Compass Points - Concept Reconsidered
Operational Maneuver from the Sea
May 6, 2024
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Missile Marines on isolated islands off China's coast? Too passive. Too narrow. Too regional. The nature of the Marine Corps is not to be primarily a defensive force, to sit, sense, make sense, and pass data. Instead, the nature of the Marine Corps is to be a global offensive force, ready to go to the sound of the guns, arrive at the scene of a crisis, and deter, assist, and fight.
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Across the decades, the Marine Corps has updated, enhanced, and transformed itself again and again. With every rise of new threats and new technologies, the Marine Corps has adjusted its thinking to make itself more relevant to a wider variety of missions and a wider section of the globe.
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Writing for Real Clear Defense, author and Marine Gary Anderson urges the Marine Corps to rediscover an advanced warfighting concept that was set aside during the decades of intense fighting in the Middle East. Gary Anderson writes about, "The Marine Corps That Should Have Been."
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If U.S. wanted to launch such a large scale punitive operation against the Houthis, it would have to be done from the sea with a large scale amphibious assault. An amphibious assault of this scale, requiring sea borne tanks, assault engineers and bridging capabilities that have been divested by the U.S. Marine Corps. Instead, the Marine Corps is building a defensive force built around anti-ship missiles designed primarily to contain the Chinese Navy.
This defensive force is a stark departure from former Marine Corps Commandant Al Gray’s vision to modernize the Marine Corps for future wars.
Back in the 1980s, General Gray had a vision for what he called Over the Horizon (OTH) operations using tilt rotor aircraft, long range helicopters, more capable long-range amphibious vehicles, and air cushioned landing craft. Gray realized that advanced defensive weapons would make traditional linear amphibious operations launched just offshore problematical, but OTH would enable landing in column in places that the enemy did not expect. Gray had the Marine Corps experiment with these capabilities. Throughout the nineties, numerous war games and field experiments took place to explore the physical and intellectual challenges. OTH gradually evolved into Operational Maneuver from the Sea (OMFTS) and a whole new philosophy of littoral campaigning.
-- Gary Anderson, Real Clear Defense
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With increasing threats from a roster of everything from non-state irregular forces, to peer and near peer adversaries, the US needs a military that can deter if possible and defeat when necessary. Above all, US policy makers need a powerful military tool to influence world events.
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To influence events overseas, America requires a credible, forwardly deployable, power projection capability. In the absence of an adjacent land base, a sustainable forcible entry capability that is independent of forward staging bases, friendly borders, overflight rights, and other politically dependent support can come only from the sea. The chaos of the future requires that we maintain the capability to project power ashore against all forces of resistance, ranging from overcoming devastated infrastructure, to assisting a friendly people in need of disaster relief, to countering the entire spectrum of armed threats.
--Operational Maneuver from the Sea
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The concept, "Operational Maneuver from the Sea" makes clear that turning the focus of the Marine Corps toward missile Marines on isolated islands off China's coast is a worn-out idea that is too passive, too narrow, and too regional for today. Compass Points will have more to say about "Operational Maneuver from the Sea," an advanced concept for Marine Corps global operations.
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Compass Points salutes Gary Anderson for his article, "The Marine Corps That Should Have Been." But perhaps his article is mis-named. Gary Anderson's article is not really about the past, it is about the future. Instead of being about the Marine Corps that should have been, it starts a discussion about the Marine Corps yet to be.
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Real Clear Defense - 05/04/2024
The Marine Corps That Should Have Been
By Gary Anderson
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US Marine Corps
Operational Maneuver from the Sea
file:///C:/Users/John%20David/Downloads/MCCP%201%20Operational%20Maneuver%20from%20the%20Sea.pdf
This post sparked another!
https://tacticalnotebook.substack.com/p/shore-huggers-and-horse-marines