In 2007, the United States Marine Corps continued to prepare for and conduct the Long War, refining its operational employment concept for meeting the uncertain security environment that emerged in the wake of 9/11. The Corps has been stressed as a result of continuous and demanding operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the performance of individual Marines and Marine Corps units—from al Anbar province in Iraq to the Philippines and operations afloat—have once again enhanced the reputation of the Corps as a uniquely flexible, agile, and capable expeditionary force.
Nonetheless, the protracted employment of the Marine Corps in Iraq has renewed the discussion concerning the service's strategic concept. Beginning in 2007, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, General James T. Conway, expressed concerns that the commitment of substantial forces to Operation Iraqi Freedom has had the effect of degrading the traditional role of the Marines as an expeditionary force in readiness, capable of responding to security flare-ups around the world. According to General Conway, the Marine Corps is in danger of becoming a second ground army. This concern led the Commandant to float the idea that the Marines should be shifted from Iraq and assume primary responsibility for U.S. operations in Afghanistan, a mission, he contended, more in keeping with the Marine Corps' expeditionary orientation.
Operations in 2007
Although deployed worldwide, the focus of Marine Corps operations in 2007 remained Iraq, especially al Anbar province. Some 25,000 Marines were deployed to Iraq during this period, mainly as part of the Camp Pendleton-based I Marine Expeditionary Force (I MEF), serving as a component of Multi-National Force-West (MNF-W). As discussed in this space last year, the U.S. strategy that guided operations in 2006 called for I MEF and other U.S. forces to focus on training the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) to conduct independent operations. Meanwhile I MEF continued counterinsurgency operations, frequently in conjunction with the ISF, aimed at neutralizing anti-Iraqi forces.
But during a nationally televised speech on 10 January 2007, President Bush announced a change in the administration's political and military strategy in Iraq. This change in direction was christened the "surge" by the press. During the address the President stated "America will change our strategy to help the Iraqis carry out their campaign to put down sectarian violence and bring security to the people of Baghdad. This will require increasing American force levels." As part of this strategic change of direction, President Bush committed more than 20,000 additional U.S. troops to Iraq.
Most of the discussion of the surge was centered on the increased number of troops. But the more important consideration was how these additional troops would be employed. In 2007, a better plan coincided with the number of troops necessary to implement it.
Prior to 2006, many observers believed that defeating the Sunni insurgency in al Anbar province constituted the key to victory in Iraq. After the takedown of Fallujah in November 2004, the Coalition continued a high tempo of offensive operations designed to destroy the insurgent infrastructure west and northwest of the town. Although successful in many respects, these operations seemed like a game of "whack-a-mole": Towns were cleared of insurgents, but because of limited manpower, were not held. Insurgents returned as soon as Coalition forces moved on.
But then even the offensive stopped as training the Iraqis took center stage in the Coalition's Iraq strategy. While a well-trained Iraqi force is critical to ultimate success in Iraq, the 2006 focus on training the ISF was accompanied by the consolidation of U.S. forces in large "megabases" in an attempt to reduce the American "footprint" and move U.S. troops to the periphery of the fight.
However, the adoption of a defensive posture enabled the insurgents to regain the initiative wrested from them during the earlier al Anbar campaigns. One result of the insurgents' regained initiative was the bombing of the Grand Mosque in Sammara, which in 2006 ignited the sectarian violence that threatened to destroy the possibility of a united Iraq. Unfortunately, the new disposition of American forces made it impossible for them to provide the necessary security to the Iraqi population as sectarian violence exploded in Baghdad and elsewhere. The so-called surge was intended to reverse this decline in Iraq's security situation.
The key to success in al Anbar and other parts of Iraq in 2007 was the implementation of a traditional counterinsurgency campaign based on the precepts and doctrine of a joint effort between the Army and Marines that produced a new counterinsurgency publication at the end of 2006. The manual (Field Manual 3-24 for the Army and Marine Corps Warfighting Publication 3-33.5 for the Marines) lays out the concept of "campaign design," which requires that prior to the outset of operations, planners must identify not only the problem that needs to be solved, but also the make-up of the community affected by the campaign, and the goals and needs of the various groups that comprise the community. It stresses the point that a counterinsurgency campaign is much more complex than a traditional military-on-military conflict because it must take into account the cultural as well as the physical terrain.
Marine operations in 2007 in al Anbar were guided by the precepts of Marine Corps Warfighting Publication 3-33.5 and by the recognition that the security of the population is the sine qua non for a successful counterinsurgency campaign. But the Marines of al Anbar were also aided by the mistakes of al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), leading to what has been called the "Anbar Awakening" in Ramadi in the fall of 2006. By disrespecting Iraqi religious and social customs, enforcing a severe form of Shari'a, including the imposition of harsh punishments for even minor transgressions, and undermining the traditional Sunni tribal system by assassinating sheikhs and seeking to impose its own ideology on the region, AQI induced the Sunni sheikhs of al Anbar to form a coalition willing to cooperate with the Americans, whom they now identified, in the words of author Bing West, as the "strongest tribe." The combination of the new approach to counterinsurgency and the mistakes of AQI led to a substantial reduction of violence in al Anbar.
But as security was waxing in Iraq, it was waning in Afghanistan. While a combination of technology, U.S. special operations forces, and indigenous forces had routed the Taliban in 2001-2002, by 2007 it was reconstituting itself in the tribal regions of Afghanistan along the Pakistani border. This state of affairs, combined with concerns that continued employment in Iraq would erode the strategic concept of the Marine Corps as an expeditionary force in readiness, led the Commandant to propose shifting Marines from Iraq to Afghanistan.
Iraq and the Marines' Strategic Concept
In 1954, the eminent political scientist Samuel Huntington defined a strategic concept as "the fundamental element of [a] service, . . . its role or purpose in implementing national policy." A service's strategic concept answers the "ultimate question: What function do you perform which obligates society to assume responsibility for your maintenance?"
As I observed in this review a year ago, the Marine Corps is in the throes of a debate about its strategic concept reminiscent of the one that took place during the interwar years. That iteration of the debate featured two schools of thought. The first, epitomized by Major General Smedley Butler, argued that the Marines should concentrate on providing "colonial infantry" of the sort that had operated in the Caribbean and Central America in the period from 1906 until the 1930s. The other, associated with Major General John Lejuene, stressed the importance of amphibious assault to seize forward naval bases in support of a naval campaign. The latter view prevailed, and the Marine Corps' World War II strategic concept came to maturity in the Pacific war against the Japanese empire.
In 2007, the Marine Corps concluded that the most dangerous situation the United States will face in the immediate future is a hybrid category of conflict called complex irregular warfare. Accordingly, many have concluded that the Marine Corps should move away from the strategic concept that has guided it since World War II—expeditionary operations from the sea—toward something closer to the Butler model of colonial infantry.
But others, while acknowledging the importance of being able to confront complex irregular warfare, have concluded that the future Corps cannot afford to move away completely from the expeditionary model. Instead, it must become a hybrid force. One part of this new Marine Corps will emphasize providing colonial infantry capable of responding to the demands of small wars and irregular threats, and operating in close cooperation with special operations forces to execute both direct action and foreign internal-defense missions. But the Marines will also need to continue refining procedures for forcible entry from the sea. Thus the Marine Corps cannot afford to abandon the "high-mobility triad," and the Navy will need to continue to procure amphibious lift and transition to the future Maritime Preposition Force (MPF).
But the war in Iraq has threatened the evolution of this hybrid force by undermining the expeditionary character of the Marine Corps. Hence the Commandant's worry that the Marines are becoming another land army. As he said during an interview with Defense Daily in October of 2007:
We [the Marines] are an expeditionary force by nature. We go down to the sea in ships. But right now we are very much taking the profile of a second land army. We have to go through what I call an expeditionary filter, when we come out of there, to get back to lighter, faster, more hard-hitting kind of capability that is deployable aboard our nation's ships. That is a necessary filter I think we will have to endure.
For the Commandant, the war in Iraq is making it difficult to maintain that expeditionary filter.
Of course, Marines have conducted sustained operations ashore in the past. As now-Senator James Webb (D-VA) observed in an article on roles and missions in 1972, "these periods of bitter fighting were not in any way related to the prosecution of a naval campaign, and took place because Marine units were ready and needed." But although Marines can conduct sustained operations ashore if required to do so, they are not organized or equipped primarily for such a task. As an inspector general report to Congress noted in 2005:
Marine Corps units fighting in some of the most dangerous terrain in Iraq don't have enough weapons, communications gear, or properly outfitted vehicles. Marines need twice as many heavy machine-guns, more fully protected armored vehicles, and more communications equipment to operate in a region the size of Utah. [Marine units in Iraq] require ground equipment that exceeds their [USMC] current supplies, particularly in mobility, engineering, communications, and heavy equipment.
This situation has improved since then, but the structural problems associated with having a force that is designed for assault from the sea conduct sustained land operations remain.
At the same time, the operational and tactical threat that manifested itself in 2006 forced the Marine Corps to purchase equipment that further undermines the Marines' expeditionary character. A case in point is the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle. Based on the pre-2007 threat that featured numerous attacks by improvised explosive devices, the Marine Corps was slated to purchase some 3,700 MRAPs. Decreasing violence in al Anbar province has reduced the buy to 2,500 vehicles.
But the MRAP, a large, heavily armored vehicle weighing 48,000 pounds (depending on the model) is not expeditionary, has no amphibious capability, is not helicopter-mobile, and is not integrated with the MPF. In addition, the cost of fielding the MRAP—a sum that could exceed $3 billion—drains funding from the Marine Corps' other acquisition priorities, such as the amphibious Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (EFV).
On to Afghanistan
In the fall of 2007, General Conway suggested the idea of shifting the Marines from Iraq, where violence has declined, to Afghanistan, where fighting increased in 2007 as a result of the Taliban's resurgence. The logic for this move flows from concerns that the Marine Corps is in danger of losing its expeditionary character and that Iraq has now become an occupation, a mission that is also not expeditionary in character. He argued that as an expeditionary force, the Marines "do not get engaged in some of the long-term type duties that you see in Germany or in Japan or in Korea."
Of course, Marines have been involved in occupations in the past. They were part of the initial occupying force in Japan in September 1945, although they were for the most part withdrawn by July 1946. And Marines were heavily involved in the administration of several Caribbean countries before World War II.
Nonetheless, the Commandant pressed the idea with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen in the fall of 2007. The Commandant's plan called for Marines to assume the role now performed by an Army headquarters unit and for Marine Air-Ground Task Forces (MAGTFs) to replace the two Army brigade combat teams operating in eastern Afghanistan.
The main public justification for making the shift was to improve efficiency. Advocates argue that realigning the forces in such a way would allow the Army and Marines to more easily manage and sustain troop levels for two wars by simplifying the planning for future troop rotations, thereby reducing the strain on their forces.
The Commandant also argued that the MAGTF concept, which allows the Marine Corps to bring its "own headquarters, ground elements, logistics, and air assault capabilities [is] especially suited to the scale of operations in Afghanistan." He further contended that the Marines' "strength and . . . capabilities as a force that combines light infantry, armored ground power and tactical air capabilities" are better suited to Afghanistan than Iraq under the current circumstances.
Opposition to the Commandant's proposal took a number of different forms. The first is that it violates jointness by giving separate theaters to the Army and the Marine Corps. Of course, jointness is supposed to be a means, not an end. If a theater division of labor improves the situation, a commitment to jointness per se should not be a reason for rejecting it.
Ironically, the appeal to jointness in this case may actually have concealed underlying service parochialism. Some reports indicate that the Air Force was unhappy with the proposal because it might reduce its role in Afghanistan, since unlike the Army, a MAGTF provides its own significant force of combat aircraft.
Others argued that this proposal was merely a ploy to favorably position the Marine Corps for upcoming budget battles. Thom Shanker wrote in the New York Times on 11 October 2007 that "military officials say the Marine proposal is also an early indication of jockeying among the four armed services for a place in combat missions in years to come."
There is no question that the high defense budgets that followed 9/11 will eventually decline, but again the idea should stand or fall on its own merits. In any event, Secretary Gates ultimately rejected the Commandant's proposal, stating that now (December 2007) is "not the right time."
The Osprey Deploys to Iraq
After years of controversy, the MV-22B Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft began flying in support of Marines in Iraq in the fall of 2007. In mid-September, ten Ospreys of Marine Corps Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 263 departed North Carolina on board the USS Wasp (LHD-1) and landed at al Asad airbase in early October.
The Osprey has been plagued by problems since the outset. Critics condemned the technological risk and the high cost of the program, saying that the hybrid aircraft is difficult to maintain and dangerous to fly. Opponents pointed out that there have been several Osprey crashes since 1991, three of them fatal. They argued that the Marines could meet their future requirements by procuring a modern helicopter.
The Marines replied that they needed the MV-22B to replace their Vietnam-era medium-lift helicopter fleet and that only the Osprey was capable of providing the combination of range, speed, and payload necessary for the Marine Corps to conduct amphibious operations from over the horizon and execute its concepts of operational maneuver from the sea and ship-to-objective movement. These concepts are designed to permit a naval task force to launch a landing force a considerable distance from shore and insert it substantially inland, avoiding a costly fight on the landing beach while reducing the exposure of the naval force.
The Osprey is one part of the so-called "high-mobility" triad necessary to implement the mature versions of these operational concepts, and arguably the most critical. The Osprey will permit the Marines to carry out their functions with the lowest risk of casualties. Its deployment to a combat zone after all of these years of controversy marks a historic milestone.
General James Mattis to Joint Forces Command
One of the most important appointments of a Marine to four-star command occurred in the fall of 2007 when General James Mattis became commander of U.S. Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM). In that capacity, he is responsible for developing the joint doctrine and concepts that will guide the evolution of future U.S. forces.
The downside of this appointment was that the country lost the services of a first-rate combat commander. But as a seasoned leader who has fought the kind of wars we are likely to fight in the future, General Mattis was now in a position to break the "technology-as-panacea" culture that has long dominated JFCOM. As a vocal critic of what he saw as the unchallenged assumptions of much contemporary defense planning, he argued against those who believe that technology provides a solution to all of America's security problems, and denounced the idea, advanced by some prominent commentators on security issues, that advances in technology have "changed the very nature of war."
As commander of JFCOM, General Mattis will also be in a position to resist the dangerous tendency of the military transformation bureaucracy to impose orthodoxy or dogma on force planning. This tendency was illustrated in 2002 during a massive war game conducted by JFCOM. The exercise, named "Millennium Challenge," was designed to test a number of DOD concepts such as Joint Vision 2002, effects based operations, and rapid decisive operations.
The "red team" was led by retired Marine Lieutenant General Paul Van Riper. Taking his role seriously—doing his best to realistically test the subject concepts—he employed asymmetric tactics and commercial off-the-shelf technologies to inflict heavy losses on the blue team, essentially bringing the game to a halt. According to General Van Riper, "neither the construct nor the conduct of the exercise allowed for [these concepts] to be properly assessed." In other words, rather than a "free play" exercise that would permit an unfettered red team to really test these concepts, the exercise merely rubber-stamped them.
Millennium Challenge revealed the flaws in the "technology-as-panacea" vision of transformation that has permeated JFCOM in the past. By all accounts, General Mattis has begun to reverse this culture, instilling the recognition that if assumptions can't be questioned, the ability to truly "re-perceive" the security environment is limited.
MARSOC in Afghanistan
In October 2005, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld directed the creation of a Marine component within the U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOC) and in February of 2006, Marine Corps Special Operations Command (MARSOC) was established. But the first deployment of a Marine Special Operations unit to a combat theater did not go well, and the consequence was a major black eye for the Marine Corps.
In February 2007, Marine Special Operations Company (MSOC) Fox arrived in Afghanistan and was attached to Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force-Afghanistan. On 4 March, while returning from a mission in Nangarhar province, a vehicle in the Fox Company convoy was apparently hit by a car bomb. The Marines claimed that the car bomb was the opening of an insurgent ambush and that they had to shootntheir way out. But witnesses accused the Marines of shooting at nearly everything that moved over a ten-mile course, killing 19 Afghans and wounding many others as they attempted to escape. On 3 April, the commander of CENTCOM's Special Operations Command (SOCCENT), Army Major General Frank Kearney, ordered MSOC Fox out of Afghanistan. The United States apologized for the incident and paid reparations to the families of those killed.
Defenders of the Marines charged that General Kearney's actions were motivated by interservice rivalry, leading to charges and countercharges that eventually involved a member of Congress and his staff. But General Kearney's decision to remove MSOC Fox from theater was based on the findings of a SOCCENT investigative team. The Marine Corps is conducting its own investigation, which according to news reports, seems to support the contentions of those who claim that the actions of MSOC Fox on 4 March 2007 were characterized by the collapse of command and control. In any event, the first deployment of a MARSOC unit was less than auspicious.
The Haditha Incident
On the other hand, the Marine Corps recovered, at least partially, from a black eye it received in 2006. Military prosecutors charged a number of Marines from the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines, of killing more than 20 Iraqi civilians in the town of Haditha in retaliation for the death of one of their comrades by a roadside bomb in November 2005, and leveled serious charges against several others, including officers who allegedly did not adequately investigate the matter shortly after the event.
In violation of the principle that one is considered innocent until found guilty, the Marines in question were immediately convicted in the court of public opinion. Most troubling was the public claim by Representative John Murtha (D-PA), a former Marine who has become a vociferous critic of the war in Iraq, that the Marines had "killed innocent civilians in cold blood." Appearing on This Week on ABC, Murtha contended that the shootings in Haditha had been covered up. "Who covered it up, why did they cover it up, why did they wait so long? We don't know how far it goes. It goes right up the chain of command."
But in 2007, then-Lieutenant General Mattis, CG I MEF, accepted the recommendations of the Article 32 investigating officer and dropped charges against two of the Marines charged with murder and an officer charged with dereliction of duty.
At present, only one of the four enlisted Marines charged with murder in the Haditha incident still faces court martial and he faces reduced charges. Two officers, including the battalion commander, still face charges of dereliction of duty. Nonetheless, as reported in the spring of 2007 by the Washington Post, a 2006 report by Army Major General Eldon Bargewell, found serious misconduct on the part of Marine Corps leadership at all levels. According to the Post, the full 104-page document found no direct evidence of a cover-up, but did find that
the duty to inquire further was so obvious in this case that a reasonable person with knowledge of these events would have certainly made further inquiries. The most remarkable aspect of the follow-on action . . . was the absence of virtually any kind of inquiry at any level of command into the circumstances surrounding the deaths.
In thinking about the Haditha incident, it is necessary to remember that in Iraq, our opponents have chosen to deny us the ability to fight the sort of conventional war we would prefer and forced us to fight the one they want—an insurgency. Insurgents blend with the people, making it hard to distinguish between combatant and noncombatant. A counterinsurgency always has to negotiate a fine line between too much and too little force. Indeed, it suits the insurgents' goal when too much force is applied indiscriminately. What seems remarkable is not that incidents such as Haditha have occurred, but that there have been so few of them.
Resetting the Force and Major Marine Programs
Over the past three years the Marine Corps has maintained 40 percent of its ground assets, 50 percent of its communications gear, and 20 percent of its aviation assets in Iraq. This equipment is used up to nine times its planned rate, been subject to a punishing environment, and depleted because of combat losses. This will require a major effort to reset and restore the current force.
As was the case in 2006, the Marine Corps drew equipment from the Maritime Pre-Position Force, pre-positioned stocks in Norway, and home-station pools to meet warfighting requirements in Iraq and Afghanistan. This in turn has affected the readiness of deploying units. This problem will continue to plague the Marine Corps for the immediate future and will require supplemental funding to avoid the disruption of modernization.
According to the second edition of the Marine Corps Operating Concepts for a Changing Security Environment (2007), Sea-Basing, Expeditionary Warfare, Distributed Operations, and Complex Irregular Warfare continue to serve as the conceptual foundations of the 21st century Marine Corps, which require, as in 2006, the funding of several critical programs, including:
- The MV-22B Osprey, the tilt-rotor hybrid aircraft that has now been deployed and will eventually replace the aging and declining fleet of CH-46 and CH-53D helicopters.
- The Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, a self-deploying, high-water-speed, armored amphibious vehicle capable of rapidly transporting Marines from over-the-horizon to inland objectives. It is considered to be the cornerstone of ship-to-objective movement.
- The Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) is a multi-role fighter optimized for the air-to-ground mission. The Marine variant of the JSF is the short take-off, vertical landing (STOVL) version. It is critical to the Marine Corps if the MAGTF is to be able to provide the capabilities necessary to prevail against future adversaries across the spectrum of conflict.
- The Heavy Lift Replacement program, also known as the CH-53K program, is intended to provide the increased range and payload necessary for the MAGTF to implement expeditionary warfare.
- The Future Maritime Preposition Force MPF(F) will allow for the robust capabilities required by the Sea-Basing concept. MPF(F) does four things that the current MPF does not: permit at-sea arrival and assembly of units; provide direct support of the assault echelon of the Marine Expeditionary Brigade; enable indefinite sea-based sustainment for the landing force; and permit at-sea reconstitution and redeployment of the force.
- The LHA Replacement Program/LHA-6 is necessary to provide an affordable and sustainable amphibious ship development program, ensuring an amphibious fleet for expeditionary warfare. The LHA-6 will be an integral element of the Sea-Basing concept. The LPD-17 will replace four retiring amphibious ship classes.
During 2007, in the face of a demanding operational tempo, the Marine Corps reconfirmed its reputation as the world's most flexible, agile, and capable expeditionary force. The performance of U.S. Marines at every level proved that soldierly virtue and uncommon valor continue to characterize the Marine Corps. From Iraq to Afghanistan and beyond, individual Marines have performed the most demanding missions with elan and courage of the highest order, while the Marine Corps as an organization has exhibited the characteristics—adaptability and innovation in response to changing circumstances—that have contributed to its success in the past and will continue to do so in the Long War against Islamic radicalism.