By Robbin Laird

As the U.S. Navy reworks how to do blue water expeditionary operations into and through the North Atlantic with integrated capabilities with our Nordic and Baltic allies, how best to shape an expeditionary approach for an offensive-defensive enterprise? 

What building blocks are essential to work more effective Marine Corps engagement in such an effort? And what does the U.S. Navy need to do to enable more effective Marine Corps engagement? 

And how does the USAF and its evolving capabilities, such as the coming of F-35s at RAF Lakenheath come into play?

Finally, how does the defense transformation being undergone by our allies in the North Atlantic intersect with the changes being driven by the U.S. Navy and supported by the USMC?

The broad point is that there are several trajectories of change in the process of change and working how to get the most effective convergence of combat capability is a major challenge.

During my visit to Camp Lejeune in April 2021, I had a chance to discuss these challenges with LtCol Daniel Macsay, an Expeditionary Operations Officer. He highlighted a number of the challenges which needed to be met to enable the Marines to be effectively engaged in North Atlantic force transformation.

I will highlight a number of takeaways from the conversation, and am not holding him responsible for what I took away from the conversation. But what is clear is that the process of change has fully engaged II MEF and very experienced Marines, like LtCol Macsay are fully engaged in the process of creating real capabilities for the strategic shift from the land wars to the Fourth Battle of the Atlantic. 

The first point may seem obvious but it is crucial.

There is a strategic triangle among the seabases, the land bases and airpower which enable the combat effects to be delivered throughout the North Atlantic defense arc from Florida to Finnmark.

As the Marines go ashore, or operate afloat, what is the major focus, mission or contribution?

One area of interest is the evolving capabilities for the reconnaissance mission.

How might ashore Marines throughout the arc connect with the US Navy, the Air Force and allies, to provide enhanced information central to the fight? 

This could be targeting information; this could be crisis management information; this could be providing information in a key situational awareness gap.

But for this to work, the C2 side of the equation needs to be significantly worked. 

How does Navy C2 onboard the amphibious and strike fleet integrate to provide a grid into which Marine Corps reconnaissance information most effectively flow?

The second point is that we are at early days in terms of Navy-Marine Corps integration.

We discussed Navy and Marine Corps targeting which currently is not well integrated.

But there is also a C2 challenge.

As LtCol Macsay put it: “We have got to get past the idea that the Navy has one lane, and we have another.

“If there’s specific skills and functions that we can do and ones they can do, then we need to work ways to operate more effectively together?”

The Marines having worked ashore in the land wars, have worked very effective C2 for fires solutions ashore.

The Navy is focused on C2 for the blue water fight.

How can these two efforts become blended with a more effective capability to work the triangle of seabases, airpower, and ashore forces?

This is a significant strategic reset that requires training, experimentation and acquisition of capabilities to enhance their ability to work together.

Scalability of the force is a key capability which is the target of Marine Corps-Navy integration but how to enable such a capability?

The third point is honing skills operating as a distributed force within an integrated battlespace. 

This means shaping new skill sets, and in LtCol Macsay’s words: “Building a discipline that allows us to actually deploy with distributed command and control.

“This requires shaping capabilities where the overall commander can have a serious level of confidence in the distributed force’s ability to carry out command guidance.”

And the final point is that this needs to be done in a denied combat environment as necessary. 

For this to happen, reducing demand on communications bandwidth is required.

This requires enhanced training of the forces working together in the distributed combat environment so that there is a good deal of in LtCol Macsay’s words, “implicit understanding of what to do” that does not need to be communicated over networks sucking up bandwidth. 

This makes the training function increasingly important to shaping the new combat approach and capability to be relied upon in North Atlantic defense.

Rather than having to do too much explicit communications, “we need to shape enhanced implied communications capabilities.”

By reshaping operations, and the exercises that support the process of changing how to operate, the template for change is created within which technologies can be identified which further the approach.

Rather than waiting for new technologies that operate as magic wands to deliver feasible Marine Corps-Navy integration, the approach of Second Fleet and Allied Joint Force Norfolk under VADM Lewis to craft the template now and technology will follow seems to make a lot of sense to North Carolina based Marines.

The featured graphic: Map of the Gulf and North Atlantic stream in the Atlantic Ocean

We have heard a good deal about the desire to work Navy and USMC integration.

What can be forgotten in this discussion is how important USMC air is in such an effort.,

It is not surprising for as the U.S. Navy refocuses on the high-end fight, at the heart of such an effort is refocusing on air-sea battle.

This means as well that a priority on USMC aviation in any transformation of the USMC remains at the heart of the effort.

But for such an effort to succeed, continued focus on the ability of the USMC and its naval aviators to have the resources and capabilities they need are crucial to play an effective role in shaping a way ahead.

But this effort almost did not happen and that near failure reminds one of the need for a renewed effort as well.

The partnership of the Marines with the Royal Navy can clearly be seen in current HMS Queen Elizabeth operations.

Because of seeing through the F-35B to deployments and now significant operations, it is possible for the Marines to publish a story like this one published by 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing on May 10, 2021.

US and UK Special Relationship Strengthened by CSG-21 Deployment

(ABOARD HMS QUEEN ELIZABETH, Irish Sea) — With the arrival of F-35B stealth fighters, the United States’ tri-maritime support to the United Kingdom (UK) Carrier Strike Group (CSG) 21 is underway. Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 211 aboard Her Majesty’s Ship (HMS) Queen Elizabeth, DDG-68 USS The Sullivans, and U.S. Coast Guard engineers on exchange programs round out the United States support to the strike group, for their upcoming deployment. This will be the first time US F-35’s have deployed on another countries carrier. 

“This deployment highlights the global reach of the U.S. and UK armed forces and their interoperability,” said Col. Simon Doran, US Senior National Representative (SNR) to the CSG. “The UK stands amongst our most stalwart and capable allies and this deployment enhances the deterrence and defense capabilities of the NATO Alliance.” 

“We are proud to represent the United States on this historic deployment reinforcing the longstanding and unbreakable alliance and defence relationship between the U.S. and U.K,” said CDR.David Burkett, the commanding officer of USS The Sullivans. “The deployment is the culmination of a decades long cooperation effort to deepen U.S. and U.K. interoperability in an unprecedented way.”

USS The Sullivans (DDG 68) is homeported out of Mayport, Florida. This multi-mission destroyer is capable of conducting Anti-Air Warfare, Anti-Submarine Warfare, and Anti-Surface Warfare.

The Sullivans is named to honour five brothers from Waterloo, Iowa who served together on the USS Juneau during World War II. The Sullivan brothers: George, 28; Francis, 27; Joseph, 24; Madison, 23; and Albert, 20; lost their lives during the Battle of Guadacanal on November 13, 1942. They were adamant about serving together in spite of the Navy wartime policy to separate family members.”

“We are excited to operate from the deck of the Royal Navy’s Flagship alongside 617 Squadron, supporting a unique, historic opportunity” said Lt. Col Andrew D’Ambrogi, the commanding officer of VMFA-211. “Marines are expeditionary, we exist to operate forward and to provide rapid response capabilities in support of national and allied defense.”

Marine Fighter Attack Squadron (VMFA)-211 is based out of Marine Corps Air Station Yuma, Arizona and assigned to Marine Aircraft Group 13, 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing. Their mission is to destroy surface targets and enemy aircraft, day or night under all weather conditions during expeditionary, joint or combined operations. 

VMFA-211 can trace its lineage to January 1, 1937 when Marine Fighting Squadron 4 -was activated at Naval Air Station San Diego, California. The “Wake Island Avengers” were the second operational squadron to transition to the F-35B and were the first unit to fly the F-35B in combat. The F-35 combines next-gen fighter characteristics of low observability, sensor fusion, fighter agility and advanced logistical support with the most powerful and comprehensive integrated sensor package of any fighter aircraft in history, providing unprecedented lethality and access to highly-contested environments. 

VMFA-211 is also supported with U.S. Navy personnel assigned to USS John C. Stennis. The Sailors, all aviation ordnancemen, will be assembling ordnance in support of VMFA-211 for the duration of the deployment. 

Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 211 and USS The Sullivans are humbled and proud to continue the special relationship with the United Kingdom through the deployment of Carrier Strike Group 21. Their interoperability with the United Kingdom, The Netherlands and additional international allies will preserve military advantage and reinforce rules-based international order. The United States and United Kingdom’s forward-deployed forces remain ready to respond to crises globally as a combined maritime force. 

But looking back, this partnership almost did not happen.

More than a decade ago, the UK government announced that they were pulling out from the F-35B program to buy F-35Cs, and to redesign their new carriers to use catapults, namely, the new electronic catapults planned by the US Navy for the USS Ford class.

As part of the UK’s 2010 strategic review, the government committed to rebuilding their new carriers to enable “cats and traps” as the launch mechanism, and the purchase of F-35Cs versus F-35Bs.

This decision left the USMC in a very difficult situation within the Pentagon at the time, ramping up pressure on their F-35B purchases.

As Asian allies have now joined the F-35B effort, the importance of the USMC commitment to allies is certainly clear and those allied Pacific F-35Bs will be key contributors to the kind of air-sea integration necessary in the Pacific and working collective defense.

As fixed airfields become higher risk propositions, an ability of an aircraft to fly from a wide variety of sites which can operate as airfields in a crisis, has become not a nice to have capability but a necessary one and a key part in the way ahead in conducting successful distributed operations for an air-sea integrated force. 

Also, see the following:

Aboard the USS Wasp: Participants in Operational Testing Provide a Progress Report

USMC Deployment Onboard HMS Queen Elizabeth: The Partnership Which Almost Did Not Happen

By Robbin Laird

The terms C2, ISR and training are changing significantly in the shift from the land wars to the high-end fight. C2 is migrating from hierarchical direction to mission command and distributed operations; ISR is moving from intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance to INFORMATION to decision making for an integrated distributed force; and training is open ended learning process of how to shape modular task forces that can work together to deliver the desired crisis management and combat effects.

We have written a great deal in the past months about the very significant changes in these domains, and I have recently published a book which highlights some of these changes.

But as the Marines work with the Navy towards more effective integration for the high-end fight, both sides face significant challenges to work with one another. On the one hand, the US Navy has added new ISR capabilities in the form of P-8s and Tritons which have not been designed in any way to support the kind of maneuver operations which the Marines are built to do. On the other hand, the excellent C2 which the Marines have built to operate ashore are not built to work with the at sea maneuver force.

There is no magic technological wand which can be waved over the two forces and create integratability. This must be worked from the ground up on each side and the ultimate purpose of doing so needs to be shaped in very concrete ways and in very clear mission areas. Why are they integrating? For which crisis management or combat effect? Against which adversaries and for what demonstrated positive outcome?

During my visit to II MEF, I had the chance to discuss the way ahead on the Marine Corps side with a very experienced SIGINT officer, who is the head of II MEF G-2 and is the senior intelligence officer for the MEF, Col. William McClane. He joined the Marines towards the end of the Cold War, and as I have seen in both Marine Corps and Navy interviews, there are a smattering of such officers towards the end of the careers who bridge the end of the Cold War and the beginning of the new phase of peer competition.

Obviously, the bulk of their careers have been through the land wars period, but these officers understand how very different those wars are from facing an adversary with full spectrum forces able to conduct contested operations across the battlespace, up to and including nuclear weapons.

I have referred to this as the strategic shift, but in many ways, this is more of a strategic shock than a strategic shift. The Navy is shifting from support to land operations to blue water maneuver warfare; the Marines are shifting from being best mates of the U.S. Army to reworking into a maneuver force for full spectrum crisis management. In my own view, the question of being reworked as a maneuver force for full spectrum crisis management is only partly subsumed under an effort for enhanced integration with the Navy. Land-based operations even in the conditions of maneuver warfare is only partly part of the maritime fight.

In effect, what is happening is that as the Navy reworks its locus from the land wars to blue water expeditionary operations, the Marine Corps is reworking how it can assist in such a shift but also, how it can operate from afloat and ashore mobile bases to shape a way ahead in their ability to work with allies in interactively shaping more effective support for allied defense, on the one hand, and more effective allied integration with the Marine Corps and the joint force’s ability to operate across the extended and contested battlespace.

I had a chance to talk with Col. McClane on several issues but will highlight three major ones. The first one is the return of Russia as a definer of North Atlantic defense. The second is the intelligence to information transmutation of ISR. And the third is the challenge of working more convergence between Navy and Marine Corps ISR systems.

But the overview point made by Col. McClane was clearly articulated by him: “We are in a campaign of learning to shift from COIN operations to great power competition.”

Part of that learning is re-focusing on the Russians. When I went to Columbia University for my PhD in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the universities were committed to Russian studies. They certainly are not now. If there is a refocus on dealing with the Russians, the absence of analysts with Russian knowledge, language, and substantive, is a major problem.

This is certainly reflected in refocusing a force like the USMC. What Col. McClane noted was that our Nordic allies certainly have not taken a vacation from dealing with Russians, and that their domain knowledge is a key part of shaping a rethink of how to understand Russian behavior training, and operations. And clearly, it is the Russian military we are dealing with, not the Soviet Union.

This means that there is a double knowledge challenge. The first is that much of the residual U.S. knowledge remains under a Soviet hangover. And second that fresh knowledge of how the Russians operate under President Putin militarily needs to be built out.

The second is the intelligence to information shift in ISR. As Col. McClane put it: “We tend to get too fixated on the cyber piece to the determinant of working the information piece about how Russian decision makers operate and will operate in a crisis. That is a craft which we need to master.”

The information piece is about shortening the cycle from knowing to acting, as well as working information war. Col. McClane noted that “it is crucial we master the process whereby information can be tailored for messaging that affects the adversaries’ cognitive decision making. The messaging is key.”

The third key challenge we discussed is aligning USMC and US Navy intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance systems. A key example is that the P-8 which is being operated by the US Navy and our allies in the North Atlantic is not generating data easily usable by the USMC. In fact, in the recent Dynamic Cape 21 exercise, the Marines were able to work much more effectively with USAF unmanned aerial systems than Navy assets in terms of ISR missions.

This means, for Col. McClane: “We need naval capability development not just US Navy, and USMC separate acquisitions in the ISR area. If we are truly going to fight a naval campaign, the Marines will need to be able to tap into U.S. Navy systems useful to a Marine air-ground task force. Fixing and resourcing the Naval ISR enterprise is a key part of shaping the way ahead.”

Featured Photo: U.S. Marine Corps CH-53 Super Stallion helicopters, assigned to the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, prepare to retrieve U.S. Marines during a simulated air assault as part of exercise Trident Juncture 2018 in Keflavik, Iceland, Oct. 17, 2018. Trident Juncture, a NATO-led exercise, hosted by Norway, will include around 50,000 personnel from NATO countries, as well as Finland and Sweden, and will test NATO’s collective response to an armed attack against one ally, invoking Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Jonathan Nelson)