Compass Points - Amphib Ops
The enduring power and flexibility
September 25, 2025
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Does ultimate technology make ultimate changes to warfare? Many national defense commentators today believe that advances in technology will change everything about war.
That was much the same thinking after World War II. The technology of the atomic bomb had shown its power in convincing Japan to surrender. Commentators after World War II began to pronounce that traditional armed forces were no longer needed because all international conflicts could be solved by atomic bomb technology. One plane flying over a troubled region would drop one bomb and whatever the conflict was, that conflict would instantly be ended. No need for armies or navies. Certainly, it was predicted, there was no longer any need for amphibious operations.
Just five years after the end of World War II, however, war erupted in the Korean peninsula. General MacArthur had few options and his military forces in Korea were on the verge of being wiped out. Did MacArthur turn to the atomic bomb? No. MacArthur pulled together an amphibious assault force led by US Marines and conducted perhaps the most unexpected amphibious landing in world history. Marines landed at Inchon and then took Seoul. The North Korean supply lines were cut and the North Korean army retreated in disarray back above the 38th parallel.
The power and flexibility of an amphibious assault force has proven its value again and again. And yet the need for amphibious operations is continually questioned. The Modern War Institute has extensively studied the enduring value of amphibious operations.
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Marines have long been mythologized as an elite fighting force. Richard Harding Davis’s famously understated dispatch—“The Marines have landed and have the situation well in hand”—speaks to this mythology and the notion that there is no challenge that a Marine force can’t handle, and handle easily. Much of this fame, echoed in histories, recruiting pitches, and catchphrases, comes from popular recognition that the amphibious assaults that Marines the world over are known for are exceptionally difficult operations. Classic examples like the assaults on the shores of Gallipoli, Normandy, Iwo Jima, or Inchon involved thousands or tens of thousands of soldiers and Marines emptying out of ships and landing craft in the face of fierce enemy fire. And these landings were coordinated with awesome amounts of seapower and, in the latter cases, airpower.
General Douglas MacArthur, in planning for the successful landings at Inchon in 1950, remarked, “The amphibious landing is the most powerful tool we have.” That remains true today as amphibious forces remain the cornerstone of joint forcible entry concepts and capability in the United States. The concepts of amphibious operations—whether a raid, a demonstration, an assault, a withdrawal, or support to crisis response—continue to play a role nearly seventy-five years after Inchon. MacArthur’s force at Inchon was spearheaded by elements of the 1st Marine Division, but amphibious operations are not limited to the Marine Corps.
-- Modern War Institute
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Going further, the Modern War Institute has published two volumes of essays on the enduring importance of amphibious operations.
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In that spirit, we have compiled and edited a new volume of essays on amphibious warfare and amphibious operations. We believe that the history of amphibious warfare offers unique perspectives on the current environment and lessons for the future. It is the responsibility of academics, historians, and practitioners to examine the history of amphibious warfare. On Contested Shores: The Evolving Role of Amphibious Operations in the History of Warfare is our effort to facilitate that study. The second volume was just released by Marine Corps University Press and is available online for free download. The first volume was released in 2020 and is also available online for free download. Print copies can be requested through Marine Corps University Press.
-- Modern War Institute
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Author and Marine, Robert D. King, in his article for USNI Proceedings, “The Enduring Value of Amphibious Warfare” explains the geo-political importance of amphibious operations.
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In geopolitical terms, the United States is an island nation in that it is separated by vast oceans from all other powers that could harm us. At the same time, it has vital economic and defense interests in regions on the far side of these oceans. These circumstances drive the need for a navy capable of controlling these oceans, plus an amphibious capability to initiate land warfare against foes anywhere on the islands and littorals of those oceans. It is folly to believe the nation could fight overseas enemies without controlling the intervening seas, and it is just as much folly to believe it will always have a friendly country to use as a base of operations for ground combat against overseas foes.
. . . If ever the Marine Corps loses sight of its responsibility for a seamless transition from war at sea to war on land, then, and only then, will it disappear, leaving the nation with a gaping hole in its ability to survive and thrive in this ugly world. Let us resolve to do all we can to keep that from happening.
-- Robert D. King, USNI Proceedings “The Enduring Value of Amphibious Warfare”
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In his article in Real Clear Defense, author and Marine Gary Anderson argues that, “Amphibious Warfare is not Dead, Its Only Sleeping.”
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Serious military planners in China and the United States -- Berger and Smith are not among them -- are thinking in terms of hypersonic weapons. The Chinese planners hope to keep the U.S. and its allies at arm’s length as they pursue their goals in the South China sea using their reconnaissance-strike (R-S) complex to threaten the American Navy in any future conflict. Conversely, the Navy and Air Force plan on using hypersonic weapons to degrade that R-S system to a point where it is possible to project U.S. combat power ashore to retake territory or reinforce threatened allies. That will almost certainly require amphibious operations. That power projection will likely come from over the horizon in small, but powerful distributed attack packages. In the last years of the last century, the Marine Corps was working on an operational concept to do just that. It was called Operational Maneuver From the Sea (OMFTS). In his panic over the missile threat Berger abandoned that for a very questionable concept called Force Design that is rapidly showing its combat impotency with obsolete equipment while other services pursue real modernization.
The pieces needed to correct the mistakes of the past six years and rebuild an amphibious warfare capability through OMFTS exist, but the current leadership of the Marine Corps has shown itself to be incapable of seeing the world as it is and reversing course before a shooting war shows it the error of its ways. It will take a combination of congressional and civilian leadership, but that cannot be done if we continue to allow people like Berger and Smith continue to emasculate our finest warriors.
Amphibious warfare is not dead; it has been asleep. It is time to wake it up.
-- Gary Anderson, Real Clear Defense, “Amphibious Warfare is not Dead, Its Only Sleeping”
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Compass Points salutes authors and Marines, Robert D. King and Gary Anderson, along with the Modern War Institute, for sounding a wake-up call for the United States about the enduring power and flexibility of amphibious operations.
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Modern War Institute - 03/18/2024
Warfighting from Ship to Shore and Beyond: Why Amphibious Operations Still Matter
By Timothy Heck, Brett Friedman and Walker Mills
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Real Clear Defense - 09/25/2025
Amphibious Warfare is not Dead, It’s Only Sleeping
By Gary Anderson
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USNI Proceedings - March 2022 - Vol. 148/3/1,429
The Enduring Value of Amphibious Warfare
By Colonel Robert D. King, U.S. Marine Corps (Retired)
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2022/march/enduring-value-amphibious-warfare
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Marine Corps University Press
On Contested Shores:
The Evolving Role of Amphibious Operations in the History of Warfare
Edited by Timothy Heck, Brett Friedman and Walker Mills
Volume I
https://www.usmcu.edu/Portals/218/OnContestedShores_web.pdf?ver=AazTk0F5BiI2fIn8ElhCBA%3d%3d
Volume 2
https://www.usmcu.edu/Portals/218/OnContestedShores%20vol%202_web.pdf
In 2003 MAG-29 deployed from MCAS New River to CENTCOM aboard amphibious shipping as the ACE for 2d MEB. We left 17 January, passed through the STROG then the Suez Canal, and arrived off the coast of Kuwait on 15 February, all without stopping and only replenishing/refueling at sea. No other country in the world could do that. MAG-29 then Chopped to 3d MAW, but remained afloat, and OIF-I commenced less than a month later. The “war” lasted only two months, but we were constantly tied to the two LHAs where all our MALS support was located. The MAG initially fought off the boats and eventually went ashore, going as far North as Tikrit while supporting the 1st MARDIV. All this time, we were still tied to the ships for our heavy/scheduled maintenance. We got home on 24 June after but one port call primarily to clean up – Rota, Spain. If that’s not an example of amphibious operations, I don’t know what is! Most of today’s nation states, their capitals, and the world’s population are on the littorals. Sea basing minimizes footprint, eases force protection, and most importantly reduces national sovereignty issues. As Thomas Hobbs put it, “The reputation of power, is power.” Amphibious warfare is not dead, it’s just ignored.
I note that the detractors of Amphibious operations are always pointing out the enemy technology that make those operations obsolete. It is as if no one considers the prep of the battle space and the appropriate time for the operation. From Dunkirk to D-Day required 4 years of preparation. We did not conduct an amphibious assault into Tokyo Bay in January 1942. We landed on Okinawa 40 months into the war. We beat the Germans to Iceland by days even before we were at war. If conditions are not right you do not fight. You decide when, where and what favors you.
There are few places on earth where a traditional Marine Corps could not conduct an amphibious assault, landing or administrative off load. Where we could not, in the initial stages of a conflict, would be China or Russia and I cannot fathom a reason to do so in either location. Sadly, since our embrace of FD-2030 , the locations on this planet where we could conduct an amphibious operation have been reduced dramatically because our ability to fight a conventional conflict have been severely degraded. In effect the Corps made itself irrelevant in large portions of the globe. “Every clime and place” has become “ in some climes and places.”