Compass Points - No Holiday

No time for days off.

Compass Points - No Holiday

No time for days off.

January 15, 2024

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Today is a national holiday honoring Martin Luther King. Holidays are a wonderful time to honor important people, as well as an opportunity for time off for millions of Americans. While many Americans are taking it easy today, others are still working hard. There is no holiday and no time off for the Marines of the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit.

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After 8 months and 3 extensions, the Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier (CVN-78) Strike Group 12, is returning to its home port at Naval Station, Norfolk, VA. That leaves the 2,000 Marines of the 26th MEU in the Mediterranean onboard warships USS Bataan (LHD-5), USS Carter Hall (LSD-50), and USS Mesa Verde (LPD-19). The Amphibious Ready Group will be joined by an unspecified number of guided-missile destroyers.

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USNI News reports:

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With the reaggregation of the Bataan Amphibious Ready Group and the embarked 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit as a presence force off Israel, the Dwight D. Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group and its escorts are operating in the Gulf of Aden off the coast of Yemen, according to Thursday’s USNI News Fleet and Marine Tracker.

-- USNI News

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The continuing crisis in and around Gaza and Israel shows no signs of ending. That means there is no end in sight for the 26th MEU and ships in the eastern Mediterranean Sea or for the Eisenhower Strike Group in the Gulf of Aden.

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Marines and sailors stay on mission until the mission is complete. But deployed Marines and sailors are not machines. Just as ships need to return home to refit and resupply, Marines and sailors need to return home as well.

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Keeping ships on extended deployments is not a new problem. As early as 2015 an article in The National Defense warned,

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The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps are operating today under unsustainable levels of stress because of a fundamental mismatch between the demands placed on them and their supply of ready forces. Both services are striving to establish deployment cycles they can maintain over the long-term, but are unable to stick to them. Deployments continue to be longer or more frequent than planned; as a result, morale is down among Sailors and Marines and the condition of their ships, aircraft, and equipment is suffering.

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. . . Over the last decade the Navy and Marine Corps met the demand by simply doing more with less. Between 1998 and 2015 the Navy shrank by 20 percent, from 333 to 271 ships. The number of ships deployed overseas, however, remained the same at about 100 ships. Each ship was, therefore, working about 20 percent harder to meet the demand. Deployment length statistics make this clear: in 1998 four percent of deployments lasted more than six months, while in 2015 all deployments lasted more than six months.

-- The National Interest

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It is easy for civilian national security leaders embroiled in a crisis to say, "just keep the Marines out there; we need them where they are."

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But such decisions are not without their own risks. Compass Points reader, Keith Holcomb has commented on the dangers of long deployments:

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Keith Holcomb

As many CP readers and contributors know, long, demanding, and stressful deployments can have several phenomena:

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1) Safety lapses.

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2) Friendly fire incidents, collisions at sea, inadvertent engagement of neutral, non-combatant aircraft, and so on.

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3) Rote, inertial thinking at times when alert and innovative responses need to be developed.

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4) Spare part shortages, equipment fatigue, and attendant compromises to get “just one more day” from people and equipment.

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5) Petty Officer, junior officer, and even senior officer lapses in supervision.

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The list is long, and the refrain shows up in too many post-accident investigations. Regrettably, it is those closest to the incident, those who were striving the longest and the hardest to accomplish the mission that are held accountable. And, yes, it is those closest to the incident that suffer the loss of shipmates and fellow Marines … a loss and a feeling of culpability that will remain with them for the rest of their lives.

But, who is truly culpable? Perhaps, it is time to hold accountable those Admirals, Generals, senior DoD/DoN civilians, and senior officials in both the Executive and Legislative branches that for years have both under-resourced required operational capabilities and have squandered much needed and combat proven capabilities to chase the latest ideologies and technologies.

-- Keith Holcomb

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Today, on a day that is a holiday for many, there is no holiday for Marines and other service members deployed around the world. Compass Points thanks all those standing a post for freedom today. Compass Points also thanks Keith Holcomb for his timely warning, as well as all those friends of the Marine Corps in Congress helping to make sure the Marines have not only the ships, planes, and other combined arms capabilities they need to respond to every crisis, but also the staffing and rotation to get Marines home.

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USNI News (news.usni.org) 01/01/2024

Carrier USS Gerald R. Ford Heading Home After 8 Months, 3 Extensions

By Sam LaGrone

https://news.usni.org/2024/01/01/carrier-uss-gerald-r-ford-heading-home-after-8-months-2-extensions

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The National Interest (nationalinterest.org) 11/18/2015

Deploying Beyond Their Means: The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps at a Tipping Point

Deployments continue to be longer or more frequent than planned; as a result morale is down among Sailors and Marines and the condition of their ships, aircraft, and equipment is less than optimal. What is the solution?

by Bryan Clark

https://nationalinterest.org/feature/deploying-beyond-their-means-the-us-navy-marine-corps-14378