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At the White House, US President Joe Biden met with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida
In a recent meeting at the White House, the President of the United States, Joe Biden, and the Prime Minister of Japan, Fumio Kishida, discussed the strengthening of military cooperation between the two countries and reaffirmed the commitment to guarantee security in the Indo-American region. Pacific, in the midst of conflicts with China and North Korea.
But behind the scenes, that focus on Asia has sparked a heated debate within one of America’s most iconic military forces, according to Jonathan Marcus, a former BBC defense and diplomacy correspondent and now an honorary professor at the Institute for Strategy and Security. from the University of Exeter, England.
At the center of the controversy is one of the most sacred institutions in the US military, the Marine Corps.
Several of its former high-ranking commanders have been critical of the current leadership over its plans to “reinvent” the corporation.
The crux of the matter revolves around the need to tailor the force for a potential conflict against China — a plan dubbed Force Design 2030.
Practically from its inception, this plan was the target of criticism from several retired generals, who went to the press to share their frustrations, something atypical in this environment.
Senior retired officials have been meeting regularly; speaking at seminars and think tanks; as well as devising their own alternative to a plan they see as a disaster for the future of the Marine Corps.
One prominent critic is Jim Webb, a former US Secretary of the Navy and former Virginia senator, who served as a Navy officer in the Vietnam War and ran for the 2015 Democratic presidential nomination.
In an article in the US newspaper Wall Street Journal, he described Force Design 2030 as “insufficiently tested” and “inherently flawed”. It warned that the plan “raised serious questions about the wisdom and long-term risk of dramatic reductions in force structure, weapons systems, and manpower levels in units that would suffer sustained casualties in most combat scenarios.”
But why has this plan attracted so much criticism?
Launched in 2020 by Commanding General of the Marine Corps David H Berger, the plan aims to equip the Marines for a potential conflict with China in the Indo-Pacific region rather than counterinsurgency wars like Iraq and Afghanistan.
The new plan envisions Marines fighting in dispersed operations across island chains. Units, smaller and more spread out, will have a much greater impact through a wider range of new weapon systems.
Large-scale amphibious landings as in World War II or even massive deployments of troops on land—as in Iraq—will likely be a thing of the past.
Reducing troop numbers and giving up all tanks are the most unpopular points so far in this new plan, so much so that some critics have even said the force is turning its back on its past.
Although it has close ties to the US Navy, the Marine Corps is a separate force that grew dramatically in World War II and assumed a prominent role in recent campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Public perceptions of the Marine Corps are heavily influenced by the experience of World War II. Anyone who has seen John Wayne in the 1949 feature film, ‘Iwo Jima, the Gateway to Glory’, or the more recent miniseries, The Pacific, produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, will remember large-scale amphibious operations; men attacking ashore from landings and so on.
But that’s not what the new plan envisions for the Marines.
Its traditional role as America’s military first responder, capable of meeting disparate challenges around the world, is what critics believe could be compromised by the new plan with its clear focus on China and the Indo-Pacific.
So what exactly does the plan envision?
- Cut down some infantry battalions – the foot soldiers –
- Replace about three-quarters of its towed artillery with long-range rocket systems
- Reduce multiple squadrons of helicopters
Money for the new weapons systems, totaling $15.8 billion, will be funded by cuts totaling about $18.2 billion.
In addition to the new rocket artillery systems, there will be new anti-ship missiles that can be fired from the ground and new unmanned aerial systems. The aim is to equip and train the Marine Corps for a new kind of warfare that the fighting in Ukraine has already foreshadowed.
The key driving factor of Force Design 2030 is what the Marine Corps commander calls “distributed operations,” breaking large forces into smaller, widely spread units but ensuring they have enough military strength to make a real difference.
Those principles are already being put into practice on the Japanese islands of Okinawa, near Taiwan, where Marines stationed there will undergo a retraining, according to US officials.
Military expert Mike O’Hanlon, director of foreign policy at the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington DC, dismisses the central criticism that the new focus on China could hurt Navy operations elsewhere. The Marines will go where they’re told, he says, and the new strategy probably won’t have as much of an impact on operations as some think.
“What really matters in that regard is the withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan over the past few years — that is the big shift, regardless of (and especially before) General Berger’s vision is developed.”
Many analysts insist that change is essential for the Marines to meet the challenges of the modern battlefield.
Frank Hoffman of the US National Defense University, himself a former Navy officer, opines: “I think critics are looking back to a glorious past and failing to see the strategic picture with regard to China and technology in a really disappointing way”.
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Iwo Jima Memorial in Washington DC
While withdrawing the Marines’ tanks has drawn specific criticism, Hoffman believes this is the right course of action. There will still be plenty of armored vehicles, he argues, but not “the heavy tanks and their tankers”.
“It is an adaptation to cover a deeper area with a more precise combination of firepower, as we are seeing in Ukraine. The force has used its aviation element to achieve this range in the past and will now have a combination of traditional artillery and a wide range of missiles that will increase the lethality and range of its firepower.”
These are all steps that many would argue are justified by the lessons of Ukraine.
The usefulness and importance of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs); rocket artillery; and the ability to attack from a great distance with great precision were emphasized in the Russia-Ukraine war and are part of the marines’ new plans. But the envisioned battleground is very different—not the forests and steppes of Ukraine, but island chains stretching across the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean.
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US military multirole aircraft lands in joint exercise with Japan in Gotemba
Force Design 2030 is an evolving program. There have already been changes and there will be more. And while the direction of this program has been established, there are still huge problems to resolve, most notably the logistical challenges posed by a force likely to be deployed over a wide area.
Amphibious transport will play a key role here. And as Nick Childs, senior fellow for Naval Forces and Maritime Security at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) think tank in London, UK, explains, new types of ships will be needed.
“Relying solely on their traditional large amphibious ships would leave them very vulnerable to the types of modern weaponry they are likely to face,” he says. “Therefore, new types of smaller ships in greater numbers will be vital so that the Marine Corps can operate in a more agile and dispersed manner.”
But having more ships available will not be easy. Smaller ones can be built quickly and at a wide range of shipyards, but not necessarily at the required pace.
The US Navy also needs a significant number of new warships, and it is not known whether there will be the necessary funds or production capacity.
It’s the age-old problem of balancing financial resources and strategic priorities. And the crisis in Ukraine shows that old threats can reappear the moment a force takes an entirely new path.