Compass Points - Budget Hearings
Rebalance the Marine Corps
Compass Points - Budget Hearings
Rebalance the Marine Corps
April 30, 2024
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The House Armed Services Committee will hold hearings on the Fiscal Year 2025 Department of the Navy budget request on Wednesday, May 1, 2024 - 10:00am in the Rayburn hearing room #2118. The full committee will meet in open session to receive testimony from the Secretary of the Navy, Chief of Naval Operations, and the Commandant of the Marine Corps concerning the fiscal year (FY) 2025 budget request. The hearing will be broadcast online on the HASC website at the link below. See in addition, the Stars and Stripes article linked below for more background about the Marine Corps budget request.
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During the hearing Wednesday morning, the Commandant will no doubt keep his remarks in line with the previously released DOD FY 2025 Defense Budget Overview.
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Overview – FY 2025 Defense Budget
Marine Corps Readiness
The Marine Corps remains the Nation’s force-in-readiness, a naval expeditionary force ready to deter adversaries, respond to crisis and conflict, and contribute to Naval and Joint Force operations. Being ready to deter, fight, and win is ingrained in the identity of Marines. As individuals, as units, and as a Corps, everything the Marine Corps does supports warfighting advantage and being the most ready when the nation is least ready.
. . . Ongoing efforts to create and sustain warfighting advantage over the long term will ensure the FMF remains organized, trained, and equipped to succeed in an ever-evolving operational environment, regardless of clime or place, maintaining its role as America’s force-in-readiness, deterring adversaries, and responding to crises globally.
-- DOD Overview - FY 2025 Defense Budget - Chapter 3 Campaigning p. 3-14
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Those are very good words. The words are similar to what the Commandant has said in his Frag Order 01-2024
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HOW WE FIGHT
We are and will remain a naval expeditionary force that fights from the sea as task-organized combined arms air-ground task forces. With Force Design in place, we will continue our proud history as our Nation’s expeditionary shock troops that can deliver combat power from sea to land – now with the additional capability to project power from land to sea. As a globally present and persistent force, we remain inextricably linked to naval campaigns, and we will be forward deployed with both conventional and special operations forces, ready to transition at a moment’s notice in times of crisis.
--CMC frag order 01-2024
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The words in both the DOD budget overview and in the CMC frag order are reassuring. The words soothingly affirm that the Marine Corps is just as capable today as in decades past. Is that true? As Congress debates the Marine Corps budget, is the Marine Corps fully capable today and into the future? At least one Marine is voicing his doubts. Bing West sees a dangerous disconnect between the reassuring words about the Marine Corps, the FY 2025 budget, and the realities of Marine Corps capabilities.
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The Commandant's frag order 01-2024 guidance is verbose and avoids relating the words to an operational concept. Four years ago, Force Design 2030 envisioned sinking Chinese ships. Now it's all about metaphysical jargon.
Let's return to basics: "Show me your budget, and I will show you your strategy." In terms of budget, CMC seeks $9 billion in vulnerable LSM ships to emplace before hostilities. He also seeks 200 to 400 antiship missiles on atolls where we have no landing rights. This means each missile costs $25 million. This is ten times more per unit than the 15,000 missiles the Air Force and Navy will be launching from existing aircraft, ship, and submarine platforms.
The Marines contribute 3% to the total missile attack, at ten times the cost per unit of other services. That is the FD2030 concept. What sense does this make? It is not credible that IndoPacom and the Dept of Navy are really going to fork over $9 billion to build those single-mission, vulnerable LSM ships.
Yet without artillery, without tanks, and without even the drones Ukraine is providing to every platoon, we Marines lack the combined arms for our basic mission.
We Marines have a capability problem, and the CMC guidance tries to hide it in a blizzard of metaphysical words.
-- Bing West
Francis J. "Bing" West Jr. is an American author, Marine combat veteran and former Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs. West writes about the military, warfighting, and counterinsurgency.
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Budget hearings begin May 1, 2024, and can be viewed online. Congress must ask questions just as tough as those posed by Bing West. While it is nice to say that the Marine Corps today is "a globally present and persistent force" as the Commandant's frag order says, the reality is MEUs are not on global patrol 24/7/365 as they need to be. The Marine Corps has focused too much time and too much money on building a Maginot line of Marine missile units in the Pacific. It is time to rebalance Marine Corps capabilities. Starting with the FY 2025 budget, the Marine Corps must begin to refocus and refinance the units, weapons, equipment, and capabilities needed to make the Marine Corps truly, as the Commandant has promised, "a naval expeditionary force that fights from the sea as task-organized combined arms air-ground task forces."
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US House Armed Services Committee
Full Committee Hearing: Department of the Navy Fiscal Year 2025 Budget Request
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Stars and Stripes - 03/11/2024
Marine Corps budget proposal seeks $53.7 billion for modernization efforts, housing improvements
By Svetlana Shkolnikova
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US Marine Corps
FRAGO 01-2024
In terms of the Navy-Marine Corps team capabilities, it’s exhilarating to tell Congress “what we were.” It’s painful to tell Congress “what we are today,” which is probably why some don't.
The Marine Corps today is no longer a rapid global response force, capable of fighting and winning against any foe. If you disagree, consider the following:
* 31 amphibious ships with 40% operational readiness = 12 ships to support global requirements; simply not enough to keep two or more MEUs forward deployed continuously or support "surge" requirements.
* 7 MPS ships in two MPSRONs to support global requirements (down from 17 ships in three MPSRONs in 2018).
* A combined arms capability that is devoid of armor, bridging, and most assault breaching; and severely hampered by limited cannon artillery and a loss of resiliency in infantry, aviation, and CSS.
For those who drink the Kool-Aid, please tell me how the Marine Corps is going to rapidly deploy and sustain a robust, combined arms MEB or MEF given the above limitations. And don’t say by using MSC or commercial shipping because the Army will get priority since it has a resilient combined arms and maneuver capability. Also, don't believe for a second that the army is going to give us tanks, bridging, or cannon artillery.
And please don’t use the 14 NSM batteries and 3 TLAM batteries as justification for gutting the Marine Corps’ “toolbox” of capabilities needed to fight and win today. The missile batteries are still limping toward the starting line. When they finally take the field, they will be duplicative of other service capabilities and arguably ineffective given the short- and mid-range of the NSM and TLAM respectively and the subsonic speed of both.
These are the facts and according to John Adams: “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”
Sometimes individuals and institutions are delusional. Both the CMC’s comments and those of Congress are either ignorance or deliberate lies. Neither is acceptable when discussing national defense or the lives of Marines. Cold hard facts and precise analysis combined with sterling honesty must be the foundation. Clearly it is not. Congress must stop pretending and the Corps must present the facts. We have become irrelevant due to the poor judgment and deceptions of our senior uniformed leaders. Some 3-4 years ago the senior uniformed leadership of the Navy, Air Force and Army watched the Corps mutilate itself in stunned silence. Today they are over it and the Corps is irrelevant while it has become the laughing stock of DoD for these other Flag Officers. One wonders if they will miss us? For now it is just back slapping and laughter.