The State of the Marine Corps 2024
The Corps' race to become a lighter service might move faster if its budget weren’t flat.
SAM SKOVE | APRIL 8, 2024
MARINE CORPS
The Marine Corps is leaning into its transformation into a lighter service of futuristic weapons, advanced logistics, and leaner formations, but it could move even faster if its budget weren’t flat.
That’s the assessment from Gen. Christopher Mahoney, the Corps’ assistant commandant.
Many of the 96 programs that support modernization efforts are “performing very well,” Mahoney said in a recent interview with Defense One. “What we can't do is accelerate them as fast as I would like, and build a depth of magazine to the level that I would like.”
That’s because Congress failed to pass a budget last year and instead funded the government with a series of continuing resolutions. And with the Corps’s fiscal year 2025 budget request set at $53.7 billion—down just a bit, in real terms, from last year’s $53.2 billion—next year’s prospects for acceleration are dim.
https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2024/04/state-marine-corps-2024/395451/
