Optimizing the Marine Corps for small wars

[Geoff]

I tend to shudder when I hear phrases like optimise, mission specific function and other generalities. Armed Forces are just that, they are designed to protect and project force, to do so they need to be capable of functioning in a wide variety of environments.

Specialisation is necessary to promote mastery of a skill, but it tends to lead to an inward focus of that specialism - let's not share our knowledge etc, this then becomes a bargaining chip in the ever increasing race for resouces (money) and creates a friction that does not need to exist.

Each part of the Armed Forces has a function, they must be mutually supporting and complementary. What we need is to re-think the whole budget system so that we do not have bureaucrats and people removed from the actual business of conducting war, being in total control of the process, they must be part of it, but not all of it.

Using Mission Command as an analogy, the politicians should state clearly what they expect of their Armed Forces, a Mission Analysis is conducted and the bill is presented, the politicians either pay or explain to the country why they did not & let the public decide if they agree.

[Norfolk]

Hi Geoff, welcome to SWC. So what are you doing living in Detroit? The beer must be pretty good there, unless you're living out in Bloomfield or Grosse Pointe, and the beer may just be a secondary consideration. Good to see another Commonwealth soldier here, and a man from Transport - someone who knows about the pitfalls of a thankless but vital job. If you haven't already done so, Introduce yourself formally to the SWC on this thread, and tell us about yourself.

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Other than providing the time and resources to bring all USMC infantry battalions up to standards approaching those of the Battalions selected and trained as SOC MEU's, I would imagine that the Corps probably doesn't need to do terribly much to match itself to the demands of Small Wars. I mean, they wrote the book on it, literally, and while other Armies certainly have encountered lessons that the Marines have or can take heed of, the Marines are fairly solid compared to a lot of Armies, and have their own fair share of lessons to teach to others. Other than improving individual and sub-unit training a little bit (and to a lesser extent Unit-level training as well), the Marines don't really need to do too much probably.

Disbanding the USMC is not just politically impractical, it's militarily unsound. Not only is the USMC a potent fighting force, fit and able to fight just about anywhere (well, maybe not so much in Arctic areas if they have to rent heavy equipment from the locals) in just about any kind of war or conflict, but chopping them to the Army would effectively deprive the Navy of its ability to establish and secure overseas naval bases and provide boarding parties for naval vessels - something the Army isn't in much of a position to do properly, even if it absorbed the Marines. And the Marine Air Wings would probably be absorbed by the Air Force!(say good-bye to Marine CAS then - everyone loves Marine Air)...

Sure, Amphibious Operations at the Operational-Level can and should (if necessary) be performed by the Army, like in North Africa and Europe in WWII. But the Marines are ideally placed to handle this, given their Maritime role, and they largely wrote the book on it anyway. Why fix somethin' that ain't broke - and it relieves much of the pressure on the Army to come up with a few more Divisions for major Amphibious Ops when they're already down to just 10 active Divs themselves.

Besides, those Dress Blues (the old No. 2 Dress Uniform in the Commonwealth) sure do look good.

[Ken White]

. . .
Using Mission Command as an analogy, the politicians should state clearly what they expect of their Armed Forces, a Mission Analysis is conducted and the bill is presented, the politicians either pay or explain to the country why they did not & let the public decide if they agree.

Pity they don't...

Channeling Norfolk, I've heard that the Marines are headed towards an MEU-SOC like effort for the BLTs; each destined for a small war or COIN locale will get specialized training and a certification of some sort.

Sounds like a good plan to me...

A guy -- or a unit that can fight a big war can fight a small one, a simple shifting of gears is all that's needed.

[Norfolk]

Channeling Norfolk, I've heard that the Marines are headed towards an MEU-SOC like effort for the BLTs; each destined for a small war or COIN locale will get specialized training and a certification of some sort.

Sounds like a good plan to me...

You know, with all this "channeling" goin' on here lately at the SWC, it sounds to me like I'm surrounded by psychics or somethin'...I think it's high time for me to invest some coin in a high-quality Tin-Foil Hat, or somein'.

[RJ]

Nomad posted - "But I’m sure that the same was said to Earl “Pete” Ellis in 1920 when he first envisioned amphibious means in the Pacific against Japan that would come to fruition some twenty-one years later. But then again, I am no Pete Ellis."

"Thoughts?"

The Corps has that "Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance Parameters" as a genitic pattern in its long view planners.

Vertical Envleopment for instance was not an Air Force or Army vision in the 60's, but a Marine one that was developing in the 50's. As a Ronnie Recon type in 1960 my unit was tasked to develop ambush tactics to lure and trap choppers into landing kill zones.

Captured me a Battalion Lt. Col. one time! Brute Krulak was the ADC of the 2nd MarDiv at the time. He thought it was very funny!

The "Anabar Awakening" seems a product of the Marine Forces in Anabar developing a friendly assist attitude and going along with Sheiks who thought that some of the sunni insurgents who were hand and glove with al Qaeda could be brought in and turned against the enemy.

In the Pacific War the Corps had 6 Divisions and 4 Air Wings and did the bulk of the Island hopping conquests.

The bulk of the Army was focused on North Africa, the Med and Europe.

The Pacific was by its nature an amphibous war stretched out over vast distances and fell to the naval service to take the lead.

Given the money and logistical support the Corps could bulk up for the multi small wars that will more than likely be the near future mode of modern warfare.

I guess the question still is , Does it wan't to belarger than 3 Divisions and Air Wings again?

[Geoff]

RJ you make an excellent point.

However if we optimise forces for a specific function, rather than train them for the wide spectrum of operations which the modern day soldier has to undertake? What happens when the COIN war is sucking up all the trained personnel? What about spreading the love (& knowledge)

Would it not be better to have specialists embedded within units, by actually incorporating different operations as part of the education and development process. Not saying that every unit must have a mountain warfare specialist, an OBUA specialist etc, but a ready pool of people who can be used in preparation for these operations and deploy to cement those lessons learnt. These individuals could then form a conduit for passing lessons learnt on the ground back to the widerarmed forces, rather than waiting for an armchair general like me to pontificate, CNN to advise and the inertial mass of bureaucracy to get in gear?

I must confess I do have a bias against too much specialisation, yes we need experts, but we should use them to spread knowledge, not hold them close and subject them to internal political wrangles - which would happen.

I feel that we need to ensure greater clarity from the political masters, not likely in my lifetime, but also the military hierarchy needs to be more forthright in its capabilities and endurance. It has been known for ages that warfighting has an increased wear and tear on men and materiel - why don't we seem to factor that in our plans? Off point but still pertinent.

Cheers

Geoff

[RJ]

Check out the article in the Marine Corps Times entitled

Marine Corps to get back to its expeditionary roots

[I've included the lead in paragraphs but this is a long article and y'all should down load it. It addresses some of the items and concerns discussed in this thread.] RJ


By Kimberly Johnson - Staff writer
Posted : Friday Feb 8, 2008 18:12:13 EST



The Corps is creating a new pre-emptive strike force unit that will put more Marines back aboard ships.

The plan, which includes creating new Security Cooperation Marine Air-Ground Task Forces, is a road map for how the service plans to fight future irregular wars and was reportedly signed off on by Commandant Gen. James Conway the week of Jan. 28.

For Marines, it means new advisory missions on top of existing requirements. And for sailors, it will mean a steady reliance on the amphibious fleet.

In recent years, with Marines committed to a long-term presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Navy’s gator force has, at times, deployed without Marines on unique missions, such as chasing pirates off Africa or using a big-deck amphib as a floating health clinic in Asia.

But that may soon be adjusted under the new operational concept, known informally as “The Long War” brief.
The emerging “long war” will put new demands on the Corps, Conway said in the report.

“Paramount among these demands will be the requirement for Marines to train and mentor the security forces of partner nations in a manner that empowers their governments to secure their own countries,” he said.
Based on threat assessments projected through 2015, Marines face a spectrum of operations, the report said: stability and support; small wars and counterinsurgency; humanitarian assistance, disaster relief and nation-building; peacekeeping operations; combating terrorism; counterproliferation and nonproliferation; combating drug trafficking and crime; and non-combatant evacuation operations.

“There will be fewer high-spectrum combat operations that require our Marines to bring the full force of our combined arms capabilities to bear,” according to the report.
Under the “Long War” plan, Marine expeditionary units will continue to be the “vanguard” first responders of the Corps. The Corps also will forward-deploy more Marines in the Western Pacific through a combination of permanently forward-based forces and forces sourced through the re-establishment of the Unit Deployment Program.

Central to Conway’s plan is the creation of the new units — the SC MAGTFs — to handle the building of partner-nation capacity, including requirements for civil-military operations and training less-developed military forces, the plan said. The unit will be “‘eyes forward’ in areas not previously accessible to U.S. military forces,” and will be used as an operational reconnaissance asset capable of taking on some special-operations missions.

[William F. Owen]

“Paramount among these demands will be the requirement for Marines to train and mentor the security forces of partner nations in a manner that empowers their governments to secure their own countries,” he said.

Why would that be a Marine mission? It doesn't have anything to do with what Marines do. OK, they may have done it in the past, but isn't the army far better resourced to handle this?

Based on threat assessments projected through 2015, Marines face a spectrum of operations, the report said: stability and support; small wars and counterinsurgency; humanitarian assistance, disaster relief and nation-building; peacekeeping operations; combating terrorism; counterproliferation and nonproliferation; combating drug trafficking and crime; and non-combatant evacuation operations.

So if this was a threat assessment, why are they talking about "types" or "styles" of operation and not talking about the threats? I understand the article is written for folks with no military understanding, but this must be dumbing the idea down to it's bare bones.