I remain very worried about Marine transformation. It is too broad and even in the Pacific theater where it could make sense fails on its own justifications. Worse, it didn't have to happen to get the needed capabilities.
Force Design
How did the United States Marine Corps transform itself from the world’s premier expeditionary force-in-readiness to a poor parody of the French Maginot Line in just four years?
Ruining the Marine ability to fight ashore against tough opponents is a high price to pay for a marginal anti-ship gain:
The Marines have essentially destroyed the combined arms capability of the operating forces to stand up 14 Naval Strike Missile (NSM) batteries and 3 Tomahawk Land Attack Missile Batteries. The Marines intend to only keep 3 NSM batteries permanently forward deployed, while the sole purpose of the other 11 batteries is to serve a rotational pool of manpower and equipment. The Corps’ contribution to the other services’ anti-ship capabilities is minimal and duplicative. Worse, the other services are all investing in long-range, hypersonic missiles while the Marines are largely buying short-range, subsonic missiles that will be obsolete in the near future, if not already. The end result is that Marines will be marginalized, at best, on far flung island with ineffective missiles.
And that assumes the detachments work.
I've been worried about the weak anti-ship capabilities--on the assumption for argument's sake that killing land capabilities is a price we should pay to help the Navy.
The authors slam the logistics of the situation. And rightly so on operating concept and means. As I recently observed:
I have many worries about the Marine plans.
In many ways the Marines could be setting the stage for a fight like the Guadalcanal campaign of World War II (in a Land Warfare Paper) when the Japanese expended a huge amount of men and ships to sustain a garrison on Guadalcanal.
The Marines could well be isolated bait that draws in the Navy to try to rescue them while the Chinese use their missiles and planes to hammer the would-be rescuers who don't want to leave any man behind.
Taking on the Japanese 1942 role doesn't seem wise.
Or maybe the Navy prudently but regrettably lets the Marines wither on the vine the way the Navy had to let the defenders of Bataan be marched off the the deadly prison camps in 1942.
I think the authors' argument about holding islands is the weakest--if true--because clearly the Marine concept doesn't intend their anti-ship detachments to hold their ground. They are supposed to shoot and scoot, however weak those two capabilities are.
The Marine Corps is officially dismissing and ridiculing criticism of their transformation. But nothing said or done so far reduces my worries.
Tragically, we had an alternative path using the Navy Expeditionary Combat Command that would have ended this risky scheme before it got started.
UPDATE: Have no doubt, the Marines have devastated those land warfare capabilities:
The United States Marine Corps is no longer capable of effectively conducting combat operations across the spectrum of conflict.
And let me repeat that even if transforming Marine units in the western Pacific to sink PLAN ships is the correct move, why "transform" the entire Marine Corps?
[Oops, I accidentally incorporated this update into the post, thinking it was scheduled rather than not already posted.]
UPDATE: Huh:
One of the mysteries of the Marine Corps’ decision to concentrate on an anti-ship mission in the South China Sea is whether or not the joint force combatant commander responsible for the region even wanted this Marine Corps contribution. The current Indo-Pacific commander has not yet weighed in on the subject. A recent war game conducted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies found the Stand-in Force concept to be duplicative and less effective than capabilities already possessed by other services and unable to contribute “heavily” in most scenarios.
But other than that, forward ... march!
NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here.
NOTE: I'm adding updates on the Last Hamas War in this post.