The U.S. Marines: They’ve Got the Answer, but Not the Ships
By Dakota Wood
June 18, 2024
The U.S. Marine Corps has been developing solutions to the China problem. Numbers will favor the PRC in any crisis that features extended naval warfare within a few hundred miles of China’s coast. Hence the importance of the Corps’ Force Design effort to field forces relevant to such conflict and the urgency with which the U.S. Navy’s shipbuilding problem must be solved.
The Marine Corps is on the right track with FD. It is rapidly evolving its ability to operate within the range of enemy weapons and to sustain its capability to engage enemy forces at close and extended ranges.
Akin to the Corps’ efforts in the 1930s, when it developed amphibious operations capabilities it foresaw would be essential in a war with Japan, Force Design, initiated by former Commandant General David H. Berger, in 2020, and accelerated by his successor, General Eric M. Smith, will: reduce its signature (physical and electromagnetic), improve its situational awareness, increase the range at which it can effectively hit targets with precision, expand its ability to share combat relevant information, lessen its logistical dependencies, and enhance is mobility and maneuverability.
But regardless of the Corps’ success in fielding unmanned systems, new communications networks, anti-ship and anti-air missiles, and high-resolution battlespace awareness, if its forces cannot get to the fight and move around the battlespace, Force Design may have limited utility in the Indo-Pacific.
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2024/06/18/the_us_marines_theyve_got_the_answer_but_not_the_ships_1038723.html
