We will establish permanent O-7–led staffs within Sixth and Seventh Fleet headquarters . . . we must experiment with deployment options that extend forward presence under the TF 51/5, 61/2, and 76/3 constructs.
—General Eric M. Smith1
The 2d Marine Expeditionary Brigade (2d MEB) is a different organization than it was three years ago. Five years into Force Design —the U.S. Marine Corps’ ongoing plan to reshape its combat power for future near-peer adversary conflicts—2d MEB has been transformed into a unit well-positioned to fulfill the role of Task Force (TF) 61/2, Sixth Fleet’s bid for success in expeditionary operations. Today, 2d MEB is no longer the exercise-focused command element it was in the past. Instead, its ability to conduct crisis response and littoral operations is contributing to integrated deterrence in the Sixth Fleet area of responsibility.2 This change was no accident; it took dedicated, transformational leaders and staff officers.3
Setting Conditions
Three years ago, 2d MEB was characterized by many staff officers within II Marine Expeditionary Force (MEF) as an exclusively exercise-focused command element. The sobriquet “MEF’s Exercise Brigade” was not necessarily an insult, but neither was it a compliment. 2d MEB was primarily II MEF’s Baltic Operations (BaltOps) force. Otherwise, employment for 2d MEB was more famine than feast.
In summer 2021, 2d MEB’s new commanding general and chief of staff set out to pivot 2d MEB from an exercise-only force to a command-and-control (C2) element capable of supporting integrated deterrence on behalf of combatant commander requirements above and below the threshold of violence. This transformation involved setting three conditions for transformation: educating the force, casting a vision, and building the organizational mechanism for achieving objectives.
The 2d MEB commanding general personally set about initiating the first two conditions: educating the force and casting a vision. His tool for this was the 2d MEB Training Campaign Plan. Many staff officers undoubtedly have written a training plan, and many have certainly read a campaign plan. Our challenge was to write a document merging the two as a blueprint for 2d MEB. This blueprint would train our C2 element, a headquarters with no permanently assigned subordinate forces, to support combatant commander campaign objectives when called on.
The Training Campaign Plan articulated three lines of effort corresponding to three methods of employment for 2d MEB: an echelon IV integrated naval warfighting headquarters, a Marine air-ground task force command element, and a C2 element for maritime prepositioning operations. Under each line of effort, we crafted intermediate objectives that would become the building blocks for all future training.
Inherent in this writing process was the education of the staff. As we wrote, we had to research. As we researched, we had to learn what would be required for each method of employment. And as we learned, we began to share the commanding general’s vision for 2d MEB. The staff’s learning and the organizational vision grew proportionally. Before we changed the MEF’s mind about the MEB—that we were more than just an exercise force—we had to change our own minds.
The third condition for transformation, building the organizational mechanism for achieving objectives, fell to the chief of staff. He established a robust battle rhythm through which we solved organizational-level problems. No more meetings. No more closed-door operational planning team sessions. We would run interrelated, cross-functional, and complementary working groups and decision boards. Each working group and decision board required getting the right people in the room with clearly stated inputs and outputs. Synchronization and situational awareness were inadequate outputs for our working groups. We were there to solve organizational-level problems. Our battle rhythm was our mechanism for achieving objectives, and it was a departure from 2d MEB’s business as usual.
Building Flexibility and Responsiveness
In March 2022, 2d MEB was in the process of disembarking and redeploying from an Italian warship after serving as Commander, Landing Forces, for Exercise Cold Response 22. Having been disconnected from U.S.-only networks for several weeks—during the outbreak of the largest conflict in Europe since World War II—2d MEB was immediately informed it had been assigned by the II MEF commanding general as TF 61/2 in Naples, Italy.
2d MEB would assume the duties of TF 61/2 from 2d Marine Division (MarDiv). The 2d MarDiv staff did the foundational work of establishing TF 61/2 in Naples. This was a concurrent and complementary task for that organization as it also was conducting service experimentation with newly task-organized maritime reconnaissance units. 2d MEB would take the banner of TF 61/2 from the MarDiv staff and begin the next developmental phase for Sixth Fleet’s newest task force.
A couple of months into 2d MEB’s 2022 rotation as TF 61/2, the II MEF commanding general designated 2d MEB as the base unit for TF 61/2 for the following calendar year as well. 2d MEB staff members began to grapple with how to manage the TF 61/2 mission for subsequent rotations. This meant dealing with personnel deployment tempo as a planning factor for how long staff members could stay in theater. To alleviate some of this burden, II MEF augmented 2d MEB’s rotations with off-cycle Marine expeditionary unit (MEU) command elements. In total, this solution was enough to meet mission requirements. In practice, it meant that staff members—whether from 2d MEB or off-cycle MEU command elements—would rotate into theater for 90 to 120 days before being rotated out.
Every TF 61/2 staff member experienced an acute sense of urgency with this 90-day rotational schedule. The 90-day redeployment countdown began the moment a TF 61/2 staff member sat down at a workstation in Naples. To handle the high turnover, everyone involved had to stay in-tune with the operational environment regardless of location. Add to this the rotation between 2d MEB and designated off-cycle MEU command elements. We began to promote staff-to-staff coordination and cooperative planning in a fluid environment.
Fortunately, 2d MEB staff members had rehearsed a staff model during Cold Response 22 that could address these challenges—the operational enterprise model of C2. Embarkation on a NATO ally’s ship limited our access to U.S.-only C2 systems. Therefore, the MEB commanding general directed the 2d MEB staff to establish a continental U.S.-based, ashore C2 capability for the duration of Cold Response 22 as a complementary capability to the embarked staff.
The 2d MEB staff carried this operational enterprise model forward to meet the challenges emerging with the TF 61/2 mission. The TF 61/2 battle rhythm connected higher, adjacent, and subordinate units. In addition, TF 61/2 in Naples and 2d MEB in the United States held at least one weekly working group to advance staff coordination and cooperative planning across the Atlantic. Regardless of which staff members were deployed to Italy and which unit would deploy next, the operational enterprise model kept all stakeholders properly oriented.
This model was stress-tested during the February 2022 Turkey humanitarian aid/disaster relief (HA/DR) operations. U.S. European Command designated U.S. Naval Forces, Europe (NavEur), as the lead service component for HA/DR to Turkey. NavEur turned to Sixth Fleet and TF 61/2, its crisis response task-force headquarters, to lead the response. Based on the permissive environment of the disaster area, the proximity of Incirlik Air Base to the epicenter of the earthquake, and the fact that Turkey is a middle-income NATO ally, TF 61/2 was able to rapidly deploy to Incirlik Air Base.
At the time of the earthquake, 24th MEU—as the designated off-cycle MEU command element—was the unit deployed as TF 61/2. The 2d MEB commanding general, designated the TF 61/2 commander regardless of which unit sourced the mission, flew from the United States to meet the TF 61/2 fly-in command element in Turkey. 2d MEB remained engaged from within the continental United States in accordance with the operational enterprise model and was able to rapidly deploy staff members to Naples to backfill the task-force capabilities now gapped by the fly-in command element’s deployment.
The 2d MEB staff members arrived in Naples and immediately integrated into the NavEur HA/DR battle rhythm. They also continued the future operations planning TF 61/2 had put on hold while deployed for crisis response. Some members of the 2d MEB staff also deployed to Incirlik with the commanding general to provide additional capacity as required.
Having TF 61/2 staff members—from both 2d MEB and 24th MEU—in Naples at the point of influence for HA/DR transition planning was crucial for assisting the deployed members of TF 61/2 in Incirlik. The forward team was able to communicate the conditions on the ground and the conditions that would be required to transition from a Department of Defense–led response to a Department of State–led response. The team in Naples incorporated these inputs into the NavEur transition operational planning team.
Overall, this operational enterprise model—established during Cold Response 22, carried forward to TF 61/2, and stress-tested during crisis response—proved flexible, responsive, and easily adaptable by the staff for different situations. It took transformational leaders to implement the operational enterprise model for steady-state operations and then to transpose and enforce this model during crisis response.
Transformation Demands Self-Monitoring
It is an axiom of the U.S. military that the most difficult type of leadership is peer leadership. Staff officers of TF 61/2 from different staff functional areas, different units, across multiple time zones were able to lead each other through this period of organizational transformation. This required TF 61/2 staff officers to foster a high degree of self-monitoring, which is the ability to perceive how others see you and to change your behavior as necessary to achieve mission success.4
This trait was highlighted in a recent NASA study attempting to identify which character traits would make a future Mars astronaut successful.5 Contrast the trait of self-monitoring with the character traits of the astronauts from the famous Mercury program: assertive to the point of arrogance with an independent streak a mile wide.6 Self-monitoring is an important trait for future Mars astronauts because of the stress that extended missions (1.5 to 3 years long) and communications delays between the astronauts and ground control will have on the team dynamics of Mars crews.
The mission requirements for future Mars astronauts provides a good analogy to the TF 61/2 implementation of the operational enterprise model of C2. Self-monitoring is not a replacement for the established Marine Corps leadership traits. However, given the massive cooperative component of the TF 61/2 mission, in which unity of effort is often required before unity of command is possible, staff officers demonstrating self-monitoring tended to be the most successful leaders. In addition, self-monitoring ensured that leaders heard from subject-matter experts, whether experts on tactical data links or surface warfare, despite those areas of expertise not being functions well-known to Marine Corps staff officers.
Toward Force Design
There are many more miles to travel before the Marine Corps realizes its aim of a permanent O-7 headquarters in Sixth Fleet. The leaders of 2d MEB, however, prove the Marine Corps has a highly capable interim solution that can be built on and replicated to achieve full implementation of the Force Design changes essential to deter or defeat the nation’s near-peer adversaries.
1. Gen Eric M. Smith, USMC, “Rethink the Marine Corps’ Role in Global Campaigning,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 149. no. 11 (November 2023).
2. David Vergun, “Official Says Integrated Deterrence Key to National Defense Strategy,” DOD News, 6 December 22.
3. For examples of transformational leadership see Doris Kearns Goodwin, Leadership in Turbulent Times (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018).
4. The Economist Board, “How to Prevent Conflict on the Way to Mars,” The Economist, 18 December 2021.
5. The Economist Board, “How to Prevent Conflict on the Way to Mars.”
6. Tom Wolfe provides a detailed illustration of the Mercury astronauts’ transformational individual personalities and collective attitudes in The Right Stuff (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1979).
