In 2019, Commandant General David Berger wrote, “Based on a threat-informed, ten-year time horizon, we are designing a force for naval expeditionary warfare in actively contested spaces.”1 But some officer schooling has yet to match his direction. There is a disconnect between General Berger’s vision and what is taught at The Basic School (TBS).
The link between today’s threats and naval strategy can be made and mastered through the Marine Corps concepts of expeditionary advanced base operations (EABO), organic long-range precision fires, training, and the nuances in between. However, the amphibious doctrine, force direction, and distributed maritime operations required to carry out these concepts are missing in the Basic Officer Course (BOC). There needs to be more targeted training and exposure to the future of the Marine Corps at TBS.
Specifically, the Marine Corps should bet on a strategy for naval expeditionary warfare in actively contested spaces and double down on the training demanded by it. Two realities must be addressed in training and education to accomplish this: First, the “basic skills” required for officers need to be redefined for naval expeditionary warfare in contested spaces and the challenges platoon commanders will face leading a Marine littoral regiment (MLR). Second, curricula at TBS need to be reevaluated to align with Force Design 2030.
New Skills Required
In its current state, the Marine Corps revolves around the infantry, but the discussion around the MLR appears to signal a shift. Officers will need a foundation to potentially operate independently on board vessels, including coordinating organic precision fires and conducting intelligence and reconnaissance, but Force Design 2030 requires more. Commanders will need skills ranging from the basics of foraging to the complexities of deconflicting a multidomain battlespace to conduct naval expeditionary warfare in contested spaces and compete in a degraded, kinetic, and self-sustaining environment.
Much of what naval expeditionary warfare in actively contested spaces will look like hinges on the composition and missions of the MLR and interoperability with the Navy, neither of which is touched on in the BOC syllabus. This needs to change. A starting point would be to invest in training and capabilities that will be needed by small-unit leaders operating in a self-sustained maritime environment, emphasizing agility, distributed operations, modularity, and the ability to provide surgical, decisive, direct, and indirect fire strikes—paired with foundational infantry tactics.2 Newly minted lieutenants need more than PowerPoint to learn these foundational tenets and better understand how to operate and train with a blue map, not just a green one.
This is not to say that all force doctrine and how we fight need to change. There is value in old tactics and keeping training flexible, to be able to meet all missions in any clime and place. However, if the focus is on the MLR and EAB, mission success will depend on the modular capabilities of skilled enlisted Marines from noninfantry backgrounds—not on how well noninfantry Marines understand infantry tactics.
More important, Marine officers will need to know how to live off the land in the event of logistical breakdowns to maintain an EAB far from the command element. Lieutenants, especially those with the new Marine littoral regiments, need to know how to survive when MREs and medical capabilities are not available. Bottom line: Support and logistics trains no longer are guaranteed, and junior officers need to be able to address this reality.
Potentially, there could be less emphasis on rifle tactics against forces in forests and deserts and more on both individual sustainment and long-range and modular small-unit capabilities over and from the sea. Lieutenants will need to understand how to strike at a grid with unmanned aircraft or long-range precision fires, seize an island for an advanced base, provide deep sensing reconnaissance, coordinate electronic warfare, and integrate signals intelligence collection to feed into greater theater awareness, all while being in command of 40 to 70 Marines and sailors well within China’s weapon engagement zone.3 Assuming these are only a few of the requirements of the future Marine Corps, much might need to be adjusted within the TBS curriculum.
Align Foundational Training with Force Design
Marine Corps leaders must evaluate what is necessary to achieve the Commandant’s vision regarding naval expeditionary warfare—especially since TBS lieutenants do not train in a maritime environment. The first questions to ask: What are the fundamental skills officers need? What should internal Marine Corps training and education look like?
Currently, TBS encompasses five training phases over six months that address fundamental tactical skills, squad- and platoon-level operations, and the wavetops of the Marine air-ground task force. However, the BOC lacks instruction on skills needed for distributed maritime operations. It focuses on how to support the infantry on the ground—not how the force can support or operate with the Navy.
TBS lacks maritime exposure. As of late 2020, it included only one day on naval heritage and naval operations/cooperation and two courses on amphibious operations, without any physical exposure to their assets or capabilities. This is not to say what is taught in the BOC is wrong. All officers must know the fundamentals of infantry tactics. But if the Marine Corps’ future includes distributed maritime operations within a weapon engagement zone, TBS must prepare young officers to operate and cooperate with the Navy and to lead in this environment, even potentially a maritime commando platoon.
In particular, Marine officers need to be able to operate far from the “flagpole” and to not only locate and close with the adversary on land, but also conduct maritime maneuvers on contested waterways in support of the Navy. Moreover, there needs to be more emphasis on what will be required for reaching the first and second island chains in the Indo-Pacific. This battlespace is fundamentally different from the picture being painted at TBS.
Recommendations
There are obvious constraints to changing training while doctrine and strategy are still developing. However, after comparing the learning objectives at TBS to Force Design 2030, perhaps there is room to expand or restructure the curriculum. The British Royal Marines, for example, conduct five phases of training over 16 months to develop their officers to lead commando units.4 An entire phase is dedicated to understanding the British Army’s and Royal Navy’s capabilities. A similar phase might ensure Marine officers have a foundational understanding of how the Marine Corps operates in support of and as part of the Navy.
An alternative could be to have students at TBS complete ancillary coursework remotely online. COVID-19 forced many courses to go virtual; why not leverage this capability and have a phase completed virtually as a prerequisite for officers to report or graduate? This would alleviate weeks of administrative tasks and foundational coursework and allow TBS more time to get in-depth with self-sustainment training or maritime and naval operations within the same timeframe. Or the service could offer a follow-on school to teach junior officers distributed maritime operations before they go to their units or primary military occupational specialty (MOS) schools. Bottom line, TBS needs more emphasis on naval capabilities to align with Force Design 2030, so lieutenants understand these capabilities before reaching their first units.
The Marine Corps is moving fast to adjust to a new era of warfighting, and many changes are occurring within the force—deactivation of tank battalions, for example. However, once the future composition of the Marine Corps is determined, training, specifically for junior officers, must be modified to position them to lead under Force Design 2030. Officers of all MOSs will need to understand how they fit in distributed maritime operations, independently operate on board vessels, coordinate organic long-range precision fires, conduct intelligence and reconnaissance, and incorporate nontraditional MOSs in their main effort.
TBS must train for a battlefield that no longer solely requires infantry-centric attacks in the forests and deserts.
1. Gen David H. Berger, USMC, “Notes on Designing the Marine Corps of the Future,” War on the Rocks, 5 December 2019.
2. David Laszcz and James Camp, “Two Small-Unit Leaders Respond to the Marine Commandant’s Notes,” War on the Rocks, 29 January 2020.
3. Joseph Trevithick, “Marines Corps Eyes Man-Portable Suicide Drones to Blast Targets on Land and at Sea,” The War Zone, 24 April 2018.
4. British Royal Marines, “What’s the Training Like?”
