Compass Points - Alert Issued
Corps commanders sound the alarm
Compass Points - Alert Issued
Corps commanders sound the alarm
June 15, 2024
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Although Compass Points often presents a buffet of nourishing reader comments on Saturdays, an alarm went off this morning. The national defense publication, Real Clear Defense, has issued a significant alert.
With the United States facing a world of threats, hazards, and perils activated by China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and others, an article in Real Clear Defense provides a timely warning and wake-up call.
For the US military, the next war may be very different from the years of fighting irregular militia in the deserts of the Middle East. In the Middle East, US military forces enjoyed air superiority, logistics superiority, transportation superiority, medical superiority, and satellite, intelligence, and surveillance superiority.
In rapidly arriving future wars, however, the US is unlikely to enjoy so many advantages. Instead, the fighting is more likely to be a brutal fight against peer or near peer adversaries. The military forces of Ukraine today, for example, are in a desperate struggle, not with irregular militia, but with the massive, mechanized forces of Russia. Just as full strength Marine combined arms forces were needed to defeat Japan in World War II, full strength Marine combined arms forces are needed today to deter and, if necessary, fight China.
What does the Marine Corps need to do today to prepare to fight full scale combined arms operations tomorrow against peer or near peer adversaries? Perhaps the best way to learn what needs to be done is to consult the true experts, those Marine leaders who have commanded a corps-size force in combat.
General Walt Boomer and General Jim Conway were the last Marine Corps generals to command a corps-size unit in combat since Major General Lewis Walt, Major General Robert Cushman, and others commanded III Marine Amphibious Force during the Vietnam war. Before Vietnam, the last such commanders were General Roy Geiger who commanded III Marine Amphibious Corps at the Battle of Okinawa and Major General Harry Schmidt who commanded V Amphibious Corps at Iwo Jima.
Of this small and distinguished group, only General Boomer and General Conway are still with us to share their views about the operational level of warfighting. With their experience, Generals Boomer and Conway have much to say to currently serving Marine Corps officers and to the entire Marine community, including friends of the Corps in Congress.
The authors begin by reviewing the fighting in and around the gulf states after 2003.
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Following the defeat of the Iraqi Army in 2003, our adversaries, while deadly, fought asymmetrically at the lower end of the tactical spectrum. In countering them, there was no need to employ strong combined arms capabilities. Absent were requirements to conduct armored operations; counterfire operations against powerful artillery threats; breaching, obstacle clearance, or bridging operations; and large scale coordinated combined arms maneuvers. Instead, operations were often conducted from fixed bases supported by contracted logistics. As a result of this narrow combat experience, it should be no surprise that capabilities not exercised during the wars against terrorists are those that have faced the Force Design chopping block.
-- General Boomer and General Conway, Real Clear Defense
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But just because full strength combined arms capabilities were not always required in the desert wars of the past, does not mean they are not needed today and tomorrow.
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. . . A full array of combined arms capabilities (including cannon, armor, close-in fire support from rotary/fixed wing aviation - - not just missiles) is required to allow a commander to deliver long range and close supporting fires in all areas of the battlespace; to maneuver the force by air or ground; to logistically support the force; to sense throughout the battlespace; and to effectively command and control forces. The divestitures of combined arms capabilities mandated by Force Design have jeopardized the Marine Corps’ ability to conduct major combat operations . . . .
-- General Boomer and General Conway, Real Clear Defense
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In their conclusion, the authors provide a frank diagnosis of what has gone wrong and what the Marine Corps needs to do now.
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Force Design is an operational and strategic dead end. It invites defeat in detail. But even worse, renders the Marine Corps irrelevant because it offers virtually nothing to combatant commanders in a full spectrum war against a determined enemy.
The national defense desperately needs Marine Corps leadership and members of Congress to speak up and help rebuild Marine Corps capabilities to fight any foe, anywhere, and win. The American people deserve no less.
-- General Boomer and General Conway, Real Clear Defense
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Readers are encouraged to review the entire article at Real Clear Defense. Compass Points thanks General Boomer and General Conway for their decades of service to Country and Corps and for stepping up and speaking out. The next major conflict is coming. The next conflict is unlikely to be against irregular militias. The next conflict is unlikely to require Marines scattered on Pacific islands. Instead, if the Marine Corps is going to be ready to both deter and fight a peer or near peer adversary, then the Marine Corps must focus now on rebuilding and enhancing its full scale and full strength combined arms capabilities -- before it's too late.
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Real Clear Defense - 06/15/2024
Force Design 2030: Operational Incompetence
Dangerously Crippled America’s Expeditionary Force-in-Readiness
By Walter Boomer and James Conway
General Walter (Walt) Boomer, USMC (Ret) is a career infantry officer. He was the Commander Marine Corps Forces Central Command and Commanding General I MEF during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. His last assignment was the 24th Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps.
General James (Jim) Conway, USMC (Ret) is a career infantry officer. He was the Commanding General I MEF during the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the First Battle of Fallujah. His last assignment was the 34th Commandant of the Marine Corps.
Sadly, from the day is was unveiled Force Design 2030 (now force design) revealed significant flaws in its proponents training, education, and knowledge. From a myopically focused missions set that ignored both strategic and operational developments to the failure to consider ideas other than the pre-developed budget driven force structure, the proponents have moved rapidly forward with "divesting" the Marine Corps of critical capabilities such as amphibious shipping, tanks, bridging capabilities, important MOS', and most importantly of all--Marines.
Yes, the force design proponents have callously and recklessly cut our most precious resource--the Marines that fill our ranks and fight our wars. Tankers--out or to the Army and the same other MOS' casually cast aside or driven into the arms of one of the other services who will make use of their skills. What happened to taking care of our Marines? That used to include tactical and operational excellence/ Have we given that up? It would seem so.
The flawed operational concepts that surround force design 2030 are bad (If they really intended to defend islands then they might have chosen something like the Army's Multi-Domain Task Force chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://sgp.fas.org/crs/natsec/IF11797.pdf a real successor to the Marine Defense Battalion. But they did not.) The Marine Corps of force design 2030 will not survive in the high threat environment of the South China Sea when faced with a dominant power with surface, air, and space surveillance, a power with peer level weapons and technology, and a willingness to use both numbers and technology in the fight.
If this could be blamed on a lack of experience or training it might forgivable but it is not. Those who participated in the invasion of Iraq know how valuable the resource thrown out by the force design 2030 advocates realize the Marine Corps is no longer capable of conducting such operations nor, apparently does the Navy/Marine Corps team have the capability to conduct NEOs--a bread a butter operation for the Navy/Marine Corps. The proponents of force design 2030 have spent more time attempting to discredit their critics than proving their concepts. It's time for major course correction while there is still a chance that missing and lost capabilities can be re-grown before our Marines have to pay the price for the flawed concept call force design 2030 meet a true test.
To Repeat! Force Design is an operational and strategic dead end. It invites defeat in detail. But even worse, renders the Marine Corps irrelevant because it offers virtually nothing to combatant commanders in a full spectrum war against a determined enemy.
The national defense desperately needs Marine Corps leadership and members of Congress to speak up and help rebuild Marine Corps capabilities to fight any foe, anywhere, and win. The American people deserve no less.
-- Geneal Boomer and General Conway, Real Clear Defense