State of the Marine Corps 2025
“Everything is in danger of slipping,” commandant says of Marine modernization.
Meghann Myers | April 18, 2025 05:54 AM ET
Marine Corps Defense Budget Technology
The Marine Corps in 2025 is about halfway through its decade-long, top-to-bottom modernization plan, trying to balance that with staying ready for its core mission as the Defense Department’s crisis-response force, which is “is wicked hard to do,” Gen. Eric Smith, the service’s commandant, told Defense One in March.
This is particularly true as the service stares down the barrel of a full-year continuing resolution, keeping the budget flat as the Marine Corps stands up new units, upgrades aircraft and procures new missile systems.
“I would say everything is in danger of slipping,” Smith said, as the Corps sits about halfway through its decade-long march to a new force design.
The Marine Corps has a big shopping list: adding new radars to its F/A-18 Hornets, upgrading survivability of MV-22 Ospreys, and buying the Navy/Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System, the AN/TPS-80 Ground/Air Task-Oriented Radar, and the Medium Landing Ship, to name the major players.
“All that starts to slip when there's a continuing resolution,” Smith said.
https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2025/04/state-marine-corps-2025/404674/?oref=d1-related-article
