Col. Blimps Dumbing Down the Marine Corps? doing away with tanks, reducing conventional artillery, and shrinking units

VIRTUAL EVENT: Re-Designing the Marine Corps for Future War: Necessity or Madness?
Marines are known for their fierce combat in wars, their fearsome and formidable infantry prowess.

But are drastic changes in the works in place to basically dumb down the force? The Heritage foundation presents what is a disturbing scenario to many who believe the Marine Corps is the image of guts and glory.

General David H. Berger, Marine Corps Commandant, is aggressively pushing a dramatic redesign of the Corps for future war incorporating new missiles, advanced sensors, unmanned platforms, and hypervelocity weapons. His Force Design 2030 effort has drawn enthusiastic support from those who agree that the Corps must change to remain relevant on a more lethal battlefield. But it has generated an equally fervent amount of criticism from others who think the effort is overly focused on China—rendering the Corps irrelevant across a range of other potentially more likely scenarios. To achieve its vision, the Corps is doing away with tanks, reducing conventional artillery, shrinking units, and placing new demands on the Navy, already struggling to modernize its fleet. But it is adding anti-ship missiles, doubling-down on unmanned systems, and reenergizing a profound discussion about the importance of naval power. Will a redesigned Corps make it irrelevant for land operations against conventional militaries of larger state powers or irregular forces like terrorist groups? Or are General Berger’s designs essential to America’s future ability to conduct nearly any military operation in any theater against a host of potential enemies? See event below.

Marine Corps new strategy was recently laid out:

The 2018 National Defense Strategy redirected the Marine Corps’ mission focus from countering violent extremists in the Middle East to great power/peer-level competition, with special emphasis on the Indo-Pacific. Such a profound shift in missions, from inland to littoral, and from non-state actor to peer competitor, necessarily requires substantial adjustments in how we organize, train, and equip our Corps. A return to our historic role in the maritime littoral will also demand greater integration with the Navy and a reaffirmation of that strategic partnership. As a consequence, we must transform our traditional models for organizing, training, and equipping the force to meet new desired ends, and do so in full partnership with the Navy.

THE ARGUMENT FOR CHANGE
Our current force design, optimized for large-scale amphibious forcible entry and sustained operations ashore, has persisted unchanged in its essential inspiration since the 1950s. It has changed in details of equipment and doctrine as technology has advanced toward greater range and lethality of weapon systems. In light of unrelenting increases in the range, accuracy, and lethality of modern weapons; the rise of revisionist powers with the technical acumen and economic heft to integrate those weapons and other technologies for direct or indirect confrontation with the U.S.; and the persistence of rogue regimes possessing enough of those attributes to threaten United States interests, I am convinced that the defining attributes of our current force design are no longer what the nation requires of the Marine Corps.

IMPLICATIONS FOR FORCE DESIGN
This imperative for change explains why I concur with the diagnosis of my predecessor that, “The Marine Corps is not organized, trained, equipped, or postured to meet the demands of the rapidly evolving future operating environment.” I assess that the current force is unsuited to future requirements in size, capacity, and specific capability:

Size and Capacity
Operating under the assumption that we will not receive additional resources, we must divest certain existing capabilities and capacities to free resources for essential new capabilities. The most logical way to approach divestment is to take a systems perspective and reduce infantry battalions while proportionally reducing the organizations dedicated to supporting these battalions – direct support artillery, ground mobility assets, assault support aviation, light attack aviation, and combat service support capabilities whose capacity is similarly related to the size of the ground and air combat elements to be supported.

Specific Capability
With the shift in our primary focus to great power competition and a renewed focus on the Indo-Pacific region, the current force has shortfalls in capabilities needed to support emerging joint, naval, and Marine Corps operating concepts.

We have shortfalls in expeditionary long-range precision fires; medium- to long-range air defense systems; short-range (point defense) air defense systems; high-endurance, long-range unmanned systems with Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR), Electronic Warfare (EW), and lethal strike capabilities; and disruptive and less-lethal capabilities appropriate for countering malign activity by actors pursuing maritime “gray zone” strategies.
Similarly – and understandably, in a force that was designed with different assumptions regarding threat and environment – there are some capabilities that I assess we are over-invested in.

A partial list includes heavily armored ground combat systems (tanks), towed cannon artillery, and short-range, low endurance unmanned aerial systems (UAS) incapable of employing lethal effects. Finally, as an element of the integrated naval force, we have capability and capacity excesses and shortfalls in areas not organic to the Marine Corps, but which are essential to our ability to contribute to sea control and sea denial in a contested littoral environment.

These include a requirement for smaller, lower signature, and more affordable amphibious ships and a shortfall in affordable, distributable platforms that will enable littoral maneuver and provide logistical support in a very challenging theater for the kind of operation new capabilities. The most logical way to approach divestment is to take a systems perspective and reduce infantry battalions while proportionally reducing the organizations dedicated to supporting these battalions – direct support artillery, ground mobility assets, assault support aviation, light attack aviation, and combat service support capabilities whose capacity is similarly related to the size of the ground and air combat elements to be supported.

The outcome of the Phase I and II effort was a redesigned “Objective Force” with the following characteristics:

Total Fleet Marine Force (FMF) structure
• Reduction of approximately 12,000 Marines relative to the current Total Force by 2030
Command Element
• Divestment of 3 active component law enforcement battalions

Ground Combat Element
• 7 infantry regimental
(divestment of 1 regimental headquarters)
• 21 active component infantry battalions (divestment of 3 battalions)
• 6 reserve component infantry battalions (divestment of 2 battalions)
• Redesign of remaining infantry battalions in the direction of greater lethality and flexibility, with reduced structure (a proposed reduction per infantry battalion of approximately 200 Marines).
• 5 cannon artillery batteries (divestment of 16 batteries)
• 21 rocket artillery batteries (increase of 14 batteries over current force)
• Zero tank companies (divestment of entire capacity of 7 companies and prepositioned capacity)
• 12 Light Armored Reconnaissance (LAR) companies (increase of 3 companies over current force)
• 4 Assault Amphibian (AA) companies (divestment of 2 companies)

Air Combat Element
• 18 active component fighter attack (VMFA) squadrons, with a reduction in the number of aircraft per squadron to 10
• 14 active component medium tiltrotor (VMM) squadrons (recommended divestment of 3 squadrons)
• 5 active component heavy lift helicopter (HMH) squadrons (recommended divestment of 3 squadrons)
• 5 active component light attack helicopter (HMLA) squadrons (divestment of 2 squadrons)
• 4 active component aerial refueler transport (VMGR) squadrons (increase of one squadron over current force)
• 6 active component unmanned aerial vehicle (VMU) squadrons (increase Of three squadrons over current force.