Mobilizing the Marine Corps
By: LtCol Douglas Toulette
Posted on July 15,2025
Article Date 01/08/2025
Why the Service is incapable of repeating June 1950
When the Korea People’s Army stormed across the 38th parallel on 25 June 1950, the Republic of Korea Army and the U.S. Far East Command were caught off guard. The Marine Corps’ rapid response in July 1950 and the 15 September 1950 landing at Inchon are the pinnacle of Marine Corps history and lore. However, the tactical and operational victories in late 1950 were the ends of the lesser-known but critically important ways and means of Service-wide mobilization. Today, the Service is consumed by a focus on tactical-level technologies, experimentation, and endless pursuit of operations, activities, and investments while being hamstrung by years-long acquisitions, delays in production, and structure design based on how many things purchased and not the enemy. If the Marine Corps does not plan for total mobilization, the next large-scale, unexpected enemy attack will result in the Corps weathering the initial storm, then looking over its shoulder and finding nothing there to carry on the fight.
Tactical technologies and tactical-level victories are for naught if not woven into operational objectives to achieve strategic ends. The fundamental concept of massing combat power more quickly than the enemy and applying that combat power at a time and place of your choosing is how conflicts are won. When the size of the force in the conflict is insufficient, the force that can rapidly flow and sustain the most combat power seizes the advantage. Throughout the history of warfare, this is done via mobilization, defined today as “the process by which the Armed Forces of the United States, or part of them, are brought to a state of readiness for war or other national emergency.”1 Often mistaken as the simple act of placing a reserve component (RC) Marine into an active-duty status, mobilization is in fact a whole-of-Service task tied to strategic and operational concepts and codified in the requirements of Title 10, U.S.C. §10208: Annual Mobilization Exercise.2 Unfortunately, the Marine Corps has lulled itself into the mistaken belief it is capable of mobilization because it has achieved battlefield successes over the last 85 years of modern conflict.
Marines with Golf Company, 2/24 Mar, 4th MarDiv, Marine Corps Forces Reserve, undergo a safety brief before a live-fire range event at Fort McCoy, WI, 21. (Photo by Cpl Maxwell Cook.)
The reality of the last 85 years is that the United States has delayed entry into every major conflict except one, the Korean War. World War II began in September 1939, with the United States not officially entering until December 1941. The U.S. involvement in Vietnam began in 1950 with advisors, the number expanding in 1962, with major combat actions not occurring until 1965. DESERT STORMsucceeded thanks to DESERT SHIELD, a five-month buildup of combat power that the enemy was kind enough to sit and observe. Finally, Operation IRAQI FREEDOM (OIF), authorized on 16 October 2002 via Congressional Joint Resolution, did not see combat operations commence until 20 March 2003.3 Each of these conflicts provided the Marine Corps with the benefit of time. Time to plan, build, and position forces to assure the successful commencement of combat operations. When the Marine Corps looks around the globe today, time is not a benefit. The United States’ competitors are positioned to strike quickly and with significant combat power. It is for this reason that the initial stages of the Korean War must be the priority case study if the Marine Corps wishes to wake from its mobilization slumber.
https://www.mca-marines.org/gazette/mobilizing-the-marine-corps/
