Compass Points - Pixie Dust?
Compass Points - Pixie Dust?
Compass Points - Pixie Dust?
Army General Takes on Force Design
February 24, 2025
.
A very young Marine officer barely out of Officer Candidate School, stood up to ask a question.
The event took place as part of a Hoover Institution seminar on "Change and Continuity in War." The speaker was retired Army Lt General H.R. McMaster.
.
-------------------
-------------------
.
Change and Continuity in War | HISPBC w/ H.R. McMaster - Pt. 2
.
In this Q&A session, Gen. HR McMaster lays out how American strategic thinking has often been plagued by false assumptions. Americans tend to look forward – towards change – incorrectly predicting future conflicts will be different while ignoring the continuities of war across history. Similarly, politicians and policymakers often hold optimistic and inaccurate assumptions about our adversaries and their intentions, from Ho Chi Minh to Vladmir Putin, rather than taking them at their word. To successfully address these and other failures, the United States must first see adversaries as they are, not as we wish them to be, and then simultaneously maintain the will and capability to project sustained power rather than seek technological shortcuts or easy exits.
H.R. McMaster is a retired Lieutenant General in the United States Army, former National Security Advisor, and the Fouad and Michelle Ajami Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He is also the host of Battlegrounds: Vital Perspectives on Today’s Challenges and is a regular on GoodFellows, both produced by the Hoover Institution.
-- Hoover Institution
.
-------------------
-------------------
.
The newly minted Marine officer stood up and asked General McMaster a question about the Marine Corps.
.
-------------------
-------------------
.
I actually also just graduated from Marine Officer Candidate School on Saturday and while we were there, we were forbidden from asking about Force Design 2030 . . . . So I wanted to ask you, because it is a very controversial strategic document -- [yet] every former living commandant came out and criticized it . . . . so was interested to hear your thoughts on it.
-- Marine OCS Graduate
.
-------------------
-------------------
.
McMaster begins his view of the Marine Corps' Force Design by saying, "I think that that document is flawed, because it's based on unrealistic assumptions about the future of war."
An AI program summarizes some of McMaster's points.
.
-------------------
-------------------
.
. . . Force Design 2030 is criticized for being based on unrealistic assumptions about future war, emphasizing stand-off strikes over close combat. [1-10]
-- The reliance on future war being clean and cheaper is compared to past strategic bombing theories and dismissed as unrealistic. [1-17]
-- Effective military deterrence relies on capable Joint Forces across all domains, rather than relying solely on long-range capabilities. [1-22]
-- The Marine Corps' shift from close combat capabilities to long-range strategies overlooks the importance of close combat's evolving decisive role. [1-36]
-- lilys.ai
.
-------------------
-------------------
.
In his remarks about the Marine Corps' Force Design, McMaster explains that throughout modern military history, every decade and a half or so, some misguided military theorists claim they have found some "nifty" new way to change future wars and make them cheaper, cleaner, and above all turn them into war fought at a distance. The future warfare, these misguided theorists always predict, will finally end the kind of bloody, punishing infantry battles that have always been the greater part of war.
It comes down to only a single question, says McMaster, one fundamental assumption, will future wars lie in the realm of certainty or the realm of uncertainty?
Yes, powerful new technologies will always arise, but shortly after the arrival of some powerful new technology, brand new counters and defenses to the new technology will also be discovered. No matter the technology, it can never be true that in wars of the future, perfect knowledge will provide enough “pixie dust" to make ground combat obsolete. In the wars of the present and in wars of the future, uncertainty will always be pervasive.
The future of war will continue to exist in the realm of uncertainty and thus also in the realm of combined arms, ground combat. McMaster concludes his remarks about Force Design:
.
-------------------
-------------------
.
So I think the Marine Corps is putting itself at a severe disadvantage in close combat competency in future war. And that's going to really be painful for the Marine Corps to relearn what it needs to conduct combined arms operations in close contact with the enemy.
-- H.R. McMaster
.
-------------------
-------------------
.
When a knowledgeable outsider looks at the Marine Corps and sees an organization that has lost its "combat competency," it is a sad day and should be a jarring wake-up call for many senior military leaders, including the Secretary of Defense.
Future wars may well echo what has taken place today in the fighting in Ukraine. Instead of combined arms, ground combat being replaced by technology, combined arms, ground combat has been enhanced by technology and grown more important. There is no doubt the Marine Corps will be called upon to fight the combined arms, ground combat battles of the future. Will the Marine Corps be ready? With the help of the Commander-in-Chief, the Vice President, the Defense Secretary, and Congress, the Marine Corps must embrace a new focus on combined arms, ground combat, and then, when the next 9-1-1 call comes, the Marine Corps will be ready.
Compass Points salutes Lt General McMaster for his pointed, insightful, and collegial observations about the Marine Corps. General McMaster is correct, it is long past time for the Marine Corps to stop sniffing the pixie dust and get back to the future: global, technology enhanced, combined arms, Marine Air Ground Task Forces ready to arrive at the shore of any crisis, to deter, assist, and fight.
.
- - - - -
.
Hoover Institution
Change and Continuity in War | HISPBC w/ H.R. McMaster - Pt. 2
www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvGWb6TAsp8
.
- - - - -
.
AI Summary
Change and Continuity in War | HISPBC w/ H.R. McMaster - Pt. 2
I find the new officer's comment about being "forbidden to ask about FD 2030" to be shocking for our Corps. What else is "forbidden"? Instructors of future leaders should be able to answer questions like this--even the very challenging, difficult questions about the direction of the Corps. "Forbidden" could be interpreted that the leaders are unable, unwilling or unqualified to answer that question. That is unsat.
Forbidden to talk about…. Why would it be permitted because it is forbidden in the active duty force too.
I am conflicted and not sure if I should be surprised by a newly commissioned officer asking a question like this. Perhaps I should think this is a good thing. Perhaps I am showing my age. As a new, 21 year old Lieutenant I was focused in trying to become the best infantry platoon leader possible. The tactics, weapons, ranges, communications equipment, patrolling, anti tank barriers, how to call in artillery or CAS, how my platoon fit into the company, how to step up to be a Company Commander in extremis, physical fitness, USMC standards, the UCMJ and policy and regulations. That was my world. It seemed everything else was above my pay grade and I trusted that my leaders had the integrity to do the right things, the right way for the right reasons. Different times….