By Robbin Laird

While reshaping how it will operate in the future, II MEF has to be ready to fight now. And to do so for 2^nd and 6^th Fleets as well as EUCOM. This means reshaping what it can do but to rework how it is integrated with the NAVY and the evolving joint force.

During my visit to II MEF at Camp Lejeune, I had a chance to discuss with the leadership at the MEF on the challenges of so doing and shaping a way ahead. I have also had the chance with my colleague Ed Timperlake in visiting Second Fleet, to discuss with C2F leadership the challenges of working a co-evolution with the USMC, and with the Nordics on what they view as the kind of force engagement by the Navy and Marines which dovetails most effectively into their own force transformation and reworking of European defense.  These are three trajectories in motion and the challenge is to work effectively ways to ensure convergence on effective approaches.

During my visit to Camp Lejeune, I had a chance to discuss the challenges of shaping the way ahead with Col. David S. Owen, the Assistant Chief of Staff for Operations (G-3) and LtCol Jon Erskine. For an enhanced focus on working with the U.S. Navy both officers have significant relevant experience. Among other aspects of his background, are several years of at sea experience with MEUs, and on carriers. With regard to LtCol Erskine, he was a Navy surface warfare officer who later became a Marine.

The current USMC Commandant has highlighted the importance of integration with the U.S. Navy as it focuses on the high-end fight. And to do so by finding ways for the Marines to operate in the weapons engagement zone or the WEZ. Another way to put this is to shape the ability of the Marines to operate as an “inside” force to support the “outside” force.

As the discussants at the Future Amphibious Forces, 2020 Conference last December put it, in working these kinds of issues the key question is both the strategic and tactical purpose of force redesign. As the moderator of the day, a noted former British General, highlighted at the end of the day, “We have had a very good conversation throughout the day about the future of amphibious forces.”

But as he also noted, the key challenge really was to sort through where one wanted to take those forces in terms of “what kinds of wars or conflicts were being prepared for or prioritized.”

His question underscored the core challenge facing any discussion of the way ahead for Maritime special forces or amphibious forces: What is their role in the high-end fight?

What is their role in crisis management?

And how related are the answers to these two questions?

Put another way, focusing on amphibious forces and their future quickly takes one into the realm of warfighting capabilities now, the next five years and the decade ahead.

In turn, the question is posed as well with regard to what capabilities are desired and for which concepts of operations to shape what kind of warfighting outcome?

In other words, there is no single force design which will easily embrace the range of options or be able to answer the question of prioritization for the warfighting approaches for the high-end fight.

As Col. Owen put it quite clearly in our discussion, “Above all, even if we are focused on enhanced naval integration, what we are really focused on is warfighting and how best to do it.”

It is clear that figuring out how the Marines can fight, survive and best deliver a desired combat effect while operating in the WEZ is challenging. As Col. Owen put it: “We need to figure out how best to operate within the WEZ. We have operated as MAGTFs, and MEUs and that entails bringing a force that is wholly. Capable. A MEU is a little suitcase of MEF-wide capabilities that can deliver scalable effects. It is a Swiss Army Knife. With a focus on the inside force approach, we are acting as an enabler for the joint or coalition force. How best to do so?”

One way to look at the force re-configuration is for a Marine Corps formation to operate, as Col. Owens noted, “to facilitate decisions in a larger kill web. For example, a Marine Corps Reconnaissance force could be part of a larger formation with tentacles which it extends to enable the force either through its own resources or tapping into other capabilities, such as the P-8.”

For LtCol Erskine, as a former SWO, he has very relevant domain expertise to work the problem of how Marines can contribute to a distributed kill web firing solution. He underscored the importance of working the sensor/shooter “mesh.” As he noted: “How do you connect any sensors on the battlefield to provide targeting quality data into a system and route it to the right decision-maker who has the authorities to either employ that weapon or coordinate it with other fire-decision authorities?”

If one is putting Marines inside the WEZ with strike weapons, those weapons clearly need to be integrated with the other services, to ensure that combat effectiveness is the outcome, rather than fratricide, negative impacts on the tactical situation or impacting negatively on the strategic crisis management decisions which need to be made as well in a conflict situation.

Marines in a kill web reconnaissance situation as an inside force might be aides to the process of finding targets and then passing those targets to the right shooter and use an asset they do not even own. As LtCol Erskine highlighted: “You could reach out to a JSF that’s in your engagement area, or you could reach out to a ship at sea or any aircraft flying through your airspace to pass the appropriate data for a firing solution. It may not even work for you as a Marine Corps unit.”

In effect, the goal is for the Marines to work with the joint and coalition force to shape a “fires network of things.”

For enhanced Navy and Marine Corps integration, clearly one challenge to be met is how to shape an integrated maritime campaign. How do you coordinate fires on land with fires at sea? As LtCol Erskine underscored the challenge: How do I provide those fires in support of the fleet from land-based capabilities and vice versa?”

As VADM Lewis put it in our discussions with Second Fleet, he put this challenge as one of enabling the fleet and the joint and coalition force to be able to operate either as supporting or supported elements dependent on the combat situation.  Shaping such a flexible combat capability is clearly a work in progress, and when where II MEF and C2F are key innovators in shaping a way ahead.

Featured Photo: U.S. Marine Col. David S. Owen is presented the Legion of Merit during a change of command ceremony for II MIG on Camp Lejeune, N.C., June 7, 2018. Owen relinquished his command of II MIG to Col. Jordan D. Walzer. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Caleb T. Maher)

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