via Breaking Defense...
“If we get in another fight – and some day we will get in another fight on the ground – I think it would be a different fight: one that’s shorter, faster-paced, and much harder,” Winnefeld said in his opening remarks. “The battlefield will be a more hostile environment than it’s ever been. The fog of war, despite all of our technology, will not clear for us, and the adversary will use the tools we have employed so successfully recently, such as quality ISR and networks and precision guided weapons, against us. We will need ground forces that can handle this.”Read the entire article but be advised.
“Speed of deployment, whether by being there already or through prepositioning or through lift, will become more important than it’s ever become,” Winnefeld went on. Getting to the war zone quickly, by the way, has been an agonizing issue for the Army since the failure of Task Force Hawk during the Kosovo campaign of 1999. Indeed, even further back, many in the Army remember the desperately vulnerable position of the much-vaunted but lightly-armed 82nd Airborne after it flew to Saudi Arabia in 1990, only to have to wait months for heavy backup to come by sea: For a stinging critique, read theDefense Science Board’s 2006 Summer Study: Search for the words “speed bump.”
This is exactly what I've been saying for months...he's just saying it better.
Its weird. The Commandant of the Marine Corps is building a light weight, airmobile force and here we have a Navy Admiral telling us that we're going to be in the fight of our lives against a sophisticated enemy, with precision weapons and ISR as good as our own.
An air assault Marine Corps will not survive this type of future battlefield. F-35's will not provide the type of support needed by Marines in this type of fight.
We're building the wrong type of Marine Corps for the future. Sea base? 200 nm offshore isn't protection from shore based anti-ship missiles anymore. Against a modern foe is the M777 the right artillery system or do we need something truck mounted like the French have? We definitely need a new AAV (or better... the BAE MPC). And is the MEU going to be capable of performing even its traditional missions as currently equipped?
I don't know. What I do know is that Marines are asking these questions. I just wish HQMC would too.
UPDATE: I just realized that the Admiral just gave us a glimpse at more than a few things...
* SOCOM is the favored child right now but its time in the sun seems to be ending. His talk about COIN going out of favor is a direct blow at them. A hard core body shot that is telling. My only question is how low will they go.
* Speaking of reduced manning. Its obvious that they want to take the military waaaay down in strength. We're talking about historic lows for the Army and Marine Corps. Its obvious that they plan is to trade manpower for weapons. Specifically the F-35...that is until everyone wakes up and kill the beast.
* He's basically telling the Army to get back to having Light Fighters. A Stryker Brigade isn't rapid deployable and neither is the 101st. Sounds like he wants the Army to get back to the days when a 50 cal was considered heavy.
I also forgot to include the link. Click here.
good thing the F-35B will make it all better ;)
ReplyDeleteNow, when you are recalled and made commandant, how will you justify to Congress the purchase of foreign equipment with out tax dollars?
easy. the same way we will be getting an Italian MPC. it'll be made in American by a home corporation..in that case BAE (don't laugh, they separated US operations). in the case of the Gripen it'll be Boeing building it in the US, but what will really cause a ruffle is when i start pulling A-10's out the graveyard, have them rebuilt and make half the Marine Corps fly them. i'll piss them off even more when i cancel the rest of the buy of MV-22s and get MH-60's...give our UH-1Ys to the USAF and have Sikorsky make a portion of our Blackhawks into Battlehawks.
Deletethe F-35B will be toast and the AV-8B will be extended. work will start on a replacement but it won't be the cluster that we saw with this program.
also, many today would say the USMC has been irrelevant since the Korean war and should be cut down to being the Navy's police force/ ship guards. Maybe Truman had the right idea.....
ReplyDeletenow you're just trolling.
Deletethe Marine Corps has been anything but irrelevant. i won't even debate that with you and if you continue along that line then you're outta here. no questions asked, you're booted.
take that shit to a "i hate the Marine Corps site" ..... i won't tolerate it here.
I never said I hate the marines, I have nothing but respect for the USMC.
DeleteHowever, some people in power today see the marines and their whole amphibious landing doctrine as being a WW2/Korean War relic.
You seem to want the Marines to morph into essentially a miniature US Army, with very heavy armor.
TRUMAN:
Delete1. Haberdasher.
2. Democrat.
3. Dropped two nukes in combat on cities.
4. Was fulla shi t.
US Navy: The Marines never guarded ships, was never the Navies police force (Master at Arms are the LEO) and any job shipboard blue water Navy a common weapons trained sailor can do, cleaning Navy Urinals, shi tters and showers while swabbing and buffing decks.
You seem to think the Marines are Policemen, security guards for boats and Janitors.
All B/S aside the Marines conduct over the beach assaults with vertical envelopment to punch a beachhead out of some S. o. B.'s Ocean front property to enable a successful Naval campaign.
The depth and duration of the assault is the difference between Army Amphibs and Marines.
Army assaults to go deep into enemy territory to pursue the battle, Marines kick down the door, hold the beachhead, capture Ports intact or destroy them.
For an example see the Army and Marine ways of battle in two island engagements same AOE Makin island and Betio.
That Bubba is the difference between a leg infantry unit and shock troops.
Speed of a Marine amphip Ops means the US Navy can speed back out to blue water and maneuver to engage the enemy fleet or protect the beachead.
The Navy is not going to hang around while Army troops slowly dig out the enemy expecting the navy to sit like ducks (do ducks sit? if so why? >Heinlein<) awaiting the Army, Navy likes it's amphibious Ops fast, furious and deadly. So they can get back to the sea and midrats and a movie aka A Naval campaign.
ARMY = slow
Marines = fast
Navy = impatience
Air Force = NICE Females and Good chow!
Semper Fidelis, Dave.
I've wondered for quite a while what would have happened if Sadam had mounted an all out attack with only airborne forces and Saudis military to resist.
ReplyDeleteI doubt he would have had the logistical back up to support it, but...
he wouldn't have needed it. he would have made it to the cities without real resistance and he could resupply there...no need to depend on his own lines. additionally he would have been able to pull back from the cities, kept the oil fields and sued in the UN for peace.
DeleteSaddam's major miscalculation was the Holy grail that was Vietnam.
DeleteOsama did it, Saddam did it and many others are still doing it.
Counting on the US to NOT get involved in a war.
Hippies and anti war protestors have fooled our enemies into thinking the US will not fight.
Phuc'd up they did.
All this means well-armored and 'smart' MEU/MEB gear in ample numbers, therefore weight, to be delivered fast, stealthily and in as many locations as you need to have defense run ragged.
ReplyDeleteAll the more reason for heavy-lift-&-swift ship-to-shore/seabase-to-shore capabilities. Whether 100nm, 200nm or more distance matters for protection in many cases.
Long-range anti-ship cruise-missiles ?
Each ship-to-shore transporter would carry its own 'bubble' of air-recon and air-defenses to amount to multiple layers of defenses between CM-launchers and the ARG/Seabase.
In many scenarios ARG/MEU operations must be doable without a DDG, never mind the rare CSG.
Marines are going ashore under hostile or "contested" circumstance and you're telling me the Navy can't get a DDG over to support them?
Deletethat thinking defies all logic. besides. an MEU isn't tasked with conducting opposed landings. addtionaly for every piece of weaponry you put on a transporter is the same amount of weight that it can't carry. if you have a ship to shore connector that can provide its own "bubble" of protection then its no longer a ship to shore connector and its something else.
It is a 3-vessel ARG with LHD, LPD, LSD - and not a 4-vessel, 5-vessel etc. squadron with DDG, FFG etc.
DeleteChange the ARG/MEU-format to include FFG/DDG etc, then you'd have a point.
This perspective sounds like these self-disarmament advocates who won't carry a sidearm but ask for a (police-state) cop just minutes away... Not plausible even in urban/sub-urban America. And sure unrealistic in suddenly-emerging conflicts/emergencies where you just can't wait for the 4th-&-5th ARG vessel - FFG & DDG.
The MEU is not tasked with conducting opposed landings because it has not been able to in how many generations of Marines learning Expeditionary Assault ?? You should not try what you physically can't do. That's where this 'doctrine' comes from. A "Deficiency" if there ever was one for an explicitly amphibious-capability focus organization !
And that is so because very few technologists with Navy and in private industry have taken potent ship-to-shore concepts seriously.
LCU is WW-2 thinking.
LCAC is fine, but a decade or two after the Brits were flying hundreds of passengers and a lot of cars (up to 112-tons per ride)across the channel in routine daily scheduled ferry-service with 40-60+kts 4-prop thrust-vectoring machines also known as SR.N4 "Mountbatten Class" - in daily service between 1968 and 2000.
And USMC's amphibious assault capability has been put at peril because of that lax attitude by too many design-folks.
That is why your idea that a heavy-lift OTH-200nm-capable Connector would not need potent self-defense is clearly rooted in the past of nobody offering a plausible proposal and thus nobody thinking further about it.
Sol, would you do a 200nm ride into enemy-territory 'buck-nekkit' ??
Spit-balls anyone ? That apparent preference for self-disarmament sounds an awful lot like some (pseudo)-lefty anti-2.Amendment policies ?!
Any Connector going to war needs potent self-defense with 1-2 20-30mm cannon, STINGER, perhaps AIM-9X self-defense, and battlefield awareness via a potent surface-&-air-defense radar. And that, in turn, makes for a plausible air-defense screen protecting the ARG way offshore. Let's see how many ASCM would get through ?
In the meantime DDG is making flank-speed to be there soon...
That's what you should be excited about, Sol.
Do the campaign for reassertion of amphibious focus and capability every other day between the F-35 drum-beat...
Guess which one is more important to the Corps ??!
Army isn't going light any time soon because its anti-tank weapon development has been frozen in time for over a decade.
ReplyDeleteTo pay for the Farsical Combat System and the war, Army dumped LOSAT/CKEM, Fire-and-Forget TOW, SADARM, 120mm mortar anti-armor munition, etc., basically all of the systems that would make light forces prickly and dangerous.
What forces have deployed to a NTC to train taking on a heavy-mechanized enemy force with only Javelins and TOWs?
It could be done, but it will take time. The technology is all there:
81mm Merlin MMW anti-armor rounds
120 mm Strix from Bofors
155mm Bofors BONUS
ER SPIKE missiles
it just requires a budget.