A Corps without a mission....who needs it. "Today SecNav Phelan and I announce that the Marine Corps unable to meet its Title X statutory mandates, and due to the lack of amphibious lift support to be found anytime in the next decade, no longer have a relevant mission. The DOD can save a strong $38 Billion annually by reducing the Corps to a largely ceremonial role here in Washington DC> America doesn't need a Corps but wants one and we feel that the traditional Tuesday and Friday evening parades from Memorial Day to Labor are sufficient to meet the public demand. Of course the "Presidents Own" will continue to perform from time to time as POTUS requests.!" From the desk fo the SecDef.
When does the light go on at HQMC, you're going in the wrong direction. You need a course correction.
Sadly based on the results thus far, it does not seem likely that the SecNav is going to do much other than answer calls at 0130 in the morning from POTUS asking where the ships are. The senior flag officers of the Navy and Marine Corps have worked hard to put the nation in a precarious position regards sea power and force projection. Pity we can't reward them with a hardy hand shake and nice pension and send them down the Potomac to retirement homes.
All those whose heads have not been inserted into dark, remote places have known, for a long time, what a foolish exercise this has been. Marines sitting on the sidelines, sucking their thumbs is not a good look for our once proud, competent Corps. Appealing to common sense doesn’t work with those people, maybe ridicule will. Semper Fi
As Don Whisnant says, how long until the Corps goes the way of the DoDo? I am thinking not long until the Fraud Waste and Abuse gang decide to cash the Corps out. Was just looking at how long we had 2 super carriers off of Yemen, where it could have been 2 LHAs with F-35Bs (16) per ship and 1 ARG (3 ship amphibious ready group) and an MEU to hit the Houties when they first started to throw missiles at ships. That port the Iran uses to send the missiles and components to looked like an ideal target for a MAGTF. We also don’t really have any way to help folks during a disaster occurrence anymore. We have no longer have a mission, whether it is Precision strikes, deterrence, or rescue. We just don’t have the ships or equipment called for under Title X statutes to do this now.
WOW, talk about being irrelevant. This takes the cake. CMC Smith, the handwriting is on the wall: its time to abandon this fiasco and do what we are supposed to do: be a combined arms naval expeditionary force.
With respect, Congress appears to still be in love with the USMC. Just watch past and recent testimony. Read what our elected officials write and sign their name to.
For instance, in a letter dated 15 May 2023 and signed by 16 members, Congress gave a full throated endorsement of Force Design.
The full letter is attached, but states, “The Marine Corps continues to lead the Joint Force in Service-level modernization and redesign.
Last year, we detailed the urgent need to accelerate from sustained land-based operations to maritime campaigns and from non-state actors to peer competitors of China and Russia. This shift imposes a necessity to fully fund Marine Corps force design, talent management, and installations and logistics efforts to keep pace with critical and evolving strategic ends.”
We come to CP and read about meetings with elected officials and actions that WILL occur. We just don’t see ANY results.
The members of Chowder II are legends of our Corps. I want to believe what they say. However it has been almost 5 years since they rallied us to oppose Force Design and I feel like they have lost all momentum.
Please show me I am wrong. What have all of these collective actions won us? Yes, there have been thousands of posts and hundreds of thousands of views. . . yet no apparent change.
Why doesn’t Congress seem to agree with Chowder II? If they do, why don’t they publicly say so?
Wow, I had not seen that letter endorsing Force Design, and it explains (to me) why congress has been so supportive of the concept and subsequent implementation.
I agree with your comment about Chowder II and others I respect that oppose Force Design, yet nothing has changed.
Cfrog- I would argue all Marine members support FD. Senator Sullivan asks good questions, but has not said he is against it.
This is my point! What do they see that we don’t? Why are the collective efforts of this group and Chowder II not making a difference? If they are, please share and encourage the continued fight.
Senator Sullivan is something of an outlier. This is an OpEd from 3 years ago signed by 7 Marine Veterans serving in Congress. 5 are still serving and I haven't seen anything to indicate they've backed away from support of FD 2030: https://moulton.house.gov/news/op-ed/op-ed-send-marines-modernization
What do they see that we don't? Good question. The answer is "nothing". It's the response, the critical analysis, or deliberate credulity in the presentation of FD(2030) that is different. I mean, what did the Chiefs see that the Eagles didn't? Nothing. It's what they did / didn't do with what they saw. This is as much a battle of branding and narratives (and politics) as it is a battle of logic and reason. More so.
The collective efforts of the group make a difference, just not in the "Now!" timeframe. "The plan is nothing, planning is everything" is where we are. Sowing the seeds for the gradual reversion to the mean. FD will probably never go away as a brand. I will not be surprised when we are looking at the restitution of a modernized holistic Combined Arms Marine Corps, only to be told "this is what we meant all along". Maybe not, but it has a decent probability as an outcome.
We need to contact these five representatives and explain that all is not well, for FD. They need to understand what has been lost by going forward with FD.
“My rifle and myself know that what counts in this war is not the rounds we fire, the noise of our burst, nor the smoke we make. We know that it is the hits that count. We will hit….”
It genuinely appears the other services are keeping their mouths shut about the FD fiasco, the plan was never widely endorsed and the development of it has gone from bad to worse over the last six years as the details of what is transpiring become increasingly disturbing.
A global cordon defense requires at its core the ability to quickly land well equipped ground troops, the Marine Corps is the only realistic force structure to achieve that end. Airborne and light infantry, bombers, submarines, and aircraft carriers all have limits as to what they can realistically do, and the malign forces of the world know that. It does not need to be a recipe for reckless adventures in foreign lands, its most valuable contribution is the threat that it can take the field and vanquish the fifedoms of the bad people of the world.
Airmobile armored regiments launched from air base carriers represents the optimal conventional deterrence force that would make rapid expeditionary operations successful, and as outlandish as many of you might think that to be, it not only can work but the technology behind will pay for it all.
Tom, are you familiar with the book/concept of: Air-Mech-Strike: 3- Dimensional Phalanx? Its a concept of air mobile armored units which can leap behind enemy lines. The book came out in the early 2000s by some Army Flag and Field Grade officers. The closest units today would be Russian VDV/Airborne forces. I don't think they did well in Ukraine though. The Germans have their Wiesel. The Army just lost its M10 Booker. Vertical envelopment with some ground mobility and firepower can be a winner.
The operational commander will be whatever geolocated Combatant Commander (COCOM) they are in. In the Middle East it is Central Command, in the east Asian theater it is INDOPACOM. They will determine where and how they will employ their forces....not the Commandant. The Commandants role is to provide trained equipped Marines to the COCOM commanders when needed. In other words, COCOM's fight the wars, the heads of the Services (Joint Chiefs) provide them with the forces to do so.
“This iteration of the Balikatan bilateral exercise between the U.S. and the Philippines is being held from Apr. 21 to May 9, 2025, seeing the participation of about 9,000 American and 5,000 Philippine military personnel, with nearly all types of aerial, land, naval, amphibious tactical and strategic platforms.
The Philippine military has identified other components of the exercise, including a mock allied counter-attack against an enemy attack on an island, using artillery barrage and standoff missile fires to sink a mock enemy ship, joint navy sails around the disputed South China Sea, and aerial combat surveillance. While the contested region has not been identified, the area could be assumed to be the Scarborough Shoal, where China and the Philippines contest overlapping claims.
“During Balikatan 25, U.S. and Philippine Marines will work “shoulder-to-shoulder” to enhance tactics, techniques, and procedures,” said the USMC.”
Well, what a revolting development this is! The MLR is a failure in strategic thinking by two narrow minded USMC Commandants. In the pivot to the CCP threat, instead of establishing a requirement for a flexible, adaptable and mobile quick reaction global force, we reorganized the Marine Corps for the MLR.
The Marine Corps has now placed it bets on a future where Marines hide on small islands and wait for enemy naval vehicles to sail into the radar of a shortrange anti-ship missile. The US Army recently announced they are going to drop the JLTV program that the Marine Corps plans on mounting their anti-ship missiles. How stupid is the idea the Marine Corps is going to take on an anti-ship mission.
The basis of the problem is the US Navy stopped building and maintaining amphibious ships and MPS squadrons. Consequently, the Navy has denied a global rapid reaction force to the strategic mobility capabilities of the US Joint Force. BTW this nation’s military strategic mobility is something the CCP fears.
The General Burger should have stood tall in front of the SECDEF, SECNAV and Congress and stated the US Marine Corps fills a global strategic mobility hole in all of the Combatant Commanders War Plans. Instead, he bowed to the political correctness of senior leadership of the DOD. Where was the General Vandergrift “bent knee speech”?
The USAF, with their distributed operations and US Army with the MDTF figured out the best way for their service to support the deterrence against the CCP. FD2030 is a strategic blunter because the General Berger and Smith betrayed their amphibious roots due to their lack of courage and failure to put the US Navy on report to Congress.
Sounds like retired "Marines" working in the defense industry conned some retiring "Marines" at Quantico and HQMC to sell snake oil to clueless "Marine" general officers.
As much as the range and capabilities of the SM-6 fundamentally change the utility of units equipped with it, a land attack optimized version of the weapon would greatly expand the target sets and engagement reach of the core system while still remaining possible to retain most of its original anti-air role. A ballistic rocket version could reach out to 1200km, making strikes all along the coast of the PRC from Luzon or similar basing options that are likely to become available in a protracted war over Taiwan possible, with a penetrating 270.0kg warhead it could plunge through a couple dozen feet of reinforced cover or the interior decks of a warship and detonate the contents of the bunker or magazine with its precision and the potential to out maneuver interceptors launched against it. Future versions could employ rocket scramjet propulsion to put the range out to 2000km from the existing launcher system at a fraction of the cost of conventional prompt strike hypersonic missile, the designing of the SAPHE warhead could factor in a nuclear version of the same, recycling the cancelled designations SM-4 and SM-5N in the process. Simplified and much less expensive guidance systems also could boost the numbers of weapons in the arsenal.
A Corps without a mission....who needs it. "Today SecNav Phelan and I announce that the Marine Corps unable to meet its Title X statutory mandates, and due to the lack of amphibious lift support to be found anytime in the next decade, no longer have a relevant mission. The DOD can save a strong $38 Billion annually by reducing the Corps to a largely ceremonial role here in Washington DC> America doesn't need a Corps but wants one and we feel that the traditional Tuesday and Friday evening parades from Memorial Day to Labor are sufficient to meet the public demand. Of course the "Presidents Own" will continue to perform from time to time as POTUS requests.!" From the desk fo the SecDef.
When does the light go on at HQMC, you're going in the wrong direction. You need a course correction.
Sadly based on the results thus far, it does not seem likely that the SecNav is going to do much other than answer calls at 0130 in the morning from POTUS asking where the ships are. The senior flag officers of the Navy and Marine Corps have worked hard to put the nation in a precarious position regards sea power and force projection. Pity we can't reward them with a hardy hand shake and nice pension and send them down the Potomac to retirement homes.
All those whose heads have not been inserted into dark, remote places have known, for a long time, what a foolish exercise this has been. Marines sitting on the sidelines, sucking their thumbs is not a good look for our once proud, competent Corps. Appealing to common sense doesn’t work with those people, maybe ridicule will. Semper Fi
As Don Whisnant says, how long until the Corps goes the way of the DoDo? I am thinking not long until the Fraud Waste and Abuse gang decide to cash the Corps out. Was just looking at how long we had 2 super carriers off of Yemen, where it could have been 2 LHAs with F-35Bs (16) per ship and 1 ARG (3 ship amphibious ready group) and an MEU to hit the Houties when they first started to throw missiles at ships. That port the Iran uses to send the missiles and components to looked like an ideal target for a MAGTF. We also don’t really have any way to help folks during a disaster occurrence anymore. We have no longer have a mission, whether it is Precision strikes, deterrence, or rescue. We just don’t have the ships or equipment called for under Title X statutes to do this now.
WOW, talk about being irrelevant. This takes the cake. CMC Smith, the handwriting is on the wall: its time to abandon this fiasco and do what we are supposed to do: be a combined arms naval expeditionary force.
How long before someone in the Senate or Congress asks "Why do we need a Marine Corps?"
Don-
With respect, Congress appears to still be in love with the USMC. Just watch past and recent testimony. Read what our elected officials write and sign their name to.
For instance, in a letter dated 15 May 2023 and signed by 16 members, Congress gave a full throated endorsement of Force Design.
The full letter is attached, but states, “The Marine Corps continues to lead the Joint Force in Service-level modernization and redesign.
Last year, we detailed the urgent need to accelerate from sustained land-based operations to maritime campaigns and from non-state actors to peer competitors of China and Russia. This shift imposes a necessity to fully fund Marine Corps force design, talent management, and installations and logistics efforts to keep pace with critical and evolving strategic ends.”
We come to CP and read about meetings with elected officials and actions that WILL occur. We just don’t see ANY results.
The members of Chowder II are legends of our Corps. I want to believe what they say. However it has been almost 5 years since they rallied us to oppose Force Design and I feel like they have lost all momentum.
Please show me I am wrong. What have all of these collective actions won us? Yes, there have been thousands of posts and hundreds of thousands of views. . . yet no apparent change.
Why doesn’t Congress seem to agree with Chowder II? If they do, why don’t they publicly say so?
This whole thing frustrates me (all of us).
https://www.kaine.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/51523lettertosenateappropriatorsonmarinecorpsforcedesign.pdf
Unfortunately, the Marine Corps "leadership" is as adept at lying to Congress as Congressmen are adept at lying to us.
Wow, I had not seen that letter endorsing Force Design, and it explains (to me) why congress has been so supportive of the concept and subsequent implementation.
I agree with your comment about Chowder II and others I respect that oppose Force Design, yet nothing has changed.
Well written comment.
There are a few retired/reserve/former Marines in Congress, both seated and on staff. Most have supported FD.
Cfrog- I would argue all Marine members support FD. Senator Sullivan asks good questions, but has not said he is against it.
This is my point! What do they see that we don’t? Why are the collective efforts of this group and Chowder II not making a difference? If they are, please share and encourage the continued fight.
Senator Sullivan is something of an outlier. This is an OpEd from 3 years ago signed by 7 Marine Veterans serving in Congress. 5 are still serving and I haven't seen anything to indicate they've backed away from support of FD 2030: https://moulton.house.gov/news/op-ed/op-ed-send-marines-modernization
What do they see that we don't? Good question. The answer is "nothing". It's the response, the critical analysis, or deliberate credulity in the presentation of FD(2030) that is different. I mean, what did the Chiefs see that the Eagles didn't? Nothing. It's what they did / didn't do with what they saw. This is as much a battle of branding and narratives (and politics) as it is a battle of logic and reason. More so.
The collective efforts of the group make a difference, just not in the "Now!" timeframe. "The plan is nothing, planning is everything" is where we are. Sowing the seeds for the gradual reversion to the mean. FD will probably never go away as a brand. I will not be surprised when we are looking at the restitution of a modernized holistic Combined Arms Marine Corps, only to be told "this is what we meant all along". Maybe not, but it has a decent probability as an outcome.
Thanks, Cfrog. As I said in an earlier post, I have been watching this all from the beginning of CP.
Your responses and comments always seem balanced and you call balls and strikes as you see them. You don’t just respond, you deliberately converse.
I appreciate you.
We need to contact these five representatives and explain that all is not well, for FD. They need to understand what has been lost by going forward with FD.
They know. They've been exposed to the concerns. The proponency for FD2030 remains strong with them.
“My rifle and myself know that what counts in this war is not the rounds we fire, the noise of our burst, nor the smoke we make. We know that it is the hits that count. We will hit….”
Has Chowder II hit? Anything?
We certainly don't need the current crop of general officers.
They will be replaced with like-minded individuals.
For them, lying is a virtue
It genuinely appears the other services are keeping their mouths shut about the FD fiasco, the plan was never widely endorsed and the development of it has gone from bad to worse over the last six years as the details of what is transpiring become increasingly disturbing.
A global cordon defense requires at its core the ability to quickly land well equipped ground troops, the Marine Corps is the only realistic force structure to achieve that end. Airborne and light infantry, bombers, submarines, and aircraft carriers all have limits as to what they can realistically do, and the malign forces of the world know that. It does not need to be a recipe for reckless adventures in foreign lands, its most valuable contribution is the threat that it can take the field and vanquish the fifedoms of the bad people of the world.
Airmobile armored regiments launched from air base carriers represents the optimal conventional deterrence force that would make rapid expeditionary operations successful, and as outlandish as many of you might think that to be, it not only can work but the technology behind will pay for it all.
Tom, are you familiar with the book/concept of: Air-Mech-Strike: 3- Dimensional Phalanx? Its a concept of air mobile armored units which can leap behind enemy lines. The book came out in the early 2000s by some Army Flag and Field Grade officers. The closest units today would be Russian VDV/Airborne forces. I don't think they did well in Ukraine though. The Germans have their Wiesel. The Army just lost its M10 Booker. Vertical envelopment with some ground mobility and firepower can be a winner.
What functional commander will have operational control of the Marine Littoral Regiment (or task organized elements) when employed?
The operational commander will be whatever geolocated Combatant Commander (COCOM) they are in. In the Middle East it is Central Command, in the east Asian theater it is INDOPACOM. They will determine where and how they will employ their forces....not the Commandant. The Commandants role is to provide trained equipped Marines to the COCOM commanders when needed. In other words, COCOM's fight the wars, the heads of the Services (Joint Chiefs) provide them with the forces to do so.
https://www.defense.gov/About/Combatant-Commands/
Marines are successfully deterring future POM investment.
Balikatan 25 - News Release
“This iteration of the Balikatan bilateral exercise between the U.S. and the Philippines is being held from Apr. 21 to May 9, 2025, seeing the participation of about 9,000 American and 5,000 Philippine military personnel, with nearly all types of aerial, land, naval, amphibious tactical and strategic platforms.
The Philippine military has identified other components of the exercise, including a mock allied counter-attack against an enemy attack on an island, using artillery barrage and standoff missile fires to sink a mock enemy ship, joint navy sails around the disputed South China Sea, and aerial combat surveillance. While the contested region has not been identified, the area could be assumed to be the Scarborough Shoal, where China and the Philippines contest overlapping claims.
“During Balikatan 25, U.S. and Philippine Marines will work “shoulder-to-shoulder” to enhance tactics, techniques, and procedures,” said the USMC.”
Well, what a revolting development this is! The MLR is a failure in strategic thinking by two narrow minded USMC Commandants. In the pivot to the CCP threat, instead of establishing a requirement for a flexible, adaptable and mobile quick reaction global force, we reorganized the Marine Corps for the MLR.
The Marine Corps has now placed it bets on a future where Marines hide on small islands and wait for enemy naval vehicles to sail into the radar of a shortrange anti-ship missile. The US Army recently announced they are going to drop the JLTV program that the Marine Corps plans on mounting their anti-ship missiles. How stupid is the idea the Marine Corps is going to take on an anti-ship mission.
https://breakingdefense.com/2025/05/marines-committed-to-jltv-despite-army-divestment-expected-price-increase-says-service-chief/
The basis of the problem is the US Navy stopped building and maintaining amphibious ships and MPS squadrons. Consequently, the Navy has denied a global rapid reaction force to the strategic mobility capabilities of the US Joint Force. BTW this nation’s military strategic mobility is something the CCP fears.
The General Burger should have stood tall in front of the SECDEF, SECNAV and Congress and stated the US Marine Corps fills a global strategic mobility hole in all of the Combatant Commanders War Plans. Instead, he bowed to the political correctness of senior leadership of the DOD. Where was the General Vandergrift “bent knee speech”?
The USAF, with their distributed operations and US Army with the MDTF figured out the best way for their service to support the deterrence against the CCP. FD2030 is a strategic blunter because the General Berger and Smith betrayed their amphibious roots due to their lack of courage and failure to put the US Navy on report to Congress.
Sounds like retired "Marines" working in the defense industry conned some retiring "Marines" at Quantico and HQMC to sell snake oil to clueless "Marine" general officers.
https://open.substack.com/pub/cpldanusmcret764175/p/accountability?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=ohc7t
Accountability what happened to the Marine Corps
As much as the range and capabilities of the SM-6 fundamentally change the utility of units equipped with it, a land attack optimized version of the weapon would greatly expand the target sets and engagement reach of the core system while still remaining possible to retain most of its original anti-air role. A ballistic rocket version could reach out to 1200km, making strikes all along the coast of the PRC from Luzon or similar basing options that are likely to become available in a protracted war over Taiwan possible, with a penetrating 270.0kg warhead it could plunge through a couple dozen feet of reinforced cover or the interior decks of a warship and detonate the contents of the bunker or magazine with its precision and the potential to out maneuver interceptors launched against it. Future versions could employ rocket scramjet propulsion to put the range out to 2000km from the existing launcher system at a fraction of the cost of conventional prompt strike hypersonic missile, the designing of the SAPHE warhead could factor in a nuclear version of the same, recycling the cancelled designations SM-4 and SM-5N in the process. Simplified and much less expensive guidance systems also could boost the numbers of weapons in the arsenal.