The Marine Corps is halfway through a decade-long project to re-imagine itself for the next generation of warfare, refocusing itself as a seagoing service with Force Design 2030
But the Marines aren’t leaving land warfare behind, and will release an updated approach to ground combat in the coming weeks, Col. Erick Clark, director of future operations and plans, said Tuesday during the Modern Day Marine conference in Washington, D.C.
Ground Combat Element 2040 follows the service’s latest aviation plan, released in February.
The framework will “make sure that we are staying focused on the ground combat element, to make sure that beyond some of the capabilities that were rolled out in Force Design, specifically focused on our Marine littoral regiments and other capabilities that would enhance the [Marine Air-Ground Task Force], we wanted to make sure that we were not losing track of our core capabilities to conduct offensive, defensive, and expeditionary operations within the ground combat element,” said Maj. Gen. Kyle Ellison, who commands 3rd Marine Division, said during a panel previewing the new plan.
Experts and recent national defense strategies have identified China as the U.S.’s most likely future opponent, though the Trump administration’s most recent doctrine seeks to cocoon the U.S. in the Western Hemisphere.
“When you envision the type of fight we’re preparing for, where we face a peer or near-peer adversary in a high-end fight, where all domains are contested—and then in some, the adversary will have an advantage—that’s not a battlefield we have fought on, at least since I’ve been in the Marine Corps,” said Maj. Gen. Farrell Sullivan, who commands 2nd Marine Division.
While Force Design 2030 has been all about evolving the Corps past the Global War on Terror, the war in Ukraine has provided concrete lessons for what combat may look like in the next U.S. ground war.
“I don’t want to have a bias toward that conflict and say that the future will look exactly like that, because it won’t, but we would be criminal not to be paying attention to that,” Sullivan said.
Like the other services, the Marine Corps is seeking to quickly build up its counter-unmanned systems capabilities, anticipating that any conflict is going to include a heavy dose of drone warfare.
“Ground-based air defense at echelon is something that we are very much focused on, based off of the UAS threat right now that you’re seeing on the modern day battlefield,” said Maj. Gen. Jason Morris, who directs the operations division at Marine Corps headquarters. “And while Force Design did field a number of systems…there is still a shortfall for maneuver coverage at the [ground combat and logistics] level, and so we are taking action to field dismounted, organic counter-UAS kits to our lower level formations, infantry battalions, [combat logistics battalions], to bases and stations to make sure that we can handle the Group 1, Group 2 UAS threats.”
The service is taking feedback from that effort to refine what those units need in counter-UAS systems, in an effort to speed up the acquisition of something closer to the best solution.
“This is a work in progress,” Morris said. “We’re building a plane as we’re flying it, but we can’t wait on the standard acquisitions program timeline for things to be fielded in five to seven years, because things are changing on the battlefield so much and so quickly that we’ve got to be able to adapt, to adapt faster than that, in the weeks and months timeframe.”
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