The Marine Corps is the United States’ premier expeditionary-amphibious fighting force in readiness. Changes in the future operating environment, however, will challenge the way the Corps projects power from the sea and fights the nation’s wars. Indeed, the “Marine Operating Concept” (MOC) published by the Office of the Commandant of the Marine Corps states:
The Marine Corps is currently not organized, trained, and equipped to meet the demands of a future operating environment characterized by complex terrain, technology proliferation, information warfare, the need to shield and exploit signatures, and an increasingly non-permissive maritime domain.1
This stark assessment raises the question of how to organize, train, and equip Marines for success in the future operating environment. In nonpermissive maritime environments complicated by proliferation of antiship weapon systems and sensors, the Marine Corps’ past offers a possible solution. Rifle companies trained as small-boat companies and equipped with the Zodiac F470 combat rubber raiding craft (CRRC) are an operationally effective, low-cost means of infiltrating combat power ashore in a contested maritime environment and should be incorporated into the battalion landing teams of all Marine Expeditionary Units (MEUs).
Small Boats in the Corps
Experimentation with small rubber craft in the Marine Corps began during World War II. Marine Raider units modeled on British Commando forces played a minor role in the early years of the war, raiding Japanese installations in the South Pacific during the Guadalcanal and Rabaul campaigns. The best-known operation, an attack on the Japanese garrison on Makin Island by the 2d Raider Battalion, generally is seen as a failure despite the destruction of the Japanese forces stationed there. Raiders launched from submarines in large rubber landing craft with underpowered motors and were battered and divided by heavy seas and wind. Nine Marines stranded on Makin after the raid subsequently were captured and executed by the Japanese.2
Despite this failure and the repurposing of the Raider battalions into conventional infantry in 1943, small rubber craft did not leave the Marine Corps’ inventory. The service maintained units equipped and trained for small-boat raids in various forms through the Cold War. The heyday of this capability came in the 1980s and 1990s, when the Corps embraced the Marine Expeditionary Unit, Special Operations Capable (MEU[SOC]) concept.
When the Marine Corp began moving away from the MEU(SOC) concept around 2003, it also reduced the number of MEUs deploying from I and II Marine Expeditionary Forces with small-boat companies. The removal of these companies from the organic structure of battalion landing teams also roughly coincided with the beginning of combat operations in Iraq. With many MEUs deploying into Iraq in support of counterinsurgency operations, the value of a motorized infantry company inside the MEU’s battalion landing team outweighed the need for a small-boat company capability. Officially, the 31st MEU alone retained small-boat capability from 2009 onward.3
In addition to real-world requirements in Iraq, there were three principal arguments behind abandoning small-boat companies: tilt-rotor aircraft offered a superior way to insert a raid force from over the horizon; CRRCs did not have the operational range or load to deliver a raid force effectively; and modern surface radars could detect CRRCs during their approach to a hostile coastline.4 Developments in the future operating environment as envisioned in the MOC, however, call for a detailed review of the CRRC and the role/capabilities of a small-boat company deployed as part of a MEU’s battalion landing team.
Rethinking Small Boats
Today, the proliferation of advanced integrated air-defense systems, long-range antiship cruise missiles, and antiaccess/area-denial weapons has curtailed the Navy–Marine Corps team’s ability to maneuver from the sea.5 In an environment that prioritizes reduced signatures, the innate visual and auditory stealth of small-boat companies employed from over the horizon at night cannot be discounted. Augmented with electronic warfare measures found inside the Marine Air-Ground Task Force (MAGTF) and joint force to defeat known surface radar threats, small-boat companies provide the most clandestine means of projecting combat power ashore. The key task is to deliver small-boat companies inside the enemy’s sensor rings without jeopardizing the ships that deliver them or alerting the enemy to the possibility of an infiltration launched from amphibious ships.
CRRCs equipped with the standard 55-horsepower multifuel Evinrude engines have a maximum range of 60 nautical miles (nm), but this range comes at the price of additional weight allocated to fuel versus personnel and equipment.6 CRRCs equipped with a 12- and 8-gallon fuel bladder have a 30nm maximum range. This range (15nm one way) is just over the horizon and places amphibious transports within range of shore-based antiship missiles.7
Small-boat companies equipped with CRRCs, however, can embark on and launch from other surface connectors such as landing craft air cushion (LCACs) and landing craft utility (LCUs).8 LCACs and LCUs have sufficient range and endurance (116nm and 1,200nm, respectively) to transport small-boat companies inside enemy threat rings without exposing amphibious transports to long-range anti-ship cruise missiles.9 In addition to protecting amphibious transports, this also extends the range of small-boat companies beyond their unassisted capability. This technique is well developed and is taught during small-boat courses executed by Expeditionary Warfare Training Group Pacific (EWTGPac).10
Critics argue that using embarked LCACs and LCUs to launch CRRCs is impractical because of the practice of “pre-boating” vehicles and other equipment on landing craft to maximize space on amphibious transports. However, there are solutions to deploying CRRCs from LCACs and LCUs that have pre-boated equipment staged on them. CRRCs can be inflated and stacked on their sides between pre-boated vehicles or transported deflated and bundled. Marines and weapons can ride inside the pre-boated vehicles, and because of the CRRC’s multifuel engines, fuel bladders can be filled from either the pre-boated vehicles’ tanks or the LCACs’/LCUs’ fuel tanks.
These techniques slow the process of launching CRRCs but also provide commanders with a long-range means of infiltrating forces ashore in a contested environment. The Navy–Marine Corps team already has the doctrine to employ small-boat companies from over the horizon and the acquisition and training programs necessary to field this capability.
Low-Cost and Efficient
Reintegrating small-boat companies into the MEU’s force structure should be an easy process compared to fielding new types of units or equipment; CRRCs already are a program of record in the Marine Corps with established acquisition processes. Small-boat companies also have existing schoolhouses, training programs, and logistical infrastructure to support the acquisition and maintenance of additional CRRC gearsets. A single component-complete CRRC and motor costs $34,990; an 18 CRRC company gearset costs $629,836.11 If the Marine Corps purchased one CRRC gearset for each MEU in I and II Marine Expeditionary Force, the total price would be $3.78 million. This may seem expensive, but equipping all MEUs with small-boat companies is just 1/20 the cost of a single $72.1 million MV-22B Osprey and equivalent to the estimated unit cost for an amphibious combat vehicle.12
Beyond the costs of acquiring more CRRCs, little additional funding is needed to train more small-boat companies. Currently, EWTGPac oversees the initial training of small-boat companies deployed with the 31st MEU. The cost of training one small-boat company at EWTGPac is $41,567, with a total cost of $83,134 to support the 31st MEU annually.13 Budgeting for an additional four small-boat courses each year to support MEUs deploying from I and II Marine Expeditionary Force would cost an additional $166,268. The total annual cost of training boat companies to deploy with all MEUs would be $249,402. However, the relative expense of this training is an important consideration. For example, a single integrated training exercise costs $5.7 million.14
Reviving small-boat company capability comes with almost no personnel costs. The Marines who support small-boat companies are 0300 military occupational specialty (MOS) personnel awarded an additional MOS. The cost of training these Marines as mechanics, coxswains, navigators, and scout swimmers is reflected in the total cost of each small-boat course. Training small-boat companies on the East Coast would require a training cadre at Expeditionary Warfare Training Group Atlantic or II Marine Expeditionary Force Expeditionary Operations Training Group. This cadre would consist of 23 Marines, mirroring the structure at EWTGPac.15 Although the manpower to support this training infrastructure could affect Marine Corps end strength, solutions exist to source the required personnel from other areas.
Small-boat companies equipped with CRRCs also offer MEUs a solution to the embarkation limitations related to the America (LHA-6)-class amphibious ready groups. The America LHAs have a vehicle/equipment embarkation deficit of 8,000 square feet relative to legacy USS Wasp (LDH-1)-class LHDs.16 This storage deficit can be alleviated by reallocating the embarkation space required for a motorized company’s gearset to a small-boat company.
A notional motorized rifle company equipped with 18 Humvees and four medium tactical vehicle replacements requires approximately 3,113 square feet of embarkation space.17 A small-boat company equipped with 18 CRRCs, however, requires only 220 square feet because the boats can be compressed and bundled into 59-by-29.5-inch storage bags when uninflated.18 CRRCs’ outboard motors do require some additional space, but it is negligible. Because of this efficiency, a MEU embarked on an America-class amphibious ready group retains an additional 2,893 square feet of embarkation space.
The ability of the amphibious transport dock/landing ship dock to use this embarkation space is limited because of the well-deck requirement for launching CRRCs and other surface connectors. Holistically, the embarkation efficiencies associated with a small-boat company provide MEU planners a viable, flexible alternative to formations requiring more equipment and embarkation space.
Small Boats for the Future
Planning for future conflict is a complicated and uncertain proposition. Failure to adapt the composition of forward-deployed MEUs for the future operating environment, however, is not an option. Low-tech means of infiltrating combat power ashore borrowed from the Marine Corps’ past offer a solution to its future problems. Although the CRRC platform is limited in some respects, the core capability it provides cannot be overlooked. The Marine Corps immediately should reinvest in this atrophied capability while researching and developing more robust platforms to support amphibious infiltrations by small-boat companies. Failure to do so may cost MAGTFs the initiative in future operations and miss a golden opportunity to capitalize on existing platforms, capabilities, and doctrine.
1. Department of the Navy, Office of the Commandant of the Marine Corps, “Marine Corps Operating Concept” (2016), 1.
2. Kenneth McCullough “The Makin Raid: Reflections on the Famous Raid by One of Carlson’s Noncommissioned Officers,” Marine Corps Gazette 90, no. 8 (August 2006), 64.
3. U.S. Marine Corps, Office of the Commandant of the Marine Corps, “Marine Corps Order 3120.9C Policy for Marine Expeditionary Units and Marine Expeditionary Units Special Operations Capable” (August 2009), 7.
4. Christopher Phelps “An Obsolete Capability,” Marine Corps Gazette 86, no. 3 (March 2002), 28.
5. Department of the Navy, “Marine Corps Operating Concept,” 5.
6. U.S. Marine Corps, “MCRP 3-05.2 Special Forces Waterborne Operations” (2009), 6–8.
7. Doug Richardson, “Iran Plans to Double the Range of Its Ghader Anti-Ship Missile,” IHS Jane’s Missile and Rockets 18, no. 9 (September 2014). Steven Zaloga, “The Ongoing Saga of the Styx,” Jane’s Intelligence Review (1997), 304.
8. U.S. Marine Corps, “MCRP 2-10A.6 Ground Reconnaissance Operations” (2016), 7–4.
9. U.S. Marine Corps, “MSTPD Pamphlet 5-0.3: MAGTF Planner’s Reference Manual” (2017), 103, Table 2-39.
10. U.S. Marine Corps, “EWTGPAC Small Boat Raid Standard Operating Procedures” (2013), 2–4.
11. CAPT Adam Muncy, USMC, “EWTGPAC Raids Branch Boathouse OIC,” email message and attached documents sent to author, 28 November 2017.
12. U.S. Department of Defense, “Fiscal Year 2015 President’s Budget Submission, Aircraft Procurement” (2014), Navy, vol. 1. Bryant Jordan, “Marine Corps Scrapes Tracks for Amphibious Combat Vehicle,” Defense Tech, 4 April 2014.
13. Muncy, “EWTGPAC Raids.”
14. Margie Hoy, Marine Corps Air-Ground Task Force Training Command G8 comptroller, email message sent to author, 5 December 2017.
15. Muncy, “EWTGPAC Raids.”
16. U.S. Marine Corps, “Amphibious Ready Group and Marine Expeditionary Unit Overview” (2014), 20. Marine Corps, “MSTPD Pamphlet 5-0.3,” 102, Table 2-38.
17. Marine Corps, “MSTPD Pamphlet 5-0.3,” 82, Figure II-4.
18. Zodiac Maritime, “The Zodiac Marine Commando F470 10 Man Inflatable Craft Field Service Manual” (2014), 4.
Captain Mirsch is an infantry officer assigned to the Expeditionary Warfare School with follow-on orders to 3d Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion. He deployed twice as a member of a small boat company with Company A, 1st Battalion 4th Marines, 2011–2014.