After a decade of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Marine Corps’ combat capability is clear. The success of young Marines and sailors has been magnificent, in both conventional and counterinsurgency operations in al Anbar and Helmand provinces. But prolonged ground operations hundreds of miles from the closest ship have led to characterizations of the Corps as a “second land army.”1
Navy counterparts operate empty amphibious ships that are forward-deployed but bereft of a mission providing synergistic amphibious forces for combatant commanders who look for more unilateral means to employ their shrinking number of platforms.2 Perhaps most distressing have been Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ remarks, in several speeches during spring and summer 2010, questioning the viability of large-scale amphibious assaults along lines of the 1950 Inchon invasion in Korea.
Yet in 2008, General James Conway, then Commandant of the Marine Corps, publicly declared: “The Marine Corps must maintain its naval roots to shape the environment and effectively deter adversaries.”3 As a result, despite ongoing requirements to continue providing large staffs and combat forces for combat, the Marine Expeditionary Forces (MEFs) on both coasts began to push for amphibious training exercises beyond Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) certification.
General Conway’s proclamation came to fruition on the East Coast on some very cold days on the waterfront of Norfolk Naval Base early in December 2010. The staffs of the Marine Corps’ 2d Marine Expeditionary Brigade (MEB) and the Navy’s 2d Expeditionary Strike Group (ESG) gathered on board amphibious shipping to conduct Exercise Bold Alligator 2011, the culmination of a coordinated Navy-Marine Corps effort to return to the Corps’ amphibious roots. The next exercise, to be conducted in February 2012, will present another opportunity to continue returning to the Corps’ amphibious heritage. But to accomplish that goal, the following fundamental changes in the service must be made:
• Greater integration of out-of-the-box thinking for amphibious exercises
• Larger-scale dedication of Marines to Navy and amphibious missions
• Platforms other than just the limited number of amphibious ships for training and to accomplish these missions
Examination of the first exercise’s aftermath shows that the mission was accomplished. Teamwork between the staffs brought many good outcomes in which sailors and Marines carried out tasks with a high level of proficiency and competence. That is the good. But because of their inexperience, there were also several bad results, and even some ugly ones for which time and training may not offer reasonable solutions. These are the most interesting, because they point to the underlying challenges that raise the question of whether the Marine Corps actually can get back to its naval origins.
A Hard Look at the Ugly
As evidence of how badly the service’s naval roots had withered, Bold Alligator 2011 was the first amphibious exercise on the East Coast at the brigade level since 9/11. For nearly two weeks, staffs worked through the problems presented by the most complicated military operation available to the United States.
Even if the exercise’s positive results are reinforced and the “bads” overcome by the 2012 maneuvers, Bold Alligator 2011 brought the “ugly” into focus for near-future amphibious operations. Regardless of how many staff members are dedicated to frequent training, no heroic effort can overcome the current shortage of amphibious shipping or the long-absent spirit of radical innovation.
Exercise developers could dedicate just two ships, the USS Bataan (LHD-5) and Iwo Jima (LHD-7), to support a MEB—which normally embarks on board 12 to 15 ships. Of the two, one returned from a five-month deployment only days before beginning the exercise. In fact, crewmen were still on their post-deployment time off when Bold Alligator began, causing a host of communication issues.
Challenges such as these were not due to poor scheduling or bad planning. Between ships deployed, maintenance cycles, and required ship-centric training, the ability to have a sufficient number of ships to embark a MEB for actual contingencies (not to mention training) is questionable. The Bold Alligator 2012 underway exercise should include seven amphibious ships. This means every amphibious ship available to the Second Fleet at that time. One thing is certain: The Navy is serious about dedicating the assets it does have to this exercise. Yet even so, there are not enough ships to train effectively.
In a poignant October 2010 address, Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Fleet Readiness and Logistics (N4) Vice Admiral William R. Burke reinforced this point. The number of ships available for training in U.S. waters is minimal. The pressure to support combat operations has driven the Navy to maintain a constant number of ships deployed forward, despite a large reduction in the service’s inventory. The result is that on any given day, approximately just 20 vessels of all types are available for home-based training.
But before Marines point fingers at more amphibious ships as the solution to getting back to its origins, Vice Admiral Burke’s realistic view of the economic future for Navy shipbuilding quickly identifies how ugly that approach would be. During the three previous military buildups (Korea, Vietnam, and Reagan’s Cold War), the Navy, like the other services, benefitted from large increases in personnel and equipment (ships). In the drawdown following each conflict, the Navy managed fiscal austerity through reductions of personnel and vessels. Unfortunately, since the start of the military buildup for Afghanistan and Iraq, the Navy has seen increases in neither personnel nor ships. In fact, both are at levels far below those before 9/11. The number of ships currently in commission with the Navy is the smallest since 1916.
Managing fiscal austerity through personnel and vessel reductions will cause fulfillment of operational and training requirements to become even more daunting. Of course, carriers and submarines remain at the forefront of the Navy’s shipbuilding efforts, with some compelling reasons as to why. According to Vice Admiral Burke’s statistics, carrier aircraft have flown 30 percent of the sorties in support of combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Submarines represent unique warfighting capability as well as national strategic interests, for the nuclear triad as a strategic deterrent and for nuclear shipbuilding as a strategic resource.
The need for cruisers and destroyers has gained momentum as they become more prominent in an antiballistic-missile defense system. With the military entering an era of fiscal austerity, any Marine Corps plan that includes increasing or even maintaining the number of amphibious ships rests on an unstable foundation. Vice Admiral Burke expressed this in October 2010: “My personal view is there is a downturn coming. This time it is different. We face an unprecedented fiscal environment in the immediate future.”4
The Other Ugly
In many ways, the Marine Corps itself is the other ugly associated with Bold Alligator. Amphibious operations were not new as the service moved across the Pacific during World War II. Historians document similar large-scale operations, from the Athenians against Syracuse to the Spaniards against England to the United States against Mexico in the 1840s. The longevity of such operations and the geography of the Earth are strong indicators that the need to place a massive military force on a hostile shore will necessitate amphibious operations in the future. They are the foundation of the Marine Corps, and remained so through most of the 20th century. This situation stemmed from the institution’s ability to look for and find innovative, even radical ways to improve large-scale amphibious operations. To do so in the 21st century in the face of fiscal austerity will take that same spirit of innovation.
For all the goods and bads represented in Bold Alligator 2011, one ugly was that this spirit of radical innovation was missing. The MV-22 was mundanely challenged to work only from the big-deck amphibs, shuttling Marines to the beach and evacuees from the beach like its CH-46 predecessor. The use of guided-missile submarines, perhaps the most advantageous platform to amphibious operations in the anti-access scenarios facing operational planners, was not discussed.
In fact, Marines have not used the platforms since they became operational. The skill levels of the staffs to refine and radically employ the doctrine against the current threats is limited by all their other demands. Despite remarkably clear economic indicators, many see discussions about exercises with platforms other than amphibious ships as blasphemy. In fact, this is merely a good example of a radical innovation in an age when amphibious ships will not be available in the needed quantities.
Finally, when the staff of the 2d MEB walked down the gangplank for the last time at the exercise’s conclusion, no Marine presence remained on board Navy ships. The MEUs remain transitory organizations trying hard to get off the boats at every opportunity, often viewing them as means to an end rather than a reason for existence. No permanent MEB staff exists to embark again in the near future to continue building on the success of Bold Alligator 2011.
Marine detachments disappeared years ago, removing so many opportunities for young service members to understand ships as more than long lines on mess decks. Whether it was junior Marines manning gun crews on board capital ships or large staffs embarked for months at a time on board flagships, the near-permanent presence of Marines in Navy ships created an unbreakable synergy for the Navy-Marine Corps team that embodied Admiral David Dixon Porter’s words, “A ship without Marines is like a garment without buttons,” and represented the amphibious roots of the Corps. In many ways, the lack of this persistent presence makes the Marine Corps the one without the garment. It also makes any return to the amphibious origins inherent in Porter’s remarks difficult to imagine.
More Challenges: The Merely Bad
Despite great levels of cooperation, problems remained at the end of the exercise. These bads represented serious shortfalls in the ability of the MEB and ESG to execute amphibious operations. Bold Alligator 2011 was a Fleet synthetic training exercise for which the ships never left the piers at Norfolk. Other than personnel, Marines embarked nothing into the wells and onto the flight decks. Additionally, both Marines and sailors used a communications architecture, perhaps the most important aspect of effective operations in today’s combat, that did not accurately reflect what would be available while under way at sea. Using plain old telephones and walking back and forth between ships tied to the pier ensured that MEB and ESG staff training could take place, but the bad remains that many fundamentals were not practiced.
A second bad with dramatic effect on Bold Alligator 2011 was the continued impact of forces currently deployed forward in Afghanistan. The foundation of a Marine infantry battalion is its corporals and sergeants. At the MEB and MEF (forward) staff levels, the nucleus is the field-grade officers and senior enlisted personnel who are the action officers and run day-to-day operations. As II MEF (forward) began preparations in summer and fall 2010 to deploy, Bold Alligator 2011 was very much a distraction rather than a base for the MEF’s success.
With departure pending from Camp Lejeune, many officers and senior enlisted who participated in the exercise viewed it as an extracurricular activity. Bold Alligator 2011 faced competition for the same personnel required by the MEF (forward) preparing for actual war, meaning it was a distant second. Upon completion of the exercise, a significant number of the same Marines on the MEB staff packed their bags for Afghanistan. This bad can be overcome, but the continued dedication of large staffs to the war effort will challenge the resurgence of MEB-level amphibious expertise.
Marines Are (Or Were) Mariners
Maintaining proficiency of the service’s bedrock amphibious mission has always been daunting. Before the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, several times a year amphibious ships embarked units other than MEUs across beaches to ensure familiarity and proficiency with shipboard operations. Complex tasks such as night-helicopter operations and riding and driving amphibious-assault vehicles into darkened well decks were commonplace for nearly every squadron and battalion. The Marine Corps was capable of doing anything, but proficiency at amphibious operations was the core for all its members.
This is a far cry from the present, when even the service’s most hardened combat veterans have never even been on board a ship. At higher levels, demands for staffs to deploy to the fight means there are simply not enough officers and staff noncommissioned officers to fulfill the support requirements for amphibious training. In the absence of field-grade officers, civilian contractors take on large parts of “amphibiousity” at the MEFs.
Recurring amphibious training at the brigade level has been nonexistent, and the Navy’s amphibious community is experiencing a similar atrophy. The Amphibious Group Headquarters, formerly a major advocate for these initiatives, is gone. It is one casualty of the competition for manpower resources.
In World War II, the Marine Corps adapted Donald Roebling’s existing “Alligator” vehicle to conduct missions for which it had not been designed. The service also made a radical use of the operational concept “maneuver from the sea” when it landed Lieutenant Colonel Victor H. “Brute” Krulak’s battalion on the island of Choiseul as a diversion to support the main effort against Bougainville. Marines in the field developed the procedures necessary to accurately drop large ordnance from aircraft at “insanely” close distances, the basis of our close air support procedures today. The staffs of Generals Alexander Vandegrift and Holland “Howlin’ Mad” Smith drastically refined the Tentative Landing Operations Manual of 1935 to provide landing plans and logistic support ashore from sea bases with supercomputer-like precision.5
The Goal: Strengthen the Good
Numerous after-action briefings for junior Marines and sailors as well as generals and admirals provided lists of what was done well in Bold Alligator 2011. Most of these goods were short-term lessons learned absorbed by those participating. But they had few, if any, lasting impact on proficiency for amphibious operations in the Navy and Marine Corps. This is not to negate the value of the good, only to point out that it is perishable. Not least in this category was the confidence and attitude that comes only to those who have served in combat. This is directly attributable to striving against all odds for success. Staffs and units of both participating organizations displayed confidence due to the large numbers among them who had fought in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Taking that combat experience and putting it on board ship, however, took great effort just to make day-to-day functions occur. Many Marines were astounded that they could not find even one of their brethren while “confined” to an 800-foot-long ship, which amused the old salts. Yet simply moving around the vessel’s spaces gave Marines the self-assurance and comfort that only experience can provide. Operators learned why a small landing force operations center is different from the cavernous, general-officer-level centers that most had experienced in Iraq and Afghanistan. Logisticians got a taste of the complicated nature of loading and unloading a ship (even though no vehicles or cargo went on board). Most challenged were the communicators. They faced a maze of passageways as they tried to run lines for all the computers and connectivity to which Marines have become accustomed in mature, static headquarters of the Middle East. They learned that the Internet pipelines of the most capable amphibious ship pale in comparison with those of their combat command posts.
Another good with a deeper impact was the effort from MEB and ESG staffs to create standard operating procedures (SOPs) for both organizations. The two commanders, Marine Brigadier General Christopher Owens and Navy Rear Admiral Kevin Scott, acknowledged the need for separate yet closely coordinated and integrated SOPs for their staffs. These developmental initiatives will continue throughout the Bold Alligator Exercise series and deliver a refined 2d MEB Amphibious SOP sometime after the conclusion of the upcoming Bold Alligator 2012.
The close coordination between the two commanders trickled down among their staffs, reflecting the most important good of Bold Alligator 2011. The temporary relationship between Marines and sailors while embarked on board a ship can be debilitating if cooperation is not practiced by all. The commander of the amphibious task force and the commander of the landing force frequently face competing missions with limited assets. Protecting ships and enabling sea control conflict with each other often, as Marines try to move to the most beneficial position for their landing while also maintaining communication with units ashore.
Despite proclamations to the contrary, dogmatic doctrine mandating a commander amphibious task force and commander landing force with attendant responsibilities, or a supported and supporting command relationship, is not and will never be enough to guarantee success in such a demanding operating environment. Only through cooperation between Marines and sailors can the doctrine be used to guide the amphibious force and the unavoidable competing interests be overcome. In this regard, both commanders and staffs of Bold Alligator 2011 demonstrated the right attitudes. These positive aspects need to continue in 2012, while the Marine Corps makes the fundamental changes that will bring about a true updated training system for amphibious operations.
1. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, speech at Army Command and Staff College, May 2010.
2. COL Frank Hoffman, “Rethinking Naval Forward Presence,” Marine Corps Gazette, May 2007.
3. Kimberly Johnson, “Corps to get back to its expeditionary roots,” Marine Corps Times, 11 February 2008.
4. VADM Burke Annual Expeditionary Warfare Conference, Panama City, Florida, October 2010.
5. “Bougainville, The Amphibious Assault Enters Maturity,” Naval War College Review 50, no. 1 (winter 1997): pp. 104-21.
Colonel Fuquea, who retired from active duty in August 2010, works in the Future Operations Section of the 2d Marine Expeditionary Force on amphibious warfare initiatives. A Naval Academy graduate, he served as an infantry officer and made many amphibious deployments.