thedrifter
06-14-05, 01:12 PM
June 20, 2005
Corps commandos
Plan would send 2,500 Marines to special ops and expand ties between 2 elite forces
By Sean D. Naylor and Christian Lowe
Times staff writers
The Marine Corps is poised to make a substantial contribution to U.S. Special Operations Command, ending years of negotiations that pitted the Corps’ long-standing tradition of remaining outside the special ops community against the Pentagon’s needs for the war on terrorism.
A proposal awaiting final approval by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld would transfer 2,500 Marines to U.S. Special Operations Command, giving the Marine Corps a permanent presence in SOCOM.
“We’re very close to the secretary giving his approval to the inclusion of Marines in SOCOM,” said a Defense Department official familiar with the plan. “They’re looking at roughly 2,500 Marines, and that’s a significant cut into the Marine Corps and it’ll be a significant plus-up for Special Operations Command.”
Though officials and outside experts familiar with the plan say it still needs to be refined, the Corps’ SOCOM contingent would include fire-support experts, logisticians, working-dog handlers, foreign military trainers and high-speed units trained for direct action and other missions.
A spokesman at Marine Corps headquarters, Capt. Dan McSweeney, declined to confirm details of the plan, saying “it would be inappropriate to comment before a decision on this issue has been made.”
But other Defense Department officials say the plan is the latest in a series of proposals to form a closer relationship between SOCOM and the Corps. Top leaders including Rumsfeld, Marine Commandant Gen. Mike Hagee and Army Gen. Bryan Brown, the SOCOM commander, have negotiated over the specifics of that relationship in meetings over the last few months.
On more than one occasion, Rumsfeld has sent Brown and Hagee back to the drawing board. The 2,500-Marine plan is the latest proposal on the table.
3-part force
The Defense Department official, who spoke on condition that he not be named due to the sensitivity of the negotiations between the Marine Corps, SOCOM and Rumsfeld, said the proposed 2,500-Marine special operations force would be divided into three parts:
• A “support cell function” that would include dogs and dog handlers, a large logistical company and an Air Naval Gunfire Liaison Company element.
• Specially selected, trained and equipped Marine contingents that would constitute the “special operations-capable” portions of Marine Expeditionary Units.
• A force dedicated to training foreign militaries, a mission that has traditionally been the preserve of Army Special Forces. Small Marine detachments are already engaged across the globe training foreign troops; 400 billets from a 3,000-Marine end-strength increase approved this year will be devoted to these programs.
Brown told lawmakers during a March 1 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing that the Marine training units would be tasked by SOCOM and would include Special Forces officers and noncommissioned officers. These units are set to receive additional language training, the defense official added.
Less clear-cut is the relationship the special ops Marines would have with MEUs. The SOC designation now reflects the intensive training in 23 specific capabilities that all MEU Marines undergo during their six-month work-up period.
The new proposal would mean only a fraction of the MEU’s personnel would be considered special operations troops. Further, these special ops Marines would not be under the Corps’ control between deployments.
“They will be kept under SOCOM control, and then SOCOM will allocate these Marine contingents to the different MEUs,” the defense official said.
The Marine special operations contingents would “probably” be stationed on Marine bases, the official said.
“But that is being reviewed also, because the thought is that if they leave them on a Marine installation, then the propensity will be for them to get treated as stepchildren or for the Marine Corps to exert its influence in terms of getting them to do typical Marine things,” he said.
While it’s still unclear which specific communities will be tapped to contribute to SOCOM, those selected would undergo a screening potentially as rigorous as some of the other pipelines to the special ops world.
And once under the SOCOM umbrella, all of the Marines will be taught new skills — how much more will depend on their job, the official said, with the SOC components receiving the most intense training.
Reviving a relationship
Should this plan get the go-ahead, it would be the most dramatic change to come out of efforts by top SOCOM and Marine Corps leaders to reinvigorate their relationship over the last several years.
In late 2001, then-Commandant Gen. James Jones signed an agreement with the SOCOM commander at the time, Air Force Gen. Charles Holland, to boost Marine liaison officers at SOCOM headquarters in Tampa, Fla., and to revive the languishing US SOCOM/USMC board — a biannual forum intended to discuss missions and support functions between the two entities.
That agreement led to the Corps’ first foray into the spec-ops realm — the 86-man Marine Corps Special Operations Detachment 1. The group — which included reconnaissance, intelligence and supporting-arms specialists — trained with Navy SEAL commandos in California in 2003, then deployed to Iraq in 2004. There, the unit participated in several high-profile missions, including assisting Army Special Forces troops in the defense of besieged Iraqi government officials in Kut during a rebellion led by radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, Brown told an audience at the Association of the U.S. Army conference in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in February.
Refining the plan
But the proposal to expand the Corps’ contribution to SOCOM beyond the 86-man force is just that — a proposal — until and unless Rumsfeld approves it.
“They presented the basic plan to Secretary Rumsfeld and he more or less nodded his head, but they’re in the process now of going back and working with the DoD comptroller, as well as the Marine Corps and SOCOM financial people to figure out what is doable,” the defense official said.
Along with command and control of the 2,500-Marine force, SOCOM would also assume responsibility for paying and equipping them, leaving difficult financial details to be worked out between the Corps and SOCOM, the official said.
“So the exact cut-over date and the exact establishment has not been set in concrete,” the official added.
If Rumsfeld gives the go-ahead, it will cap a bruising bureaucratic struggle.
“The tough issue has been that the initial proposal was to leave things as they were, that the Marine Corps was capable of detaching their different elements in support of SOCOM,” the defense official said. “But what the SecDef kept insisting on was an actual Marine component, and a robust Marine component, within USSOCOM.”
The latest proposal would meet that requirement and ensure that the new units do not get left without the bureaucratic support they will need on funding and personnel issues, according to the defense official.
“That is ultimately SOCOM’s plan,” he said. “SOCOM really wants to incorporate them fully and not leave them as stepchildren.”
Despite the obvious fiscal and organizational hurdles, outside experts say the move to establish a Marine special ops unit is a long time coming.
“This is a realization that overall, we’re going to need to organize differently and to create task organizations for the global war on terrorism,” said retired Col. Gary Anderson, who commanded Marines in Somalia and now works as a Pentagon defense consultant. “This is just an evolution of the things the Marine Corps has done for a long time.”
Retired Marine Lt. Gen. Paul Van Riper, a frequent Pentagon consultant and military strategist, said both the Army and the Marine Corps need more special operations-related skills.
Van Riper said he favors the latest plan for the 2,500-man force over others he has seen, including one that called for committing 4,000 Marines to SOCOM.
“Frankly, I was concerned about some of the other plans that I’d seen,” Van Riper said.
Staying special
How long it would take to establish the full Marine component is unclear.
“Portions of it will get stood up with the snap of a finger — the training units, for example,” the defense official said. “For the SOC component on the MEUs, because of SOCOM’s desire that they go through a selection process, that will take a bit longer. But it depends what that selection process is, and those details, to the best of my knowledge, haven’t been worked out as yet.”
Giving SOCOM the authority to assign Marine special operations contingents to the MEUs will complicate planning for the Corps, the defense official predicted.
Because the MEUs are Marine assets, they allow the Corps to plan adequately and to put those assigned to the unit through some form of special ops-style training, the official said.
“That has helped make them a good force with a multitude of missions, from trying to do non-combatant evacuation operations to disaster relief to actual armed conflict stuff,” the official said. “So this, in my mind, makes it a bit difficult on them.”
Beyond the planning challenges, the official said, “the other thing I get concerned with is jealousies within the Marine Corps.”
He predicted challenges for the Corps in managing its special operations cadre, which will be an elite within an organization that has long striven to avoid the creation of any clannish internal subcultures, let alone one that is by definition more “special” than the rest of the Corps.
“These people who decide to take a special operations path, are they going to be competitive in terms of promotions and assignments, and what befalls them if, for whatever reason, they want to go back to the regular Marine Corps?” the official asked. “I know, intuitively, that there will be Marine commanders that will say, ‘OK, if you want to apply [for a special operations job], then in my mind, you’re no longer a Marine.’”
Sean D. Naylor covers the Army.
Ellie
Corps commandos
Plan would send 2,500 Marines to special ops and expand ties between 2 elite forces
By Sean D. Naylor and Christian Lowe
Times staff writers
The Marine Corps is poised to make a substantial contribution to U.S. Special Operations Command, ending years of negotiations that pitted the Corps’ long-standing tradition of remaining outside the special ops community against the Pentagon’s needs for the war on terrorism.
A proposal awaiting final approval by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld would transfer 2,500 Marines to U.S. Special Operations Command, giving the Marine Corps a permanent presence in SOCOM.
“We’re very close to the secretary giving his approval to the inclusion of Marines in SOCOM,” said a Defense Department official familiar with the plan. “They’re looking at roughly 2,500 Marines, and that’s a significant cut into the Marine Corps and it’ll be a significant plus-up for Special Operations Command.”
Though officials and outside experts familiar with the plan say it still needs to be refined, the Corps’ SOCOM contingent would include fire-support experts, logisticians, working-dog handlers, foreign military trainers and high-speed units trained for direct action and other missions.
A spokesman at Marine Corps headquarters, Capt. Dan McSweeney, declined to confirm details of the plan, saying “it would be inappropriate to comment before a decision on this issue has been made.”
But other Defense Department officials say the plan is the latest in a series of proposals to form a closer relationship between SOCOM and the Corps. Top leaders including Rumsfeld, Marine Commandant Gen. Mike Hagee and Army Gen. Bryan Brown, the SOCOM commander, have negotiated over the specifics of that relationship in meetings over the last few months.
On more than one occasion, Rumsfeld has sent Brown and Hagee back to the drawing board. The 2,500-Marine plan is the latest proposal on the table.
3-part force
The Defense Department official, who spoke on condition that he not be named due to the sensitivity of the negotiations between the Marine Corps, SOCOM and Rumsfeld, said the proposed 2,500-Marine special operations force would be divided into three parts:
• A “support cell function” that would include dogs and dog handlers, a large logistical company and an Air Naval Gunfire Liaison Company element.
• Specially selected, trained and equipped Marine contingents that would constitute the “special operations-capable” portions of Marine Expeditionary Units.
• A force dedicated to training foreign militaries, a mission that has traditionally been the preserve of Army Special Forces. Small Marine detachments are already engaged across the globe training foreign troops; 400 billets from a 3,000-Marine end-strength increase approved this year will be devoted to these programs.
Brown told lawmakers during a March 1 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing that the Marine training units would be tasked by SOCOM and would include Special Forces officers and noncommissioned officers. These units are set to receive additional language training, the defense official added.
Less clear-cut is the relationship the special ops Marines would have with MEUs. The SOC designation now reflects the intensive training in 23 specific capabilities that all MEU Marines undergo during their six-month work-up period.
The new proposal would mean only a fraction of the MEU’s personnel would be considered special operations troops. Further, these special ops Marines would not be under the Corps’ control between deployments.
“They will be kept under SOCOM control, and then SOCOM will allocate these Marine contingents to the different MEUs,” the defense official said.
The Marine special operations contingents would “probably” be stationed on Marine bases, the official said.
“But that is being reviewed also, because the thought is that if they leave them on a Marine installation, then the propensity will be for them to get treated as stepchildren or for the Marine Corps to exert its influence in terms of getting them to do typical Marine things,” he said.
While it’s still unclear which specific communities will be tapped to contribute to SOCOM, those selected would undergo a screening potentially as rigorous as some of the other pipelines to the special ops world.
And once under the SOCOM umbrella, all of the Marines will be taught new skills — how much more will depend on their job, the official said, with the SOC components receiving the most intense training.
Reviving a relationship
Should this plan get the go-ahead, it would be the most dramatic change to come out of efforts by top SOCOM and Marine Corps leaders to reinvigorate their relationship over the last several years.
In late 2001, then-Commandant Gen. James Jones signed an agreement with the SOCOM commander at the time, Air Force Gen. Charles Holland, to boost Marine liaison officers at SOCOM headquarters in Tampa, Fla., and to revive the languishing US SOCOM/USMC board — a biannual forum intended to discuss missions and support functions between the two entities.
That agreement led to the Corps’ first foray into the spec-ops realm — the 86-man Marine Corps Special Operations Detachment 1. The group — which included reconnaissance, intelligence and supporting-arms specialists — trained with Navy SEAL commandos in California in 2003, then deployed to Iraq in 2004. There, the unit participated in several high-profile missions, including assisting Army Special Forces troops in the defense of besieged Iraqi government officials in Kut during a rebellion led by radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, Brown told an audience at the Association of the U.S. Army conference in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in February.
Refining the plan
But the proposal to expand the Corps’ contribution to SOCOM beyond the 86-man force is just that — a proposal — until and unless Rumsfeld approves it.
“They presented the basic plan to Secretary Rumsfeld and he more or less nodded his head, but they’re in the process now of going back and working with the DoD comptroller, as well as the Marine Corps and SOCOM financial people to figure out what is doable,” the defense official said.
Along with command and control of the 2,500-Marine force, SOCOM would also assume responsibility for paying and equipping them, leaving difficult financial details to be worked out between the Corps and SOCOM, the official said.
“So the exact cut-over date and the exact establishment has not been set in concrete,” the official added.
If Rumsfeld gives the go-ahead, it will cap a bruising bureaucratic struggle.
“The tough issue has been that the initial proposal was to leave things as they were, that the Marine Corps was capable of detaching their different elements in support of SOCOM,” the defense official said. “But what the SecDef kept insisting on was an actual Marine component, and a robust Marine component, within USSOCOM.”
The latest proposal would meet that requirement and ensure that the new units do not get left without the bureaucratic support they will need on funding and personnel issues, according to the defense official.
“That is ultimately SOCOM’s plan,” he said. “SOCOM really wants to incorporate them fully and not leave them as stepchildren.”
Despite the obvious fiscal and organizational hurdles, outside experts say the move to establish a Marine special ops unit is a long time coming.
“This is a realization that overall, we’re going to need to organize differently and to create task organizations for the global war on terrorism,” said retired Col. Gary Anderson, who commanded Marines in Somalia and now works as a Pentagon defense consultant. “This is just an evolution of the things the Marine Corps has done for a long time.”
Retired Marine Lt. Gen. Paul Van Riper, a frequent Pentagon consultant and military strategist, said both the Army and the Marine Corps need more special operations-related skills.
Van Riper said he favors the latest plan for the 2,500-man force over others he has seen, including one that called for committing 4,000 Marines to SOCOM.
“Frankly, I was concerned about some of the other plans that I’d seen,” Van Riper said.
Staying special
How long it would take to establish the full Marine component is unclear.
“Portions of it will get stood up with the snap of a finger — the training units, for example,” the defense official said. “For the SOC component on the MEUs, because of SOCOM’s desire that they go through a selection process, that will take a bit longer. But it depends what that selection process is, and those details, to the best of my knowledge, haven’t been worked out as yet.”
Giving SOCOM the authority to assign Marine special operations contingents to the MEUs will complicate planning for the Corps, the defense official predicted.
Because the MEUs are Marine assets, they allow the Corps to plan adequately and to put those assigned to the unit through some form of special ops-style training, the official said.
“That has helped make them a good force with a multitude of missions, from trying to do non-combatant evacuation operations to disaster relief to actual armed conflict stuff,” the official said. “So this, in my mind, makes it a bit difficult on them.”
Beyond the planning challenges, the official said, “the other thing I get concerned with is jealousies within the Marine Corps.”
He predicted challenges for the Corps in managing its special operations cadre, which will be an elite within an organization that has long striven to avoid the creation of any clannish internal subcultures, let alone one that is by definition more “special” than the rest of the Corps.
“These people who decide to take a special operations path, are they going to be competitive in terms of promotions and assignments, and what befalls them if, for whatever reason, they want to go back to the regular Marine Corps?” the official asked. “I know, intuitively, that there will be Marine commanders that will say, ‘OK, if you want to apply [for a special operations job], then in my mind, you’re no longer a Marine.’”
Sean D. Naylor covers the Army.
Ellie