‘Fighting weight’, amphibious flexibility and pivoting to counter great powers

From the shores of Tripoli to the trenches of Belleau Wood or the blood-soaked volcanic sands of Iwo Jima, the United States Marine Corps has proudly and often defiantly stepped forward to answer America’s call to arms.

As the spectre of great power competition looms large over the Indo-Pacific and more broadly the global geostrategic environment, the Marines have begun a period of soul searching, drawing on their proud history of amphibious warfare to leverage adaptability, flexibility, and experimentation to reshape the Marine Corps as part of Force Design 2030.

With its eye on increased global instability and great power competition, particularly the rising regional ambitions of the People’s Republic of China, shifting away from the decades of counterinsurgency conflicts across central Asia and the Middle East, fundamentally requiring a rethink of the way the Marines engage in the 21st century.

Summarising the driving force behind these changes, the Marine Corps Commandant, General David Berger, makes the core argument for these important changes, stating, “Our current force design, optimised for large-scale amphibious forcible entry and sustained operations ashore, has persisted unchanged in its essential inspiration since the 1950s. It has changed in details of equipment and doctrine as technology has advanced toward greater range and lethality of weapon systems.

“In light of unrelenting increases in the range, accuracy, and lethality of modern weapons; the rise of revisionist powers with the technical acumen and economic heft to integrate those weapons and other technologies for direct or indirect confrontation with the US; and the persistence of rogue regimes possessing enough of those attributes to threaten United States interests, I am convinced that the defining attributes of our current force design are no longer what the nation requires of the Marine Corps,” Gen Berger articulates.

This “ambitious overhaul of the Marine Corps” echoes similar force posture design changes identified by the Albanese government’s long-awaited Defence Strategic Review (DSR) released in late April with a number of key similarities designed to improve the agility and decrease the vulnerability of the Marines.

Fighting weight and a new operational concepts

VIEW ALL

Driving this, the Marines will see a fundamental restructuring and reorientation of both its fighting capabilities and its manpower, including a number of divestments to better reallocate personnel and capabilities to meet the challenges of great power competition.

Gen Berger’s Force Design 2030 Report Phase I and II identifies, “With the shift in our primary focus to great power competition and a renewed focus on the Indo-Pacific region, the current force has shortfalls in capabilities needed to support emerging joint, naval, and Marine Corps operating concepts.”

Expanding on these key points, Berger adds, “We have shortfalls in expeditionary long-range precision fires; medium- to long-range air defence systems; short-range (point defence) air defence systems; high-endurance, long-range unmanned systems with intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), electronic warfare (EW), and lethal strike capabilities; and disruptive and less-lethal capabilities appropriate for countering malign activity by actors pursuing maritime ‘gray zone’ strategies.”

Delivering this transformation will see the Marine Corps focus on four key operating concepts, some new, some old, but all designed to enhance the operational flexibility and lethality of the Marines when countering rival great power capabilities, namely:

1. Expeditionary advanced base operations: Playing into the traditional strengths of the Marines but incorporating the combination of new technology and doctrine will empower the prosecution of naval power, support sea control operations, and conduct sea denial operations across the littorals, support maritime domain awareness, acting as a forward based sensor node through the use of “mobile, low-signature, operationally relevant, and relatively easy to maintain and sustain naval expeditionary forces from a series of austere, temporary locations ashore or inshore within a contested or potentially contested maritime area”.
2. Naval integration: Leveraging the traditional relationship between the Marines and the US Navy to enable the survivable, flexible, and mobile application of amphibious warfare capabilities across the contested environment, enabling America to respond to global crises, secure key maritime terrain and support the delivery of sea control and prevail in great power competition.
3. Distributed maritime operations: Leveraging the flexibility provided by a reduced personnel, coupled with the restructuring of the Corps at the most basic level, the Marines’ distributed maritime operations will enable the Marines to be persistent and combat credible in a contested environment, leveraging precision-strike missiles, advanced sensors, intelligence and surveillance capabilities, uncrewed systems across the littoral and maritime environment to strike at the heart of an adversary.
4. Stand-in forces: Are designed to generate technically disruptive, tactical stand-in engagements that confront aggressor naval forces with an array of low-signature and affordable platforms and payloads supported by expeditionary advanced bases in a flexible manner designed to increase the unpredictability of the Marines, complicating the adversary decision making at the tactical and strategic levels.

All of this new capability isn’t without its trade-offs, with the Marines requiring a dramatic divestment of investment across the Corps, namely:

• Eliminating all Marine Corps tank battalions and associated military occupational specialties (MOSs).
• Eliminating all law enforcement battalions and associated MOSs.
• Eliminating all bridging companies and associated MOSs.
• Reducing the number of infantry battalions from 24 to 21.
• Reducing the number of cannon artillery batteries from 21 to 5.
• Reducing the number of amphibious vehicle companies from 6 to 4.
• The deactivation of a number of Marine airlift and close air support helicopter squadrons and a reduction of the number of F-35B and C respectively, in each squadron from 16 to 10.

At the base level, the Marines will also be restructured into three Marine Littoral Regiments (MLRs) to augment the expeditionary capabilities provided by Marine Expeditionary Forces (MEF) and the larger, globally-focused Marine Expeditionary Units (MEU)s enabling the Marines to be capable of deploying and supporting both traditional and expeditionary advanced base capabilities that can deploy with nonstandard amphibious ready groups (ARGs).

Redesigned force v focused force

Much like Australia’s shift from the concept of a “balanced force” championed by the 1986 Defence White Paper and every subsequent white paper until the release of the DSR, the Marines are reorienting themselves to better leverage the suite of new capabilities, platforms, and technologies to enhance their lethality across the vast and disparate maritime environs of the Indo-Pacific.

The changes identified in the Force 2030 plan are identified by a recent Congressional Research Service (CRS) report into the progress made by the Marines, emphasising:

• Expansion of long-range fires: Achieve a 300 per cent increase in rocket artillery capacity, which, in conjunction with anti-ship missiles, is intended to significantly expand the Marine Corps’ ability to support the fleet commander in sea control and denial operations.
• Lighter, more mobile and versatile infantry: Reduce the size of infantry battalions in order to support naval expeditionary warfare and to facilitate distributed and expeditionary advanced base operations.
• Investments in unmanned systems: Double the number of unmanned aerial systems (UAS) squadrons and austere lethal unmanned air and ground systems to enhance the ability to sense and strike targets.
• Maritime mobility and resilience: Develop new capabilities to increase littoral maritime mobility and resilience, including a new light amphibious warship, as well as more affordable stern-landing and operational support vessels.
• Mobile air defence and counter-precision guided missile systems: Develop a variety of systems and efforts to include directed energy systems, loitering munitions, signature management, electronic warfare, and expeditionary airfield capabilities and structure to support manned and unmanned aircraft and other systems from austere, minimally developed locations.

If all of this is starting to sound a little familiar, you’d be correct in drawing the comparisons to a number of the decisions identified in the Albanese government’s DSR which called for the major reshaping of the Australian Army to emphasise long range strike, greater tactical and strategic mobility throughout the maritime domain and a reallocation of large, “heavy vehicles” like the proposed LAND 400 Phase 3 program and LAND 8116 program, respectively.

Final thoughts

Ultimately, Army, like the broader ADF, needs to undergo a broader force structure planning and development process. Simply outlining future acquisitions and trying to mash them together and saying this will fit is not a solution to the very real tactical and strategic challenges we face.

Army, in particular, will require a major reorganisation to account for the proposed increase in the ADF personnel power and to adequately integrate the suite of new capabilities, however, we can’t forget that the primary responsibility of the Army is to close the gap and engage the enemy in a close combat environment across the land and amphibious-littoral environment.

Accordingly, it is important that Army be restructured to account for the new responsibilities without compromising its core mission, because undermining Army’s core mission will effectively undermine the core mission of the other branches.

Importantly, what lessons can the Australian Army learn from a similar reorganisation and fundamental restructure transforming the Marine Corps to better fulfil the tactical and strategic requirements our rapidly deteriorating environment now places on the Army?

Get involved with the discussion and let us know your thoughts on Australia’s future role and position in the Indo-Pacific region and what you would like to see from Australia’s political leaders in terms of partisan and bipartisan agenda setting in the comments section below, or get in touch This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Stephen Kuper

Steve has an extensive career across government, defence industry and advocacy, having previously worked for cabinet ministers at both Federal and State levels.

Send me a message