Distributable Platforms and Determined Marines: The Necessity of Operational Art in a 21st Century Marine Corps
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By Matthew Schultz, Michael Manning, Jeremy Smith, Brian Meade, Matthew Newman & Paul Kozick
June 22, 2020
On 22 March 2020, the Wall Street Journal first reported a number of planned force structure changes for the U.S. Marine Corps—the nation’s naval expeditionary force-in-readiness. Within a few days, the Marine Corps officially released the long-awaited adjustments in Force Design 2030, following months of integrated planning, modeling, and threat-based wargaming. The sweeping changes within the document echoed the vision General David H. Berger, the 38th Commandant of the Marine Corps, laid-out in his 2019 Commandant’s Planning Guidance. Taken together, these documents aimed to align the Marine Corps with the 2018 National Defense Strategy and steer the service’s efforts in redesigning itself for a future of naval campaigning in a new era of great power competition. Yet, despite serving as the first critical step in transforming the Corps, the much-awaited unveiling of the objective force of 2030, which proposed a force structure cut of up to 12,000 Marines, shocked many in the defense community. It also triggered a flurry of dialogue in professional journals and online periodicals regarding the Corps’ future direction.
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2020/06/22/distributable_platforms_and_determined_marines_the_necessity_of_operational_art_in_a_21st_century_marine_corps_115403.html
