War, the military, COIN and stuff

Navy, Marines Game Out Their Future

U.S. Navy delivering humanitarian supplies ashore in Colombia. (Pic: Paul McLeary)

With the Marine Corps leadership itching to get “expeditionary” again and start placing their Marines back on U.S. Naval vessels after a decade fighting in the deserts of Iraq and Afghanistan, the sea services are starting from square one.

On December 11, the Navy and Marine Corps kicked off Bold Alligator, a simulation that marks the largest joint fleet simulated amphibious exercise in the last 10 years. Brig. Gen. Christopher S. Owens of the II Marine Expeditionary Force, the Marine component of Exercise Bold Alligator, said in a conference call last week that while it's the first brigade-level amphibious exercise in quite some time, “it's also a first step in our revitalization of our amphibious proficiency with larger or brigade-size units” after a decade of kicking sand.

The synthetic exercise—a real, physical exercise is planned for 2012—will be run out of Norfolk from two amphibious assault ships, the USS Bataan and USS Iwo Jima, and will simulate a “hybrid threat environment where U.S. forces have been requested by friendly nations to help bring a measure of security and stability to the area,” Owens said. “With one nation, we'll support their fight against an externally-supported insurgency and repel foreign invaders from within their borders; at the same time, in a neighboring country, we will likely conduct a noncombatant evacuation operation of U.S. citizens in the midst of sectarian violence that is related to the more conventional conflict next door.”

Read the rest at ARES...

Tough Cuts: Marines Have Choices to Make

In the December issue of DTI, Kimberly Johnson, Mike Fabey and I have a story about some of the USMC's big ticket programs, and the challenges they'll face in staying afloat in the upcoming budget squeeze:

Many in and out of the Pentagon thought the EFV was on its way to the junk heap by mid-2010. Gates had the program in his sights and no one was sure what kind of support Amos would lend. Like other programs that have been decades in development, the EFV became a target for defense industry reformers who questioned the relevance of equipment they say is more suited to warfare from another era.

For example, it is designed to carry a large enough gun to engage hostile armored vehicles but not—in its basic form—to withstand large mines or improvised explosive devices.

The kind of amphibious assault landings for which the EFV was initially designed no longer make sense, critics added. But Amos presents a new idea of what constitutes an amphibious landing. In his first planning guidance, released in October, he cites global disasters in Haiti and Pakistan that required the deployment of 5,000 Marines from seven amphibious ships. Amos also made clear in his guidance that he was for anything that bolstered the Marines’ expeditionary capabilities.

“The Marine Corps is America’s expeditionary force in readiness,” he wrote in the guidance, which mentions “expeditionary” 15 times. “To a Marine, the term ‘expeditionary’ is more than a slogan; it is our state of mind. It drives the way we organize our forces, how we train and what kind of equipment we buy.” The defining expeditionary tool now is the EFV.

Read the whole thing here.

USMC Cutting 10,000 Ground Vehicles

The Marine Corps is about the get leaner, according to the USMC’s Lt. Gen. George Flynn, who said recently that the service is planning on ditching 10,000 of the current 42,000 tactical vehicles it has in its fleet.

Flynn, who is the deputy commandant for combat development and integration, told This Week in Defense News that although the USMC’s Ground Combat Tactical Vehicle Strategy is still evolving, the service is committed to the cut, but he failed to elaborate which vehicles will be jettisoned. “We’re going to cut 10,000 vehicles from the inventory because we’ve decided what capabilities we need,” he said.

The Marines have some tough decisions to make when it comes to their ground vehicle fleet. The biggest, of course, is the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, the $2.5 billion, decades-long program to replace the ancient Amphibious Assault Vehicle (AAVs) which was first fielded in the 1970s. The Corps has estimated that the EFV will run them over $16 million per vehicle and hopes to build a total of 573 of them, although leadership has made some noises lately talking up the capabilities they provide--amphibious forced entry, speed, armor--rather than the EFV specifically.

Please read the rest at ARES...