The pundits and their uniformed acolytes are quick to proclaim the demise of one weapon or another. Battleships, tanks, manned bombers, ocean mines, air craft carriers, tube artillery, infantry, helicopters. For every rat there is a cat.
The Marine Corps leadership reacted to the Chinese hypersonic missiles in complete ignorance of reality. Their reaction bordered on criminal. Ships can defend themselves with technology and we have yet to see a hypersonic Chinese missile hit a moving garbage barge. If the entire State of Israel can create an iron dome a ship most certainly can. We have the technology…. Modern tanks are being outfitted with their own self defense umbrellas.
The battleship was not obsolete despite mines, torpedoes or aircraft had the ocean going units been properly configured. As late as WWII a German battleship with air cover ran the English Channel. As much as war time propaganda wanted to indicate the Bismarck had been sunk, she was actually scuttled by the crew. The USS New Jersey saw service off of Vietnam and Beirut. A refurbished battleship with air defense and cruise missiles would still be formidable.
My contacts tell me that most Russian Drones in use in Ukraine have poor cameras and properly camouflaged infantry and armor are often bypassed, especially at night. Not every drone has infrared and comm links can be jammed. Like any weapons platform Drones can be lured into kill zones much like aircraft or helicopters.
If Amphibious ships are obsolete the entire surface fleet and fixed installations are too. Of course, neither is true. The amphibious force can move, advance, withdraw….. if the cruise missiles of their era, the Kamikaze did not prevail the range of anti ship missiles will not either.
When the Russians invaded Ukraine a smarter leader would have withdrawn his surface combatants into the southern regions of the Black Sea. But, there ships lack the logistics to bore holes into the ocean for weeks on end.
Berger’s Folly may have killed the Corps. If it has not, the reconstitution of three Marine Expeditionary Forces as MAGFTs requires some modernization in air defense and the return of MPS squadrons.
There are strong indications that Great Britain will dispense with their two new carriers. Buy them. Offer their crews US citizenship and rename then USS Anglo-Saxon and USS Thatcher. Then buy every ship and armored unit they will shut down. Crews and all. Buy the Royal Marines lock stock and barrel and make them their own Regiment in the US Marines. We do not have time. You can buy capability faster than you can grow it.
Right now a smug DoD is a deer in the headlights thinking that Russia or China will operate off of some mythical US Timeline. The US Army seems to get it with the USAF waking up while the US Navy is broken and delusional and the USMC is in the injured reserve with no prognosis as to when it might return to the field.
“ Over the bleached and jumbled bones of destroyed civilizations are written the pathetic words: Too late, too late. “
The US sense of urgency at the moment is pathetic and soon to collide with DOGE which could be a debilitating storm of the worst sort.
“At first the technology seems unbeatable. At first the technology may actually be unbeatable. But soon opposing nations develop a variety of counters in training, tactics, and new counter technology of their own. What was once the new technology inevitably becomes the old technology? And weapons that once seemed unbeatable become just another factor commanders must deal with on the battlefield.”
EXACTLY!!! Developing “counters” in warfare goes back to after “Agincourt” when the French, as a counter, started cutting off the middle finger of captured English archers. Instead of countering the CCP A2/AD tactics, the Commandant copied them with the MLR development of land based short range anti-ship missiles. This is akin to the English cutting off their own fingers. Speaking of middle fingers, what is the US Navy doing to the US Marine Corps by not building and maintaining amphibious ships. It certainly is not enhancing the war fighting “lethality” of the Combatant Commanders. Instead of disassembling the MAGTF capabilities why not enhance them with a new idea? If the Commandant's worry was CCP ships, at a bare minimum, the Commandant should have realized the Marine Corps has the new stealthy F-35 coming into the FMF. Why not take a look at new anti-ship tactics and weapons for the F-35. Good strategy is not “rocket science”.
Baron von ChapBottom's comments notwithstanding, latency, in digital and physical space, remains a key concern in combat and is why surface vessels will remain relevant regardless of fad theories of future war.
"I remember when the introduction of the rifled barrel, with it's precision, spelled the end of the offensive infantry. It was certainly the end of innovation." - Baron von ChapBottom, memoirs of a Noble Field Officer
Donald J. Trump class Marine Assault Aircraft Carrier CVM (Eight Ship Class + Eight Nuclear Powered Naval Attack Aircraft Carriers CVN)
"The biggest warship ever built for the biggest president whom ever was! Make Aircraft Carriers Great Again!
Replaces 2 x LHA ($9B) with 1 CVM ($9B) that exceeds up to 4 LHA's ($18B) in capacity with large transport aircraft ability supporting 1000nm airmobile armored regiments of re-constituted back in to relevance MAGTF's. For 3 CVN's the Navy could build and outfit 4 CVM's with close to twice the tonnage and possibly re-direct some nuclear support activities to submarines. Retire the Beltway dinner party circuit that spawned the defeatist "Force SFA Design". A CVM would be no bigger than a medium container ship or oil tanker, because the biggest practical displacement is the most efficient displacement, ship steel amounts to only 10-15% of the delivered cost of a warship, personnel, fuel, and the support for it are much greater costs.
Broadbeam 27knot, 144,000t (365mX51m), Panamax-II Navigable, Inclined Stealthy Hull, Large Hangarage Capacity, High Flight Deck, No Islands
Arrangement: 1200'-5° Runway + 600'-10° Runway, bridges under sponsons port forward XO bridge and below starboard rear of mid flight deck captain's bridge.
Internal stowage of the majority of the air group, a large percentage of which would be comprised of a large CCA fleet that would not be deployed on a regular basis and accessed only during specific tests and programmed exercises; generally, lightweight drone aircraft would be launched in elevator sized clusters and would achieve flight through free taxiing to cleared 600' or 1200' flight path runs without catapult assistance (and 300' aviation frigate FFGV/LPVD/LSB/CC-PSCs/USNS landing section equipment for recovery).
The lowest hangar deck level would service the smaller lightweight aircraft in a flexible space that accomodates armor and vehicle stowage, although additional volume might be required for an area of second deck full aircraft storage and/or a limited capacity for oversized aircafft like notional C-230 twin-engined 100t MTOW naval transports in need of repair to return to flight. The HUGE advantage of a conventionally powered aircraft carrier of large size is its low relative overhead costs that allow it to economically operate at a fraction of operational capacity (compare ship crew sizes of nuclear and carbon fuel, the former of which can not be reduced by any worthwhile scale).
Marine Assault Aircraft Carriers (CVM) would balance its resources between larger manned and smaller unmanned combat aircrafts, an embarked tiltrotor/helicopter group for use ashore or from the ship, capacity for large aircraft transport operations (limited hangar spots for repair), and the embarked armored Marine regiments or lighter battle units and all their vehicles and equipment and up to 30 combat days of supply.
Overall hangar capacity should be sufficient to store over 80% of the air group, maximum 40 F-35D/F/H/J and 20 UA-36E/G/I/K along with up to 50-100 ~8t-MTOW CCA & CSG aircraft; frequent flight support for air transport missions; deck edge cradle slings for surplus deck handling >>> reducing to 20 F-35 & 50 CCA & tiltrotor group, when a full airmobile armored marine infantry regiment or lighter equipped task-mission defined units are embarked and CONUS based numbered fleet 100t-MTOW 'C-230' air transport operations are in progresss.
Conventional diesel-electric propulsion and power, 10-16 independent stations, experimental solar & wind systems for political show; limited trial option for LEU compact nuclear reactor systems..
Two or more aircraft elevators would be designed to recover full capacity hovering surface effects vessels at the water line, as well as a range of manned tactical surface boats and missionized drone fires and support systems; fully unmanned surface effects swift supply boats would offer a secure and stable means of re-supply of key logistics demands including personnel, armaments, replacement equipment, medical and hotel services of the floating support air base.
Fleet Marine amphibious ships would comprise the 8 CVM, 8 three ship LSD/LPD/LPVD inshore groups (with potential conversion to ocean escort ASW role), 8 ESB/LSB offshore support ships operating with the 32 ship LWT force and a small number of SES-LPA's. 36 enlargened future LCA's would support the Marine force for a total of 100 vessels (LCAC are counted as ships because of their cost as well as meeting a ship definition of 1000t AND/OR 10,000shp). Logistically, they would be supported by a number of novel unmanned platforms, submersible fuel bladder supply subtugs, small surface effects aircraft drones, and others, none of which need to built in large numbers but all have the critical capacity to supply forward units up to and beyond 1000nm range without support.
Under a simplified and reduced hierachical structure, level units would be created by a common multiple of 7, 7 Marines per squad, 7 squads to a platoon, 7 platoons to a '343-battalion' (company removed), 7 battalions to a 2401-regiment, 7 regiments to a 16,807-Marine Brigade (superceding Mar.Div.s 1,2/3//4,5), Marine Brigades 6 and 7 would bring the full Marine 'Corps' to 117,649 of first line deployable Marines under a full service war strength in the 500,000 range and as many direct civilian support positions. By reducing the levels of commnand hierachy, the end strength is improved by 10-20% in an age where global communications have reduced the need for them to begin with. Any larger and it begins to literally be an army and not the Corps it was enacted to be, and most importantly, that it is NEEDED to be.
Under a broader revision and general rationalization of service forces, the US Army would be required to pare down in size to the same as the Navy and Air Force, assuming responsibility for a full combat corps of 117,649 ready use soldiers and the one year strategic deployment of a full 7 Corps Army of 823,543 within a service size of ~333,000, six other interior reserve armies of notional other structures [a major realignment reducing the Army from a little less than 500,000, to inhibit the recent history of reactionary expeditionary deployments by requiring reserve army units to secure a full operation. The Army would assume responsibility for CONUS ICBM's and create a force of 200-300 100t-MTOW transports for organic air maneuver and tactical delivery of airmobile armor units. Finally, the Air Force would assume responsibility for a globally mobile light infantry brigade, the Brigade of Air Force Regiments, built from voluntary transfers from the 101st Airmobile Division as a series of mission defined light infantry units up to regimental size directly under Air Force command (like Stargate Command...still reading?) rather than joint commands with all the associated service overhead costs.
Why is the Marine Corps axing three divisions while the US Army is not only giving up nothing, but creating three Multi-Domain Task Forces on essentially the same form as Marine Littoral Regiments which are themselves redundant to the core purpose of the Navy? If you want to accept the hypothetical argument that available expeditionary power negatively creates a window for excessive expeditionary deployments, then logically it is the Army and not the Marine Corps that should be absorbing those cuts (I have absolutely zero service bias). Three rapid deployment divisions globally should be enough, the Marines with Navy support are the only service that can perform it, calling six and twelve month war 'time-outs' for the Army to arrive (with Navy support) is idiotic. The Marine Corps is optimal as an assault force from the sea, not as a static occupying army where all the problems of (re-)insurgency begin and part of the reason Force De-Design slipped in under an administration that defers to surrender as its go to move.
Put this logic of efficiency and effectiveness in to your DOGE pipe and inhale very deeply until you begin to understand how these factors are the difference between ascension and decline, because any 5% improvements to the world economy would be meaningless without it, individuals would never be motivated to provide wealth and power to communists or any other type of authoritarian regime which they have never done in the past or nor will in the future because the commonwealth is squandered by mentally disordered types to enforce their hold on power.
Speaking of costs and practicality... by divesting 85% of tubed artillery and going with multi rocket laucher systems, the Corps went from spending a few hundred dollars per shell to spending $150k+ per round on various rocket launcher munitions... pure insanity, yet the Ukraine War has proven the masive use and need for 155mm shells and tubed arty by both sides, yet FD2030 proponents claim the 155mm shells are out of date and irrelevant to modern battlefields... smh!
The pundits and their uniformed acolytes are quick to proclaim the demise of one weapon or another. Battleships, tanks, manned bombers, ocean mines, air craft carriers, tube artillery, infantry, helicopters. For every rat there is a cat.
The Marine Corps leadership reacted to the Chinese hypersonic missiles in complete ignorance of reality. Their reaction bordered on criminal. Ships can defend themselves with technology and we have yet to see a hypersonic Chinese missile hit a moving garbage barge. If the entire State of Israel can create an iron dome a ship most certainly can. We have the technology…. Modern tanks are being outfitted with their own self defense umbrellas.
The battleship was not obsolete despite mines, torpedoes or aircraft had the ocean going units been properly configured. As late as WWII a German battleship with air cover ran the English Channel. As much as war time propaganda wanted to indicate the Bismarck had been sunk, she was actually scuttled by the crew. The USS New Jersey saw service off of Vietnam and Beirut. A refurbished battleship with air defense and cruise missiles would still be formidable.
My contacts tell me that most Russian Drones in use in Ukraine have poor cameras and properly camouflaged infantry and armor are often bypassed, especially at night. Not every drone has infrared and comm links can be jammed. Like any weapons platform Drones can be lured into kill zones much like aircraft or helicopters.
If Amphibious ships are obsolete the entire surface fleet and fixed installations are too. Of course, neither is true. The amphibious force can move, advance, withdraw….. if the cruise missiles of their era, the Kamikaze did not prevail the range of anti ship missiles will not either.
When the Russians invaded Ukraine a smarter leader would have withdrawn his surface combatants into the southern regions of the Black Sea. But, there ships lack the logistics to bore holes into the ocean for weeks on end.
Berger’s Folly may have killed the Corps. If it has not, the reconstitution of three Marine Expeditionary Forces as MAGFTs requires some modernization in air defense and the return of MPS squadrons.
There are strong indications that Great Britain will dispense with their two new carriers. Buy them. Offer their crews US citizenship and rename then USS Anglo-Saxon and USS Thatcher. Then buy every ship and armored unit they will shut down. Crews and all. Buy the Royal Marines lock stock and barrel and make them their own Regiment in the US Marines. We do not have time. You can buy capability faster than you can grow it.
Right now a smug DoD is a deer in the headlights thinking that Russia or China will operate off of some mythical US Timeline. The US Army seems to get it with the USAF waking up while the US Navy is broken and delusional and the USMC is in the injured reserve with no prognosis as to when it might return to the field.
“ Over the bleached and jumbled bones of destroyed civilizations are written the pathetic words: Too late, too late. “
The US sense of urgency at the moment is pathetic and soon to collide with DOGE which could be a debilitating storm of the worst sort.
“At first the technology seems unbeatable. At first the technology may actually be unbeatable. But soon opposing nations develop a variety of counters in training, tactics, and new counter technology of their own. What was once the new technology inevitably becomes the old technology? And weapons that once seemed unbeatable become just another factor commanders must deal with on the battlefield.”
EXACTLY!!! Developing “counters” in warfare goes back to after “Agincourt” when the French, as a counter, started cutting off the middle finger of captured English archers. Instead of countering the CCP A2/AD tactics, the Commandant copied them with the MLR development of land based short range anti-ship missiles. This is akin to the English cutting off their own fingers. Speaking of middle fingers, what is the US Navy doing to the US Marine Corps by not building and maintaining amphibious ships. It certainly is not enhancing the war fighting “lethality” of the Combatant Commanders. Instead of disassembling the MAGTF capabilities why not enhance them with a new idea? If the Commandant's worry was CCP ships, at a bare minimum, the Commandant should have realized the Marine Corps has the new stealthy F-35 coming into the FMF. Why not take a look at new anti-ship tactics and weapons for the F-35. Good strategy is not “rocket science”.
Baron von ChapBottom's comments notwithstanding, latency, in digital and physical space, remains a key concern in combat and is why surface vessels will remain relevant regardless of fad theories of future war.
"I remember when the introduction of the rifled barrel, with it's precision, spelled the end of the offensive infantry. It was certainly the end of innovation." - Baron von ChapBottom, memoirs of a Noble Field Officer
Donald J. Trump class Marine Assault Aircraft Carrier CVM (Eight Ship Class + Eight Nuclear Powered Naval Attack Aircraft Carriers CVN)
"The biggest warship ever built for the biggest president whom ever was! Make Aircraft Carriers Great Again!
Replaces 2 x LHA ($9B) with 1 CVM ($9B) that exceeds up to 4 LHA's ($18B) in capacity with large transport aircraft ability supporting 1000nm airmobile armored regiments of re-constituted back in to relevance MAGTF's. For 3 CVN's the Navy could build and outfit 4 CVM's with close to twice the tonnage and possibly re-direct some nuclear support activities to submarines. Retire the Beltway dinner party circuit that spawned the defeatist "Force SFA Design". A CVM would be no bigger than a medium container ship or oil tanker, because the biggest practical displacement is the most efficient displacement, ship steel amounts to only 10-15% of the delivered cost of a warship, personnel, fuel, and the support for it are much greater costs.
Broadbeam 27knot, 144,000t (365mX51m), Panamax-II Navigable, Inclined Stealthy Hull, Large Hangarage Capacity, High Flight Deck, No Islands
Arrangement: 1200'-5° Runway + 600'-10° Runway, bridges under sponsons port forward XO bridge and below starboard rear of mid flight deck captain's bridge.
Internal stowage of the majority of the air group, a large percentage of which would be comprised of a large CCA fleet that would not be deployed on a regular basis and accessed only during specific tests and programmed exercises; generally, lightweight drone aircraft would be launched in elevator sized clusters and would achieve flight through free taxiing to cleared 600' or 1200' flight path runs without catapult assistance (and 300' aviation frigate FFGV/LPVD/LSB/CC-PSCs/USNS landing section equipment for recovery).
The lowest hangar deck level would service the smaller lightweight aircraft in a flexible space that accomodates armor and vehicle stowage, although additional volume might be required for an area of second deck full aircraft storage and/or a limited capacity for oversized aircafft like notional C-230 twin-engined 100t MTOW naval transports in need of repair to return to flight. The HUGE advantage of a conventionally powered aircraft carrier of large size is its low relative overhead costs that allow it to economically operate at a fraction of operational capacity (compare ship crew sizes of nuclear and carbon fuel, the former of which can not be reduced by any worthwhile scale).
Marine Assault Aircraft Carriers (CVM) would balance its resources between larger manned and smaller unmanned combat aircrafts, an embarked tiltrotor/helicopter group for use ashore or from the ship, capacity for large aircraft transport operations (limited hangar spots for repair), and the embarked armored Marine regiments or lighter battle units and all their vehicles and equipment and up to 30 combat days of supply.
Overall hangar capacity should be sufficient to store over 80% of the air group, maximum 40 F-35D/F/H/J and 20 UA-36E/G/I/K along with up to 50-100 ~8t-MTOW CCA & CSG aircraft; frequent flight support for air transport missions; deck edge cradle slings for surplus deck handling >>> reducing to 20 F-35 & 50 CCA & tiltrotor group, when a full airmobile armored marine infantry regiment or lighter equipped task-mission defined units are embarked and CONUS based numbered fleet 100t-MTOW 'C-230' air transport operations are in progresss.
Conventional diesel-electric propulsion and power, 10-16 independent stations, experimental solar & wind systems for political show; limited trial option for LEU compact nuclear reactor systems..
Two or more aircraft elevators would be designed to recover full capacity hovering surface effects vessels at the water line, as well as a range of manned tactical surface boats and missionized drone fires and support systems; fully unmanned surface effects swift supply boats would offer a secure and stable means of re-supply of key logistics demands including personnel, armaments, replacement equipment, medical and hotel services of the floating support air base.
Fleet Marine amphibious ships would comprise the 8 CVM, 8 three ship LSD/LPD/LPVD inshore groups (with potential conversion to ocean escort ASW role), 8 ESB/LSB offshore support ships operating with the 32 ship LWT force and a small number of SES-LPA's. 36 enlargened future LCA's would support the Marine force for a total of 100 vessels (LCAC are counted as ships because of their cost as well as meeting a ship definition of 1000t AND/OR 10,000shp). Logistically, they would be supported by a number of novel unmanned platforms, submersible fuel bladder supply subtugs, small surface effects aircraft drones, and others, none of which need to built in large numbers but all have the critical capacity to supply forward units up to and beyond 1000nm range without support.
Under a simplified and reduced hierachical structure, level units would be created by a common multiple of 7, 7 Marines per squad, 7 squads to a platoon, 7 platoons to a '343-battalion' (company removed), 7 battalions to a 2401-regiment, 7 regiments to a 16,807-Marine Brigade (superceding Mar.Div.s 1,2/3//4,5), Marine Brigades 6 and 7 would bring the full Marine 'Corps' to 117,649 of first line deployable Marines under a full service war strength in the 500,000 range and as many direct civilian support positions. By reducing the levels of commnand hierachy, the end strength is improved by 10-20% in an age where global communications have reduced the need for them to begin with. Any larger and it begins to literally be an army and not the Corps it was enacted to be, and most importantly, that it is NEEDED to be.
Under a broader revision and general rationalization of service forces, the US Army would be required to pare down in size to the same as the Navy and Air Force, assuming responsibility for a full combat corps of 117,649 ready use soldiers and the one year strategic deployment of a full 7 Corps Army of 823,543 within a service size of ~333,000, six other interior reserve armies of notional other structures [a major realignment reducing the Army from a little less than 500,000, to inhibit the recent history of reactionary expeditionary deployments by requiring reserve army units to secure a full operation. The Army would assume responsibility for CONUS ICBM's and create a force of 200-300 100t-MTOW transports for organic air maneuver and tactical delivery of airmobile armor units. Finally, the Air Force would assume responsibility for a globally mobile light infantry brigade, the Brigade of Air Force Regiments, built from voluntary transfers from the 101st Airmobile Division as a series of mission defined light infantry units up to regimental size directly under Air Force command (like Stargate Command...still reading?) rather than joint commands with all the associated service overhead costs.
Why is the Marine Corps axing three divisions while the US Army is not only giving up nothing, but creating three Multi-Domain Task Forces on essentially the same form as Marine Littoral Regiments which are themselves redundant to the core purpose of the Navy? If you want to accept the hypothetical argument that available expeditionary power negatively creates a window for excessive expeditionary deployments, then logically it is the Army and not the Marine Corps that should be absorbing those cuts (I have absolutely zero service bias). Three rapid deployment divisions globally should be enough, the Marines with Navy support are the only service that can perform it, calling six and twelve month war 'time-outs' for the Army to arrive (with Navy support) is idiotic. The Marine Corps is optimal as an assault force from the sea, not as a static occupying army where all the problems of (re-)insurgency begin and part of the reason Force De-Design slipped in under an administration that defers to surrender as its go to move.
Put this logic of efficiency and effectiveness in to your DOGE pipe and inhale very deeply until you begin to understand how these factors are the difference between ascension and decline, because any 5% improvements to the world economy would be meaningless without it, individuals would never be motivated to provide wealth and power to communists or any other type of authoritarian regime which they have never done in the past or nor will in the future because the commonwealth is squandered by mentally disordered types to enforce their hold on power.
Speaking of costs and practicality... by divesting 85% of tubed artillery and going with multi rocket laucher systems, the Corps went from spending a few hundred dollars per shell to spending $150k+ per round on various rocket launcher munitions... pure insanity, yet the Ukraine War has proven the masive use and need for 155mm shells and tubed arty by both sides, yet FD2030 proponents claim the 155mm shells are out of date and irrelevant to modern battlefields... smh!