Compass Points – No Counterfeit Concepts
The Marine Corps is a Combined Arms Force
As we wrap up, for now, our ongoing discussion about the importance of combined arms, Compass Points invites readers to consider the similarities between Warren Buffet and General Zinni. Both have decades of experience, innovation, and success in their fields. Warren Buffet and many others sounded the alarm for years over the dangers of investing in counterfeit crypto schemes. General Zinni and many others sounded the alarm for years over the dangers of investing the future of the Marine Corps in poorly conceived concepts.
In the investment world, Sam Bankman-Fried defrauded normally savvy investors into believing the future was in the FTX cryptocurrency exchange, briefly valued at $32 billion before it all came crashing down. Are we being similarly misled by Force Design 2030? The answer is yes.
Marines have never been and can never be a sit and wait force. Marines are a first to fight force. Marines are a mobile, maneuver focused, combined arms team, equipped, trained, and prepared to arrive immediately at the scene of any crisis and immediately take on any foe.
The duty expert with decades of actual experience, actual innovation, and actual success, Warren Buffet, warned for 8 years about the dangers of crypto currency. He called it ‘rat poison.’ He went on to say,
“It’s not a currency. It does not meet the test of a currency. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s not around in 10 or 20 years. It is not a durable means of exchange, it’s not a store of value. It’s been a very speculative kind of Buck Rogers-type thing.”
If there ever can be any value in some form of crypto currency, that can only be discovered by study and proven performance. In the same way, there is a place in the arsenal of the Marine Corps for longer range missiles and every other useful technological upgrade. But to throw away the combined arms Marine Corps in a mad grab for counterfeit innovation is insanity.
Combined arms is central to the conduct of Marine operations, not just at the platoon level, but at the MEF level and beyond. When he was CentCom Commander, General Zinni used an approach for his volatile AOR he describes as ‘combined arms on steroids.’
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General Zinni’s ‘Combined Arms on Steroids’
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The model for combined arms is the ability to execute the Deep Battle concept. This concept assigns expanded battlespace to a force that must possess 6 capabilities.
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1. The ability to see throughout the assigned space
2. The ability to fire throughout the space
3. The ability to maneuver throughout the space
4. The ability to logistically provide support throughout the space
5. The ability to command and control operations throughout the space
6. The ability to protect the force
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Operations must be conducted in three time and space dimensions.
1. Conduct of the current or close fight
2. Transitioning, seamlessly into the next phase of the current fight (mission)
3. Shaping the battlespace for the next anticipated mission
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Momentum is achieved by control of the battle rhythm and relentless application of fire and maneuver and with combat support and combat service support not allowing you to hit a culminating point before mission accomplishment.
Without the full array of capabilities within a force, it cannot develop the ability to execute effective combined arms operations. Also, without the training and experience necessary to hone the skills required to execute. It is a combination of both capabilities and developed processes.
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As many as one million smart, savvy investors were misled by the false promises of the FTX currency exchange. Many celebrities were fooled. Warren Buffet and others were never fooled.
In a similar way, many well intended members of the Marine Corps and defense establishment have been misled by the false promises of FD 2030. General Zinni and others were never fooled.
The best plan is to take investment advice from the investment experts like Warren Buffet and take Marine Corps advice from experts like General Zinni.
Mark Cancian, another expert in national defense issues, in his CSIS wargame about the invasion of Taiwan, forcefully shows that any such invasion will be a messy, bloody contest. Traditionally, with nearly one-third of America’s immediate combat power, the Marine Corps cannot be left stranded along the island chain. The Marine Corps must never become a sit and wait force. Marines must always be a first to fight force. Marines are a mobile, maneuver focused, combined arms team, equipped, trained, and prepared to arrive immediately at the scene of any crisis and immediately take on any foe. No crypto counterfeit military concept can ever be allowed to take the combined arms out of the Marine Corps.
In a static concept the force is , for a time at least, fixed in place. A fixed position can be , bypassed, isolated, and maneuvered against. When fixed and isolated, one may be starved of food , water , munitions, and lack of safe egress. Simple words and notions but true. The entire ethos of the Marine Corps is offense and aggression . We were all instilled with the training and belief that everything in the Corps served to support the maneuvering of our infantry. We are also trained to the extent that when you thought you had expended every ounce of yourself ……,,you still had more . I am appreciative of this extra once of effort by this group to save our Corps
It strikes me as odd, that the Chairman of the JCS has been in Poland and Germany discussing the training of 500 or so Ukrainian members of the their military in combined arms deployment. The Ukrainian military are asking for more tanks and artillery tubes, etc etc., to support the infantry. Maybe the 200 F-16's and A-10 Warthogs currently mothballed in the southwest desert of the USA, could be helpful for close air support as well. At the same time our SecDef, the JCS and our current commandant want to diminish and neuter our Corps. We do not sit and wait for the battle to come to us. Every time that has happened in the last 80 plus years there are bad outcomes. As General Van Riper reminded all last week, the idea of stranding a Marine unit of ANY size on some island in the South China Sea means that we learned nothing from Wake, Bataan, Khe Shan, Teheran and Lebanon. The fascination of the shiny new toy of "missiles and special operations, etc., have blinded the combined staffs of our military leadership to reality. The word corrupt comes to mind. Just because wether are in the military branch doesn't mean leadership can't be corrupted.
Something is very wrong and hopefully someway, somehow the course can be corrected and the Marine Corps can get back to the Force in Readiness it needs to be in order support the over military posture of the United States military.