How the Marine Corps will organize to fight can be found within a hierarchy of concep

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The Family of Concepts

by Col Arthur J. Corbett

How the Marine Corps will organize to fight can be found within a hierarchy of concepts.

Within recent years the Marine Corps has witnessed new challenges, threats, and adversaries. The Corps has firmly responded to these tests and continues to look for new ways to maximize its role as part of the joint force. Numerous concepts have been developed in a continuing effort to advance the Marine Corps conduct of military operations. Collectively, these concepts form the basis to dramatically increase the Marine Corps’ overall effectiveness while enhancing the flexibility and responsiveness that have served as signature characteristics of the Corps. Specifically, this hierarchy of concepts determines how the Marine Corps will organize and fight in America’s battles and how the Marine Corps will contribute across the range of military operations in the near and far term. The fundamental elements of these concepts are described below explaining the direction and initiatives the Marine Corps is taking to continue to be ready to accomplish any assigned mission. The direction the Marine Corps is taking will result in a more effective organization. This hierarchy of concepts capitalizes on the Marine Corps’ warfighting philosophies, innovation, and dynamic warrior ethos.


Expeditionary Maneuver Warfare
Expeditionary maneuver warfare (EMW) was not created due to a demand for a new operational concept for the Marine Corps. Rather, it was an effort to synthesize our current concepts, core competencies, expeditionary ethos, and warfighting philosophy into a cohesive document that focuses on providing enhanced Marine/naval capabilities for the future joint fight. As such, it is a “capstone” document for the institution that integrates our operational, functional, and enabling concepts, and it describes the relationship between them. EMW was written before enhanced networked seabasing (ENSeabasing) but includes a reference to seabasing as part of Marine Corps emerging ideas and concepts.


EMW prepares the Marine Corps to move beyond traditional “amphibious operations,” in the narrow sense, toward “expeditionary warfare,” with a broader range of operational capabilities and organizational, deployment, employment, and sustainment methods.


EMW builds on, rather than amends, the previous conceptual and doctrinal work that the Marine Corps has developed. Consequently, it embraces operational maneuver from the sea (OMFTS), ship-to-objective maneuver (STOM), sustained operations ashore (SOA), draft other expeditionary operations, and the emerging (at the time written) ENSeabasing concept. EMW preserves the Marine air-ground task force (MAGTF) as the central organizational construct, while providing commander’s guidance for improvement in the other integrating concepts of deployment, employment, and sustainment.


OMFTS
OMFTS applies the principles and philosophy of maneuver warfare to the seaspace. In crafting OMFTS, the Marine Corps incorporated the many lessons of history regarding how command of the sea can enable exploitation of the seaspace in order to gain an operational advantage. OMFTS focuses on the littoral region of the battlespace and on the operational level of war. When describing OMFTS we concentrate on the “maneuver” capabilities of seaborne forces and differentiate strategic movement from operational maneuver. Maneuver is conducted with a reactive adversary in mind and is designed to gain a positional disadvantage, give the enemy a dilemma, and exploit the advantages of surprise.


OMFTS capabilities can force an adversary into this uncompromising situation. The ability to strike from the sea at the time and place of our choosing compels the enemy to defend the length of his coast. Our OMFTS capability forces him to disperse his forces throughout a littoral region and renders him vulnerable to defeat in detail. If he fails to dissipate his combat power to guard against our capability and remains concentrated, then we can maneuver opportunistically through the gaps in his defenses to strike at critical infrastructure and vulnerabilities. Effectively, the adversary becomes complicit in his own demise.


OMFTS enables naval forces to “redimension” the battlespace. By attacking from an unexpected or new direction, naval forces can have decisive impact on the enemy scheme of maneuver. Inchon serves as a classic example.


OMFTS can be conducted from current amphibious platforms, but it is greatly enhanced by the new capabilities described in the naval concept of ENSeabasing.


ENSeabasing
ENSeabasing is an enabling concept that has been jointly developed with the Navy. As a naval concept, ENSeabasing fits within the Sea Power 21 (SP 21) construct of sea strike, seabase, and sea shield. The Marine Corps regards both the networked naval force (ForceNet) and ENSeabasing as enablers for power projection and sea control—now described as sea strike and sea shield in SP 21.


From a Marine perspective, seabasing provides a significant enhancement to conduct OMFTS and is a critical enabler of STOM. The seabase can also support the Marine Corps concept of SOA. The seabase described in the ENSeabasing concept is fundamentally dynamic (as opposed to a static mobile offshore base), capable of operational maneuver speeds at sea, and can project, protect, and sustain forces while projecting power ashore from over the horizon (OTH) at sea such as envisaged in STOM.


The new capabilities that will be enabled by ENSeabasing include:


• Integrated naval power projection (offensive and defensive fire and maneuver generated by fully networked, forward deployed forces and assets).
• Network enabled command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (command and control (C2) systems integrated into the joint C2 architecture in concert with ForceNet).
• Rapid force closure. (Forces will close to the joint operations area (JOA) by multidimensional means, including self-deployment and strategic air, surface, and commercial assets.)
• Phased at sea arrival and assembly. (To move directly to the seabase assures rapid deployment of a Marine expeditionary brigade (MEB) and selected joint forces in as little as 7 days without the need for host-nation support within the JOA.)
• Selective offload (the ability to assemble tailored, sustained packages and deliver those tailored packages directly to units, optimizing force packaging for employment).
• Persistence and sustainment. (Naval forces can remain on station where needed for extended periods of time. The seabase is sustained through the interface with support bases and strategic logistics pipelines.)
• Reconstitution at sea. (Once units are recovered to the seabase, onboard logistics capabilities enable the restoration of those units’ readiness levels for further employment.)

Seabasing is best understood as part of a trilogy of concepts. Seabasing enables the naval concepts of sea strike and sea shield. Likewise, seabasing integrates the operational maneuver capabilities of OMFTS with the operational and tactical reach of STOM. (As power projection capabilities, OMFTS and STOM are incorporated under sea strike in the naval transformation roadmap.) The most transformational capabilities that will be enabled by this trilogy of concepts at the operational level of war are assured access and rapid force projection.


Assured access. Seabasing assures access to any JOA despite political and diplomatic exclusion efforts by regional powers. Naval forces operating from a seabase can conduct and contribute to joint forcible entry operations to secure a lodgment and enable the introduction of additional follow-on joint forces.


Rapid force projection. The ability for a MEB-sized force to be operational from the seabase within 7 to 10 days from initial deployment can significantly alter the initial conditions of conflict. Forcible entry operations by the forward deployed naval assets of the expeditionary strike group and carrier strike group, reinforced by the maritime prepositioned group (Marine MEB aboard associated maritime prepositioning force (future) MPF(F) ships), can seize critical infrastructure and lodgment required for the introduction of joint early entry forces (Army interim brigade combat team and U.S. Air Force tactical aircraft) before the enemy has the opportunity to establish robust and integrated antiaccess capabilities. This ability for rapid action can influence the adversary’s response and subsequent intensity and duration of some conflicts. It fits well within a preemptive strategy.


STOM
STOM will be a significantly new tactical way of conducting operations when fully implemented. In conjunction with OMFTS and ENSeabasing, STOM represents a new paradigm for the conduct of expeditionary warfare. STOM is designed to seamlessly extend the maneuver capabilities we enjoy at sea over the land to achieve objectives deep inland.


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STOM is predicated on enhanced maneuver capabilities that are to be achieved by innovations in surface and air platforms. STOM operations will seabase—to the greatest extent possible—C2, fires, logistics, aviation, and other support functions. By lightening the load of the maneuver forces, we will significantly enhance operational tempo. Sustaining the force from the seabase precludes the need to build “iron mountains” ashore and enables operational independence from fixed bases and airfields that are highly vulnerable to enemy fires and weapons of mass destruction. STOM uses the sea to enhance force protection, thereby keeping vulnerable administrative and logistical capabilities at sea, while enabling greater operational tempo and combat power for maneuver forces ashore.


STOM capabilities will be fully met with continued technical innovation in several areas that include vertical/short takeoff and landing airframes, amphibious surface maneuver vehicles, OTH communications and surface vessels such as the LHA (replacement), high-speed vessel, and MPF(F).


STOM is the tactical extension of OMFTS. At the opening of a conflict, seabased forces will maneuver toward and along an enemy coast from the seabase using OMFTS and subsequently maneuver to inland objectives using STOM. Enhancements in aircraft and amphibious assault vehicles will enable seabased operations to commence from longer distances and well OTH, significantly enhancing the opportunity for surprise. The ability of the force to rapidly strike from the sea and then quickly withdraw to the seabase optimizes naval forces to exploit fleeting opportunity and attack critical enemy vulnerabilities, even in the face of numerically superior foes. The ability for amphibious vehicles to maneuver at speed at sea and then cross the beach without pause is a unique and exploitable asymmetrical capability. The same sea that constitutes a barrier for the enemy is maneuver space for our Navy-Marine Team.


STOM extends the naval threat imposed on the enemy by OMFTS far into his littoral regions and beyond. Consequently, it deepens the enemy’s operational dilemma and creates new opportunities for exploitation.


Combat power, traditionally described as the artful integration of fire and maneuver at the tactical level, will be similarly integrated at the operational level with STOM. The many advances in precision fires that have occurred in the past 15 years will be matched and complemented by similarly advanced maneuver capabilities. STOM will provoke exploitable reactions by adversaries forced to concentrate against maneuver forces or be defeated in detail. Once adversaries begin to move, they self-optimize as targets for naval and joint precision fires. If an enemy successfully concentrates and presents a significant threat to the STOM force, the MAGTF can withdraw to the seabase, operationally maneuver at sea to exploit a new gap or vulnerability in the enemy disposition of forces, and compel the enemy to again run a gauntlet of joint fires to try to reorientate on the STOM force’s new objective.


STOM operations are not just an alternative to the use of vulnerable ports and airfields. Once fully developed, the seabasing capabilities that enable STOM may well make it a preferred means of employment for any operations that can benefit from enhanced force protection and operational tempo. STOM is a concept capable of supporting the full range of military operations from humanitarian assistance to major theater war.


SOA
Not all Marine operations will be seabased. Marine forces will be “seabasable,” not just seabased. As situations and conditions dictate, particularly given the distance operations may be conducted from the sea, Marines will adapt operational basing accordingly. EMW calls for additional operational capability while retaining all of the capabilities we have today, so SOA, far distant from the ocean, are incorporated in the SOA concept. The preferred means of providing MAGTF functional support and sustainment is seabasing; however, Marine forces will retain the ability to conduct operations independent of the seabase as required.


During Operation ENDURING FREEDOM, Marine forces in Task Force 58 conducted operations in Afghanistan far from the sea. Still, the operation was initially seabased, with significant additional capabilities outside the JOA, better enabling sustained operations. Likewise, as recently demonstrated in Operation IRAQI FREEDOM (OIF), Marines can operate Marine expeditionary force (MEF)-sized forces at extended operational distances from the sea with integrated landbased logistics. Nevertheless, seabased aviation assets greatly contributed to the MEF’s combat capability in OIF.


When possible and advantageous, MAGTF commanders will exploit seabased capabilities. When necessary or more efficient, they will utilize landbased operations. Consequently, MAGTFs must retain the capability to sustain operations from landbases. Versatility in basing options ensures that Marines will be capable of mounting sustainable operations in “any clime or place.”


Summary
Marine Corps operational, functional, and enabling concepts are mutually supporting; integrated with our naval partners; and appropriate for meeting current and future operational and strategic challenges. In accordance with Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication 1, Warfighting, and the capstone concept of EMW, they are practical in design and account for the enduring nature of war, human nature, and the chaos and complexity of battle introduced by fog, friction, and chance. At the same time, to ensure continued competitive advantage, future concepts introduce new operational paradigms and demand technical innovation.


All Marine Corps concepts are maintained as living documents that are revised as technology advances and strategic imperatives mandate. As the start point for the Marine Corps’ expeditionary force development process, consistency among these conceptual documents is essential to build coherent force structures with complementary capabilities across the range of doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership, personnel, and facilities.


Marine Corps concepts are descriptive not prescriptive in nature and are expected to be employed at the discretion of operational commanders as particular situations dictate. No single operational concept can effectively cover the full range of military operations. Consequently, our concepts are varied to provide an array of options. The Marine Corps has an array of operational concepts and capabilities that can be integrated by commanders in accordance with operational art to produce competitive advantage in any contingency.


>Col Corbett is an infantry officer currently assigned as the Director, Future Warfighting Division, Marine Corps Combat Development Command.

http://www.mca-marines.org/Gazette/1003corbett.html

Sempers,

Roger
:marine: