If there’s a bumper sticker for the Marine Corps these days, Marine officials will tell you it’s “innovate, adapt and win,” a cocky but perhaps accurate characterization of a Corps in transition.
While there may be lingering doubts about the wisdom of ending two large ground wars, it’s clear the political appetite for ground forces is on the wane, and that’s allowed Marines to begin to return to their maritime roots in an attempt to distinguish themselves from the other service with ground forces, the Army.
Marines are now refocusing on amphibious operations, reacquainting themselves with the Navy and, in true form, attempting to do more with less: fewer ships, a smaller force and less money.
“I would say that we are living the new normal today,” said Lt. Gen. Kenneth Glueck, Jr., head of the Corps’ Combat Development Command, in an interview with Defense One.
After more than 13 years of war, the Corps faces a new period of fiscal austerity, a smaller force and a scramble, like all the services, to be relevant. Instead of maintaining thousands of Marines in landlocked Afghanistan, which was considered counter to the Corps’ sea service traditions, the focus now is on smaller, more forward-deployed forces ready to respond to contingencies.
“The Marines play as big a role in that as any of our services do, because you were always on that cutting edge and you were always on that front edge as your relationships develop and as you have to reach out,” outgoing Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told Marines aboard Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, Calif.. “We're going to get you back to that.”
The Marines are now being led by commandant Gen. Joseph Dunford, installed in October, and he is expected to release his “commandant’s Guidance,” an annual ritual for the Corps’ top Marine, in coming weeks. It’s not expected to change the direction of the Corps in any dramatic ways, but may emphasize enduring themes, from adapting and innovating to decentralizing planning and empowering junior leaders across the service.
Dunford may not work behind the famous saloon doors of the commandant’s office in the Pentagon’s E-Ring for long. Dunford, who returned from nearly two years as commander of the war in Afghanistan, remains a leading candidate to become the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The current chairman, Gen. Martin Dempsey, is expected to retire sometime later this year.
For now, Dunford will to continue lead the Corps to a place where it is most relevant given the budgetary environment in Washington and the security environment around the world.
Under the previous commandant, Gen. Jim Amos, there was a distinct effort to position the Corps as relevant to those very security challenges, which include the threat posed by the Islamic State across the Middle East but also to respond to raw sensitivities among many nations in the Pacific or security threats in Europe.
In 2013, the Corps rebranded its cornerstone concept, the Marine Air-Ground Task Force, with the creation of the Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force for Crisis Response, a so-called MAGTF specifically designed to respond to contingencies requiring accelerated response times. The first one was created and deployed to a base in Moron, Spain. Though planned long before the attack on the U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya in 2012, Corps officials have said the task force could be an effective first responder in a similar attack in the future.
And as the big land wars ended and the appetite for large ground forces waned, the Special Purpose MAGTF was part of the answer to how the Corps could contribute to U.S. global security and the response from combatant commanders has been positive and the demand for more of the task forces unyielding.
“We’ve always had special purpose MAGTFs, but this is the first time where we’ve put some legitimacy behind it,” Glueck said.
The Marines play as big a role in that as any of our services do.
But there are limits to what the Corps can do given the amount of resources available to it or its sister service, the Navy. Ships, or the lack thereof, are the best example of that. The current availability of Navy ships doesn’t satisfy the Marine requirement for amphibious ships or so-called “amphibs.”
Such is the demand for ships that Marine Expeditionary Units used to ride on amphibs along with what’s called an Amphibious Ready Group. These flotillas of ships used to deploy and steam generally in concert; now the ships are split up for different missions, or “disaggregated,” as Corps officials like to say, because the Navy can’t afford to keep them grouped for operations.
According to one recent study, conducted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Maren Leed, the demand for amphibious ships in 2015 was more than 70, even as the ships the Navy was able to provide was only 33 at any one time.
As a result, the Corps is exploring alternative ways to put Marines closer to where they need to be in order to respond to crises, be it an embassy under attack, or for broader and less time-sensitive forms of engagement, like the kind of relationship-building known as “Phase Zero” that Marines also conduct.
Marines are looking at the model provided by Special Operations Command’s use of the Ponce, an old Navy ship that has been “repurposed” as a floating forward operating base for the specialized units. Other alternatives to expensive Navy amphibious ships include what’s known as an MLP, or Mobile Landing Platform, which are cheaper and more available than traditional combat ships. Such approaches eliminate the inherent complications of basing units ashore, where political sensitivities within the nation hosting the base can undermine the mission, and also where they can be further away from where they need to be. The Corps is studying how best to integrate forces deployed on such alternative platforms with those ashore and on more traditional Navy combat ships.
All of this comes at a time when the Corps and the Navy are touting their newly renewed, close relationship. Marine and Navy officials say the relationship between Amos, the former Marine commandant, and Adm. Jonathan Greenert, the Chief of Naval Operations, grew closer and has begun to permeate across both services. And there’s no reason Dunford won’t continue that relationship. That’s a welcome change and one Corps officials hope endures.
“Usually, we’re the red-headed step-child of the Department of the Navy,” one Marine official said.
It’s not going to be how it was in the past, no Iwo Jima or Tarawa.
Lt. Gen. Kenneth Glueck, Jr
Corps leaders like Glueck say that although the Corps is returning to its maritime roots, these are not your father’s amphibious operations. Corps planners are focused on exploiting enemy forces’ gaps and seams, but that means amphibious units must plan on inserting themselves in places a much farther distance away. “It’s not going to be how it was in the past, no Iwo Jima or Tarawa,” Glueck said. “We’re going to be utilizing different concepts.”
In the meantime, the Corps is still shrinking in at least two ways – its size, and its budget. It will re-size to a force of 182,000 by the end of 2016, from a high of 202,000 just a few years ago. That’s not as small as it was at the time of the attacks on 9/11, when it was about 172,000, but still smaller than it’s been for many years and making it that much harder for Corps leaders to meet the demands being placed on them.
At the same time, the Corps is focused on balancing between competing needs: “near-term readiness,” the need to make sure forces and equipment are prepared to get the call to deploy, and long-term modernization of the force, that equipment, and infrastructure across the force. Budget cuts over the next year could mean more tough choices: the Corps could lose the funding for as many as two MV-22 Osprey squadrons and three infantry battalions, which would have, in the words of one Marine official, “some pretty immediate and drastic effects.”
http://www.defenseone.com/feature/state-of-defense-2015/
