March 26, 2023 Topic: Force Design 2030
Marine Generals: ‘Trust But Verify’ Force Design 2030
Congress cannot assume every prospective military innovation and transformation is necessarily good for the national defense simply because it offers seductive budgetary solutions and illusions of future “silver bullet” technologies.
by Jerry McAbee Mike Hayes
Most people assume military innovation and transformation are two sides of the same coin, and in many respects they are. Many also believe military innovation and transformation are good, never bothering to “look under the hood” and ask the hard questions about the integration, testing, and validation needed to assure a positive outcome and bring about genuine improvement in operational capability
Two recent articles address the virtues and pitfalls of redesigning a military force, albeit from different perspectives. These articles deserve a closer look given ongoing innovations and transformations across the military services. The poster child for both revolutions is the United States Marine Corps, which is well down the road of redesigning and restructuring itself for what it perceives, correctly or not, are the challenges of the twenty-first century. Pursuing the unwise strategy of “divest to invest,” the Marines have shed approximately 50 percent of the combined arms capabilities needed to fight and win today to acquire new weapons and technology for specific future threats. These new capabilities are at least six to eight years away from being fielded in sufficient quantities to be operationally relevant. The Marine Corps is foolishly gambling that potential enemies will ignore the window of opportunity these misguided actions present them.
The first article, “Dangerous Changes: When Military Innovation Harms Combat Effectiveness,” is authored by Kendrick Kuo. One of Kuo’s most important cautions is “The notion that innovative and better military performance go hand in hand is thus intuitive. It is also wrong.” True innovation is the result of a well-developed and tested operating concept that can be vetted through a robust combat development process to determine integrated requirements necessary to effectively implement the concept. The enablers include doctrine, force structure and organizations, training and education, equipment, and facilities and support. A good example of failed innovation is the flawed Pentomic Army Divisions developed between 1957 and 1963 to counter the possible use of tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield. Conversely, an example where innovation succeeded was the Army’s Air-Land Battle concept that was developed to counter the Warsaw Pact’s plan to overrun NATO defenses in Europe in the 1980s and was later validated during Operation Desert Storm in Kuwait and Iraq.
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/marine-generals-%E2%80%98trust-verify%E2%80%99-force-design-2030-206347
