Where's the Innovation?

If there is one thing that we Marines are good at, it's believing our own press releases.  There's actually a lot of good in that.  Young Americans will do amazing things, as long as they believe in themselves and in each other.

USMC Video

But senior officers need to stay a little more realistic.  Believing in yourself is good.  Fooling yourself isn't.

When I joined the Marines, 20-something years ago, I was made to memorize a long list of facts about the Corps.  Or at least I accepted them as facts at the time.  It went something like this:  

A drill instructor asks a question, and the whole platoon of recruits recites the answer back at the top of their lungs:

"Who is the Grand Old Man of the Marine Corps?"  

"Sir, the Grand Old Man of the Marine Corps is Archibald Henderson, sir!"

"Who is the father of Marine Corps aviation?"

"Sir, the father of Marine Corps aviation is Alfred A. Cunningham, sir!"

"Where did the Marines earn the name 'Devil Dogs'?"

"Sir, Marines earned the nickname Devil Dogs from the Germans at the Battle of Belleau Wood in World War I!"

These stories of the Corps are mostly at least sort of true, at least I think they are.  Over the years, I heard these stories repeated, over and over, to the point they became a sort of a dogma, almost a religious scripture, something that was beyond question.  It doesn't matter if it's bullshit or not.  

They aren't all that open to the idea of debating things at Parris Island...

One of the big things that we Marines tell ourselves is that we, as a service, are very innovative.  Some examples of this innovation are below.  There is an underlying truth in all of these, too.  

• The close integration of fire support from aircraft with ground maneuver during the "Banana Wars" in the 1920's.  This resulted in what we call "close air support" today.
  
  
  
• The first use of helicopters to deliver ground forces in a combat maneuver (called vertical envelopment) during the Korean War.

  

  U. S. Marines of the 1st Marine Div. Reconnaissance Co. make the first helicopter invasion on Hill 812, during the renewed fighting in Korea. September 20, 1951. T. G. Donegan. (Marine Corps)

• The development of amphibious armored vehicles (now called AMTRACs) that can deliver troops to shore and then move inland on land.
  
  
  
• The use of personal body armor ("flak jackets") for ground troops, also in the Korean conflict.

  

  Marine holding the shrapnel stopped by his body armor in Korea.

• The development of amphibious assault doctrine in the 1930's, just in time for World War II. 
  
  
  

The most significant thing from that short list of examples is the last one: amphibious doctrine.  It saved the world's bacon in the 1940's, in case you don't realize that.  Amphibious doctrine is the how-to guide for delivering land forces to a hostile shore by ship.  It integrates naval gunfire and air support.  It describes in detail how to load ships, how to organize the landing craft, and how to allow for logistics and resupply.  What it did, in effect, was to analyze the disastrous Allied amphibious assault in WWI at Gallipoli, and then it solved all the problems through planning processes and new technologies.

Not sure how they failed, given that they had Mel Gibson with them.

This new doctrine, after some tweaking early in WW2 at places like Guadalcanal, became wildly successful.  It allowed for some of the most famous American victories ever: Normandy, Iwo Jima, Okinawa.  Perhaps you've heard of them.

The most famous photo of all time...
"This guarantees a Marine Corps for 500 years"
-James Forrestal, Secretary of the Navy, 1945

  All of this success during World War II most definitely went to our (meaning the USMC's) heads.  The Corps transformed, almost overnight, from a small, specialized force of 17,000 Marines into an amphibious force of more than 500,000.  We had generals and bases and funding.  The public loved us.

But we had become too big for our britches, it seemed.  During the post-war drawdown, there was a serious attempt by some to dissolve the US Marine Corps, on the grounds that it was a redundant capability, essentially a second land army.  Furthermore, nuclear weapons had made major amphibious landings obsolete, or so it was said.

“Large-scale amphibious operations will never occur again.”
-Gen Omar Bradley, US Army, 19 October, 1949.

US Marines landing at Inchon, Korea on 15 September, 1950.
This landing reversed the course of the Korean War, and saved America's bacon.  Again.
Take that, Omar Bradley.

The Marine Corps survived this period of infighting amongst the services, but we developed an intense institutional paranoia about people trying to get rid of us.  The "graybeards" of the Marine Corps at the time understandably wanted to hold on to this impressive force they had developed.  Furthermore, the idea of keeping a large amphibious force ready at all times seemed vindicated by what happened in Korea.  In fact, there was so much protective love for the Marine Corps, that Congress codified the minimum size and composition of the Corps in 1952 in an amendment to the National Security Act of 1947.  The Marine Corps still clings to this mission, large-scale amphibious assault, as its raison d'être.  Many still quote the National Security Act of 1947 as if it were sacred scripture.  But what if Omar Bradley was right (read the article in the link)?  Then what?  

When Major Pete Ellis was dreaming up amphibious doctrine in the early 1930's, the Marine Corps was facing a fiscal strain and looking at an uncertain future.  The Corps' missions up until then had been what we would call special operations today, but then we called 'small wars.'  In fact, at the same time that they were busily developing amphibious doctrine, other Marines were writing the "Small Wars Manual," which is still highly regarded today, from the experiences of the Marines in the interwar years.  But World War II was on the horizon, and small, specialized operations was not where the action was going to be, and the Marines damn well knew it.  So they reinvented themselves into what was needed for the time.

Well, the world has turned a few times since 1945, and the Marine Corps once again faces an identity crisis during a fiscally tight period.  Technological advances in sea mines and anti-ship missiles have undercut some of the traditional ideas in how we might conduct an amphibious forcible entry operation.  The ways of the past are out-dated.  It's time to reinvent ourselves again.

But what passes for innovation in the Marine Corps today is really just clinging to the past glory of World War II.  Our developments are not really revolutionary, they are evolutionary.  Our new technologies, like the Expeditionary Assault Vehicle and the MV-22 Osprey are really just new technologies that help us to accomplish a landing that would look very much like the one at Iwo Jima nearly 70 years ago.  We aren't thinking up new ways to provide a useful service to our country in the modern world, we are busy cramming a square peg in a round hole, trying to justify our existence.  Another thing--I'm tired of listening to people use the requirements of O-Plans (contingency plans developed in advance by DoD) as justification for a certain number of amphibious ships and the appropriate size of the Marine Corps.  Those plans were made to use existing capabilities, and using them in turn as as a source of what our requirements ought to be is circular logic, and is guaranteed to stagnate our thinking.  The plans should be adapted to the forces fielded by our nation, not the other way around.

It isn't all bad, though.  Some of our new technologies, like the MV-22 and the LCAC hovercraft, actually do provide some amazing capabilities to the amphibious world, but they go far beyond their use in a traditional large-scale amphibious assault.  But these new capabilities haven't made much of an impact on our roles and missions, because we remain dogmatically locked to the past.

LCAC - Landing Craft, Air Cushion
It's a hovercraft, and it's really fast.

So I ask you, Marine Corps, where is the innovation?  Where are the forward thinkers?  Where are the new ideas?  With no money available, we aren't going to technology our butts out of this one.  We are going to have to really think.

Those of you still reading this far down the page who aren't Marines, may not realize the absolute heresy of my even saying any of this, especially in a public forum.  I may end up like the ending of another Mel Gibson movie if I'm not careful...

Like this one.

Or like this one...

Our True Heritage

One of the things that some Marines will tell you is that large amphibious assaults are our heritage, our service identity, our tradition.  I disagree.  That's only a part of it.  Our true heritage is our adaptability.  Our true heritage is in small wars and independent actions, at least since the end of the age of sail.  There is the previously cited example of the Banana Wars in the Caribbean, but also think about the actions in China between the world wars, and even many of the smaller landings during World War 2.  We are the original American Special Operators.  In fact, I think that the development of the modern SOCOM community was necessary to fill the void left by the Marine Corps' transformation into a conventional force in the 1940's.  

So there's one idea for you.  Return the Marine Corps to its true roots.  Make it an amphibious arm of the special operations community, like a seaborne version of the Rangers, but with the heavy equipment that being on ships allows.  Using the MV-22 Osprey and the LCAC, our reach is enormous, and we can completely bypass most types of beach defenses and obstacles.  We could shrink the Corps and the amphibious fleets drastically, while raising our training quality and increasing our interoperability with SOCOM forces.  This would drastically reduce the size and cost of the Corps, while increasing the utilization of Marines in real-world operations.  

When Special Operations Command (SOCOM) was created in 1987, the Marine Corps stiff-armed it in disdain.  The Corps didn't want to lose control over its best Marines to some outside command.  The Marines are too small of an organization to survive this kind of talent bleed.  Also, the whole Marine Corps considers itself elite, and doesn't like for some Marines to think they are better than their brothers.  That kind of thing really damages Esprit de Corps.

I'm not talking about MARSOC the way it is now, which is exactly what was worried about.  I don't mean a few "operators" or some dudes who think they are badasses jumping out of airplanes.  I mean the entire service of the United States Marine Corps falling under SOCOM.  That removes the big problem right at the source.  I mean completely redefining the missions and roles of the Corps; actually I mean redefining the roles and missions of all the services.  It's damn sure time for it, too.  The organization of the Department of Defense is a bureaucratic nightmare scenario, which defies the understanding of many career military officers, including Yours Truly.  It's wasteful, unwieldy, and bloated.  And it wishes mainly to preserve itself, above all else. 

I'm no Pete Ellis, but this seems like an idea to me.  Our current organization was codified early in the Cold War, a war that has been over since 1991.  I think two decades is long enough to wait for someone to take another look.

You don't like my ideas?  Let me hear some better ones then, Marines.  I'm just wiping a booger on the wall to see who notices.