Marine Littoral Combat Regiment?

In something of a follow-up to news that the Marine Corps is eliminating its tank regiments over the next decade, there are plans afoot to develop and field a Marine Littoral Combat regiment

The Marine Corps’ current force design conversations and planning will help develop the littoral regiment concept, Stephenson said.

If the past few months of public appearances by Berger and his top generals are any indication, a littoral regiment would likely find itself in the III Marine Expeditionary Force, headquartered in Okinawa, Japan, and consist of small teams of Marines armed with a host of unmanned air, ground and maritime assets along with long range fires and air defense systems.

Sounds like the Marines are going to go heavy into drones.

While details are not yet available, a regiment is a sizable unit to form in a limited manpower Marine Corps.

An infantry regiment can include up to nearly 2,200 Marines divided into three battalions along with a headquarters and support company, depending on the mission and configuration.

But there are different configurations for a regiment. The Corps also staffs combat logistics regiments to provide transport, communication and logistics assets to the ground combat forces.

In October 2019, Brig. Gen. Benjamin Watson said that the Corps was “no longer going to stick or take an uncompromising position on the sanctity of the MAGTF,” [Marine Air-Ground Task Force, a basic Marine organizational structure since 1963] while speaking at the National Defense Industrial Association’s Expeditionary Warfare Conference in Annapolis, Maryland.

“If what is needed is a piece of the Marine Corps that is not organized like a MAGTF or a capability the Marine Corps can bring that is not a MAGTF, then we are not too proud to provide that,” he said.

A retired Marine Corps officer now a senior adviser for the Center for Strategic & International Studies shared analysis at the same conference showing “no growth” for personnel in future Marine budget planning.

“Coastal defense, cyber, space,” Mark Cancian said. “They will have to take down existing capabilities to find the structure and the space to do that.”

I rather doubt the Marines are going to field localized cyberwarfare units out in combat regiments beyond some basic signal corps countermeasures. I suspect we already have a cyberwarfare unit up and running out of one or more three initial agencies in the greater D.C. area.

The Corps will need to cut and shift priorities for the next fight, Berger said at a November Marine Corps Association and Foundation dinner.

“We may need to get smaller, trade some parts we’ve had for a long time but are not a good fit for the future,” Berger said.

He looked to reduce or eliminate money going toward manned anti-armor ground and aviation platforms, manned and traditional towed artillery that can’t shoot hypervelocity rounds and short range mortar systems.

All other efforts are leaning into conducting sea control and sea denial operations from the sea and maritime terrain, he said.

To make that happen, the commandant said that he wants low cost, lethal air and ground unmanned platforms, unmanned long range surface and subsurface vehicles, mobile, rapidly deployable rocket systems, long range precision fires, loitering munitions across the echelons, mobile air defense and counter-precision guided munitions capabilities, signature management, electronic warfare and expeditionary airfields. [“Signature management,” in this context, means controlling your electronic emissions and observables. “To be detected is to be targeted is to be killed.”]

And it appears, the Marine littoral regiment may be the formation for many of those new capabilities and manpower.

All this seems both forward-looking and also very amorphous. It suggests “we’re adjusting our force mix to better face off against China, but we’re not sure quite how yet.” But China is just one part of the equation; the furious pace of technological change, budget pressures, and long simmering doctrinal debates all seem to be additional change drivers.

It’s also interesting that they’re using the word “littoral,” as the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship program was hardly a smashing success.

Great power military conflicts of the future are likely to use weapons smarter, more autonomous, more lethal and probably lower cost than the weapons systems we’ve built our combat forces around today. Taking and holding contested shorelines is probably going to look less like Iwo Jima and more like battles between rival autonomous drone swarms.

The question is how long it will take to get to that technological plateau, and what the Marine Corps will look like during the transition.

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3 Responses to “Marine Littoral Combat Regiment?”

  1. Patrick C Carroll says:

    I have always been impressed by the USMC’s willingness to innovate.

    God bless them. Good luck to them.

  2. EVA-04 says:

    The lack of armor may be the MLR’s Achilles Heel, considering that the PLA is fielding a new armored amphibious fighting vehicle family currently in significant numbers. It seems that the new USMC units are designed to be highly mobile, but they’re mobile by air transport, not by ground transport once they’ve landed.

    If air control is contested, what you have left are jarheads with a few Javelins but not much else between them and the Type 05 amphibious assault guns that the Chinese marines are now employing.

    I’m not suggesting bringing the M1 tank to an island campaign. But they’re gonna need something tracked and well-armed to repel. Something like an upgunned LAV that you can still sling under a CH-53.

  3. […] point about the leathality of modern precision munitions is well taken. As modern Marine Corps doctrine states: “To be detected is to be targeted is to be killed.” Amphibious invasions are extremely […]

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