A To-Do List for the Next Marine Corps Commandant Saving the Marine Corps may require dismantling the signature reform of the last decade

Gary Anderson for American Spectator

Saving the Marine Corps may require dismantling the signature reform of the last decade.

When General Eric Smith became commandant of the Marine Corps, he inherited an organization in the midst of a botched reform that was supposed to transform the Corps from a worldwide force-in-readiness to a China-centric anti-ship missile-firing force in a strategy called Force Design (FD). He felt compelled to finish the job begun by his predecessor, General David Berger.

Virtually every former commandant — minus Berger — along with retired Marine four stars and three stars have pleaded with Smith to drop FD and bring back the capabilities that made the Marine Corps a worldwide purpose reaction force.

Many active duty Marines agree, but they have to keep their opinions muted for fear of retribution from the top. I have been among the most vocal of the dissidents and along the way have been called — mostly anonymously — everything from “attack dog” to a traitor to the Corps. Last week, a fake obituary showed up on social media. Unfortunately for the author, wishing somebody dead doesn’t make it so. It is obvious that Smith will not change course. The hope among the retired community is that his successor will put the train back on the track. The author’s unprofessionalism is typical of the Berger acolytes. He lifted the body of the “obit” from a 2022 official biography without changing “is” to “was.”

The good news is that several current two- and three-star generals are quietly seething over FD and would kill it if given the chance. Hopefully, one of them will become the next commandant. If that happens, there are many things that need to be changed. A list is provided below:

First, kill Force Design. It was a flawed concept from the beginning. Its centerpiece — the NEMSIS anti-ship missile — is obsolete, too slow, and it has insufficient range to contribute meaningfully to a conflict in the South China Sea. Each of the other services is developing hypersonic anti-ship systems that can far outrange the NEMSIS.

The commander of all forces in the Indo-Pacific theater has wisely ignored FD and leaned on the other services for anti-ship missile support, as demonstrated in the recent Balikatan exercise in the Philippines.

Second, if totally abandoning Force Design is politically impractical, change its focus to worldwide support for choke point warfare using the traditional Marine Corps combined arms tool kit. I’ve suggested several ways that this can be done in previous columns in this publication.

A third recommendation flows from the first two. Rebuild the capabilities that Berger discarded to afford FD. Create experimental units using new armor, heavy engineer, and artillery systems. As these X-battalions are stood up, they can be used in a pinch to augment the three Marine Expeditionary Forces. Minus these capabilities, the Marine Corps is not currently able not be able to provide the kind of middle-weight combined arms force that proved critical in the Korean War, Desert Storm, and Iraqi Freedom.

Item four would be to recreate the Marine Corps’ Scout-Sniper school at Quantico. Urban warfare is the most likely kind of combat the U.S. is likely to face for the rest of the century. As shown in the Iraq war battles such as Najaf, Fallujah, and Ramadi, schools trained snipers, along with tanks and engineers, are vital to success in city fighting.

Finally, the next commandant should continue to support the current War Department drive to build or reactivate an adequate number of amphibious ships. One of Berger’s many disastrous mistakes was to release the Navy from its agreed requirement of 38 amphibious ships down to 31. With the addition of South and Central America as an additional critical theater, we will now need at least 50 amphibs to support four continuously on-station Navy/Marine Corps amphibious Ready Groups versus the three required before the second Trump administration.

There are other items needed for the Marine Corps to recover from the disastrous Berger/Smith era, such as rebuilding infantry and artillery battalion strength as well as increasing aircraft squadrons, but the above list is an absolutely required start. It will take years to get the Marine Corps back to pre-Berger readiness, but we need to start somewhere.

The counter-reform movement does not consist of retired and hidebound old fogies. It comprises some of the most innovative and imaginative Marines in the past century. I am proud to stand with them. But, there are two types of reform: the first is disruptive reform (action based on what is needed). The second is disastrous reform that is not founded on need, want, or well thought out. Force Design is the latter, and needs a stake driven through its heart.