Blue-Green C2 for the Littorals

The Marine Corps is returning to its naval roots after two decades of protracted land-centric warfare in Afghanistan and Iraq. In perhaps the most dramatic shift since World War II, last year’s Commandant’s Planning Guidance calls for the Navy and the Marine Corps to integrate blue-green command and control (C2) on the tactical and operational levels. Such unity of effort and unity of command will increase the lethality of the total force. It also will provide greater opportunities to achieve sea control across a broad maritime battlespace. Employing the Marine Corps alongside the Navy to establish sea control will enable freedom of action to project power and deny the adversary the same. 

In the near-term, distributed maritime operations, expeditionary advanced base operations (EABO), and littoral operations in a contested environment (LOCE) remain evolving concepts. The naval force must prepare to fight and win with what it has on hand today. The Navy–Marine Corps team will need to increase its mobility and interoperability, as well as inculcate rapid decision-making at every echelon. This will demand new approaches to doctrine and tactics, techniques, and procedures. 

The Commandant’s vision calls on the Fleet Marine Force (FMF) to better support both the joint force maritime component commander (JFMCC) and fleet commanders. It recognizes that proper execution of support requires a common, decentralized, tactical-level C2 construct. Marines will have to assume new warfighting duties and responsibilities within the composite warfare concept (CWC). Both services will have to adjust to naval rather than service-centric command. Navy–Marine Corps staff unification and an embedded-team approach can help offset knowledge shortfalls. 

Perhaps most important, EABO and LOCE will require a single, unified naval commander because EABO implies a fight across and through the littorals. Marines should expect to assume duties and responsibilities as composite warfare commanders or officers in tactical command, responsible for sea control and power projection. This new littoral combat force (LCF) concept will differ from today’s expeditionary and carrier strike groups in that it—or smaller littoral combat task groups (LCGs)—will be responsible for power projection from the sea to the shore and from the shore to the sea. 

Marine air-ground task forces (MAGTFs) are the most capable and credible power projection asset in the existing expeditionary force and will form the nucleus of the LCF. This capability logically suggests designating Marines as strike warfare commanders (STWCs) in emerging LCFs, amphibious readiness groups/Marine expeditionary units (ARGs/MEUs), and expeditionary strike groups/Marine expeditionary brigades (ESGs/MEBs). Getting this structure right will require time, patience, experimentation, and trust. 

The Old Way to Fight: CATF/CLF

Today’s doctrine, which defines the commander, amphibious task force (CATF), and the commander, landing force (CLF), is a legacy of problems with command and control at Guadalcanal in 1942. There, Rear Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner, commander, Southern Pacific Amphibious Force (TF 62), received orders to command all “naval, ground, and air units assigned to the amphibious force.”² Major General Alexander Vandegrift’s First Marine Division was responsible for the primary effort, yet it was designated as a subordinate task group (TG 62.8). Turner described the command-and-control structure at Guadalcanal as “cumbersome.”³ A series of decisions Turner made, including ordering the early departure of the escorting carrier groups, and the defeat of the close escort at the Battle of Savo Island prevented the Navy component from establishing sea control and placed the Marine force at risk. As a result, Turner unknowingly undermined the trust and confidence of generations of Marines in Navy command.

The Commandant of the Marine Corps at the time, Lieutenant General Thomas Holcomb, soon intervened and proposed a revised structure. This led to the establishment of a Marine commander on the same echelon as the amphibious force commander, a requirement for joint operational planning by both, and a shift in task organization for Marines after landing. The Navy and Marine Corps achieved a consensus for future amphibious operations that led to victory in the Pacific and has carried down to the present.⁴ But modern warfare requires reexamination of this relationship and consideration of new ways forward. To become a truly unified naval fighting force, parochial green and blue teams must be consigned to history. 

The present CATF/CLF relationship rests on this concept of coequal, separate teams and commanders. By design, this structure creates a seam, where the Navy–Marine Corps teams can decouple into separate forces as the landing force establishes a beachhead and holds ground ashore for follow-on forces. And it allows the task force commander to look outward across the maritime domain to ensure sea lines of communication. In a sense, two teams operate back-to-back without integrating across the entirety of the maritime domain. 

While potentially still valid in some assault operations, the CATF/CLF structure hinders the rapid, agile, and unified effort required to support sea control operations. In these operations, the primary effort does not shift. It remains with the fleet. Forces ashore place an adversary’s sea lines of communication at risk and enable the maneuver of the fleet. C2 must persist afloat. Phasing command and control ashore is complex, slow, and cumbersome. It requires sufficient capabilities, information symmetry, and complex decision-making across two staffs, two structures, and two physically separate forces.⁵ The process creates critical vulnerabilities for each. Mutual support becomes the exception. Commanders and staffs duplicate effort, planning, and limited skills to support this structure and transition. 

LOCE and EABO require a mind-set of “from the sea, through the littorals, and into the sea.” Sensors, logistics, and fires provided by Marines ashore must fuse closely with those of forces afloat, enabling dynamic maneuver of the fleet. The supported/supporting relationships under CATF/CLF do not permit the streamlined C2 required for land- and sea-based sea control operations. And merely rebranding expeditionary strike or amphibious ready groups as littoral combat forces without replacing or modifying the parallel command structures will be insufficient. Only a unified command structure can achieve mission success.

The inadequacies of the existing system are becoming more widely recognized, but proposed solutions so far fail to achieve unity of effort or create a unified naval force.⁶ In the composite warfare concept, warfare commanders simultaneously employ multimission units within the force, deconflicting competing requirements and reprioritizing based on the operational environment. The creation of an expeditionary or littoral warfare commander continues to rest on the parochial idea that Marines will remain a “Marine unit” rather than a multi-mission, multidomain naval unit. Associating a commander with a segment of the battlespace (“expeditionary” or “littoral”) limits the utility of the Marine force—and its contribution to the fight outside this geographic boundary, relegating Marines to second-tier status.⁷ Functional and sector warfare commanders activate as required but are subordinated otherwise because their missions, functions, and tasks depend entirely on the physical location the force. While nothing prohibits elevation of the expeditionary or littoral warfare commander to an equal partnership at the table, it happens only at the discretion of the CWC. 

A New Strike Warfare Commander

Marine Corps Commandant General David Berger stresses: “Marines cannot be passive passengers en route to the amphibious objective area. . . . [We] must contribute to the fight alongside our Navy shipmates from the moment we embark.”⁸ This applies on the open ocean as much as in the littorals. From a warfare perspective, this means closing seams in the current naval amphibious structure with Marine Corps capability, leadership, and tenacity. 

Today’s MAGTFs possess substantial strike capability. Current C2, however, does not support a naval single-battle concept. Modifying the MAGTF to become a littoral combat force would move away from existing, land-centric amphibious models. This would share effort, responsibility, capabilities, and assets across the force. Within an LCF or LCG, unity of command would be achieved under a single leader and single staff, with the deputy commander from the sister service. Asset capabilities would be shared across the force, in this way ensuring the service in command ceases to matter. And it would afford the opportunity to designate Marines as strike warfare commanders (STWCs) for the air, ground, and sea. 

In carrier strike groups, the commander of the carrier air wing (CAG)-—a Navy (rather than naval) aviator—typically executes the duties and responsibilities of the STWC. The STWC balances strike tasking and power projection with support of other primary warfare commanders, such as the air and missile defense commander, the information warfare commander, and the sea combat commander. The air resource element coordinator routinely dedicates sorties to defensive counterair, electronic support, and surface surveillance coordination to defend the force and build the recognized maritime picture. 

Amphibious squadrons (PhibRons) such as ARGs also have STWCs, although in most the role is retained by the Phib-Ron commander, a Navy surface warfare officer. But many of the strike warfare tasks fall within the six functions of Marine Corps aviation and the MAGTF.⁹ Marines routinely exercise these assignments today as part of integrated carrier air wings and in defense of the amphibious task force. This consolidated command authority is suited for peacetime operations, but it is overly centralized for a future distributed fight. 

All this adds up to the possibility that a MEU/MEB commander or air-combat element commander could function as STWC for the amphibious force in the same ways CAGs presently do for the carrier strike group—except with not only aviation resources on call, but also the full force and might of the ground combat element: a platoon of Marines with truck-based Naval Strike Missiles on an island 100 miles away, say, or a light amphibious vehicle on the elevator of an LHA for counterdrone defense.

The amphibious force’s offensive capability must be sharpened to support the blue-water fight. This effort must include the development and fielding of long-range, antiship precision fires from the F-35B. The Marine Corps must expand its six aviation functions to incorporate a seventh: air operations in maritime surface warfare. These operations include war at sea, armed reconnaissance, air interdiction, strike coordination and reconnaissance, and countering fast-attack and fast inshore-attack craft. Other areas could be strengthened by embedding Marine forces, assets, and skills. When adversaries with long-range precision fires place the amphibious force at risk, embarked Marine aviation and ground forces offer the greatest capacity to reach over the horizon to prosecute targets ashore and afloat.

This construct requires a closer alignment with joint doctrine: “Strike operations may employ ballistic or cruise missiles, aircraft, naval surface fires, Marines, and special operations forces to attack targets ashore” [emphasis added].¹⁰ Joint doctrine also makes the STWC “responsible to the CWC for planning, directing, monitoring, and assessing maritime power projection ashore and may be responsible for striking surface targets at sea at extended ranges.”¹¹ The Navy’s definition of strike operations must expand to encompass these, as well as include the projection of power from the shore to the sea in support of sea control. 

Adapt, Improvise, Overcome . . . from the Sea

If anyone is ready to be this striking force, it is the Marine Corps. 

Limited resources in the interwar period drove the Navy–Marine Corps team to develop amphibious doctrine and command and control to prepare for the Pacific fight. But that C2 failed at Guadalcanal. The revisions that followed succeeded in their day, but the demands of the next fight will require both services to change again. Neither service wants to cede command of its warfighters to the other, but an interdependent, multidomain fight will demand it. 

Unifying command, merging Navy–Marine Corps staffs to form LCFs, and broadening current concepts of strike warfare lead to the realization that often a Marine will be the most appropriate choice for strike warfare commander. These changes move toward a single-battle concept for the naval force and exploit the naval services’ combined-arms capability. By conducting rigorous interservice war gaming and experimentation; fleet battle problem testing and validation; and doctrine development, the Department of the Navy can increase the lethality of the totality of its force and get it right—before the next fight.