Fiction, USMC Transformation Week

Locate, Close With, Destroy

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Transforming the Marine Corps Topic Week

By Ian Brown 

D-90 

“—unprecedented chain of events culminated today in his early resignation only three months into his second nominated term. Citing the well-publicized campaign against his reforms, he noted that his person had become a distraction from the Service’s ability to fulfill its mandated functions. As he stepped away from the microphone, our Pentagon correspondent heard him comment that ‘never was so much so misunderstood by so many,’ but she could not get him to elaborate. While his successor awaits Senate confirmation, sources already report that the rapid recapitalization of divested weapons systems will be a top priority for the new—”

D-1

             “You’re fucking kidding me,” spat Colonel Sara Hård, though she knew the general was, sadly, serious. The general’s fleeting smirk confirmed her suspicions.

            “Come now, colonel,” responded Brigadier General Paolo Ricci. “We all have our roles. This is just what your little science experiment was designed for, right?” Hård bit her tongue until she could taste blood. It was that, or say something that would see her leave the room stripped of her already tenuous command. Truly, there are none so blind as those who will not fucking see…

            “Sir,” she said, working to keep her tone neutral, “I don’t dispute that this assignment is one of the many possible missions my regiment was constructed to execute, but I strongly believe that a more mutually supportive deployment—”

            “Enough.” The smirk was gone. “Let me be clear, colonel. I’ll use your band of littoral misfits because this crisis is here, and so are you. And as it happens, your reason for being happily aligns with this specific request of the Norwegian government. Who knows, this could be the perfect chance for the Marine Littoral Regiment to finally show its quality.” A ghost of the smirk reappeared. “So you will plant your space experts and cyber warriors and influencers and missileers on those islands, and make noises if any Soviets get too close—which they won’t. We will handle anything that comes down the road.”

            And there it was. General Ricci, poster child of the old guard, wanted his refurbished tanks and artillery tubes to have a public knife fight upon which he could slap the bumper sticker of “locate, close with, and destroy,” because that’s what the old guard wanted. Her “influencers”—linguistic trend analysis among their skills, not that Ricci cared—were screaming that this conflict would unfold another way. They want an amphibious win against us, her influencers said, they’ll come by sea, the road is just a distraction—but Ricci clung to his vision.

            “Captain Rhys, please have the duty driver return Colonel Hård to the airfield,” he said nonchalantly. Hård rose and wordlessly followed the captain out of the room. She could feel Ricci’s eyes mocking her as she left.

            Hård sat in silence on the drive back to Kirkenes Lufthavn. She had known this eleventh-hour plea with the MAGTF commander was likely fruitless regardless of the moment’s urgency. The Russian Federation had collapsed following its army’s expulsion from Ukraine and subsequent economic free fall. The chaos had forced NATO to contend with more than a dozen new breakaway regimes all fighting each other, with the violence regularly spilling over NATO borders. The New Murmansk Soviet had been quiet thus far, until a few days ago when its Chairman broke his silence.

            The Chairman’s exact words—rights under the Svalbard Treaty, a litany of historical injustices, the protection of Russian-language speakers—were largely irrelevant. Only two things mattered. The Soviet’s military forces were among the most potent of the breakaway states and  the Northern Rotational MAGTF was in a position to do something about it.

            Hård had hoped this meant the Marine Littoral Regiment’s turn had finally come after the long months of being shunted aside. Facing the pending Soviet offensive, she thought her argument was strong: the MLR, along with Ricci’s conventional forces, should redeploy to Bear Island and Svalbard together to oppose Soviet landings and threaten their naval forces seeking to break into the Atlantic. Ricci gave one of his smirks and assessed Soviet amphibious and naval capability as “low.” But since the Norwegian government shared her concern, her MLR would cover the islands. Away from the “real” land fight in Hesseng he wants, and the cameras.

A knock on the car window pulled Hård back from her dark thoughts. She was at Kirkenes Lufthavn. Giving the waiting driver a tight smile and small nod for his forbearance, she got out. The MV-22 Osprey that had brought her here was already spinning a short distance away, and a shadow in front the aircraft’s silhouette walked toward her. She recognized her assistant operations officer, Major Travis Cuomo, who raised a hand holding a cranial to her in greeting.

“I’m guessing we’ll be in Longyearbyen a bit longer?” he asked as she strapped her cranial on.

“Yes,” she replied, continuing toward the Osprey. “I’ll have some orders to transmit once we’re airborne. Weather update?”

“Low pressure system’s growing. Pilot’s gonna have to buster to get us back before the skies close.” Cuomo paused. “With aviation grounded, we’ll be awfully lonely out there.” Hård smiled tightly.

“Nonsense,” she said with forced lightness. “It’s just an opportunity to grow where we’re planted.” Cuomo quietly nodded as they approached the Osprey’s tail ramp. After the Osprey lifted, Hård plugged her cranial into the aircraft’s communications system and started sending orders into the ether. The lights of Kirkenes faded behind them. Far to the west, lightning danced on the horizon.

D+1

            “Dog Three Six confirms the Pyotr Velikiy is destroyed.” Hård nodded thanks at the corporal who had delivered the message.

“Good,” replied Hård. “Tell Captain Garard and the Influence cell to launch their packages in 20 minutes. I don’t need to review it.” The corporal nodded in return, and went back to his corner of the hotel dining room. Outside, the arctic storm swirled, an angry contrast to the unnatural calm of her Marines inside the Blu Polar Hotel. Turning away from storm, Hård headed to a different corner to watch the Influence cell at work.

Captain Garard was quietly guiding the editing process for the latest information packages. The work was a microcosm of what her “misfits” brought to the table. Her Space Marine liaison team had received commercial satellite cuing for the Soviet Northern Fleet flagship Pyotr Velikiy a few hours ago. The satellites fed targeting information to the Maritime Strike Tomahawk battery with the Lava Dogs on Bear Island, which then—with the satellites watching and her Influence cell listening—launched a missile salvo.

Hård observed the strike playback as Garard’s team massaged it. Two missiles struck the ship, one detonating the vessel’s magazine to break its back. She listened as the radio transmissions from the Pyotr Velikiy changed from bored reports to screams. Radio silence followed as the two pieces of the Pyotr Velikiy’s hull slid beneath the storm-frothed waves.

Of the Influence cell’s information packages, the first was for public consumption, highlighting a straightforward message: we are winning. It showed the video but omitted the screams, instead dubbing over a patriotic Norwegian rock ballad that had gone viral when the New Murmansk Soviet announced its intentions. This package would go to Norwegian news outlets, Russian social media, even Ricci’s COMMSTRAT Marines—not that the latter would do anything with it.

The second package also had a straightforward message: we are going to kill you, and you can’t stop us. It swapped out music for the dying crew’s screams. This one would go out across Soviet naval military channels to sow pure fear. Similar packages had gone out following each strike, and her Marines had been gratified to watch some of the Soviet ships turn back after receiving the Influence cell’s transmissions. It was maneuver warfare at work—space and influence domains joined with long-range fires assets to create a combined arms effect that had significantly shrunk the Soviet threat to the archipelago. Things were going pretty well. Except…

The amphibs were missing. There were four Project 23900-class amphibious assault ships in the Soviet Northern Fleet, and when that Fleet had met the front edge of the storm southeast of Svalbard, satellites lost track of them. Her Space Marine liaisons had worked to recover the tracks scattered by the storm—but despite reacquiring many lucrative targets, the amphibs remained ghosts. That meant thousands of Soviet naval infantry were out there, location unknown, plowing toward them—

“Ma’am?” A hand touched her shoulder; it was Captain Garard. “We’ve launched the packages,” said the captain. “Just wanted you to know before we start breaking things down to displace.”

“Thanks,” Hård replied with a small smile. “I guess that means I should be getting myself ready to move too, doesn’t it?” Garard gave an agreeable nod as the room’s calm turned to flurried activity. In moments, her Marines had packed up the command post and were hauling their Pelican cases into the rain toward their next location under the displacement plan that kept them ahead of the Soviet targeting cycle. Hård gave herself another small smile. The rain seemed to be slackening; that would make it all the easier to find the amphibs. Things were indeed going well.

D+2

            “Riptide Six, launch the barn.” Hård pushed the “end” button and tossed down the handheld. So much for things going well. A sharp crack overhead caught her attention. From her latest command post high above Isfjorden, she looked up through the camouflage netting to see pieces of burning debris floating in the dark sky. It was the latest casualty in the air battle raging above them.

            They’d found the amphibs; or, rather, the amphibs had found them. Under cover of the storm, the Soviets had reached the Isfjorden undetected. Her regiment’s coastal radars picked up faint returns, called it in, and then came the missiles and loitering munitions as the line of Project 23900 ships brazenly pushed toward Longyearbyen. But once the initial surprise had worn off, her Marines stung back.

            Explosions and flaming debris filled the air in the battle between her Stinger and MADIS gunners, and Soviet missiles and drones. The Soviet drones came in increasing numbers, intended to soak up as much ground-based air defense as they could, but she’d trained her Marines to be ready for this. A new sound thrummed through the airspace, and she again looked skyward to watch the results.

            “Launching the barn” was a contingency she’d kept in the back of her mind for unconventional employment of her MLR’s excess tactical ISR drones. Now those drones would add their rotors and propellers to the air battle. New flashes lit up the night sky as her drone operators sent their unmanned platforms against the cloud of Soviet drones in kamikaze runs. They plunged down from above to cut their Soviet counterparts in half, or drove into Soviet rotors and propellers to send them spinning to the ground. The frequency of the flashes slackened after a few minutes, and Hård knew that her Marines had cleared the airspace for the battle’s next phase. She picked up her handheld, scrolled to a different contact, and pressed the “call” icon.

            “Go for Dog One Six,” came the reply.

            “This is Actual,” Hård said. “Ghost them, and be ready for leakers.”

            “Yes ma’am,” the voice responded. “Everyone goes swimming.” Hård felt a small measure of sympathy toward the Soviet amphibs for the hard time about to unfold. She looked through her binocular NVGs, saw a flash and bloom of light on the flight deck of the rear-most amphib, and then the rest of the Ghosts came.

            The Ghost drone—its predecessor first tested in Ukraine but later dismissed by the old guard as lacking the spirit of true combined arms—was silent, low-profile, and launchable from almost anywhere. Hård swept her NVGs across the dark sky, the darker-than-dark silhouettes of the Ghosts barely visible as they converged from a hundred launch points around the island, and then plunged into the amphibs.

            The rear-most ship took three hits to the bridge in quick succession, and as its course drifted slowly to starboard it became clear the helm was beyond human control. The next ship in line suddenly spewed flames from virtually all of its openings. Fuel tanks ruptured, and we know they have poor damage control. Jesus. As she watched, some of the flames fell down to the water rather than rise in the air, and she knew those flames were wrapped around people. She shifted her gaze to the right—

            —to be blinded by a searing white light from up the fjord. Hård ripped her NVGs off, blinking away painful spots. When her vision cleared, she looked down the fjord and saw a sheet of fire spreading across the water where the lead amphib had been. A Ghost had hit its magazine, and the ship was simply gone. Need to work up an award for whoever flew that drone, she thought, just as a tall black shape cut in front of the pool of flame. It was the last amphib, burning in more places than she could count, but clearly still under control and just as clearly, its captain was sprinting to shore to give the embarked naval infantry a fighting chance. Hård put her NVGs back on in time to see smaller black shapes speeding from the ship’s stern. In an act of true desperation, the Soviets were launching their landing ships while the amphib was still at flank speed.

            Then the Marines’ next defensive layer opened up. Carl Gustavs lanced across the water, Javelins arced up and then back down. More flames blossomed across the landing flotilla until it looked like fire had replaced water within the fjord. The last amphib charged toward the shore without slowing, and Hård guessed that it was no longer under human control either—this collision would kill or cripple anyone left alive on board that inferno. From her distant post, the sound of the warship crunching into rock sounded like a thousand empty oils drums being tossed around in a giant’s dryer. Then the ship simply sat, and burned. Just like that, it was over.

            Her handheld vibrated. Hård looked at the screen. The number combination indicated it was a valid contact in the MAGTF C2 network, but she didn’t recognize it. She swiped to answer.

            “Colonel Hård?” The voice was a faint quaver. “Colonel Hard? Ma’am?” Hård had to say “yes” several times before the answer finally registered with the caller. When it did, the caller muttered something indistinguishable, and Hård finally placed the voice.

            “Captain Rhys? Why the hell are you calling me directly—“

            “They’re all dead, ma’am,” Rhys replied softly. “They’re all dead, and we need you back here, and they’re all dead…”

            It was several minutes before Hård could get Rhys to say anything else.

D+4

             Hesseng and Kirkenes Lufthavn were smoldering heaps, though at least the airport had enough unbroken tarmac for an Osprey to land. Hård waited for the aircraft to shut down before stepping off the tail ramp, dreading the revelations to come. She walked toward the pitifully small field hospital the Norwegians had erected for survivors on the far side of the airfield.

            Rhys’ bed was close to the door flap. Hård pulled up a folding chair and sat down. They looked wordlessly at each other for a few moments, with Hård finally breaking the silence.

            “What happened?”

            “The general got his close fight,” Rhys said softly. “He thought their air would be grounded by the storm, and they would have to come up the highway into Hesseng. Our artillery would pound them on the way in, and then we’d have the urban tank battle that…” Rhys trailed off.

            “That would prove Ricci right,” Hård finished. Rhys nodded.

            “They killed our guns with rockets first. BM-30s and Tornados.” Rhys half-sobbed. “The Soviets know this ground, they live next to it. They know where you can put towed artillery and where you can’t. We were too far away to shoot back and too slow to move out of the way. Then they moved closer and did the same to Hesseng. They didn’t kill many of our tanks, just destroyed all the buildings so we couldn’t move. And when the weather broke, Tu-22s put cluster bombs on everything still standing.” Rhys paused again. “Then they came up the highway. Not many, but enough to…make their point. They drove right up to our stuck tanks and the rubble on our fighting positions, and pulled those Marines out who were still alive and…you saw the YouTube videos?” Hård nodded silently. She’d watched them on the flight over. The crew chiefs had kindly loaned her a rag to wipe up the vomit afterward. Ricci had gotten the close fight he wanted; close enough, as the Soviet videos showed, to put bullets in the back of Marines’ heads.

Rhys was silently weeping now. Hård stayed with the captain until weeping gave way to exhausted sleep, and then stood up to leave. On tables at the back of the field hospital were a number of body bags awaiting temporary burial. One lay on a separate table, a strip of bright yellow tape stuck to its side, with “Ricci” scrawled on it in black letters. Hård did not look at it on the way out.

D+30

            “—retired generals expected at today’s hearings on the recent skirmish in the High North. Viewers might recall that yesterday’s hearings were interrupted by protestors, several of whom were later identified as family members of Marines executed by Soviet forces in the Norwegian town of Hesseng. Protestors displayed several of the horrifying images we have seen of shell-shocked Marines being shot at point-blank range by the Soviets, and, well, listen to the replay here as the protestors were removed: ‘Was that close enough, general? The Soviets got close and my son is dead, was that close enough, are you happy now—’”

Major Ian T. Brown currently serves as the operations officer at the Brute Krulak Center for Innovation and Future Warfare at Marine Corps University, Quantico. He is a contributor to previous CIMSEC Fiction Weeks, and has also discussed military fiction and wargaming on the Sea Control podcast. The views expressed here are in a personal capacity and do not reflect the views of the Krulak Center, Marine Corps University, the United States Marine Corps, or any other agency of the U.S. Government.

Featured Image: “War Ship” by Romain Laforet via Artstation.

The Lighter Side

Celebrating the Definitely True History and Future of the Top Gun Franchise and Carrier Aviation

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By Billy Mitchell

Yes, it’s me. Billy Mitchell, Army officer, airpower advocate, and Father of the U.S. Air Force. I am writing today because I am finally confident enough to reveal the details of my long-term plan to integrate naval aviation into the U.S. Air Force. I know it’s time to buzz the tower because Top Gun: Maverick is finally in theaters and reviews are in – it’s a hit!

What’s that you say? You never heard that the Top Gun franchise is an Air Force info-operation to render the U.S. naval aviation community ineffective by failing to change its culture or adopt unmanned technology? What I’m about to tell you is classified. It could end my career – and no, this isn’t the worst dogfight you’ve ever dreamed of….

Given the hopes that Top Gun: Maverick will inspire a similar recruiting boom as its 1986 predecessor, I know that Congress and naval aviators will never get rid of their carriers or the people in their strike fighters. So once the People’s Liberation Army Air Force and Rocket Forces render your community and service impotent with “Great Balls of Fire,” just remember boys, there’s no points for second place in service parochialism or great power conflict.

Back When I Was the Top Gun

If you look at the Wikipedia page of 1986’s Top Gun, some people might have you believe it’s a Paramount Pictures production at the height of the Cold War and Reagan/Lehman-era 600-ship Navy build-up. But the history goes back way further to the interwar period. And me? I didn’t feel the need for speed, only victory.

You see, I fought in the Spanish-American War and World War One (as you all seem to call it). I was an Army aerial observer in France and saw what aviation could become, so when I got back to the U.S. in January 1919, I was appointed the Director of Military Aeronautics. I knew that airpower would become the predominant force of war, so our country would need an independent air force equal to the Army and Navy.

I was the maverick in 1919 who wanted floating bases of aircraft to defend the country, but your senior naval aviators thought I’d never understand sea-based aviation requirements, so used Assistant SECNAV Franklin Delano Roosevelt to block me. FDR can thank me later for projecting forward the technology that won World War Two. But as I’m sure you historians remember, I got the Navy to commit to demonstrations of aviation against battleships by working the press like I am today. “1,000 bomber aircraft could be built and operated for the cost of one dreadnought and my airplanes could sink that battleship,” which is something you still seem to have forgotten today with your Ford-class carrier embarking F-35s compared to the B-21 Raider…But I digress.

As we remember now, SECNAV Josephus Daniels rigged the initial demonstrations in an attempt to show battleships could survive the bombing attempts. But in July 1921 with bombs I personally oversaw in designing, we sunk the old German warship Ostfriedland with a total of six bombs. Thankfully for the Navy, this exercise gave Bill Moffat enough authority to start building the carriers you would use to win in the Pacific in World War Two. But the only reason you used them was because the Japanese were so successful at sinking your battleships in Pearl Harbor (using airplanes).

There was some real genius in their flying – from the development of the Thach weave, to Dick Best sinking two Japanese carriers at Midway, or Pappy Boyington’s exploits throughout the Pacific – but I couldn’t say that here, to my Army Air Corps and Air Force brethren. I’d be afraid that everyone reading this would see right through me – but I know after World War Two, everyone had fallen for manned carrier aviation.

I never got to see it in person though. After a September 1925 crash of the helium-filled rigid airship Shenandoah that killed 14 and destroyed three seaplanes, I issued a statement accusing Army and Navy senior leaders of “almost treasonable administration of the national defense.” And to think I could have saved that line for your post-Cold War shipbuilding policies! Anyway, that statement got me court-martialed, and I resigned from the Army as a colonel. In short, how did I end up here? Well, the list of people I pissed off is long, but distinguished.

“Here” is the ‘Wild Blue Beyonder,’ the Aviator Afterlife I came to after my coronary occlusion in 1936. It’s here that I’ve been able to watch, far above you all, the advancements of aviation and try to help the Air Force absorb naval aviation. How can I do this, if I’m directly above you? Because I’m inverted. And it’s classified. I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.

After World War Two and the Need for a Movie

I watched as your admirals and SECNAV James Forrestal opposed unification to create a separate Air Force after World War Two. Their fitness reports said it all – they led by the seats of their pants, totally unpredictable. But it takes a lot more than just fancy grandstanding to win a long-term interservice rivalry. Despite the innovation of nuclear weapons and the B-36 Peacemaker, the admirals whined about the cancellation of the USS United States, and justified carrier-based strike-fighter-launched nuclear weapons to stave off the budget cuts you’d actually enact 50 years later.

That “Revolt of the Admirals” really taught me something though – I can’t get the Air Force to beat you at your culture, so I needed to let you beat yourself. It wasn’t until Howard Hughes, the Aviator-actual, arrived in the Wild Blue Beyonder, and we chatted about his film directing experiences, and how disappointed he was the Spruce Goose never made it to use in World War Two. That’s how I gave him his callsign “Goose” after the kangaroo court. He hated carrier aviation just as much as I did, given that the U.S. Navy gave up on seaplanes 60 years ago at the time of this writing.

As we were writing the movie, we got nervous. We thought for sure that the 1982 Falklands War would teach the U.S. Navy the enduring need for long-range strike capabilities, given how even small numbers of Argentine fighters carrying Exocets could sink ships and push carriers out of effective range. I turned to Howard and said, “Talk to me Goose – will this movie even work?” He nonchalantly responded, “Oh yeah, these bro-culture aviators will lap it up. Just a walk in the park for us.” So we worked through the traditional Hollywood seances to pitch Tony Scott, Don Simpson, and Jerry Bruckheimer. Thanks to Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse, we can now just plug into the internet, but thankfully Paramount loved the idea.

They did think it was a little on the nose to have our two main characters be a maverick aviator named Mitchell who doesn’t fit into the system and a lovable and awkward counterpart with the name Goose who disappears from life halfway through. I remember Jerry Bruckheimer screaming at the Ouija Board: “You don’t own this movie! Paramount does! Mitchell, your ego is writing checks your lack of a body can’t cash!” Which was fair – but the movie was a huge success!

Over $350 million at the box office; cemented Tom Cruise as a star; convinced people across the country that being shirtless with jeans was a legitimate volleyball uniform, and led a whole generation of naval aviators to join the community just as the Soviet Union collapsed. Without that threat requiring them to innovate, they could just live off the vapors of Maverick, Goose, Viper, and Ice Man at Tailhook, while occasionally bombing Eastern Europe or the Middle East. That was some of the best flying I’ve seen to date – right up to the part where their cultural inertia ensured they’ll get killed in this century. And thanks to the Navy pulling all non-strategic nuclear weapons off non-SSBNs by 1991, that whole argument for carriers from the Revolt of the Admirals went right out the window!

Heck, the original Top Gun was so impactful over so many decades that Goose and I finally were able to convince John Paul Jones and Willis “Ching” Lee as a practical joke that the SWOs needed their own movie. They pitched Hollywood on what became 2012’s Battleship. It was a box-office bomb, but it helped take Navy surface forces out of the Air Force’s long-range strike game in three ways:

  1. It validated that toxic leadership should be maintained through nepotism or special privileges, and that the fire of battle will ultimately fix these cultural issues.
  2. Rihanna’s character served as an operations specialist, gunner’s mate, and various other roles, validating the optimal (minimal) manning constructs that were so successful with the Littoral Combat Ship and Zumwalt-class destroyers.
  3. And lastly, the climactic battle is premised on the USS Missouri, a museum battleship, getting underway in mere hours through the capabilities of septuagenarian veteran maintainers with limited financial investment or detailed explanation. I believe this is the current NAVSEA policy for leaving American shipyards, as I’ve seen it explained in the Balisle Report, Comprehensive Review, and the regular pictures of rusty combatants traversing the world’s oceans.

And to think the SWOs killed the Tomahawk Anti-Ship Missile (TASM) in 1994 only to bring it back three decades later as an improved “Maritime Strike Tomahawk”? What a run for Top Gun.

This is what the Chinese call a “Target-Rich Environment” – the Need for a Sequel

Even after the PLA lost that lovin’ feelin’ during the 1996 Third Taiwan Strait Crisis, those reckless U.S. carrier aviators put their crew and their plane first. The PLA on the other hand couldn’t live down having multiple American aircraft carriers nearby and interfering in the China/Taiwan issue. In the following generation, they “fielded, and [are] further developing, capabilities to provide options for the PRC to dissuade, deter, or if ordered, defeat third-party intervention during a large-scale theater campaign such as a Taiwan contingency.” And look, I get it – you don’t have time to think up there in the Pentagon, developing the future of carrier aviation over a generation. If you think, you’re dead. People know the F-35 works just like the F/A-18 works just like the F-14 worked.

Except Goose and I started to get worried again. When the DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile reached initial operating capability in 2010, we thought, “Surely these naval aviators will clamor for the aircraft ranges necessary to operate from beyond that missile’s danger zone.” But ride into the danger zone they did, continuing to do ineffective presence while the South China Sea was militarized, and providing free OPFOR training to the Chinese. Within three years naval aviation was landing the X-47B drone aboard a carrier – an unmanned reconnaissance system with such accuracy it would dent the carrier deck with its consistency. Surely you Cruise-wannabes would acknowledge the future and transition it to a program of record for an unmanned strike fighter, enabling far longer ranges and time-on-station than manned fighters. Right?

Even in the think tank world, experts started asking: Is the carrier obsolete? Why has the air wing’s range diminished dangerously? How could air wings transform to do long-range sea denial in support of a Taiwan counter-intervention scenario, now seen as the pacing challenge for American geopolitics this century? And all of this while the Chinese fielded the DF-26 “Guam Killer,” DF-17 Hypersonic Missile, and tested a Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS)/Hypersonic Glide Vehicle hybrid with potentially global conventional strike range? It was as if senior aviators were screaming at future wars, “I will adapt to new technologies when I’m god$%& good and ready! You got that?”

We knew it was time for a sequel. If the U.S. naval aviation community could once again fall in love with manned carrier aviation, they would never adopt the unmanned systems at the speed or scale needed for modern threats. A sequel, loved by all, would pave the way for a single service with conventional and strategic long-range maritime strike capabilities able to take it right into China’s danger zone: The U.S. Air Force. Will thousands of sailors die and billions of dollars of American treasure sink for these facts to be realized? Probably. The defense department will regret to inform many that their sons and daughters are dead because their predecessors were shortsighted.

So yeah – we got Top Gun: Maverick made. It’s great. Was it a bold, ironic move to open the movie with Tom Cruise shredding a government boondoggle manned aircraft trying to fly at Mach 10 when that could very easily be unmanned? Sure – but goodness that anthem is iconic, so don’t think about the force structure implications. And you know what the best part is? We probably didn’t even need the sequel. The Winged Luddites of carrier aviation ensured that X-47B was killed in 2015. The replacement MQ-25 Stingray won’t reach IOC until 2025 and is slated to provide only tanking to the long held-dreams of putting Top Gun’s finest right to the edge of the envelope – not even going Mach 2 with their hair on fire. Probably going Mach .9 max conserve to make the whole trip for blue water ops.

All this while my Air Force actually is succeeding with multiple autonomous drones and developing greater autonomy so that as DARPA’s AlphaDogfight trials showed, drones never get too close for missiles to switch to guns. They just always win. But the Air Force’s airfields don’t move– so they’re easy to target right? Sure – but the Navy’s newest moving airfield was bought in 2008, and will deploy in 2022. So are you going to tell me that your crippled maritime industrial base will replace a carrier during the length of the entire world war? It’s like Meg Ryan once said, “Take me to war and lose me forever!”

Where does this leave carrier aviation? You want to say this is fine. But really, it’s so bad it would take my breath away. If I were in fact a corporeal junior naval aviator looking at the long-term direction of my community in the face of growing threats, I’d want to find anyone – Congress, senior community leaders, or acquisition professionals from the past three decades and just scream: “Guys, it’s not your leadership, it’s your attitude and acquisition execution. The enemy’s dangerous, but right now you’re worse. Dangerous and foolish. You may not like who’s enabling airpower with you, but whose side are you on?”

So as I sit up here in the Wild Blue Beyonder, all I can say is: The Air Force will be your wingman anytime. Mostly because you can’t stay out at these ranges anyway. Looking forward to taking your aircraft and dollars next POM cycle. Watch the birdie!

Colonel William (Billy) Mitchell, US Army, Retired, is an incorporeal spirit, airpower advocate, and unlisted executive producer of military films in Hollywood. The views and opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or Department of Defense.

Featured Image: Top Gun: Maverick movie poster by Paramount Pictures.

USMC Transformation Week

Stand-In Forces: Disrupting Anti-Access Systems

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Transforming the Marine Corps Topic Week

By Joseph Mozzi

The threat of anti-access capabilities is here to stay, and the Marine Corps’ stand-in force concept lends much-needed variety to the toolbox of approaches that will allow the joint force to “break the wall” if needed.1 Anti-access strategies are not new concepts, nor are they the oft-depicted ‘deus ex machina’ that will turn vast swaths of the globe into prohibited regions for American power projection.2 They do, however, present a threat that is only increasing in capability, bolstered by the increasing evolution of the mature precision-strike regime.3 By winning the maritime reconnaissance and counter-reconnaissance fight, the stand-in force is uniquely capable of contributing to the systemic disruption of anti-access capabilities, generating advantages and opportunities for the naval services and joint force to exploit. It lends much-needed asymmetry to breaking the walls that many of America’s current adversaries will erect in their efforts to hold American power-projection capabilities at bay.4

There is broad congruence between the stand-in force’s role and the Marine Corps’ capstone doctrine of maneuver warfare. Penetrating an adversary’s system to eliminate its ability to function as a coordinated whole is central to the service’s warfighting philosophy,5 and systemic disruption is its defeat mechanism of choice.6 In viewing anti-access capabilities for what they are: complex systems reliant on technology, information, and human decision making; the stand-in force generates effects that both deter and provide advantages during conflict. It reinvents the traditional understanding of penetrating a denied space from the outside-in by persisting within an adversary’s weapons engagement zone beginning in periods of competition. It cooperates with allies and partners, assuming a deterrent posture as a form of temporal penetration. If competition escalates to conflict, the stand-in force already occupies a position of advantage. The stand-in force concept challenges the Marine Corps to create an adaptable system that can persist and sustain itself in a contested space, adapting its theory of warfighting to present challenges.

Anti-Access Systems

It is not the sources of power within anti-access systems that threaten external actors but the force of power that the system exerts. Anti-access approaches exhibit the emergent characteristics of complex systems: a whole greater than its parts. The sources of anti-access power: anti-ship missiles, surface combatants, and both terrestrial and extra-terrestrial reconnaissance systems, among others, are reliant on critical linkages to project force that can deny an area to an adversary.7 They are, in effect, an entirely interdependent network that must work together successfully.8

Anti-access warfare is fundamentally a struggle to gain and maintain awareness that can be synthesized within a system to result in targetable information.9 Actions cannot occur absent awareness of the environment. For example, China’s DF-21 anti-ship ballistic missiles rely on information to detect prospective targets throughout their range. They are dependent on other target acquisition systems within the larger system to achieve their intended effects. Information about the environment and the means to process it emerge as critical linkages within anti-access systems. A force that can affect those linkages – denying information and understanding to the adversary – has a high potential to contribute to the systemic disruption of the anti-access capability. In this lies the potential of the stand-in force, eschewing the direct approach of penetrating an anti-access system from the outside in favor of asymmetrically disrupting it from within.

Systemic Disruption and the Stand-In Force

Systemic disruption is the result of affecting a system’s coherence. It recognizes that an adversary is a system of interacting parts and attacks the relationships between critical components.10 By targeting the connections which bring coherence to an adversary’s system, systemic disruption achieves second-order effects on individual sources of strength by negating their collective functionality. Applying lethal or non-lethal means to disrupt an adversary’s ability to acquire targets within a contested space can have effects commensurate with destroying the systems themselves that would deliver effects. In this sense, it generates results disproportionately greater than the effort expended.11 The asymmetry inherent in stand-in force maritime reconnaissance and counter-reconnaissance lends weight to its systemic disruption capabilities.

Narrowly dependent systems are less able to account for the full range of environmental pressures that may be brought to bear upon them.12 In the case of anti-access systems, this narrow dependency is the system’s reliance on information to the end of preventing the joint force from entering a contested area. By existing inside of a “denied” space during periods of competition, the stand-in force becomes part of multiple dilemmas facing an adversary. The anti-access system must detect forces both within its denied space and attempting to penetrate from the outside. The interdependence between the inside and outside forces strengthens the asymmetry. Unmanned target acquisition systems employed in-depth by the stand-in force are the forward edge of an integrated system encompassing not only stand-in force lethal capabilities but those residing in the fleet and joint force. The stand-in force can give and take, augmenting its actions by integrating external capabilities while generating opportunities for the fleet and joint force to exploit in its wake.

Successful reconnaissance and counter-reconnaissance in periods of competition keep the stand-in force and fleet in a position of information advantage over the anti-access system through the transition to conflict. Stand-in forces create an area within which the anti-access system cannot aggregate the targetable information required to function. While the stand-in force denies the anti-access system information vital to its efforts to target the fleet, it remains a lethal and elusive obstacle that must be addressed. The anti-access system must expend increasing resources to “detect” and continuously “track” a force benefitting from high intra-theater mobility, low signature levels, decoys and deception, and lethal precision capabilities. Robust reconnaissance efforts support the counter-reconnaissance fight by identifying adversary collection patterns over time, ensuring both the fleet and stand-in force remain ahead of adversary decision cycles.

Stand-in force actions force the anti-access system to adapt to an unexpected threat. Air Force Colonel John Boyd characterized a theory of systemic collapse where actions present as “simultaneously menacing…ambiguous, chaotic, or misleading.” These actions induce confusion and disorder into the system.13 To remain viable, the system must adapt by seeking new and perhaps riskier means to gain the information it requires to function. Without a complete understanding of its threat environment, it decompensates as challenges cascade faster than the system can adapt to them.14 Refocusing and repositioning target acquisition systems to locate the stand-in force will rob the anti-access system of vital capacity that could be dedicated to detecting the fleet while increasing its exposure to the lethal capabilities of the stand-in force.

The Stand-In Force and Maneuver Warfare

The realization of the stand-in force must be accompanied by a continued embrace of maneuver outside of the spatial domain. While spatial maneuver is fundamental to the success of the stand-in force in both competition and conflict, the Marine Corps’ capstone doctrine is careful to underscore that the service must “consider maneuver in other dimensions as well.”15 As a philosophy that aims to shatter an adversary’s cohesion through actions that generate a rapidly deteriorating situation, any action that generates and exploits advantage – executing maneuver in “all dimensions”16 – is well nested in the service’s capstone doctrine.

As information is a critical linkage within anti-access systems, the broader maritime reconnaissance and counter-reconnaissance fight becomes a centerpiece to the stand-in force’s actions to achieve an advantage. These actions are fundamentally maneuverist in their effects, generating interconnected temporal, cognitive, and spatial advantages over an adversary. Temporal advantage begins in competition. The stand-in force in partnership with allies generates a persistent and baseline awareness of adversary systems and decision processes, a product of intelligence-led operations.17 This contributes to cognitive and temporal advantages in conflict, allowing the stand-in force in cooperation with the fleet to anticipate and remain ahead of adversary actions,18 dictating the terms of escalation or return to competition. Successful counter-reconnaissance also supports spatial advantage, as rapidly mobile and low signature forces use their understanding to achieve positions to hold adversary forces at credible risk. Spatial maneuver converges with temporal, cognitive, and informational maneuver to generate these advantages for the force.

For the Marine Corps, this forward-looking embrace of an expanded understanding of maneuver warfare must occur at all levels of leadership. The Marine Corps prides itself on teaching its leaders how to think, not what to think. Limiting one’s conception of maneuver warfare to the bounds of the land domain and spatial maneuver ignores the true potential of a timeless theory of achieving advantage and winning in both competition and conflict. The Marine Corps is currently training the non-commissioned and company-grade officers that will form the core of tactical-level leadership in the stand-in force of the future. They must retain a conception of maneuver warfare’s continued and timeless relevance.

Implications for the Stand-In Force

Depriving an anti-access system of information that forms the critical linkages between its sources of power is not the job of any single entity within the stand-in force. It is a task levied on the force as a whole. While the Marine Corps understands this fact,19 it presents potentially the greatest challenge to translating the concept of a stand-in force into a persistent and forward-deployed system that can provide these functions to the fleet and joint force. A holistic stand-in force that can win the maritime reconnaissance and counter-reconnaissance fight will contribute to the systemic disruption of an anti-access system. If the stand-in force cannot, it will in turn be isolated and vulnerable.

There are elements of both art and science that will contribute to realizing the stand-in force. Sustainment and logistics methods that can support a stand-in force at scale and in conflict,20 advancing unmanned capabilities as a service in partnership with the Navy,21 and the rapid maturation of the information maneuver occupational field are a few examples of capabilities that will enable success.22 The stand-in force must be able to persist over time and throughout the depth of the environment.

To say that the concept of stand-in forces is high-risk and high-reward is perhaps an understatement. While current events in Ukraine can shed some light on the realities of future conflict as they apply to the Marine Corps,23 experimentation within the concept of stand-in forces is still largely anticipatory. Force Design 2030 is subject to an ongoing series of wargames to assess future force design and its associated concepts.24 Even the best-designed wargames are not completely predictive, at least not in the sense that they reduce the realities of conflict to a formulaic problem of right or wrong answers that can guarantee success.25 They can, however, provide a valuable means through which to reduce the complexity of problems to illuminate constraints, test theories, and challenge hypotheses.26 The end product of these efforts is a best assessment of what a future maritime fight may demand. 

The uncertainty that will always surround the future battlefield is perhaps the Marine Corps’ greatest advantage in preparing for the future. Recovering from battlefield surprise is the best test of a military’s adaptability. Even the best efforts to anticipate the character of future conflict will in some ways come up short, and how a service develops itself to respond contributes greatly to its success or failure. In his book On Flexibility, Meir Finkel might as well have been speaking of the Marine Corps when he outlined requirements for successful battlefield adaptation. Warfighting doctrine must be “open” and flexible enough to adapt to emerging battlefield realities, being of immediate utility while at the same time supporting change at the tactical level. Diverse force structures must provide complementary capabilities and solutions to meet emergent problems. Doctrine and force structure must be supported by a decentralized command and control model supported by cognitive flexibility. These attributes must be fostered through formal education and training, which arms leadership with the ability to meet new challenges effectively. Perhaps most importantly, improvement must be a central pillar within the organization.27

Stand-in forces will provide a valuable capability to the joint force to deter adversaries and, if necessary, disrupt anti-access systems in times of conflict. The success of stand-in forces is incumbent on the Marine Corps’ ability to realize an adaptable system that can persist and sustain itself in contested spaces. Its success will not be the result of any singular capability but of the competencies of the force as a whole. Warfighting remains a timely and relevant capstone doctrine to understand and realize this emerging concept, providing Marine leaders with the cognitive foundations to adapt to emerging demands. As the current and vibrant debate over the merits of Force Design 2030 indicates, the Marine Corps’ longstanding commitment to improvement lends confidence to the idea that the service will get it right.

Joseph Mozzi is a Marine Corps artillery officer. He is currently a student at the U.S. Army’s Command and General Staff Officers Course.

References

1. “Break the wall” from Sam Tangredi, Anti-Access Warfare, (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2013).

2. Luis Simon, “Demystifying the A2/AD Buzz,” War on the Rocks, (January 4, 2017).

3. Andrew Krepinevich, Maritime Competition in a Mature Precision-Strike Regime (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 2014).

4. A more in-depth discussion on how America’s various adversaries could employ anti-access strategies can be found in Anti-Access Warfare.

5. Headquarters Marine Corps, MCDP 1, Warfighting, (Washington, DC: 2018).

6. For further discussion on systemic disruption, maneuver warfare, and the Marine Corps, see: Marinus, “Defeat Mechanisms,” Marine Corps Gazette, (July, 2021): 101-106.

7. The idea of sources, forces, and linkages of power is drawn from Pat Pentland, Center of Gravity Analysis and Chaos Theory (Maxwell AFB, AL: Air War College, 1993).

8. Anti-Access Warfare.

9. Ibid.

10. Marinus, “On Defeat Mechanisms”.

11. Ibid.

12. Murray Gell-Mann, “Complex Adaptive Systems,” in Complexity: Metaphors, Models, and Reality, ed. Cowan Pines et al (Addison-Wesley, 1994).

13. John Boyd, ‘Patterns of Conflict,’ in A Discourse on Winning and Losing, ed. Grant T. Hammond (Maxwell AFB, AL: Air University Press, 2018).

14. The idea of decompensation in complex systems can be explored further in David D. Woods and Matthieu Branlat, “Basic Patterns in How Adaptive Systems Fail” in Resilience Engineering in Practice: A Guidebook, ed. Erik Hollnagel, and John Wreathall (Taylor & Francis Group, 2010).

15.Warfighting.

16. Ibid.

17. Headquarters Marine Corps, The Tentative Manual for Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations, (Washington, DC: 2021).

18.A Concept for Stand-In Forces.

19. Headquarters Marine Corps, “Recon – Counter Recon,” Official Website of the United States Marine Corps, (August 2, 2021).

20. Daniel Katzman, “Sustaining Stand-in Forces,” Marine Corps Gazette, (March, 2022): 14-19.

21. Navy Press Office, “Navy and Marines Release Unmanned Campaign Plan,” Official Website of the United States Navy, (March 16, 2021).

22. Gregory Carroll, “Marine Corps Establishes 17XX Information Maneuver Occupational Field,” Official Website of the United States Marine Corps, (March 9, 2022).

23. Noel Williams, “Insights for Marine (and Beyond) Force Design from the Russo-Ukrainian War,” War on the Rocks, (March 31, 2022).

24. Tim Barrick, “On Future Wars and the Marine Corps: Asking the Right Questions,” War on the Rocks, (April 12, 2022).

25. For a further discussion on wargaming see Robert Rubel, “The Epistemology of War Gaming,” Naval War College Review, 59 (2): 1-21.  

26. Bob Work and Gen. Paul Selva, “Revitalizing Wargaming is Necessary to Be Prepared for Future Wars,” War on the Rocks, (December 8, 2015).

27. Meir Finkel, On Flexibility: Recovery from Technological and Doctrinal Surprise on the Battlefield, (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2011).

Featured Image: U.S. Marines with 3d Battalion, 12 Marines, 3d Marine Division, deploy High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems during Balikatan 22 in northern Luzon, Philippines, April 4, 2022. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Melanye Martinez)

USMC Transformation Week

Transforming the Marine Corps Topic Week Kicks Off on CIMSEC

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By Dmitry Filipoff

For the next two weeks CIMSEC will be featuring articles sent in response to our call for articles on transforming the U.S. Marine Corps. 

The Marine Corps is in the midst of a far-reaching and controversial transformation. As the USMC sheds many of the legacy platforms and capabilities that helped define it for years, it has taken on new roles and technologies to conduct Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations and function as stand-in forces. These reforms are being implemented through the overarching Force Design 2030 initiative, which has sparked heated debate about the merits of this transformation and what the Marine Corps ought to become to remain relevant through the 21st century. 

Below are the articles and authors being featured in this series, which may be updated with further submissions as Transforming the Marine Corps Topic Week unfolds.

“Stand-In Forces: Disrupting Anti-Access Systems,” by Joseph Mozzi
“Locate, Close With, Destroy,” by Ian Brown
“EABO Beyond the Indo-Pacific: Reimagining the “Battle of the Aegean,” by Capt. Ross W. Gilchriest, USMC
“Preparing for Change is as Important as Change Itself: Change Management and Force Design 2030,” by Carl Forsling
“Antisubmarine Warfare for the Amphibious Warfare Team,” by The Good Sailor Svejk
“The First Stand-in Forces: The Role of International Affairs Marines in Force Design 2030,” by Majors Zach Ota and Eric Hovey, USMC
“Marine Corps Metamorphosis: Legal Considerations,” by Brent Stricker
“The Importance of Unmanned Logistics Support For a Transforming Marine Corps,” by George Galdorisi
“When Only a Chisel Will Do: Marine Corps Force Design for the Modern Era,” by Capt. Jesse Schmitt
“Missing: Expeditionary Air Defense,” by Ben DiDonato

Dmitry Filipoff is CIMSEC’s Director of Online Content. Contact him at Content@cimsec.org.

Featured Image: U.S. Marines with 3d Marine Littoral Regiment, 3d Marine Division present arms during the redesignation ceremony of 3d Marines to 3d MLR aboard Marine Corps Base Hawaii, March 3, 2022. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Patrick King)

Fostering the Discussion on Securing the Seas.