The Marines could field widely distributed anti-ship missiles that would defy Chinese attempts to nullify the threat.
The Marine Corps took out a moving ship by firing a Navy missile at it from the back of an unmanned vehicle on land -- a new weapon the service's top general says will make "an adversary think twice."
Commandant Gen. David Berger revealed new details about a groundbreaking test announced last month in which Marines in California used a deadly new system to take out a threat at sea. Known as NMESIS, the Navy Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System can launch naval strike missiles from the back of a modified Joint Light Tactical Vehicle to destroy targets.
If the Marines can drop these off on islands and coasts by helicopters and link them with satellite or drone communications links to targeting assets, the Chinese would have serious problems breaking through the first island chain.
This ability to drop off and rearm or move the UGV with helicopters should make the Navy and Marines reconsider fully relying on the Light Amphibious Warship.
The LAW is unarmed and designed to move much more than a single vehicle. I question its value:
I'm really not happy with how the proposed LAW ship class is unfolding. How is it possible to think a slow and unarmed vessel can survive, let alone complete their missions? If the threat environment is low enough to do both, the Navy (and Air Force) has already won control of the seas--or it is peacetime still.
If these are supposed to roam around planting small Marine detachments capable of fighting the Chinese navy, I think the World War II model should be the destroyer transport (APD), as I wrote about in Proceedings a few years ago.
If this new Marine weapon is produced in sizable numbers, an armed transport that I advocated in that linked Proceedings article would be perfect to deploy and retrieve them at multiple locations.
