MARINE CORPS NEWS
Comments (12)
It is indeed a sacred obligation that if we truly commit to "once a marine always a marine" then we acknowledge that we have one Commandant at a time. General David Berger is the Commandant of The Marine Corps. I fully support our Commandant and I think that it is important that all who call themselves marine, whether they agree with him or not, publicly show support for him. Every compromise that he may be forced to make has the potential to cost us success in combat. That's just how imperative it is that we as marines make it known that we support his efforts as he sees it to insure that we are trained and equipped to win future battles. The Marine Corps fights for democracy but it is not one. Any fracture in our numbers could serve to emboldened those that are not our friends in congress. I think we all dispise the ugly political polarization currently over our nation and I fear any disagreements between brothers should never be aired on a public forum wherein those that are not marines are allowed to breed such polarization within our ranks. Regardless of what phase of your life as a marine that you are in, active duty, no longer on active duty, retired, it matters not. Discuss things eye to eye or directly with your brothers. Displaying unity, loyalty and support to our Commandant shows a significant number of voters to our congress, and those who aspire to be members of congress, that there could be political risk to them should they fail to support our Commandant. He deserves our trust, loyaly and support as do the marines currently serving and those that will serve. Those two support efforts cannot be separated. I believe that the new force structure should lay to rest forever the conversation that often arrises threatening the very existence of our Corps. Oooorah and success to the marines...
Ken Merrell
MGySgt USMC/Ret
Berger is accomplishing what no other enemy has been able to do in almost 250 years. By doing away with the historic combined arms approach, and by departing reality in thinking the Navy will give us the (yet to be designed, let alone produced, let alone work as advertised) special purpose ships we'd need, and by wrecking the hard to make it worse "but look Mom, we did it"Marine Corps personnel system, he has stuck a knife in our collective backs. When next called upon to defend an ill-prepared nation (does anyone think Joe Biden would EVER allow us to stand up to China????) the Corps will fail and when it fails, it will be absorbed into the Army or simply done away with. With "friends" like that - who needs enemies?
Kirk Weir at 4:59 PM
It appears that Berger is accomplishing something that neither Truman nor Eisenhower could do: Destroy the Marine Corps. His "pie in the sky" revisionism of all phases of the Corps plus his addiction to a WOKE, Cancel Culture and CRT indoctrination will negate our reason for existing as this nation's premiere combat organization. If this philosophy comes to fruition, some Marine casualties will not be KIAs but rather MIAs (murdered in action) as the result of hallucinatory and sanctimonious war theories.
What makes this "brain trust" think that a conflict with China will be much more different than Guadalcanal, Okinawa9 or Vietnam?
I served in 2nd Tank Bn.Camp Lejuene, FMF...YOU WILL NEED MARINE TANKS. Semper Fi.
LEIGHTON DOCKERY at 10:22 PMOutstanding reporting of a crucial development of the Future Marine Corps. The Commandant is demonstrating flexibility of Thought which isnt all that common in higher military attitudes! The next generation of Marines will reap the benefits of such courageous forward-thinking!
Mark Stergios at 3:01 PMI do not recognize the Marine Corps the I love, and served for ten years. All I can say is theCommandant better be right or a lot of marines are gonna get hung out to dry and die. I also question the wisdom of telling your potential enemy just how you plan to fight him. Oh well what do I know. I’m just an old Sgt and he’s a general.
Mike Shepherd Sgt. USMC (Ret) at 7:19 PMI submit that the current Commandant is myopic in threat perception. I assert further that the opinions of an (alleged) retired Master Gunnery Sergeant who fails to capitalize the Marine title of his "brothers", who consistently employs "that" instead of "who", and, who misspells "OOO-RAH" as "Oooorah" should be dismissed summarily.
MSgt Andrew Monak, USMC, Retired at 3:26 PMWhat is the CMC going to do for direct fire support such as only a tank can provide? I understand the problem of getting 72-tons to the battlefield, so what is on the drawing board to replace the Abrams? Light and fast is a nice goal, but an M-203 grenade launcher is not going to do the job of direct fire support. The CMC is betting everything on one kind of combat mission. Anything other than attacking islands will severely limit the future role of the Corps. That's a lot on the line.
Robert Peavey at 9:43 AM
Those who have issues with how Gen. Berger is implementing the wholesale remodel of the USMC have to understand the reasons why aren't entirely declared in the open. Yes, there's going to be a revival of island-hopping operations in the Pacific and elsewhere that does in fact require a domain-specific force, and good luck getting another armed service to make island combat a priority.
But there's also this: the USMC does not want to be America's Second Army. The Corps spent years in the desert paired up with the Army doing Army jobs with Marine equipment. In getting stuck with such role, the question comes "why do we need a USMC anyway?" Well, doofus, the Marines do a specific kind of warfare and it's not the kind that requires 13 month deployments five hundred miles inland into a mountain range with no water. Those concerned that Berger will destroy the USMC with the focus on littorals should consider it's a mission no other service can truly do, where the extended counter-insurgency warfare of the last two decades was actually more off base of the Corps' mission. Let the Army do Army jobs, and let the Special Forces do COIN.
For the record, I'm not crazy about all of Berger's vision. Stripping the USMC of its tactical armor is downright stupid in light of the PLANMC's heavily armored components. But the force reorientation is in the right direction.
People and critics need to understand a few things about USMC Force Design 2030. The USMC has not asked for an increase in funding, and with Climate Change, COVID-19 pandemic, 20 years of the GWOT, the economy, tax cuts, trade deficits, wildfires and natural disasters every year, etc. I can see that the USA doesn't have the cash. Thus, the divestment in the USMC M1A1 tanks and heavy armor.
BUT, General Berger will (obviously) not admit how much money the USMC has saved with divestments. He did admit that the USMC has saved money for new systems. BUT General Berger did not say WHAT new systems because that is considered Classified. Yes, there is NMESIS and there is Tomahawk cruise missiles on trailers, but honestly, I haven't seen these implemented in force. There is LAW and a few other items, but again, that doesn't equate to replacing all the divested heavy armor in the USMC and divesting of aviation units. Are the savings meant to fund LAW? The USMC is very unclear and vague in all of this because the LAW lacks firepower---it is just to transport 75 Marines around with wheeled vehicles and one 25mm autocannon and a few machine guns---and now Industry is coming out with newer and better designs that kind of make LAW kind of useless and pointless because why not larger and faster hovercrafts, landing crafts, or seaplanes?
The USMC transformation moves too slow to be adaptable. Now the US Army is building some modernization areas that kind of make it seem that the US Navy should support the US Army in amphibious lift instead. And there is still no indication that the US Army, US Navy, and USMC are jointly working together. They say that they are working together, but in the news it doesn't seem that they really are.
General Berger needs new firepower to compensate for the lack of tanks and I'm just not seeing that happen yet. F-35Bs are replacing AV-8 Harriers but that's a replacement, not an overflow of stealth fighters to compensate for the lack of tanks. The same goes for the rotorcrafts...trim some to fund other items that aren't disclosed to the public or the Media. New units aren't being created and new ATGMs aren't being fielded to replace the tanks. The transformation doesn't seem complete or even fully started yet and that makes me wonder if it's just replacements of Legacy USMC systems with newer systems than USMC modernization to really reach out and whack someone better, faster, cheaper, and more effectively as the US Army is striving for.
I agree with most of the other commenters. Berger comes across as untrustworthy. He has a "woke" agenda. That seems clear. No way can his plan be good for the Marine Corps or the nation.
Walt Miller at 6:49 AM
Berger is destroying the Marine Corps from within to the shock and dismay of many active Marines and Marine Veterans. His Force Design 2030 seems to be a cc of the Russian Marine Corps, and Berger's legacy will be that of the beginning of the end of the U.S. Marine Corps. What the past foreign and domestic enemies of our nation could not accomplish, Berger is doing from within the Corps. Shame on the DOD and on our Congress for allowing this one-man travesty to happen.
I. Macias, Jr. at 9:26 AM