Compass Points - Circle of Comments
Readers provide insights.
May 4, 2024
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The US is being challenged around the world by ongoing threats and conflicts. What will happen next? No one knows. No matter what happens, however, there is no doubt Compass Points readers will have insightful analysis and comment.
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Over the last week, Compass Points readers have responded online and off with a treasure load of comments, insights, and analysis. Only a few of the comments are re-posted below. Most of the full comments are available for reading on the Compass Points site. As always, comments have been edited for length and content. Several long, thoughtful comments have been reduced to just a sentence or two. Often the real enjoyment comes not as much from the excerpt included below but from reading the comment in full. Compass Points appreciates the full, insightful, and professional comments of all readers. Many thanks!
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Samuel Whittemore
Fantastic comments! We are Legion! We are not alone! God Bless America and Our Marine Corps!
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Polarbear
US senior military leadership is responsible to explain to our political leaders that a rigorous war, makes for a short war, and a short war is a merciful war. If they could get that idea across to our politicians maybe, just maybe, the US would stop losing forever wars strategically, while our warriors bleed to win them tactically.
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Charles Wemyss, Jr.
This also highlights being nimble, fast, first, having the ability to go from the MEU to MEB to MEF and back again and carry the fight fast and viciously to the combatants on the other side. Ships, arty, tanks, engineers, more MAGTF equipment and logistics. Not sitting waiting for the fight to come to us, rather Marines going to the fight as they have for the life span of the Corps.
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Jerry McAbee
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.
No amount of missiles, rockets, drones, or cyber can substitute for what has been lost.
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The Wolf
Reportedly many active-duty Marines read Compass Points posts and check out comments on the site. Let's hope they not only read this comment but they also pass it to those in leadership positions and ask for answers to Jerry McAbee's questions.
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Douglas C Rapé
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.
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cfrog
Good comment, I look forward to hearing good questions from the HASC and good answers from SecNav, CNO, and CMC. Bing West brings up good points that should be addressed ("The Marines contribute 3% to the total missile attack, at ten times the cost per unit of other services.").
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Keith Holcomb
Strategy 101: A Nation on the strategic defensive that seeks to maintain some semblance of global order will always need a credible, resilient, sustainable counteroffensive capability to take back what snatch and grab aggressors would seize.
Imagine if the previous Commandant had chosen to tackle the challenging issue of presence/offensive amphibious operations in the face of new technologies. Imagine, if after the "long wars" he had chosen to lead the other Services in developing amphibious counteroffensive capabilities. Imagine, if like many previous Commandants, he had sought to leverage the combat and development expertise of previous generations, if he had sought to strengthen Marine culture and ethos rather than cancel it.
Opportunity cost is opportunity lost. Tragically, many young lives may be lost trying to build such a capability in the midst of conflict.
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Coffeejoejava
I think what upset me most about that hearing is NO ONE asked any hard questions about what the Corps is doing.
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Randy Shetter
Our shipyards are having difficulty maintaining the ships we do have. We can't get the big deck amphibs we need, and they want to compound the problem by starting a new ship class. This is totally irresponsible!
Meanwhile the US is being chased out of Africa to be replaced by Russia and China. There are problems worldwide, and now we don't have a credible combined arms expeditionary force to deal with these developments. I hope someone in the Senate is paying attention!
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Greg
I fear the LSM is the Marine Corps version of the LCS. If they can’t sail with an ARG and their “mission” is to supply Marine units occupying islands in the First Chain, they’re useless, unless they’re true mission is to have the Chinese expend a good portion of their anti-ship missiles putting them on the bottom.
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Jerry McAbee
I strongly disagree with the rosy assessment by the ACMC in his written statement before the HASC’s Readiness Subcommittee on 30 April. Statements not backed by facts are dangerous. To paraphrase former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld: “When the nation calls, the Marines will go to war with the forces and equipment they have, not the imaginary forces and equipment briefed to Congress.”
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Polarbear
Woulda, Shoulda, Coulda,
The SECNAV and Commandant should have stated to the Committee: “My wish is that “we” focus on building and maintaining the amphibious fleet in order to provide the Combatant Commanders a “heal to toe” US Marine MAGTF in their AORs. Marines give Combatant Commanders, Congress, and Executive branch policy makers an array of options in any global crisis. Then the Commandant could have walked the Committee through the 1992 "Operation Provide Relief" to Somalia, a good example of how the US can us expandable Marine forces to respond quickly and powerfully to any crisis.
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Charles Wemyss, Jr.
The drum beat needs to continue, we are not ready, we do not have the right equipment, we can not met Title X mandates currently (to say otherwise is just flatly false) and we need to make noise about it with the members of HASC. The MAGTF needs its full compliment of air and ground assets to conduct missions within the mandate of Title X. Full stop.
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Bud Meador
In reading remarks of BG McAbee, I thought of JFK’s book, “While England Slept.” Seems to me that may apply to the US today.
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Keith Holcomb
In these times, we learn of Marine Generals demeaning fighting as outdated and merely "blowing up stuff;" we read of abject leadership failure from top to bottom in the housing for Marines; we see Generals lobbying for a ship that is "designed to blend in with civilian ships" and "run and hide" when the shooting starts. The list is long and not worthy of the word Marine.
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Coffeejoejava
One news reports talks of Marines "seizing key terrain for an aerial landing, inserting HIMARS using aircraft,"
How are they doing this? HIMARS are not small. When discussing aircraft with relation to the HIMARS we are talking at least a C-130, in this video a C-17. That means seizing a forward air strip. What troops are doing this? How are they getting there to do the seizing? Why would you waste the manpower to seize it, launch a couple of subsonic missiles at something, and then leave? If a ship cannot get into this area, what makes these folks think a very unstealthy C-17/C-130 can make it in?
What are these people smoking??
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Douglas C Rapé
My sense of disbelief grows daily. The General thinks the Marine Corps should be a huge electronic reconnaissance organization that observes, senses and reports. Reports to whom? What will “they” do with the information provided? At some point somebody needs to actually do something like “blowing things up” and killing the enemy.
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Randy Shetter
There is only once force which conducts combined arms naval expeditionary operations: the United States Marine Corps. This must be our focus and mission. An organization as small as the Marine Corps cannot be focused on two competing missions. Let the Army, Navy, and Air Force continue their missile work. Prior to Force Design, the Marine Corps' offensive capability came from the synergy of the MAGTF, and the ground combat elements' triad of ground combat power: infantry, artillery, and armor. This gave the Marine Corps a robust offensive capability. We must be focused on one mission: combined arms naval expeditionary warfare.
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Mark Pizzo
The Corps' history has demonstrated that our ability to fire and maneuver with tenacity, determination, and agility is what won battles. Combining all capabilities into a crescendo of blast, heat and fragmentation wins battles. MAGTFs are not a thing of the past, and future wars are not different from those of the past. Anyone sensing what we are witnessing in Ukraine, Gaza, China, etc should be passing data that says, “Let’s get back on track and reestablish the Corps as the Nation’s 911 force!!”
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Keith Holcomb
For over five years the Marine Corps has lacked the wherewithal and increasingly the expertise to conduct offensive operations at speed and with coordination. In martial arts, white belts practice many of the same moves as black belts; the difference of course is that black belts through years of practice have learned to execute those moves with speed and power. This era's battlespaces possess capabilities to quickly and ruthlessly punish the uncoordinated and the slow. Those sent forward may find themselves (the survivors!) engaged in a "campaign of learning" at the hands of massive and well-armed foes. We write, research, and pass on lessons learned for them.
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Coffeejoejava
Hopefully, those young Marines, both officer and NCO, that read Compass Points are taking the comments made within to heart. THEY are the ones who will cause the course correction and change the trajectory of our beloved Corps. If those currently in charge cannot or will not listen to the more than thousands of years’ experience gathered all echoing the same message, then our hope lies with those young men and women, the next leaders of our Corps. God bless them.
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Compass Points salutes all readers who in their own ways are continuing to build the discussion about a stronger Marine Corps.