Step Into the Unknown, or Future of American Marines
Infantrymen from the 22MEU (company A) land on a tiltrotor aboard the Kirsarge UDC. After the reform, the role of airmobile units in Marines will grow even stronger.
The United States Marine Corps (USMC), an organization that is called the United States Marine Corps in Russia and which is actually called the United States Marine Corps, is currently experiencing one of the most dramatic moments in its last thirty (at least) years stories. Having gone unnoticed by domestic observers, the Corpus launched a phenomenally deep reform, which, if successful, will turn it into a fundamentally new instrument of war for the Americans, and, most importantly, naval warfare, rather than land war.
Well, in the event of a failure, the United States may lose its legendary military structure almost completely. The ongoing Marines reform is worth talking about.
First, the backstory.
Second Army
Started after September 11, 2001, the American world war (supposedly against terrorism) demanded extreme tension from the US Armed Forces. This even affected the Navy: sailors on rotation served as soldiers on land bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, patrol Orions were involved in reconnaissance tasks over land, carrier-based Navy aircraft inflicted countless strikes on ground targets. This cup has not passed, of course, and Marines. As a naval expeditionary force designed to fight on the ground, the Marines (let's call them that) were among the first to set foot on the soil of Afghanistan and Iraq. During the Iraq War, during the advance on Baghdad, the entire American right flank consisted of them.
Iraq, 2003, Marines in the battle for the bridge
Later, as the insurgency flared up on the occupied lands, these troops, along with the US Army, became increasingly involved in the occupation service. They received wheeled MRAP armored cars so as not to move on tracked AAV7 armored personnel carriers optimized for over-the-horizon landings, or on the LAV-25 armored personnel carrier, which the Corps directives expressly forbid to use on the battlefield as an armored personnel carrier due to thin armor (it is only slightly stronger than our armored personnel carriers, which would not have been used in the American Armed Forces due to low survivability). They sat at bases and roadblocks, went on night raids in Baghdad or Tikrit, and, as former US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates aptly put it, they turned into a second army. It cannot be said that America needed a second ground force, and questions were slowly but surely brewing among the American public about the status that the Corps had achieved as a result of the wars organized by the Republicans.
Marines in Afghanistan: Zero Differences with the Army
Why does America need another ground force? Why do these ground forces have their own Air Force (deck aviation Corps are stronger than many national air forces in the world. Stronger than most, at least in terms of numbers). Where and against whom will the Corps demonstrate its landing capabilities? Against mainland China? Not funny. Against Russia? In general, it is also not funny, and why? Why do we need endless "deployments" (deployment) of amphibious combat-ready groups (ARG) at sea? Is it possible to defeat at least Syria with such a group? No. Conduct a special operation on its territory? Yes, you can, but the landing forces of the group are redundant for this, and the air forces are insufficient, at least if the Syrians try to interfere.
Questions ripened and in what condition the Corps was.
Overstrain caused by an endless war, in general, in principle, harmed the US Armed Forces. But Marines - especially. So, the flight of the Hornet pilot, assigned to the Corps, fell to a miserable 4-5 hours a month.
F / A-18 of one of the Corps squadrons
There are other issues that would take too long to list. One way or another, the Corps was slowly turning into a thing in itself. The situation was not changed by the actual seizure of military power in the United States by officers from the Marines - at some point, Marine Mattis was the Secretary of Defense, Marine Dunford was the chairman of the OKNS, and Marine General Kelly was the head of the White House staff. The Trinity even arranged photo shoots in uniform at the White House, but they were of no use to the USMC: in fact, the only breakthrough was the entry into service of the F-35B aircraft, which were a serious step forward compared to the AV-8B, which the Corps pilots flew previously. And that's it.
The rapidly changing world, however, required changes in the American military machine. Trump's attempts to break out of the Middle East swamp and focus on strangling China required appropriate tools, and the opponents of the Corps demanded that its existence (and expenses) be given meaning or that its army be subordinated to the rights of army landing units (an attempt of which, by the way, in the history of the United States has already been under Truman in late forties).
Everything was complicated by the delicacy of the topic. Marines in the USA is just a legendary structure, surrounded by a lot more myths than the Airborne Forces in our country. The entire Second World War in the United States is largely associated precisely with the assaults by the Marines of the Japanese fortified islands in the Pacific Ocean. Corps in America is simply adored, just remember the famous "Raising the Flag over Iwo Jima" - one of the symbols of America as such. As one journalist put it, "The United States doesn't need a Marine Corps, but the United States wants one." They even have Marines fighting in space in computer games about the distant future. The corps is part of the American identity, not the most important, but integral, it's not just troops. And it was not so easy to approach the issue of their reform.
Marines are not just troops, they are a symbol of America, as some Americans think, and it is a symbol that will survive America itself.
But in the end, the reform began, and began from within. On July 11, 2019, the post of commandant (commander) of the Corps was taken by General David Hilberry Berger, a combat general who is the author of the reform currently under way, her father. Good or not, but now the result of the transformations in the Corps will be connected with it.
General David Berger
Berger received military training at the university, at the local analogue of the military department, and from there he went to the army for the rest of his life. He went through almost all command levels: platoon, company, battalion, regimental battle group, division, expeditionary force with a division in its composition (Marine Expeditionary Force), all the forces of the Corps in the Pacific. He participated in the Gulf War in 1991, in operations in Haiti, in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He served in Kosovo and the Pacific. He, in general, fought wherever he could. At the same time, he spent about half of his service in headquarters at various levels and in instructor positions. He is trained as a scuba diver, scout, parachutist, and studied at the army ranger school. The battalion he commanded was a reconnaissance battalion, Berger knows what it's like to be behind the front lines. Already an officer, he was trained at the command and staff college of the Corps and advanced training courses in the so-called. School of Advanced Combat Training, also Marine. Against this background, his master's degree in political science at a civilian university no longer looks good, but he also has it.
Apparently, such versatile preparation gave Berger the opportunity to generate his extremely radical plan for reforming such an important institution for America. The plan that the American public initially met with hostility.
Because Berger announced his plan with the need for radical reductions, and what!
Rejection of all tanks: quite numerous tank forces of the Corps are completely disbanded, there will be no tanks. Field artillery is being reduced from 21 batteries of towed guns to five. The number of each F-35B squadron is reduced from 16 vehicles to 10. Convertiplane squadrons, Cobra helicopter attack squadrons, transport squadrons, and battalion controls are being cut. Many parts are reduced completely, others partially. In total, the corps will lose 12000 people by 2030, or 7% of its current strength. It is by the named year that he must take on a new look completely.
There were people who called Berger grave digger Corps. Veterans say they will not recommend young people to join his ranks - it is better to join the Army, Navy or Air Force. And this is an unprecedented level of criticism.
Behind the collapse, however, is something interesting.
Berger's plan
The reform planned by Berger is inextricably linked with how American strategists see the future non-nuclear (or limited nuclear) war against China.
And the first thing is where they see this war. And they see it on the so-called "First chain of islands" - a set of archipelagos that cut off mainland China from the Pacific Ocean. At the same time, the specifics of the theater of operations is that the chain is already under the allies of the Americans, and the task will not be so much to take these islands by storm, but to prevent the Chinese from doing this when they try to break the naval blockade, for example. A separate issue is the islands in the South China Sea. Often these are just shoals, nothing more, but control over them allows you to control navigation in a vast area, and the capture of islands that have airfields makes it possible to quickly transfer troops within the archipelagos. This is a very specific environment.
Two island chains - two containment lines of China. The Americans want to block it on the first line and then go to the South China Sea. It is also planned to hold Taiwan and the waters around. Departure to the second chain of islands is extremely undesirable and in fact is regarded as a defeat
Berger does not hide, and he has repeatedly said this, that the task of the Corps will be to effectively fight in this specific environment, and not somewhere else. And, I must say, now the organizational and staffing structure of the Corps does not correspond to such tasks.
The main postulates of the Berger plan are:
1. The corps is an instrument of naval warfare; it ensures its success by operations on land. This is an openly revolutionary position. Before that, everything was the other way around: the victory achieved by the Navy at sea opened the possibility of using the marines on earth to achieve victory on earth. Berger simply flips this generally accepted logic.
This is not to say that before him no one had come up with this. In a series of articles "Building a Fleet", in the article “We are building a fleet. Attacks of the weak, loss of the strong the author formulated one of the principles of naval warfare by the weakest side, which had previously been used more than once in history:
Thus, we formulate the third rule of the weak: it is necessary to destroy the enemy's naval forces by ground forces and aviation (not sea) in all cases when this is possible from the point of view of the predicted effect and risks. This will release the forces of the Navy for other operations and reduce the superiority of the enemy in forces.
The Americans, being the strongest side, plan to do the same to further widen the gap in power between themselves and China. How Berger is going to use troops against the enemy fleet, this is a separate conversation, and it is ahead, for now, we note the revolutionary nature of the new reform. By the way, one of the innovations voiced by Berger will be a much closer interaction of the Navy in the course of the fulfillment by the latter of their tasks to establish dominance at sea.
It is interesting, but in the same article it was predicted that the Americans would develop in this direction:
It is especially worth mentioning that such operations are the “hobby” of the Americans. We can believe in such opportunities or not, but they will do it in droves, and we should be prepared for this, on the one hand, and not be “embarrassed” by doing it ourselves, on the other.
And so it turns out in the end.
One of the important aspects of the first point is that Berger takes the Corps away from the position of the "second Army" - now the Army will do what it did before, but the Marines will do completely different things that are necessary in principle, but inaccessible to the Army. Thus, the question of the usefulness of the Corps for the country is closed, not only in the ideological field, but also in practice.
2. The corps must carry out its tasks in conditions of dominated by the adversary at sea and in the air (contested environment). This is also a revolutionary moment - both earlier and now, the conditions for conducting an amphibious landing operation are to achieve supremacy at sea and in the air in the area of \uXNUMXb\uXNUMXbits implementation and on the communications necessary for its implementation. Of course, history knows many examples when relatively successful landings took place without all this, at least the German landing in Narvik, but these were always marginal examples - examples of how, generally speaking, it was not necessary to do, but lucky. The Americans are going to create forces that will fight like this on a regular basis. This is something new in military affairs.
These two requirements lead to the fact that the Corps must change beyond recognition - and this is what is happening.
We ask the question: do you need a lot of tanks in conditions when the task of the Americans is to disrupt the enemy’s landing on "their" islands? Most likely, a complete rejection of them is a mistake, but in general they do not need a lot.
And the barrel artillery? Again, there may be a situation where it is really needed, here the Americans are taking risks with landslide reductions, but let's admit that it will not be needed as much as in a regular ground war. Yes, and do not completely eliminate it, just cut it.
Or we will consider the same questions in relation to the capture of the Chinese bulk islands: where are the tanks to disperse there? And isn’t it too difficult to deliver them there? And the numerous barrel artillery? Ammo to her? And can this artillery, based on one island, support fire troops on another, say, 30 kilometers? No.
Or such a question as the reduction of the staff of the battalion as a whole. This is currently being studied in the United States, but the question that the battalions are "losing weight" is a settled one, the question is only how much. It seems stupid, but the small and dispersed parts are much more stable when using nuclear on the battlefield weapons, and this cannot be ruled out in the war with China. And it seems that the Americans want to be prepared for this as well.
In general, the new states of the Corps promise to be very well adapted to nuclear war. Few people comment on the reform from this side, but it has this side, and it is impossible not to notice it.
In fact, if we consider Berger's undertakings precisely through the prism of the US war with China, and precisely on the first chain of islands and in the South China Sea, it turns out that he is not so wrong. One can argue whether five artillery batteries will suffice, or whether at least a certain number of tanks should have been left behind. But the fact that hundreds of tanks and 21 cannon artillery batteries are not needed for such a war is undeniable.
And what you need? We need equipment and weapons, completely different than the Corps is using now. And this is also taken into account in Berger's plan.
New weapons policy
To conduct battles in such an environment and with declared goals, the Corps will need a new approach to weapons systems and military equipment. This is due to the following specifics.
Firstly, we need the ability to suppress the actions of enemy (Chinese) Navy from the ground. This requires anti-ship missiles. Secondly, it is necessary that the troops can support each other with fire at a great distance, when a supported unit on one island, supporting on another, for example, 50 kilometers. This requires long-range weapons, naturally missile.
For firing at such ranges, it is necessary to have powerful intelligence in order to have accurate information about the enemy, both at sea and on the islands.
And you also need to have a lot of ships that provide landing operations, while taking into account the need to act until sea supremacy is achieved, these should be cheaper, “consumed” ships, with a smaller landing party, smaller, but in larger numbers. At least in order not to lose thousands of people on every ship sunk by the enemy.
Actually, all this is laid down in a new vision of the future Corps and has already been voiced. To combat the enemy Navy, marines must receive ground-based anti-ship missile installations.
American anti-ship missiles NSM. Future Marines
In order to support each other’s fire on neighboring islands - missile launchers, so far as a first approximation they will be the HIMARS MLRS, capable of using not only unguided, but also small-sized cruise missiles, over a distance of hundreds of kilometers. Berger has already announced a threefold increase in the number of such systems in the Corps.
Exercises on the use of MLRS HIMARS during the raid (!) Marines ashore
The next important program announced the creation of a powerful line of long-range precision-guided munitions, including loitering missiles, capable of staying in the air for some time before receiving target designation and a command to strike. It is assumed that during the assault operations such ammunition will be literally “over the head” of the attacking troops and, at the first request, will fall on the enemy, which will give a few minutes between the request for a strike and the strike itself, and without any aircraft, which is also a new trend for the US Armed Forces .
It is also planned an abrupt increase in the number of various UAVs and a simultaneous increase in their performance characteristics, this also applies to strike drones, and to reconnaissance, which should get data for the Marines about the enemy, which will then be destroyed by missiles.
And, of course, Berger has already announced aloud the need to have smaller amphibious ships than the current San Antonio, though it hasn’t come to specifics yet.
And of course, so specific troops need specific staffing and doctrine of combat use.
New troops for a new war
The reductions in Corps that Berger planned were not just reductions, but a reduction to new states — fundamentally new.
According to his plan, the so-called Marine Littoral Regiment, MLR, should become the main combat unit of the Corps. This part of the three-battalion composition will become the basis of the future MEF, Marine expeditionary force - an expeditionary force, usually consisting of a marine division and various reinforcement units (our home translators usually translate MEF as a “division” without further ado, although this is not so , MEF is more than a division).
Now, several MEFs will act as a “wave” of regiments, which promptly, anticipating the enemy and not waiting for the complete defeat of his Navy, will have to occupy the key for the need to provide maneuver with the troops of the island.
The regiments would then be required to establish what the Berger Doctrine calls an Expeditionary advanced base. This is a stronghold on which refueling points for helicopters and tiltrotor planes, missile weapon firing positions for attacks on other islands and surface ships, and air guidance posts will be based using rapidly deployable devices and systems. The key content of such a base will be FARP equipment - Forward arming and refueling position - an offensive position (point) of ammunition supply and refueling, on which helicopters and airmobile units and subunits will rely when attacking other islands.
When the enemy tries to drive out the American landing force, the regiment's anti-ship missiles will have to come into play, which will prevent the enemy from approaching the shore. If some parts of the enemy still manage to gain a foothold on the shore, then a massive missile attack by all types of missiles should fall on them - from guided cruise missiles to the good old MLRS missiles, “package” after “Package”, after which mechanized infantry at an extremely fast pace The corps must destroy these enemy troops in a swift attack.
Relying on such an advanced base, other units, using primarily tiltrotors and helicopters, should capture the following islands during the American offensive, where a new littoral regiment or units of the already fighting regiment will then be pulled.
The result should be a sort of "frog jump" scheme - an assault on the island or its occupation without a fight - the landing of the main forces of the "littoral regiment" - the creation by the forces of the regiment (including ground-based anti-ship missiles) and carrier-based aviation of a zone of prohibition of access around the island, the creation of a base for assault units, which should attack the next island - attacking the next island, for example, by airborne forces from the air and everything from the beginning.
Something like this: small-sized landings with long-range weapons, an airborne assault operation against an island with an aerodrome (a landing on convertible planes, special forces from Marine Raiders on parachutes, but you shouldn’t understand it too literally), the F-35B attacks an enemy ship - dominating the sea not yet. Many small American ships around. So they see it
What will act as an assault element of the new forces? What forces will conduct the assault on the islands occupied by the enemy, relying on long-range missiles and the rear infrastructure of the “littoral regiment”? Firstly, the regiment can technically do it itself - out of three battalions, one may well go on an assault. It must be understood that the “base” that the regiment must establish is just trenches, soft tanks with jet fuel (if not a tanker at all at an automobile base) and boxes of ammunition dumped in holes in the ground, at best a mobile command and control tower for assistance in takeoffs and landings of their helicopters, nothing that would require a lot of people for maintenance or a lot of time for deployment is planned there. This means that the regiment can allocate part of its forces for the offensive.
Farp
But. in addition to the littoral regiments, Berger considers it necessary to leave in the ranks the expeditionary units - Marine expeditionary units. The MEU is a battalion battle group consisting of a Marine battalion, a rear battalion, many different reinforcement and control units, and an air group that is often volatile (for example, it may or may not have VTOL aircraft, but usually There is).
Berger has already announced that the expeditionary forces remain, but their staff can also change. That MEU and MLR will interact with each other has also been announced. So to storm the islands, relying on the support bases created by the "littoral regiments", there will also be someone.
It should be noted that this is likely to be a working scheme. And it is focused precisely on an extremely fast offensive operation in the archipelagos, so fast that the enemy simply does not have time to dig in and transfer sufficient forces to the defended islands, and does not have time to occupy those islands that were not controlled by him at the beginning of hostilities. Everything that can slow down such an operation, "extra" armored vehicles, for example, Berger is going to quit. Tanks cannot conduct air assault operations from helicopters and convertiplanes.
It should also be noted that on the islands of the South China Sea, the Corps most likely will not meet either numerous defending troops (there is nowhere to place them and nowhere to get the right amount of drinking water), nor armored vehicles (the islands are small and often lack vegetation in which to disguise themselves, especially bulk islands), but the continuous raids of the light forces of the enemy fleet will be a problem, and this is where the ground-based anti-ship missiles of the Corps, and the deck F-35Bs will have to have their say.
Oddly enough, the much-criticized "littoral warships", LCS, can also have their say in such a war. The presence on board each of them of a helicopter capable of both providing anti-aircraft defense and carrying guided missiles (Penguin anti-ship missiles and Hellfire anti-tank missiles), the ability to place an attack or multi-purpose helicopter on them and up to a platoon of infantrymen will also be very useful. Naturally, after all these ships are equipped with NSM anti-ship missiles, which are currently being installed on them.
And even a reduction in the number of F-35B squadrons in practice will not reduce their combat effectiveness, but rather increase them. Berger very vaguely comments on issues related to changes in the states of the carrier-based deck aviation, but here his comments are not particularly needed.
In 2017, as part of its usual pressure on China in the South China Sea, the United States sent not the aircraft carrier, but the Uosp UDC, which was supposed to act as a light aircraft carrier, for planned exercises with the Philippines.
In the South China Sea, 2017. The whole air group on deck
In preparation for the campaign, it turned out that it was impossible to operate with large aviation forces with UDC - it was unsuccessful precisely as an aircraft carrier, it has a small hangar, there are no resources for aircraft repairs at the proper level, a cramped deck, despite 40000 tons of displacement. It turned out that the largest air group that can use all its forces and perform combat missions is a group of ten F-35Bs, four Osprey convertoplanes with a rescue squad, which can be used to evacuate downed pilots from enemy territory (however, for delivery to the rear of the enemy groups of special forces too), and a pair of search and rescue helicopters for lifting pilots who ejected over the sea from the water.
And Berger's plan to reduce the squadron to 10 vehicles just hints that the Corps is going to use the UDC not so much as landing ships, but as light aircraft carriers with short takeoff and vertical landing fighters. This will dramatically reduce the dependence of the Marines on the Navy, which may have some other tasks of their own. Of course, UDCs are very dubious aircraft carriers, their effectiveness in this capacity is extremely low, but what are they. On the plus side, they will carry some landing forces in this case, which means that they will be useful for the purposes of the Corps.
Reform progress and weaknesses in the Berger plan
At present, the Americans are solving practical issues. What should be the staff of the battalion? How should expeditionary units (MEU) change? Should they all be the same, or should squad states be different in each area of responsibility? Now these and many other issues are being worked out in the course of various military games. The tradition of war games in the US is very strong. It must be admitted that games really allow you to simulate some things that have not yet been in the real world. Now they are modeling the battles of parts of the Corps with different states and determine the optimal organizational and staff structures for the form of military operations that they plan to resort to in the future.
With the exception of these questions, which have not yet been clarified, Berger clearly has a clear vision of the future Corps, he does not hesitate to speak live on SIM and confidently answers sharp questions about what he is doing, and we must admit that the sharp critical attitude of American society his reforms are changing very quickly, literally not by the day, but by the hour.
There is also support for the Berger plan from the military-political leadership.
Some things, however, raise questions.
So, practice shows that sometimes it is impossible to do without tanks. If not without tanks, then at least without another vehicle armed with a powerful cannon capable of direct fire. The absence of such a vehicle in the plans for the rearmament of the Corps looks like a weak point - at least one or two vehicles in an infantry company are simply required even during such island operations. And if the enemy can land, then more.
The second question is whether the American industry can provide the right line of missile weapons for reasonable money. There is no doubt that she is capable of this, but she needs to still want to, otherwise it could turn out to be truly golden missiles that replenish corporate accounts with money, but which are not massive enough to fight with them - simply because of the price.
The critical dependence of the troops on the means of communication - and this is obvious. If the enemy "lays down" communication, then the use of all those long-range missile systems that can get one island from another will simply be impossible: there will be no communication between those who request fire on targets and those who should conduct it. The same will happen in the event of a nuclear war. Without communication, the Americans will constantly be faced with the need to solve the problem only with the help of rifles and grenades, with all the ensuing consequences. They obviously need to worry about it.
And the main problem: the new Corps will be suitable for the war on the islands. On the first chain of islands in the Pacific Ocean, in the Kuriles, in the Aleuts, in the South China Sea, in Oceania. He will be able to fight in sparsely populated areas with poor communications, for example, in Chukotka, or in some areas of Alaska. But it is of little use for anything else. History shows that the troops have to act in a variety of conditions. And if someday the Marines will be required to occupy a coastal fortified city, and they will say that they cannot (and this will be true, for example), then Berger will be reminded of this. Of course, the US also has an army, and there is a historical experience of landing operations that were carried out only by the army without Marines (at least Normandy), but, nevertheless, Berger is at risk here. A demonstration of the uselessness of the Corps will be very painfully received by American society, and a narrow specialization in one theater of operations and one enemy is fraught with precisely this. Although it might work out.
There are arguments "for", and not only those listed above. In Russia, such things as the transfer by sea to a threatened direction of coastal missile systems with anti-ship cruise missiles are widely practiced. They are also used for coastal defense, including on the islands (the Kuriles, Kotelny - in the latter case, obviously not where it is needed, but it will not be fixed for long - a matter of days). And since we succeed, why can't the Americans succeed?
One way or another, the Rubicon has been crossed. Either the United States will lose its expeditionary forces, or they will move to a new quality and give them opportunities that the Americans do not have now. And it must be admitted that the chances for the second outcome with a competent and balanced approach will be much higher than for the first. This means that we need to closely monitor what the Americans are doing and prepare to counteract their new methods.
Indeed, important for the country archipelagos are not only in China.
Presentation from CSBA. During the offensive on Kamchatka, the Kuril Islands are shown as US-friendly territory in which American air defense systems (or allied air defense systems) are deployed. And these are islands too
- Alexander Timokhin
- USNI, The National Interest, US Marine Corps, Lance Cpl. Joshua Sechser / USMC, Tawanya Norwood / USMC, Daniel Barker / US Navy, CSBA, Consorthium of Defense Analysts, AP / Kuni Takahashi, Assosiated Press, Simon Mortimer / jetphotos.com, TheDrive
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