Occasionally I have the good fortune to come across articles that won't get posted mainstream. The QDR is set to release next week, and according to DefenseAlert is anticipated to step away from planning for two wars and the use of such aids to force planning as the "1-4-2-1" or the "Michelin Man" constructs. The scenario outlined below portrays one possible future, but when coupled with the direction of the QDR may serve notice to the services in general, and perhaps the Marine Corps specifically, that we need to think differently about how to plan for a more diverse and complex set of challenges in the future. Schuehle
LESSONS FROM THE FUTURE
The following narrative is a notional depiction of a 2025 scenario that sets the stage for this article.
Circa 2025: The Director of National Intelligence briefs the President on imminent terrorist threats to the homeland. It has been reported that Al Qaeda operatives congregating for a rare jihadist assembly near Tembuku, Bali, Indonesia would include high level planners. Intelligence reports further indicated that a terrorist operation staged from a planning site just outside Baardheere, Somalia (about 120nm inland) was expected to occur within 24 hours. Additionally, human intelligence reports that a high level Al Shahab[1] leader has been identified in a safe house in Western Sahara. An "execute order" was given and at 2217Z composited capabilities from joint forces completed a multipronged operation in a five-hour span of time across three distinct regional AORs. These attacks were not executed under the operational control of a regional combatant commander, but were executed independently by embarked special operating forces (SOF) from seabasing platforms, in coordination with joint drones, UXV combatants[2], and Navy and Air Force delivery systems. Operational control remained with SOCOM.
This short narrative offers a word picture of a national security environment that some would argue exists today as part of U.S. threat response to violent extremism. That interpretation might be true were it not for the fact that SOF employment has yet to evolve and develop to the level inferred in the narrative. The narrative is meant to be illustrative of new doctrine, strategy, and organization of the Armed Forces circa 2025. This notional future has materialized, in part, because the conventionally accepted global response to the threat of violent extremism has been stalemated. In spite of major military operations—primarily in the Near East—and two decades of global extra-military efforts, the fact remains that by 2025 neither conventional war nor hybrid campaigns nor engagement efforts have explicitly defeated the Al Qaeda threat. In 2015, Al Qaeda networks had fully adapted as an "ideological cloud" that can neither be fixed in the Arabian Peninsula nor in the Horn of Africa nor in Southeast Asia. After 2018, successful attempts against violent extremism are primarily executed by SOF through rapid reaction to fleeting opportunities. By 2025, based on its successes, funding and resourcing for SOCOM increases precipitously. At the expense of "general purpose" forces, SOF numbers markedly increase.
Implications. The force structure implied for the execution of this 2025 scenario should elicit concern among the Services. It can be surmised that the threat of violent extremism and other non-traditional threats will either persist or increase. In an environment where U.S. security interests will require anticipatory military response, force and concept integration will likely lead to adjustments in organization and structure. As the demand for military response increases into 2025, strategic reform derived from developments in technology and burgeoning new concepts may impose a greater influence over the organization, structure, and core competencies of the services. This can be seen today in the Army's Mounted Vertical Maneuver[3] concept being developed at the Army Training and Doctrine Capabilities Integration Center. So, if the future can be characterized by increasing nontraditional missions, a further shift in service "market share" can be expected as a result of such realities. The service most likely affected by these realities could be the Marine Corps. Can the Marine Corps ignore such a future? How will it change or reform to remain relevant and maintain its innovative edge beyond 2025?
Lessons from the Recent Past. The idea of knowing when to realign a military institution in a strategic direction continues to be the subject of many strategy and policy scholars, think thanks, and military leaders. In his July 2001 Strategic Forum No. 181 circular, A Military for the 21st Century: Lessons from the Recent Past, General Anthony Zinni, USMC (Ret) advocated against pitfalls of lacking "strategic direction, a forward-looking force design, and a logical future threat base" on which to build a military for the future. These assertions came in a pre-9/11 world. In that recent past, there was much ado about the peculiar nontraditional missions that were unpopular and viewed as a distraction to the mission of a post Cold War military. As a result of a rapidly changing geo-strategic landscape, adjustments needed to be made in doctrine, organization, training, and equipment. Arguably, a lack of innovative action to confront the growing list of threats can be considered characteristic of defense industry lessons learned from that transition into the 21st Century.
Innovation. The Marine Corps is at an opportune moment in its history and should take all necessary steps toward innovative reform to remain relevant to meet the demands of future strategic direction. Marine Corps Vision and Strategy 2025, informed by a number of documents including the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review, National Intelligence Council assessments, the USJFCOM Joint Operational Environment, and Marine Corps Intelligence Activity's Long Range Threat Assessment, synthesized future assessments and articulated the Commandant's vision into strategy statements. As endorsed in this document, Marine Corps strategists have accepted the well-founded arguments for likely future security environments and their expected consequence. It is still unclear, however, if hereditary service thinking is able to overcome the sheer inertia of a successful past to make essential adjustments in doctrine, strategy, equipment, and structure. If necessity is the mother of all invention, then lethargy is the obstacle to all change. But even more significant than the latter point is that which is suggestive of a Marine Corps dominated by current and near term operational considerations. Short of a strategic pause, the Marine Corps must find the capacity to execute its current tasking and fervently pursue the critical need to innovate in a deliberate and significant manner. The institution must consider and eliminate the risks of significant action versus the cost of relative inaction.
Beyond 2025. As a string of iterative defense guidance in the form of the Quadrennial Defense Review, the National Military Strategy, National Security Strategy, and others, are likely to be released in 2010, institutional thinkers must define the Marine Corps not so much as a multi-capable force, but as part of a "multinary" force with specific niche capabilities. Just as with binary compounds, multinary compounds achieve their potential only after the sum of all parts have been composited. Such endeavors should be rooted in an adaptation of warfare principles that integrate predominant concepts such as Joint Distributed Operations (Joint), Littoral Maneuver (Navy), Air/Sea Battle (Navy/Air Force), Sea Basing (Navy/Marine), Vertical Maneuver (Army), etc. An approach of synchronous multidisciplinary processes to match and exceed that of the enemy mindset is essential. Today's evolved concepts will likely reflect tomorrow's conduct of military operations through an extensively dispersed network of platforms, sensors, enablers, connectors, and shooters. The composited forces of the future will blur the line between service specialization and could operate as hybrid enhanced forces whose impact is weighted by virtue of their aggregate proximity and netted capability to execute a specified limited objective through unlimited measures. Understanding the lessons of the future will guide the Marine Corps to evolve in a strategic direction with a structure to sustain the force beyond 2025.
1 comments:
I tried the "Mounted Vertical Maneuver" once, but then the wife slapped me.
SNLII
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