In a devastating article in War on the Rocks, Marine and author Owen West details the tremendous damage done to the Marine Corps by both how FD 2030 was created and promulgated and by the particulars of the plan.
War on the Rocks (warontherocks.com) 05/27/22
Are the Marines Inventing the Edsel or the Mustang?
By Owen West
. . . The Marine Corps is in a far more precarious position. It could have used incremental dollars to test its promising fusion of targeting technologies and distributed maritime operations with a minimum viable product. Instead, the commandant, Gen. David Berger, divested current crisis response and land battle capabilities in order to fund a large-scale, hyper-optimized capability that will take eight years to build. Before the new force was designed or prototyped, Berger wrote, “We will not seek to hedge or balance our investments to account for [other] contingencies.” . . .
Owen West is a former marine infantry officer and retired Goldman, Sachs partner who took two leaves of absence to serve in Iraq. He was the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict from 2017-2019.
Are the Marines Inventing the Edsel or the Mustang? - War on the Rocks