides opportunities to achieve outcomes before war, ensure favorable conditions for escalation, and gain advantage in the event of conflict. By building influence with allies, partners, and other actors is critical to producing opportunities in competition.”19

Figure 1. Strategic competition-balanced. (Figure provided by author.)

In Figure 1 (strategic competition- balanced), influence for both nation-states is depicted as equal. Advantage (represented via a triangle) acts as a fulcrum in the diagram, and for Figure 1 on the previous page, the advantage is also equal between the competing nations. It is important to note that a fulcrum simply provides the pivot point for a lever. Based on where the fulcrum is placed, will directly determine the amount of leverage, (synonymous with force and power), that a device can create. Advantage in strategic competition “is comprised of physical or virtual aspects (e.g., technology, geographic access, resources, and arsenal inventories) as well as more nebulous, cognitive elements (e.g., initiative, momentum, and skill).”20 Like many fulcrums, the advantage for the United States or its competitors can vary with time due to several variables.

Lastly, Figure 1 displays leverage via a lever for the strategic competition diagram. In strategic competition, leverage is facilitated by a “deep understanding of other actors and the strategic environment to increase the likelihood and scope of success.”21 Using the proposed strategic competition model (Figures 1–3), leverage is directly affected by both the advantage and influence of a nation.

In Figure 2 (strategic competition- negative), the reader can see that the United States’ interests (blue arrow) are directly being confronted by a strategic adversary’s interests (red arrow). However, Figure 2 shows the United States losing in strategic competition below the threshold of war. In Figure 2, the adversary has greater influence and supreme advantage, thus increasing the possible leverage in the situation and beating the United States in competition. An example of Figure 2 could be China pressuring a government of an underdeveloped nation (i.e., influence) by using their economy to build infrastructure in said nation (i.e., advantage), to minimize the U.S. influence and access in a country (leverage). By minimizing the U.S. influence in a country, China increases its global reach, resource allocation, strategic depth, and strategic encirclement. Unfortunately, Figure 2 appears to be the norm in many countries in the world due to the loss of influence by the United States as well as a shift in the advantage and leverage. Simply put, Figure 2 shows the enemy imposing their will on our Nation during strategic competition.

“Stand-in forces disrupt an adversary’s plans at every point on the competition continuum.”

—A Concept for Stand-in Forces

Figure 2. Strategic competition-negative. (Figure provided by author.)

In Figure 3 (strategic competition-neutral), the reader can once more see that the United States’ interests (blue arrow) are directly being confronted by a strategic adversary’s interests (red arrow). Again, it must be emphasized that competing interests are to be expected as the new normal for the foreseeable future for tactical SIF units being deployed to ODTAAC environments, (which is preferred to either crisis or conflict).

In Figure 3, the reader can see that the outcome of the strategic competition is neutral despite the advantage being held by the adversary and the influence being supreme for the United States. Regarding strategic competition, this is a recommended view of how a tactical SIF unit can be ideally employed in an ODTAAC deployment. An example of Figure 3 could be China having the advantage due to their building of infrastructure in an underdeveloped nation using their economic instrument of national power, while the United States has greater influence, perhaps through a shared history; a strong, mutually benefiting relationship; and military training exchange programs.

Application and Recommendations
“SIF are small but lethal, low signature, mobile, relatively simple to maintain and sustain forces designed to operate across the competition continuum within a contested area as the leading edge of a maritime defense-in-depth in order to intentionally disrupt the plans of a potential adversary.”22 As stated by Hassett, “great power strategic competition does not inherently imply strictly conventional forms of warfare.”23 Regarding the application of tactical SIF units, it must be emphasized that military contribution should not be the bid for success, but rather the full coordinated implementation of the United States’ instrument of national power (i.e., diplomacy, information, military, economy, financial, intelligence, legality/ law enforcement, and technology).

This article prescribed a simple concept for understanding strategic competition. It must be emphasized that over a six-month deployment or a two-to-three-year tour of duty as a SIF unit, it is significantly easier for a SIF unit to impede our Nation’s leverage, influence, and advantage through negative and exploitable actions and information via our adversaries. Thus, we must recognize that preserving and methodically improving (over long-term sustainment) our leverage, influence, and advantage is of the utmost importance.

During competition, a SIF unit has the unique ability to measure our Nation’s influence, leverage, and advantage as on-the-ground sensors by providing on-the-ground truth. What might be perceived by national and strategic leaders as an effective campaign, operation, or situation, in all reality could be missing the mark for the targeted population. Thus, SIF units must be educated and trained accordingly. I offer four simple recommendations that the Marine Corps can and should start implementing to empower and enhance SIF units, which has been similarly suggested for SOF operating in ODTAAC environments.24

Figure 3. Strategic competition-neutral. (Figure provided by author.)

“Not the fortress, but the army that we send into the field secures our position of power in the world.”

—Gen Helmuth Karl Bernhard von Moltke

Although training must focus on and emphasize the most dangerous situation, education should span competition, crisis, and conflict; especially considering the preferred situation is competition. While Training and Education 2030states, “Ultimately, every Marine is responsible for their own learning,”25 (in which the author agrees) we as leaders in the Marine Corps must recognize it is imperative to educate our Marines by providing the optimal resources and direction. To facilitate the SIF concept, our tactical-level professional military education should incorporate the concepts of strategy.

However, more importantly, tactical SIF commanders and leaders must develop their unit professional military education specific to the region their SIF unit will deploy using the concept of the strategic lens. The strategic lens (which has been updated from its original concept by including language), which includes geography, culture, history, language, religion, governmental systems, education, and economics, is of the utmost importance for SIF units.26 As stated,

The ‘strategic lens,’ like most lens, can be viewed from different angles. Regarding the ‘strategic lens,’ tactical SOF units must view the lens through the host nation, the relevant population, the belligerents, the strategic competitors, the United States, etc. By only viewing the ‘strategic lens’ through the viewpoint of the United States, the tactical SOF unit promotes the negative stereotype of the United States as being culturally unaware, ahistorical, and arrogant.27

Miller et al state, “To make informed assessments about degrees of influence, one must develop a better understanding of populations, interest groups, governance, grievances, and other strategic issues.”28

2. Integrate with SOF
SOF has unique authorities and permissions that our SIF units will not possess. Additionally, SOF usually has access and placement that conventional forces do not have. A gap for SOF will always be capacity since a SOF principle is that you cannot mass produce SOF. However, SIF embedding with SOF is mutually beneficial in several ways.

First, SIF provides added capacity for SOF units, especially regarding foreign internal defense (training of the host nation forces). The author truly believes that a highly proficient machinegunner or mortarman, for example, should out cycle the average SOF operator on said weapons systems because these Marines are tasked with being the true subject-matter experts, while the SOF operator is tasked with a high number of varying skills.29 Thus, through this integration, our combined forces can increase the total number of partnered forces trained. Second, via this collaboration, we can also increase dispersed operations across the area of operations because the mixture of SOF and SIF can cover more units. It must be noted that dispersed military operations are being called for by our current guiding documents.

3. Educate the Joint Force
As the Commandant’s Planning Guidance, Force Design 2030, and Stand-in Forces continue to be enacted, we need to ensure the Joint Force (JF) understands our capabilities, limitations, and the opportunities we bring to the JF.30 As Marines, we must recognize that self-promotion isolated within our community is flawed. Thus, education on our capabilities to the JF via engagements, exchanges, liaison, etc. to increase our presence inside the weapon engagement zone as SIF is necessary.

4. Increased Communication Among All Relevant Players
As stated in previous works on SOF in ODTAAC environments, there are many strategic factors that tactical SOF units cannot impact. However, tactical SOF units can promote positive communication between all the relevant players up, down, and laterally within the chain of command. Regarding communication, lateral or higher units in the chain of command may possess permissions, capabilities, and intelligence that is needed for a SOF unit. Similarly, a SOF unit may possess permissions, capabilities, and intelligence needed by others.31

While written about tactical SOF units, this is equally as true for Marine Corps SIF units of action. To elicit operational and strategic effects in strategic competition via SIF, we have to communicate to the relevant players (i.e., joint, interagency, intergovernmental, multinational, and commercial) our missions, locations, capabilities, initiatives, opportunities, and the ground truth. Our SIF units doing great tactical actions that do not lead to operational or strategic effects is not what our Nation needs and is not in line with the SIF operating concept. Using Figures 1–3, our tactical SIF units-of-actions will not have the ability to directly utilize strategic leverage (i.e., exploit strategic opportunities) and must rely on the joint, interagency, intergovernmental, multinational, and commercial communities; however, our SIF can have greater effects on influence and advantage. Therefore, our SIF units must rely on others, such as politicians and strategic leaders to utilize and apply leverage. Thus, six questions our SIF units should ask are: Does this hurt our national influence? How do we increase our national influence? Does this hurt our national advantage? How do we increase our national advantage? Does this lessen opportunities for national leverage? How can we create opportunities for national leverage?

“Create purpose-built forces … Aggregating specialized units with base elements creates a tailored multi-domain force in order to provide maximum relevant combat power (RCP) on demand.”

—Force Design 2030

Conclusion
During the 2018 House Armed Services Committee, Gen Raymond stated that “SOF is uniquely capable of effectively competing below the level of traditional armed conflict and across the spectrum of conflict as part of the Joint Force.”32 While Gen Raymond was referring to SOF, the author believes SIF can also contribute in this manner. While both SOF and conventional forces should prepare for absolute conflict, we must also train, educate, and equip our SIF units on and for strategic competition illustrated via Figures 1–3. Of the U.S. military conventional-tactical units, tactical SIF units must thrive in competition.

“Forces that can continue to operate inside an adversary’s long-range precision fire weapons engagement zone (WEZ) are more operationally relevant than forces which must rapidly maneuver to positions outside the WEZ in order to remain survivable.”

—Force Design 2030

Notes

1. Jim Mattis, National Defense Strategy of the United States of America, (Washington, DC: 2017).

2. Gen David H. Berger, 38th Commandant’s Planning Guidance, (Washington, DC: 2019); Gen David H. Berger, Force Design 2030, (Washington, DC: 2020); Headquarters Marine Corps, Tentative Manual for Expeditionary Advanced Based Operations 2d Edition, (Washington, DC: 2023); Gen David H. Berger, Training and Education 2030, (Washington, DC: 2023); Gen David H. Berger, Talent Management 2030, (Washington, DC: 2021); and Gen David H. Berger, A Concept for Stand-in Forces, (Washington, DC: 2021).

3. A Concept for Stand-in Forces.

4. Ibid.

5. Training and Education 2030.

6. A Concept for Stand-in Forces.

7. Jeffrey Record, Beating Goliath: Why Insurgencies Win (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, Inc., 2007).

8. Michael Mazar, Mastering the Gray Zone: Understanding a Changing Era of Conflict (Carlisle: Strategic Studies Institute and U.S. Army War College, 2015).

9. Beating Goliath.

10. Colin S. Gray, The American War of War. Critique and Implications. Rethinking the Principles of War (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2005).

11. National Defense Strategy.

12. David Kilcullen, The Dragons and the Snakes: How the Rest Learned to Fight the West (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020).

13. Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, Unrestricted Warfare (Battleboro: Echo Point Books & Media, 1999).

14. Patrick S. Hasset, “The Hybrid Warfare Vulnerability,” Marine Corps Gazette 105, No. 5 (2021).

15. Joe Miller, Monte Erfourth, Jeremiah Monk, and Ryan Oliver, “Harnessing David and Goliath: Orthodoxy, Asymmetry, and Competition,” Small Wars Journal, February 7, 2019, https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/harnessing-david-and-goliath-orthodoxy-asymmetry-and-competition.

16. Ibid.

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid.

19. Ibid.

20. Ibid.

21. Ibid.

22. A Concept for Stand-in Forces.

23. “The Hybrid Warfare Vulnerability.”

24. Jeremy Carter, “Strategic Effects by Tactical Special Operations Units in Outside Declared Theaters of Active Armed Conflicts: Guiding Features for Enduring Strategic Effects,” (thesis, American Military University, 2021).

25. Training and Education 2030.

26. “Strategic Effects by Tactical Special Operations Units in Outside Declared Theaters of Active Armed Conflicts.”

27. Ibid.

28. “Harnessing David and Goliath.”

29. Jeremy Carter and Thomas Ochoa, “The Relationship Between Enlisted and Officers- Part 1: The T-Shape Philosophy,” Marine Corps Gazette 107, No. 7, (2023).

30. 38th Commandant’s Planning Guidance; Force Design 2030; and A Concept for Stand-in Forces.

31. “Strategic Effects by Tactical Special Operations Units in Outside Declared Theaters of Active Armed Conflicts.”

32. Statement before the House Armed Services Committee Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities, 115th Congress, (2018) (statement of Raymond Thomas).

The Strategic Gap in the Pacific

Training opportunities in Alaska

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notes

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

2. Ibid.

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

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

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

6. Ibid.

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

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

9. “Marines May Go to Alaska for Cold

Weather Training.”

10. Marine Corps University, “Arctic Strategic

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

11. Ibid.

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

13. Ibid.

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

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

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

Aleutian Allure

“Key Maritime Terrain—Any landward portion of the littoral that affords a force controlling it the ability to significantly influence events seaward.”-Tentative Manual for Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations, Second Edition 2023 

 Alaska is the most central place in the world … in the future, he who holds Alaska will rule the world.”BGen Billy Mitchell, U.S. Army Air Corps, Congressional Testimony, 1935 

The Aleutian Campaign may be one of the most forgotten U.S. undertakings of World War II. Its human carnage and materiel costs were not insignificant for both American and Japanese forces, yet few today know anything about it. Even among military history enthusiasts, names like Attu and Kiska often go unrecognized. Such obscurity is hardly surprising when one considers the large number of campaigns that took place across Admiral Chester Nimitz’s vast Pacific Ocean Areas during the war. Not only was the North Pacific Area a decidedly peripheral operational theater to Nimitz, but the campaign’s surprising and anticlimactic conclusion was also not one U.S. and Canadian commanders wanted to be remembered for. The subsequent decision by the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) not to use the Aleutians as stepping stones to invade the Kuriles and attack the Japanese home islands from the north further contributed to its historical ambiguity. 

As a case study, however, the Aleutian Campaign offers numerous insights for commanders and planners on the tensions that frequently arise between theater priorities and strategic imperatives driven by time-sensitive political expectations. It also provides lessons on why the value of key maritime terrain should be periodically reassessed from both friendly and enemy perspectives. Considering the tremendous operational and logistical accomplishments of both Japan and the United States, the inclusion of this campaign in professional military education and on reading lists could elevate discussions on distributed maritime operations as envisioned today by the Navy-Marine Corps team. Certainly, the strategic implications of seizing, occupying, and/or controlling key maritime terrain in the context of amphibious operations and expeditionary advanced base operations (EABO) deserve study.  

In the case of the Aleutians, the law of unintended consequences affected both sides. By seizing and retaining key maritime terrain for purposes subject to broad speculation by the United States, Japan set in motion events that reverberated well beyond the region and achieved outsized strategic effects on the pace and direction of the wider U.S. war effort. From this perspective, observations and decisions from the North Pacific Theater may have relevance to future naval campaigns against a peer adversary. 

Strategic Context 
The persistent presence of a relatively small but capable Japanese amphibious force in the Aleutians starting in June 1942 was an audacious affront to the nation’s sovereignty and a psychological burden on Washington. With the United States now in a global world war tilting precipitously in the Axis’ favor, the intense political pressure on the Joint Chiefs of Staff to push the Japanese out of the Western Aleutians was counterbalanced by regional fears bordering on paranoia about a Japanese invasion of the North American continent. Service commanders in theater began uncoordinated actions against the Imperial Japanese Navy and its advanced bases before they were fully ready. As the perceived Japanese threat in the North Pacific grew, a cumbersome and disjointed command and control structure was hastily concocted to oversee the massive buildup of land, sea, and air capabilities unsupported by prewar planning. Hundreds of thousands of American soldiers, sailors, and airmen, along with millions of tons of equipment and supplies, were diverted to the Alaskan theater on short notice. This military might would aggregate steadily into overwhelming land, sea, and air power until it could be focused on the annihilation of two isolated Japanese garrisons doing little more than occupying the most remote American territory in the world.  

The Aleutian Allure 
Comprising over 660,000 square miles of mostly wilderness and 34,000 miles of coastline, Alaska stands out prominently on the globe because of its enormous size and strategic placement in the North Pacific adjacent to the Eurasia land mass. The Alaskan Peninsula extends to the southwest from the mainland over a thousand miles before transitioning to the Aleutian Archipelago which continues in a gentle westward arc for another thousand miles. Comprised of 14 large islands, 55 smaller islands, and innumerable islets, the Aleutians appear on a map to form a natural approach route to either the North American or Asia continents. Their appeal as an invasion route in either direction quickly fades under analysis, however. The remoteness, inhospitable topography, and relentlessly harsh weather make the Aleutians unforgiving to all forms of movement and sustainment. Most of the islands are dominated by snow-covered peaks rising to 9,000 feet above the frigid, turbulent waters of the North Pacific. What level ground can be found is usually covered by muskeg—a thick, wet, spongy bog into which vehicles quickly sink up to their axles. Harbors and airfields essential for intratheater movement or to support landward operations are scarce and underdeveloped. When the islands are not shrouded in thick clouds and mist, they are battered by shrieking winds, driving snow, and freezing rain. Not even trees grow in the Aleutians. Despite these daunting conditions, neither the United States nor Japan discounted the possibility that the other side might make strategic use of the Aleutians in a war.  

Preparing Alaska for War
Although the Aleutians’ strategic linkage to control of the North Pacific was generally understood, little was done to protect the archipelago until war loomed. In 1938, Congress appropriated nineteen$19 million dollars for the construction of air, submarine, and destroyer bases in Alaska but few military forces were assigned until after the war began in Europe.1 The only military presence in the Aleutians themselves was a Navy radio station and a small Coast Guard base at Dutch Harbor on Unalaska Island.2  In early 1940, the War Department developed plans to increase the Army garrison in Alaska, establish a major Army base near Anchorage, develop a network of airfields across Alaska, and provide troops to protect the naval installations at Dutch Harbor, Sitka, and Kodiak.3 The 750-soldier-strong Alaska Defense Force was created in July 1940 under the command of the energetic and flamboyant Brigadier General Simon B. Buckner of, the US Army. The remoteness of the proposed base locations, poor weather, and the lack of existing transportation infrastructure delayed progress on these plans until mid-1941—though Buckner spared no effort in tackling the myriad of tasks before him.4

Buckner was emphatic that Japan not be allowed to gain an expeditionary lodgment anywhere in Alaska from which they could launch air and naval operations across the North Pacific.5 He focused on defensive preparations, but remained convinced of Alaska’s offensive potential, believing the Aleutian Chain formed a “spear pointing straight at the heart of Japan.”6 He traveled throughout the archipelago identifying every island where an airfield could be built:  Umnak, Adak, Amchitka, Kiska, Shemya, and Attu. Before the war’s end, all would host advanced air bases with semi-autonomous garrisons to support maritime reconnaissance and offensive air operations.7 

Japan’s North Pacific Gambit  
Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese Imperial High Command commenced a war of conquest to establish its long-desired Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. By late April 1942, Japan had swept aside Allied power and seized strategic terrain across the Pacific at the cost of nothing larger than a destroyer.88 The elated Japanese High Command chose to capitalize on this momentum and press on to New Guinea and the Solomon Islands to set conditions for an invasion of Australia. 

Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the architect of the Pearl Harbor attack, respected American industrial capacity enough to know that time was not on Japan’s side. He believed their only hope for victory lay in keeping America on the defensive while striking a decisive blow against what remained of the U.S. Pacific Fleet—principally its aircraft carriers—while Japan still had the advantage.9 Such a victory might compel Washington to recognize Japan’s expanded empire and negotiate an end to the war. To this end, he sought to draw the American fleet from Hawaii into the Central Pacific where it could be destroyed by Japanese air power. To lure in the American carriers, Yamamoto developed an ambitious plan to seize Midway and conduct diversionary attacks in the western Aleutians. From Midway, he could project enough land-based air power to form a protective barrier for Japan straddling the North and Central Pacific.  

Japan’s Aleutian operation was intended to capture or destroy “points of strategic interest” in the Aleutians and check further U.S. naval and air movements from the north.10 Interestingly, this was not the first time the Aleutians had been identified by Japan as key maritime terrain. Just a year earlier, the Japanese Army had proposed a plan to sever U.S. and Soviet lines of communication by seizing some portion of the Aleutians. Moreover, from a strategically defensive perspective, Japanese planners saw the Aleutians as a potential northern axis of advance on Japan well before the United States had developed the capability to use them as such. After the bombing raid on Tokyo by Lieutenant ColonelLtCol James Doolittle in April 1942, some on the Imperial Staff suspected his B-25 Mitchell bombers had originated from a secret base in the western Aleutians.11

Japan Seizes Key Maritime Terrain
On 5 May 1942, Japanese Imperial General Headquarters issued Navy Order 18 to capture Midway as well as the islands of Attu and Kiska in the western Aleutians. It also directed an air attack on the U.S. base at Dutch Harbor, some 200 miles east of Adak. As Yamamoto’s armada set course for Midway, a smaller Northern Area Fleet under Vice Admiral Hoshiro Hosogaya composed of two light aircraft carriers, six cruisers, a dozen destroyers, and various amphibious support vessels moved east from the Kuriles to attack the Aleutians. The element of surprise was crucial, but U.S. success in breaking portions of the Japanese naval code informed Nimitz in mid-May of Yamamoto’s plan. Buckner’s Alaska Defense Command was duly warned as Nimitz prepared to confront both Japanese fleets simultaneously. While three U.S. aircraft carriers converged on Midway, a smaller force—Task Force 8 under Rear Admiral Robert “Fuzzy” Theobald—raced to the North Pacific to defend the Aleutians.

During 34 June, Japanese carrier-based aircraft bombed Dutch Harbor, killing 43 soldiers and sailors, wounding another 64, and damaging infrastructure. The Japanese also destroyed eleven U.S. aircraft while losing ten, including an A6M Zero fighter that U.S. forces recovered largely intact. It was quickly disassembled and shipped to the States, where a complete technical analysis was performed that was later credited with influencing U.S. fighter designs.12 Throughout the two days of attacks on Dutch Harbor, Theobald’s Task Force 8 had remained just south of his headquarters on Kodiak Island, wary of being discovered by Japanese aircraft but frustrated by his inability to locate Hosagaya’s fleet with his PBY Catalina patrol aircraft and help from Eleventh Air Force bombers.

Japan’s crushing defeat at Midway temporarily delayed their planned landings in the Aleutians as the two actions were loosely coupled. However, Yamamoto thought a small naval success would help offset the disaster at Midway, and the defensive value of establishing advanced bases in the western Aleutians remained valid. At the very least, they would bedevil the U.S. Navy’s control of the North Pacific.13 So Yamamoto directed the Attu-Kiska landings to go forward. During 6–7 June, Hosagaya landed 2,500 troops on Kiska and Attu—the first U.S. territory captured by an enemy force since the War of 1812. The landings were effectively unopposed. Once established ashore, Japanese soldiers and sailors set about fortifying positions, building seaplane ramps, and installing antiaircraft batteries. They would later attempt to construct two airfields with little more than hand tools.

America Retaliates
The occupation of Attu and Kiska dealt a serious blow to American prestige. The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff directed that the effort to recapture the islands begin as soon as possible. This operation, the first U.S. counteroffensive of the war (preceding Guadalcanal by two months), required a joint littoral campaign whereby a series of advanced bases would be constructed from east to west along the Aleutian Chain, with airfields suitable for heavy bombers situated close to sheltered harbors. The selection of mutually supporting airfields and harbor sites required close cooperation between the Services— a level of cooperation between the Army and Navy that had heretofore proven difficult.

Unfortunately, a unified theater commander for the Aleutian Campaign was never identified, exacerbating already tense command and personal relationships between Buckner and Theobald. In a rare oversight by Nimitz, the respective commanders of the Alaska Defense Command and North Pacific Force were directed to conduct a joint campaign through “mutual cooperation” and share the use of the Eleventh Air Force. Predictably, Buckner and Theobald were never able to set aside their differences and achieve a productive command relationship based on mutual trust and respect, and halfway through the campaign, Nimitz replaced Theobald.14

The campaign was slow to get organized and gain momentum, but Army and Navy engineers prevailed in unimaginably tough conditions, defying the skeptics, and proving essential to the ultimate success of the campaign.  Meanwhile, the fledgling Eleventh Air Force mounted a sustained long-range bombing campaign while the Navy prowled the fog-shrouded seas searching for Japanese vessels with the electronic eyes of radar.15 The weather was as much an enemy as the Japanese. Shifting winds, squalls, and low clouds made air operations extremely hazardous, while rough seas and limited visibility made the U.S. naval blockade challenging. Japanese Navy submarines were a constant menace, while its destroyers and transport vessels still managed to periodically slip past U.S. air and sea patrols to resupply and reinforce the garrisons. Japanese forces ashore not only survived the bombardments but also, over the course of the campaign, increased their concentration of antiaircraft guns, redistributed forces between Attu and Kiska, reinforced Attu, defended Kiska with seaplane fighters, attacked the new U.S. airbase at Amchitka, and most importantly continued to deny the Americans a northern approach to Japan.16 

Finally, on 4 May 4, 1943, ten months after Japanese forces seized Attu and Kiska, an American amphibious task force set sail from Cold Bay to recapture Attu. Kiska, the closer and more heavily defended of the two occupied islands, was bypassed for the time being.17 Operation LANDCRAB, the assault on Attu, began on 11 May and was spearheaded by the untested 7thth Infantry Division (7thth ID). Intelligence reports estimated Attu to be defended by a force of 1,600, but a successful Japanese reinforcement effort by fast transports and destroyers in early April had clandestinely raised the number of defenders to over 2,600. (18)  

Poor weather and difficult terrain hindered the entire U.S. operation. Dense fog caused at-sea collisions, and mist ashore delayed the multi beachmulti-beach landings and limited the use of naval gunfire. Trucks and artillery pieces became hopelessly mired in the muskeg, causing supplies and ammunition to pile up on the beach and ultimately be carried inland by hand.  

Japanese light infantry occupied carefully prepared defensive positions on high ground that dominated the landing beach exits. Concealed from observers below by a protective mist that hovered a few hundred feet above the landing beaches, the dug-in Japanese soldiers could nevertheless see well enough to deliver deadly accurate fire on American soldiers below as they struggled to advance over the wet, spongy ground. By massing indirect fires, the 7thth ID was eventually able to close on the Japanese defenders from multiple points and drive them into a pocket. The last of the Japanese, some 800 soldiers, ended the battle abruptly on 29 May with a vicious banzai charge that overran several frontline formations and a field hospital inflicting horrific casualties before being stopped by a hastily formed defensive line on a promontory known as Engineer Hill.  

Only 28 Japanese soldiers survived the Battle of Attu. Burial parties counted 2,351 enemy dead on the battlefield with another three hundred found to have been buried earlier by the Japanese.  Of 15,000 Americans in the invasion force (10,000 of whom constituted 7thth ID), 549 were killed and 1,148 wounded in action. Another 2,132 soldiers were evacuated for sickness and severe cold-weather injuries. What was planned as a three-day operation had taken a reinforced infantry division backed by overwhelming air and naval power three weeks to accomplish. The 25-percent casualty rate inflicted on the landing force was only exceeded in the Pacific war at the Battle of Iwo Jima.19

The suddenness and ferocity of the final Japanese banzai charge left a deep impression on one of the few Marines in the Aleutians at the time. Major General MajGen Holland M. “Howlin’ Mad” Smith, who had overseen the amphibious training of the 7thth ID in southern California, was present as an observer during Operation LANDCRAB. After the banzai attack, Smith made a conscious decision to train specifically for such occurrences in the future.20 He would later credit this experience on Attu with his anticipation of both the time and location of the fanatical banzai attack that would occur in the closing days of the Battle of Saipan a little over a year later.21

The Kiska Surprise
With Attu in American hands, preparations for Operation COTTAGE, the amphibious assault on Kiska, shifted into high gear. Intelligence estimates fixed Japan’s Kiska garrison at around 10,000 men. With the painful lessons of Attu still fresh, American commanders assembled a massive invasion force of 35,000 troops (including 5,500 Canadians) and 100 ships at Adak over the next three months. After weeks of preparatory bombing and naval gunfire, the landing took place on 15 August.  It was unopposed. As U.S. and Canadian soldiers ventured inland, they encountered no resistance whatsoever. A cautious but thorough search revealed only abandoned and destroyed Japanese equipment, numerous bunkers, and an extensive network of underground tunnels.  

The news that so large a Japanese force had slipped away undetected despite daily bombing and aerial reconnaissance missions—to say nothing of the vastly superior American armada that encircled the island—was greeted with shock and disbelief by nearly all senior leaders. One notable exception was Major MajGen General “Howlin’ Mad” Smith, who, along with some of his staff, had returned to the Aleutians to direct amphibious training for the landing force. He had no direct role in planning the Kiska invasion but remained in Adak as an observer. For two weeks prior to the landing, Smith studied intelligence reports and aerial imagery of Kiska and, recalling how six months earlier approximately 11,000 Japanese troops had quietly slipped away from Guadalcanal on destroyers at night, concluded that the Japanese had already left the island.22 His call for a small ground-reconnaissance element to scout the island before the landing was rebuffed as too risky by the Army’s landing force commander, Major General Charles Corlett, who dismissed Smith as an interloper and would not even show him the landing plan.23 The decision was ultimately left up to Vice Admiral Thomas Kinkaid, the North Pacific Force commander who had replaced the prickly Theobald months before the Attu operation. Kinkaid considered the risk to the scouts greater than to the landing force and directed that the full-scale invasion proceed as planned, even if it turned out to be, in his words, just a “super dress rehearsal, excellent for training purposes.”24 

Despite the absence of any Japanese defenders, however, the landings proved far more dangerous than a training exercise. Casualties ashore included 21 men killed and 50 wounded either by booby traps or shot by fellow Americans or Canadians, as edgy soldiers fired at each other in the mist, mistaking adjacent comrades for the dreaded Japanese.25 The last and most serious casualties of COTTAGE occurred when a destroyer, the USS Abner Read, had its stern ripped off by a moored mine in Kiska Cove, killing 70 sailors and injuring 47. (26) In his memoirs, Smith called the failure to allow a proper reconnaissance in advance of the landings an act of inexcusable negligence by senior commanders.27 Kiska was declared secure on 24 August 1942. Operation COTTAGE brought the Aleutian Campaign to an anticlimactic but frustrating end. 

Only after the war would Americans learn how a Japanese surface task force, under the command of Rear Admiral Masatomi Kimura, had accomplished the evacuation. Kimura had waited patiently for weeks until weather conditions favored an unobservable approach from Paramushir Island in the Kuriles to Kiska. Navigating by dead reckoning in a tight formation under radio silence, Kimura guided his task force through thick fog for a week to slip quietly into Kiska Bay on the afternoon of 28 July.  Immediately upon anchoring, Kimura’s task force and the Kiska garrison began the evacuation with remarkable precision and efficiency. In less than one hour and again under complete radio silence, the entire Japanese garrison of 5,183 men was transported by landing craft and loaded aboard six destroyers and two cruisers.28 The Japanese aptly described the evacuation as a “perfect operation”; it was undoubtedly one of the most daring and successful evacuations in military history.29 

Echoes of Attu and Kiska in the 21stst Century
While the Aleutian Campaign is rarely examined from the Japanese perspective, the accomplishments and shortcomings of Japan’s forces and methods offer some intriguing lessons and planning considerations for emerging operational concepts such as EABO—particularly in a conflict with a peer adversary such as China. Japan’s operational practices can be instructive for some of the challenges the United States currently faces in the strategic island chains of the Western Pacific. Certainly, the Imperial Japanese Navy’s operational reach, stealth, speed, and tenacity both on and below the surface were critical to the sustainment, mobility, and command and control of Japanese “stand-in forces” conducting a form of EABO in the Aleutians. That Japanese naval forces were able to evade detection, strike Dutch Harbor, seize key maritime terrain, and persist in their advanced Aleutian bases for well over a year was a remarkable feat. The weather conditions naturally helped in this regard. The adverse weather routinely shielded Japan’s most vulnerable assets from American eyes and bombs. At the same time, the Japanese Navy managed to exploit prolonged periods of darkness, fog, and cloud cover to evade U.S. air patrols and run the U.S. Navy’s blockade on several occasions. Japanese successes during the campaign were manifold. They were able to reposition and resupply their forces, deliver reinforcements, conduct seaplane operations, and build a formidable air defense capability. Their evacuation of an entire garrison completely undetected in an incredibly compact time period defies the imagination and remains an unrivaled achievement in the annals of amphibious evacuations under pressure.   

Given the ongoing focus within the Marine Corps on light and mobile “littoral” formations, the effectiveness of the Japanese Army’s landward defense of key littoral terrain is also worth studying. Small numbers of well-trained, dispersed light infantrymen were able to attract considerable attention and impose severe costs on a far larger, multidomain task force after it landed on Attu. The defenders’ resilience and tenacity, despite prolonged isolation and severe conditions, were perhaps their most obvious attributes. These attributes remain relevant today, particularly for an isolated force conducting EABO. During the campaign, the Japanese ability to exploit difficult terrain and turn unique weather conditions into an advantage was equally impressive.  

While it might appear that today’s advanced technologies such as long-range precision fires and unmanned aerial vehicles make comparisons between 1943 and the present (or even the near future) problematic, there are capabilities that remain valid for any outnumbered force defending a salient of key maritime terrain. The tactical value of all-weather, suppressive fires; anti-invasion obstacles; antiship weapons; air defense; and over-the-horizon reconnaissance assets is clear; these are enduring requirements for the defense of EABs. Stand-in forces operating inside an enemy’s weapons engagement zone may also require the ability to perform heavy engineering tasks to rapidly build airfields to project power and fortifications to survive sustained attacks. Furthermore, a force executing EABO that can organically emplace maritime sensors and undersea effectors (e.g., sea mines and decoys) to interdict enemy surface and subsurface vessels around vital, littoral chokepoints can contribute asymmetrically to sea denial with virtually no signature. Bringing such effects to bear requires a deep and modular inventory of maritime capabilities from across the naval force to build balanced or specialized task organizations as required.  

In many ways, this depth in capabilities was the decisive American strength that eluded the Japanese, who were unable to complete even a single airfield during their year-long occupation of two Aleutian islandsAleutian Islands. Yet their ability to construct fortifications and tunnels dramatically improved their ability to survive bombardments requiring a sizable landing force to dislodge them from the advanced bases they had established. Had their diligence and determination been complemented by such capabilities as long-range radar and engineering, the Japanese would likely have been able to build and operate airfields which would have delayed both U.S. amphibious assaults for many months.

Conclusion
The impact of Japanese forces landing on American soil reverberated all the way to Washington. The political pressure to clear two Aleutian islandsAleutian Islands of fewer than 8,000 Japanese troops drained substantial resources at a dangerous time for the global Allied war effort. The Japanese achieved disproportionate effects against U.S. forces whose strategic objective became increasingly shaped more by emotional sentiment than reasoned assessment. Even when the actual invasion threat to the North American mainland was determined to be minimal, Washington had no strategic patience for any course of action that failed to yield a decisive tactical defeat of Japanese forces in the Aleutians. Thus, the United States adopted an attrition-centric operational approach that culminated in the costly recapture of Attu and, unknowingly, the embarrassing amphibious assault on Kiska nearly three weeks after the Japanese had departed.  

In the end, the 15-month campaign drew in over 300,000 Americans, thousands of aircraft, and hundreds of warships, transports, and merchantmen. It also necessitated an immense diversion of military engineering resources to build dozens of U.S. bases and supporting infrastructure where none previously existed—including the 1,640-mile Alaskan Highway across Canada to link the “Lower 48” with Alaska. The heavy commitment of manpower to the North Pacific disrupted mobilization plans and delayed global force deployments to primary theaters for nearly two years. It also forced the U.S. to pour billions of dollars of materiel into a physically taxing and dangerous theater that in the end contributed very little to defeating Japan and hastening the war’s end.  

The phenomena and interactions just described will likely be a feature of future wars and again prompt disproportionate, unnecessary, and even reckless decisions by distant political leaders seeking immediate results. The Aleutian Campaign case suggests that, in addition to contributing to sea denial, stand-in forces executing EABO can generate strategic effects by forcing an adversary to divert substantial resources from principal objectives to honor or neutralize the threat the stand-in forces appear to pose. Whether they can succeed in this regard will depend on their location and their attributes. Do they pose a credible and durable threat? Are they resilient, tenacious, stealthy, and survivable? Now, as then, the value of stand-in forces in the face of a regional hegemon will likely be tested. Whether they stand and fight, or slip away in the night, may once again be more a matter of strategy than tactics.

>Col Sinclair retired in 2018 after 30 years on active duty. He is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Emerging Threats and Opportunities at the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory.

 

Notes

1. Stetson Conn, The Guarding of United States and its Outposts, US Army in World War II Series: The Western Hemisphere (Washington, DC: Department of the Army, 1964).

2. Brian Garfield, The Thousand Mile War (Fairbanks, AK: University of Alaska Press, 1969).

3. Guarding of United States.

4. The Alaska Highway was not completed until November 1942. In 1940, there was only one government rail line between Seward and Fairbanks by way of Anchorage.

5. Guarding of United States.

6. Thousand Mile War.

7. Ibid.

8. Ibid.

9. Galen Roger Perras, Stepping Stones to Nowhere: The Aleutian Islands, Alaska, and American Military Strategy, 1867-1945 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2003).

10. Ibid.

11. Japanese Navy General Staff, “Aleutian Naval Operation, March 1942–February 1943,” Japanese Monograph No. 88, trans. Military Intelligence Service Group, G2, Headquarters, Far East Command (monograph, US Department of the Army, n.d.), http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/Japan/Monos/pdfs/JM-88_AleutianNavalOperations/JM-88.htm.

12. George L. MacGarrigle, Aleutian Islands, Center for Military History Pub 72-6, (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1992).

13. Guarding of United States.

14. Thousand Mile War.

15. Attu is 350 miles west of Kiska and was initially out of range.

16. Thousand Mile War.

17. Although Kiska was smaller, it was the more militarily important of the two islands with a much larger Japanese force. Attu was selected first both to gain valuable experience and because the number of available amphibious ships could not accommodate a multi-division landing force as was deemed necessary for Kiska.

18. Thousand Mile War.

19. Ibid.

20. Norman V. Cooper, A Fighting General (Quantico, VA: Marine Corps Association, 1987).

21. Holland M. Smith, Coral and Brass (Nashville, TN: The Battery Press, 1989).

22. Thousand Mile War.

23. Fighting General.

24. Thousand Mile War.

25. Ibid.

26. Aleutian Islands.

27. Coral and Brass.

28. Thousand Mile War.

29. Masataka Chihaya, “Mysterious Withdrawal from Kiska,” Proceedings 84, No. 2 (1958).

General Alfred M. Gray, Jr – Warfighting Innovator

A profile view of General Alfred Gray Jr.

The Marine Corps lost one of its great and visionary leaders on 20 March 2024. In the many public eulogies that marked Gen Alfred M. Gray’s passing there were three aspects of his life and career that stood out: his leadership, his focus on combat readiness, and his role in promoting maneuver warfare and the creation of FMFM 1, Warfighting. This article focuses on the latter aspect, Gen Gray’s achievements as a warfighting innovator. His contributions in this role both deserve explanation and illuminate many of his other merits worthy of emulation today. 

Of the many models of military innovation presented by political scientists and historians, several highlight the importance of mavericks with new radical ideas and senior officer “champions” who protect them.1 Gen Gray’s greatest contributions to the adoption of maneuver warfare by the Marine Corps are not that he was an early adopter, or even that he served as the champion who fostered and promoted maverick innovators (though both of these are true). Instead, it was his genius for blending traditional Marine Corps values with unconventional ideas throughout his career. Gene Gray advanced bold new ideas and programs again and again over his decades of service, but was simultaneously a traditional leader of Marines who embraced the Corps’ customary expectations. “Al” Gray had a keen intellect and an open mindedness that helped him appreciate the importance of a new way of thinking about warfare but he also had unimpeachable credibility as a warrior and leader of Marines. This allowed him to blend the new ideas with the Corps’ traditional values, and in the process foster a fundamentally different approach to war for the Marine Corps.  

Background
Born in Rahway, New Jersey, in 1928, Alfred M. Gray, Jr. studied at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania for more than two years before the Korean War broke out, prompting him to enlist in the Marine Corps. He served in Korea as a sergeant in an amphibious reconnaissance unit and was selected for a commission in 1952. After training as an artillery officer, he returned to combat in Korea with the 11th Marines and then extended to serve as an infantry officer with 7th Marines. Even in the earliest years of his career, Lt Gray demonstrated not only strong leadership but also uncommon versatility. 

In the years following the end of open hostilities in Korea, Lt Gray was involved in several assignments relating to special operations and intelligence. He attended Communications Officer School and was then assigned to one of the Marine Corps’ first Cold War signals intelligence and cryptological efforts. Gray received linguistics training in several East Asian languages and spent the next five years in assignments focused on communications intelligence in the Western Pacific, including activating the 1st Composite Radio Company in Hawaii. His growing expertise in signals intelligence then led to command of a signals intelligence detachment supporting Headquarters Marine Corps, and he used this position to advocate for Marine linguistics and cryptological capabilities.

By the time Al Gray ended his first decade of commissioned service, he had repeatedly succeeded in positions creating new organizations and developing new techniques and tactics. He developed deep expertise in a field that focused on gaining insight into an adversary’s mind and routinely engaged in competition in the information domain. His talent for linguistics, which involves cultural aspects of communications, also indicated great flexibility of mind and perspective. For the East Asian languages and the military subjects on which he focused, this would include an appreciation for deception, indirect approaches, and stratagem. Long before Al Gray was exposed to the concept of maneuver warfare, he came to appreciate ideas that would be among its central tenets. 

Vietnam War experience figures prominently in the reasons many Marines took an interest in maneuver warfare. Gray’s first assignment in Vietnam began at the very start of the conflict, in 1964 as a major in charge of Marine Detachment, Advisory Team 1, the first Marine ground unit in Vietnam. After leading this unit in its sensitive intelligence-gathering missions, Gray extended his tour in Vietnam, returning to the artillery as a staff officer and aerial observer in the 12th Marines. After a brief respite, Al Gray returned to Vietnam in 1967, commanding an artillery-heavy task force along the Demilitarized Zone, followed by command of 1st Radio Battalion. In the latter role, one where it was important for Gray to advocate for intelligence-driven operations at the Marine Amphibious Force headquarters, LtCol Gray continued to distinguish himself as a “Marines Marine,” often going forward to ensure his Marines knew he understood their hardships. Although Al Gray’s next assignments were in the United States, leveraging his unique expertise in intelligence matters, he was not pigeonholed as a specialist. He went on to command an infantry battalion and regiment, then Col Gray commanded the 33d Marime Amphibious Unit and served as Deputy Commander of the 9th Marine Amphibious Brigade, returning to Vietnam in 1975 as the on-scene commander of the amphibious task force for the final evacuation of Saigon. By the end of the Vietnam War, Col Gray was a leader with broad experience in warfare and who appreciated the fundamental complexity and unpredictability of war. He understood the value of outsmarting one’s enemy rather than seeing war as a simple contest to find, fix, and finish the enemy with maneuver and supporting arms. It was this appreciation, one founded in a certain way of thinking about war, which primed him to see value in unorthodox ideas being expressed by some defense reformers he would soon encounter, William S. Lind and John Boyd. 

Exposure to Unconventional People and Ideas
Gray’s contact with Lind and Boyd came early in the time when they were each forming radical new ideas. In the spring of 1976, Lind, a reform-minded Congressional staffer, was engaged in a critique of a new U.S. Army doctrine he considered too static to succeed in the face of the Warsaw Pact’s numerical superiority in Europe. Lind thought a better answer lay in the German way of war, emphasizing mobility, aggressive action, and independence of action for capable commanders. To help his audience understand his argument, Lind created a model which contrasted the traditional American way of war based on firepower and attrition, with what he called “maneuver doctrine,” a style that emphasized disruptive mobility over firepower. It is clear in the definitions Lind offered at the time that he was explaining what is now known of as attrition warfare and maneuver warfare.2  It is also clear that in the same months Lind began making this argument, he encountered BGen Gray and considered Gray receptive to his new ideas.3 Soon after, as the head of the Development Center in Quantico, Al Gray was overseeing Marine Corps experimentation with mechanization and became an advocate for the Marine Corps to adopt the Light Armored Vehicle, a program that benefitted from Lind’s political influence. 

Gen Gray also took a great interest in John Boyd’s work, sitting through his lengthy “Patterns of Conflict” briefing several times through the years when Boyd was incorporating his own ideas on “maneuver conflict.”4 It is likely Gray was not just impressed by Boyd’s description of maneuver conflict, or even the OODA Loop, for which Boyd later became famous. The deeper message in Boyd’s briefing was a product of his own deep interest in Eastern ways of thinking, to include Taoism and Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. Boyd’s central argument in “Patterns of Conflict” was that success in war required leaders to appreciate its fundamentally unpredictable nature and adapt faster than their enemies. Boyd saw Variety, Rapidity, Harmony, and Initiative as the critical qualities needed to achieve victory, ideally by disrupting an adversary in the moral and mental domains, rather than by focusing on simple physical destruction. 

Gray was attracted to the ideas of these two outsiders to the Marine Corps because they comported with his own sense of and experience in war. He saw enough value in Lind’s and Boyd’s unconventional views to overlook the idiosyncrasies of the abrasive political operative and the retired Air Force fighter pilot considered a loose cannon by his own Service. Other Marines were less interested in looking past these eccentric personalities, especially in the case of Lind, who came across as a pedantic know-it-all despite his lack of military experience, and who used his political influence to push unwilling military organizations to change. 

Patron of the Maneuver Warfare Movement
As the Marine Corps lost interest in mechanization on a large scale, Bill Lind turned his efforts toward getting Marines to understand and adopt his broader notions of maneuver warfare. Part of this took place in the pages of the Marine Corps Gazette, but Lind also worked closely with the Chief of Tactics at the Amphibious Warfare School (AWS), LtCol Micheal Wyly. Together they began fleshing out ideas about maneuver warfare and how to teach it. Wyly began to include these ideas in AWS’s curriculum, while Lind held an elective seminar where he was able to both shape and learn from some of the most eager students. 

For all the hard work that was accomplished at AWS, in 1981 the idea of maneuver warfare was still largely theoretical. Some supporting concepts had been worked out but remained unproven. This began to change that summer when MajGen Gray assumed command of the 2nd Marine Division. He immediately set out to make his division a place for experimenting with the new ideas and formed a panel of officers to collaborate, evaluate training, and make recommendations.5 Many members of this Maneuver Warfare Board were recent graduates of AWS and Lind’s elective seminar. Assignment to the board empowered the younger officers to steer the division and its activities according to what they had learned, with Gray serving as the driving force for getting their ideas implemented. A series of exercises were held to test and refine the new ideas, yielding insights into the core warfighting functions of intelligence, maneuver, fires, and command and control. The exercises also revealed many other aspects of operations that would need to be adjusted for the new approach, including general logistics, maintenance, and even food service.6 Another important product of this experimentation was the conversion of skeptics. After seeing the new concepts and tactics in action in free-play training, some began to appreciate just how effective they could be.  

An intense debate had begun in the pages of the Gazette, sparked by Lind’s initial efforts to explain maneuver warfare in 1980. It expanded and intensified as Marines were exposed to the new ideas in the field, in conversation, and in what they were reading. Some questioned the origin of the new ideas, arguing that the Marine Corps had little to learn from the Germans, who lost two world wars. Some also questioned whether the Corps should accept the advice of a civilian like Lind, whose pointed critiques of the officer corps were meant to provoke reform, but alienated many. Some debated the meaning of the ideas behind maneuver warfare, which were not well understood. Maneuver warfare called for a decentralized approach to command and control, and while some Marines recognized the dangers of micromanaging tactics in combat, others saw the notion of decentralization as a threat to discipline in the Marine Corps. Another major issue was the idea of attempting to disrupt an enemy rather than making direct attacks. To many, this suggested that the maneuver warfare advocates were making impossible promises of bloodless victories. In a Corps which embraced order and took pride in its heritage of prevailing in combat against impossible odds, maneuver warfare concepts provoked deep-seated cultural resistance, especially when they were misunderstood. 

As the debate raged through its first five years, Gen Gray did not contribute to it in the pages of the Gazette. He certainly saw value in the ideas expressed there, for he made several of those articles required reading within the 2nd Marine Division. When he did make public statements about maneuver warfare, though, Gray downplayed the conflict. For example, he described it as “a style that many Marines have employed over the years” and “at the conceptual core of some of our most successful amphibious operations,” citing the Pacific campaigns of World War II and Inchon landing in Korea.7 Even as he remained sensitive to the cultural objections and the suspicion Marines showed towards offensive outsiders like Lind, Gen Gray refused to dissociate himself from the most polarizing personalities. He invited Boyd to deliver his “Patterns of Conflict” briefing to the division’s officers, though many found his ideas too strange to be understood. Gray also employed Lind as a consultant to his Maneuver Warfare Board and invited Lind to observe the maneuver warfare exercises. And when Lind alienated many Marines during these events with his sometimes-outlandish dress, unmilitary appearance, and abrasive comments, Gen Gray still empowered him as an honored guest. At a debrief with the division’s officers at the end of one such exercise, Gen Gray passed up his own opportunity to speak and turned the microphone over to Lind. Some officers were shocked by the brutally critical analysis of an outsider expressing new ideas rather than listening to their commanders cite doctrine to justify their actions in the exercise. Others were intrigued. Al Gray created this experience because it was consistent with his understanding of war. As he summarized, “Above all else we try to orient our training upon the cultivation of the attitude that the only thing certain on the battlefield will be the uncertain—the unexpected. We train them to expect to find no recipes or formulas which will guarantee success in battle.”8 

An important reason why Gen Gray was able to associate himself with such controversial figures is because he kept the end state clear—to challenge Marines to be open to new ideas if it could mean an increase in combat readiness. His ability to do this was a product of his reputation as a proven combat leader, and the warrior image he cultivated. Indeed, though it is unlikely that Gen Gray coined the term “warfighting,” it was clear by this time that warfighting had become his “brand.” Gray’s unimpeachable credibility as a warrior enabled him to be a patron to two highly iconoclastic outsiders and to like-minded Marines. 

In August 1984, Gray, after an unusually long three-year period in command of the 2nd Marine Division, was advanced to command of II Marine Expeditionary Force and a third star. He held that post three more years, enabling him continue progress with maneuver warfare at the head of his “Carolina MAGTF.” During this time, however, the debate over maneuver warfare became much more polarized. In 1985, the conversations which had flourished in the pages of the Marine Corps Gazette swiftly dropped off, likely because the Commandant began to show displeasure with those associated with the maneuver warfare movement. This was not a matter of simple conservatism. It was at least partially, if not mostly, motivated by public attacks made upon the Marine Corps and the Commandant himself. Most vocal among the critics was Bill Lind, and the directness and harshness of his critique made many officers think twice before they were willing to publicly associate with his ideas.9 Gray was clearly the most senior officer associated with the maneuver warfare movement, but wisely continued to quietly promote maneuver warfare within II MEF, rather than joining the controversy surrounding the man who had been a trusted agent. Time would show, however, that Gray could continue to overlook Lind’s abrasive tactics and employ him to good effect. 

The decisive event for the maneuver warfare movement in the Marine Corps was Gen Gray’s selection as Commandant. Despite Al Gray’s considerable achievements, this was an unlikely outcome that only happened because of a radical intervention. LtGen Gray was considered a Washington outsider without strong political experience, having spent the last six years in the FMF. He was not on the initial list of finalists to succeed Gen P.X. Kelley in the summer of 1987, and he was approaching his statutory retirement date in that rank. Gray had applied and been approved for retirement. What changed everything was the sudden appointment of a new Secretary of the Navy, James Webb, a former Marine and highly decorated combat veteran of the Vietnam War. Al Gray was Webb’s first choice for the job, though it is unlikely that Webb selected Gray with the intention of promoting maneuver warfare. Webb himself had been a harsh critic of military ideas being advanced by civilian academics and saw Lind as the prime example.10 Instead, Webb was looking for a Commandant who would restore the Marine Corps’ reputation and military ethos in the wake of several scandals. In true Marine fashion, Webb believed it was important to appoint the right man and then give him the latitude to take charge according to his own best judgment. In this case, Gen Gray’s leadership credibility and central focus on combat readiness also brought an entirely new way of thinking that would become synonymous with Gray’s brand, Warfighting. 

Promoting Fundamental Change as Commandant
When Gen Gray became Commandant of the Marine Corps on 1 July 1987, it was widely understood within the Corps that the manueverists had won, and maneuver warfare would be the new doctrine by which Marines would fight. Gen Gray undoubtedly understood the degree of division over the topic and did not start by simply imposing a new doctrine, as he had when he took command of the 2nd Marine Division. As Commandant he made no overt move to promote maneuver warfare at first, avoiding mention of the topic in his speeches for the first four months. Instead, he used those early speeches to show it was his priority to reform the culture of the Marine Corps around the image of the warrior and to improve training and education. The organizational changes he placed the most emphasis on were the consolidation of force generation activities in a new organization, the Marine Corps Combat Development Command, and the institutionalization of a new professional military education program in what would become the Marine Corps University. Gen Gray did not get around to the project of developing a new doctrine until the fall of 1988, more than a year into his four-year term as Commandant.   

Gen Gray was, of course, widely associated with the maneuver warfare movement. As soon as it was clear Gray would be Commandant, doctrine writers began to insert ideas associated with maneuver warfare into their work. Their efforts lacked cohesion, however, for the additions were not consistent with the existing doctrine, which lacked a central focusing element. Gray understood that establishing maneuver warfare as the basis for all Marine Corps doctrine would require an altogether new foundation, a cornerstone publication that defined a particular way of thinking about war. To ensure its coherency, Gray wanted a single author and carefully selected a young captain named John Schmitt, a former member of the Light Armored Vehicle battalion in his 2nd Marine Division. Though Schmitt had the latitude to consult whoever he wanted while working on the project, he answered only to the Commandant. The final result justified Gray’s approach and confidence in the author he had selected. Fleet Marine Force Manual 1 was unique among Service doctrines in that it prescribed a way of thinking about war and essential qualities the Marines Corps needed to embrace, rather than defining specific actions. In this respect, it very much reflected the Eastern ways of thinking that Gen Gray had come to embrace throughout his career. 

Though the new doctrine was not published until almost two years into GenGray’s commandancy, his other initiatives to include manpower, training, and education, were all undergirded by the philosophy that would ultimately be expressed in FMFM 1. All of these efforts were energized and focused by Ge Gray’s warrior brand, which he imparted to the new doctrine by titling it Warfighting. Once it was published, FMFM 1 imparted greater focus and ensured a deeper level of engagement across the Corps, with Gen Gray charging his Marines to “read and reread” it.11 With the book written, however, much work remained, and Gray continued to employ the eccentric outsiders who had helped develop the new ideas. Boyd lectured in Quantico and Lind was sent to more distant stations, observing and reporting back as Gen Gray’s “directed telescope.” 

Conclusion
Gen Gray has been described as the product champion for maneuver warfare, but he was not merely that. He was deeply involved over an extended period and sought to instill in his Marines a fundamentally new way of thinking about war that would undergird all their efforts in war in peace. As radical as these ideas and the changes they involved were, Al Gray was no maverick, either. He personified Marine ideals of combat leadership and a Spartan focus on combat readiness, and it was exactly his commitment to this warrior ethos that enabled him to simultaneously promote new ideas and change. Gen Gray remains an inspiration to today’s Marines not just for his leadership but also for his distinctive ability to blend new ways of thinking with traditional values and his willingness to personally invest in promoting unconventional people and ideas.   

>Dr. Shawn Callahan is the Director of Marine Corps History DivisionHe retired from the Marine Corps as a lieutenant colonel in 2014, and worked as an educator at Marine Corps University for a decade before assuming his current position. 

Notes

1. See, for example, Stephen Peter Rosen, Winning the Next War: Innovation and the Modern Military (New York: Cornell University Press, 1991).

2. William S. Lind, “DRAFT, Some Questions for TRADOC,” unpublished draft, William S. Lind Papers, Collection 4939, Box 32, Unnumbered and unlabeled brown folder, Marine Corps Archives, Quantico, Virginia, 13.

3. William S. Lind, Letter to Major General F.E. Haynes, Jr., June 9, 1976, William S. Lind Papers, Collection 4939, Box 6, No Folder. Marine Corps Archives. Quantico, Virginia, 2.

4. Ian Brown, A New Conception of War: John Boyd, The U.S. Marines, and Maneuver Warfare (Quantico, VA: Marine Corps University Press, 2018).

5. U.S. Marine Corps, “Maneuver Warfare,” newsletter, undated. Camp Lejeune, North Carolina: 2d Marine Division Maneuver Warfare Board. William S. Lind Papers, Collection 4939. Box 15, Folder 6. Marine Corps Archives, 1.

6. P.R. Puckett, “MCCRES,” Marine Corps Gazette 65, No. 12 (1981), 13; G.I. Wilson, “Maneuver/Fluid Warfare: A Review of the Concepts,” Marine Corps Gazette 66, No. 1 (1982); and P.J. Klepper II, “Food Service and Maneuver Warfare,” Marine Corps Gazette 66, No. 1 (January 1982).

7. John C. Scharfen, “Tactics ad Theory: An Interview with Major General Alfred M. Gray, Jr.,” Amphibious Warfare Review 2, No. 1 (July 1984).

8. Ibid.

9. William S. Lind and Jeffrey Record, “The Marines’ Brass Is Winning Its Battle But Losing the Corps,” The Washington Post, July 28, 1985, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1985/07/28/the-marines-brass-is-winning-the-battle-but-losing-the-corps/7e1d1c1e-c8d7-42fe-a0d1-52b14b670e3d/.

10. James H. Webb, Jr. “Military Competence,” speech, San Francisco, CA, August 28, 1986, Military Competence, http://www.jameswebb.com/speeches-by-jim/military-competence.

11. Headquarters Marine Corps, FMFM 1, Warfighting, (Washington DC: 1989).

The Operational Level of War Does Not Exist

Observation from OIF and OEF

During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, I served on what was then the Marine Corps Combat Development Command’s Combat Assessment Team. There was a sense of urgency in gathering campaign lessons learned and the team members of the team were imbedded in staffs across the MEF. We contributed as part of the staff during the day and captured observations at night. When Baghdad fell and I MEF was re-deployed home, we spent a couple of months synthesizing what we had learned into something that would hopefully be helpful for future fights. 

Our observations were focused on tactical lessons learned. The Marine Corps, after all, fights at the tactical level. Although I spent a lot of time studying and thinking about the operational level of war, my perspective has shifted, and I now argue the operational level of war does not exist.  It is a construct (and not a useful one) for warfighting, justifying, in the wake of Goldwater-Nichols, general officer positions and massive supporting staff. Every staff, from combatant commanders through joint task forces, and functional component commanders, to the MEF claims to fight at the operational level of war. 

These “operational-level staffs” create a massive demand for tactical information from those doing the actual fighting while diffusing authority, responsibility, and accountability. Accountability and responsibility are vital in war, and it is critical to know who is empowered to make decisions.  He who makes decisions in war is responsible for strategy, and I am not certain our current organizational constructs make it clear who is in charge.   

As a related aside, it should be troubling to recognize the United States won World War II with fewer than a dozen four-star admirals and generals leading sixteen million men and women in uniform. The nature of war has not changed even though its character has evolved with technology. We are creatures of our technology, however, and one could argue war’s complexity has not necessarily become more difficult to manage. Today, we have forty-three four-star admirals and generals, and our win-loss record is not great. I thought the Information Age was supposed to flatten organizations. 

A tactical observation made, but perhaps not captured, by the Iraqi Freedom Combat Assessment Team was the failure in Phase IV planning. Phase IV was the phase that would follow the conclusion of combat operations. To say the Phase IV plan for I MEF was opaque would be charitable. Honestly, though I MEF planners were not negligent, they received no direction from the combined forces land Component commander or from anyone else.   

Arguably, the reason there was no direction for Phase IV is there was no strategic goal for the U.S. war in Iraq for which Operation IRAQI FREEDOM was the opening campaign. There were vague goals surrounding finding weapons of mass destruction. Also, suggestions of ties between the Iraqis and the events of 11 September and after the initial campaign the shift from finding weapons of mass destruction to regime change continued to add ambiguity to our strategic goals. What was to come after regime change? What was the overarching U.S. strategic goal in Iraq? We did not have one. 

We did not have a strategic goal or a strategy in Afghanistan either; if we did, it was a bad strategy. In hindsight, Afghanistan should have been a punitive expedition with the goal of punishing those responsible for the 11 September attacks and those who provided them refuge. The United States had a worldwide charter of approval for a punitive expedition, after which U.S. forces should have been withdrawn.   

On 18 August 2021, following the debacle that was the withdrawal of U.S. forces, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen Berger, wrote a letter to Marines who had served in Afghanistan. He said,  

You fought to defend your country, your family, your friends, and your neighbors. You fought to prevent terror from returning to our shores. You fought for the liberty of young Afghan girls, women, boys, and men who want the same individual freedoms we enjoy as Americans. You fought for the Marine to your left and the Marine to your right. You never let them down. 

All of this is true, all of it is noble, and all of it is truly laudable and reflects the values of Marines and the Marine Corps. But through it all, one must wonder, what was the U.S. strategic goal in Afghanistan? Were Marines fighting for the liberty of young Afghan girls, women, boys, and men? Is that the goal for which we invested more than twenty years’ worth of effort and national treasure? 

A popular saying in the wake of the U.S. loss in Vietnam was that we won all the battles and lost the war. We dominated tactically and lost strategically. After Vietnam and through the 1980s, the Marine Corps, the Army, and the Nation writ large went through a catharsis of sorts, working to understand the failure and how to avoid the same again. One of the products of this work was what became known as the Weinberger Doctrine, which amounted to a list of questions and pre-conditions to be met before committing U.S. forces to conflict. The Weinberger Doctrine to many appeared quaint and inapplicable in the “changed world” of 2002. I would argue the tenants of the Weinberger Doctrine were applicable then and are just as applicable now.   

From my vantage point, there has been no effort comparable to post-Vietnam in understanding the failures of Afghanistan and Iraq. The focus has shifted to China and for the Marine Corps, Force Design 2030, kind of like a “whew, I’m glad that’s over, we need to get ready for what’s next.” I hope, at minimum, work has been done, as was done in 2003 to capture tactical lessons learned for the Marine Corps. Those lessons have immediate value and importance.   

So, why is this important to the Marine Corps and readers of the Marine Corps Gazette to think about strategy? Because many of the Marines reading the Gazette today will soon find themselves in the position of shaping national strategy. But our national strategy for Afghanistan and Iraq was the responsibility of our Nation’s civil leadership, right? A cornerstone of our constitutional republic is civil control of the military, they define our national goals. The military supports the national strategy.   

All of this is true, but at the same time, nobody in the Nation understands conflict and security better than those in uniform. The Nation invests in cultivating this knowledge and should be able, when necessary, to harvest the fruit. Senior military leadership has spent decades in uniform, in operational roles, in supporting roles, and attending schools. By the time these leaders arrive at the pinnacle of their careers, none of the civilians they support and advise can hold a candle to their training, education, and experience in matters of national security. 

Moreover, throughout their careers Army and Marine leaders at least learned the importance of well-defined goals for tactical-level operations. They recognize tactical goals are the pinnacle of a pyramid resting on the foundational layer of strategy and strategic goals. As was seen by I MEF in 2003 during phase IV planning, tactical goals are impossible to divine absent strategic guidance.    

This begs the question, why were we conducting military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan without defined strategic goals military forces were fighting to achieve? If we did have a strategy, why did we fail to attain our goal? Why, when former Commandant, Gen Berger penned his letter to the Marines, was he unable to point to or mention what had been achieved or not achieved in terms of worthy and defined strategic aims? Why is there an after-the-fact questioning by many Americans of why we were even in Afghanistan, countered by vague assertions, with foundations of support resting in the shifting sand of assumptions of it being better to fight potential terrorists abroad rather than at home?   

Developing strategic goals implies the need for political consensus and approval. This means Congressional approval. In both conflicts, the use of force was authorized by Congress for initial operations, but there was little to no Congressional oversight focused on validating or shifting strategic goals in subsequent years of these long wars. There are many reasons for this lack of oversight. 

Strategy is not stagnant nor is strategy limited to planning. Developing plans is merely the first step of strategy, the most important part being the identification of the strategic goal, followed by a reconciliation of that goal with means and ways. Strategy continues beyond planning, however, with an endless series of decisions, adjusting to the changing reality to attain the goal. With each decision comes another round of reconciling means and ways to ensure they remain sufficient and feasible.   

Perhaps, with so few members of Congress having prior military experience, there was a dearth of understanding of the requirement for continuous oversight. Perhaps Congress simply trusted the military and State Department with the mission. Perhaps there was Congressional consensus, spoken or unspoken, for the need to project unity in the face of conflict. Perhaps political discussions of strategic goals were intentionally avoided precisely because doing so would create unwelcome controversy. It certainly is easier to simply approve generous annual appropriations to continue tactical actions than it is to wrestle in strategic discussions.       

The various war colleges are the capstone educational experience for officers. Much time is devoted to the discussion and understanding of civil-military relations. These institutions are probably one of the best venues to at least begin discussions on what has gone wrong in recent conflicts with the goal of improvement. While these discussions would make interesting non-attributional fodder for lectures and seminars, something formal and attributional resulting in a product with recommendations would better serve the Nation’s needs. 

Two questions that should be explored are what was the relationship between senior military officers and civil leadership from 2001 to 2021 and was it sufficient? In the over twenty years of conflict, no senior military officer ever spoke publicly with real misgivings in either conflict. Was this because of misplaced confidence in the status of ongoing operations?   

If this is the case, our armed services have a training and educational shortfall that precludes leaders from accurately assessing conflict. In July and August 2021, most civilians with common sense recognized the looming disaster in Afghanistan. It is puzzling to hear assertions that military leadership saw no warnings and indicators of imminent collapse.     

There would be true value when those who participated in Iraq and Afghanistan were available to examine these questions and to determine why we keep failing to get our strategy right. It would be valuable to re-consider the roles of military leadership in determining strategy in conflict. It may be of value to re-consider our organizational constructs. Is the geographic combatant commander and associated joint task forces construct still appropriate and are they effective?   

We should ask strategic questions today about the fighting in Ukraine. While U.S. troops do not appear to be overtly committed, the United States is nonetheless supporting tactical actions, committing resources totaling more than three times the Marine Corps annual appropriation, without clearly articulated strategic goals. We hear platitudes of “defending democracy” or dubious assertions we need to stop Putin from his plans to conquer all of Europe—but no real strategic goals. 

As noted, military leadership has more experience and qualifications than anyone else in understanding how to best shape our Nation’s strategy during conflict. Understanding how our strategy became insufficient in Iraq and Afghanistan and how it remains insufficient in Ukraine is important. Understanding and either validating or modifying for better results the roles of military leadership in defining strategy should also be considered. It is time to repeat the post-Vietnam efforts to understand what has gone wrong and determine how can be precluded from happening again. 

>Col Vohr served as a Logistics Officer and MAGTF Planner.