Tarawa. Saipan. Iwo Jima. Peleliu. Okinawa, Inchon. These are among the most sacred names in Marine Corps history. They define the sea-borne warriors’ in so many ways: sacrifice, grit, honor, competence. To most Americans, and to many Marines, those amphibious assaults are the soul of the Corps.
But those bloody and costly frontal assaults are not the future of the Marines, even as they plan for a return to sea-based operations after more than a decade of land wars in Aghanistan and Iraq. For much of the last two years reporters have heard the Marines talk of going back to their roots. Some sort of successor to the failed but fast Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle was in the works, we heard.
Lt. Gen. Kenneth Guelick, deputy commandant for combat development and integration, made clear this morning that the Marines will sidestep the full force of an enemy’s firepower in future amphibious operations. I asked him at a Defense Writers Group breakfast how the Corps would cope with the environment of death expected in an anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) battle for which the US military now trains and equips. “We want to pit strength against weakness,” Guelick told me, adding the Marines would look to exploit the “seams” in an enemy’s force and position.
The A2/AD battle is predicated on in-depth and layered defenses such as China’s advanced CSS-6 and CSS-7 short-range ballistic missiles (SRBMs), SA-10 SAMs, anti-ship cruise missiles and over-the-horizon targeting systems. A battle group of ships launching Marines in ship-to-shore connectors like the Amphibious Combat Vehicle (ACV) could be decimated by the rain of steel from such a power.
Careful not to identify any particular scenarios (though we were all thinking China), Guelick offered one other characterization: “The intent is not to go in force on force. The intent,” he said, “is to find the gaps.”
That sounds very much as if the Marines have read Chinese doctrine...
High-tech warfare at knife-fight ranges: that’s the ugly future of urban combat. If you thought Baghdad was bad, with its roughly six million people, imagine a “megacity” of 10 or 20 million, where the slums have more inhabitants than some countries. Imagine a city of the very near future where suspicious locals post every US military movement on Twitter with digital photos and GPS-precise coordinates. Imagine roadside bombs that fly because the bad guys downloaded blueprints for a kamikaze mini-drone and built it with their 3-D printer.
As the US pulls out of the mountains and deserts of Afghanistan, the Navy and Air Force may be looking to the wide-open Pacific, but the Army is increasingly concerned about the cramped alleyways of Third World cities. (The Marines, as usual, have a foot in both worlds). Chief of Staff Ray Odierno’s personal Strategic Studies Group — now led by hybrid warfare expert David Johnson — is working on the subject, as is the Army’s think tank and teaching institution, Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC). This August, after months of seminars, simulations, and study, the Army War College will host a “deep future wargame” set in a megacity, probably a coastal one, circa 2035.
“We talk about the danger of failed states: Imagine a failed megacity,” offers Col. Kevin Felix of TRADOC’s Army Capability Integration Center (ARCIC), which plays a leading role in organizing the wargame. Even a partial breakdown of security and public services could put thousands of people in peril — or under the rule of drug gangs, as in Brazil’s infamous favelas; or of terrorist groups, like Hezbollah in parts of Lebanon. In those parts of the city, Felix told me, “there may be order, but I wouldn’t define it as law and order.”
There are already 26 megacities, defined as urban areas with over 10 million population, including such hives of instability as Karachi, Pakistan and Lagos, Nigeria. Worldwide the urban population now exceeds the rural for the first time in history. While megacities are the flavor of the month, they’re hardly the only potential trouble spots.
