Defense News Editorial on Expeditionary Force 21. They get it wrong.

Thanks for the link Jonathan!!!

via Defense News...

With competition for scarce resources run­ning high at the Pentagon, documents such as the US Marine Corps’ Expeditionary Force 21 plan are as much about justifying systems and their costs as they are about strategy.
Still, the plan heralds a thoughtful readjustment for America’s sea-based crisis response force, which seeks to recast itself in the wake of two land wars.
The document makes it clear the Corps is not only heading back to sea, but operating in a more distributed manner than ever before, with smaller units in more places across larger areas. That’s key; a smaller force minds a still large and dangerous world.
The plan calls for the service to retain the ability to conduct amphibious landings under fire. But it also acknowledges the growing threat from ever­more- precise guided rockets, artillery and mortars.
Those factors will change how the Marines oper­ate and equip themselves. The concept makes it
clear that the Marines are thinking hard about a different future with a different mix of capabilities, not just a smaller version of their pre-9/11 air-ground task forces.
Although the Marines invested billions of dollars in a failed attempt to develop a 36-ton fighting vehi­cle required to travel at nearly 30 mph over water, the service now wants its future amphibious vehicle to have more modest specifications and be better optimized for land combat. That’s a welcome change.
The Marines now have two challenges. First, the US Navy may not be able to afford the amphibious ships and littoral connectors the Marines need to do their job. And second, their new ground mobility plans may not fare well with Congress, nor suffi­ciently offset the dangers posed by hybrid threats.
Without the right ships, connectors and vehicles, a smaller but more widely deployed Corps could find itself at greater risk.
- Defense News Editorial

Distributed Operations, Operational Maneuver from Ship to Objective, Ship to Objective Maneuver and Sea Basing is not designed to face near peer or peer threats.  Expeditionary Force 21 simply repackages those concepts and that is the problem.

While the Navy and Air Force are developing Air-Sea Battle to deal with a rising China, the Marine Corps is orienting itself to deal with terrorism and support SOCOM.

That is the weakness and danger in this concept.

Instead of maintaining a capable middle weight force that can fight across the spectrum of combat and win, EF21 will make the Marine Corps vulnerable to all but 3rd world opponents.

That's why its flawed.  Don't believe me?  Check this out from a different Defense News article talking about EF21....

Maj. Scott Cuomo, director of IOC, said today’s enemies have weapons they can fire from hun­dreds to thousands of miles away. That requires Marines to operate from greater distances in many sit­uations, he added, and that can limit the size of the force they’re able to put on the ground.
“Between 100 to 200 Marines will be the first wave in,” Cuomo said. “And that force is going to have to fight by itself for — in what Expe­ditionary Force 21 lays out — potentially three to seven days that force is on the ground.”

These initial Marines would potentially be responsible for — at times company by company — taking airstrips, naval bases, missile sites, and setting up small forward operating posts.

The mission, along with the time spent without direct support, requires a more morally, mentally and physically capable Marine Corps, Cuomo said. And Expeditionary Force 21 lays out the plan for operating in those more austere, forward-based conditions.

The very idea that the USMC thinks that a Company Landing Team can hold ground for three to seven days should make every Mother of America that knows her stuff opt to send her kid to another service.

This plan will fill body bags.