Compass Points - The Future
The Future of the US Marine Corps
Compass Points - The Future
The Future of the US Marine Corps
July 7, 2026
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As the United States wraps up the 250th anniversary celebrations, the next 250 years begin. For the Marine Corps, it is a good time to take stock of where the Corps is today and what path it should take going forward.
Over the last year, the US has deployed a massive naval fleet to the Middle East as part of the ongoing conflict with Iran. The US is also maintaining another fleet in the Caribbean. US Marine crisis response, air, ground, logistic forces are part of both fleets.
In the Caribbean, a Navy-Marine Corps Amphibious Ready Group (ARG) with an embarked Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) has been part of the Caribbean fleet for months. The Navy-Marine ARG MEU participated in Operation Absolute Resolve in January 2026. Marines were still in the Caribbean when Venezuela was struck by two devastating earthquakes on June 24, 2026.
Now, in the Caribbean, there are reports that Cuba is suffering from its third nationwide power outage. If the Cuban government collapses, US Marines may be called on for a variety of peace keeping missions.
For decades the US has been able to rely on the Marines to arrive at any crisis to deter, assist, rescue, strike, and fight. What is the future of the Marine Corps? Is the future global crisis response or is it some other more narrow mission in only one region?
Nearly seven years ago the Marine Corps began to struggle with what the Marine Corps of the future should be. Some senior Marine leaders advocated for less focus on combined arms, global crisis response, and a more narrow focus on small sensor and missile units off the coast of China.
It was not long after the introduction of the sensor and missile unit plan that experienced Marines began to subject the plan to a thorough study. One of the first Marines to step forward publicly with an insightful review of the unexpected plan, was former Secretary of the Navy, Jim Webb. Serving as a Marine infantry officer in Vietnam, Webb was honored for his heroism under fire. Later, as an author, US Senator, or Presidential candidate, Jim Webb never backed away from controversy.
As the controversy over the future of the Marine Corps began in 2020, The National Interest published, Webb’s comprehensive review, “The Future of the U.S. Marine Corps.”
In his article, Webb was the first to publicly warn that the sensor and missile plan was a existential threat to the Marine Corps’ ability to serve the Nation both as an always ready crisis response force. and as a combined arms ground combat force.
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The convergence of these two realities is at the center of a growing unease with the implications of the recent announcement by Gen. David Berger, the new Commandant of the Marine Corps, that the Corps will move from operational concepts in the Middle East and will re-engage in Pacific Asia. The decision to shift priorities back to this region comes as no surprise to those who closely follow national security issues since by now there is little argument that the United States should never have disengaged from Pacific Asia in the first place. What is surprising is that the new Commandant should be using a predictable re-emphasis on East Asia to propose changing the fundamental force structure and operational doctrines of the Marine Corps.
Interestingly, when citing his philosophical inspiration at the outset of his proposal, General Berger chose to ignore two centuries of innovative and ground-breaking role models who guided the Marine Corps through some of its most difficult challenges. The giants of the past—John LeJeune, Arthur Vandegrift, Clifton Cates, Robert Barrow and Al Gray, just for starters—were passed over, in favor of a quote from a professor at the Harvard Business School who never served. Many Marines, past and present, view this gesture as a symbolic putdown of the Corps’ respected leadership methods and the historic results they have obtained.
Much more important is the potentially irreversible content of the proposal itself. If authorized, appropriated and put into place, this plan would eliminate many of the Marine Corps’ key capabilities. It could permanently reduce the long-standing mission of global readiness that for more than a century has been the essential reason for its existence as a separate service. Its long-term impact would undo the value of the Marine Corps as the one-stop guarantor of a homogeneous tactical readiness that can “go anywhere, fight anybody, and win.” And after the centuries it took to establish the Marine Corps as a fully separate military service, it could reduce its present role by making it again subordinate to the funding and operational requirements of the Navy.
— Jim Webb, “The Future of the U.S. Marine Corps”
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In his article, Webb reviews how the Marine Corps has been used over the most recent decades both as an always ready crisis response force and as a substantial and sustained ground combat force.
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The most important evolution of the Marine Corps in our national security posture has been as an immediately deployable, fully capable expeditionary force, with an included mission of amphibious assault. And this has usually required “sustained land operations.”
When North Korea suddenly attacked South Korea in June 25, 1950, Gen. Douglas MacArthur asked immediately for the Marines, not simply because they had amphibious capabilities but because he knew that whatever it took, they would be ready. By September 15 the Marines had called up thousands of World War II veterans, formed an invasion force, deployed aboard ship, crossed the Pacific and landed at Inchon. The Inchon landing was one of the most technically difficult maneuvers in American history, subject to fluctuating sea tides and well behind enemy lines. Inchon was followed by more than two years of sustained land operations, including the most memorable engagement of the Korean War, the First Marine Division’s breakout from the Chosin Reservoir against vastly superior odds after the Chinese army crossed the Yalu River and surrounded them.
During and after the Korean War, Marine Corps innovation developed and perfected techniques of close air support and helicopter doctrine. During the late 1950s its leadership overcame intense opposition in order to retain fixed-wing aircraft so that the Corps could continue to field a fully capable, homogeneous force that could deploy immediately whenever called upon to do so, with every necessary combat component intact. This effort paid off in Vietnam with the quality of Marine Corps close-air support, a skill perfected only by continuous air-ground training.
In Vietnam the Corps fielded two full divisions and part of a third in sustained land operations, engaging a determined enemy for six years of hard combat that took the lives of fourteen thousand Marines and brought more than one hundred thousand total casualties. In the 1980’s they operated for more than a year in Beirut, Lebanon. They were among the first on the ground during Desert Storm, and again in Afghanistan and then again in Iraq. Such sustained operations as a highly integrated combat force, available to the country’s leadership on demand, has become an inseparable part of the modern Marine Corps tradition.
— Jim Webb, “The Future of the U.S. Marine Corps”
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Webb concludes by warning that any idea that the Marine Corps can divest proven combined arms capabilities to focus on a narrow mission in only one region of the world is not supported by history.
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History tells us that in the future there will be other engagements in other places, sometimes littoral, sometimes not. If so, the Marine Corps that will be called upon to respond will be bringing with them only the weapon systems, logistics, technologies and people that our top leaders are now deciding to fund and to build and to train.
What will such a commitment look like? Where will it be? Will it involve “sustained land operations” rather than a “one and done” smack-down launched and quickly recovered by Navy ships? What kind of notice will our Marines have before being sent into harm’s way? What will be the size of that commitment—a company, a battalion, a regiment, perhaps a division—and over what expanse? Will it be urban or rural, or maybe in the mountains? How long will it last? Will there be adequate helicopter and other assets to insert, relocate, provide fire support, resupply and sustain the Marines, weapons systems, and logistical necessities required even to begin such an unanticipated call to duty?
With such drastic “divestments” as those now proposed, will there be enough infantry Marines in the pipeline to replace and sustain the casualty flow and weapons replacements from battalions that are committed, not simply on the first day or the first week but over a much longer period, perhaps under conditions where our aviation assets and other mechanical systems are shot down, or crash, or wear out from such environmental erosions as heat, ice, sand, clay dust, monsoon rains, or the simple wear-and-tear of constant operations?
Technology can increase effectiveness on a battlefield but it cannot replace people or equipment. This is why these recent proposals should be examined with the utmost scrutiny. And it is for these reasons that our country needs a Marine Corps that has every conventional capability inside its proven tradition of “good to go” readiness.
— Jim Webb, “The Future of the U.S. Marine Corps”
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Compass Points salutes Jim Webb for his long decades of service to Country and Corps. As the Marine Corps turns to preparing for the next 250 years, Marine leaders would do well to tap the wisdom and experience of Marines like author and statesman, Jim Webb.
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The National Interest - 05/08/2020
The Future of the U.S. Marine Corps
By: Jim Webb
Former Senator and Secretary of the Navy Jim Webb served as a Marine infantry officer in Vietnam, where he was wounded twice and awarded the Navy Cross for “extraordinary heroism.” He currently serves as the inaugural Distinguished Fellow at Notre Dame’s International Security Center.
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/future-us-marine-corps-152606?amp
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For the last several years, I have been a regular reader of Compass Points and multiple other publications and sources that have both critiqued and defended "Force Design 2030" (and now "Force Design"). I suspect this is common for those of us who were privileged to serve for decades as Marines. While I believe the criticism of Force Design is merited, I am not certain that all those offering their critiques have been completely forthright or fairly introspective.
To say that Force Design was hastily conceived and poorly tested is true. More importantly, its implementation strategy (divest to invest) accepted an inordinate level of both institutional and national risk. Divesting capabilities and capacities associated with the Marine Corps' primary, unique role in global crisis response to invest in an unproven, single theater-focused concept -- one arguably duplicative of other service concepts, and supported by untested, "emerging" technologies -- was imprudent.
But one should closely examine the environment from which Force Design emerged. At the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, we had around 63 L-class amphibious ships. By 2019, we had 34. The maintenance readiness rates of our amphibious ships over that span atrophied even more rapidly than the number of ships. And Maritime Prepositioned Ship (MPS) Squadrons had been reduced from three to two.
We may have had the best-equipped, most capable Marine Air Ground Task Forces (MAGTF) in history, but without the dedicated strategic and operational lift needed to rapidly respond, and the associated systems needed to defend that lift, it is challenging, if not impossible, to serve effectively as the nation's global crisis response force. The host nation permissions required to support prepositioned, land-based special purpose MAGTFs incur similar limitations as those associated with Force Design units.
In short, the 38th Commandant and Force Design did not cause the atrophy of the amphibious fleet. Abandoning the long-accepted Operational Plan rationale for the amphibious ship floor has had no appreciable impact relative to the reduction experienced over the previous three decades. During that time, the Marine Corps had eight Commandants, two Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, multiple geographic commanders, a few cabinet secretaries (including a Secretary of Defense), a National Security Advisor, and several sitting Members of Congress (both in the House and the Senate). Even with all of this representation, how effective were we in preserving the strategic and operational lift upon which the MAGTF relies to perform its role in global crisis response?
Having offered a critique of both Force Design and many of its critics, I also humbly acknowledge my own failing to effectively defend the MAGTF and its vital role in our nation's security. For a brief period, I served as the 37th Commandant's senior liaison to Congress. As has historically been the case, the Navy had little interest in advocating for amphibious or maritime prepositioned ships. They view this as a Marine Corps responsibility, and worse, as a competitor to platforms upon which they place more value. It was not uncommon for some senior Navy officers to speak about the vulnerability of amphibious ships in the anti-access/are denial (A2AD) environment without pointing out that other capital ships experience similar vulnerabilities without proper augmentation, enhanced technology, and applicable tactics.
Within Congress itself, Member discussions surrounding social initiatives consumed significantly more time than those associated with specific warfighting capabilities. The professional staff of the Senate Armed Services Committee was convinced that amphibious ships could not be defended in the western Pacific, and they were fixated on the close fight in the first island chain. They had a unique interest in evolving a lightning carrier concept. Despite a parade of our most capable senior officers explaining in great detail the importance of responsive, forward-deployed Amphibious Ready Groups with Marine Expeditionary Units (ARG-MEUs), made scalable by land- and sea-based prepositioned assets, these staffers continued to believe that the MAGTF was synonymous with a World War II-era amphibious assault.
I can assure you that both the Members of the Congressional armed services committees and their staffs were thoroughly familiarized with the many arguments Compass Points and others have been arguing in the last several years. They simply did not resonate, and they had not resonated for years. This is the environment the 38th Commandant inherited.
While I do not believe Force Design is the answer, I do believe that it is serving a unique and valuable purpose. It has brought about the richest discussions concerning Marine Corps roles and concepts since those associated with maneuver warfare. It has mobilized many of our Corps' greatest intellects from all eras (with the notable and unfortunate exception of those in the late 2010s). Most importantly, this debate has promoted greater Congressional and public attention to what the Marine Corps does and what is required for the Corps to do it effectively.
The confluence of current events is also somewhat fortuitous, as the demand for regional crisis response forces has rarely been higher. The public should be made aware of the increased risk in the Pacific when the 31st MEU is deployed out of area. It should also be made aware of the gap U.S. Southern Command experiences when it loses an ARG-MEU and relies instead on a land-based SPMAGTF. Perhaps most importantly, it should be made aware of the consequences of not responding to regional crises.
Finally, and as several senior leaders have noted, it is time to take the lessons of the last decade, apply them to the combat development process, create a newly revised operational concept, and thoroughly vet and test it. This concept should begin with the right assumptions concerning the Marine Corps' unique roles and specifically address the current and emerging technical challenges to executing those roles.
The versatility of an institution is often revealed in how fast it can adapt or reverse a mistake. The Corps set out on a flawed path and stubbornly doubles down on sticking to a course of action that amounts to Lemmings throw ing themselves off of cliffs. Flawed assumptions led to false conclusions. That sort of behavior is more than ignorance and arrogance. It is not tenacity. It is a form of intellectual idiocy. The leadership of the last seven years just kept digging.
The problem now is the cost and time to recreate and modernize would require resources the Corps is not likely to get, funding Congress will not appropriate and the leadership is not capable of designing. Hence, the Light Brigade continues to advance up the valley.
The only way to salvage this requires a wholesale leadership change. The Corps is now in its 7th year of virtual irrelevance and it is only getting worse.
My attention now turns to the Secretary of the Navy and Secretary of War. Are they turning a blind eye to the pending disaster? Are there too many other problems or have they just concluded that they’ll just let it destroy itself?
Strange bedfellows in this game. America First isolationists will welcome our inability to operate on a global scale. The ultra liberals will welcome the same. Impotence is welcomed. The Army, Navy and Air Force all have their spending priorities and don’t want a dime spent on the Corps. They secretly cheer the Corps’ march into extinction. Allies see it as another US capability that no longer is a part of their own calculus. Just one more step back from the leadership roll the US no longer wants to exercise. Domestically, the culture warriors of the left have long despised a Corps focused on martial prowess, warrior ethos, self sacrificing discipline and merit. They will cheer its irrelevance.
This is the existential fight for the survival of the Corps.