Compass Points - Mobile III MEF?
Getting III MEF and the Marine Corps on the move.
October 4, 2025
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Authors and Marines Brandan R. Schofield and Andrew C. Edwards have written a powerful article about the need for greater mobility for the Marine Corps’ only forward based amphibious force, III MEF, headquartered on Okinawa, Japan. The authors propose a range of short term, ad hoc, and partial fixes that could improve the tactical and operational mobility of III MEF.
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All the critical near-term decisions identified earlier — charters, sustainment, prototype extension — combined cost less than the refit of a single destroyer. A dozen Stern Landing Vessels, a fleet of marine-crewed Ancillary Surface Crafts, and a scalable amphibious “bridge” all fall below the budget lines of a single exquisite program that might never dock in the littorals.
We are not asking to rewrite the Navy’s 30-year shipbuilding plan. We’re asking to spend smart now to avoid strategic regret later.
Practical Over Perfect
The Marine Corps isn’t waiting for perfect platforms. It’s fielding what works. But the service can’t do it alone. The broader defense establishment, Congress, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Navy, and the Joint Staff should recognize that the mobility gap is not conceptual, it’s physical. The platforms are not hypothetical, they’re real. The need is not tomorrow, it’s today. We don’t have to build for 2050 to succeed in 2025. America should buy time, capacity, and deterrent credibility now.
One Last Note from the Arena
This article is not theory. It’s an operational after-action report from marines who have planned with spreadsheets open, maps on the table, and weather delays testing force closure timelines. There’s no glamour in arguing for surface vessels and a lot of the figures will be further refined as this work is published. But there are real consequences for not resourcing what III Marine Expeditionary Force needs. The truth is: Mobility is the predicate to everything else fires, command and control, sustainment, partnership, and presence.
-- Brandan R. Schofield and Andrew C. Edwards, “Flood the Zone: III Marine Expeditionary Force’s Mobility Mandate”
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The Marine Corps often claims that III Marine Expeditionary Force (III MEF) headquartered on Okinawa, Japan, is the “fight now” warfighting force of the Marine Corps. III MEF is forward based just miles from China. No doubt with all the focus on China today, the Marine Corps must have spent the last several years building up the warfighting power of III MEF. Sadly, no.
Although the Marine Corps has said it is focusing on China in the Pacific, the Marine Corps has spent many years decreasing its combined arms combat power in the Pacific. Why would the Marine Corps want a weaker presence off the coast of China?
For decades the US with the help and cooperation of Japan have established a powerful military presence on Okinawa, only 400 miles from China. The largest parts of the US military on Okinawa are units from the Air Force and Marine Corps.
Air Force units stationed at Kadena Air Force Base on Okinawa include the USAF’s 18th Wing, the 353rd Special Operations Wing, reconnaissance units, and 1st Battalion, 1st Air Defense Artillery Regiment.
The Marine Corps only has three large, active duty expeditionary forces: I MEF, II MEF, and III MEF. The III MEF based on Okinawa and elsewhere in the Pacific is the only forward based MEF and includes:
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-- 3rd Marine Division
-- 3D Marine Expeditionary Brigade
-- 1st Marine Aircraft Wing
-- 3D Logisics Group
-- 31st Marine Expeditionary Units
-- III MEF Information Group
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Unfortunately, the Marine Corps, instead of building up III MEF, has been stripping combined arms combat power. The plan for 3rd Marine Division was that it would soon have no infantry regiments nor even a single artillery regiment. The 1st MAW will have fewer aircraft and fewer air support units. III MEF is supposed to be the source of combined arms combat power, but III MEF has lost so much combined arms combat power it cannot supply 3D MEB with a brigade’s worth of combined arms units and equipment. III MEF today cannot even keep the small 31st MEU on patrol in Indo-Pacific waters 365 days a year.
One author and Marine has made the additional point in a article for USNI Proceedings, that the “fight now” III MEF is not positioned to fight. The author argues that III MEF needs to harden its infrastructure, move communications underground, and provide cover for aircraft. Instead, III MEF spends time providng housing for military families. Why are families forward deployed with Marine warfighters off the coast of China?
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To continue along this path is folly. The Marine Corps can realign the posture of forces to that of a true, combat-credible, and ready-to-fight force. To do this will require deploying Marines to Okinawa without their families, establishing them persistently on key maritime terrain, and making all the other changes that a force deployed in range of the enemy’s fires must make. The Marine Corps must get III MEF into a fighting stance.
-- Proceedings, “Put III MEF in a Fighting Stance”
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While families are still sent to the “fight now” bases on Okinawa, thousands of Marines are being moved off Okinawa and away from China. Even the current Marine Corps Commandant admits that removing Marines from Okinawa and sending them to Guam is a bad idea.
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Gen. Eric Smith said the planned transfer of Okinawa-based Marines to Guam in the coming years will distance the force from a critical theater that China seeks to further influence. The agreement also includes moving thousands of Marines to Hawaii, Australia and the continental U.S.
The move “puts us going the wrong way,” he said, specifically fielding a question about Guam. Smith spoke to a group of reporters at a Defense Writers Group event in Washington, D.C.
-- Drew F. Lawrence, “’Going the Wrong Way:’ Booting Marines from Okinawa Could Embolden China, Commandant Says”
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Instead of relocating thousands of Marines off Okinawa and moving them halfway to California to Guam, any Marines moved from Okinawa should be moved to South Korea, closer to China.
Instead of a family friendly, stripped down, III MEF, the Marine Corps needs a full 40,000 force of III MEF Marines, forward based, with all the combined arms units, equipment, and capabilities to provide the United States with 9-1-1 crisis response combat power off the coast of China.
Compass Points salutes authors and Marines Brandan R. Schofield and Andrew C. Edwards for their powerful article about the need for greater mobility for III MEF. The authors are to be commended for their efforts to help assist in solving some of the myriad of issues that prevent III MEF from actually being capable of deterring now and fighting now.
Unfortunately, the decline in the combat power of III MEF goes back a half dozen years and more when the Marine Corps began a misguided program to strip III MEF of much of its combined arms units, equipment, and capabilties. The theory was III MEF would be well supplied with NMESIS missiles launchers. But after all these years it is not only mobility that III MEF is missing.
Young officers would not have to be creating duck tape and string solutions for mobility that should have been solved in advance by the Marine Corps’ combat development process. Even if III MEF operational mobility could be established with this menagerie of vessels, the Corps will only have 12 NMESISs until late 2028 or early 2029 when it will begin to grow to 36 — if technical problems are resolved in the interim. Far beyond the limits of III MEF alone, the Marine Corps has forfeited its ability to serve the Nation as an always ready global crisis response force. The authors want to “flood the zone.” What needs to be done is much larger. The Marine Corps needs to get refocused on flooding the globe with always forward deployed, crisis response, forces ready to arrive, deter, assist, strike, and fight.
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War on the Rocks - 10/01/2025
Flood the Zone: III Marine Expeditionary Force’s Mobility Mandate
By Brandan R. Schofield and Andrew C. Edwards
Brandan R. Schofield is a Marine acquisition officer serving as the team lead on expeditionary fuel and water systems at Marine Corps Systems Command. He recently completed a tour as an Exercise Planner for the 3rd Marine Logistics Group, and the logistics officer for the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit. He holds a Master of Science in Information Technology Management and a Master of Business Administration. He is published by the Naval Postgraduate School and the Marine Corps Gazette.
Andrew C. Edwards is a Marine logistics officer currently serving as the training team officer for the 12th Marine Corps Recruiting District. He was previously a logistics officer for the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit. He recently served as the lead capabilities integration officer for III Marine Expeditionary Force G‑9, directing integration of new logistics capabilities and surface vessel prototypes.
https://warontherocks.com/2025/10/flood-the-zone-iii-marine-expeditionary-forces-mobility-mandate/
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USNI Proceedings - December 2023 Vol. 149/12/1,450
Put III MEF in a Fighting Stance
The American Sea Power Project’s “War in 2026” from the stand-in force’s perspective.
By Lieutenant Colonel Brian Kerg, U.S. Marine Corps
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2023/december/put-iii-mef-fighting-stance
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Military.com - 01/15/2025
‘Going the Wrong Way:’ Booting Marines from Okinawa Could Embolden China, Commandant Says
By Drew F. Lawrence
Forward deployed if you are mobile makes sense. Forward deployed if you lack mobility is a tripwire of blood and guts.
We do not need to have Marine units closer to the Chinese strengths if they are fixed in place. It is a Wake Island effect. The Berlin Brigade had very little chance of impacting a Soviet Invasion. It was a symbolic commitment of resolve and intent. You do not charge the light brigade into Russian artillery. The Marine Corps is an attacking force not a stay behind sniper effort that thinks it will not be detected and eliminated.
In 1982 I had a conversation with a German Armored Brigade Cmdr in Hamburg. I asked about his tasks to retreat and attrit invading Warsaw Pact Forces and he acknowledged that was the official policy. In fact he and the Danish Brigade would attack to the East. The logic was that the Warsaw Pact was not flexible enough to deal with that and that the arrival of West German and Danish Forces would cause locals and Warsaw Pact Forces to turn on the Russians.
A conventional fight with China ( hard for me to grasp) is a Navy- USAF fight. A III MEF MAGTF held in reserve on amphibious shipping and out of range has innumerable options to strike at the right place at the right time over vast distances be it an amphibious assault or offload in friendly nations. The challenge to China is not the short range, immobile, coastal defense missile batteries trying to hide and survive in the jungle or on coral islands. A MEF afloat disbursed between the Aleutians and New Zealand is another story.
Naval Air Defense
I have to commend the participants on CP for exposing the US Navy’s failed ship building and maintenance programs. However, I have to say that the Navy has done a very good job on anti-air defense. This has been documented on a “60 Minutes” show here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRRJmOTCqqQ The “youtube” clip is important because of its strategic approach. 60 Minutes first stresses the strategic importance of the Red Sea SLOC and then touts the success of the US Navy’s 5th Fleet. If you watch and listen closely there is a comparison between Red Sea Houthi attacks and the Iranian drone and missile land attacks. IMHO the difference is striking in casualties and effects.
This clip demonstrated the successful coordination and complexity of today’s network centric anti-air defense: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAX7UjO3A0E .
I do not like the cost benefit analysis of $50,000 drones compared to $3,000,000 US Navy “Standard Missile 2”. The analysis leaves out the potential drone damage and the cost of losing control of a major SLOC. I do have to salute the Navy Captain’s decision to use to the Phalanx “Close-in” System (CIWS) to destroy the four follow up drones following the missile attack. A decision like that represents a significant “trust” level not only in the Captain’s weapons system but also his crew members and leaders.
The US Navy’s approach to this layered defense is not new. It was actually developed in Navy’s WW2 Pacific War campaigns. The layers of long range (Navy fighter aircraft), intermediate (5-inch dual-purpose guns and 40mm Bofors “POM-POM” Guns), and close-in (20mm automate anti-aircraft guns) was develop and use extensively in WW2. The Navy actually built 8 Atlantic Class anti-aircraft light cruisers, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta-class_cruiser ) with every inch of deck space covered with one of these weapon systems. I should note the Atlantic Class cruisers were very important in establishing air superiority in amphibious pre-landing operations in the Leyte Gulf, Iwo Jima and the Okinawa campaigns.
The bad news is the US Navy started to forget about this lesson learned and was abruptly reminded by a US Marine Officer (Retired) in the Millennium Challenge 2002 war game. The wargame objective “was designed to test the military's new concepts of "network-centric warfare," in which advanced technology would give U.S. forces an overwhelming advantage. It was the most expensive war game in U.S. military history, costing $250 million.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002
The bad news is; “Red, commanded by retired Marine Corps Lieutenant General Paul K. Van Riper, adopted an asymmetric strategy, in particular, simulating using old methods to evade Blue's sophisticated electronic surveillance network. Van Riper simulated using motorcycle messengers to transmit orders to front-line troops and World-War-II-style light signals to launch airplanes without radio communications in the model.” In the opening scenario not only were Blue Force Carrier Strike Groups and Amphibious TFs defeated; they were sunk by inferior “Red” forces.
For these reasons I do not understand why folks argue that the CCP A2/D2 marks the end of amphibious operations. I cannot buy that assumption. A peer-to-peer conflict with the CCP will require amphibious operations that will require at least local air superiority and SLOC control. The US Navy has recently demonstrated it can achieve SLOC control and air superiority in the Red Sea. If the US Navy can protect their carriers and the SLOC they can certainly protect an Amphibious TF (maybe add a few Arleigh-Burk Destroyers to the Amphibious TF and practice air and sea control in pre-landing operations).
The US Navy got a wakeup call in 2002. I suspect that General Van Riper never received a “that a Boy” from the US Navy or Joint Force leadership for his efforts in Millennium Challenge. Understanding the old joke about military leadership that “One Ah S__t! wipes out five that a boys”, the Navy needs to look at its history and find those “that a boys’ to counterbalance their ship building and maintenance issues.
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