ARLINGTON, Va. – Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger’s big plan for reintegrating with the Navy for the big fight of the future requires moving a lot of pieces around the Corps.
This week, three of his generals who’ll be doing the moving shared some of the challenges the Corps faces regarding those changes here at the 32nd National Symposium of the Surface Navy Association.
While the composition of the MEU as a Marine Air-Ground Task Force serves current Marine Corps needs, it’s unlikely that makeup will remain unchanged when Marines afloat confront counterparts in the Pacific Ocean. What capabilities the Marine Corps needs and what the Corps no longer will do as it moves forward in competition with peer adversaries such as China is what is currently being worked on, according to Maj. Gen. Mark Wise, deputy commanding general, Marine Corps Combat Development Command.
“For instance, the MEU, how is it configured, what capabilities will it have?” Wise said.
RELATED
Marines from 2nd Battalion, 8th Marines, Combat Logistics Battalion 26 and the Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 365, make up the current 26th MEU ― one of seven in the Marine Corps.
Maj. Gen. Tracy King, director, expeditionary warfare, pointed to the current and future utility of the pairing of Marine assets aboard ships ― referencing the recent pulling of the Amphibious Readiness Group, 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit out of exercises in the Atlantic and moving the Marines first into the Mediterranean and then the Red Sea following the missile strikes by Iran.
“I guarantee you our potential adversary’s calculus to de-escalate had a lot to do with the operational agility of these expeditionary forces,” King said.
But what’s even needed to fight at the distances and in the ways that both the Marines and Navy plan for, distributed but networked, will require re-evaluating what they want their gear, and units, to do.
King, for example, said that the Marine Corps needs to revalidate its requirement for certain types of fires.
“Do you need naval surface fire support when doing (Expeditionary Advanced Basing Operations)? Absolutely,” King said. “Do I need to suppress an enemy infantry battalion? I don’t know, maybe not."
At the same time, existing equipment needs to do more than it was originally designed to do.
King pointed to amphib ships specifically.
“I’ve got 32 ships that need to be able to sink a ship,” he said. “We’re working on that as well. If it floats, it fights.”
And almost as much will change for the Navy as for the Marine Corps.
Lt. Gen. Charles Chiarotti, deputy commandant, installations and logistics, who spoke on a panel covering naval integration with Wise and Vice Adm. James Kilby, deputy chief of naval operations, said the old ways are lacking.
The way of the Navy carrying Marines over to the fight, landing them ashore while providing supporting fires and then going back out to the high seas to do Navy business wouldn’t be enough anymore, Chiarotti said.
“This is a paradigm shift,” he said. “This is fundamentally different.”
Todd South has written about crime, courts, government and the military for multiple publications since 2004 and was named a 2014 Pulitzer finalist for a co-written project on witness intimidation. Todd is a Marine veteran of the Iraq War.
