The Marine Corps is returning to its roots as a sea-based strike force after 13 years of ground wars, but getting there in fighting shape requires flexibility and resourcefulness, warned Maj. Gen. Robert Walsh.
Walsh, director of the Navy's eExpeditionary Warfare Division, laid out the plan for getting putting the Corps afloat again — and the challenges associated with it head — during the Surface Navy Association's annual symposium in northern Virginia on TuesdayJan. 13. Commandant Gen. Joe Dunford is prioritizing Marines' the ability of the Corps to undertake amphibious operations in contested areas, he said.
"As Marines, we want to be sea-based," Walsh said.
But doing so means giving the Navy's amphibious assault ship force needs a chance to recuperate after more than a decade of hard-use, he added Walsh warned. Extended deployments, compressed training cycles and ship substitutions have taken a toll.
"We were running ships too hard and readiness went down," he said before praising the Navy's new 36 month training and deployment cycle as a potential solution.
As the service shifts its nd to shift focus to the Asia-Pacific region, it still needs to remain at the ready while being in position to respond to ongoing and unexpected crises in the Middle East, Africa and Europe. The Corps is looking at will require more ships and placing Marines on new types of Navy vessels, he said, a The latter concept already being tested is under discussion. Marines experimented with embarking upon nontraditional vessels including an aircraft carrier, destroyer and dry cargo ship last summer., all nontraditional vessels.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies hinted at this new approach in the fall, reporting that the Defense Department was working with Congress and the Navy to consider other types of ships as operational platforms.
The versatility of the MV-22B Osprey also has given the Corps more options, Walsh said. For instance, while the joint high-speed vessel cannot support Ospreys, dry cargo ships or mobile landing platform ships like the soon-to-be finished Lewis B. Puller can. They could be used to give land-based special-purpose Marine air-ground expeditionary task forces — created in part because of the shortage of amphibs — a sea-based going platform, Walsh said.
"It has changed how we're looked at in the Marine Corps and [are]be called on … for missions," Walsh said of the tiltrotor aircraft Osprey.
As for new ships, Walsh praised the America class amphibious assault ship landing ships — the America and the forthcoming Tripoli — and said the arrival of the amphibious transport dock ships John P. Murtha and Portland in the coming years will bring the amphib force back up to its base level. Budget constraints, though, mean the existing fleet must be carefully maintained and modernized, he warned.
In the meantime the Corps will look to leverage as many assets as it can to get Marines back to sea, Walsh said.
"… Demand on the amphib forces continues to go up and the demand for ship-based or sea-based platforms continues to go up," he said. "The relevancy of the combat power coming from the sea base or operating at sea continues to grow."
