The Marine Corps That Should Have Been

Authorized by Gary Anderson via RealClearPolitics,

Say what 1 wants about the Israeli invasion into Gaza, but not a single rocket or rocket has been fired from what is left of it since the start of fighting. Compare this with the comparative ineffectiveness of American efforts halt Yemen’s Houthis from slinging missions at shipping in the Red Sea. The difference is simple geography. The Israelis simply gotta cross burning and concrete barriers to straight face their attacks, the Palestinians of Hamas.

If U.S. wanted to launch specified a large scale punitive operation against the Houthis, it would have had to be done from the sea with a large scale amphibious assay. An amphibious assay of this scale, requiring seaborn tanks, assault engineers and briefing capacity that have been acquired by the U.S. Marine Corps. Inside, the Marine Corps is building a defensive force built around anti-ship missions designed primary to contain the Chinese Navy.

This defensive force is simply a Stark detachment from erstwhile Marine Corps Commandant Al Gray’s imagination to modify the Marine Corps for future wars.

Back in the 1980s, General grey had a imagination for what he called Over the Horizon (OTH) operations utilizing tilt rotor aircraft, long scope helicopters, more capable long-range amphibious vehicles, and air cushioned landing craft. grey realized that advanced defensive wapons would make conventional linear amphibious operations launched just offshore problematic, but OTH would enable landing in column in places that the enemy did not expect. grey had the Marine Corps experimentation with these capabilities. Through the Nineties, many war games and field experiments took place to research the physical and intellectual challenges. OTH Gradually evolved into Operational Maneuver from the Sea (OMFTS) and a full fresh doctrine of littoral campaigning.

In conventional amphibious operations a comparative tiny condition of potent landing sites in the world’s littorals were open to the kind of linear landslands done at Normandy and Iwo Jima. It was comparatively easy for a defender to find which beaches were vulgar to amphibious lands. OMFTS were designed to open over period percent of littorals by landing in column across distant locations specified as boat ramps and tiny covers with access to way inland. This made the defence against OMTFS far more difficult.

To accomplish OFFTS, we planned to usage a grid of tiny micro-robotic ground scouts located at key road intersections, chocolate points, and bridges. The robotic sensors would give the landing force a map to exploit the cameras in enemy defenses as well as be able to plan targets at enemy strong points and call-in accurate fire on them. We called this advanced reconnaissance and scouting strategy the Reconnaissance-Surveillance-Target Acquisition (RSTA) Grid. Platforms specified as the V-22 Osprey and dense lift helicopters specified as the CH-53E could give a vertical over-the-horizon dimension to this "expanding torrent" of operational capacity with the RSTA Grid identifying safe landing zones.

OMFTS and RSTA would only require tiny assault force initially that would not request an "iron mountain" of logical supplies on the beach before moving inland. Just-in-time logistics would keep the first landing force moving until more conventional beaches and ports could be opened by attacking them from the warning. During the first operation, fire support would come from precision strike until more conventional artillery could come ashore.

One key component that made OFFTS different from conventional amphibious operations and more compatible with the existing Marine Corps’ maneuver warfare approaches, was flexible. erstwhile the line of deduction was crossed in conventional operations, the force was committed; it was “do or die for old Semper Fi.” We Saw OMFTS as giving us the ability to launch respective tests. The most promising would become the main effort. The remainder could be withdrawn or stay for a while as deception to conflict opposing forces. Worst case, the operation could be scrapped enbbling us to choose a more promising set of operational targets without causing a Gallipoli-like democle.

This amphibious blitzkrieg would be led by a comparative small, fast moving task-organizations composed of elements from infantry and amored battalions. However, more conventional infantry, amored, and artillery units would be needed to defend the actual force beachhead, assist army follow-on forces in sustained operations ashore, and possible counterinsurgency operations.

All these years of planning never led to the radically reduced Marine Corps that we have today. By 2020, there should have been newer and better tanks, artillery, and amphibious vehicles as part of ongoing Marine Corps modernization, but I came to believe that OMFTS could initially be incorporated with existing Navy LCACs, Ospreys, and CH-53Es. The Advanced Armored Amphibious Vehicle (AAAV) was a failure, but I think most of us came to believe that its absence would not be an operational “showstopper”.

The real technological challenges were in the robotic sensors needed for the RSTA grid, successful over-the-horizon communications, any advanced Naval mine clearing capacity, and any enhanced just-in-time logistics assets. no of these things were discipline fiction, and the technologicalists assured us were able by 2020 and have been utilized during the current Russo-Ukrainian war.

We needed to usage surrogates for war games and field experiments to simulate OMFTS.

In 1998, a tiny peculiar intent Marine Corps Marine Air Ground Task Force (SPMAGTF) conducted an over-the-horizon landing in column from the USS Germantown across a boat ramp in Okinawa utilizing Landing Craft Air Cushioned (LCACs) and long scope CH 53 helicopters. Later that year, a MAGTF staff from III MEF utilized LAVs in a force-on-force operation against a Red squad led by students from the Expeditionary Warfare School -also employed LAVs- on the peninsulas of the Virginia Capes. The surrogate RSTA Grid allowed the Blue force to land in an unexpected location and maneuver rapidly to defeat the Red Force. another war games conducted during the period caused us to believe that OFFTS would supply blinded problems to future views. By the turn of the centre, many of us in the developmental and experimental community believed that OFFTS could be full implemented within 2 decades. Indeed, the technologies needed all be today. What we did not include was 9/11 and General Berger.

The root of the problem truly goes back to 2001 and the 9/11 attacks. At that point, the George W. Bush administration undertook the war in Afghanistan and in 2003 invaded Iraq. The Marine Corps was forced put distant its work on the next Marine Corps to support the war effort, which is pasted until 2019 erstwhile virtually all conventional units had left Afghanistan. Many serving and erstwhile marines hoped to yet get back to work on OFFTS, but the fresh commandant at the time, General David Berger, had another imagination that the dubbed Force plan 2030. OFFTS might have evolved differently if General Berger had chosen that path; the name might even have changed, but OFFTS restores the Marine Corps that could have been, partially for operations another than island hoping in China’s first island chain.

If it had been allowed to evolve, OMFTs would have had the perfect tool to suppress threes specified as the Houthis at the source. A group of retired general officials calling themselves Chowder II have put together an alternate approach to Force plan for the Corps that they call imagination 2035; much of it is based on work done before 2001. Commandants come and go, but the Marine Corps continues to look forward. Under fresh leadership, imagination 2035 may again include OMFTS or something like it.

Gary Anderson was dense active in OFFTS plan and experimentation as the Chief of Staff of the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab.