Compass Points - Vision 2035
Seven kindling twigs
Compass Points - Vision 2035
Seven kindling twigs
September 25, 2023
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The Marine Corps Mountain Warfare Training Center at Bridgeport California teaches a variety of field craft and survival skills. While everything the training center teaches in their summer and winter courses is valuable, one of the most valuable skills is how to build a fire. When survival depends on heat, a big, blazing fire is needed. To build a big, blazing fire, first start small. Start with twigs. Start with less than twigs. Build a wispy bird’s nest that even a tiny spark can ignite. The heavier sticks and logs come later. First, start small.
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With a new Commandant now officially confirmed, the Marine Corps has the opportunity to start a blaze of discussion, review, and creation that could lead the Marine Corps in a new direction, toward a brighter future. Even now, some of the top minds in the Marine Corps are assembling thoughts and ideas about the way ahead. It will take the heavier sticks and logs from the integrated and comprehensive Marine Corps Combat Development process to complete the bonfire, but for now, across the broad Marine community everyone should contribute to the discussion with thoughts, ideas, and suggestions.
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To spark discussion, Compass Points offers seven kindling twigs for consideration:
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1. Vision 2035
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Vision 2035 is a roadmap for a better way forward. It provides the conceptual foundation for the development of supporting concepts and the identification and fielding of specific capabilities the Marine Corps requires to meet its Title X and Goldwater-Nichols responsibilities, congressional intent, and the global challenges of the twenty-first century. It restores infantry and combined arms as the central components of Marine Corps operations. It ensures the Marine Corps remains ready, relevant, and capable of responding to the crises and contingency requirements of all combatant commanders, not just some.
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The National Interest - 12/16/2022
Vision 2035: Global Response in the Age of Precision Munitions
By Charles Krulak and Anthony Zinni
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/vision-2035-global-response-age-precision-munitions-205995
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2. Compass Points - Check the Vitals - July 8, 2023
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The ugly truth is the Navy and Marine Corps team that was always just over the horizon ready to respond when the nation called is no longer able to respond quickly and effectively to worldwide threats. -- CP
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Marine Times (marinecorpstimes.com) 07/07/2023
How capable is today’s Marine Corps to answer a 9-1-1 call? Not very
By Gen. James Conway (retired) and Gen. Anthony Zinni (retired)
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3. Compass Points - The Challenge - July 12 2023
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It all begins by responding to the pacing challenge of China, not by putting Marines on defense, but by keeping Marines on offense. -- CP
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. . . when a crisis erupts, we count on our Marines to be ready for anything — and to leap into action.
-- Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin
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4. Compass Points - Marines Need Logistics - May 15, 2023
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When Marines go ashore, they require maneuver, fire support, and sustainment. This creates the operational reach dilemma: No matter how you plan to support distributed forces, you require more assets to solve the problem, not fewer.
Real Clear Defense (realcleardefense.com) 05/13/2023
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The Radical Redesign and Restructuring of the United States Marine Corps
By Christopher Owens
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Marine Corps Gazette (mca-marines.org) December 2022
Sustaining Stand-in Forces
Evaluating the logistical supportability for Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations
By Maj Daniel Katzman
. . . In a modern, high-end conflict, EABO is not logistically supportable given the need to persist and operate within the enemy’s weapons engagement zone at a significant distance from friendly support bases. EABs used for fires in support of sea control or forward arming and refueling points (FARP) provide the required sustainment scope to appreciate the logistics dilemma. When these EABs operate simultaneously to realize operations at scale, a logistics distribution challenge arises that is greater than the Marine Corps or joint force can support.
https://mca-marines.org/wp-content/uploads/Sustaining-Stand-in-Forces.pdf
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5. Chase Award - "Thinking Bigger" by Colonel Seth Milstein
Marine Corps Gazette
2023 MajGen Harold W. Chase Prize Essay Contest: First Place
Thinking Bigger
By Colonel Seth Milstein
Like a latter-day Schlieffen Plan, the answer is not committing to a single course of action that crams a significant fraction of the Marine Corps’ operating forces into the beaten zone of a massive amount of PRC firepower. Parking limited and relatively immobile combat power in isolated and predictable locations cedes the initiative and offers plenty of opportunity for enemy target practice. At the same time, retrenching from the rest of the globe offers a vacuum for the pacing threat and ambitious adversary to fill. Worst of all, this approach wastes a historic Marine Corps strength: excellence at expeditionary operations.
https://mca-marines.org/blog/gazette/thinking-bigger/
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6. Compass Points - First, Define the Problem - July 13, 2023
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It is likely history will be just as cruel to the futuristic fantasies that attempted to create a neo-Maginot Line of Marine units in the Pacific. The source of all such misguided solutions may be failing to understand the problem. It is critical first to make sure the problem is well defined, well examined, and well understood. -- CP
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The National Interest (nationalinterest.org) 12/13/2022
Force Design 2030 Is Trying to Solve the Wrong Problem
The most valuable contribution the Marine Corps could make in preparing for future conflict is to focus its force design efforts on preserving or restoring the ability to maneuver in the age of precision weapons rather than on developing capabilities that are already core competencies of other services.
By John F. Schmitt
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/force-design-2030-trying-solve-wrong-problem-205991?page=0%2C1
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7. Compass Points - Inside the WEZ - August 10, 2023
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What the Marine Corps and the Nation need now is a Corps of Marines updated with the most advanced weapons and technologies that help the Corps of today be the offense focused, combined arms, maneuver warfare, ready, relevant, and capable Corps of tomorrow. -- CP
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It is the smallest twigs that help start a fire. Compass Points salutes all those on active duty today and those no longer on active duty helping to build the bonfire of discussion, review, and creation that will lead to a stronger Marine Corps.
My favorite saying: “Want a new idea, read an old book”
A previous Marine Corps Compass Point article is entitled “Courage”. I hope the new Commandant has the courage to review the “Island Chain Strategy” and press the reset button on the 2030 Design. The first step in that review is for the Commandant and his planners to read “England in the Seven Years’ War” by Julian S. Corbett published in 1907. (I should warn that it is two volumes, and in a day and age of sound bites and internet quick searches, a two volume read might be too much for senior military planning officers.)
The Seven Years War is billed as the first “global war” with England and France as the two main belligerents. England had the better and larger Navy and France had the much larger Army on the European mainland. England had invested in their Navy to protect their colonial interests and France had not. At the time, Sir William Pitt was a longtime advocate arguing the best way to deal with France in war is with the English Navy and pressuring France’s colonial possessions.
The Seven Years’ War started badly for England with losses and confusion. England formed a ministry to deal with the war and Pitt was given the responsibility to run it. Pitt knew that the best way to win a war is with a strong offensive strategy. However, he also recognized England’s strategic strengths and limitations. Pitt recognizing that England’s war needed to be a national war and would also be a war at sea. He initially reequipped and reorganized England’s Navy and took steps to ensure that the Naval Leadership was aggressive and possessed “dash and enterprise”.
England conducted amphibious raids and blockades on the French mainland to tie up the French Army and support Frederick the Great of Prussia, his ally. Pitt also provided financial aid and military resources to support Prussia. He launched expeditions against France’s colonies in America, West Indies, Philippines and coastal Africa gaining colonies and influence at France’s expense.
The War ended with the 1763 Treaty of Paris and the exchange of capture territories with England keeping considerable gains.
One of the concerns for the great power competition and possible peer-on-peer conflict with China’s CCP is their anti-access/area denial capabilities. I fear that this concern has too much influence on the Marine 2030 Design. However, technology moves quickly these days and that was four plus years ago. What history teaches us is for every advantageous technology innovation there is another innovation developed as a counter. The technology of missile defense has improved dramatically with systems like the US Army’s Patriot based “Iron Dome”. The US Navy has been busy with the recent announcement of their new shipboard Electronic Warfare System SEWIP (Block III). “The battle to control the electromagnetic battlefield is jumping into warp speed and these capabilities are especially important for protecting warships against many types of threats, from ever more advanced anti-ship missiles to swarms of drones. https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/41829/this-is-what-the-navys-new-shipboard-electronic-warfare-system-can-actually-do
The CCP strategy is focused on the global SLOCs because they are dependent on imports. CCP recognizes two strategic imperatives: They must keep their population working and they must keep their people fed.
The first step in a reset is the recognition that a proper strategy is a global strategy and remembering that the US Navy and US Marine Corps are strategically mobile. The strategy also needs to be offensively minded in order to grab the initiative in the event of a global war. A good Navy and Marine strategy can and should be a great help with deterrence in the great power competition. The US Navy also needs to understand the LOAC Blockade Laws. They also need to hold the appropriate training exercises for blockades and amphibious raids vis figuring out how to hide and sustain small Marine units armed with anti-ship missiles on Pacific Islands. Semper Fi