This is the vision for distributing Marines to help the Navy sink PLAN warships?
USNI News previously reported the Marine Corps would buy 28 to 30 of the ships between Fiscal Years 2023 to 2026, with a per-ship price tag potentially below $100 million, the Congressional Research Service has written. ...
“We need to build an affordable ship that can get after the ability to do maritime campaigning in the littorals,” King said.
“So not forcible entry, not the ability to replace the L-class ships. It’s going to be additive. But it is going to be affordable. So what that means is, she really needs to know what’s going on, and she needs to have a sheepdog watching out for her; that might be an LPD-17, it might be a DDG Flight III, it might be an LCS, depending on what the fleet commander sees is the situation. ...
“We’re going to have Marines out there sinking ships. I’ve even talked to our undersea guys about Marines out there sinking submarines, so some of our inside forces can stay hidden. Let our adversary worry about me and my hundred guys running around crazy on some island instead of these capital assets that are really the heart and soul of the joint force,” he said.
The Marines are supposed to disperse across islands and coastal areas to detect and sink Chinese warships. Yet the Navy will need to detach warships to escort these small amphibs?
That makes no sense. The ships could be quite inexpensive yet require the escort of expensive warships? How is that saving money or promoting the mission?
My vision in Proceedings (membership required) was for smaller ships with some limited offensive and defensive capabilities to deploy company-sized Marine units. I wanted to experiment with replicating the old converted destroyer escorts used in World War II in large numbers by converting retired Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigates.
But no, the Navy will have to subtract ship-killing power from the fight to gain Marine ship-killing power in the fight. Got it.
