The Marine Corps the United States Needs
By Adam Clemens
The U.S. Marine Corps is in the
process of a bold modernization initiative known as Force
Design, and Congress has called for
an independent review, assessment,
and analysis of this initiative.1
Force
Design began during the tenure of the
previous commandant, General David
H. Berger, and the new commandant,
General Eric M. Smith, sworn in last
year, endorses it in his official guidance, FRAGO (Fragmentary Order)
01-2024, Maintain Momentum.
2
The
continuation of Force Design under
a new commandant and the congressional attention it is receiving provide
opportune circumstances to consider
the Marine Corps’ roles and missions.
The Marine Corps’ statutory
mission—amphibious assault to seize advanced naval bases—is not as relevant as
it once was, but it cannot be completely
dismissed. The Marine Corps needs a
mission or set of missions to ensure its
relevance in a 21st-century world in which
denied environments will become increasingly common. More important, the
Marine Corps cannot simply choose the
missions it would like to do and hope that
the other Services and Congress accept
those choices and that our partners and
competitors respond to them in a way
that improves the competitive position
of the United States. The Marine Corps
must instead optimize itself to suit the
Nation’s needs given the choices made by
other actors.
A new mission set may or may not
be a good fit for a force structure built
around light infantry and short-range
aviation. In this article, my purpose is
neither to find missions that best justify
the current composition of the force nor
to conduct a troop-to-task analysis and
prescribe a new force structure tailored
to new missions. Rather, my goal is to
argue for a new mission set suitable to
enduring institutional strengths of the
Marine Corps, leaving to future work
the detailed analysis of what that mission
set will require. In the process, I do note
where elements of existing Marine Corps
structure and capabilities seem a likely
Marines assigned to Charlie Company, Battalion Landing Team 1/5, 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit, exit CH-53E Super Stallion attached to
Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 165 (Reinforced), 15th MEU, for amphibious landing during exercise Tiger Triumph at Kakinada Beach, India,
https://digitalcommons.ndu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1054&context=joint-force-quarterly
