The U.S. Marine Corps Transformation Path: Preparing for the High-End Fight

The USMC Transformation Path: Preparing for the High-End Fight

Copyright © Robbin F. Laird, 2021

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

ISBN: 978-1-66781-9-570 (softcover)

ISBN: 978-1-66781-9-587 (eBook)

Cover Photo Credit: 3rd MAW At Work

A U.S. Marine Corps MV-22B Osprey with Marine Aircraft Group (MAG) 16, 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing (MAW), departs the amphibious assault ship USS America (LHA 6), as part of routine training.

Credit: LCpl Juan Anaya, USMC, Eastern Pacific, 2019

Cover Design © OPS

[email protected]

This book is dedicated to my father Bradley Clayton Laird, in honor of his service in the Pacific during the Second World War, including his time in Japan after the defeat of the Empire of Japan. He taught me much about the true nature of the brutality of war and the threat which a determined adversary to our democracy truly poses. He was part of the fight against the Empire of Japan and now we face at least three determined adversaries in the Pacific challenging our way of life.

Contents

Foreword

Preface

Chapter 1: The Shift from the Land Wars to Preparing for the High-End Fight

Escalation Management

The C² Piece

The ISR Piece

The Basing Piece

The Logistics Piece

The Training Piece

The Pace of Conflict Piece

Shaping a Way Ahead

Chapter 2: The Marine Corps in the Strategic Shift

The Tiltrotor-Driven Transition

The F-35-Driven Marine Corps Transformation

The Next Phase: The 2020s

Enter Force Design 2030

Chapter 3: The View from MAWTS-1

Col Gillette, CO of MAWTS-1

Working Mobile Basing

Moving Forward with Mobile Basing

The Role of Heavy Lift

Forward Arming and Refueling Points (FARPs)

MAWTS-1 and the F-35

Expeditionary Basing and C²

The Evolving Amphibious Task Force

The Ground Combat Element in the Pacific Reset

Blue Water Expeditionary Operations

The F-35 and USMC–U.S. Navy Integration

Unmanned Air Systems and the USMC

Chapter 4: The View from II MEF and Norfolk

The Perspective of VADM Lewis

The Perspective of the Commanding General of II MEF

The Perspective from II MEB

Working II MEF Operations in Transition

The C² Piece

The ISR Piece

II MEF Information Group

The Logistics Piece

The Challenge of Preparing for Future Operations

Shaping a Way Ahead

Looking Back and Looking Forward for the USMC

Chapter 5: The View from 2nd Marine Airwing

Multiple Basing, Kill Webs and C²: Shaping a Way Ahead

Further Thoughts on the C² Piece

Working the Distributed Operations Piece

Working the Light Attack Helicopter Piece

The Osprey Piece

The Heavy Lift Piece

The Coming of the CH-53K

The Impact of the CH-53K

Visiting MAG-26

The Tactical Fighter Piece MAG-14 Preparing the Transition

Nordic Training

Visiting the Warlords

The Training Piece

Shaping a Way Ahead for the Assault Support Community

Chapter 6: The View from the Pacific

The Perspective of LtGen Rudder, the MARFORPAC Commander

The Perspective of LtGen Heckl, I MEF Commander

Three Key Weapons Systems for the Marines in the Pacific

The F-35 Piece

The Osprey Piece

The C² Piece

Seam Warfare, Exercises and Deterrence

Allies, Partners and Marines in the Indo-Pacific

Operations in the Information Environment

The Logistics Challenges

Shaping a Way Ahead for Force Design 2030 in the Pacific

Chapter 7: The MARSOC Case

MARSOF 2030

Shaping a Way Ahead for MARSOC

A Discussion with Major General James F. Glynn

Chapter 8: Challenges Facing the Way Ahead for the USMC

The Way Ahead for the U.S. Military Strategy and the Joint Force

Adversaries and Allies: How Will They Shape the Dynamically Evolving Strategic Environment?

The Configuration of the USMC Going Forward

Challenges Going Forward: The Perspective of LtGen (Retired) Robling

Afterword

Dr. Robbin F. Laird

Foreword

LtGen George J. Trautman III, USMC (Ret)

Former USMC Deputy Commandant for Aviation

My first experience with Robbin Laird occurred almost fifteen years ago when I was assigned as the new U.S. Marine Corps Deputy Commandant for Aviation. Facing the daunting task of introducing the MV-22 Osprey into combat operations, we deployed the first of three Osprey squadrons to Iraq beginning in the fall of 2007. Of course, our rabid and largely uninformed critics predicted abject failure and even I had to admit the stakes were extremely high. During that tense period, one of the key intellects I turned to for advice was Robbin Laird.

From that initial relationship grew a bond between Robbin and a succession of USMC Deputy Commandants (both Air and Ground) that helped the Marine Corps not only achieve incredible success with the Osprey, but also the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the Venom and Viper helicopters, and state-of-the-art command and control systems such as the TPS-80 G/ATOR radar.

So, what has Robbin’s main contribution been to the Marine Corps? He always asks the right questions, and he is doggedly determined to examine new warfighting concepts and equipment — not just from the perspective of the upper echelons of the Pentagon, but from a broad cross section of tactical operators serving in the fleet. He interviews Marines who come to work every day with a passionate dedication to improving the Corps. They are always thinking, and sometimes struggling, to translate the ideas and equipment given to them in ways that take maximum advantage of the tools of their trade. Sometimes all they need to excel is a knowledgeable listener who can help coalesce their thought processes into action and Robbin fulfills that niche perfectly.

Unlike many of the gotcha defense journalists and think tank elites writing today, Robbin is happy to play the role of a facilitator who shines the spotlight on the active-duty sailors and Marines who are actually serving in the arena. In this book Robbin uses this technique to explore three primary objectives. First, is the fact that Marine aviation has been at the forefront of post Iraq and Afghanistan operations for at least two decades. While the rest of the Corps was bogged down in small unit tactics and nation building, USMC aviation introduced capabilities that are ideally suited for 5th generation warfare and the potential near peer adversaries of the future. Second, is the sometimes-overlooked fact that the Marine Corps occupies the vortex of the dynamics of change being pursued by the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Air Force. Marines must not be myopic in how they envision their future contributions to the joint and combined force. And, finally, he provides an examination of the 38th Commandant’s sweeping changes as delineated in Force Design 2030 (FD 2030). Almost everyone agrees that service wide transformation is required following two decades of stagnation and the evolution of new global strategic priorities, but the harshest critics of this new path believe the cart has been put before the horse and the future relevance of the Marine Corps is at stake.

Robbin is careful not to join the chorus of Force Design 2030 naysayers. Instead, he burrows into the thinking of those who are dealing with the coming changes and inspires them to think through the impacts – positive and negative — that lie off our bow. In that way, this book contributes directly to a principal element of Force Design that is often overlooked because of the premature ax that has been taken to service end-strength and force structure (including cuts to infantry battalions, aircraft squadrons, tanks, and cannon artillery). That is, that the transformation being thrust upon the Corps today must rest upon a solid analytical foundation. As John P. Kotter, Harvard Business School, is quoted on the opening page of the document, Transformation is a process, not an event.

After Former Navy Secretary James Webb blasted Force Design 2030 in an op-ed for The National Interest well over a year ago, there has been little intellectual curiosity or constructive criticism expressed by the defense establishment, including relevant members of Congress about the plan. Is this because FD 2030 is so sound that it stands above criticism or is it because the changes, as eloquently described by Secretary Webb, will make the Marine Corps largely irrelevant? Only time will tell how the Marine Corps navigates this treacherous transformation journey, but it’s not the equipment that will make the Corps successful on the future battlefield – it’s the Marines. Their imaginations, ideas and creativity will lead to innovative employment of the tools they are given. That’s true of every piece of equipment in use today and it will remain that way in the future. The USMC Transformation Path: Preparing for the High-End Fight makes a valuable contribution to the professional dialogue that must occur by giving voice to those who are charged with managing the change.

George J. Trautman III

LtGen, USMC (Ret) Former USMC Deputy Commandant for Aviation

Preface

Last year, I published a book on Training the High-End Fight: The Strategic Shift of the 2020s . This book is a continuation of that effort. My colleagues and I have focused on the strategic shift from the Middle East land wars to the return of Great Power competition for a number of years, certainly before it became a more general focus of attention.

The strategic shift is much more than that—it is a strategic shock as well. We have trained and battle tested a whole generation of warriors who have operated in the deserts of the Middle East and the mountains of Afghanistan. The U.S. Army has been the bedrock force to which all the other services have provided capabilities, and even though what went on in the past twenty years was called joint warfighting, what really was happening was the United States Marine Corps (USMC) was becoming an adjunct to the U.S. Army; the United States Air Force (USAF) was providing fire support, intelligence and lift for the ground fight; and the Navy was providing amphibious and carrier support to the ground scheme of maneuver.

Many innovations in warfare occurred during these twenty years, but they were in support of U.S Army operations and the ground scheme of maneuver. The focus was on counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, nation-building and stability operations. This period came to a dramatic end with the Biden Administration’s Blitzkrieg withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021. That withdrawal has significant and lingering effects on the U.S. military and our alliance policies and approaches. I have written about that elsewhere.

And to be very clear, the dramatic withdrawal from Afghanistan represented the failure of twenty years of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) policies and of the U.S. Army’s dominating role in defining forces and shaping strategy. The conflicts involving peer competitors have little to do with the force structures and strategies pursued in the past twenty years.

But how effective will be the rebound? How effective will the political and military leadership in the beltway be in understanding how dramatically different the strategic shift really is? Will the U.S. Army’s leading role be jettisoned to allow for a fresh redesign of the joint force, one appropriate to the nation’s defense?

When I worked for Secretary Wynne, first when he was head of acquisition and then Secretary of the Air Force, it was abundantly clear to him and his team that going down the rabbit hole of the land wars was going to lead to a significant reduction in high-end warfighting capability. That has clearly happened. Both Defense Secretary Gates and President Obama attacked the F-22 as a Cold War airplane, and the fifth-generation revolution was slowed to a crawl. The U.S. poured its operational resources into support for the land wars and struggled to keep up its other warfighting skills. For example, anti-submarine planes turned into land support assets, and skill sets finding enemies on land replaced those of prioritizing finding enemies underwater.

There is a real danger that the nation does not recover rapidly enough and shape a force more appropriate to the world in which we live. To do so requires significant reworking of how the joint and coalition forces work together. That strategic shift is discussed in the first chapter.

The second chapter highlights the core focus of the book, which is highlighting the transition of the USMC within the overall strategic shift. The Marines have unique air, ground and sea capabilities which put them at the vortex of the dynamics of change being pursued by the U.S. Navy and the USAF.

And many coalition partners look to the USMC as a relevant benchmark for the kind of multi-domain operations which they can pursue. For many allies, their force structure approximates the size of the USMC, and they find the fit better than emulating the total force which the United States has built. It is also the case that the legacy force coming out of the land wars which the United States deploys today is distorted in terms of its warfighting relevance to the approaches for combat with the peer competitors.

The second chapter focuses on the Marines and their transformation, which really started with the introduction of the Osprey into the land wars and has continued with the deployments of the F-35, to the return to more focus on amphibious operations and the latest phase of transformation, the one being shaped by the current USMC Commandant.

The remaining chapters bring together my discussions with Marines over the past two years as they shape their transition within the overall strategic shift. Those Marines certainly understand the gravity of the situation and the challenges they face. I have had a wide range of interviews over the past two years, which are included in this book.

I spent time with MAWTS-1 and 2nd Marine Air Wing in 2020. In 2021, I returned to 2nd Marine Air Wing and visited II Marine Expeditionary Force twice. I then went to Hawaii, where I spent time with the commander of U.S. Marine Corps Forces, Pacific or MARFORPAC and his staff. As I spent time there in 2014 and 2015, I have included interviews from those visits as well, which provide a good sense of how the transition which the Marines launched in 2014 is playing out now. My final look at the Marine Corps transition focuses on the Marine Special Forces Command as a case study in the transition from the land wars to the peer competitor fight, and includes my interview with the Commanding General of MARSOC.

In other words, the reader can learn first-hand how Marine Corps combat leaders see the transition and the challenges they face to making that transition. All of these interviews are taken from our two websites, Second Line of Defense and Defense Information. I have indicated the date published to provide the time horizon to the judgment being made by Marines.

I conclude by taking a look at the challenges being faced by Marines to make their transition within the broader strategic shift which U.S. forces are undertaking. These challenges are significant and if not met will leave the Marines exposed to threats and dangers which will impact their combat success. Success in making the strategic shift is not guaranteed, but failure is not an option.

Chapter One:

The Shift from the Land Wars

to Preparing for the High-End Fight

It cannot be overstated how different the decade ahead preparing for the high-end fight and engaging in full-spectrum crisis management is from the past twenty years of Middle East land warfare. In my interviews over the past few years, I have talked with a number of officers in the USMC, U.S. Navy or the USAF as well as several allied militaries who entered the service towards the end of the Cold War. There are few remaining officers who have served in this period, but they are a very precious commodity because they bridge back to the peer fight with the Soviet Union to the current 21st century authoritarian competitors.

It is not the Cold War, of course. Russia is not the Soviet Union, and China is a very different animal than the Soviet Union. But the experiences of the 1980s were rooted in dealing with a core peer competitor. Air and sea dominance could not be assumed as it has been in the period of the past twenty years of engaging in the U.S. Army–led approach to counterinsurgency and stability operations.

We began to see movement towards the peer fight with the shift in the Middle East required to destroy ISIS strongholds and with the Russians bringing their naval and air forces to Syria and engaging in shadow war with the United States and its allies. But it was just a foreshadowing of how different the decade ahead would be from the past two decades.

The use of airpower against ISIS-held territory saw the beginnings of a return to what airpower really is all about as opposed to supporting the ground scheme of maneuver. I interviewed my colleague Ben Lambeth, who wrote a very important book about this transition and how hard it was for the Army-led CENTCOM. And it took the election of a new president as well to authorize the kinds of air strikes which are more relevant to peer warfare than the past twenty years of the use of airpower.

In his book entitled Airpower in the War against ISIS, Lambeth provided his assessment of the shift from the pure dominance over airpower of counterinsurgency operations to the fight against ISIS, a fight which required airpower to remove the Army’s shackles on its proper use against a state-like competitor.¹

Lambeth noted: "Clearly, as counterinsurgency operations became the predominant American way of war after 2003, the USAF lost a lot of muscle memory for doing much of anything else by way of higher-end force employment. And the predominant Army leadership at U.S. Central Command continued to apply its long-habituated Army thinking going forward into an entirely different situation that was presented by the rise of ISIS. A more assertive leadership in CENTCOM’s air component at the time would have pressed for a different response to the challenge it was handed in 2014 by arguing for targeting ISIS not as an insurgency, but rather as a self-avowed state in the making.

"However, CENTCOM’s commander, U.S. Army General Lloyd Austin III, simply assumed ISIS to be a regenerated Islamist insurgency of the sort that he was most familiar with, which it was not at all, and accordingly proceeded to engage it as just another counterinsurgency challenge. Eventually, his air component’s second successive commander, then-Lieutenant General C. Q. Brown, finally prevailed in arguing for deliberate strategic air attacks against critical ISIS infrastructure targets in both Iraq and Syria, not just for on-call air ‘support’ to be used as flying artillery for the ground fight.

One must remember that the vast majority of today’s serving U.S. Air Force airmen are only familiar with Operation Desert Storm from their book reading. And even much of the USAF’s more senior leadership today has never really been exposed to higher-end aerial warfare as we last experienced it over Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 2003. Only now are we slowly coming to realize the opportunity costs that were inflicted by this neglect for nearly two decades, during which time we fixated solely on less-intense counterinsurgency warfare.

The other transitional moment was when the U.S. and its closest allies conducted a strike on Syrian chemical weapons facilities. This was done within the threat envelope of potential Russian counter-engagement against those forces. Ed Timperlake provided his assessment of this event from the side of the United States: "… the surface Navy can also undertake independent offensive operations, as the Russians in combat support for the President of Syria recently found out, after the Syrian President used chemical weapons on his opponents:

"When President Trump gave the go order to attack Shayrat Air Base Syria, where a chemical attack had been launched, two U.S. Navy surface warships stood ready to implement the order. In one shining moment with Tomahawks fired from USS Porter and USS Ross, the world knew a new Commander-in Chief was at the helm. It was reported that 59 of the 60 Tomahawks hit the intended target. Our way of war was to actually warn the Russians to minimize any chance of Russians being hit or killed — how nice for them."²

Murielle Delaporte reported on the French engagement in the operation, which also presages how the allied engagement changes as the strategic shift begins to unfold. "France was in charge of hitting two facilities assembling and stockpiling chemical weapons near Homs. They were hit simultaneously by a combination of airborne and sea-based missiles: a total of 12 out of the 105 fired by the three countries, which, when added to the British salvo of eight Storm Shadows, constitutes the usual percentage of the French and British contributions to coalition operations (roughly 20 percent)….

"Being able to strike every 10 minutes from different platforms using different types of missiles meant working in perfect synchronicity on a trilateral basis (the U.S., the UK and France) and among the three countries’ different services, something that cannot be improvised.

Political meetings beforehand and constant contacts and coordination among the three countries’ ministers of defense and military chiefs were crucial to prepare a pretty risky mission both politically and technically, but what counted to achieve that kind of success have been the decades of mil-to-mil relationship and training among the three allies. Building the trust necessary so that a French mission commander based in the Mediterranean could direct part of the strikes in an autonomous manner did not just happen overnight. This is the result of years and years of flying and sailing together and operating together whether in Afghanistan or over Libya or in Niger. It is also the result of the joint planning done in 2013, albeit in a very, very different threat environment.³

In a way these two developments framed the transition. But a brutal transition it is and a difficult one. As the United States was focusing on the Middle East and pouring treasure, manpower and equipment into those wars, the Chinese put their money on shaping their version of a 21st century combat force and their version of the revolution in military affairs. The Russians are somewhat different in terms of their investments and their approach, but they seized Crimea and refined new methods of warfare central to the challenges of direct defense today in Europe. The Russians had already experienced their Afghan nightmare and were no going to go down that rabbit hole again.

And the latest version of their military doctrine released on July 2, 2021, provides a very clear statement of how they are approaching the conflict with the liberal democracies. What is asserted is the priority for Russian values against Western values. And in this defense of Russian values, information war is highlighted as a key reality facing the Russian federation as the West using the various modern means of information, such as the internet, to seek, in the Russian view, to disrupt the Russian value system and way of life. This means that the Russians see themselves as free to do the same, and to use information warfare to do the same. Indeed, the document does not use the word cyber warfare whatsoever. It focuses on political warfare and information security.

And in the Russian military mind, information war is an ongoing element of the global competition which allows them to get inside the adversary’s decision-making cycle, and inside the debates and conflicts within Western societies and in their alliances, and to do so in ways that weaken the West and lead to disintegration of Western values.

It is not just about intrusion for classic military effect; it is about a much wider agenda of undercutting Western values, protecting the Russian way of life, and preparing the way for the Russians to use various lethal means to achieve their objectives short of widespread direct armed conflict. It is about using lethal force to achieve their objectives without triggering a wide-ranging conventional confrontation but being prepared to master escalation control.⁴

The peer fight has little to do with how to manage a slo-mo counterinsurgency control the ground campaign. It is about the right tools, managed in the right way, to achieve escalation control. It is about compressed time operations; it is about understanding that when dealing with nuclear powers, the counterinsurgency model has really no relevance whatsoever.

In this chapter I will address a number of the key factors driving the redesign of U.S. forces to deal with full-spectrum crisis management and escalation control and an ability to engage and prevail in the high-end fight. I will deal with what I think are the most central ones, which will allow one to understand how different the challenges are facing our forces as they transition. It is not an exhaustive or comprehensive list, but in the interviews, which follow in the book, a wide range of such challenges are identified by the Marines I have interviewed over the past two years.

In particular, I will discuss seven elements which highlight the character of the strategic shift, strategic shock or strategic transition. These elements are escalation management, the Command and Control (C²) piece, the Information, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) piece (I prefer this over intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance), the basing piece, the logistics piece, the training piece and the pace of conflict piece.

It is important to realize that our core adversaries, China and Russia, are engaged in political warfare as well as military operations against us and our allies. Terms like gray zone conflict and hybrid warfare have been created to explain that our competitors are working to leverage the perceived weaknesses in the liberal democracies and exploit seams within our societies and as well with our alliance relationships.

That is why it is a full-spectrum crisis management set of challenges and not a race to get to World War III as fast as possible and win. At the same time, we live in a world where counterterrorism is a reality, and we have to expend our efforts and use forces and allied working relationships to manage those threats as well. But it is not about occupying territory and building new societies, which then will in the ideal world not breed terrorists. It is about understanding the limits of what we can do and prioritizing core defense tasks and not frittering away our resources leaving us unable to provide for the most salient and significant defense challenges facing the nation and our allies.

Escalation Management

The Russians face three nuclear powers in the West—the United States, France and the United Kingdom—and the United States and its allies face three nuclear powers in the Pacific—China, Russia and North Korea. This means that any peer competitor conflict is embedded in a wider consideration of escalation management, which entails at a minimum shadowboxing with regard to the nuclear warfare dimension. It also means that a number of developments in conventional warfare, such as degrading an adversary’s C², the excessive use of artificial intelligence decision-making systems and errant use of autonomous systems, can have significant consequences for approaching the nuclear threshold much more rapidly than intended.

One of the legacies of the land wars is that we have a generation of officers who have NEVER had to consider this problem. That legacy is a very negative one. Conventional force modernization needs to be done in such a way that its integration within the real world of dealing with nuclear powers is a sine qua non for shaping a way ahead for deterrence.

What certainly cannot be done is to shape a way ahead with regard to high-end warfare as if it is primarily or solely a conventional engagement. Even a conventional engagement has nuclear consequences, notably with regard to embedded C² systems and networks being relied upon in conflict. Notably any U.S. Army or USMC thinking about the way ahead in the Pacific needs to return them to their Cold War roots, where there was no expectation that one could do land engagements without considerations for the overhang of nuclear operations.

As Dr. Paul Bracken, the author of The Second Nuclear Age and a noted strategist, put it in a 2018 piece: "The key point for today is that there are many levels of intensity above counterinsurgency and counter terrorism, yet well short of total war. In terms of escalation intensity, this is about one-third up the escalation ladder. Here, there are issues of war termination, disengagement, maneuvering for advantage, signaling, — and yes, further escalation — in a war that is quite limited compared to World War II, but far above the intensity of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan….

"A particular area of focus should be exemplary attacks. Examples include select attack of U.S. ships, Chinese or Russian bases, and command and control. These are above crisis management as it is usually conceived in the West. But they are well below total war. Each side had better think through the dynamics of scenarios in this space. Deep strike for exemplary attacks, precise targeting, option packages for limited war, and command and control in a degraded environment need to be thought through beforehand.

"The Russians have done this, with their escalate to deescalate strategy. I recently played a war game where Russian exemplary attacks were a turning point, and they were used quite effectively to terminate a conflict on favorable terms. In East Asia, exemplary attacks are also important as the ability to track U.S. ships increases.

Great power rivalry has returned. A wider range of possibilities has opened up. But binary thinking — that strategy is either low intensity or all-out war – has not.⁵

Ed Timperlake and I interviewed Bracken on the challenges of conventional force modernization in the context of engaging with the nuclear powers in conflict. According to Bracken: "When considering how to go after the adversary’s C²