FEATURE ARTICLE

January 2007

Marine Corps’ Vision for the Future Requires More Training, Technology

By Grace Jean

Beginning this month, the Marine Corps will start testing a new war-fighting concept aimed at countering unconventional enemies. The technologies that would support it, however, are lagging, officials said.

The goal is to disperse small units that would maneuver relatively independently, much like special operations teams. The Marine Corps calls this concept “distributed operations,” and is seeking to incorporate it into its war-fighting doctrine.

“Distributed operations are going to enhance our capabilities to be able to influence the action on the ground,” said Lt. Gen. Jan Huly, Marine Corps deputy commandant of plans, policy and operations. “It’s going to be another tool in the toolkit.”

Officials envision that distributed operators will be physically separated throughout geographic locations as large as the southern Pacific, but will be tactically unified through networks, both at sea and at shore, said Lt. Gen. James Amos, commanding general of the Marine Corps Combat Development Command.

“We’re on the verge of being able to do that with networked operations,” he told a National Defense Industrial Association expeditionary warfare conference in Panama City, Fla.

But other speakers at the conference voiced more skepticism.

“By and large, we have our arms around the tactical pieces of distributed operations,” said Brig. Gen. Randolph Alles, commanding general of the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory. “But the other pieces — the logistics and medical support — I don’t think we have our arms around that,” he told the conference.

To turn the concept into reality will require substantial investments in communications gear, weapons and training, said Huly.

For example, distributed operations will require five times the number of communications assets presently in the infantry battalion. “Think of the implications of that,” he said.

In current operations, communications assets have often been inadequate, said Brig. Gen. Joseph Dunford Jr., director of the Marine Corps operations division at the plans, policy and operations directorate.

“We could not push voice, data and imagery across the force at the appropriate levels to the degree necessary,” he said. “Our capabilities and the equipment that we have out there in the operating forces are not what they need to be for the current fight.”

Under the distributed operations concept, small units, such as squads and platoons, will make decisions independently of upper echelon commanders.

“One of the most significant implications of distributed operations, from my perspective, is we’re pushing down functions — we’re pushing down command and control, we’re pushing down fires, we’re pushing down intelligence, logistics, tactical mobility — to a level far below what it had been before,” said Dunford. “As we do that, we need to make sure we’re addressing the training and education of our Marines and sailors. In some cases, we’ve probably got to have more mature leadership at certain levels.”

In October, the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory conducted an experiment in the Philippines involving the 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment of the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, to validate the distributed operations concept and training.

Preparing junior Marines to take on leadership roles requires additional training on specialized communications equipment, as well as other technologies and tactics.

“It is the type of training that we want to field in the operating forces,” said Alles.

Having forces so widely dispersed also will put a strain on the logistics support system.

“They are talking about the ability to do things that stress the logistics support systems in ways that we’re not sure if we can in fact support them,” said Rear Adm. William Landay, chief of naval research.

Maritime prepositioning ship squadrons have traditionally provided up to 15,000 Marines with all the cargo and supplies they will need on deployment for 30 days. However the current fights in Iraq and Afghanistan demand more armor and specialized equipment than in the past conflicts. As a result, “we can’t fit everything we need to fit aboard those three ships,” said Dunford.

Marine expeditionary units that have deployed to Central Command have had their Iraq-bound equipment, weapons and tactical mobility assets shipped separately and stored in Kuwait, said Dunford.

“That’s a great solution” he said, “but it doesn’t help you if you need to be deployed somewhere else.”

To get around those challenges, the Marines are examining how they might be able to link up pieces of the maritime pre-positioning squadrons with forward-deployed naval forces.

Marine planners expect to conduct additional experiments to address those issues.

One concern is that Marines have encountered problems with their reconnaissance, surveillance, target acquisition and intelligence dissemination, said Dunford.

“We have some challenges right now in identifying the enemy. We have some challenges in finding the enemy. And none of these concepts are going to be realized unless we wrestle with challenges,” he said.

“We have to field unmanned air vehicles at every level in the Marine air ground task force,” said Dunford, who added that UAVs are not out in the significant numbers that Marines need today.

Implementing the distributed operations concept will cost money, but that shouldn’t be a major hurdle, said Huly. “There is not a shortage of money to fight the war effort here. You just have to be smart,” he said. The Marine Corps needs to do a better job explaining what it wants to buy and expediting the procurement process, he added.

Marine Corps insiders, meanwhile, have questioned the relevance of the distributed operations concept, especially at a time when the Corps is overstretched in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to one observer, the debate over distributed operations has become an “unnecessary distraction.”

Please email your comments to GJean@ndia.org

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