The Marine Corps has a tremendous opportunity sitting right in front of it IF it has the audacity to act boldly, dump an ill conceived formation and make it the force of choice for Combatant Commanders.
How about we make our MEU's reinforced by attaching an AFSB to the Amphibious Ready Group?
How would we do it? First we have to dump the SPMAGTF-CR. Land based Marine units that fly in on MV-22's, supporting units hundreds of miles away and expecting them to be combat capable is a recipe for disaster.
Correcting that mistake will be easy...all it will take is a wave of a pen by the current Commandant. Acknowledging that the SPMAGTF-CR was not the way to go will be hard.
But the benefits will be tremendous. We will be floating an extremely powerful combat unit that will handle most low intensity situations with ease. We're talking about a plus up of maybe 200 infantrymen (I think, not sure how many Marines can be transported on the AFSB or whether extra space is available on the rest of the ARG)...an additional number of MV-22s, CH-53s, AH-1Zs or UH-1Ys...or you could simply keep the number of helos the same, transfer some to the AFSB and plus size your firepower on the big deck amphib by increasing the number of Harriers carried!
The idea needs work but I think it has merit.
