FD 2030 - Not Made to Win
Reply to Article: “Force Design - It’s About Winning”
Compass Points says, “Not so fast!” to many of the articles in the current issue of the Marine Corps Gazette. The December edition of the Maine Corps Gazette is dedicated to FD 2030. The Gazette includes several articles written in support of FD 2030, as well as several articles that raise concerns. Compass Post will feature several of the articles that raise significant concerns about FD 2030. But to those articles that support FD 2030, Compass Points can only say one thing, “Not so fast!”
Reply to “Force Design - It’s About Winning."
Marine Corps Gazette December 2022
In the article, “Force Design - It’s About Winning,” the author paints the dreams of the Force Design (FD) 2030 architects, but in the process exposes the weaknesses and risks of this great gamble on the future of the Marine Corps. First, though, some compliments.
The Marine Corps is trying to adapt quickly to a war with a near peer competitor in which technological advancements demand adjustments to the operating style of the last twenty years. The Marine Corps also is attempting to revitalize skills that are important to advantages that accrue from our naval character. In conjunction with these first two efforts, the Corps is accelerating capabilities in the information domain and with loitering and precision munitions. All necessary initiatives. Where, then, do the tenets of FD 2030 go astray? Principally, it is because these initiatives were possible without sacrificing the global response capability of the Corps. And there are other reasons. Here are a few.
A crutch continually used with FD 2030 is that it is merely following the direction of the 2018 National Defense Strategy. Actually, FD 2030 is not dictated by the 2018 National Defense Strategy. Even a cursory reading of that document would reveal that nothing in the DoD guidance requires or even suggests the Marine Corps drastically alter its force structure and, thereby, undermine its fundamental global contribution to national security.
If FD 2030 was carrying out the direction of that document, its guiding mentors – retired Generals Jim Mattis and Joe Dunford – would support it. Note their silence. Note also that the initial and appropriate response to FD 2030 from the previous Marine Commandant, General Robert Neller. He provided guidance to shift the Corps to a more technologically advanced and Pacific oriented force, but his direction was cast away the day that he retired. FD 2030 merely uses the 2018 Defense Strategy as a fig leaf for its certainly imaginative, but deeply flawed schemes.
The article’s author and other loyal supporters of FD 2030 continue to submit that the Corps remains at least as capable of supporting world-wide commitments as it ever could. This claim is patently false. With FD 2030, Marine Corps operational elements at every level, from MEFs to MEUs, lose critical combat power and required sustainability.
Those who are experienced with the contingency plans of the Combatant Commanders know that a critical cog in their desired responsiveness, flexibility, and shock action is now less dependable. Part of the reason for this is that there was virtually zero advance consultation with the Combatant Commanders before irreversible decisions were made three and a half years ago. Increased precision fires (already in the pipeline), loitering munitions, and accelerated acquisition of drones provide increased capability, but cannot make up the loss of nearly one third of Marine Corps combat power.
The most egregious gap is found where the powder keg is most primed – the Korean Peninsula – and where the Corps had its most essential contribution. One often overlooked shortfall also tells the tale: Marine Corps’ expeditionary sustainability (one of its most valuable traits for COMCOMs) has suffered the loss of two-thirds of Maritime Prepositioning, all of its Kuwait prepositioning, and a large proportion of its Northern Europe prepositioning. It will be difficult enough to get to the crisis with reduced amphibious shipping, fight with reduced combat power, but sustaining the force is now another critical issue.
Finally, the Nation’s premier response force, whose very DNA is oriented to the offense, is now consigned to actions that are wholly defensive. This highlights the irony of the article’s title, “It’s About Winning,” because FD 2030 has removed the capacity for maneuver and offensive action that are essential to victory.
Reconnaissance forces are often underappreciated, particularly in finding surfaces and gaps in enemy capabilities, but without exploitation of these gaps by a powerful maneuvering force, it is unfulfilled potential. Snipers (the parallel for the Stand in Forces) are a combat multiplier, but they do not “win” without offensive action that destroys the enemy and its will to fight. Over time, a great fear is that Marines, by their operating concept, doctrine, training, and equipment will develop a culture and mindset of the defense and, thereby, forfeit the attacking traits that made them world renowned for fighting spirit.
The substantial defects of Force Design 2030 mean it is not, and cannot, be all “about winning.” But it could have been. There was never any requirement to cut critical Marine capabilities in order to upgrade the Marine Corps. The Marines could have accelerated much needed longer range and precision fires, incorporated loitering munitions advanced of everyone else, cleverly applied drones to amplify maneuver and defense, but still strengthened the infantry shock troops that forever have kept foes worried, deterrence strong, and made sure Marines remain, “no greater friend, no worse enemy.”
“ The substantial defects of Force Design 2030 mean it is not, and cannot, be all “about winning.” But it could have been. ”.
On point, incisive, and well said.