This post is prompted by an interview by SeaPower Magazine of General Gleuck. Read the entire article for yourself but this part has me punching walls...
It was planned to travel in the water at 25-plus knots. That was all predicatedWhat has me pissed off and shouting at the moon is that several exercises were done that looked at the anti-access threat. Even if the threat has us moving back to 100 miles off shore that does not mean that the EFV was not viable. It does not mean that amphibious assault vehicles are not viable. It just means that you transport them to a launch point. But the bigger problem is that the Marine Corps seems to rapidly be forgetting its history.
on launching from 25 miles, having the sea base at 25 miles and understanding that the EFV would leave the water and maneuver deep inland. Under some conditions, we may start operations from further out to sea, changing our previous EFV assumption and increasing the importance of speed and range.
Given current technology, we could not achieve the ability to maneuver through the sea from beyond 25 nautical miles and seamlessly maneuver inland with protection and firepower. More significantly, in the time of reduced budgets, the EFV became unaffordable. Maneuvering in the littoral sea-land environment means maneuvering in tough, complex terrain. Most of that mission occurs on the land — about 90 percent. We relooked at that 90 percent on the land mission and the EFV fell short given today’s technology.
Similar problems with current technology and high cost forced a halt in the EFV replacement program, the original Amphibious Combat Vehicle [ACV].
Everyone forgets the name of one of the Marine Corps greatest minds. General Paul K. Van Ripper.
General Van Ripper made the term asymmetric warfare popular in the Pentagon and his work (read that to mean brilliant strategic thinking) in Millennium Challenge 2002 war game is estimated to have cost the Navy a sunk Carrier Battle Group, a sunk Amphibious Ready Group AND 20,000 servicemen dead.
But now you're asking me, what does this have to do with "delivery of a mechanized raid force to a launch point"? Its simple. We've been dealing or rather learning to deal with anti-access threats in the Marine Corps for quite a while now.
We've been planning on moving amphibs further offshore for quite a while now. I talked about this in 2012 but consider this a refresher. This page is from MCRP 3-31.1A Employment of Landing Craft Air Cushion.
We have the tools, we had the doctrine, the only thing we're lacking is the understanding of leadership that air power alone will not win the next war.
