The U.S. Marine Corps prepares to fight and win using maneuver warfare as established by Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication (MCDP) 1: Warfighting. Called the “modern system” by Stephen Biddle, this doctrine elaborates the offensive and defensive tactics that allow well-trained units to survive on the modern battlefield.1 The system lays out how the Marine Corps should fight and win battles, but the service must prepare for the reality that a clash of wills between two equal states often becomes one of attrition—battlefield victories will rarely be decisive.
States do not necessarily desire a drawn-out conflict. But strategic considerations, technological capabilities, and available forces ultimately force a war of attrition. Russia’s war against Ukraine demonstrates the nature of conflict between two states in the 21st century. To successfully engage in this kind of war, the Marine Corps needs to be prepared on three fronts: munitions, weapon systems, and manpower.
In MCDP 1-3: Tactics, the Marine Corps looks to the Battle of Cannae (216 BCE) during the Second Punic War as an outstanding example of maneuver warfare. Carthaginian commander Hannibal oversaw the annihilation of a Roman army through superior tactics during the battle. But the story did not end with Carthage’s victory at Cannae. Rome rebuilt its armies, severed Hannibal’s connection to reinforcements in Italy, and defeated Hannibal outside the gates of Carthage.2 The Marine Corps must ensure it does not follow the trajectory Hannibal established, with units in a foreign land cut off from reinforcements while the adversary rapidly regenerates forces and reestablishes its ability to maneuver. To prevent this, the Marine Corps needs a clear picture of the pacing threats, the nature of prolonged war between states, and what it must do to prepare. The United States may not seek a war of attrition, but the nature of a future conflict might force it into one.
Conflict between powerful states has always tended away from resolution through a decisive battle. Hannibal won incredible victories, but Rome eventually won the war through a combination of Fabian strategy to wear down the enemy, Rome’s ability to regenerate units, and its mastery of the seas.3 Likewise, Napoleon Bonaparte led France to conquer much of Europe, often through brilliant battles and campaigns. But France was defeated by Spanish insurgents and a coalition and blockade led by the British Empire with its vast economic power. During World War I, leaders of the Central Powers and the Entente tried to break out of the trenches but found their attempts at operational maneuver stymied until both sides brought together a new combination of tactics and technology.4 In World War II, the United States produced more war materiel than the Axis powers, enabling victory after six years as the Axis powers’ industries were choked by blockade.5 In Ukraine, the repulse of the initial invasion in February 2022 resulted in an attritional conflict as Moscow, Kyiv, and Ukraine’s allies revamped their defense-industrial bases to support and continue the conflict. Modern states have vast industrial, financial, and manpower resources to regenerate their armed forces. They can rebuild after major defeats. The tendency toward attrition in conflict is evident. The Marine Corps must learn from these examples and prepare itself not just for battlefield maneuver, but also for long-lasting, resource-depleting conflict. Such conflict will draw in the Marine Corps even though the service will not be tasked with invading the Chinese mainland or recapturing an occupied Taiwan. As the history above shows, great-power conflicts become wars marked by major attritional exchanges across the theater.
The Challenge of 21st-Century Peer Conflict
Maneuver warfare and mission tactics are important means of waging war, but they do not address the fact that modern states can martial significant resources for conflict. In 2018, the National Defense Strategy said that “long-term strategic competition with China and Russia are the principal priorities,” with the 2022 National Military Strategy identifying China as the “pacing challenge” for the armed forces of the United States.6 The Marine Corps—and indeed, all the services—should evaluate how prepared it is for the challenge of conflict with a peer adversary.
A war with China would be unlike any conflict the Marine Corps has fought before. China has an immense population and industrial base to support its war efforts. It is capable of sustaining successful conflict, perhaps even more so than the Axis powers of World War II.7 Marines may achieve battlefield success, but translating that success into permanent victory requires continually generating and sustaining forces.
The challenge is made sharper by the fact that most potential sources of conflict between the United States and China are within the area where China can effectively project its antiaccess/area-denial strategy from its mainland. As part of their plan to control access, the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has surpassed the U.S. Navy in the number of its warships. This is not a complete indicator of naval power. The U.S. Navy has greater tonnage and more vertical launch system (VLS) cells. It also employs more sailors and has key advantages in areas such as undersea warfare. Nonetheless, the PLAN has grown at a rapid pace. It is positioned to surpass the U.S. Navy in VLS cells and has required that civilian shipping meet certain military requirements, further expanding available seaborne assets.8 Chinese shipbuilding capacity, both in warships and civilian cargo vessels, surpasses the United States and is evidence of China’s use of all industrial capabilities to support a future conflict.
The Marine Corps, with the help of the Navy, is prepared to halt the PLAN’s advance. With its Marine littoral regiments, air naval gunfire liaison companies, and Marine wing support squadrons across the Pacific, the Marine Corps is positioned and ready for an extended conflict. To establish and maintain these capabilities in a protracted conflict requires Marines to be present, equipped with the required weapons and munitions, and able to be resupplied.
Weapon Systems
The war in Ukraine features a massive level of turnover in weapon systems. This happens through destruction of weapons, the need to provide systems for new units, and the requirement for new capabilities that are currently gapped. The turnover seen in this war dwarfs U.S. industrial capacity for replacement equipment and the current Marine Corps inventory. Since 2022, Ukraine has destroyed more than 200 Russian towed artillery pieces. This would represent over half of the current Marine Corps towed artillery for a system that has only recently seen production lines restarted.
The war in Ukraine also has seen each side use drones extensively for a variety of missions, from intelligence and surveillance to strike missions. The combatants deploy and lose thousands of drones on the battlefield each month. With the proliferation of drones comes the requirement to proliferate air defense and electronic warfare assets to protect friendly forces. The Marine Corps needs to study how it can prepare equipment inventories now to deal with wartime requirements, potentially by establishing larger reserve inventories and working with industry to prepare surge-production capacity.
Munitions
The availability of munitions, especially artillery shells, has been key in the conflict in Ukraine. Success on the battlefield is tied to the ability to acquire munitions, transport them to combat units, and have enough available systems to fire them. Thousands of artillery rounds are fired per day—tens of thousands under certain circumstances. Quality of munitions and quality of fire control help offset the number of shells needed, but the explosive power and accuracy of a shell only improves its ability on the margins. Combatants still need enough munitions to be available to achieve the mission. As the Marine Corps moves toward proliferation of rocket artillery and seeks to establish naval strike missile batteries, it must remember the system used matters little without the appropriate munitions available in appropriate quantities at the appropriate locations.
While artillery shells may not be as crucial to a fight in the Pacific as in Ukraine, other munitions, such as antiship and air-defense missiles, will take their place. Wargames looking at conflicts between the United States and China have indicated the United States would run out of critical munitions within the opening weeks of a conflict.9 Use of munitions would far outstrip the current productive capacity of the United States.
While it is unrealistic to have a peacetime industrial base that can meet wartime demands, the Marine Corps can take steps to help cover the gap, especially considering the time from order to delivery of advanced munitions can be measured in years. The identification of key munitions and realistic estimates about wartime usage are important first steps. These numbers can then be compared with industrial production numbers and estimates about the time it will take to build up industry to meet wartime demand. Current surge-production capacity for critical Marine Corps missiles and munitions would take six years to replace stockpiles.10 The Marine Corps can work with the other services and with Congress to establish multiyear munitions contracts to build a resilient stockpile and encourage defense-industrial expansion in a sustainable manner. Crucially, Congress and the Pentagon cannot treat these multiyear contracts as a piggy bank that can be canceled to direct funding toward other priorities.
Manpower
A final area in which the Marine Corps must seek to improve its capabilities is in manpower; not necessarily the management of existing manpower, but the ability to rapidly mobilize reserve forces to generate replacements and new units. In the opening days of the Russian invasion, Ukrainians with prior military experience, and those with critical skills, self-organized to resist the invaders.11 Part of the reason for Ukraine’s success in that part of the conflict was the many Ukrainians with prior military experience who were not part of active or reserve forces but could be rapidly integrated into a wartime military. This allowed Ukraine to rapidly expand its armed forces when it needed them most, but this expansion was often conducted in an ad hoc manner and did not provide enough personnel with critical skills or experience. Rushed training further exacerbated the issue, leading to new units often incapable of complex military operations such as breaching fixed defenses with combined arms.12
The Marine Corps has the reserve component needed to initially boost manpower in case of a major conflict, but this comes with its own drawbacks. Reserve units require time to draw equipment, conduct required maintenance, and train to standard before commanders bring them into conflict zones. They would strengthen Marine Corps forces engaged in a conflict, but it would be only a short-term boost to manpower. In any major attritional conflict, the need for new manpower to replace casualties and build new units would be high and constant. Some of this demand could be met with members of the individual ready reserve (IRR), but that would not eliminate the need to evaluate if they are fit for service and retraining requirements. The IRR is a limited pool from which to pull replacements. Eventually the Marine Corps would need to meet service requirements through new recruitment. To be appropriately prepared, the Marine Corps needs to seriously study and practice the ability to activate reserve units and members of the IRR to ensure it is ready for major conflict. It also must consider how training for incoming recruits can be expanded or streamlined.
The Marine Corps has done this before, most prominently between 1950 and 1952 during the Korean War, when it more than tripled in size.13 However, reserves outnumbered active-duty Marines at the time. That is not the case today. If faced with a conflict that called for rapid manpower expansion to meet an adversary in the field, the Marine Corps Reserve would provide only a small addition to manpower, with an end strength of 33,600 Marines in the Reserve against the 172,300 on active duty.14 The importance of reserves is evidenced in the Fiscal Year 2025 Defense Budget Overview, which calls for “the Reserve Component to be ready, responsive, and relevant.”15 In preparing for their 2023 offensive, Ukraine tried to create new units but found itself facing issues with manpower, training, equipment, and the creation of new command staffs.16 The Marine Corps needs to look at how to mobilize personnel and quickly integrate them into new or existing units, thinking about the time it will take to train these troops and create new command teams.
China is the pacing threat the Marine Corps must be prepared to confront. The Marine Corps is positioned to fight, and to win, the initial battles of any conflict with the People’s Liberation Army and Navy. But winning initial battles will not win a war. The winner of a wider conflict is often the side that can better maintain, sustain, and build their forces. China has a large military supported by a robust industrial base, positioning it well to maintain and rebuild its forces over the course of a conflict.
To meet the challenge of an attritional conflict, the Marine Corps needs to be prepared before the conflict. This requires a clear-eyed evaluation of its capabilities and the ability to maintain them. Of vital importance is ensuring the availability of munitions, weapon systems, and manpower.
1. Stephen Biddle, Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 3.
2. Cathal J. Nolan, The Allure of Battle: A History of How Wars Have Been Won and Lost (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2019), 20–23.
3. Nolan, The Allure of Battle, 20–23.
4. Nolan, 332–403; Biddle, Military Power, 30–35.
5. Mark F. Cancian et al., “Industrial Mobilization: Assessing Surge Capabilities, Wartime Risk, and System Brittleness” (Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic & International Studies, 8 January 2021), 16; Sidharth Kaushal, “Navies and Economic Warfare: Securing Critical Infrastructure and Expanding Policy Options” (London: Royal United Services Institute, 23 January 2023), 6.
6. U.S. Department of Defense, "Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy of The United States of America” (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Defense, 2018), 4; Mark A. General Milley, "National Military Strategy 2022” (Joint Chief of Staff, 2022), 2.
7. Throughout the Second World War Germany, Japan, and Italy's combined gross domestic product (GDP) never equaled the United States’ GDP (Mark Harrison, “The Economics of World War II: An Overview,” in The Economics of World War II: Six Great Powers in International Comparison [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998], 1–42). Today China’s GDP, accounting for purchasing power parity, is larger than the United States’ GDP. China has structural economic issues that should not be overlooked, but at the same time the United States’ defense industry is not without issue. GDP is also not a perfect measure of economic ability in war, and a side-by-side comparison ignores potential contributions from allies and partners.
8. Jones and Palmer, “Rebuilding the Arsenal of Democracy: The U.S. and Chinese Defense Industrial Base in an Era of Great Power Competition,” 11.
9. Mark F. Cancian et al., “The First Battle of the Next War Wargaming a Chinese Invasion of Taiwan” (Center for Strategic & International Studies, January 2023), 88–89.
10. Cancian et al., “Industrial Mobilization,” 42.
11. Mykhaylo Zabrodskyi et al., “Preliminary Lessons in Conventional Warfighting from Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine: February–July 2022” (Royal United Services Institute, 30 November 2022), 13–14.
12. Watling, Danylyuk, and Reynolds, “Preliminary Lessons from Ukraine’s Offensive Operations, 2022–23,” 31–32.
13. Ernest H. Giusti, Mobilization of the Marine Corps Reserve in the Korean Conflict, 1950-1951, Marine Corps Historical Reference Pamphlet (Washington, D.C.: Historical Branch, G-3 Division Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, 1967), 1 and 6.
14. Highlights of the Department of the Navy FY 2024 Budget (Washington, D.C.: Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy, 2023), 1–19.
15. Office of the Undersecretary of Defense, “Defense Budget Overview: United States Department of Defense Fiscal Year 2025 Budget Request,” 4 March 2024.
16. Watling et al., “Preliminary Lessons,” 31.
