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U.S. Marines, working with a Dutch Marine mortar team, call for fire support from an Italian ship off the coast of Sardinia during NATO Exercise Dawn Patrol 1977. The corps itself needs all the help it can get. The growing mechanization of the world’s armies casts a lengthening shadow on a Marine Corps whose day in the sun has been characterized by its prowess as a light infantry force.
As the Carter administration sets its own course in the field of defense, one fact is becoming clear: the U.S. Marine Corps is in serious trouble. The fiscal year 1979 Defense Authorization Bill, which deals with the first defense budget this administration can truly call its own, cripples Marine Corps and related spending. Amphibious assault shipping, essential to the corps’s capacity to carry out its principal mission, is reportedly to be cut from an inadequate 1.33 of the Marine Corps’ three divisions to 1.15. The dock landing ship (LSD-41 class) program has been cut from six ships to two over the next five years. Funding for the V/STOL (vertical or short takeoff and landing) Advanced Harrier attack aircraft program, upon which the marines have staked most of their future air capability, has been cut in half. And marine troop strength is to be reduced once again.
In the past, such a meat-axe assault on the Marine Corps’s budget would have encountered stiff resistance outside the Department of Defense, particularly in the Congress. Today, however, many of the corps’s long-standing supporters may be reluctant to step forward. The brutal truth is that a growing number of defense analysts regard the Marine Corps
as an under-gunned, slow-moving monument to ‘ bygone era in warfare. Indeed, as early as February 1975, Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesing^j publicly voiced serious doubts ”... about the nee for an amphibious assault force which has not seen anything more demanding than essentially unop posed landings for over 20 years, and which wou have grave difficulty in accomplishing its mission 0 over-the-beach and flanking operations in a nig1 threat environment.”
As specified by the 1947 National Security the Marine Corps consists of three divisions ground troops and three air wings. The present troop strength is 191,500. The fiscal year 1978 Marine Corps budget is $3-2 billion (excluding associate Navy funding—the so-called “blue dollars )•
1947 act lists the main mission of the Marine Corps as amphibious operations, officially defined as • • ' attack(s) launched from the sea by naval and landing forces embarked in ships or craft involving a landing on a hostile shore.” This remains the primary m*s sion of the Marine Corps, despite the fact that since the end of World War II marines have usually been employed in combat environments devoid of any am phibious dimension.
Today’s Marine Corps is plagued by several major structural deficiencies. First, with the exception three or four small battalion landing teams which are continuously afloat, marine combat forces cannot be moved by sea to a transoceanic theater quickly enough to be of use in many foreseeable contingencies in this era of rapid crisis development. Second, because marine ground forces are still organize around the foot soldier, they have a diminishing utility on the modern battlefield.
Although the Marine Corps has three divisions—' one on the East Coast, one on the West Coast, an one on Okinawa—it would take at least a month to bring even one of these divisions into action m a
f
transatlantic theater by using sea transport. This sluggishness was acceptable in prolonged conflicts such as World War II, Korea, or Vietnam. But if future crises in Europe or the Middle East follow recent patterns, they are likely to erupt and to be resolved within days or weeks, not months. The 1973 Mideast War began without any warning, and it was over in less than three weeks. A war in Europe could well be decided, if not altogether over, in as little as a few weeks. This raises serious questions as to whether a Marine Corps which can move but one- third of its strength—and then only at a pace likely to be overtaken by events—provides a useful crisis management tool to the political leadership.
Even if sizable marine forces could be deployed overseas in time to be of use, their chances of defeating many of the types of threats likely to oppose them are diminishing. All three marine divisions are foot infantry (unmechanized), which, except under special conditions, has limited capability against modern mechanized or armored divisions. For example, if the marines were committed to conflict in Europe against the forces of the Warsaw Pact they would assuredly find themselves struggling against an adversary vastly superior in tactical mobility and firepower. The 168-division Soviet Army has no foot infantry units, and few can be found in the armies of its East European allies.
Unfortunately, the wisdom of assigning NATO missions to the Marine Corps has not been adequately addressed within the Defense Department. Marines have never been routinely deployed in Europe and have not fought on the Continent since 1918. Strong arguments can be made for ceding these tasks entirely to the Army and granting the corps exclusive responsibility for contingencies requiring either seaborne or aerial insertion in areas where U.S. ground troops are not already present.
But Europe is no longer the only area where U.S. ground forces may expect to operate in mid- to- high-intensity combat environments. Most nations of the Middle East possess substantial armored and mechanized forces: Iran has 3,200 tanks (including those on order); Egypt, 1,930; Syria, 2,600; Iraq, 1,500.' In contrast, the Marine Corps today has 238 active tanks.2 Admittedly, most of the world’s poorer nations still have foot infantry armies. However, the comparatively small role these nations play on the international stage, coupled with America s post-Vietnam reluctance to become directly involved in violent conflicts in this ‘‘Fourth World, suggest
'Figures from The Military Balance, 1977-78 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1977).
2Figures provided by the Department of Defense.
they are unlikely targets of U.S. intervention forces. The international trend is for nations with wealth or strategic position, particularly those of the l*11 World, to field mechanized ground forces, strong in tanks and other armored fighting vehicles. JuSt ‘lS the marines move too slowly to be a useful tool >n many conceivable crises, so their utility to t policymaker is additionally circumscribed by their being foot infantry. ..
Today’s Marine Corps has yet another major de • ciency. While in theory the three marine air wings exist to support the ground forces, in reality marine aviation (excluding helicopters) consumes so much 0 the Marine Corps’s total funding (including b L,e dollars)—at least 35%—that the ground forces have been pauperized. Capital starvation is a serious Pr<)1 lem for the Marine Corps: in an age when c 1 battlefield is dominated by machines rather than J simple numbers of men, 76% of the Marine Corps* budget is gobbled up by personnel costs (compare with 59% for the Army). The remaining 24% cou not adequately equip this manpower under any c,r cumstances, and with the air wings taking part ot lC plus most of the blue dollars, marine ground forces have been condemned to comparative impotence- Short on operations and maintenance as well as train ing funding, marine divisions have troub e adequately maintaining the comparatively fo" weapons and vehicles they do have. ,
Allocating the major part of the Marine Corps s budget to marine air might be justified if tactic® aviation could offset ground force deficiencies on the battlefield. But many of the same nations which are fielding mechanized ground forces capable of defeat ing marine foot infantry are also building powerfo air defense systems. Warsaw Pact forces move under an umbrella of seven different types of antiaircra t missiles, plus highly effective automated antiaircra t guns. Many Third World states, including those < the Middle East, have or are acquiring similar air defense systems, some of Western European or U.S- manufacture. The difficulties of the Israeli Air Force in the face of Egyptian and Syrian air defenses during the October War of 1973 cannot be ignored by any force planner. It is increasingly doubtful whether any segment of U.S. tactical aviation, marine or other, can continue to maintain its traditional role as the great equalizer of ground force deficiencies in the face of modern air defenses.
These weaknesses in the Marine Corps are obvious to a growing number of defense analysts. Indeed, m 1976 a high-level Marine Corps commission headed by Major General Fred Haynes produced a study the “Haynes Report”—which identified many ot the
JX>ve problems and proposed some interesting reme- les. including partial mechanization of selected ITIarine ground units and the substitution of in- Cfeased firepower in marine ground forces for three li't ^Ua^rons-3 To date, the Marine Corps has done ,ttle to implement the crucial major recom- n^n^at'ons of the Haynes Report, although a
L|mber of the minor suggestions have been acted upon.
Tlie deficiencies in the Marine Corps—and the t°rps s consequent eroding utility as a tool of na- j^°naI Policy—create unparalleled opportunities for jP—nt Defense budget cutters. It is difficult argue for the Marine Corps’s own funding requests I these merely perpetuate the present weaknesses n °rce structure. Unfortunately, many of the cuts being considered by the Office of the Secretary t, ^knse will exacerbate these deficiencies. Since ^e Pr°jected cuts fall most heavily on ships and capon systems, the marines will become even more Undercapitalized. This can lead only to greater and 0re justifiable skepticism about the corps’s capabilities, creating a vicious circle which could ul-
Pub,Jrt't le based (>n tht' Haynts Report written by General Haynes, will be 'shed in the September Proceedings.
timately produce pressures for disbanding of the Marine Corps.
Opportunistic budget cutting is the last thing the corps needs at this juncture in its history. Instead, what is required is a comprehensive program to turn the Marine Corps into a truly useful tool of crisis management. Policymakers will continue to need the capability the Marine Corps can provide to insert U.S. ground forces into areas where we have no troops normally stationed. The growing importance and volatility of the Third World suggest that while NATO will remain the most important defense concern for the United States, certain Third World situations may be more likely to require U.S. involvement in actual hostilities. The United States may also require forces to counter Soviet intervention in Third World conflicts, should this country ever fully acknowledge the inherent antagonism between local nationalism and Soviet expansionism. Such a policy
The products of research and development could give the Marine dorps increased capability for assaulting defended beaches in the future. But such products are hardly affordable when three-fourths of the corps's money goes into personnel and when aviation eats up a large chunk of the remaining fourth.
of “resisting hegemony while not seeking hegemony could well become a keystone of U.S. grand strategy in the 1980s, and it would require the existence of effective U.S. insertion forces—i.e., an effective Marine Corps.
Specific steps to convert the Marine Corps into an effective, responsive crisis management tool are both definable and feasible. The problem of responsiveness has two elements: lift capacity and time. Capacity could be increased by employing merchant marine containerships, as proposed in the imaginative and impressive Marine Corps Field Logistics System study.
Time of response could be cut drastically by applying the same concept we now use for reinforcing U.S. Army forces in Europe: pre-positioning of equipment. Tanks, artillery, and other heavy equipment for a minimum of one mechanized marine brigade could be stored on board roll-on/roll-off ships berthed near the East Coast 2nd Marine Division. In event of a crisis, it should be possible to load the troops in a matter of hours; actual transatlantic transit time, with 30-knot ships, would be fairly short. This system could cut the response time of a marine force from more than a month to between one and two weeks. New technologies such as 100-knot surface effect ship transports may be able to cut response time even further in the foreseeable future.
For the marines to be a truly effective fighting force available for the full spectrum ot contingencies, the 2nd Marine Division and other units slated for participation in European and Mideast contingencies should be converted from foot infantry to a new type of mechanized force which avoids the penalties in strategic mobility associated with Army-style mechanization. Mechanization is not especially expensive; it costs approximately $300 million for one Army foot division.
The heavy weight of traditional mechanized equipment, particularly tanks, can cause problems for a force which must be strategically mobile. However, mechanization need not encompass large numbers of main battle tanks. Small, highly specialized anti-tank vehicles, such as the mobile protected weapons system (MPWS) being developed by the Marine Corps, may be available by the early 1980s. Moreover, several foreign countries, such as France and Brazil, have developed lightweight but powerful armored vehicles which could meet the Marine Corps’s needs. Much of this equipment is wheeled rather than tracked, giving it the additional advantage of simplicity of maintenance.
These two basic improvements—increased, reorganized sealift and mechanization—would resolve
the corps’s two basic current problems of slow re^ sponse and marginal ability to fight the mechanize opponents it is likely to meet on the battlefie ^ Both improvements, although cost-effective, do co money. One source of funds could be the air win^s While the V/STOL Advanced Harrier should be Pr0 cured to maintain some marine close air supp0*^ capability, the need for the present number ^ Marine Corps fighter/attack squadrons is less appar^ ent. Navy fighters, along with marine “Hawk mlS^ sile air defense batteries, can provide substantia ai defense capabilities, With minor changes in configuration, the Advanced Harrier also promises to be effective local air defense fighter. Eliminating s0 ^ or even all of the 12 marine fighter squadrons, wlt their personnel and support, would release appr0*^ mately $50 million annually per squadron demobilized to be invested in additional sealift Jn mechanization of ground forces.
Additional money could be obtained by reduction in marine divisional personnel. Currently, two of 1 ® three marine divisions are stationed in the Pad 1 theater. This seems to be excessive, in view of £ e present and projected reduction of U.S. Pacific i volvement. One of these divisions could be reduce to a cadre formation, or even demobilized, althougj it might be preferable to reorient it towar European/Mideast contingencies and provide additional funding. ,
However, the greatest potential source of neede funds for the Marine Corps would be a more logica division of mission assignments between the Army and the Marine Corps. Currently, the two services compete for the mission of sending troops in time o crisis into areas where the United States does not normally have forces stationed. This duplication 0 missions is debilitating for both services. It prevents the Marine Corps from having a clear, manageab e mission assignment, and it also encourages the Army’s seemingly endless infatuation with airborne, light infantry, Ranger, and other insertion forces- Many of these forces, such as the 82nd Airborne, have little evident utility on the modern battlefiek , and are maintained in part so the Army can claim a share of the insertion mission.
If the entire insertion mission were assigned to the Marine Corps, existing Army and Marine Corps insertion forces could be restructured, with substantia potential savings. For example, elimination of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, plus its supporting “slice,” could save approximately $878 million pet year—almost enough to mechanize the entire Marine Corps in one year. Or, with a modern 30,000-ton roll-on/roll-off transport costing between $85 and
trillion, ten could be purchased each year from manpower reduction.
$90
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Unless these basic reforms in the Marine Corps are undertaken, the corps’s ability to serve our national Policy goals will decline further from its already in- p e9uate level. It will become more and more dif- lcu t to oppose budget cutters who would rather Save money than improve combat capabilities. Indis- Cr,minate assaults on the Marine Corps’s budget will w°rsen the undercapitalization of the corps, lower its capabilities, and set the stage for further cuts. This
Mr. Lind received his A.B. from Dartmouth College in 1969, graduating Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude with a history major. He received a master’s degree in history in 1971 from Princeton and is working on a Ph.D. dissertation in the field of 18th century European intellectual history. From October 1973 to January 1977, Mr. Lind served as legislative assistant to ^nator Robert Taft of Ohio. He assisted in the preparation of the Taft oj. ,te ^aPer on defense and in the senator’s development of the concept l^a new technology Navy. In January 1977, Mr. Lind became the legis- ^1Ve assistant for the Armed Services Committee to Senator Gary Hart for^0^0ra<^° ^'nds Plications include “Some Doctrinal Questions s°F tlle Umted States Army” in the March 1977 Military Review; propo- s lor restructuring the Marine Corps in “Mission and Force Structure,” „ December 1975 Marine Corps Gazette; a guest editorial entitled . °uld We Shoot an Admiral?” in the 25 July 1977 issue of The Wash- kt()n Star; and “Is it Time to Sink the Surface Navy?” in the March
^7 Proceedings.
cycle can be broken only by genuine reform directed at specific weaknesses in the Marine Corps’s ability to serve as a tool for crisis management. Without such reform, it is not clear that the Marine Corps will survive as an institution through the probable two terms of the present administration.
William S. Lind and Jeffrey Record are legislative assistants for military affairs to Senator Gary Hart and Senator Sam Nunn, respectively. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Senator Hart, Senator Nunn, or any other member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Dr. Record received his B.A. in diplomacy and world affairs from Occidental College, Los Angeles, in 1965; M.A. in international relations from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Washington, D.C., in 1967; Ph.D. in international relations from Johns Hopkins in 1972. He served in Vietnam with the U.S. Agency for International Development and has subsequently worked for Research Analysis Corporation, McLean, Virginia; Development Alternatives, Inc., Washington, D.C.; American University Foreign Area Studies, Washington, D.C.; befense Analysis Staff of the Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C. Since 1976, Dr. Record has been Legislative Assistant for Military Affairs on the staff of Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia. In addition to writing numerous published articles on military subjects, he is the author of Sizing Up the Soviet Army (Brookings, 1975) and U.S. Nuclear Weapons in Europe (Brookings, 1974) and coauthor of U.S. Force Structure in NATO: An Alternative (Brookings, 1974) and Where Does the Marine Corps Go from Here? (Brookings, 1976).
A Moving Target ______________________________________________
As a very new Marine recruit, I missed a notice of a personal interview with the commanding officer. An hour late, I was marched in by an irate sergeant and decided to try to Btrieve the situation by a show of military correctness. I stopped smartly at the CO’s desk, c°ming to a halt on a mat atop a recently polished floor and sailed past him to the opposite 'Val1' 1 attempted to remedy the situation with a smart about-turn and skidded right past "ltT> again.
All right,” said the captain. “Just stand still, and I’ll come to you.”
A.H. Livingston
Stung
Every division and every squadron used to have an education officer whose ability was measured by the success or failure of his enlisted charges in passing their advancement in aung exams. In the late 1940s, one frustrated lieutenant (junior grade) sat down with a Candidate who had just flunked his test for seaman first class for the third time.
Look at some of these answers,” he said. “After all the lectures I gave you, they ask what a,rcraft carriers are named after, and you write down ‘insects.’ You’ve been in the Navy for Seven years, for Pete’s sake. What kind of duty have you had?"
The sailor responded smartly, “Four years on the Hornet, Sir, and three on the Wasp."
Captain A.H. Vito, Jr., USN (Ret.)
(The Naval Institute will pay $25.00 for each anecdote published in the Proceedings.)