The horror that Stand-in Forces (SIF), isolated and unsupported on remote islands, will have inadequate on-scene medical and casualty evacuation support should not come as a surprise to anyone. Like the rest of Force Design 2030, the SIF concept was never vetted through the Combat Development Process. Had the SIF concept been properly vetted, it would have been exposed for what it is - - a fool’s errand. The entire area of logistics (medical, food and water, maintenance, transportation, etc.), survivability, positioning and repositioning, and even the effectiveness of the anti-ship missiles have never been sufficiently addressed, much less resolved. In the mad rush to appear revolutionary, the Marine Corps put empty words ahead of the mission and the welfare of the Marines needed to accomplish it. The entire SIF concept needs to be scrapped before Marines, isolated and unsupported on remote islands, are needlessly killed and maimed.
I recently had an email exchange with an individual I do not know who has his own Substack Account. ( Amphibiosity) It appears that he is a Marine Colonel in the USMCR and currently a civilian employee in Quantico. He has actively defended FD-20XX. In one exchange he claimed that the Chinese cannot deploy forces to threaten the missile batteries and that the “near by” MAGTF can support them. Imagine my surprise….. he also opined that the terms winning or losing have no meaning as the objective is to create a political situation in our favor. I will not engage any further because I simply lack the intellectual depth to understand what he is talking about. I relate this exchange for a simple reason. Try as I might, I simply cannot understand the viability of the concept. It is a concept that has no flesh and blood component.
Doug, That individual is simply professionally unschooled. Hardly worth it to waste time engaging him. His lack of insight is another indictment of the Corps' PME.
Of all that has been written about concerning Force Design, the topic of logistics worries me the most. I haven’t read anything remotely feasible that speaks to how we will succeed in supporting our Littoral Marines once they are dropped off on the so called first island chain.
How is the Marine Corps going to resupply and or evacuate when needed in the face overwhelming enemy capabilities, especially when the Corps and our Navy partners don’t have the ships, nor the aircraft to maintain and sustain the force. And please don’t tell me technology is going to save the day.
“In 1979, Gen. Robert H. Barrow, then commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps., uttered the famous phrase that “amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals study logistics.”
FD2030 was, is and will considered in the fullness of time “Dereliction of Duty”. Full stop. Similar to General McKenzie’s Dereliction of Duty in the assessment of the situation in Afghanistan, the abandonment of Bagram Airbase and it’s importance to any semblance of an orderly withdraw and then further the absolute malfeasance in his orders to combatant commanders on the ground at HKIA, and the loss of 13 US service men and woman 11 of whom were OUR Marines. Coupled together the loss of confidence in this group of senior “managers” supposed leaders leaves a gaping wound, we are in the Golden Hour for our Corps, and luckily the Chowder Society II is in the surgery suite. Happy to hand a scapel over to any of the Chowder Society II doctors when they call for one. Start the breathing, stop the bleeding, treat for shock. The basics never get old.
No doubt as some point McKenzie was a good officer, and someone likely we would not have minded serving with, but as it happens something derails an individual from our ethos, stoicism goes by the way, promotion, no fault managment come to the fore. If General McKenzie had serious misgivings about abandoning Bagram, he should and may have made those clear. But, when the orders whomever sent them, that we the USA were on the way out and the planning was being hampered by POTUS’ staff, SOS, SECDEF, it is time to put your stars on the desk and say “NO.” That said General Millley has crafted an elegant excuse when he participated in a political rally in his uniform, under Trump. It would take most here five minutes to asses the situation. It goes like this: “Mr. President, I can not accompany you and your civilian staff across the street in my uniform, it’s violation of the UCMJ, and I have to set the most senior example” The President, “you’re coming….” Milley…”no I’m not.” Then excuse yourself to the secretarial pool, have a two sentence letter typed up, “I quit…” hand it to POTUS and walk slowly home to Fort Myer. Walk through the door of your quarters and let Mrs. Milley know that she is moving for the last time and the retirement home in South Carolina looks damn good right now. Burden rests on General McKenzie and instead of writing long winded articles in The Atlantic magazine about killing Soleimani, he could apologize and then go quietly away. But he won’t, and as long these senior officers go on without any accountability then we have an odd military structure that does not work. Our ships can’t go to sea, we have planes that can’t fly, we have under manned and under armed units everywhere. The nation deserves better than this current lot.
Re McKensie, further research regarding General McKensie’s leadership in the Biden, Blinken, Austin debacle may change your mind re McKensie’s culpability concerning Bagram.
The debacle origins were the Trump Administration Secretary of State^s Pompeo agreement negotiated directly with the Taliban without any Afghanistan government officials involved at all. Gen. McKensie at CENTCOM had months to plan the withdrawal, especially at the point when President Biden stated he would honor the United States of America agreement as a matter of honor. The withdrawal was a military withdrawal. The responsibility for its success or failure rests on the shoulders of the responsible Combatant Commander. To Biden^s ctedit, he has not pointed fingers and accepts responsility as the Commander-in-Chief.
The Corps is facing a breakwater issue with it's main focus zeroed in on the littoral islands off the coast of China. The Corps cut its teeth on jungle warfare and island hoping the remote Pacific islands in WW II. Hell, we wrote the book! But, weapons have changed and have become more lethal with higher kill ratios. So what do we do to handle today's threat?
If you believe that history often repeats itself, as I do, then we war planners need to examine the history of the Corps combat in the WWII Pacific theater. Our research must focus on the details of lessons learned. No stones must be overlooked. The oral histories and combat experiences of WWII Marines to include Generals, Lou Walt, Louis Wilson, Marion Carl, George Axtell, Mike Ryan, Lewis Puller, Paul Fontana, Robert Barrow, and Vic Krulack, need to be read and studied. There is much to glean and perhaps apply to the planning for littoral actions.
Travis, Do you know how the Corps plans to logistically support its SIF forces? I don't and I believe I have read every unclassified FD 2030, EABO, and SIF document that the Corps has published. If you can't support SIFs logistically you can't easily evacuate causalities, plain and simple.
Respectfully, Travis...this is central to the impetus behind my own wondering at the institution's secretive concept development, uncharacteristically-targeted info ops, and harsh marginalization of the retired officers' criticism a couple years ago. There were planning assumptions being advanced over the SIF concept, surrounding all things sustainment and low signature presence, in the context of actual LVC scenarios tested by actual warfighting units, that created silent eyebrow raises at the planning table and hushed conversations in the cigar pit, by principal staff and campaign planners involved in INDOPACOM's equities. The assumptions questions continue today.
Regardless FD2030 never seems to address the fact that the Corps has a Title X mandate, it’s a federal statute. The fact was, even before the debacle of FD2020 the Corps was not meeting the requirements of Title X. Aging sealift capacity and capability are just one small subset of problems that FD2030 didn’t address properly, General Berger more or less said we don’t and can’t meet Title X and therefore the Corps will just pivot to MLR/SIF Tables of Organization and Tables of Equipment. The armor was too heavy out it went, too many artillery pieces out they, elements of the wing no longer needed. Out they went and now are being brought back to meet the most basic needs of the Corps in terms of CAS for the ground elements. Skip the ship building and maintenance we won’t need ships. Yep, and one can guess the only thing holding the Corps in motion is the idea that America doesn’t need a Marine Corps, but the America people want one. That is thin gruel and a bad plan, which it now appears was not much of a real plan rather a conceptual design. Architects draw pretty pictures, then the owner and the builder have to brazen it out. So here we are, brazening it out.
Regarding lack of Medical Support for FD 2030, Napoleon’s disastrous retreat from Acre during his Egyptian Campaign and his even more costly retreat from Russia are both examples of failed medical and other logistical catastrophes. Napoleon reportedly shot his prisoners in the retreat from Acre and administered fatal dosages of opium to his own soldiers who were dying from wounds and or the plague.
The horror that Stand-in Forces (SIF), isolated and unsupported on remote islands, will have inadequate on-scene medical and casualty evacuation support should not come as a surprise to anyone. Like the rest of Force Design 2030, the SIF concept was never vetted through the Combat Development Process. Had the SIF concept been properly vetted, it would have been exposed for what it is - - a fool’s errand. The entire area of logistics (medical, food and water, maintenance, transportation, etc.), survivability, positioning and repositioning, and even the effectiveness of the anti-ship missiles have never been sufficiently addressed, much less resolved. In the mad rush to appear revolutionary, the Marine Corps put empty words ahead of the mission and the welfare of the Marines needed to accomplish it. The entire SIF concept needs to be scrapped before Marines, isolated and unsupported on remote islands, are needlessly killed and maimed.
General, I’m sure the new war fighting lab at Quantico will “fix” all of these trivial problems.
General Barrow was right “amateurs talk tactics, but professionals talk and PLAN (my addition) logistics”.
I’m afraid the Corps is being led by amateurs at this point.
I recently had an email exchange with an individual I do not know who has his own Substack Account. ( Amphibiosity) It appears that he is a Marine Colonel in the USMCR and currently a civilian employee in Quantico. He has actively defended FD-20XX. In one exchange he claimed that the Chinese cannot deploy forces to threaten the missile batteries and that the “near by” MAGTF can support them. Imagine my surprise….. he also opined that the terms winning or losing have no meaning as the objective is to create a political situation in our favor. I will not engage any further because I simply lack the intellectual depth to understand what he is talking about. I relate this exchange for a simple reason. Try as I might, I simply cannot understand the viability of the concept. It is a concept that has no flesh and blood component.
Doug, That individual is simply professionally unschooled. Hardly worth it to waste time engaging him. His lack of insight is another indictment of the Corps' PME.
Of all that has been written about concerning Force Design, the topic of logistics worries me the most. I haven’t read anything remotely feasible that speaks to how we will succeed in supporting our Littoral Marines once they are dropped off on the so called first island chain.
How is the Marine Corps going to resupply and or evacuate when needed in the face overwhelming enemy capabilities, especially when the Corps and our Navy partners don’t have the ships, nor the aircraft to maintain and sustain the force. And please don’t tell me technology is going to save the day.
“In 1979, Gen. Robert H. Barrow, then commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps., uttered the famous phrase that “amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals study logistics.”
FD2030 was, is and will considered in the fullness of time “Dereliction of Duty”. Full stop. Similar to General McKenzie’s Dereliction of Duty in the assessment of the situation in Afghanistan, the abandonment of Bagram Airbase and it’s importance to any semblance of an orderly withdraw and then further the absolute malfeasance in his orders to combatant commanders on the ground at HKIA, and the loss of 13 US service men and woman 11 of whom were OUR Marines. Coupled together the loss of confidence in this group of senior “managers” supposed leaders leaves a gaping wound, we are in the Golden Hour for our Corps, and luckily the Chowder Society II is in the surgery suite. Happy to hand a scapel over to any of the Chowder Society II doctors when they call for one. Start the breathing, stop the bleeding, treat for shock. The basics never get old.
No doubt as some point McKenzie was a good officer, and someone likely we would not have minded serving with, but as it happens something derails an individual from our ethos, stoicism goes by the way, promotion, no fault managment come to the fore. If General McKenzie had serious misgivings about abandoning Bagram, he should and may have made those clear. But, when the orders whomever sent them, that we the USA were on the way out and the planning was being hampered by POTUS’ staff, SOS, SECDEF, it is time to put your stars on the desk and say “NO.” That said General Millley has crafted an elegant excuse when he participated in a political rally in his uniform, under Trump. It would take most here five minutes to asses the situation. It goes like this: “Mr. President, I can not accompany you and your civilian staff across the street in my uniform, it’s violation of the UCMJ, and I have to set the most senior example” The President, “you’re coming….” Milley…”no I’m not.” Then excuse yourself to the secretarial pool, have a two sentence letter typed up, “I quit…” hand it to POTUS and walk slowly home to Fort Myer. Walk through the door of your quarters and let Mrs. Milley know that she is moving for the last time and the retirement home in South Carolina looks damn good right now. Burden rests on General McKenzie and instead of writing long winded articles in The Atlantic magazine about killing Soleimani, he could apologize and then go quietly away. But he won’t, and as long these senior officers go on without any accountability then we have an odd military structure that does not work. Our ships can’t go to sea, we have planes that can’t fly, we have under manned and under armed units everywhere. The nation deserves better than this current lot.
Re McKensie, further research regarding General McKensie’s leadership in the Biden, Blinken, Austin debacle may change your mind re McKensie’s culpability concerning Bagram.
The debacle origins were the Trump Administration Secretary of State^s Pompeo agreement negotiated directly with the Taliban without any Afghanistan government officials involved at all. Gen. McKensie at CENTCOM had months to plan the withdrawal, especially at the point when President Biden stated he would honor the United States of America agreement as a matter of honor. The withdrawal was a military withdrawal. The responsibility for its success or failure rests on the shoulders of the responsible Combatant Commander. To Biden^s ctedit, he has not pointed fingers and accepts responsility as the Commander-in-Chief.
The Corps is facing a breakwater issue with it's main focus zeroed in on the littoral islands off the coast of China. The Corps cut its teeth on jungle warfare and island hoping the remote Pacific islands in WW II. Hell, we wrote the book! But, weapons have changed and have become more lethal with higher kill ratios. So what do we do to handle today's threat?
If you believe that history often repeats itself, as I do, then we war planners need to examine the history of the Corps combat in the WWII Pacific theater. Our research must focus on the details of lessons learned. No stones must be overlooked. The oral histories and combat experiences of WWII Marines to include Generals, Lou Walt, Louis Wilson, Marion Carl, George Axtell, Mike Ryan, Lewis Puller, Paul Fontana, Robert Barrow, and Vic Krulack, need to be read and studied. There is much to glean and perhaps apply to the planning for littoral actions.
What concept or plan is the the author of this thought piece referencing? Please be specific in regards to the “stranding of Marines” assertion.
Travis, Do you know how the Corps plans to logistically support its SIF forces? I don't and I believe I have read every unclassified FD 2030, EABO, and SIF document that the Corps has published. If you can't support SIFs logistically you can't easily evacuate causalities, plain and simple.
Respectfully, Travis...this is central to the impetus behind my own wondering at the institution's secretive concept development, uncharacteristically-targeted info ops, and harsh marginalization of the retired officers' criticism a couple years ago. There were planning assumptions being advanced over the SIF concept, surrounding all things sustainment and low signature presence, in the context of actual LVC scenarios tested by actual warfighting units, that created silent eyebrow raises at the planning table and hushed conversations in the cigar pit, by principal staff and campaign planners involved in INDOPACOM's equities. The assumptions questions continue today.
Regardless FD2030 never seems to address the fact that the Corps has a Title X mandate, it’s a federal statute. The fact was, even before the debacle of FD2020 the Corps was not meeting the requirements of Title X. Aging sealift capacity and capability are just one small subset of problems that FD2030 didn’t address properly, General Berger more or less said we don’t and can’t meet Title X and therefore the Corps will just pivot to MLR/SIF Tables of Organization and Tables of Equipment. The armor was too heavy out it went, too many artillery pieces out they, elements of the wing no longer needed. Out they went and now are being brought back to meet the most basic needs of the Corps in terms of CAS for the ground elements. Skip the ship building and maintenance we won’t need ships. Yep, and one can guess the only thing holding the Corps in motion is the idea that America doesn’t need a Marine Corps, but the America people want one. That is thin gruel and a bad plan, which it now appears was not much of a real plan rather a conceptual design. Architects draw pretty pictures, then the owner and the builder have to brazen it out. So here we are, brazening it out.
Regarding lack of Medical Support for FD 2030, Napoleon’s disastrous retreat from Acre during his Egyptian Campaign and his even more costly retreat from Russia are both examples of failed medical and other logistical catastrophes. Napoleon reportedly shot his prisoners in the retreat from Acre and administered fatal dosages of opium to his own soldiers who were dying from wounds and or the plague.
Re the Colonel at Quantico needs to fully understand the PRC Naval Order of Battle…..he is delusional.