QUANTICO, Va. — The Marines’ annual appeal to industry is focusing
heavily this year on capabilities that would allow distributed Marine Corps forces
to not just survive but persist within the deadly areas created by the kinds of
high-technology weapons that a peer competitor — such as China — can create.

The priorities at the Modern Day Marine exposition were unmanned
systems, man-machine teaming, long-range precision fires, more secure and
alternative forms of communications to counter the adversaries’ demonstrated
abilities to intercept, jam and distort traditional means, and systems that
better integrate with the U.S. Navy — all directives from Commandant Gen. David
H. Berger.

And it all must be lighter, faster and affordable, Lt. Gen.
Eric Smith, the Corps’ top future capabilities officer, stressed.

“We’re looking for autonomy, man-unmanned teaming, we need
to get lighter. … I’m willing to take risks,” Smith, commanding general of Marine
Combat Development Command, told industry representatives on Sept. 17 at the
opening of Modern Day Marine.

Smith repeated the commandant’s guidance that new systems
should be “good, not exquisite. … It’s not an existential threat to use good
enough for a few years until the budget improves.” But the ultimate need is the
ability “to persist in the weapons-engagement zone. Not survive, persist,” he
said.

Panels of the senior officers and civilian officials in the
Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory (MCWL) and the Combat Development and
Integration division under Smith’s command repeated those views as they
discussed their programs. And all of them emphasized the focus on integrating
with the Navy in ways that would allow the Corps to help naval task forces get
through the anti-access, area-denial capabilities that China — and to a lesser
extent Russia and Iran — can create with long-range missiles, mines and other
weapons.

Col. Tim Barrick, director of wargaming at MCWL, said Berger’s guidance to the Corps emphasized the need for additional wargaming to shape the missions and capabilities they would need to meet the emerging great power competition. To meet that demand, the Marines are planning to create a wargaming center that would go from 22 to more than 200 personnel and serve not just the Marines but the joint forces in the Washington, D.C., region.

Barrick said they were stressing three concepts: distributed operations; littoral operations in a contested environment; and expeditionary advanced based operations. “We’re focused on a naval campaign. How does the Marine Corps support naval operations,” he added.

Many briefers said the level of Marine integration and cooperation with the Navy leadership and senior staffs was the highest they had ever seen. The greatest deficiencies cited by the briefers was a lack of long-range precision fires in the ground forces, the need for command, control and communications systems that are mobile enough to move with small distributed combat units but work in the highly contested information environment, and logistics methods and systems that can sustain those distributed units within the deadly “weapons-engagement zone.”

Unmanned and robotic systems were proposed as possible solutions to some of those capabilities gaps.

A plan for an 8,600-person residual U.S. force in
Afghanistan after any peace agreement came from military leadership — not
President Trump — and such an agreement must be based on conditions and not on
trust in the Taliban or the belief that they could prevent other extremists
from planning an attack on America, the nation’s top military officer said.

The purpose of the current U.S.-Taliban negotiations “is to
deliver inter-Afghan deliberations” that will establish a path to a future
political arrangement. And, “one thing we’ve all been clear on is any agreement
will be conditions-based,” Marine Gen. Joseph F. Dunford, chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, said before the Council on Foreign Relations on Sept. 5. “We
have very specific conditions, and if they are not met, my assumption is the
negotiations will run down.”

The primary conditions for an agreement are that it would
reduce the Taliban-led insurgency in Afghanistan to a level that the Afghan
security forces could handle, while U.S. and coalition forces deal with the
extremist elements that would like to attack America, and it would set up
negotiations between the Taliban and the government in Kabul on Afghanistan’s
political future, Dunford said.

In response to questions, Dunford said: “The number of 8,600
that the president has referred to was a number that was generated by military
leadership,” including the U.S. commanders in Afghanistan and Central Command.

“No advice I’ve provided is founded on trust in the Taliban …
nor based on the assumption that the Taliban can protect us from over 20
extremist groups in South Asia,” he emphasized. “The level of violence and
extremism in South Asia is inextricably linked to the level of the insurgency
in Afghanistan” and if it “can be reduced, then the Afghan security forces and
the U.S. and coalition forces left can focus on counter-terrorism not the
insurgency.”

Afghanistan must be viewed “in context of the overall national
defense strategy,” Dunford said. “We need a fiscally, politically and
militarily sustainable strategy against violent extremism,” which will remain a
threat, so the military can focus its attention and resources on the primary
threat of great power competition with Russia and China, he added.

“Clearly, China and Russia are the benchmark against which
we measure our strategy, how we think about risk and allocate resources for the
forces today,” Dunford said. But they also “have to be able to deal with the
threats we have today — violent extremism — at the same time we shift
sufficient resources to ensure we maintain the competitive advantage we have
today well into the future.”

Crafting a defense budget means making choices, he noted. “First and foremost, we must protect cyber, space, electronic warfare, the maritime capabilities … to make us more functional in the context of great power competition.” Dunford cited the growing defense capabilities of China and the aggressive efforts by Russian President Vladimir Putin to re-establish Russia as a major world player.

Asked about efforts to renew the U.S.-Russian New Start nuclear limitation treaty, Dunford said he “would be in favor of extending the agreement, providing if all the parties would follow the agreement.” But he noted it was “hard to say that” in wake of Russia’s violations of the INF treaty.

The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps are aggressively changing course
and refocusing their resources and training to prepare the fleet and
expeditionary forces for a “Great Power Competition” with China and Russia. But
a growing number of Navy officers and defense analysts are warning that current
and planned maritime logistics capabilities are seriously inadequate to sustain
forward-deployed combat forces in an extended fight against such peer
competitors.

This deficiency would be particularly severe in a high-intensity
conflict against China, which is rapidly developing military capabilities
specifically aimed at keeping U.S. forces far from their shores and able to
threaten Pacific Ocean-based logistical support facilities, the critics warned.
A fight against a resurgent Russia could be a repeat of the 1940s “battle of
the Atlantic” with a small Military Sealift Command (MSC) force and an American
merchant marine fleet — a fraction of the size of the World War II armada — trying
to evade scores of sophisticated Russian submarines in a desperate effort to
reinforce and supply U.S. forces in Europe.

“Failing to remedy
this situation, when adversaries have U.S. logistics networks in their
crosshairs, could cause the United States to lose a war and fail its allies and
partners in their hour of need. An unsupported force may quickly become a
defeated one,” said a comprehensive report released this spring by the Center
for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment (CSBA).

A
similar warning was issued by retired Navy Capt. Pete Pagano, who wrote in the
May edition of the journal Proceedings: “The combat logistics force must be
able to sail in harm’s way and defend itself, with enough ships in inventory to
absorb losses and still sustain Navy forces at sea. The Navy will not possess
sufficient surface combatants to meet this demand signal, even if it reaches
its goal of 355 ships.”

Last
October, the U.S. Maritime administrator, retired Rear Adm. Mark Buzby, said
the Navy told his agency that it would not be able to escort sealift and supply
ships during a major war. For those ships to survive, crews have been told to
“go fast and stay quiet,” with the latter referring to reduced electronic
signaling. But MSC ships, with sustained speeds of 15 to 20 knots, can’t go as fast
as 30-knot Navy warships.

Also, in
May, defense analyst Loren Thompson,wrote in Forbes that the well-trained and
equipped U.S. military is facing “a big operational challenge that few
policymakers or politicians are even aware of — its ability to get to the fight
is wasting away. So even with the most capable fighting force in history, the
United States might find itself unable to respond effectively to future
military contingencies. … Until recently, military planners could at least
assume the safety of commercial sea lanes outside war zones. But now even that
assumption is being called into question.”

‘Unchallenged Sea to Contested Waters’

MSC Commander Rear Adm. Dee L. Mewbourne in 2017 told Seapower, “The operating environment is changing,” going from “unchallenged sea to contest waters. … I would maintain that the debate over whether we’re sailing in contested waters is over.” Looking at the situation today, “there is a persistent threat to the ships that are going through those areas,” Mewbourne added, citing missile attacks on U.S. and other ships sailing near Yemen and China’s growing sea-denial capabilities.

“The question
might be, ‘Will it be like it is, or could it get worse?’ I would suggest it’s
the latter,” Mewbourne said, showing a graph depicting a rising curve of the
threats from China and Russian and a nearly flat line of likely U.S. sealift
capability to meet that threat. To adjust, Mewbourne said he is working on ways
to harden his fleet of tankers and ammunition and cargo ships and to train his
crews of primarily civilian mariners to survive in contested environments.

The most comprehensive analysis of the threats to maritime
logistics was the 124-page CSBA report, “Sustaining the Fight, Resilient
Maritime Logistics for a New Era,” which Navy Secretary Richard V. Spencer
praised, saying “this is a critical issue for the [Department of the Navy]. We
have not funded it, and we
really have to get after it.

“It is key that we focus on this now,” Spencer said at
the report’s rollout. “Over the past two decades, our naval logistic
enterprises have performed admirably, in an environment of truly expanded
responsibility and resources that were constrained. But the world has changed. …
And we have to start addressing this in earnest” and not as “business as usual.”

Spencer noted that the National Defense Strategy recognized the logistical problem,
“and we have to stay ahead of it.” He saw the report as “a forcing function.”

‘Brittle’ Maritime Logistics Forces

The CSBA report said that although the defense strategy listed “resilient and agile logistics” as one of the eight capabilities that had to be strengthened for the great power competition, the Navy’s latest 30-year shipbuilding plan reduced the funding for maritime logistical forces and “further reduces the logistical forces as a proportion of the fleet.” It also noted that “decades of downsizing and consolidation” have left U.S. maritime logistics forces “brittle” and contributed to the decline of the U.S. shipbuilding industry and the Merchant Marine, which is expected to carry the bulk of military material and equipment for an overseas contingency.

To create a logistical force able to prevail in a major conflict with a peer competitor, CSBA recommended increasing that force from the current 299 ships to at least 364 by 2048. Most of those ships are not included in the Navy’s target of a 355-ship battle fleet.

The largest
increases CSBA proposed would go to refueling capabilities, from the current 21
tankers and fleet oilers to 69; the towing and salvage fleets, from five to 25;
and maintenance and repair, from two tenders to 17.

The report also
recommended growing cargo and munitions support from 12 ships to 25 and
creating a combat search and rescue (CSR) and increasing medical care capability
from the current two large and aging hospital ships to seven. That would
include platforms for CSR helicopters and MV-22 tilt-rotor aircraft and small
“expeditionary medical ships,” based on the expeditionary fast transports
currently being built.

This larger
logistical support force would include several new ship types — including a
variety of tankers and smaller oilers able to refuel combatants and commercial
tankers to move fuel forward to replenish fleet refuelers. The CSBA report also
urged that munitions ships be able to reload vertical launching system (VLS)
tubes at sea and that new tenders be able to repair surface combatants and even
unmanned surface vessels.

The greater
numbers and new types of support ships are needed, the report argues, to allow
logistical support to continue despite the high attrition expected in a great
power conflict, to provide support in contested waters, and to make up for the
likely damage to forward support facilities such as Guam, the Marianas and
Diego Garcia.

Still in Need of an ‘Expeditionary Navy’

Much of the CSBA recommendations were supported in a July 24 opinion article in Real Clear Defense by surface warfare Capt. Anthony Cowden, who wrote: “A navy that cannot rearm itself at sea, that cannot conduct ship systems repairs organically” without use of a friendly port “is not an ‘expeditionary’ navy. … The United States needs an expeditionary navy, and that’s not what it has.”

The CSBA report echoed
the call from the congressional sea power subcommittees to expand and modernize
the sealift fleet, much of which is old and still powered by ancient,
inefficient steam power plants. The report endorsed the congressional plan to
have U.S. shipyards build a variety of new ships using a common hull under the Common
Hull Auxiliary Multi-Mission Platform concept and buy used cargo vessels off
the international market.

Spencer supported
that two-track plan, but said, “I can’t afford a lot of $400 million new ships,”
when he could buy a lot of surplus ships for much less. He said he has been “up
on the Hill asking for some money” to update the sealift fleet.

CSBA estimated the
cost of buying the additional ships and different capabilities at $47.8 billion
over 30 years, which the report said would be $1.6 billion a year above what
the Navy plans to spend on its maritime logistics capabilities.

The need for that spending was illustrated by the CSBA report’s co-author, Harrison Schramm, who said the Chinese are focusing on counter-logistics in their campaign plans because “they know that forward-deployed naval forces are limited by magazine size.” Once the onboard munitions are expended, the U.S. fleet’s capabilities are drastically diminished, Schramm said. That problem is aggravated, he added, by the Navy’s inability to reload VLS tubes without use of a functioning port.

The report also stressed a point that Buzby also made: The U.S. flagged merchant marine has shrunk to a degree that it would be of limited help in providing logistical support in a major conflict. And, CSBA noted, leasing cargo ships or tankers from larger international fleets is complicated by the fact that China owns or controls a substantial portion of those ships. And Buzby also warned that if the U.S. tried to expand its civilian merchant marine for a crisis, it would have trouble manning those ships — because of an estimated shortage of more than 1,000 qualified mariners.

The Marine Corps’ top combat development officer told an
unmanned systems forum that the Corps is looking for families of unmanned systems
that will allow small units to persist and survive inside an enemy’s
weapons-engagement zone, such as those China is creating in the Western
Pacific.

One of the key systems the Marines want is an unmanned
long-range surface vessel that could link up with amphibious or support ships
far from the threat zone and move personnel or supplies to Marines conducting
Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations (EABO), Lt. Gen. Eric M. Smith said Aug.
20. The service also is still pursuing a large Group Five unmanned aircraft
under the Marine Air Ground Task Force UAS Expeditionary (MUX) program.

“The goal is for us to be able to persist inside that
weapons engagement zone of any adversary, to create problems and challenges, to
make that adversary change his behavior or change the course of actions they
are intending to pursue,” said Smith, who is commander of the Marine Corps
Combat Development Command.

Smith told the AUVSI Unmanned Systems forum that the Marines
were interested in all types of unmanned platforms — surface, subsurface,
aviation and ground. But they are looking for relatively inexpensive families
of systems that can be fielded in significant numbers, “because there is a
quality in quantity.”

Smith, who recently took the MCCDC post after commanding the
Okinawa-based III Marine Expeditionary Force, said everything they buy “has to
have range to get us out in the Pacific … because the ranges are stunning. … It
is stunningly difficult to maneuver and to get around in the Pacific.”

The general urged the industry representatives in the
audience to read the planning guidance released last month by Marine Corps
Commandant Gen. David H. Berger because it sets the path the Corps is to
follow. That future will include conducting EABO missions, which he likened to
“a raid. We’re going to go in, grab a piece of terrain, to do some refueling,
perhaps launch a few long-range precision missiles, and then we’re coming out.
When I say coming out, we’re not leaving the engagement zone, we’re just moving.
… I need systems that allow me to get in, get out. Whether it’s moving people
or things.”

“If we can persist … inside that weapons engagement zone at
a company, platoon level,” they could “be more than a nuisance. We can be a
lethal force, that causes an enemy to divert their course of action.”

Smith said he recently observed a simulation of the long-range surface vessel that the Corps is considering. In response to a Seapower question, he said evaluators were using an 11-meter rigid inflatable boat with unmanned controls to test the concept. “What we’re looking for is a long-range vessel that has the ability to do resupply, to move personnel, or cargo, that can move over long distances” in the kind of sea states prevalent in the Western Pacific.

“We need things that will link up with ships to offload things that we bring” and move them independently in and out of the EABO site. Asked about the MUX, which has gone through several changes in required capabilities, Smith said he was making a trip to the West Coast with Maj. Gen. Steven Rudder, the deputy commandant for aviation, to review the latest ideas for it.

The Defense Department is developing a space-based sensor
system and an associated communication network to defend the nation against
hypersonic weapons. But the military’s top future technologies official also
wants to field an offensive capability.

Although the United States led the world in developing
significant parts of hypersonic technology, “we choose not to weaponize it,”
Michael Griffin, the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering,
said Aug. 13.

But “our adversaries are developing hypersonic weapons.” In
response, “I came into office wanting DoD to make a big deal of that. I want to
be the offense. I want to hold others hostage. … Hypersonic technology is the
key to that.”

In addition to the research being conducted by defense
agencies, the U.S. Navy, Army and Air Force all have programs to produce
hypersonic missiles, with some test flights expected within a year.

Griffin said the danger from hypersonic weapons is that they
“overfly our air defense and underfly missile defense. They’re a new class of
threat we have to deal with,” he told a Hudson Institute forum. And that
requires sensors in space that can detect and track hypersonic missiles, which
can fly more than five times the speed of sound and, unlike ballistic missiles,
can maneuver.

Because they fly so low and so fast, “by the time we see them,
it’s too late in the kill chain” to intercept them. “We have to see them
farther out. Radar detection ranges are “about as good as they’re going to get,”
he said. “If this were exclusively a land conflict, the solution would be to
forward-deploy radars.” But intelligence suggests a future war would be “a
maritime conflict,” Griffin said.

Because there are “not a lot of islands out there” to put
radars on, “we have to move to space. You can see a lot from space.” Hypersonic
weapons also present a dimmer target than ballistic missiles so the space-based
sensors need to be in a lower orbit than those looking for ballistic missiles,
he explained.

“The sensor layer is critical. But if it can’t talk among
itself, it won’t be efficient. The network underlays everything we need to do,
in space, land and maritime. That’s what we don’t have today,” Griffin said.

Developing that network is one of the main jobs of the Space
Development Agency (SDA), which then-acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan created
in March, Griffin said. SDA was placed under Griffin, but if Congress agrees to
create a Space Force, as President Donald Trump proposed, and Griffin supports,
SDA would move into the Space Force, he said.

Asked about the ground-based midcourse missile defense
system, which includes the 44 interceptors in California and Alaska, Griffin
said he has “a great deal of confidence” in that system, even though the
Missile Defense Agency stopped its program to develop a new kill vehicle for
the interceptors because preliminary tests indicated it would not be
successful. Now the MDA and his office are looking for alternatives, Griffin
said.

Under official U.S. policy, the current missile defense
system is not designed to counter an attack from Russia or China, which have
more ballistic missiles than it could handle. Building a system to defend
against Russia and China would be a budgetary issue, not a technology
challenge, Griffin said.

“We know how to do it,” he said.

The U.S. military training engagements with less-developed
militaries, such as the ongoing African Partnership Station mission in the Gulf
of Guinea, are also a learning experience for the American personnel because it
can expose them to the level of military technology they could encounter in
counter-insurgency missions, a senior Navy officer said.

“We are blessed with the resources we have. But we do
understand that a lot of these nations … are still developing those
capabilities,” Capt. Frank Okata, commander Task Force 63 in the U.S. Navy
Europe-Africa Command, said Aug. 7. “We do feel it is important that we
demonstrate and train at their level.”

“It also helps us, too. It helps our [civilian] mariners,
our Sailors, Coast Guardsmen, and Marines with greater mental agility and
flexibility when we deploy to an unanticipated place, because we’ve been
exposed, over the length of our careers, been exposed to the very high-end
machinery of warfare to the very low end,” Okata said in a telephone briefing
from Naples.

“As we see in the continuing instability in the world that gravitates
to the lower end of warfare, …

it is important that we also know how to operate at the
level of our partners,” he said.

Okata was briefing a few reporters in the Pentagon on the
current partnership engagement mission of the USNS Carson City to half a dozen
nations along the Gulf of Guinea. The expeditionary fast transport ship with a
civilian master and crew was reinforced by a military detachment of U.S. Sailors,
a Coast Guard law enforcement team, medical and religious personnel, plus
Portuguese, Spanish and Italian sailors.

“This kind of engagement is instrumental in improving
maritime security along the African coast line, territorial seas and exclusive
economic zones, so that our African partners can be successful and prosperous,
securing their waterways and maintaining surveillance,” Okata said.

Cmdr. Tyrone Bruce, commander of the military detachment on
Carson City, said the Sailors have repaired small boats, conducted routine
maintenance and “worked side by side with our partners, sharing best practices,
tactics, techniques and procedures.” And, Bruce said, “we’ve learned
ourselves.” They also had a medical detachment that provided a variety of medical
care and training, several chaplains who interacted with local religious
leaders and an eight-piece band that performed at every stop.

Asked if the partnership mission was an effort to counter the extensive activities in Africa by China, Okata said, “We are keenly aware that the People’s Republic of China is also trying to make in-roads in West Africa,” including “some significant investments in infrastructure construction that could be used for different purposes than what we are trying to do. With Carson City, we are trying to share skill sets, to help these countries so they can surveil their economic zones.”

“We’re not there to build infrastructure, not there to build an enduring presence,” he added.

The latest in a series of advanced naval technology exercises
(ANTX) provided a lot of new ideas on how to improve maneuverability,
communications, logistics and force protection in the highly contested
environments expected in a future fight against a peer competitor, a trio of
top Navy Department officials said Aug. 1.

But the most exciting thing about the recent ANTX was the
demonstration of how the U.S. Navy and the Marine Corps are working together to
meet the challenges of a great power confrontation, James Geurts, the assistant
Navy secretary for research, development and acquisition, said at a Pentagon
briefing. It was a way “to kind of close the distance between ideas, wherever
they came from” and, by using some of the new acquisition authorities, to get
new technologies out into the field quicker.

Geurts said they have about a 12- to 18-month window to move
technologies through the acquisition process and into the hands of Sailors and
Marines, instead of a “20-year development program.” By bringing together the
requirements and acquisition officials with the operators, “we tend to find a
bunch of new ideas that we didn’t think of when we didn’t get all those
together,” he said.

The briefing focused mainly on the ANTX held July 9-19 at
Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, in which Geurts said 53 new
technologies were presented by 32 organizations, from large corporations to a
company with three people, and were tested in the field. Some of those
technologies could be moved into the acquisition process, while others would be
cited for additional development.

Maj. Gen. Mark Wise, the deputy commander of Marine Corps Combat
Development Command, said: “When we start looking at what that future fight
might look like and the things we will need to enable it, this has become a
really great way to start ferreting out some of those technologies that will
enable our Sailors and Marines to do that.” Wise mentioned technologies,
including unmanned air, land, surface and undersea systems, that could help
with force protection and logistics at comparatively low cost.

Michael Stewart, the deputy director of integrated warfare,
said by using the ANTX process, “we’re trying to increase the decision speed …
trying to leap frog [the normal acquisition process] and do it fast.” It was
“all about being a smart buyer.”

Wise said he was excited about some of the concepts for allowing communications for small, distributed Marine units when the current methods are disrupted, including systems that were small enough to fit on a light off-road vehicle, and using unmanned systems to provide fuel and ammunition to expeditionary air fields.

Geurts said a key factor in the ANTX process was, “we don’t call this a test, it’s an experiment. It’s OK to fail.” That is part of the new push for rapid innovation, which requires an environment “where it’s safe to fail.”

The U.S. Navy’s new surface warfare director said the sea service
is still working on what it wants in a proposed large surface combatant and also
what to do with the large unmanned surface vessels that the Navy plans to buy —
or even if they would be fully unmanned.

For the large surface combatant (LSC), “it’s a question of
how much speed do you need? How much can you afford? How much are you willing
to pay for it,” Rear Adm. Gene Black said July 17.

“The things I know, I need a big sensor. I need big
computing power, and I want a big [weapons] magazine. Beyond that, I don’t
know. It’s going to be a fantastically capable ship. … It’s going to be an
expensive ship. We want to make sure we’re coming in with the capability we
need.”

During a Surface Navy Association lunch, Black spoke at
length about his previous job as commander of the Harry S. Truman carrier
strike group, which made an historic voyage north of the Arctic Circle to
support the large NATO exercise Operation Trident Juncture, which included
driving the task force into a Norwegian fjord.

Asked what he thought about the five large unmanned surface vehicles the Navy asked for in the fiscal 2020 defense budget, Black said: “If I had had an USV at my disposal, I would have pushed it out ahead of me, certainly when I was in the high north. It would give me sensors, eyes and connectivity way out in front of the strike group, and awareness of what was going on, so I can decide if I want to go in another direction or do something completely different.”

“We’re just now exploring that space,” he said, noting the
recent establishment of a surface development squadron in California that will explore
possible use of unmanned surface vessels.

“Candidly, we’re going to get some of those things, going to
buy them,” and Black predicted “the young guys and gals in this room” would
find ways to employ them that older officers like himself could not contemplate.

“Certainly not in the next couple years are we going to turn
an unmanned vehicle loose from the West Coast and send it on a mission. There’s
a lot of learning that has to go on. And we have to come to terms if they’ll be
manned, unmanned or optionally manned. We’re working our way through all that,
and we don’t have the answers to all that.”

Asked about the new frigate program, for which a contract is
expected to be awarded soon, Black said only that “the program is going great.”

Black talked at length about the Truman deployment, which
was notable not only for operating in horrendous weather conditions north of
the Arctic Circle but also for its split deployment — in which it operated in
the Mediterranean Sea, returned to Norfolk, and then deployed again.

“The capabilities we’re bringing to sea these days [are] spectacular.
I can’t say much about it other than the investments we’ve made, the
investments we put into surface warfare strike” have produced a “return on
investments, probably 10 times over.”

Gen. David H. Berger relieved Gen. Robert B. Neller on July
11 to become the 38th commandant of the Marine Corps in a ceremony at Marine
Corps Barracks, Washington.

Acting Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper said of Berger: “In
this era of ‘Great Power Competition,’ I can think of no better leader to
assume the post of commandant.”

Berger “understands well the challenges we face in today’s
complex strategic environment. His work to shape the way we train and equip the
Marines for future battles makes him the perfect fit for this position,” Esper
said, referring the Berger’s previous job as deputy commandant for combat development
and integration.

“He is a visionary who is committed to marching the Marine
Corps down the path of modernizing,” Esper added. “He has demonstrated
throughout his career, he possesses the intellect, the stamina and courage to
lead in this demanding position.”

In his initial statement to the Marines he now will lead,
Berger said: “I consider it a privilege just to wear the uniform, just to stand
in their ranks. Whether commandant or corporal, just the privilege of wearing
this uniform, of calling yourself a Marine. It’s an honor.”

“I know we need to modernize the Marine Corps. I know we
need to train better. We need to recruit the very best people we can and keep
them in our ranks,” Berger added.

He also repeated a promise from Marine Gen. Joseph F.
Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who was in the audience: “We
will never send our force, we will never send our Marines, into a fair fight. I
know what we need to do.”

In his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services
Committee, Berger said among the most significant challenges he will face as
commandant “will be to sustain readiness at high levels for our operating
forces while concurrently modernizing the force.”

He predicted “a deliberate redesign of the force to meet the
needs of the future operating environment,” which would include divesting
legacy equipment and programs and “consider potential end-strength reductions
in order to invest in equipment modernization and necessary training upgrades.”

With the rising concerns over China, Berger brings highly
relevant experience to his new post, having commanded the California-based I
Marine Expeditionary Force, then Marine Forces Pacific. He also commanded the
Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, Twentynine Palms, California, where the
Marines test new equipment and operating concepts and have begun training for
high-intensity combat against a peer competitor.

Esper gave extended praise to Neller, who will retire next
month with 45 years and six months of service as a Marine officer, calling him
“a proven combat veteran” who has commanded at every level and “always took
care of his Marines. As commandant, he led the Marine Corps through a critical
inflection point,” from two decades of counter-insurgency operations “to a renewed
focus on high-intensity conflict against Great Power Competitors.”

In his farewell to the Marine Corps, Neller said among his
regrets was that the Corps “has been so slow to make changes” and that
“sometimes we may not always have met the mark of the Marine Corps. But that
was just a few of us. … If there has been any failing in our Corps, that
resides with me and any success belongs to the Marines.”

“At the end of the day, it’s not about me. It’s
not about Dave Berger, it’s about our Corps,” about the active duty and Marine
Reserves “who do the nation’s business. … It’s been a great ride, but its time.
I’ve had my time, but it’s done. I’m going home.”

Despite the current heavy focus on great power competition,
the Navy must retain and build its ability to engage in irregular maritime
conflict, which historically has always been a fundamental part of maintaining
maritime security, a panel of historians and naval security analysts said June
26.

Although the early Navy considered irregular actions, such
as raids on coastal cities and enemy commerce and antipiracy missions, as a
part of general maritime conflict, the current Navy thinks of itself as
blue-water force that must be prepared for the clash of battle fleets. But some
potential adversaries, including China and Iran, are engaging in “gray zone”
actions below the level of war and the Navy and Marine Corps must be able to
respond, the panel said at a Hudson Institute forum.

Benjamin Armstrong, a Naval Academy
professor and author of a history of 18^th and 19^th
century U.S. Navy, contrasted John Paul Jones’ raids on British ports and
merchant ships with the current Navy’s devotion to the clash of battle fleets
championed by Alfred Mahan, while Iran harasses U.S. warships with small boats
and China build artificial islands and employs its fishing fleet as an
auxiliary force to control the South China Sea.

“Today’s Navy and Marine
Corps are wrestling with how to balance great power conflict with gray zone
acts … the kind of maritime competition below the level of war,” Armstrong said.

Martin Murphy, a fellow at
the Corbett Centre for Maritime Policy Studies and author of a book on piracy
and maritime terrorism in the modern world, and Joshua Tallis, from the Center
for Naval Analysis and author of a similar history of irregular maritime
conflict, also said the current Navy’s strategy and self image does not account
for the broader dimension of maritime security and the challenges from
non-state actors.

Murphy said, “I do not believe
the United States is prepared” for the broader dimensions of maritime security,
because the importance of sea power has “lost all traction in U.S. foreign policy.”

Peter Haynes, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments and a former deputy with the Special Operations Command, said the Navy’s problem is that it “has defined the [maritime] competition very narrowly in the context of global conflict,” which reflects the Navy’s self-identity of “we only do blue-water operations.”

Linda Robinson, the senior
international/defense researcher at the RAND Corp., said that while the new
National Defense Strategy cited the return of great power competition, it also
said “irregular warfare was part of what the U.S. needs to be about,” because
small-state and non-state actors can employ a “broad range of powers.”

In response to a question,
several of the panelists said the Navy should be buying more smaller ships to
deal with the challenges from adversaries other than China and Russia,
including Iran’s threat of swarming attacks of small fast craft. “When
we see the Navy buying small ships, we’ll know the Navy has got it,” Murphy
said.