Compass Points readers have responded to the post,
FD 2030 - Looking at the Updates
which provided a link to Mark Cancian’s article in Breaking Defense, “Analyzing the Biggest Changes in the Marine Corps Force Design 2030 Update” Readers have asked for more information about Mark Cancian. Mark Cancian wrote one of the earliest articles raising questions about Force Design 2030, “Don’t Go Too Crazy, Marine Corps” See more information below about Mark Cancian’s distinguished career, as well as a link to his early article about FD 2030.
Mark F. Cancian
Senior Adviser, International Security Program, CSIS
Mark Cancian (Colonel, USMCR, ret.) is a senior adviser with the CSIS International Security Program. He joined CSIS in April 2015 from the Office of Management and Budget, where he spent more than seven years as chief of the Force Structure and Investment Division, working on issues such as Department of Defense budget strategy, war funding, and procurement programs, as well as nuclear weapons development and nonproliferation activities in the Department of Energy. Previously, he worked on force structure and acquisition issues in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and ran research and executive programs at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.
In the military, Colonel Cancian spent over three decades in the U.S. Marine Corps, active and reserve, serving as an infantry, artillery, and civil affairs officer and on overseas tours in Vietnam, Desert Storm, and Iraq (twice). Since 2000, he has been an adjunct faculty member at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, where he teaches a course on the connection between policy and analysis. A prolific author, he has published over 40 articles on military operations, acquisition, budgets, and strategy and received numerous writing awards. He graduated with high honors (magna cum laude) from Harvard College and with highest honors (Baker scholar) from Harvard Business School.
War on the Rocks (warontherocks.com) January 8, 2020
Don’t Go Too Crazy, Marine Corps
By Mark Cancian
. . . The risk is twofold. First, since the national command authorities will use the tools that they have available, they will employ the Marine Corps in whatever conflict that arises regardless of the Marine Corps’ capabilities or design. Overspecialization will waste lives until the Corps can adapt and risks mission failure if adaptation is too slow. It is the phenomenon that bedeviled the Army in Vietnam, where Andrew Krepinevich argued the Army was “a superb instrument for combating the field armies of its adversaries in conventional wars but an inefficient and ineffective force for defeating insurgent guerrilla forces.” The fact that the U.S. Army of 1965 was designed to fight Soviet tank armies in Europe did not stop President Johnson from sending it to Vietnam to fight insurgents and a regional power (North Vietnam).
Second, the Marine Corps does not want to be in a position where it cannot go to war without Army support for tanks, heavy firepower, logistics, and mobility. That undermines the Marine Corps’ expeditionary nature, which has traditionally been its most useful feature. Indeed, the Marine Corps has long claimed that “one call gets it all,” that the ground-air-logistics-command elements of the Marine Corps can be combined to meet any threat that arises. Though this may be a slight exaggeration — the Army provides niche capabilities like psychological operations units and theater-wide logistics to all U.S. forces, not just the Marine Corps — the point is valid: The Marine Corps has been able to deploy and fight a wide variety of adversaries using its organic capabilities . . . .
https://warontherocks.com/2020/01/dont-go-too-crazy-marine-corps/
FD 2030 - The Marines of the Chowder Society are turning over in the Graves
We all know that Force Design 2030 is necessary and needed but that watching what has been described as an “intellectual civil war” by others over Force Design 2030 has admittedly been disappointing, especially the parts that have bordered on becoming personal.
Who do you serve? The Marine Corps or your egos? As I’ve thought on what is happening, I’ve wondered if perhaps there might be a better and more constructive way to move forward, together.
Knowing, learning from, and open to both sides of the coin by so many involved in both sides of the Force Design 2030 debate, I can’t help but think that the current leadership of the Marine Corps forgot some of the basic requirements to effect change in an organization founded in deep in traditions with many experts.
In April 1944 Congress began hearings on the subject of disbanding the Marine Corps and gave new momentum to the Army's unification plan of May 1945. The unification advocates were beginning to line up and take sides. No legislation was reported out. Then President Roosevelt told all involved, "...knock it off, we're in a war now and this is no time to have the services fighting between themselves."
Currently there is a war in Ukraine and the tides are shifting in the Pacific.
Fortunately for the nation, the Army and Marines began making significant strides in restoring goodwill between the two services in the mid-1980s. With the passing of the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986, the former rivals began a gradual shift away from old parochialisms and interservice rivalries.
I’m sure Marine leadership – current and past – know the story in detail. If you do not, then know that the Marine Corps was not represented on the JCS and the 1478 papers were highly classified and not available to the Marines.
The papers recommended that the Marine Corps be kept very small, and restricted to units no larger than a regiment. Among the duties envisioned were, "to protect United States citizens ashore in foreign countries and to provide interior guard of naval ships and naval shore establishments."
Admiral Nimitz, CNO, responded to these papers on 30 March 1946. He said, "The basic and major issue considered in JCS 1478/10 and JCS 1478/11 comprise a proposal on the part of the Army to eliminate the Marine Corps as an effective combat element, reducing it to the status of Naval police units."
We do NOT need Congress, the Army or any politician to get involved in designing the Marine Corps of the future. Don’t take this “Joint Stuff” to far.
Today, political candidates advertised their Marine Corps connections to get elected; once in office, they made common cause with the Corps for a variety of reasons. These coalitions were critical to the Corps' growing cultural power in days past, but the Marines did not control the relationships.
Civilians had a say, and sometimes they were the most prolific distributors of Marine Corps stories and images. Other sources have tried to explain the Marines' cultural power by comparing them to Samurai, Spartans, or other warrior castes.
Cultural similarities may exist across services indeed even across centuries and continents but every military organization exists in a specific time and place, and while comparisons have their benefits, they also often require distortions to make the subjects fit the argument.
Force Design 2030
There are many experts on change and all have good suggestions to manage change in a large organization. The most common and most important factor that is common among all experts is “listen carefully.” I was glad to see the discussions started years ago about the Marine Corps of the future as I did not think we were moving in the right direction or better said – not keeping up with the changes in technology.
I had hoped to see a good plan, with doable goals, that articulated the challenges, gather the correct amount of experts, and finally set or adjust new performance objectives. But implementing change (i.e. getting rid of tanks, etc.) BEFORE the plan was accepted was fool hardy at best. You cannot effect change if you do not have consensus among leadership – current and past – and the Marines that joined the Corps before you implement Force 2030.
The Marine Corps has always considered itself a breed apart. Since 1775, America's smallest armed service has been suspicious of outsiders and deeply loyal to its traditions. Marines believe in nothing more strongly than the Corps' uniqueness and superiority, and this undying faith in its own exceptionalism is what has made the Marines one of the sharpest, swiftest tools of American military power.
Along with unapologetic self-promotion, a strong sense of identity has enabled the Corps to exert a powerful influence on American politics and culture. Venerating sacrifice and suffering, privileging the collective over the individual, Corps culture was saturated with romantic and religious overtones that had enormous marketing potential in a postwar America energized by new global responsibilities.
Force Design 2030 was billed as a new direction for the Marine Corps — one met almost immediately with backlash from retired officers, current and former Marine enlisted personnel. Last month, the Marines released an update to the document, with some notable changes.
We still have a “plan” that is not accepted by all. The Commandant should have insisted ALL from 4 stars to a recent private give their feedback and input as to “listen carefully.” You do not need to accept their point of view but you honor them and our traditions by letting them have a say in something this important. Not doing this was a serious mistake and the reason we have quote “intellectual civil war” in the Marine Corps.
The retired generals and Marine enlisted personnel have harshly criticized the changes in aircraft, tanks and artillery, arguing that the Marine Corps is moving away from its historical and successful employment of balanced combined arms. This will be a continuing point of contention.
Finding a new light-weight, fuel efficient modern tank that can survive on the battlefield of the future is not an impossible task. Do you realize how many combat veterans have stories of how their brothers in tanks saved their comrades in some distant battlefield?
Before you cut, change or hack you need buy in or Force 2030 will fail. You need to delegate this critical and politically bombshell to an Marine Task Force made up of current, retired generals with a dose of technology non-Marine experts and a few Sergeant Majors thrown in willing to speak their minds. Each should have a vote with many open (to the extent feasible) meetings to hash out the plan.
The Commandant has stated that FD 2030 would adjust over time based on analysis and experimentation with future updates will therefore have additional changes. Looking ahead, the update identifies major unresolved issues. For example, resupplying widely distributed units inside an adversary’s defensive zone with today’s technology is extremely challenging.
Stop, redo the process, protocols and personnel effecting change before doing any more changes. Looking ahead, the “plan” has major unresolved issues. The biggest to me is the issue of risk. Even if you stipulated that everything that the current leadership desires, it ought not to be done in the manner in which creates a civil war or makes the Corps unable to fulfill its basic mission.
In other words, divesting of capability before the replacements are aboard. Doing so is a recipe for failure. Remember McNamara’s Wall during the Vietnam War? Rely on those that fight the war than intellectuals that play at war. The McNamara line was going to do away with the need to patrol the DMZ in Vietnam with ground forces so be careful of the “siren song of technology.”
The Marine Corps needs to change and needs new technology without a doubt. It will be different than the Corps we served in. We’re not longing for some long old days. What I’m saying is to get consensus with an operational concept. Do the analysis before you make any substantive changes.
If General Krulak was alive today, he would say in his commanding voice to all of you “GET SQUARED AWAY MARINES. THE WORLD – AND MY MARINES – ARE WATCHING YOU!”