Lessons from Operation Ke for the Marine Corps
Ben Ho
November 23, 2020
ÂÂÂThe U.S. military is ignoring the fact that someone must lose the much-talked about high-end fight against peer competitors. It might be the U.S. military that loses, and it would then have to retreat, withdraw, or evacuate in the face of enemy fire. U.S. Marine Corps planners working on the service’s new keystone concept of expeditionary advanced base operations should bear this in mind as withdrawals have received short shrift in various official documents on amphibious missions. In a western Pacific contingency, the concept posits the deployment of relatively small Marine units on territory within the first island chain and in the face of the burgeoning Chinese anti-access/area denial complex, rendering these lodgements susceptible to defeat in detail, as one analysis points out. For instance, a salvo or two of Chinese missiles could cripple or destroy an expeditionary advanced base given its relatively small size. Indeed, another study contends that “maintaining small and vulnerable units deep inside an adversary’s weapons engagement zone will be challenging.†Under such circumstances, amphibious withdrawal to another less exposed location will be imperative.
https://warontherocks.com/2020/11/lessons-from-operation-ke-for-the-marine-corps/
