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Last year was a critical year for the Naval Service in general and the Marine Corps in particular. During this year, the conceptual transition from the Cold War to the new security environment was effected, and the foundation laid for a programmatic shift as well. This new security environment is tailor-made for naval expeditionary forces, placing a premium on the capabilities provided by Marine air-ground task forces (MAGTFs). The debates of 1992 will have consequences for Marine Corps doctrine, operations, and force structure for many years to come.
In this regard, the most important
event of the year was the release in September of the Navy Department’s white paper, “. . . From the Sea,” which refocuses the Naval Service’s emphasis away from an exclusive concern for blue-water operations toward littoral operations, the bread and butter of the Marine Corps. Other important 1992 milestones on the road to the new security environment include the reopening by Congress of the roles-and-missions debate—more properly, roles and functions—and the central part played by the Marine Corps in Operation Restore Hope in Somalia.
“. . . From the Sea” delineates a new strategic concept for the Naval Service.
strategic concept of the Naval Service is to conduct operations in littoral areas o* the world, to influence events ashoh- through demonstrated commitment and promotion of U.S. interests overseas,10 deter or contain crises, protect U.S. ciO' zens and property, and project poWeJ when necessary. The new focus of nava1 warfare will be operations from the sea- This brings the Naval Service into lin6 with the January 1992 Military Strategy of the United States, which increases the relative significance of forward presence
Forcible entry remains a requirement for sea-based forces—and the Navy and Marine Corps are responsible for meeting it. In Exercise Team Spirit 93 U.S. and South Korean forces practice the skills required.
Samuel Huntington defined a strategic concept as “the fundamental element of a military service,” a service’s own statement of its role or purpose in implementing national policy.1 An early draft of “. . . From the Sea” stated that the new
Naval Service of capabilities tradition' ally associated with the Marine Corps- According to the white paper, nava* forces will need to be: expeditionaryshaped for joint operations; capable o> operating from the sea; and tailored as
. . From the Sea” is nothing new for the Navy-Marine Corps Team. These Marines come ashore from rigid raider boats during a recent exercise, preparing for littoral warfare.
Squired by national needs.
As the world’s premier expeditionary force in readiness, the Marine Corps provides an array of capabilities that will assume greater relevance in the emerging security environment: the ability to respond swiftly to distant crises; the ability to build power from the sea; the ability to sustain long-term operations; and the ability to operate independently of hasing, transit, or overflight approval from foreign governments. But the real importance of the white paper for M arines is its acknowledgement that expeditionary means, more than anything, a special mind-set or culture—something Marines have always known.
U.S. strategy can be seen as a power- Projection system, deigned to permit the Measured application °f force to defend national interests in any region of the world.2 Such a power-projection system must be ahle to provide tailored forces that can shape the security environment through Presence, respond to Crises, and then if necessary, enable the tiansition to conflict 0r theater war.
Marines will play a central role in this strategic scheme. In documents written during 1992, however, the Marine Corps has emphasized that it is only °ne element of a Power-projection system based on joint-force sequencing. Marines constitute the point of the power- Ptojection spear, as the landward extension of forward-deployed naval expeditionary forces. As such, they are capable of containing many crises before they escalate into full-blown conflicts. In the event a crisis does escalate. Marines are the enabling force that permits the introduction of follow-on heavy forces in the fransition to conflict or theater-level war.
Naval expeditionary forces provide forward presence, one of the four requirements of the National Military Strategy, a requirement that will become increasingly important in the future. As forward basing declines, the only way to signal allies and adversaries alike will he through a powerful yet unobtrusive offshore presence. Unfortunately, the critical relationship between force structure
and the ability of naval expeditionary forces to provide forward presence is very difficult to quantify. A force structure based exclusively on threats and warfighting scenarios will undervalue naval expeditionary forces.
Neither the Marine Corps nor the Navy was fully successful during 1992 in conveying this relationship to those outside the Department of the Navy. The failure to establish clearly that naval forces in particular must remain capable of fighting wars—while serving a much broader range of policy objectives short of conflict—takes on added importance now that Les Aspin has become Secretary of Defense. Aspin’s force-planning methodology is explicitly threat-based and as such
does not take adequate account of the ability of naval forces to shape the security environment through forward presence.
Secretary Aspin’s methodology is suitable for sizing land-based forces for conflict or theater war, but less appropriate for determining the force structure of the Navy and Marine Corps because of their role in providing forward presence. To borrow an analogy from Ronald O’Rourke of the Congressional Research Service, Secretary Aspin and others who employ a threat-based approach to force planning look at force requirements from the perspective of police commissioners who believe that a police force should be made up exclusively of SWAT teams at the expense of day-to-day patrols.
But police patrols—the cops on the beat—may be the best way to make the employment of SWAT teams unnecessary in the first place. A commissioner who invests only in SWAT teams will have to use them for many crises that police patrols could have prevented. Similarly, if the United States builds a force structure strictly on the basis of requirements generated by specific regional scenarios, the result may be a Navy and Marine Corps too small to do all the nation asks of them.
Marine Corps task organizations and deployment capabilities are tailor-made for the expeditionary force packages envisioned in “. . . From the Sea.” A MAGTF is an extremely flexible instrument of national power—expeditionary, self-sustaining, and capable of forcible entry. Such a task force can provide unified commanders with a fully integrated, combined arms combat force for operations across the spectrum of conflict.
To provide the greatest possible flexibility to the unified commander, the Marine Corps has developed a planning technique that enables him to use a combination of mobility assets for building and deploying MAGTFs rapidly in accordance with joint-force sequencing requirements. These Crisis Action Modules constitute a building-block approach that permits the deployment of a full range of mission-tailored forces.
They can combine elements of an air contingency force, an amphibious ready group, and maritime prepositioning forces from all three Marine Expeditionary Forces to form a specially-tailored MAGTF, capable of fulfilling a unified commander’s crisis-response requirements, or other needs arising from the adaptive planning process.
“. . . From the Sea” is important to the Marine Corps because it explicitly shifts the focus of the Naval Service as a whole to those areas that Marines have always emphasized: littoral operations, expeditionary capabilities, power projection, crisis response, and forward presence. This change in emphasis means, as the white paper acknowledges, that the Navy and Marine Corps are full partners in joint operations.
Roles and missions
On 2 July 1992, Senator Sam Nunn (D-GA), Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, called for “a noholds barred, everything-on-the-table review” of service roles and missions. His stated purpose was to “eliminate needless duplication and inefficiencies” among the services by consolidating both forces and functions and thereby to “shape a new force in light ... of changed circumstances. . . .” Senator Nunn stated that “we must find the best way to provide a fighting force that is not bound by the constraints of roles and missions outlined in 1948.”
Several of Senator Nunn’s examples of “inefficiency and duplication” were related to the Marine Corps. “Does the Marine Corps really need fixed-wing aviation?” he asked. “Could the Marine Corps specialize in vertical flight [helicopters and AV-8Bs] and the Navy specialize in fixed-wing fighter support?”
“Why do we find light divisions in both the Army and the Marine Corps?” he continued. “Do we need 8 divisions [5 Army and 3 Marine] of contingency or expeditionary forces?” And finally he inquired: “Can the Army provide armor and artillery support for the Marine Corps?”
General Carl Mundy, Commandant of the Marine Corps, implicitly responded to Senator Nunn’s questions in the October 1992 issue of Armed Forces Journal, when he said that “each of the services is . . . responsible for developing capabilities based on its assigned roles and functions; these capabilities must serve the national interest both in times of war and peace. . . . Capabilities flow from requirements which, in turn, flow from a carefully thought-out National Security Strategy that delineates our national goals or objectives and the military contributions required to attain them.”[1][2] [3] [4]
The key, he wrote, is that service capabilities are complementary. While both Army and Marine divisions are capable of ground combat, each is “precisely structured, trained, and equipped to provide a distinct capability for a CinC to select for a specific mission.” The same holds for Marine Corps tactical aviation. Marine fixed-wing aviation can operate either from carriers or airfields to provide a wide range of support for a unified commander.
As I observed in the fall 1992 issue of Strategic Review, the real question regarding roles and missions is whether “ ... in an uncertain world there is a strategic requirement for a ready, flexible, sustainable power-projection force that can be task organized and launched from the sea. [If so], the nation should continue to fund a Marine Corps as a maritime complement to the land combat capabilities of the Army. And if the Marines are to field the balanced, combined-arms force that best fulfills the strategic requirement, they need their own artillery, tanks and fixed-wing aircraft.”[5]
The Marine Corps position on roles and missions was vindicated by the recent report of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which argued that “there are advantages in having complementary capabilities among the Services.”
Regarding Marine Corps tactical aviation, the report states that “U.S. Marines train and fight as a combined arms air- ground team, supported by organic aircraft that can operate from carrier decks and austere expeditionary sites ashore. Despite calls for its elimination, Marine Corps tactical air is a unique capability, essential to our military strategy.[6]
On the other hand, the number of aircraft types in Marine aviation will decline from nine to four, and Marine squadrons will deploy more frequently on board aircraft carriers.
The report supports the Marine Corps position in other matters as well. For instance, while noting the complementary relationship between the “expeditionary capabilities of the Marine Corps and the contingency capabilities of Army airborne and light infantry forces,” it nonetheless suggests that Army light infantry may be cut further. It also states that the Marine Corps “must retain enough tank battalions to support amphibious operations and outfit three Maritime Prepositioning Squadrons,” and that proposals to have the Army provide general-support artillery for the Marines is “a major step that requires in-depth cost and effectiveness analysis before implementation can be considered.”[7]
Operation Restore Flope
The 1992 edition of the Headquarters U.S. Marine Corps publication Concepts and Issues contains a useful discussion of the requirements of an expeditionary force. It must, of course be prepared for immediate deployment. Accordingly, it must maintain a high level of readiness and training. An expeditionary force will be an integrated force sharing doctrine and operational techniques. “A force pulled together at the last moment, or one that rarely exercises as an entity, is not well prepared to execute expeditionary tasks.” Since an expeditionary force will often be the first U.S. force on the scene,
it must be interoperable with follow-on joint forces. “Because of this fact,. . -Ma" fine forces are capable of effective com' mand and control in a joint/combined op" erational environment.”[8]
Operation Restore Hope demonstrated the practical application of these very concepts and requirements. In essence 3 MAGTF acted as the expeditionary po'nt of a power-projection spear, ultimately enabling a multinational humanitarian operation under the authority of the United Nations. It did so in an austere environment that made logistical support in some respects more difficult than in Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm.
When Operation Restore Hope was approved by the President, the command element of I Marine Expeditionary Force was designated as a standing joint task force (JTF), which permitted the estab' lishment of a joint-combined force in a very short time. An amphibious ready group and elements of a maritime prepositioning squadron enabled the introduction of the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division and forces of allied countries into Somalia.
Operation Restore Hope demonstrated once again the flexibility and adaptability of the MAGTF. It also illustrated the capability of the Marine Corps to fulfil1 the requirements of a naval expeditionary force as called for by “. . . From the Sea- Somalia confirmed that, again in 1992 the Marine Corps remained the world s premier expeditionary force in readiness-
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Colonel Owens is Professor of Strategy and Defend Economics at the Naval War College and Adjund Professor of International Relations at Boston Ut11' versity. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Strategic Revie" and has written widely on the naval and power-pr°" jection forces. He served in Vietnam as an infantry platoon leader and company commanders.
and Issues, 1992, p. 29.
'Samuel P. Huntington, “National Policy and the Transoceanic Navy,” Proceedings, May 1954, p. 483
[2]For a discussion of the strategic rationale f°r i
power-projection system, see Mackubin Thom116 Owens, “Toward a Maritime Grand Strategy: Para"
digm For a New Security Environment,” Strateg11 Review, Vol. XXI, No. 2, Spring 1993.
'For a critique of Secretary Aspin’s force plannitr$ approach as applied to naval forces, see Mackub111 Thomas Owens, “Why Planning Naval Forces Is Deferent," Defense Analysis,, Vol. 9, No. 1, April 1993 pp. 43-50.
'General Carl Mundy, Jr., USMC, “Capabilities Are the Key to U.S. Forces Reorganization,” Armt" Forces Journal International, October 1992, p. 52- 'Mackubin Thomas Owens, “Accountants vs. Strategists: The New Roles and Missions Debate,” Strata gic Review, Vol. XX, No. 4, Fall 1992, p. 8. “Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Report on the Roles, Missions, and Functions of the Armed Forees of the United States, February 1993, p. xvi.
[7]Ibid., p. xviii.
“Headquarters, United States Marine Corps, Concept