Enhanced MAGTF Operations- USMC's Small Unit Future
A little over 6yrs ago the USMC announced a new Operating Concept titled Distributed Operations.
D.O. was taking USMC infantry Plts & Squads and enhancing them w/ Advanced Patrolling, Zone & Area Reconnaissance, Surveillance & Observation, Man Tracking, Communications, & CAS Packages; operating them 10s-100s of miles & fr/a BN HQ w/10s of miles of dispersion btwn them.
Although heavily embraced fr/Lance Corporal to Commandant it was heavily criticized outside the Corps. 2yrs later the Concept was proven an overwhelming success in Combat in the Mountains of Afghanistan Jan-Jun '06.
In '07 just when the AA reports and articles on the successful deployment began to heavily circulate HQMC announced the program was dead.
But later that year very quietly the next logical step in the DO for was taken and Enhanced Company Operations. Whether DO was dead in name or not was irrelevant, its Operating Concept, training, and TTPs, were already validated & set in stone.
The Marine Rifle Co is seen as Optimum Construct to support Tactical DO. ECO set out to develop Marine Inf Co's that can do 2 things:
1) Support DO Plts
2) Conduct Operations over vast distances Independent of Higher HQ
The Corps has been developing the ECO Concept over the last 2yrs & has put much of the results into practice in its Operating Forces.
This summer the USMC will conduct its Culminating Exercise in ECO dubbed LOE 4. This LOE will be the proving ground for some potentially revolutionary Tactics & Technologies. Including:
1) Distributed Tactical Communications System (DTCS): A PDA-based Netted Iridium push-to-talk system that allows Squads to communicate out to 100 miles presently & w/a software upgrade coming that will push that out to 250mi.
The PDA also fulfills its traditional role of Personal Data Assistant for the Squad leader giving him a direct data link to Higher HQ. Also each squad member will have a Trellisware radio directly connected to the SqdLdr's PDA giving the SqLdr & HHQ exact locations for every Marine.
2) Reorganizing the Marine Rifle Co: Doubling the size of HQ, removing the Plt Guides, & adding a Scout & Reconnaissance Section made up of two 5-man S&R teams specially trained in controlling CAS & providing Close-In Reconnaissance.
3) Squad-Level Unmanned Ground Vehicles: The LOE will include early models of emerging UGV. 1) A wheeled variant of a Polaris 2+2 ATV that can be armed. 2) The early-stage gas powered Big Dog.
4) 155mm Howitzer Plt attached to the Inf. Company: In the future this could, & probably would, change to a 120mm EFSS Plt. But for now they want to test to the extreme of whats possible & available to support a Company Operating on its own w/Plts spread over great distances.
The Marine Corps always does things in relation to the Corps as a whole. W/the announcement of the Culminating EX last yr HQMC began referring to the ECO Company as the Company Landing Team or CoLT.
When the Marine Corps uses the suffixes 'Landing Team' or 'Combat Team' that means its the base Ground Combat Element of a larger MAGTF construct.
W/the validation of Distributed Ops Plts & Squads, the Company-level HQs to both Coordinate & Support DO Units independent of HHQ wrapping up. The Marine Corps Warfighting Lab announced it will move on to the Logical Conclusion of DO, Enhanced MAGTF Operations.
EMO Concept will develop:
1) How to properly incorporate Aviation & Logistics Units into Independently Operating Company-Sized MAGTFs.
2) Whether or not a separate Command & Control Element would need to be developed like that of the other MAGTFs w/an O-4 Major as over all MAGTF Commander.
That became true after about the US Mexican War in one sense.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
COMMAR
You might be terribly grieved by reason they said they removed it then. They said that... It appeared useless & seemed to serve no purpose.
Once going on line to fight became not in fashion he really had no job as a 'guide.' Plus that's been said before -- there were none before Korea, they got quickly added back in during that fracas, so no grieving from me (other than a head shake at business as usual :rolleyes:).
However, they missed the fact that most everyone knew that and kept the space around for most of another 160 plus years as an Assistant Platoon Sergeant for four reasons:
- Marine aggressiveness meant high casualty ratios and the rapid availability of an experienced NCO as a replacement in the heavy combat of WW II, Korea and even Viet Nam was important. (Today, right now anyway, with far fewer casualties, that seems less important to the folks who have not experienced 50% or more casualties in one operation and have been told to find spaces...).
- He could do the beans and bullets while the Platoon Sergeant did the more important tactical stuff and sheparded his LT. Or, if the Platoon Sergeant wasn't that competent tactically (it happens), the Guide hopefully would be...
- He was an immediate replacement (due to the above mentioned combat job and thus location) for a knocked out Platoon Sergeant -- or even a Squad Leader if that seemed worthwhile. Or for a Platoon Sergeant position in another Platoon that had taken even higher casualties. He had disappeared before in various reorganizations but just wouldn't stay dead... :D
- He was a counterpoint to the Platoon Sergeant and was being very effectively trained for that job while offering a different approach to the constant training of the Squad and FT Leaders.
Other than that, 'they' were right, It appeared useless... ;)
Wingate's "Disributed Operations" and Burma
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Rifleman
Maybe I'm getting a little off subject here, but can someone in the current USN/USMC community tell me why the USMC has shown no interest in modern seaplanes?
It seems like they would have a lot of application for dispersed USMC units in littoral and riverine areas in small wars.
I find it interesting that a lot of the conceptual thinking behind concepts like DO was tried in one form or another by Orde Wingate and his operations in Burma especially with regards to semi-independant operations behind enemy lines relying on air-dropped supllies while briage sized sub-units (deploying as "columns" with strong scout groups) relied on mules (AFIAK an option being reconsidered in some cirlces) and locally made/acquired bamboo boats for riverine operations. Fire support was also mortar and pack howitzer based. Of course, the air component, supplied graciously by the USAF under the innovative thinking of the its commanders (whose names escape me currently) by No.1 Air Commando, also offers interesting lessons learnt if only from an USAF perspective.
http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc...f&AD=ADA397999
http://cadair.aber.ac.uk/dspace/bits...imonThesis.pdf
Thanks for the clarification
Quote:
Originally Posted by
COMMAR
But as similar as these examples appear on the surface none are near as comprehensive or developed as DO.
Its the level of refinement & attention to detail paid to insisting that DO remain both Comprehensive & Fluid, shifting fr/Aggregated to Dis-Aggregated or vice/versa & back according to: the enemy, the terrain, the flow of battle, etc. that makes DO Light Years beyond any previous example.
One of the Major differences that made the USMC's Amph-Asslt Doctrine more advanced & successful than any before was the recognition/development of mastering of the fluid flow of "controlled chaos" in the shift from 'Landing' to 'Build Up' to 'Breakout'.
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Being a civvie I get the impression, for the above post and a number of Marine Corps Gazette articles I have read on DO, that it is essntially an evolutionary approach to fielding task/mission based units according to METT-T(C) through the exploitation of advanced C4I without which "controlled chaos" would result is just plain, vanilla chaos? To use the example of Wingate, poor and largely irrelevant that it may be, Operation Longcloth suffered from severe C3I problems which resulted in a number of "columns" becoming "unco-ordinated" which led to mission paralysis form the strategic and operational PoV even though, tactically, they performed well (in most instances). How would these "Enhanced Companies" operate in an environment in which C4I would be severely degraded/disrupted say by an EMP? or, in systems terms what if sub-systems were severed from their parent organisation and deprived of battlespace awareness from Bn, Bde and national intel sources....surely then the guides/scouts and their traditional role of "finding" in order to Fix and Kill would become paramount again?
On a different note, I do get that historically the force to space ratio gap has been widening since antiquity with smaller and smaller units (thanks to advances in technology (ISTAR/C3I) and weaponry) being able to hold larger and larger frontages/AOs but it seems to me that this is very much an Weberian "ideal type" refering to ann almost pure expression of Eucledian space. IN WWII Sixth Army prior to Operation Blau held a horizontal front of a few hundred kilometers yet upon entering Stalingrad the entire Army group was swallowed up in the vertical morass comprising a dozen or so square klicks. Excuse my ignorance but as you are more knowledgable than I I am taking this opportunity ask questions that I ordinarily wouldn't be able to (at least not in my local Pub!).
LOE 4: 1Company Launch fr/SeaBase Conducting 2Missions Simultaneously- 1IW, 1Convnt'l
War Lab to Apply Seabasing and ‘Three Block War’ to Counterinsurgency: Company to carry out two-part mission
Date: November 23, 2009
The Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory’s experiment in Oahu, HI, next summer will examine the applications of enhanced company operations and seabasing concepts on a counterinsurgency mission.
EDITED by SWCAdmin: see http://www.strategypage.com/militaryforums/1-13794.aspx, 3rd article down (as of this posting) for the material that has been removed from this site due to copyright concerns
