Compass Points – CMC CPG - Sec 15

Marine Expeditionary Units - Comment and Analysis

Compass Points – CMC CPG - Sec 15

Marine Expeditionary Units - Comment and Analysis

September 27, 2024

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The Commandant recently issued the Commandant’s Planning Guidance (CPG) which provides his personal, broad review of the Marine Corps highlighting issues, challenges, and opportunities.

Nearly at the beginning of the new CPG, the Commandant sets a clear expectation that the CPG is to be read and discussed throughout the Marine Corps, "I expect all Marines to read this Planning Guidance and leaders to discuss its key concepts with their Marines."

It is good to hear the Commandant wants robust discussion about the CPG. In fact, not only does the Commandant call for discussion at the beginning of the CPG, when he reaches the conclusion, he once again calls for robust CPG feedback:  "Sergeant Major Ruiz and I look forward to hearing your feedback, and we expect and need your bottom-up refinements to this top-down guidance."

Marines are not shy and already Marines on active duty and veteran Marines are wading into the CPG page by page.

Compass Points has begun receiving detailed, insightful, and often pointed CPG comments and analysis. If the Commandant and the Sergeant Major "look forward to hearing your feedback" they should subscribe to Compass Points and benefit from the wisdom and experience of Compass Points readers.

The CPG is divided into 25 sections from INTENT to CONCLUSION.

Readers are encouraged to read the CPG and provide comments on one or more of the 25 sections. Below are comments and analysis of the CPG section 15 - Marine Expeditionary Units

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39th Commandant’s Planning Guidance

Comment and Analysis

Section 15. MARINE EXPEDITIONARY UNITS - p 12

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MARINE EXPEDITIONARY UNITS

MARINE EXPEDITIONARY UNITS (MEUs) – 3.0 REQUIREMENT

CPG -- The Amphibious Ready Group / Marine Expeditionary Unit (ARG/MEU) is the premier force offering of our Corps, and I will make all necessary investments to keep it that way. No other formation we offer as Marines is as responsive or flexible as a three-ship ARG/MEU. Forward deployed, the MEU provides our national leadership with combat credible forces that are persistently on-scene and contribute to deterrence, campaigning, crisis response, and combat operations. The ARG/MEU provides our Nation’s premier seabasing capability, which remains a national imperative and delivers unmatched flexibility without the need to first request access, basing, or overflight permissions prior to conducting operations. In a peer fight, the ARG/MEU can hold adversary overseas holdings at risk, and if necessary, expand the conflict to strain adversary resources in protracted conflict. For these reasons, the Geographic Combatant Commanders’ demand for ARG/MEUs greatly exceeds the Navy and Marine Corps’ ability to source them.

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Comment & Analysis –

Beginning with General Gray as the 29th Commandant of the Marine Corps, Marines placed emphasis on the Marine Expeditionary Force (MEF).  The most common expression of this emphasis was the phrase, “primacy of the MEF.”  Marines also spoke of the MEF as a “reservoir of combat power.”  Why has the Corps moved away from this MEF-focused construct, which proved very successful in the fielding and employment of MEUs, MEBs, and on two occasions MEFs?  What else can the MEU “contribute to combat operations” other than a light infantry battalion, a cannon artillery battery, and a vertical lift capability?

How will the Corps even be able to support a 3.0 presence?  Recently, battalions operated on a 24-month cycle—six-months deployed and 18 months at home station—requiring 4 infantry battalions for each of the MEUs based in the continental US.  Thus, maintaining a “heel-to-toe” (365 days a year) deployment of MEUs from the East and West Coasts will require 8 infantry battalions.  This leaves 13 of the existing 21 infantry battalions available, however one is stationed permanently as Littoral Combat Team (LCT) in Hawaii, bringing the number to 12. 

The LCTs in Okinawa and Guam are planned to be part of a unit deployment program requiring 8 battalions.  If that is true, there will only be 4 infantry battalions remaining to serve as the maneuver elements of 5 infantry regiments -- 3 West Coast regiments and 2 East Coast Regiments. Four infantry battalions shared by 5 infantry regiments? That makes no sense. The misguided missile unit experiment is having a catastrophic effect on Marine Corps combat power.

Also, the idea that MEFs are force providers is badly misguided.  Service Components (MARFORs) are force providers. MEFs are warfighters.  Or, they are supposed to be warfighters. The unbalanced focus on the MEUs alone has led to severe reductions in the capabilities of the all important MEFs. And III MEF, the Corps’ so-called “fight now” MEF has been dangerously stripped of nearly all its combat arms infantry.

The combined arms infantry of III MEF resides in the 3^rd Marine Division. But the division’s infantry regiments are being removed. The 3rd Marine Division is being converted to three Marine Littoral Regiments, (MLRs). The 3rd Marines and 12th Marines have already been redesignated MLRs. The 4th Marines is next to go.

What this means for the Marine Corps is 1 of the 3 active Marine Corps divisions has been restructured and reorganized into irrelevance. The MLRs are not infantry regiments. The purpose of the MLRs in III MEF are to forward deploy SIFs inside contested areas to sink PLAN ships.

Each MLR has one Naval Strike Missile Battery. The NSM is subsonic and short-range (115 NM or thereabouts). The shorter missile range means the SIF must deploy deeper into the Chinese WEZ (Weapons Engagement Zone) to even theoretically get off a shot.

How will the Marine missile units get deep inside the WEZ? The Marine Corps has no capability to deploy, redeploy, or logistically support widely dispersed and isolated SIFs inside the WEZ. The current and the previous Commandant put all their eggs in the LSM (Landing Ship Medium) basket - - articulating a requirement for 35.

The Navy has reduced the requirement to 18. So far, not one LSM has been built. It is not clear that any ever will be constructed. Five do have some visibility in the budgeting process. The main stumbling block to procurement is survivability. The LSM ships as currently envisioned are simply not survivable, despite Marine Corps pronouncements that they will blend in with commercial shipping and go to ground and hide when the shooting starts.

With or without the LSM, the SIFs cannot be logistically supported. With no SIFs, the MLRs are irrelevant. Without MLRs, Force Design is irrelevant. Without the infantry regiments from 3^rd Marine Division, III MEF is not the Corps’ “fight now” MEF, it is, unfortunately, the Corps’ “irrelevant now” MEF.

Although the global MEUs are a powerful tool for the US, the real power of the MEU comes not from the small Marine force that arrives quickly offshore in a crisis, the real strength of the MEU is when it can be quickly reinforced and expanded into a larger and more capable force. Rapidly expanding the MEU at the scene of a crisis requires supplies and equipment from maritime prepositioning ships together with fly in echelons of Marines provided by robust MEFs. But very soon, III MEF will have nothing to “fight now” with and no echelons to fly in to support a MEU in crisis.

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Compass Points appreciates all the insightful discussion about the current Commandant’s Planning Guidance and about the future of the Marine Corps.

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Compass Points – New CMC CPG

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September 10, 2024

https://marinecorpscompasspoints.substack.com/p/compass-points-new-cmc-cpg