I still don't really get why we had to take an entire Marine division and turn it into three Marine Littoral Regiments. Why wasn't the Navy Expeditionary Combat Command tapped for teaming up with traditional and new Marine units?
In addition to converting the division's two infantry regiments to MLRs, "'We’ve decided that the 12th Artillery Regiment would remain in Japan and be reorganized into the 12th Marine Littoral Regiment by 2025,' Austin said."
I already complained about how Third Marine Division is being organized. It has been thoroughly gutted of its forcible entry and ground combat capabilities without apparently gaining much of an anti-ship capability.
Perhaps I should offer a broadly defined alternative.
With two infantry regiments and an artillery regiment as the core of 3rd Division, I'd leave the infantry regiments as infantry regiments without turning them into those Marine Littoral Regiments. I'd beef up the artillery regiment so it can retain air defense assets plus 155mm guns to support Marine infantry while adding dual purpose HIMARS--ground support and anti-ship--and dedicated anti-ship missiles.
I won't reopen the tank question. For the Western Pacific anti-ship mission I concede they are excess capability. Just don't get me going about Marines in the rest of the world who could still use tanks.
Instead of ripping apart the infantry regiments, I'd turn to the Naval Expeditionary Combat Command (NECC) for the anti-ship and anti-air mission. Create a number of anti-ship and coastal defense battalions, able to parcel out batteries and sections to the Marines. Perhaps the NECC is too small now to provide the infantry component. Or perhaps it is better to simply let the Marines provide their quality infantry instead of pushing the NECC that far.
If that is the case, the Marine Division's two infantry regiments and artillery regiment would be adapted but kept intact. They would create platoons and companies of mixed infantry, anti-ship, anti-aircraft, and general purpose artillery, drawn from the the infantry regiments, artillery regiment, and NECC.
These units would be moved around and supplied by armed transports as I suggested in this Proceedings article. I really don't like the proposed Light Amphibious Warfare transports to move Marine anti-ship assets around the Pacific.
And later I thought seaplanes could have a role as well for movement and logistics. Interestingly enough, DARPA is looking to really expand on that seaplane idea:
The Pentagon’s emerging technologies research arm awarded two aviation companies contracts to develop seaplanes that would fly less than 100 feet off the ground and carry 90 tons of cargo more than 6,500 nautical miles, the Department of Defense announced Wednesday.
It would have the carrying capacity of a C-17.
Those could conceivably replace the surface ship element of moving and/or supplying the shifting Marine Expeditionary Advanced Bases that form an important part of a kill web to kill and contain Chinese ships and aircraft inside the Western Pacific first island chain.
NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here.
