Reader and friend Joefour sends this think-piece from a Navy author about the MAGTF being the downfall of the USMC.
The MAGTF took the Marines from a specialized force (amphibious operations) and attempted to turn them into an all-purpose, do everything, force. It’s not hard to imagine that the genesis of the concept was budget driven with the idea being that the more versatile the Corps, the more it would be called on and, therefore, the more it would be funded.
Unfortunately, the lack of focus led to the Marines being employed in all manner of situations for which they were not specialized. They became just another army unit.
There was also an enormous opportunity cost associated with generalization. The generalization and loss of focus on the core amphibious mission cost the Marines their institutional knowledge about amphibious assaults as they embarked on a decades long turn towards purely land warfare. In recent years, Marine generals have proudly announced that the Marines are taking the first steps towards relearning amphibious assault.
Relearning?!!!? It was your core mission. How could you have lost it? This is a sad commentary on Marine Corps leadership over the last couple of decades.
The loss of focus also meant that the technology, doctrine, and tactics of amphibious assault languished or was lost. We wound up with doctrine calling for 25-50+ mile stand off assaults coupled with AAV/ACV landing craft that only had an effective range of a few miles – a mismatch of colossal proportions, to say the least. By not maintaining focus on the core mission, the mission atrophied and was lost.
MAGTF also began the myopic focus on the aviation side of the Corps to the great detriment of the ground side. Huge, questionable investments were made in the MV-22 and the F-35 with little or no supporting doctrinal or operational underpinning. Again, it was a budget grab, pure and simple – an attempt to be all things in all situations instead being proudly specialized.
The Marines were once something special and respected. Now, they’re just a poor, small copy of the Air Force and Army. MAGTF destroyed the Marine Corps.
Or I should have said, “purported” think piece. There is a lot of confusion in this analysis.
First of all, saying that the USMC is a poor copy of the Air Force and Army is beyond stupid, and could only be said by someone who has never been in ground combat with the Marines, Army or Air Force.
Second, I don’t think the author understands the concept of the MAGTF. It isn’t, and was never intended to be, a tool to turn them into another massive ground force, if you will, the “big army.”
The MAGTF was always intended to keep control of all assets – Force Recon, infantry, armor, artillery, air support, other spec ops – under the complete control of a single chain of command, all reporting to a Colonel or Lt. General. What the Marine Corps doesn’t like to do is rely on assets NOT under their immediate control to achieve the mission. The MAGTF remedies that weakness.
That can even be true of assets not assigned to but not formally part of the USMC. When the Marine Corps launched their operations into Helmand in earnest, army spec ops also participated, but it was made clear to them that they didn’t report to JSOC or SOCOM. They reported to a Marine Corps general. As long as they were fine with that, they could participate. They were, and they did, and they reported only to the Marine Corps chain of command while assigned to that operation.
When the author says that the MAGTF caused this or caused that, he’s just making things up. With all of that said, the author does hit on the major tingling nerve in the Marine Corps today, i.e., mission statement.
The Marine Corps Commandant has just recently stood down the Marine Corps tank battalions – completely. They are no more. I have no particular commitment to Marine Corps tank battalions, so I won’t comment in the positive or negative about this.
But he does indicate that he intends to go back to the amphibious roots. But this, he means heavy-laden, large scale, and foolish beach assaults. The author we cited also apparently wants the Marines to return to such a paradigm.
I’ve argued for years that the Marine Corps has never been able to get past their silly romance with Pacific beach landings in WWII, a romance that would prove deadly and ineffective in modern warfare. It would be deadly for the Marines, and would be effective for nothing more than sending LCACs to the bottom of the ocean.
But they are “solders of the sea,” don’t you see, so for years they tried to push their ridiculous notions of the EFV (Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle) on Congress, after they had blown a wad of cash finally getting the Osprey off the ground and somewhat reliable. Congress (correctly) refused to fund such a concept.
The idea was that they would use Amphibious Transport Ships carrying F35s, LCACs, Ospreys, and a battalion of infantry, and be able to land anywhere within reach at the president’s order. But why this concept? That’s never explained. Near peer states would easily be able to manage such a threat, and with drones, surface to ship missiles and air assets, the ships would be sunk before ever getting within reach. The LCACs could be taken out with nearly commercial grade equipment, and if the EFVs ever did make it ashore, they would be alone.
If not a near peer actor, then who? A troubled or failed state? A place like Somolia? Why would they outfit the Marines with such a heavy footprint (like they’re going to battle against Japanese in the South Pacific) for a failed state?
Specialized operators, UAVs, MilStar uplinks, and a whole host of other developments have made the sort of battle fought in the South Pacific irrelevant today. Such a strategy would involve deaths on a scale not seen since then, and it’s improbable that the public would support such an adventure, likely seeing it as a misadventure instead.
To date, MEUs have been used primarily (or perhaps exclusively) for training and medical relief on humanitarian missions. The claim is that they stand in ready should the president ever call. The reality is that they have turned into a gigantic waste of money, resources and talent.
How did we get here? As the demands of modern warfare caused development in training, equipment, TTPs, electronics, weapons systems and small arms, the Marine Corps got stuck in the South Pacific battling imaginary enemies. And no, they aren’t going to engage in massive landings on or near China in disputed territory. The public will not support something like that.
A half century ago, the Marine Corps could have seen this coming and jettisoned their romantic notions of massive beach landings. They could have shrunk the size of the Corps and focused on more specialized missions. Posted at TFB, “The Marine Corps Scout Sniper Schools are the best combined precision marksmanship and observation packages in the United States Military, Period.”
Every branch of the military has a combat diver course and qualification, and the Marine Corps Recon school is storied. My own son took Scout Sniper training, as well as months of shoothouse and CQB training before deployment to Iraq. Airborne school is still an option, and at least MARSOC is getting assigned to specialized schools like high altitude shooting in Nevada.
Four year enlistments could have been jettisoned in favor of six years or more, and specialized schools could have been pursued and developed in lieu of the idiotic EFV, Osprey and F35. Insertion of troops could have been designed around improved air assets and HALO or LALO jumps.
Finally, the Marine Corps Commandant could have gotten his panties out of a wad over Marines being deployed in groups of under company size units (You see, they don’t trust their people without the proper chain of command, and don’t like mission failure, and so Marine Corps doctrine has always been opposed to distributed operations of fire team or squad size).
Instead of this, the country has turned to the Navy, and more specifically, the SEALs and then DEVGRU to perform air insertions, specialized operations and other highly secretive distributed operations across the globe. There is no logical reason that it had to be the Navy – it could have been the Marine Corps who chose to pursue this path. Frogmen will always be needed in the Navy. But there is no logical reason that Frogmen had to become land operators. This only happened because they saw the opportunity.
The Marine Corps didn’t because of their love affair with massive beach assaults and, apparently, death on a large scale. No return to their core amphibious roots will save the Marine Corps from becoming irrelevant.
It doesn’t really matter at this point anyway. The DoD’s focus on women in combat billets, race relations, LGBT parades, and sensitivity training will ruin what’s left anyway. My son believes with the current state of affairs, there is no way America could fight and win against a near peer state if the majority of the fighting is on the ground.
The Marine Corps made him and other Iraq veterans feel unwelcome and let them go. Big army is too slow and infected with political correctness to respond quickly or effectively (Have you seen basic training at Fort Jackson? And did they ever call the shooting at Fort Hood anything other than “workplace violence?”).
The Navy is crashing ships into other ships and letting fires ruin their assets. The Air Force is too taken with their love affair with 5GW to think about support for ground combat troops (oh, wait, is the proper term now Mosaic Warfare?). I want to make sure I get the terms correct. Otherwise, it won’t sound smart and informed to the brass.
In my opinion, it’s really a sad state of affairs. It’s not the fault of the DoD. It’s the fault of America, a country coming apart at the seams. The DoD is just a reflection of the country.
