Sea Control - Sea Control 238 - Equipping the 21st Century Marine Corps with Joslyn Fleming & Dr. Jonathan Wong

Episode Date: April 8, 2021

Links1. "Equipping the 21st Century Marine Corps: Alternative Equipping Strategies for Task Organized Units," by Joslyn Fleming, Dr. Jonathan Wong, et al, RAND, 2021.

Hey folks, Jared here. One note on the podcast feed, just a reminder that there are two existing C-Control feeds out there, so make sure you're listening to the newest one. The legacy feed, that's the old one, is labeled C-Control-SimSec. It's run through something called FeedBurner, and we have no control over what is populated in that feed. The current feed, the one you want to be listening to, is labeled simply C-Control and includes the phrase SimSec's Flagship Podcast podcast in its description. So I'd encourage you to follow the current feed. If you follow the legacy feed, you may have noticed that the last several episodes haven't populated there. Go back, give those a listen, and as you transition over, I'd encourage you to rate and review the new feed

as well. This week we have John Frerichs with his first episode for us. He's discussing a RAND report entitled Equipping the 21st Century Marine Corps with two of its authors, Jocelyn Fleming and Jonathan Wong. This episode was edited and produced by Taylor Fairless. I'd also encourage you to check out everything going on over at the main website, simsec.org. We just completed a retrospective series on the 1980s Maritime Strategy and Naval Intelligence Week, as well as our next call for submissions for Project Trident. It's now out. So our current topic, Maritime Infrastructure and Trade, is having a bit of a moment with all the discussions surrounding Ever Given in the Suez Canal. If you're interested in contributing to the discussion, submissions are due April 19th.

For more information, check out our website at simsec.org. Finally, I want to take the opportunity to recommend our partners in the SimSec Podcast Network, The Bilge Bums. You can find Alex, Jamie, Drack, and a pile of iron brew bottles wherever you download your podcasts. On that, I'll turn it over to Kimber's men. You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International Maritime Security. Guten Tag, shipmates, and welcome back. Today, we will discuss a recent study published by RAND called Equipping the 21st Century Marine Corps, Alternative Equipping Strategies for Task Organized Units. Today, we are fortunate to be joined by two of the eight authors, Jocelyn Fleming and Dr. Jonathan Wong.

The study was published by RAND in February of 2021 and will be linked in the show notes on the CIMSEC website. This study struck an interest with me as I've been focusing on a project exploring the establishment of a maritime operational logistics organization for a maritime component command. Before we begin, I'll remind the listeners that all opinions express our own and not reflective of any institutions with which we might otherwise be associated. During the course of this project, I consistently walked away with more questions than answers. Dr. Wong and Jocelyn, I was excited to see the work your team did on this topic to help answer some of these questions I've had. I'd like you guys to go ahead and conduct a personal introduction and tell me how the team came together. This is Justin Fleming, and I'm a defense policy researcher at the RAND Corporation. I specialize in doing logistics assessments, particularly looking at the service's future operating concepts.

I also am a Marine Corps reservist with 16 years of service, 10 on the active duty side, and 6 in the reserves, where I'm a Marine Corps supply officer. John, why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself, and then I'll explain how the team got together. Sure. Thanks, Jocelyn, and thanks, John, for having us on the show. I'm Jonathan Wong. I'm a policy researcher at the RAND Corporation, just like Jocelyn. I spend a lot of my time looking at operational concepts, just like her, across the services, how that joins together with doctrine, how that joins together with technology, and how that kind of forms a better way of fighting. I also do a lot of work in RAND's acquisition space.

And before I came to RAND, I was a Marine Corps infantry officer and infantryman. I served from 2001 to 2011. Great. Thanks, John. And, yeah, so how our team came together. So we were approached to do this project by the Marine Corps, by the Operations Analysis Directorate, and specifically the Marine Corps Office, the Deputy Commandant for Installation and Logistics. And they asked us to take a look at this project. And the way that these things come into RAND is the project sponsor approaches us with a problem set, we iterate with them to come up with a project, and then we find a project leader.

So I was assigned to be a project leader along with my colleague, Dr. Matt Lewis, who's a phenomenal leading thinker looking at some of these organizational issues. I was really happy to be working with him. He's done a lot of interesting work in this space, particularly for the Army. He looked at some equipping challenges and strategies for the Army combat support hospitals and looked at some of the unique considerations there. So we were chose to co-lead this and we wanted to get a very diverse group of people looking at this problem set from both a quantitative and a qualitative perspective. John Wong and I are both kind of qualitative experts. We really excel in doing analyses through interviews and surveys and research groups. But we also brought along some quantitative experts. Duncan Long did some phenomenal work for us, particularly looking at the demands for equipment across this problem set.

We also had some just phenomenal help from some junior research staff at RAND, Angelina Bowman and Mike Gaines both provided some real help there. And I'm sure I'm missing out some other people, but we like to take a collaborative approach to looking at these problem sets. And, again, we like to do, particularly me, when I approach a problem set, I like to look at it from a mixed methods approach, looking at it both quantitatively and qualitatively. John, is there anything I missed there? No, I would only add that just highlight the fact that RAND assembles these teams from, you know, from a multi kind of disciplinary nature. And it's really driven by Matt. It was really driven by Jocelyn. They were the ones that assembled the team and picked out the skill sets that we used.

And, you know, if you look at a lot of RAND research, you're going to see like a whole cornucopia of names on there. And that just kind of highlights how RAND assembled folks from different academic backgrounds. Matt is a psychologist, I believe, actually, by training. You know, I'm a policy, public policy PhD by training. And we really put these teams together in a way that complements all sorts of different skills, all sorts of different perspectives, and all sorts of different experiences, particularly because, as Jocelyn hinted, RAND does a lot of research, not only for the Marine Corps, but for the Army, for the Air Force, and other parts of the DoD. And we really draw on that experience, on previous research, to try to put together both the best team and the best way of kind of tackling the problem. John and Jocelyn, I appreciate that, and it's a great background to the team. It seems like the team itself is task-organized, which is kind of a fun way to look at bringing the team together.

Jocelyn, you talked a lot about the problem set. What exact problem were you asked to solve? The research question kind of evolved from where the sponsor originally expected it to go, and we tried to broaden the research question beyond what their limited scope was. Unfortunately, I don't think we broadened it quite enough, but the way it came about to begin with was this project was funded back in 2017, and at that time, it's important to know that the Marine Corps was really focused on regaining its readiness after the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and so trying to regain readiness, particularly at home

station, because that had lapsed in trying to prioritize those equipment sets that were going to be forward deployed. And so General Neller at the time, he had learned a lesson from the time in Iraq and Afghanistan about the need to rotate aircraft in and out of theaters, particularly to ensure that it got its depot level maintenance. And so this project looked at it very specifically in terms of, okay, we have forward equipment at these special purpose Marine Air Ground Task Force units, which are these units that are forward deployed to make up for the lack of the marine expeditionary units that we normally forward deploy. And so they were trying to determine how they could buy back that readiness,

and they were thinking about doing an equipment rotation. And so we were specifically looking at that, that we were asked to look at that specific policy and to do a cost-benefit analysis to see if that was something that should be, that was good or bad. But by the time the money came in for this project to go forward, it was already kind of overcome by events because they decided to scrap this policy. And so they asked us to look more holistically at these four deployed units that the Marine Corps was using. What is the best way to equip them? I would argue that probably the better question would have been to look holistically across the Marine Corps. We were kind of at a turning point at what we were looking to support future operating concepts.

And so as we look at that more small and distributed manner, what is the best way to equip the force to support those proposed concepts of employment? Unfortunately, the study had to be scoped kind of narrowly in terms of the funding that was available. And so we looked at it specifically for these forward rotational units. One of the drawbacks of that is that already by the time this report has come out, most of those units no longer exist. The Marine Corps has folded the flag for the Special Purpose MAGPAS and other units that are forward deployed. But that was kind of how it came about. I will say they wanted us to look at some cost-benefit analyses in terms of what were some of the best equipping strategies for these forward deployed units. And so we can get a little bit into that as we continue the discussion.

Yeah, I would just highlight what Jocelyn said earlier about the context at the time. So this was about 2016, 2017, or mostly 2017 when the Marine Corps started seeing this issue and started bringing RAND into looking at it. And, you know, at the time, you know, there were all sorts of these interesting provisional units, the Special Purpose Marine Airground Task Forces that Jocelyn mentioned, the Black Sea Rotational Force, the Marine Rotational Force Darwin. I forget the exact number that we counted up, but it was a pretty significant number of units that were provisional. Provisional in the sense that they weren't designed for kind of long-term use. And that meant that the equipment that they were using wasn't designed to be used by them, wasn't designed to be maintained by them, which is all, I think, well and good if you're going to do it for six months or nine months or whatever. But the Marine Corps was doing it for much longer.

And so, you know, these provisioning units, they don't have a plan for maintenance. You know, the Marine Corps is basically running these equipment sets into the ground. And, you know, they were also looking, I like to call it, they were digging around the couch for kind of loose change to find equipment in the first place. It was this incredibly kind of dynamic and fluid situation that the Marine Corps could see was starting to become a problem. I always think back in my time in the service and really think about, like, how often the Marine Corps relies on kind of the cleverness and the grit and the kind of candy spirit of its Marines. And it was really, I think, relying on that at that time to make these provisional units go from an equipping standpoint. And what we were asked to do was to find a way out of that, to find a way to balance both the needs of maintaining readiness, as Jocelyn pointed out, but also to maintain the presence and that availability of these units for combatant commanders to use.

So it was a pretty interesting kind of wicked problem and one that I think that sounds pretty wonky and pretty narrow on its own. But as Jocelyn pointed out, it actually has a lot of implications for developing future operating concepts for really experimenting and changing the way that you fight. One of the things I really appreciated about this project and one of the things that's nice about working with the Marine Corps is that when these projects come to be, they establish a study advisory committee. And this one particularly had a lot of buy-in across the headquarters Marine Corps organization. And so when we got in the room and we got all these people there to kind of do sort of a problem framing, we started to realize it was much broader than the way that the study had been scoped. And exactly what John talked about is, you know, there is this growing demand and this growing appetite, particularly from the combatant commanders, for more forces to be forward. And so that's where these task organized units came about. And so even if, you know, the special purpose MAGTAFs have gone away, there's still that continued appetite and demand.

And so that was usually filled by the Marine Expeditionary Units forward, you know, with fiscal tightening and fiscal constraints, particularly on the Navy side. When those couldn't be as, you know, there weren't as many MUs to be deployed and there were issues with their readiness as well, we stood up these task organized units. So I don't think the demand for those units is going to go away. And the way that we've been equipping these types of units is still very structured in an archaic Marine Corps structure where we're looking at it from, OK, we normally deploy a battalion sized unit. And that is kind of our base unit concept. And that is how all of our equipping strategies, many of our logistic strategies. And honestly, across, you know, the doctrinal tack, you know, across the dot MLPF, you know, personnel, all of those issues, this, you know, it is a wicked problem, like John talked about, and that it's all related in that nature. So, again, hindsight's 20-20. You look at these projects afterwards, and you're like, oh, I really could have sunk my teeth into this or sunk my teeth into that. We are limited with what we had at the time, and I still am really proud of the research we did, and I think it does get at some really great opportunities for future research. Yeah, I would just, you know, one last thing I would jump in there with is, you know, although our ambition was to do something much, much larger, I think there is some benefit in looking at the details.

And I think about it in a sense of some of the research I conduct today for emerging concepts and evaluating how, you know, how they work and how you might actually operationalize some of these ideas that are coming across in the services. And one thing that I come away with today is that you really have to tend to the details. You really have you can't just kind of, you know, cocktail napkin your way into a concept and think that it's going to work. You really have to dig into the dig down the brass tacks and figure out, you know, what are the second and third order effects on the force if you try to do something new? And, you know, something Jocelyn said a second ago reminded me of something that we observed during the research was that, you know, when when the Marine Corps dug around the couch that was changed by that equipment and they figured out how to maintain it by a lot of cleverness and grit. What they were doing was that they were not just, you know, not just making that one unit prepared, that provisional unit, but they were breaking their readiness and breaking the availability of other units behind it because they were basically robbing Peter to pay Paul. They were taking away equipment from other units that wasn't meant to be taken away. They were taking away maintainers and capabilities.

And so this problem was something that was really spider webbing out from just, you know, these small provisional units into the wider Marine Corps. And that's when the organization reached out to Rand, reached out to Jocelyn and Matt and asked us to come in. But I think you're right, Jocelyn. I think it's a problem that isn't going to go away anytime soon. You know, the units themselves, the ones that we mentioned, you know, those are mostly gone. But the problem itself and the demand for ready forces isn't going to go away. And it's not going to come in the shape of having whole Marine Expeditionary Units or Battalion Landing Teams or Regional Combat Teams or something like that. I think that's going to be too big and too cumbersome.

The demand is going to come from smaller disaggregated units, and so that problem of how you equip it, how you make it work, and how you do it in a way that's sustainable for the organization, whether it's the Marine Corps or the Army or the Air Force or what have you, I think that's going to remain the same. I don't know, John. I do some of my best work on the back of a cocktail napkin. That is true, and I've seen it. I've seen it myself. Or a whiteboard. Give you a whiteboard, and you'll go to town on it. I feel like all planners enjoy the application of a whiteboard to help solve the problem. I appreciate that background and the response. And speaking of emerging operating concepts, same month that your report was published, the Marine Corps published Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations as an enabling or functional concept, depending on who you talk to.

And I felt like your report specifically to equipping the 21st Century Marine Corps, It was written and conducted a couple of years before the Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations report or publication was released. I felt like it has a lot of applicability to answering kind of some of the same problems that are identified within the functional concept. How does your report and the study that you guys conducted with regards to equipping, how does that contribute to supporting maritime security for the U.S. Naval Service? The Marine Corps and the Navy, as they look to do naval integration in support of their future operating concepts, and particularly for the Marine Corps in terms of expeditionary advanced spacing operations, I think that a lot of what we looked at in this report is going to be applicable. First and foremost, I think what we were just discussing in terms of the small disaggregated units and the Marine Corps' inexperience with deploying forces at that small of a level is something that the Marine Corps is going to have to address, not just logistically. They're going to have to address it doctrinally.

They're going to have to look at a lot of these issues. Another big thing that came out of our report and that I still don't think we have a good grasp on and something I particularly want to look into more is we talked about it in terms of high-demand, low-density equipment. And so if you look at to support future operating concepts like EABO, it's going to require a lot of communications assets. It's going to require a lot of that high demand, low density. So what we mean by that is there's a lot of appetite for it across the force and there just isn't enough of it available. And so we looked at, you know, in the report, we looked at some strategies to try to address this, either through some rapid acquisitions, looking at partner capabilities, looking at, you know, even 3D printing, things of that nature. But you have to try and find a way to get it at that problem set.

And so, you know, in terms of how this supports maritime security, as we look to have a forward posture, as we look to compete below the threshold of conflict, and that includes having people further forward, we're going to have to find a way to solve this problem. Yeah, Jocelyn, the problem of high demand, low density equipment, I think is particularly applicable. When I think of all the services and what they're doing, all their solutions to the problem in the Indo-Pacific, whether it's multi-domain operations, expedition advanced space operations, distributed maritime operations, agile combat employment. I probably have a whole laundry list of other ones that I'm forgetting to mention.

All of them have a common thread, a common theme, and that is that they break apart big units that can be targeted and destroyed and spread them out across different geographic spaces, spread them out by putting some of their capabilities further forward while others further back. And all that's really well and good, but one of the things that I think the services, as far as i've seen hasn't really explored is where are the critical points of failure and

that's what a high demand low density item is and i forget exactly what we said in there what we identified in the report it was like some generators and and some like really quotidian kinds of things like a tool set or something like that uh there are these really quotidian things that will stop the entire organization in its tracks if you don't have enough of them because the you know the capability that you push forward wasn't meant to be broken out in that manner and That's a problem that scales up, I think, a lot as the services really pursue these these different and admittedly really creative solutions to the problem in the in the Indo-Pacific as it pertains to maritime security. So I just wanted to add one quick thought to what you just said. And you reminded me when you talked about the maintenance sets, which which does seem very quotidian, but it's an issue.

And it's another broad discussion point, particularly in the logistics community, which is that so many of our policies and equipping procedures have been about gaining efficiencies. And so what we have done is we have centrally focused our maintenance capabilities and things of that nature so that it's all pushed to kind of a central location. And as we have these smaller disparate units, that type of efficiency just does not work. Yeah, that's a great reminder. And I think, you know, I got to say that there's nothing wrong with the way the Marine Corps or the other services in the U.S. military have gotten to this point. You know, efficiency was something of value over the last 20 years. You know, I experienced it myself and benefited from that in operations in Iraq. When I do this kind of research, I always try to look back and see why a policy was put into place, why a practice was put into place, because most likely it was probably done for a very good reason. And we're merely, you know, the context of the problem is changing and we have to change with it, which makes me think a lot about the problem that we were handed by the Marine Corps as as almost like a way of ensuring that the Marine Corps had a way of had an enabling set of things that were could be allowed to experiment.

And I guess I can put it a better way. It needed the Marine Corps needed a way to allow itself to experiment with different forms of force structure, with different kind of force designs. And I think this the way we approach this, this particular problem contributes to that, because, you know, you're not going to be able to get to the way that the Marine Corps imagines expedition advanced space operations. You can't get to the way they expect to operate like that without really going in, messing things up from the standpoint of different organizations, breaking capabilities down, breaking units down, breaking them apart, reshuffling them, putting them back together. If you don't have the ability to equip that kind of new force, you're really not learning. You're really not growing. You're really not operationalizing some of those new and imaginative operational concepts that are out there. Same would go, you know, I would, and we didn't look into this, but I would imagine the same would go for personnel, for education, for, you know, for other aspects of how you develop a force. So, you know, it's a pretty, we were handed a pretty specific problem and a very detailed problem.

But I think it has implications for the force overall as the Marine Corps and the other services to adapt it to the new operational realities, both in Europe as well as in the Indo-Pacific. It's a common narrative, right, in a lot of the research we're doing, where, okay, we learned all these lessons, we committed all of these resources to fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And now as we shift, and particularly as the Marine Corps shifts to be more maritime in nature, to get back to its naval roots, it needs to look at issues like this one that they've asked us to look at. But it still needs to retain enough flexibility, exactly what John just talked about. You know, we have to be aware of why these policies came into place. We have to be aware of historical narratives, need to look at historical case studies. You know, talking about how the team came together, one of the people which we originally had on the team was a historian. To look at some of this from a historical perspective as how equipping strategies have evolved. It didn't really assist this particular problem, but I think it's important to have that kind of consideration as you're looking to define some of these problems.

You know, we're not the first people, the Marine Corps or any of the services or the DOD Department of Defense, you know, we're not the first ones that they asked to solve this. It's been tried before. And we usually get handed the problem after, you know, folks have given honest faith attempt to solve it. And, you know, the results weren't as as they hoped. And so what we had to deal with and we constantly deal with on RAND projects, I shouldn't say deal with like it's an impediment. It's actually a great benefit to us is that we often see partial solutions or attempted solutions that other folks have already tried and the results weren't as hoped. And what we often do is we take those as either inspiration or as the basis for the solutions that we ultimately present. Because when it comes down to it, I think for the Marine Corps and for the other services, it's about the institution setting its people, its organization up for success when it comes to this sort of experimentation, when it comes to this sort of force transformation. You know, it has to be better than just relying on what I call a get-or-done attitude that I think the Army and the Marine Corps in particular have.

And, you know, there's kind of two anecdotes that really kind of drive this home. One is when Jocelyn, for this project, sent me down to Darwin to poke around and see what the Marine Rotational Force down there was doing. Went down to Matilda Lines right after a cyclone, as it were. And you know what I found? I found a limited-duty officer major in coveralls swapping on Humvee engine that he got from who knows where. And that's great. That's amazing. He was showing leadership from the very front.

But this guy was three maps ground maintenance guru. He was the most sought-after, most capable maintainer that RIMF had, and they sent him down there to Darwin to fix some of these problems because they were so enormous, right? But you can't do that at scale. You can't replicate this guy at scale. Our operational concept is the one that pertained the most to the problems in the Pacific where the maritime domain is preeminent. You really have to get to the details so that we can rely on good doctrine and solid equipment that will get us most of the way there. You know, is there going to be time for these kind of Herculean efforts? Yes. But but we really shouldn't rely on it. And it's not just you know, it's not just in the Marine Corps.

It's not just in the Pacific. You know, previous work that I did for Rand looking, you know, for the looking at how the army packs out its equipment from home station. You know, one of the things we found was that some that really relies on like two or three, you know, long tenured government, you know, government employees, civilians that this this one in particular. He was a guy that packed rail cars like he was the guy that knew exactly how to fit the most number of tanks, the most number of, you know, armored personnel carriers and whatnot onto the onto rail cars in the most expedient way possible. And remember, I interviewed this guy. His name was Buzzy. And he had a he had a hard hat in the shape of a cowboy hat. Great American, great getter done attitude. And I asked him, like, how how do you ensure that this works? And he basically said, I just when when it when the time comes to do this, i just basically get up on this huge stand and i just you know conduct this orchestra and i do it

until it's done and he did mention that you know sometimes he's you know he would be doing this for 18 hours a day or whatever and it and you know on one hand that's an amazing you know just amazing kind of get her done attitude but the same token like what if a bus hits buzzy on the way to work you know that you know a whole set of units for the army at this one particular base will be sidelined because they wouldn't have they wouldn't have the expertise they wouldn't have a guy that knows how to do it all. And it's a theme that I see come up repeatedly in research that I conduct for RAND, a strong emphasis from some of the military services to just not wish away the problem, but rely, I think, too much on its people to kind of undertake these herculean efforts to

make it all work in the end. I think it's admirable, but I worry a lot about how sustainable and how appropriate that is when you could instead try to build better solutions through a little bit sharper thinking or smarter thinking through better doctrine, through better policies instead of relying on these kind of heroic efforts. Sorry, that was like a long diversion, but it's something that I just kept seeing over and over again in research for Rand over the last couple of years. Now, I appreciate the anecdotes on both sides and the laughter. Hopefully, I didn't wake my kids with the belly laugh based on Buzzy.

So all I can picture is a bus coming by and hitting Buzzy, which which would be tragic. No, it wouldn't be buzzy. He's my hero. I want to get at, before talking about any surprising findings or recommendations, you guys both discussed the research. And one of the things I appreciate about RAND is RAND always comes at the problem with a very specific approach with regards to the research methodology. So if you guys could just discuss what research methodology did the team use to look at the problem? We did a mixed methods approach here, both quantitative and qualitative, Particularly, you know, the Marine Corps wants those hard numbers oftentimes and asks for those quantitative stats.

So we wanted to make sure to give them that. But I think that there is a lot to be gained by going and talking to the subject matter experts, talking to those people down in Darwin who are doing yeoman's work down there. So the way that we did this was we went about, we looked at it from a quantitative perspective perspective to just look at what the actual demand for the equipment was and how it compared to other units across the Marine Corps. John and I have both developed quite a portfolio of doing interview questions that are semi-structured, and then we do an analysis of those findings on the back end using a software called DEDUCE

to look for thematic, to do thematic analysis. and then we were going to try and do a costing assessment of all of the courses of action that we proposed as recommendations. Unfortunately, there just wasn't the data available for us to look at this and again, I mean, this showcased another issue with the way that these units are task organized and how the Marine Corps has a very specific way they do it for traditional units. We couldn't actually get good cost data for them because the way that GCSS Marine Corps works, which is the way that we account for a lot of those financials and maintenance records, it's the database that the Marine Corps uses. It's set up for the home station unit and it's

not set up for the specific task organized unit. So we couldn't actually pull out the cost data for any of this. But in order to get a good assessment, that is something that absolutely needs to be looked at in terms of the costing of all of these. I think the only thing that I would add that we also did was how we came up with the solutions and how we came up with the recommendations. And like I said before, it's kind of rare for us to be handed a problem that someone hasn't already tried to solve. And so part of our work is actually to take that previous work, those previous solutions or solutions that we find from other RAND research or have experienced in other RAND research and really unpack its assumptions, figure out why it didn't work and what we can adapt from

You know, unpack the content or kind of separate the idea from the context. And that's actually quite a powerful, powerful way of approaching a problem because I think a lot of times and we can definitely, you know, kind of see this as we were talking to people and having them describe to us what they've done and what they tried to do to kind of maintain their equipment, to acquire their equipment, maintain it, account for it, et cetera, et cetera, is that as they were speaking, I could almost hear the underlying thread, the set of assumptions they'd used to come to that solution to decide that that was the best thing that that they could do and so that was i think an underrated part and kind of under like it doesn't get mentioned explicitly in the report that we that we wrote up but it was actually i think a a fundamental and kind of a key part to our to our research was to just piece you know take that thing apart take the idea apart and figure out you know what was the context behind it you know how it might uh work in a different context if it if it might work at all that's the

only thing I would add in terms of methodology, as far as some of the other things that we did in terms of qualitative analysis, you know, it really comes down. Yeah, I got to mention this because I think it's so pertinent to the Marine Corps and to how we conduct kind of public policy research in general at RAND is that, yeah, we talked to a lot of people. We had a set of questions, but like Jocelyn said, they're semi-structured questions. It's a conversation because oftentimes we don't know what the right question to ask is. Oftentimes, you know, someone will go off on a tangent and you would uncover something useful from that. And that's, you know, that's really great. But the key, I think, is to do it methodically, almost like an anthropologist.

You know, everyone does get asked the same questions at the start of the conversation and everything gets recorded for us. We prefer to have someone type it out. And what we do then is we go to work by analyzing it thematically. We take everything apart and figure out what the themes are, both in the interview that we conducted and across interviews. And I think I forget the exact number. We were somewhere in the neighborhood, like 30 or 40 interviews or so. And we take it apart. We figure out what the themes are that keep popping up over and over again. We really examine who that person is and what part of the organization they represent and how that plays into the way that they're answering. And that is actually, I think, a really powerful way of conducting

research, particularly for the Marine Corps. Not because they don't deserve to have the full quantitative deal, you know, the sophisticated methodologies, regression analysis, and whatnot. But I think, you know, just from my observation in the Marine Corps in the time that I've been at RAND is that the Marine Corps really operates on narratives. And

we could come up and, Jocelyn, I think you and I have both done this, we can come up with pretty nifty, quantitative things, different methodologies that leverage numbers and the power of the explanatory power of numbers And, you know, it gets received. But there's something about an anecdote. There's something about a particularly pithy quote or a narrative that really resonates with decision makers. And it really, for them, I think, unlocks the meaning behind what we're trying to tell them. It basically helps them arrive at our way of thinking, the way that we approach the problem, why we came up or are making the recommendations that we're making.

I think that's true in any setting, right, in any public policy research. But I think it's particularly impactful for the Marine Corps because, you know, it's a service that runs on narratives. I think Jocelyn, John, you know, myself, we all know this having joined the Marine Corps. You know, it's just a place that values storytelling. And it's not something that we do to kind of spin the narrative, but it's the way that we uncover it and relate it in a way that resonates with folks. rand's mission is objective analysis for effective solutions and i think what what is good when these problem sets come up when the marine corps goes to an organization like rand it's able to get kind of an external look at what the organization is doing to validate or to challenge some of the

assumptions that they're making well it's helpful that john and i both have a marine corps background I think, you know, so that we have a leg up on the start to the question, it's that kind of objectivity that really helps. And I think what we'll get at your next question that you sort of hinted at is we also take an approach, you know, very scientific type methodologies of, you know, we come at this with a hypothesis of what we expect to find. And then we continue to refine it. We continue to check in across the course of the project to say, hey, is that hypothesis still valid? Do we need to change it? Do you know what assumptions are we making? And so on this project particularly, that that was a really helpful approach because we came in with a certain hypothesis and found that that that actually evolved throughout the course of the project. Thank you, Jocelyn. And John, you said we're often captured by pithy quotes. It was one of your quotes within the conclusion that really grabbed me that I'd like to lead into the next

question. The quote from the report says, the research team expected to find a small number of underlying issues that were causing most of the overall problems that were initially identified by Headquarters Marine Corps. However, this was not the case. Equipping problems stemmed from many small problems that collectively caused negative impacts. So with that frame within your conclusion, what were the most surprising findings and or recommendations that you guys came up with? I think when we started this in our conversations with the experts up at Headquarters Marine Corps, we thought that the solution was going to be to lie in kind of a policy change that would sort of codify or fix some of these issues that we were talking about

for these task organized units. But what we found was that was very stifling to the overall flexibility of the organization. So, for instance, one of the things that I thought that would come out of this would be that, okay, we just need to make this unit have its own table of organization and its own equipment assigned to it that will solve the problem and then we can get on our way. Well, there are many issues associated with that across that range of issues we were talking about that don't just apply to equipping in terms of manning and what's required for that, maintaining those assets, who's responsible for that. And so as we started to peel that back and really understand the total organization and how it kind of operates together, we realized that

there needed to be something much more flexible for the organization. And so that's when we started to identify those really critical areas where it was prohibiting the organization from either understanding the problem and being able to remedy that problem. So talking about it, you know, in terms of some of the things we've already covered, but the standard unit used by the Marine Corps is very much at that battalion-level structure, and everything sort of feeds into that in terms of how it's supported, how it's manned, how it's trained, and how it's equipped. And so when you start to look at that and you start to think, okay, so when we disaggregate it, when we just send out a company or do something of that nature, the IT systems, they don't necessarily

support that type of disaggregation. The maintenance doesn't support it. The supply doesn't support it. The costing, you know, all of those things, as you start to break it down, there are certain support functions that are required in order to disaggregate a unit and deploy it forward. The one really critical asset that we, and we've already talked about it quite a bit, but I'd like to hit on it again, which is those high-demand, low-density assets that really enable the unit to be able to perform its critical functions. And so as we look at it across the Marine Corps, you know, and we did kind of our quantitative approach, we looked at it and, okay, across the Marine Corps, the equipment demanded by

these units wasn't astronomical. It wasn't really exacerbating the system. But when it came to those high demand, low density assets, that was where it was really stressing the organization and they weren't able to support it. That's where this policy of the principal end item rotation came about was to try and get those critical assets back and get them maintained and then back out into the fight. And so we were able to kind of focus the research in that area on those kind of critical nodes where we could really help the Marine Corps focus on those critical issues without kind of losing them saying, oh, you've got to completely revamp the whole way that you're looking at this. But look at those kind of critical nodes and then how they could go about having a flexible solution to get at that. what i found most surprising was uh was i had a slightly different take and i think back to when we were conducting this research i really thought that the solution that we're going to be stuck

with uh was basically buying our way out of it which is just not a tenable solution i think you can't do that a little bit right you you you build these tables organization that means you buy more stuff because you you know you don't have enough tool sets you'll buy more but i you know i just knew from the very beginning that that wasn't going to be viable for the marine corps and that's and that's too easy, right? And what was surprising to me was that we could do a lot without having to spend a lot more money buying things. That was the most kind of surprising thing that I found from the research. You know, as someone who studies the military as an organization, you know, I'm always struck by how much room for improvement there is in terms of policies that are already

existing, but can be emphasized or not emphasized. Resources that can be redirected from one place to another you know it's it's a big military right it gets used a lot it gets used for a lot of things and so over time over you know many decades we've accumulated this policy these practices and these resources from that experience it's all you know i shouldn't say it's all there but a lot of it's there and it's a matter of emphasis it's to a large extent just a matter of reimagining what already exists and jocelyn pointed to to a lot of that it is opening you You know, increasing that situational awareness so the Marine Corps has a better understanding of what it actually has in the scope of it, in the actual scope of its problem. It's doing things that enable the Marine Corps to maintain that flexibility while isolating the kind of second and third order effects as much as possible.

There are all these little things that we recommended that in its totality we hope would make a big difference. And it really could avoid the solution that I was afraid that we were going to find, we were going to end up with, which is just basically to buy more stuff. That's almost too easy. You know, when you have a $700 billion military budget, you know, I think there's got to be something we can do. And I was pleasantly surprised to see, you know, just how much space there was for us to make improvements that were based on things that already existed. whether there were resources that could be redirected or it could be policies, some policies that could be emphasized and some policies that could be de-emphasized. Yeah, I think it's a system approach that you have to take to all of these questions.

And in this particular one, I became acutely aware of it. If you change this one policy, what second and third order effects does it have on the rest of the organization? Too often, military planners that we interacted with had some of those simplistic ideas that John was talking about in terms of like just buying their way out of it. Okay, we just established the table of organizations and the table of equipment. We just forward positioned this equipment. Okay, well, who manages that? Who are the personnel that are responsible for that?

Where do those personnel come from? You know, whenever you think of solution sets of that nature, you have to kind of think of those ripple effects throughout the rest of the system and how that's going to impact it. What I would agree wholeheartedly with what John outlined is that we found that there were creative solutions to get at some of these problem sets. And too often, I think we do try to buy our way out of the issue. And looking at policies specifically can help tremendously as you're looking at trying to help solve some of these critical issues. I think that's what I enjoyed as I read through is that what you both got at was it's not just about buying the solution,

because I think that is instinctually the U.S. military response, but looking at how, from a systems perspective, we can get after it with also understanding and assessing the risk of what those second and third order consequences are. So I really, really appreciated the depth of research that went into it and that made its way into the final report. So for you both, project or study should we look for next from you? I continue to work across the board at RAND on looking at issues related to logistics in support of future operating concepts. I'm working on some stuff for the Navy on supply chain risk in that regard. But in terms of what I really want to be working on, particularly I'd like to be doing it for the Marine Corps, how to logistically

support some of these future operating concepts. And we've identified already how some of the work here would be especially useful for the Marine Corps. Again, looking at a kind of a systems approach to it, I think there are some current deficiencies in the way that the Marine Corps is looking at how they're going to support those concepts logistically, that when you look at them through models and simulations are just not feasible. And especially when you look at some of the creative solutions, they're creative and helpful, but I don't think they get at some of the critical issues that we're going to see in order to facilitate those concepts. Yeah, for me, and this is almost like a showcase of breadth of the work that we do at RAND,

three things for me. One is some work that I'm doing right now on basically filling in some details on the Army's multi-domain operations concept in the Indo-Pacific, helping the Army figure out, you know, what it can, you know, how it can take its, you know, just absolutely prodigious capability that it has, you know, across so many warfinding functions, how it can take all that, you know, all that and square it with the multi-domain operations concept that they're coming up with. So that's one, you know, one area of work that I'm in knee-deep in right now. Another area that's coming up for me is taking a look at the defense innovation ecosystem. So many of those defense innovation units that you may have heard about, the defense innovation unit itself, some of the various works, app works, software works, you know, what have you.

Those organizations, you know, we've been at this for a couple of years with these kind of new and creative ways of engaging the commercial technology space. What's the prospects for it for those organizations in the future? Are they, you know, are they useful? What place do they have as we kind of get, you know, get on in years? And then a third area that I'm hoping to actually work on, surprised Jocelyn did mention it, is looking at some diversity, inclusion, and equity issues, particularly in the Marine Corps as it relates to promotion. It's a topic I know the Commandant, this Commandant, and to some extent the previous Commandant had mentioned as a concern, and looking at it hopefully in a way that emphasizes narratives. I harped on it earlier. The Marine Corps is run by narratives, and we think there's something about that that we can use as a tool to better understand where some of the diversity issues are cropping up in the Marine Corps as it pertains to particularly officer promotion and how we can use those narratives to shine a light on it and to come up with policy solutions. It's something that Joss and I actually kind of worked on in terms of designing the approach on our spare time.

And we're hoping to find a sponsor for that within the Marine Corps soon. Yeah, actually, you just reminded me. One of the projects I'm working on that I wanted to mention is looking at some personnel policy issues, particularly looking at body composition standards and the military appearance policies, which sounds, you know, sort of similar to this project that we're discussing right here, a little limited in scope. But as we look again across the force, you know, looking at some of these policies and ensuring we have policies that enable the finest lethal force that the Marine Corps and all of the services can put together. These personnel policies are essential for us to be looking at. And it's something that John and I are working a lot on these days.

Well, I look forward to seeing the reports when they eventually get released from all of those topics. Both of you with your background as Marine Corps officers, I ask all the guests who come to the program with different views and backgrounds to help me expand my own perspective as I wrestle with the topic. I'd like you to, in two sentences, describe how you define maritime security. It's funny. It's just such a hard thing to define because definitions always have an inclusion-exclusion criteria, right? And maritime security is such an all-encompassing idea. But let me offer what I think is a distinctly American perspective. And that is maritime security is making sure that the medium that moves people, ideas, things remain safe and open to all.

You know, it's not carved out into kind of chunks or spheres of influence where you can have a piece and I can have a piece. but it's consistently accessible to everyone, to every nation that wishes to utilize it. And it's something that spans, you know, hard power. So VLS cells and gray hulls. It spans, you know, things as wonky as kind of fisheries and fishing rights and things like that. There's also an environmental component to it, making sure that there's good environmental stewardship. So the oceans that I use today to surf on, for instance, this morning, you know, remain viable for generations hence. And so it's keeping that medium free and open for all.

You know, I really think it's ensuring access for our national interests and in support of our allied and partners' interests in the maritime domain. However, like John so eloquently put it, I think scoping it too narrowly can be detrimental. And so, you know, I always think of it more from the hard power type perspective, like John was talking about, you know, I think back to my days of pirate hunting off the coast of Somalia, and I'm like, well, that was maritime security. And that was maritime security all day, every day. But, you know, it is continuing to do it across, not just, you know, in terms of military security, but looking at it across all of the dime functions is important. And so I think as we continue, you know, I keep harping on systems approaches to things, but I think it's important to look at it in terms of what our national power assets are to ensure maritime security. But then I think we also need to understand that these domains, as we look to fight a multi-domain environment, we have to be careful about not carving out too much across the domains and to look at it in a much more multi-domain approach. Yeah. Well, I appreciate both of those responses, and I look forward to going back and listening and kind of thinking about both of those. Both expanded my current perspective.

Jocelyn and John, my sincere appreciation for coming on the podcast today to discuss your report. To the listeners, highly recommend that you check out the report, as it offers several opportunities to improve the process for equipping the future Naval Force, an area that I think remains grossly underexplored and critical to operating effectively in the future. Thank you for listening, and until next time, guten tag. © transcript Emily Beynon