Compass Points - Amphib Assault
Interview with BGen McAbee
Compass Points - Amphib Assault
Interview with BGen McAbee
August 5, 2025
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USNI News is reporting that US Marine units participated in a multi-nation amphibious assault exercise in Australia during exercise Talisman Sabre. After six years of degrading far too much of Marine Corps global, combined arms combat power, is the Marine Corps beginning to re-discover the power and flexibility of the amphibious Marine Air Ground Task Force (MAGTF)?
In an exclusive interview with Compass Points, BGen Jerry McAbee, USMC (ret) reviews the misguided journey the Marine Corps has been on for the last half dozen years.
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Compass Points
Interview
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BGen Jerry McAbee, USMC (ret)
Subject: Marine Corps Global Response in the Age of Precision Munitions
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Compass Points -
What happened to the Marine Corps six years ago?
BGen McAbee -
Almost six years ago, the United States Marine Corps adopted an unproven concept to guide future combat developments. The overarching vision for the new approach was codified in Force Design 2030. The path chosen focused almost entirely on the certainty of a known threat (People’s Liberation Army Navy) in a specific location (Western Pacific region). The strategy embraced was defensive, essentially arguing that the proliferation of precision munitions and advanced sensors had changed the character of war, rendering the defense decisively dominant over the offense. A “Mature Precision Strike Regime” had made maneuver all but impossible. The Corps now deemed defense the primary method for fighting peer and even lesser rivals.
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Compass Points -
How did the new focus harm the Marine Corps' proven combined arms capabilities?
BGen McAbee -
To acquire the innovations required for this new approach, the Marine Corps divested organizations and equipment needed today to self-fund future, largely experimental capabilities that will not be fully fielded in sufficient quantities until 2030 or beyond. Simply stated, the combat power the Marine Corps needs to respond quickly and effectively to current and subsequent threats have been jettisoned to fund a narrowly focused one-dimensional, largely regional future force. The Marine Corps envisions this force, consisting of small teams known as Stand-in Forces, to be widely distributed and effectively isolated among the first island chain of the Western Pacific. The mission of the Stand-in Forces is to acquire and sink Chinese warships with mid- to long-range missiles.
Force Design 2030 wrongly assumes that a redesigned and reconfigured force narrowly focused on the sureness of war with a pacing challenge has equal utility across the spectrum of conflict. We disagree. We believe a force broadly prepared for the contingencies of an increasingly unpredictable world is in the Nation’s best interests.
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Compass Points -
How did the broader Marine community react to the new approach?
BGen McAbee -
Almost immediately after the Marine Corps released Force Design 2030, a group of senior, retired Marines has argued that the path currently charted by the Marine Corps poses significant risks to national security. This group has steadily grown to include hundreds, if not thousands, of retired, former, and active-duty Marines of all ranks. The core of this group, loosely known as Chowder II, has advocated for a Marine Corps that can respond quickly and effectively to global crises and contingencies across the spectrum of conflict. Global response not only requires a Marine Corps that is organized, trained, and equipped for any mission, but it also requires a Marine Corps properly supported with adequate amphibious shipping and a robust, immediately deployable Maritime Prepositioning Force.
Chowder II’s concerns with the adverse impacts of Force Design 2030 on national security have been clearly and widely articulated in over sixty articles in various national media. Chief among the concerns is the unwise strategy of “divest to invest,” discarding currently needed combat power to self-fund unproven capabilities that may or may not function as intended or could be obsolete by the time they are fielded. Other concerns are Force Design 2030’s almost exclusive focus on a single threat, in a single theater and the Marine Corps’ failure to use a rigorous combat development process to test and validate the concept before shedding organizations and equipment needed today to fight and win.
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Compass Points -
Where should the Marine Corps focus?
BGen McAbee -
We believe the Marine Corps should be focused instead on the uncertainties of global threats, which requires the ability to conduct offensive operations. This approach embraces the requirement to maneuver in an environment characterized by precision weapons and advanced sensors.
Our vision for the Marine Corps reduces risk to national security. The vision is a forward look at all 21st Century threats, not a concept focused on one threat in a single theater. By returning to a more capable combat development process and leveraging innovation and technology, the Marine Corps can regain its offensive capabilities by restoring maneuver, which will enable the Nation’s Corps of Marines to respond quickly and effectively to global threats across the spectrum of conflict.
History informs us that wars are more quickly terminated when one side or the other maneuvers to achieve decisive results. Defensive operations, though necessary and prudent at times, are more often an invitation to being outmaneuvered and becoming irrelevant or drawing out a conflict that no one wins, while casualties mount.
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Compass Points -
Is your focus on proven offense capabilities opposed to new technology?
BGen McAbee -
Not at all. Technology is important. Chowder II’s vision for the future reduces risk to our national security by pursuing innovative technologies that will enable Marine forces to be capable of responding to multiple threats anywhere in the world. One of the lessons from the Cold War was that the focus on the Soviet Union as our main threat did not reduce the number of lesser threats facing the Nation. Proxy wars and the need to suppress other belligerents threatening our national security kept the Marine Corps and the other Services occupied for some 40 years. The rise of China as the Nation’s pacing challenge will not lessen the need for a Marine Corps to respond to other threats. A belligerent Iran, a recalcitrant North Korea, and other secondary dangers will continue to threaten our national security. The Nation requires a Marine Corps capable of responding to a wide array of global threats quickly and decisively.
Chowder’s II vision for the Marine Corps is a distinct alternative to Force Design 2030 and the ill-advised Stand-in Forces concept. A Nation without the capability to respond globally to emerging threats risks wider wars, not only with peer competitors but with a host of other state and non-state state actors that are intent on attacking United States sovereignty and other interests in areas other than the Western Pacific.
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Compass Points salutes BGen McAbee for taking time to provide his insights on how the Marine Corps tomorrow can be even stronger than the Marine Corps today.
Marine Corps Brigadier General Jerry McAbee (ret) is a career artillery officer. He served as the Chief of Staff for the Marine Corps Combat Development Command. His last assignment was Deputy Commander United States Marine Corps Forces Central Command during Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. He writes prolifically on defense topics, and is the author of the Civil War history, “Stubborn Men and Parched Corn: The Eighteenth Georgia Volunteer Infantry Regiment.”
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Vision 2035
A Better Way Forward for the U. S. Marine Corps
https://mega.nz/file/crxlUJoC#G-Wh2nlQllKnIXUuCvCdolmQEWg_fk4_Jv6KQuRe3us
The General has been unfailingly on target over the past six years. Amphibious Assault gives the nation a forced entry capability no other nation has to the degree that the Marine Corps could execute it. Every mission short of amphibious assault scaled down from that and was a hallmark of flexibility and task organization.
The Corps, prior to FD-2030, continuously innovated, adapted, modernized and adjusted in the open forum of professional discussion, debate and informed exchanges. FD-2030 unfolded in secrecy, with nondisclosure, threats, insults and obstinacy. This drove a huge wedge into the smallest of the US military forces in breech of culture and integrity. In so doing it dealt a serious blow to the Esprit de Corps that was the timeless foundation of our elite fighting force. It followed a tumultuous period of 30 years of Congressionally imposed cultural policies that Marines discussed and debated but, once decisions were made and against their better judgment, saluted and instituted. To make matters worse, legions of experienced individuals saw FD-2030’s glaring flaws and delusional assumptions and knew it could be a fatal reorganization.
FD-2030 was different. It was internally hatched in a conspiratorial manner and implemented in the most draconian fashion. The blow to institutional integrity was glaring. The keystone was a betrayal of the most fundamental core values of integrity and trust. That betrayal had taken this battle beyond equipment, tactics and Strategy as important as those are. The implementation attacked the heart and soul of the Corps. The intangibles of Semper Fi matter.
I was told for years that the job of the US Marines was to project sea power ashore. Force Design 2030 obviously doesn’t do that or anything close to it. To project sea power ashore requires combat power and FD 2030 reduces Marine combat power. Go back to tanks, artillery, and outstanding training and preparation for intense combat. Use the carriers for air power & fleet assets for naval gunfire including missiles for support. The old concepts that focused on combat power worked and should still work.