Smaller, faster, more flexible, more lethal, and more decentralized are all terms Commandant General David H. Berger, might use to describe his ideal Marine Corps. Judging by the 2019 Commandant’s Planning Guidance, the modern Marine Corps could soon look strikingly similar to the Corps of old—the Fleet Marine Force, which existed as a weapon to be used as needed by Navy unit commanders. The Commandant makes the case for closing the gaps that have formed between the Navy and Marine Corps since passage of the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act and two decades of combat in the Middle East. He writes: “The Marine Corps will be trained and equipped as a naval expeditionary force-in-readiness and prepared to operate inside actively contested maritime spaces in support of fleet operations.”1
To complement this shift in focus, the Commandant emphasizes the need for a leaner, more disaggregated, and more technically proficient force, capable of creating asymmetric payoffs on the battlefield using low-cost, low-risk technology. The goal is for the service to play a complementary role to the Navy using highly trained, decentralized units to open up areas denied to the Navy by precision fires. The force should be capable of fighting asymmetrically in the littorals, cooperating with intelligence and cyber units, and using unmanned systems throughout the battlespace.
Competitors have begun to challenge the once-unquestioned dominance of the U.S. fleet. China, Iran, and Russia are leveling the playing field with low-cost, high-precision munitions fired from shore and platforms at sea, changing the calculus of maritime warfare and surpassing some U.S. defensive capabilities.2 Surface ships—aircraft carriers especially—have not diminished in capability, but they are susceptible to low-cost, high-payoff attacks such as drone and small boat swarm attacks.
Essential Task and Purpose
This is where the Marine Corps comes in, providing security within the littoral zone and ashore to allow Navy ships to carry out their own roles. To do this, the Corps must develop mission and war-fighting concepts that align with those of the Navy. The services have taken preliminary steps with the advent of complementary warfighting concepts such as expeditionary advanced base operations (EABO).3 Thinking of Marines as stand-in forces within the Navy composite warfare structure will make it easier for naval commanders to see Marine units as organic assets rather than burdens to be carried to a destination.
Jointly developing capabilities such as mine countermeasures and small boat tactics will only help tie the services together. Combat in the Middle East has stunted the development of these areas of amphibious warfare; the Marine Corps should seek to learn from the Navy to become more proficient at its primary job.
With function covered, form must follow: That is, how should modern Fleet Marine Forces look in terms of technology, platforms, and manpower?
Based on the Commandant’s guidance and the direction of the modern battlefield, the Marine Corps and Navy must emphasize disaggregation, lethality, autonomy, and speed. In General Berger’s words: “We must continue to seek the
affordable and plentiful at the expense of the exquisite and few when conceiving of the future amphibious portion of the fleet.”4
Practically, this means fewer big L-ships herding large groups of Marines around and more small ships and boats—perhaps autonomous—distributing units of Marines over a large area. The Marine Corps must also reconsider how it deploys its largest forces, as Commandant Berger notes:
We will continue to recommend Marine operating forces be employed as combined-arms teams; however, we must be flexible enough to satisfy Fleet and Combatant Commander needs whether they require a [Marine expeditionary force], a single LHA with Marine complement in support of an Expeditionary Strike Group (ESG), or an aviation detachment in support of U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM). First and foremost, we must be prepared to be employed as Fleet Marine Forces.5
The shape of a Marine air-ground task force (MAGTF), particularly the Marine expeditionary unit, is not off-limits to significant change or even obsolescence.6 The Marine Corps will emphasize the use of proven modern weapon systems, including unmanned drone systems for reconnaissance and other functions, and rocket artillery and missiles for sea-denial capabilities. Speed and flexibility being preferable, slow, heavy armored systems, particularly tanks, will be withdrawn in favor of smaller, more versatile platforms in the coming years.7
In terms of manpower, including the available talent and how it is structured, the Marine Corps cannot rely on mass to overwhelm the enemy. It is no longer enough to recruit vast numbers of 18- to 22-year-old men and women, quickly train and push them onto a few deployments, and let them slip away after only four years of service. The Corps must instead shift its thinking about how it recruits, trains, deploys, and retains Marines to build smaller groups of proven operators, each with a specific task to accomplish, backed up by excellent training and support.
The Marine Corps must offer incentives to induce effective, proven service members to stay. As General Berger notes, some methods for doing this could include allowing for crossover for military occupational specialties, rewarding combat experience, redesigning fitness reports to allow for more detailed evaluations, actively removing those who do not possess the motivation or skills to continue, and finding ways to target specific individuals for retention rather than groups.8 The Marine Corps does not need more people so much as it needs better people, and it does not need to recruit talent so much as it needs to retain the skilled members it has already trained.
Adapting to Overcome
Even if it does manage to hold on to its most skilled, specialized fighters, the Marine Corps must also examine how best to arrange them to maximize their effects on the battlefield, whether actively fighting or supporting those who are. Modern munitions, particularly missiles, have become too precise and lethal to consistently concentrate in large numbers. Instead, the preference should be for low-risk, high-payoff small group operations. The Commandant emphasizes this shift in organization in the Planning Guidance with the concept of distributed operations. In these, the default becomes combined-arms action at the squad level first, instead of the current default to the rifle company.9 Special operations units (such as Navy SEALs, among others) already employ platoons the size of a Marine rifle squad to accomplish various types of asymmetric operations, giving the service a variety of models to learn from.
One benefit to this shift in organization might be a reduction in the burden placed on special operations forces (SOF). Their ludicrously high operational tempo and the vast array of different mission types have contributed to burnout and disciplinary issues within the SOF community.10 Shifting to a similar organizational basis as the special operations community will allow those units to slow their operational tempo and some of those mission sets to bleed over into the purview of the Marine Corps. By effectively changing the way that the force organizes itself, the Marine Corps also can help optimize elements of the other services.
The Marine Corps also must consider further employment of autonomous and remotely piloted systems for in-depth reconnaissance, delivery of troops ashore, and performance of various other operations to aid ground elements in their fight.
The nature of the next conflict cannot be known for certain—not the adversary, the location, the timing, nor even the larger circumstances. The Navy and Marine Corps can, however, attempt to prepare for their roles in that conflict, optimizing units, gear, and doctrine to be as effective and robust as possible when the time comes. Even before the release of the current Commandant’s Planning Guidance, the Marine Corps had begun this process and was well under way to adapting its technology and platforms to the future fights of the century. Former Commandant General Robert Neller continued to call for such adaptation in his final “Message to the Force,” arguing that the Marine Corps required significant preparation and change for the next conflict.11
Future fights will still require a Marine Corps that serves as a quick reaction force—that much is certain. The differences will come in how the Marine Corps interacts with the Navy and how it goes about solving problems within the context of that relationship.
Where once there was an attitude of aggressive indifference toward the fleet as nothing more than a shuttle service and occasional large-scale artillery, there now will be a desire to solve problems using the assets the fleet brings to the fight. The Marine Corps will complement and defend those assets from enemy threats such as long-range missile attacks. Its objectives will not be separate and different, but will be inherently tied to those of the Navy.
Where in the past solutions might have emphasized quantity of force rather than quality, the emphasis will now shift to more robust operations with smaller units. These will seek to create big effects at low levels of cost and risk, using technology for reconnaissance, combat support, and communication. They also will employ capabilities previously ignored by the Marine Corps, including small boat tactics, mine countermeasures, and hydrographic reconnaissance.
Finally, the Marine Corps will not impose a rigid structure on how it deploys its units. The MAGTF remains useful, but it will not be defined so rigidly. Instead, it will be a conceptual tool that helps produce the best possible solution without having to be the solution.
The Marine Corps is entering a period of significant change in doctrine and structure. At the same time, it is making a concerted effort to return to its historical roots. It is doing so by reuniting its mission set with that of the Navy and reembracing its role as a powerful tool to be used by the fleet, in the process distancing itself from the trends of the past 20 years of combat.
By matching warfighting concepts with the Navy, attempting to operate within the framework of Navy doctrine, and asking the Navy what it needs, the Marine Corps also is asking how it must change structurally. The Corps is investing in its people; the importance of the individual Marine is being emphasized during this transition through innovative unit structure, technological support on the battlefield, development of systems to aid warfighters, and educated, aggressive retention efforts.
The Marine Corps has adapted to fight in any climate and place, through any sort of combat to accomplish any type of mission. Ship-to-ship combat, guerrilla tactics, trench clearing, unconventional warfare, foreign internal defense, and urban warfare—the list goes on. There is no challenge the Marine Corps cannot take on and win.
This development is anything but new. It is simply a return to older practices—with a modern twist. The next battlefield will be one that rewards aggressive, bold, and skilled fighters who can move, think, and fight quickly against huge odds. Naturally, the Marine Corps will not only survive, but thrive.
1. GEN David H. Berger, USMC, Commandant’s Planning Guidance (Washington, DC: Marine Corps Headquarters, 2019), 1.
2. Adam Taylor, “Billions Spent on U.S. Weapons Didn’t Protect Saudi Arabia’s Most Critical Oil Sites from a Crippling Attack,” The Washington Post, 17 September 2019.
3. Berger, Commandant’s Planning Guidance, 10–11.
4. Berger, 4.
5. Berger, 5.
6. Berger, 3.
7. GEN David H. Berger, USMC, Force Design 2030 (Washington, DC: Marine Corps Headquarters, 2020), 8.
8. Berger, 6–8.
9. Berger, 11.
10. COL Mark Cancian, USMC (Ret.), “U.S. Military Forces in FY 2020: SOF, Civilians, Contractors, and Nukes,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, 24 October 2019.
11. GEN Robert B. Neller, USMC, Message to the Force 2019: Continue the Attack (Washington, DC: Marine Corps Headquarters, 2019).
