The Marines and America’s Special Operators: More Collaboration Required
Gordon Richmond
December 29, 2020
Change is coming to the U.S. Marine Corps. For decades, the service pinballed between two different roles, serving as an amphibious “second land army†in both world wars, but specializing in counter-insurgency and police action for most of the rest of its history. In two recent documents — the Commandant’s Planning Guidance and Force Design 2030 — the Marine Corps officially embraced support to fleet operations as its preeminent purpose. The Marine Corps seeks to enable the U.S. Navy’s access to contested areas and support the penetration of adversary air and maritime defenses while simultaneously disrupting enemy efforts to threaten the U.S. fleet. Operationally, the Marine Corps’ concept for expeditionary advanced base operations calls for a dispersal of the force. This creates the potential to dismantle Marine air-ground task forces — the most hallowed organizing principle in modern Marine doctrine and culture.
U.S. Special Operations Command should take a keen interest in the modernization efforts of the Marine Corps. They serve as a live-action case study for dramatic organizational change — the sort of change that Special Operations Command may now be expected to enact. The public dialogue among relatively junior marine officers also exemplifies the bottom-up driven debate about the future of the service that the special operations community should seek to emulate. Finally, the Marine Corps’ new concept is likely to require significant special operations support, and the two commands should craft a symbiotic relationship as they compete and prepare for conflict.
https://warontherocks.com/2020/12/the-marines-and-americas-special-operators-more-collaboration-required/
