Compass Points - What Priority?
Marine Corps needs focus on the MAGTF
Compass Points - What Priority?
Marine Corps needs focus on the MAGTF
May 5, 2025
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Where is the focus of the Marine Corps?
What is the priority?
Artillery batteries must have a POF - Priority of Fires.
What is the Marine Corps' POF?
In the current Commandant's Planning guidance, be begins with extravagant language about the Marine Corps Force Design initiative:
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Force Design remains a righteous journey . . .
-- Marines CPG August 2024
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Although it is not clear what the Commandant means by "righteous journey," just a few sentences later, he removes all doubt about the Marine Corps' priority:
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Force Design remains our strategic priority and we cannot slow down.
-- Marines CPG August 2024
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Force Design is a controversial Marine Corps plan to focus on building a string of anti-ship missile sites off the coast of China. In nearly six years, not one operational Marine missile site off China's coast. In making anti-ship missiles the strategic priority, the Marine Corps has eliminated or eviscerated combined arms units, equipment, and capabilities including armor, air, artillery, infantry, engineering, snipers and more. When the Marine Corps started on its Force Design, "righteous journey" the Navy was immediately informed that the Marine Corps no longer needed so many amphibious ships.
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. . . Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. David Berger backed away from the two-MEB requirement in his initial Commandant’s Planning Guidance after he took command in July 2019. He noted that “we will no longer use a ‘2.0 MEB requirement’ as the foundation for our arguments regarding amphibious shipbuilding, to determine the requisite capacity of vehicles or other capabilities, or as pertains to the Maritime Prepositioning Force. We will no longer reference the 38-ship requirement memo from 2009, or the 2016 Force Structure Assessment, as the basis for our arguments and force structure justifications. … The global options for amphibs include many more options than simply LHAs, LPDs, and LSDs.” . . .
-- Megan Eckstein, Defense News
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The Navy must have been astounded back in 2019 when the Marine Corps said it would accept fewer than the long-standing requirement of 38 amphibious ships. Just the year before, the Marine Commandant General Neller had testified before Congress that the Marine Corps needed at least 38 amphibious ships. To meet the full worldwide demand from all the regional Combatant Commanders would require "upwards of 50."
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38 L-Class Amphibious warships are required to meet a 2.0 MEB Joint Forcible Entry requirement, and upwards of 50 would be needed to meet CCDR demand.
-- General Neller, Posture Statement, 7 March 2018 (p. 5)
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By changing the Marine Corps priority from worldwide crisis response to regional missile units, much has been lost. But that is what Marine leaders intended. They intentionally choose regional missile units over global crisis response.
Strangely, however, instead of celebrating the decline of Marine global crisis response capabilities, now Marine leaders are complaining. Recently, both the current Commandant Gen Eric Smith and the Acting Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jim Kilby told a crowd at the Modern Day Marine Exposition in Washington,DC, that the Marine Corps needs more amphibious ships.
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“A MEU embarked on a three-ship Amphibious Ready Group is the most versatile, flexible and lethal global response force the United States has to offer,” Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Eric Smith told the crowd here just hours before Kilby spoke. The ARG-MEU is “the most called for asset after the carrier strike groups… It brings with it the ability to strike from range and to return to the sea without the need for access, basing and overflight.”
-- Gen Eric Smith, Modern Marine Expo 2025
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What is the Marine Corps' current "strategic priority" Force Design missile units or global crisis response? If global crisis response is now going to be the Marine Corps' strategic priority, then Marine leaders need to stand up forthrightly and repudiate Force Design and clearly establish a new strategic priority for the Marine Corps -- no longer regional missile units, but once again global crisis response.
It is long past time for the Marine Corps to reject both the amphib mistake of 2019 and the misguided "righteous journey" of Force Design. With the help of the entire Marine community and Congress, the Marine Corps must embark on a new journey with a new priority: rebuilding, restoring, and enhancing the amphibious ships, and pre-positioning ships, as well as all the armor, artillery, air, infantry, engineering, snipers and more needed by America's global, always ready, 9-1-1 force, the US Marines!
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Breaking Defense - 05/02/2025
Navy, Marine Corps Chiefs Hammer Amphib Readiness In Back-To-Back Addresses
At Modern Day Marine, Acting Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jim Kilby acknowledged he "owes" themMarine Corps a three-ship Amphibious Ready Group.
By Justin Katz
If their lips are moving, they are lying. It’s that simple. They hope that Secretary Phelan is either too dumb to figure out their grift before they can retire, or they just won’t do what he wants, assuming he can figure it out, and start to put the Navy and Marine Corps back on course. Tick Tock, Tick Tock Secretary Phelan, Tick Tock… “every minute I stay in this room, I get weaker, and every minute Charlie squats in the bush, he gets stronger.” Captain Willard Apocalypse Now. There are a lot of MAGTF type Charlie fights out there and they are getting stronger every minute we waste talking about it.
Modern AMPHIBIOUS WAR demands Artillery: Grok…”Finally, the U.S. and NATO’s efforts to ramp up artillery production—like the Camden LAP facility opening in April 2025—reflect the understanding that artillery remains indispensable. The U.S. push to produce 100,000 155mm shells per month by the end of 2025 is driven not just by Ukraine’s needs but by the recognition that modern warfare, even with drones, still demands massive artillery support. A 2025 Pentagon report estimated that a high-intensity conflict against a peer adversary like China would require 5,000–10,000 shells per day, a benchmark that underscores artillery’s enduring role.
In conclusion, FPV drones have not decreased artillery use in the Ukraine-Russia conflict—they’ve made it more efficient in some contexts but have also increased the overall demand for shells by intensifying the pace and precision of engagements. Artillery and drones are complementary tools: drones enhance targeting and reduce waste, but the scale and nature of the conflict ensure that artillery remains the backbone of both sides’ strategies, with daily shell usage remaining in the thousands.”…Artillery remains THE KING OF BATTLE…!