Compass Points - Compelling Comments
Readers expand the discussion.
Compass Points - Compelling Comments
Readers expand the discussion.
May 11, 2024
.
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.
.
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!
.
=================
.
Polarbear
Why is the Marine Corps spending time, effort, and money on developing a Tactical Resupply Unmanned Aircraft System (TRUAS) drone that can carry a whopping 150 pounds for nine miles? Wow! . . .My point is with this small pay load, you are going to need a “swarm” of these just to resupply a single rifle company (with beans, bullets and bandages).
----------------
Ray “Skip” Polak
Threats to international shipping ought to be handled by an international leadership entity. Especially when those who threaten are not a “state” per se. Anybody else in the world concerned? Is a littoral regiment mobile enough to take on a portion of this development, or are they fixed?
On an aside: thanks to Generals TZ and PKVR for sparking these wide-ranging discussions!
----------------
Bob Whitener
. . . it is time for all influential Marine leaders to move beyond the Divest to Invest era and move to dealing with the evolving exigencies that will face Marines in future operations.
----------------
Frank P DiMarco
Sit and sense sounds like a bunch of nonsense! We had better get our amphibious house in order along with undoing most if not all of this divest to invest baloney.
----------------
Cfrog
These emerging concepts and technologies are additive, and will be combined with relevant legacy systems in novel ways to become more effective. They are likely to spur further innovation in legacy systems rather than the disappearance of those systems.
----------------
Bud Meador
One should not trust that “one trick pony.” Either we are a robust capability COCOMS (and, the American people) can rely on for heavy combat action, or we’re not. I really think it is as simple as that. We need to put muscle back on the skeleton. The good news is that we have bright people to do just that, plus the added blessing of many senior officers in our retired community who have answers to our many questions. Press on. Semper Fi!
----------------
Samuel Whittemore
The “Eagle, Globe and Anchor” is not the “Eagle, Indo Pacom and Anchor.” Marine Regiments, Artillery Regiments, Engineer Battalions, and Tank Battalions etc. become a Marine Division. The Ground Combat Element of a Marine Expeditionary Force is not several Marine Littoral Regiments. Why would you trust a One Trick Pony?
----------------
PKVR
Always appeared to me that our former CMC did not understand the purpose of the Goldwater-Nichols Act. Even if COCOMs ask for Marines today they do not have the amphibious ships to get there nor the MPF ships to provide sustainment.
----------------
Jeffrey Dinsmore
BGen Holcomb’s article is exactly on point. It prompted a couple things. First, it prompted a review of my mental rolodex to identify those senior officers I know, or know of, on active duty that should be lauded for their integrity and encouraged to maintain their guard against the danger of compromise. Second, it jump-started a theme that I have been wrestling with for several years; an overdue philosophical and academic examination of how senior officer integrity is often compromised in this modern era.
. . . During a past tumultuous time in our Corps, the Marine Corps chief of strategic communications repeatedly made it clear that public perception of the institution and its favored issues trumps reality and truth-telling. Period. Commstrat advice demonstrably supplanted the judgment of senior leaders of that time. This was 20 years ago, and this ethos has come to full flower of late. Messaging as a leadership ethic has insinuated its way into the otherwise common-sense calculus of our senior leaders’ judgment. When BGen Holcomb writes of obfuscation, half-truths, and ad-hominem attacks, CommStrat is the institutional root of these deceptions.
. . . Like Brute Krulak, Gen Gray understood that America doesn’t need its Corps to do what the other services can already do, but it wants it--for its ethos, its unfailing alchemy, its integrity.
----------------
Jerry McAbee
Well done to BGen Holcomb for not accusing anyone by name. Those who obfuscate and deceive know who they are - - and so does everyone else.
----------------
Charles Wemyss, Jr.
. . . there is great hope in this next generation of senior company grade and field grade officers coming along. The challenge it seems is keeping them off the rocks and shoals of self-aggrandizement and self-serving behavior that is done only for purposes of promotion and advancement or other things as outlined in General Holcomb’s article.
They seem so ready now, too bad they cannot be accelerated to senior field grade command and vetted earlier still for general officer positions.
----------------
Keith Holcomb
Colonel Dinsmore: Superb development of a difficult topic: You provide breadth, depth, recent experience, and creditability.
Most narratives lend themselves to "tweets' or 20-second advertising sound bites, facilitating broad dissemination and even indoctrination.
Narrative users/developers tend to avoid the great difficulty in understand complex and inter-related matters and the even more difficult task of representing that reality and positing that reality's dynamics over time. And frankly, in today's information culture, there is little reward in striving to understand and represent difficult matters.
Yet, integrity as wholeness/completeness is essential if military organizations are to accomplish missions as the lowest cost in life.
I don’t think that the Nation's militaries will be able develop credible forces and to employ those forces with operational competence and strength of character until senior officers work to create of culture of integrity (both definitions are in the paper). They need to learn (and to model!) the mental toughness to consider the “whole” of problems (good, bad, ugly) and resist narrow narratives.
----------------
Polarbear
Question: Does cooperation with the politicization of the military by the senior military leadership represent an integrity failure?
----------------
Randy Shetter
Then Admiral Harry Harris wanted the "Army to develop a native anti-ship capability." The article does not say Admiral Harris wanted the Marine Corps to develop this capability. He wanted the Army. Could it be that being the largest of the services, the Army has the most capabilities to do so? Did the Admiral not say the Marine Corps, because he knew the Marine Corps has a unique capability of its own: that of a combined arms naval expeditionary force?
----------------
Charles Wemyss, Jr.
The Marine Corps should stick to what it has done best or well over the last decades, meaning a MAGTF concept that allows very good flexible response to many different crises large and small. This includes real humanitarian relief operations, sustained combat operations, and the mere threat of Marines “going across the beach” in a short, sharp action of some sort. The rest can take care of itself.
.
===============
.
Compass Points salutes all readers who in their own ways are continuing to build the discussion about a stronger Marine Corps.
Saw the New York and Wasp off the coast today...nice to see a MEU ARG on the water even if it is a ship short. It was also a good visual reminder of the importance of this capability.
On a separate note, these Saturday rollups of the week's coverage are great; thank you Compass Points.
Reading comments above, appears to me the Navy is the problem. If Navy cannot provide sufficient amphibs, is not the USMC obligated to go elsewhere IOT stay relevant? Amphibs are the one trick pony.