Update:
USMC Force Design 2030: Threat Or Opportunity?
Recap:
He [current Commandant] made it his top priority to bring the Marine Corps more into alignment with both the changing character of war and international security environment, and he announced a plan called Force Design 2030 to accomplish this aim.
But today, a group composed primarily of disaffected retired generals vehemently disagree with the General Berger’s overall vision of a future Marine Corps–so much so, that they are mounting a sweeping public relations campaign to stop him from getting it off the drawing board.[iii] While the Commandant is in no way obligated to listen to their complaints, the thoughts and inputs of retired Marines, particularly general officers, have long been valued by serving Commandants (the same can be said of all service chiefs). But this campaign takes “input” to an unsettling degree. The retired generals have made their objections known to General Berger and are expecting him to heed their preferences to preserve the status quo. Up to this point, Berger has not done so–or at least not enough for their liking. They therefore decided to “seek legislation that would halt the [Commandant’s] ongoing efforts until a more thorough requirements-based future is reviewed.”[iv]
There is a term for this approach: a shake down. There is nothing remotely like this behavior in Marine Corps history.
As a result, he arrived as Commandant with some broad preliminary judgments about both the future and Marine Corps force design, which he offered in his planning guidance. Among them, four stand out to me.
Judgment 1: The future Marine Corps must be organized, trained, equipped and postured to conduct distributed operations.Judgment 2: The Chinese anti-access/area denial threat in the Western Pacific is the “pacing threat” for a future naval expeditionary force in the precision strike regime and calls for a different set of amphibious capabilities.
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Translated, III MEF would become a force capable of operating inside the Chinese anti-access/area-denial network from the first day of any future conflict
Judgment 3: Given expected budgets, pursuing any new force design would require the Marine Corps to divest some legacy programs and force structure to invest in needed future capabilities.Judgment 4: The urgent requirement to adopt Marine Corps force design for the future operating environment meant change must start immediately; “essential to charting our course in an era of strategic fluidity and rapid change will be the effective integration of professional wargaming in force design…”