The United States Marine Corps (USMC), an organization known in Russia as the United States Marine Corps and actually called the United States Marine Corps, is now experiencing one of the most dramatic moments in (at least thirty years) of its history. Remaining unnoticed by domestic observers, a phenomenally profound reform has started in the Corps, which, if successful, will turn it into a fundamentally new instrument of war for the Americans, and, most importantly, naval war, and not war on land.
But in case of failure, the United States could lose its legendary military structure almost completely. The ongoing reform of Marines is worth telling about it.
First, the background.
Second Army
The American World War (allegedly against terrorism), which began after September 11, 2001, demanded extreme stress from the US Armed Forces. This even affected the Navy: the rotational sailors served as soldiers at ground bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Orions patrol missions were involved in reconnaissance missions over land, and the Navy's carrier-based aircraft inflicted countless strikes on ground targets. This cup did not pass, of course, and Marines. As a ground-based expeditionary force of the Navy, the Marines (let's call them that) were among the first to set foot on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq. During the Iraqi war during the offensive on Baghdad, the entire American right flank consisted of them.
Subsequently, as the rebel movement flared up in the occupied lands, these troops, along with the US Army, were increasingly involved in occupation service. They received MRAP wheeled armored vehicles, so as not to move on tracked AAV7 armored personnel carriers, optimized for over-the-horizon landing, or on the LAV-25 BRM, which the Corps instructions explicitly prohibit using on the battlefield as an armored personnel carrier due to thin armor (it is only slightly stronger than from our armored personnel carriers, which in the American Armed Forces would not find use due to their low survivability). They sat at strongholds and roadblocks, went on night raids across Baghdad or Tikrit, and, as former US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates aptly put it, they turned into a second army. This is not to say that America needed a second ground force, and that the status to which the Corps came as a result of the wars organized by the Republicans, the American public, slowly but surely maturing questions.
Why does America need another ground force? Why do these ground forces need their own air forces (the carrier-based aircraft of the Corps are stronger than many of the national air forces in the world. Stronger than most, at least if you look at the numbers). Where and against whom will the Corps demonstrate its amphibious capabilities? Against mainland China? Not funny. Against Russia? In general, it's not funny either, and why? Why do we need endless “deployments” of amphibious combat-ready groups (ARGs) at sea? Is it possible to break even Syria with such a group? No. To carry out a special operation on its territory? Yes, it is possible, but the landing force of the group is excessive for this, and the air force is insufficient, at least if the Syrians try to interfere.
Questions were ripening about the state of the Corps.
The overstrain of forces caused by the endless war, in general, in principle, harmed the US Armed Forces. But especially the Marines. Thus, the flight of the Hornet pilot assigned to the Corps dropped to a paltry 4-5 hours a month.
There are other problems that will take too long to list. One way or another, the Corps was slowly turning into a thing in itself. The actual seizure of military power in the United States by officers from the Marines did not change the situation - at a certain point Marine Mattis was the secretary of defense, Marine Dunford was the chairman of the OKNS, and Marine General Kelly was the chief of staff of the White House. The trinity even arranged photo shoots in uniform at the White House, but there was no sense in them for the USMC: in fact, the only breakthrough was the arrival of the F-35B Corps, which was a serious step forward compared to the AV-8B, which Corps pilots flew. previously. And that's all.
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 demanded appropriate tools, and opponents of the Corps demanded to make its existence (and expenses) meaningful or to subordinate it to the army as army airborne units (an attempt which, by the way, in the history of the United States was already under Truman in late forties).
Everything was complicated by the delicacy of the topic. Marines in the United States is just a legendary structure surrounded by much more myths than the Airborne Forces in our country. The entire Second World War in the United States is largely associated with the assault by the marines of the Japanese fortified islands in the Pacific Ocean. They simply adore the corps in America, 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 computer games about the distant future in space. The corps is part of the American identity, not the most important, but integral, it is not just the troops. And it was not so easy to approach the issue of their reforming.
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 Hillberry Berger - a combat general, who is the author of the reform now underway, her father. For better or worse, the result of the transformations in the Corpus will now be linked to it.
Berger received military training at the university, at the local analogue of the military department, and from there he went to the troops for life. He passed almost all command levels: platoon, company, battalion, regimental battle group, division, expeditionary formation with a division in its composition (Marine Expeditionary Force), all forces of the Corps in the Pacific Ocean. He took part in the Gulf War in 1991, in the operation in Haiti, in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He served in Kosovo and the Pacific. In general, he fought wherever he could. At the same time, he spent about half of his service at 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 as an officer, he was trained at the Corps Command and Staff College and refresher courses at 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", but he also has it.
Apparently, such a versatile preparation gave Berger the opportunity to generate his extremely radical plan to reform such an institution so important to America. The plan, which the American public initially greeted with hostility.
Because Berger announced his plan with the need for radical cuts, and what!
Rejection of all tanks: the rather numerous tank forces of the Corps are disbanded completely, there will be no tanks. The field artillery is being reduced: from 21 batteries of towed guns to five. The strength of each F-35B squadron is reduced from 16 vehicles to 10. Tiltrotor squadrons, Cobra attack helicopter squadrons, transport squadrons, and battalion controllers are being cut. Many parts are cut completely, others partly. In total, the corps will lose 12,000 people by 2030, or 7% of its current strength. It is by the named year that he must finally take on a new look.
There are people who call Berger the Gravedigger of the Corps. Veterans say they will not recommend young people to join its ranks - better in the Army, Navy or Air Force. And this is already an unprecedented level of criticism.
There is something interesting behind the crash cuts, however.
Berger's plan
Berger's planned reform is inherently tied to the way US strategists see a future conventional (or limited nuclear) war against China.
And first of all - where do they see this war. And they see it on the so-called "First Island Chain" - a collection of archipelagos that cut mainland China from the Pacific Ocean. At the same time, the specificity of the theater of operations is that the chain is already under the allies of the Americans, and the task will be not so much to take these islands by storm as to prevent the Chinese from doing this when they try to break through the naval blockade, for example. A separate issue is the islands in the South China Sea. Often these are just shallows, nothing more, but control over them allows you to control shipping in a wide area, and the capture of islands on which there are airfields makes it possible to quickly transfer troops within the archipelagos. This is a very specific environment.
Berger does not hide, and he said about this more than once, that the task of the Corps will be to effectively fight in this specific environment, and not somewhere else. And I must say that now the organizational and staff 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 up the opportunity to use the Marines on the ground to achieve victory on the ground. Berger simply reverses this conventional logic.
This is not to say that no one had invented such a thing before him. 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 waging a naval war by the weakest side, which was previously used more than once in history:
Thus, let us formulate the third rule of the weak: it is necessary to destroy the enemy's naval forces by forces of ground units and aviation (not naval) in all cases when it is possible from the point of view of the predicted effect and risks. This will free up the naval forces for other operations and reduce the enemy's superiority in forces.
The Americans, as the strongest, plan to do the same to further widen the power gap between themselves and China. How Berger is going to use troops against the enemy fleet is a separate conversation, and he is ahead, for now we note the revolutionary direction 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 latter's fulfillment of their tasks to establish supremacy at sea.
Interestingly, the same article predicted that Americans will develop in this direction:
It should be specially noted that such operations are the "strong point" of the Americans. We can believe in such opportunities or not, but they will do it en masse, and we should be ready for this, on the one hand, and not “be ashamed” to do so 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 used to be, but the Marines will do completely different things, which are necessary in principle, but inaccessible for 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 under the conditions of the contested environment of the enemy's supremacy at sea and in the air. This is also a revolutionary moment - both earlier and now the conditions for conducting a naval landing operation are to achieve supremacy at sea and in the air in the area of its conduct 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 same landing of the Germans in Narvik, but these were always marginal examples - examples of how, generally speaking, it was not necessary to do it, but it was lucky. The Americans are going to create forces that will normally fight like this. 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 happens.
Let us ask the question: is it necessary to have a lot of tanks in conditions when the task of the Americans is to disrupt the enemy landing on "their" islands? Most likely, completely abandoning them is a mistake, but in general you don't need many of them.
And the cannon artillery? Again, a situation may arise when it is really needed, here the Americans are taking risks with avalanche reductions, but let's admit that it will not be needed as badly as in a conventional ground war. And they will not completely eliminate it, they will simply reduce it.
Or let us consider the same questions in relation to the capture of the Chinese bulk islands: where are the tanks to disperse there? And wouldn't it be too difficult to get them there? And the numerous barreled artillery? Ammunition for her? And can this artillery, based on one island, support the troops with fire on another, say, 30 kilometers away? No.
Or such a question as the reduction of the staff of the battalion as a whole. This is now being studied in the United States, but the question of whether the battalions will "lose weight" is a settled one, the only question is how much. It seems silly, but small and dispersed units are much more stable when using nuclear weapons on the battlefield, and this cannot be ruled out in the war with China. And it seems that the Americans want to be ready for that too.
In general, the new Corps states promise to be very well adapted to nuclear war. Few 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, then it turns out that he is not so wrong. It can be argued whether five artillery batteries would suffice, or whether at least some of the tanks should have been left behind. But the fact that hundreds of tanks and 21 batteries of cannon artillery are not needed for such a war is undeniable.
And what you need? We need equipment and weapons, completely different from what the Corps uses now. And this is also taken into account in Berger's plan.
New armaments policy
To fight in such an environment and with declared goals, the Corps will need a new approach to weapon systems and military equipment. This is due to the following specifics.
First, we need the ability to suppress the actions of the 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 the supported unit is on one island, supporting on the other, for example, 50 kilometers away. This requires a long-range weapon, naturally missile.
To fire at such ranges, it is necessary to have powerful reconnaissance in order to have the most accurate information about the enemy, both at sea and on the islands.
And you also need to have a lot of ships that support the actions of the landing, while, taking into account the need to act before reaching domination at sea, these should be cheaper, "consumable" ships, with a smaller landing force, smaller in size, but in greater numbers. At least for the sake of not losing thousands of people on each ship sunk by the enemy.
Actually, all this is incorporated in the new vision of the future of the Corps and has already been announced. To combat enemy navies, Marines must obtain ground-based anti-ship missiles.
In order to support each other with fire on the neighboring islands - rocket launchers, while in the first approximation it will be MLRS HIMARS, capable of using not only unguided, but also small-sized cruise missiles, at a distance of hundreds of kilometers. Berger has already announced a threefold increase in the number of such systems in the Corps.
The next important program announced the creation of a powerful line of high-precision long-range ammunition, including loitering missiles, capable of staying in the air for some time before receiving target designation and command to strike. It is assumed that during assault actions such ammunition will be literally "over the head" of the attacking troops and at the first request fall on the enemy, which will give a few minutes between the request for a strike and the strike itself, and without any aviation, which is also a new trend for the US Armed Forces …
It is also planned to abruptly increase the number of various UAVs and simultaneously increase their performance characteristics, this applies to both strike drones and reconnaissance drones, which must obtain 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 landing ships than the current "San Antonio", however, so far it has not come to specifics.
And of course, such specific troops need a specific staffing structure and doctrine of combat use.
New troops for a new war
The downsizing of the Corps, which Berger has planned, is not just downsizing, it is about bringing in new states - fundamentally new.
According to his plan, the main combat unit of the Corps should be the so-called Marine littoral regiment - Marine littioral regiment, MLR. This part of the three-battalion will become the basis of the future MEF, the Marine expeditionary force - an expeditionary force, usually consisting of a Marine division and various units and reinforcement units (our home translators, without further ado, usually translate MEF as a "division", although this is not the case, MEF is more than a division).
Now several MEFs will operate in 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 ones to ensure maneuver by the island's troops.
The regiments would then have to establish what Berger's doctrine calls the Expeditionary advanced base. This is a stronghold on which, due to rapidly deployable devices and systems, refueling points for helicopters and tiltrotors, firing positions for missile weapons for strikes on other islands and surface ships, and aircraft guidance posts will be based. The key content of such a base will be the equipment FARP - Forward arming and refueling position - an offensive position (point) of ammunition supply and refueling, on which helicopters and airmobile units and subunits will rely during attacks on other islands.
When the enemy attempts to knock out the American landing, the regiment's anti-ship missiles will have to enter into action, which will not allow the enemy to approach the coast. If some enemy units are still able to gain a foothold on the coast, then a massive missile strike with all types of missiles should fall on them - from guided cruise missiles to 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 a forward base, other units, using primarily tiltrotors and helicopters, must capture the next islands in the course of the American offensive, where a new littoral regiment or units of an already warring regiment will then be pulled up.
As a result, there should be a kind of "frog jumping" scheme - the storming of 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 anti-ship missiles) and carrier-based aviation of an access denial zone around the island, the creation of a base for assault units, which must attack the next island - attack the next island, for example, by airborne forces from the air and all from the beginning.
What will act as the 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 to the assault. It should be understood that the "base" that the regiment must establish is simply trenches, flexible tanks with aviation fuel (if not a tanker at a car base at all) and ammunition boxes dumped in holes in the ground, at best a mobile control tower for assistance in the takeoffs and landings of their helicopters, nothing that would require a lot of people to service or a lot of time for deployment there is not planned. This means that the regiment can allocate part of its forces for the offensive.
But. in addition to littoral regiments, Berger considers it necessary to leave in the ranks the expeditionary detachments - Marine expeditionary units. The MEU is a battalion battle group consisting of a Marine battalion, a rear battalion, many different reinforcement and command units, and an air group that is often variable in composition (for example, it may or may not have vertical takeoff and landing attack aircraft, but usually there is).
Berger has already announced that the expeditionary forces will remain, but their states may change too. The fact that MEU and MLR will interact with each other has already been announced. So there will be someone to storm the islands, relying on the support bases created by the "littoral regiments".
It should be noted that this will most likely turn out to be a working scheme. And it is focused precisely on an extremely fast offensive operation on the archipelagos, so fast that the enemy simply does not have time to dig in and transfer sufficient forces to the defended islands, does not have time to occupy those islands that are not under his control at the beginning of hostilities. Anything that can slow down such an operation, "extra" armored vehicles, for example, Berger is going to abandon. Tanks cannot conduct 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 there and nowhere to take the required amount of drinking water), or armored vehicles (the islands are small and often devoid of vegetation in which to hide. especially the bulk islands), but the continuous raids of the enemy's light forces will be a problem, and it is here that the ground anti-ship missiles of the Corps, and the deck F-35Bs, will have to say their word.
Strange as it may seem, the many times criticized “littoral battleships”, LCS, can also say their word in such a war. The presence on board each of them of a helicopter capable of both providing an ASW and carrying guided missiles (anti-ship missiles "Penguin" and ATGM "Hellfire"), the ability to place an attack or multipurpose helicopter on them and before 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 is very vague in his comments on issues related to changes in the staff of the Corps carrier-based 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 an aircraft carrier to the planned exercises with the Philippines, but the UDC Wosp, which was supposed to act as a light aircraft carrier.
In preparation for the campaign, it turned out that it was impossible to operate with large aviation forces with the 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 40,000 tonnes of displacement. It turned out that the maximum number of air group that can use all its forces and carry out combat missions is a group of ten F-35B, four Osprey tiltrotors with a rescue squad, which can be used to evacuate downed pilots from enemy territory (however, for delivery to the rear of the enemy spetsnaz groups too), and a pair of search and rescue helicopters for lifting pilots from the water, ejected over the sea.
And Berger's plan to reduce the squadron to 10 aircraft just hints that the Corps is going to use the UDC not so much as amphibious assault ships, but as light aircraft carriers with short takeoff and vertical landing fighters. This will dramatically reduce the dependence of Marines on the IUD, which may have some other tasks of their own. Of course, the UDC are very dubious aircraft carriers, their effectiveness in this capacity is extremely low, but they are what they are. The plus is that 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 Berger's plan
The Americans are currently dealing with practical issues. What should be the staff of the battalion? How should expeditionary units (MEU) change? Should they all be the same, or should the squad staff be different in each area of responsibility? Now these and many other questions are being worked out in the course of various war games. The tradition of war games in the United States is very strong. It must be admitted that games really allow you to simulate some things that have not yet existed in the real world. Now they are simulating the battles of the Corps units with different states and determine the optimal organizational and staff structures for the form of hostilities that they plan to resort to in the future.
With the deduction of these questions that have not yet been clarified, Berger clearly has a clear vision of the future of the Corps, he does not hesitate to speak live on the SIM and confidently answers sharp questions about what he is doing, and it must be admitted that the acute critical attitude of American society to his reforms is changing very quickly, literally by leaps and bounds.
There is also support for the Berger plan from the military-political leadership.
Something, however, raises questions.
So, practice shows that sometimes it is impossible to do without tanks. If not without tanks, then at least without another machine armed with a powerful cannon capable of firing 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 with such island operations. And if the enemy can land, then more.
The second question is whether the American industry will be able to provide the required range of missile weapons for reasonable money. There is no doubt that she is capable of this, but she needs to want something else, otherwise it can turn out to be truly golden missiles that will replenish corporate accounts with money, but which will not be massive enough to fight with them - simply because of the price.
The critical dependence of troops on communications equipment is obvious. If the enemy "puts down" communication, then the use of all those long-range missile systems that can reach one island from another will simply be impossible: there will be no communication between those who request fire on targets and those who have to fire it. The same will happen in the case of a nuclear war. Without communication, 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 clearly need to worry about it.
And the main problem: the new Corps will be fit for war on the islands. On the first chain of islands in the Pacific Ocean, the Kuriles, the Aleuts, the South China Sea, 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 he is of little use for anything else. History, however, shows that troops have to operate in a variety of conditions. And if someday the Marines are required to occupy a coastal fortified city, and they say that they cannot (and this will be true, for example), then Berger will be remembered. Of course, the United States also has an army, and there is a historical experience of amphibious operations that were carried out only by an army without the Marines (at least Normandy), but, nevertheless, Berger is at risk here. The demonstration of the uselessness of the Corps will be very painful for the American society, and narrow specialization in one theater of operations and one enemy is fraught with just that. Although, maybe it will.
There are pros, and not just those listed above. In Russia, such things as the transfer of coastal missile systems with anti-ship cruise missiles by sea to a threatened direction are very widely practiced. They are also used for coastal defense, including on the islands (Kuriles, Kotelny - in the latter case, clearly not where it is necessary, but it will not take long to fix it - a matter of days). And since we can do it, why can't the Americans do it?
One way or another, but the Rubicon has been crossed. Either the United States will lose its expeditionary forces, or they will move into a new quality and give them opportunities that the Americans do not have now. And it must be admitted that the chances of a second outcome with a competent and balanced approach will be much higher than the first. This means that we need to closely monitor what the Americans are doing and prepare to oppose their new methods.
After all, not only China has archipelagos important for the country.
