The U.S. Marine Corps has an ambitious 10-year transformation plan that could see the service eliminate
its entire tank force, dramatically scale back
howitzer batteries, and cut a significant number of aviation units in favor of
land-based rocket artillery and
stand-off missile launchers and
unmanned aircraft. The proposal follows an already dramatic announcement from the Corps' top officer last year about the need to move away from reliance on large traditional amphibious warfare ships, something
The War Zone explored in depth. All of this is rooted in the prevailing view that Marines will have to fight in small groups and in a distributed fashion in any major conflict in the future, especially in the Pacific region, in order to remain relevant.
The
Wall Street Journal was
the first to report on the Marines plans for the radical shift on Mar. 23, 2020. The newspaper interviewed Marine
Corps Commandant General David Berger about his proposal, which would fundamentally change the face of his service for years to come.
"China, in terms of military capability, is the pacing threat," Berger told the
Journal. "If we did nothing, we would be passed."
"I have come to the conclusion that we need to contract the size of the Marine Corps to get quality," he added.
“The wargames do show that, absent significant change, the Marine Corps will not be in a position to be relevant" in a high-end conflict against a “peer competitor,” U.S. Marine Corps Lieutenant General Eric Smith, head of the Marine Corps Combat Development Command, also explained to the
Journal. Berger had been head of this command, which is responsible for developing new and improved concepts of operations for the Corps, before becoming Commandant.
Berger's contraction is significant and wide-ranging. Over the next decade, he wants to shrink the entire size of the Corps from approximately 189,000 personnel to 170,000.
To do this, he would get rid of a number of units, including all seven existing Marine tank companies, along with their
M1 Abrams and
support vehicles. Three
bridging companies, necessary to get those heavy vehicles across waterways, would go get shuttered. Marine armored vehicles fleets would be limited to the service's existing fleet of
LAV-25 8x8 wheeled armored vehicles and its new
Amphibious Combat Vehicles (ACV), another 8x8 wheeled design. The ACV will increasingly supplant the tracked
Assault Amphibious Vehicles (AAV) in the coming years.
“We need an Army with lots of tanks," Berger said. "We don’t need a Marine Corps with tanks."
The total number of
155mm howitzer batteries would also drop from 21 to just five. Three of the 24 infantry battalions are also set to get cut under the plan, though the Marines have talked
about increasing the size of infantry squads, and by extension the remaining infantry units, at the same time.
The total number of
Marine fighter attack squadrons, all of which are transitioning to
variants of the F-35, would remain at 18. However, the size of each of these squadrons will shrink from 16 aircraft to just 10, according to a separate
report from USNI News.
Three
MV-22B Osprey tilt-rotor squadrons, two light attack helicopter squadrons equipped with
AH-1Z Vipers and
UH-1Y Venoms, and three heavy helicopter squadrons are all set to get cut from the overall force structure. The latter of these units are equipped with
CH-53E Super Stallion helicopters, which are set to get replaced by
CH-53K King Stallions. Trimming those squadrons could impact the total number of CH-53Ks, which have had
a long-troubled development, the Marines expect to buy in the end.
Despite this contraction, Berger is planning to make additions, as well, including tripling the size of land-based rocket artillery and stand-off missile units from seven to 21. This would include M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (
HIMARS) launchers that the Marines want to be able to fire
Naval Strike Missile anti-ship missiles in the future, in addition to 227mm guided artillery rockets and short-range
quasi-ballistic missiles. The Corps is also planning to introduce land-based launchers able to fire
the Tomahawk cruise missile.
The Marines' unmanned aircraft force would also double in size, from three to six squadrons. The service is very much in the process of defining exactly how it envisions the composition of these drone fleets. In its most recent budget request for the 2021 Fiscal Year, submitted as part of the larger U.S. Navy proposal, the Corps' revealed that it was reassessing its Marine Air Ground Task Force Unmanned Aircraft System Expeditionary program,
or MUX, as well as scaling back plans to acquire
MQ-9 Reapers in the interim.
The present plan includes exploring a "
system of systems" that could including various smaller drones, as well as larger, land-based unmanned aircraft. The original MUX concept, which you can read about in more detail in this
past War Zone piece, had envisioned large Marine unmanned aircraft capable of performing various complex roles and intended to operate from large amphibious warships.
The Marines would also add another squadron of
KC-130J Hercules aerial refueling tankers, which can also serve as airlifters and
gunships.
These massive force structure changes are driven in part by budgetary concerns, as well as a new, over-arching operating concept the Marines have been experimenting with, on paper and
during exercises, called Expeditionary Advance Base Operations (EABO), for some years now. EABO is heavily center on an idea of an island-hopping blitzkrieg of sorts during a major conflict in the Pacific region where ground units could
easily find themselves distributed across a front thousands of miles long separated by large expanses of water.
Unlike the other U.S. military services,
even the U.S. Army, the Marines do not expect to have the capacity to conduct large-scale stand-off operations and plan to fight almost exclusively inside "the weapons engagement zone" of a potential opponent, such as China, according to the
Journal. China, in particular, has invested significant resources in the development and fielding of anti-access and area denial capabilities, including air, sea, and ground-launched
anti-ship cruise missiles, as well as medium and intermediate-range ballistic missiles, including
air-launched ones, some of which carry
hypersonic boost-glide vehicles or that may have
anti-ship capabilities. Longer-range surface-to-air missiles and
supporting sensors are also part of the picture. All of this forces large traditional amphibious warfare ships to
operate further and further from actual objectives, limiting the ability of the Marine Corps in its present configuration to contribute in the minds of Berger and other senior service officials.
Under the EABO concept, smaller elements of Marines would use air assaults and
smaller ships, including
unmanned surface vessels, to seize control of small islands and rapidly set up forward operating bases. Unmanned platforms, including drones, unmanned ships, and
unmanned ground vehicles, including
remotely-operated mobile artillery systems, would be important to giving these Marine units additional capabilities without the need for significant amounts of additional manpower.
Missile units, especially with anti-ship missiles, would then be able to conduct strikes on hostile ships from this constellation of island outposts. Depending on the facilities available or that could be readily made available, they might also support forward
manned or
unmanned aviation operations. Targeting data from forward-deployed Marine units would also be passed back to other assets,
including Navy ships and
U.S. Air Force aircraft, which could then conduct their own stand-off attacks.
To keep the enemy on edge and to prevent them from effectively counter-attacking, Marines would reposition from one outpost to another every 48 to 72 hours. Decoy movements, which could be physical or generated
using electronic warfare systems, would further confuse the enemy. Constantly changing positions would also enable Marines to
attack from different vectors, forcing an opponent to be constantly evaluating their own defenses and potentially spreading their forces thin to protect against all avenues of attack.
"The Marine Corps will have three Marine Littoral Regiments (MLRs) organized, trained, and equipped to accomplish sea denial and sea control within actively contested maritime spaces as part of a modernized III MEF [Marine Expeditionary Force]," U.S. Marine Corps Major Joshua Benson, a Marine Corps Combat Development Command spokesperson, separately
told USNI News in a statement. "This Pacific posture will be augmented by three globally deployable Marine Expeditionary Units (MEUs) that possess both traditional and Expeditionary Advanced Base capabilities that can deploy with
non-standard Amphibious Ready Groups.”
In principle, the EABO concept certainly presents a number of potential benefits. There are also real questions about just how viable it would be in practice, especially from a logistical standpoint.
In his interview with the
Journal, General Berger highlighted how 3D printing in small field workshops could help manufacture on-demand replacement parts to support distributed operations. But you can't 3D print
fuel, water, ammunition, or food. Water is a resource that U.S. military units
particularly take for granted and which is absolutely essential to any operation.
The fuel demands for modern U.S. military units are also only increasing as more and more is required on a daily basis to power the generators that supply electricity for ground-based sensors, communications systems, living facilities, and more. There is work being done on alternate battlefield power concepts, including
small nuclear reactors and
hydrogen fuel cells, but these efforts are still in the very early stages of development.
The Marines have been looking at various distributed logistics concepts, including
using unmanned ships and
expendable supply drones, and
even seaplanes, as ways to get critical supplies to forward units with limited risk. None of these proposals entirely eliminate supply chain disruption that could potentially have serious impacts on the ability of Marine units to operate under the EABO concept.
"Some of the capabilities we assume might pan out, will not pan out, and other technological things will come along that we have not even considered," Berger told the Journal. He described his plan “as an aim point" and that the Corps would "monitor the threat all along as we go."
It certainly remains to be seen how much of the Commandant's ambitious proposal comes to fruition. However, it is clear that the Marine Corps' present senior leadership sees radical changes as essential to ensure that the force continues to be useful in future major wars, especially in the Pacific region.
https://www.thedrive.com/article/32...g-tanks-howitzers-in-favor-of-drones-missiles
