Sea Control - Sea Control 322 - The Role of Marine Infantry in EABO with Jeong Soo Kim

Episode Date: February 28, 2022

Links1. “Design the Littoral Combat Team Around Its Core Mission,” by Jeong Soo Kim, USNI Proceedings, November 2021.2. “Sacred Cows for What? Considering Force Structure Cuts to the Infantry,��� by Walker Mills, CIMSEC, November 2019.3. “Where is the NECC?” by Walker Mills, Marine Corps Gazette, December 2019.4. “Preparing for the Future: Marine Corps Support to Joint Operations in the Contested Littorals,” by David Berger, Military Review, May 2021.5. “Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations Handbook: Considerations for Force Development and Employment,” June 1, 2018.6. “Tentative Manual for EABO,” US Marine Corps, 2020. 

Hey folks, Jared here. Walker Mills is your host today. He's joined by Jong-Soo Kim to discuss the role of Marine Infantry in Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations. This episode was edited and produced by Marie Williams. We are still looking for audio editors, so if you are interested in joining your team, please reach out via email at seacontrol at simsec.org with your resume. I did want to highlight a couple of developments over at the main website. In the last two months, we've launched the Flotilla, SimSec's warfighting society focused on tactics. and just this week we launched our naval wargaming discord so you can find more information at simsec.org finally i want to take the opportunity to recommend our partners in the simsec podcast network the bilge pumps you can find alex jamie drack and a pile of iron brew bottles wherever you download your podcasts on that note i'll turn it over to kimbersman you're listening to sea control hosted by the center for international

Welcome back aboard the Sea Control Podcast from the Center for International Maritime Security. Today, we're talking with Lieutenant Junior Grade Jong-Soo Kim, a civil engineer in the Navy. Today, we're going to be talking about his recent article that was published in USNI Proceedings, Design the Littoral Combat Team Around Its Core Mission, which also won first place in the annual Marine Corps Essay Contest. Welcome aboard. Can you introduce yourself a bit more formally to our listeners? Hey, good evening. I'm Lieutenant Junior Grade Kim, originally hailing from Seoul, South Korea. I grew up around the country in California, Pennsylvania, and New York.

In college, I studied mechanical engineering and history, and I've always had an interest in military history and definitely a nerd when it comes to doctrine, history, and basically the military arts in general. Before we start, I'd like to remind our listeners that the opinions presented here are solely our own and should not be taken as representative of any of the institutions that we're associated with. To start out, can you give us kind of a brief description of EABO, the Marine Corps' new concept, Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations, as you understand it, and kind of the context for why the Marine Corps is moving in that direction, which kind of sets the scene for the article that you published?

I'll start with that. But EABO is a sign that the Marine Corps is transitioning from a force that exploits the naval dominance that we've enjoyed since the fall of the Soviet Union into a force that has to contend for maritime superiority on the high seas. I think it is an admittance that with our pacing adversary in China, and also a cognizant of all the global naval commitments that the United States Navy has, that the Navy itself would not be able to deter China enough around its peripheries. So I think we have tasked the Marine Corps to project lethal firepower against naval assets and in a sense become part of the naval battle space instead of exploiting a naval dominance. How EABO fits into this is quite interesting. So the Marine Corps imagines the EABO as pretty small, austere bases that possesses weaponry that could strike out and reach both ships, aircraft, and ambitiously even submarines. The Marine Corps, I refer to them as they because i'm a navy officer and see them as austere low-key hard to identify and target and lethal

compared to its size and they're expeditionary and very advanced because they will be inside the enemy's weapon engagement zone and are all and or can be struck and can are under hostile fire in conflict. Thanks. I think that's a decent description. And I would just add that the EABO concept, while the concept document is classified, there's a good amount of robust discussion that's been published and you can find online kind of about what it is and whether or not it makes sense. And I would also say kind of from where I sit, I think there's a little bit of a, I don't want to say moving the goalposts, but a little bit of a shift in how we understand EABO. And I feel like I've seen recently more an emphasis on what the Commandant calls the reconnaissance and counter reconnaissance fight.

So still lethal capabilities, it kind of austere and small and low signature bases in maybe the first island chain, but potentially less emphasis on the anti-surface fires and a little bit more on enabling capabilities for the joint force. John, moving forward in your article, you talk about the Littoral Combat Team. So can you describe that for us? And how is it different than the Marine Corps' traditional operating organization, the Marine Corps Expeditionary Unit that we organize and deploy all over the world? this document is on on the public and it's the tentative manual for expedition advanced space operations and in there it recognizes basically us standing up of two distinct units one is the marine littoral regiment and one is the 2030 marine expedition unit and the littoral

combat team is the is the core combatant element of that marine littoral regiment Its mission statement is that it builds and it operates and command and controls multiple EABs that can be either fires, forward army refueling, so FARP, or a combination of them, and provides command and control over those EABs and basically fights them. So in a sense, it is more or less equivalent to the ground combat element of the Marine Expedition Unit. And then you have to juxtapose this next to the 2030 Mew, which is an evolution of the current Mew that is a reinforced infantry battalion with basically every single joint fires and enabling capabilities that a battalion commander could want. so it basically adds additional more higher capability air power it gives you precision munitions it gives you more more precision firepower more reconnaissance and also more robust logistics so i guess how i describe the littoral combat team and how it differs from a Mew is that the Mew and it's also it's Mew 2030 is still a infantry base maneuver element maneuver

combat team while the littoral combat team is fights a more static fight against naval assets from multiple expedition advanced base that support each other via reconnaissance and supporting fire supporting fires and logistics and just to be clear when we're talking about a littoral combat team is that that's based around an infantry organization at what size the doctrine right now says an infantry combat team that's that is centered around a battalion size unit so a battalion added with additional enabling units okay so now kind of getting into your your argument that you made in in proceedings you suggest a less infantry centric littoral combat team so can you tell us maybe what both uh why you you think that would be a

better fit um and what that would look like and how it might be organized a little bit differently so i'll start by saying hey uh i i approach this problem more as how i was trained as an engineer versus the marine corps which is how they're trained um i think the marine corps basically starts all problems with a rifleman and his weapon and how that could how to enable the rifleman to solve a problem of killing the enemy um i approach a problem a little differently so um i'll give the example of the fairchild a10 as an example um the engineers at fairchild realized that in order to destroy soviet tanks in the in the western europe theater that they needed a large 30 millimeter cannon rotary cannon to destroy tanks and they're realizing they need

to utilize that and attack tanks from above so they put the gun first that's the effective weapon and basically built the plane that effectively utilizes that that weapon system so let's take this take that approach into the in the new battlefield in the western pacific so what does the Marine Corps want to kill? They want to kill ships and aircraft. What kills advanced DDGs and fourth and fifth generation combat aircraft? It is advanced anti-ship missiles and advanced anti-air missiles. So let's start with that platform. So I'll take the ship part just for an example. So what do you need to effectively utilize an anti-ship missile? You need the firing platform you need a robust fire direction center you need robust communications to

enable that and to enable the command and control nodes to talk to each other and then you also need a extremely robust sensor that could reach beyond the range of our next generation anti-ship missiles which is which you're talking 150 200 miles and if you take that as totality that itself is more than a battalion's worth of people expertise and equipment and to to give that task to a infantry battalion and to attach some fires elements to it and say hey figure it out i don't think that's the right way to approach the problem so what i would say is hey form that kill chain of the archer the sensor the commander and the communication link and figure out how to best protect it and

allow it to kill ships the best way like the same way we built the a10 by saying hey we figure out the most effective weapon against the threat and build the plane around it and that's how i kind I've got to my conclusion of utilizing a building the LCT, taking out the infantry-centric focus and putting in fires and FARP elements inside the LCT. Because that's what its mission statement as stated in the tentative manual say. So I'm really not arguing that the LCT should have a different mission. But I'm simply arguing that for the mission that the Marine Corps wants to assign the LCT, perhaps they should take a different approach to solving that problem and designing a unit that kills ships as the Marine Corps wants to. I think that's a really interesting argument. And some of our listeners may know that a couple of years ago, kind of before we had received the EABO concept documents and the force design program, I made a somewhat similar argument that basically said, hey, look, if we want to work on sea denial, the infantry, you know, and I say this as an infantry officer, is not the key capability. And I thought that kind of culturally that's going to be a kind of mental block, a framing block for some of the force design efforts, because the organization, as you know, has always been about every Marine or rifleman, you know, and I think that served the organization really well.

But if your mission, like you're saying, is sinking warships, right, infantry doesn't necessarily have a role in that. I think some people would be quick to say, well, you need local security. You know, you've got to secure these these FARB sites or these EAB sites. And I would flip that on its head and say, well, if every Marine is supposed to be a rifleman, you don't need dedicated infantrymen to secure austere bases, right? They should, you know, these airmen and these logistics Marines should be able to do that themselves. So I'm very interested to see as well kind of where the organization goes, because my read on the situation is that the Marine Corps is still kind of in experimentation. And I think that to some degree, they almost have to leave the infantry somewhat at the core of the organization during some of the early experimentation, just because it's built in and that change will have to come a little bit more slowly. But I think, John, you certainly got some good points there for why we might have to do it differently. so actually you actually bring up a great point about uh hey why can't logistics marines and why

can't air wing marines protect their their farm sites um you're absolutely correct uh that's actually part of my my article and there is a good portion that says hey uh the infantry mindset of being able to fight the enemy and take the fight to the enemy in the most austere conditions is that requirement only increases because of how EABs will be operating inside enemy weapon engagement zone and logistics will be extremely strained. And the tenacity and the resourcefulness

that infantry Marines show, that skill will have to be bred into all the other branches, all the other communities inside the Marine Corps. And currently, I think that's something that the non-infantry community can work on and if you want me to elaborate into that I can from especially my experience inside a city battalion yeah I mean I think that's a really good point and you know as much as I'd hope to say you know we know every Marines are riflemen and every Marine gets gets a certain level of of basic infantry training it's not you know perhaps

as much as it should be. And I think like you're saying, moving forward, that's going to be critical, especially if we want to operationalize the EABO concept. So yeah, if you could give us a little bit more about your perspective from being inside a CEB battalion, I think that'd be great. So just as a correction here, not a CEB, but a CEB, a construction battalion. So the um the naval construction force um so i think i'm i have a little bit of experience in speaking to the infantry infantry ization of a non-combat type so cbs officers and enlisted alike we show up to a naval mobile construction battalion at mcb with zero training in firearms, in field skills, and in any infantry tactics.

But our unit is expected to go in harm's way and construct general construction to code in combat zones, historically including Fallujah, Afghanistan, Vietnam, and all the way back in history into Iwo Jima. and that means that infantry skills has to be taught to us after the fact that we checked into our ultimate destination units a lot of the skills are

taught second hand or on OJT by more senior CVs and more importantly our ISIC Naval Construction Group 1 has a training cell that of senior

infantry marines whose task is to embed into a battalion and teach the junior folks, junior officers, and junior CVs how to survive on the field. It takes basically every time we end the

deployment and we return to home port, we conduct exercises that build confidence in their ability to operate a fire team, squad, platoon, armored convoys, And we build those skills almost every year.

So I think as the Marine Corps perhaps take the focus away from dedicated infantry and need to instill that toughness and infantry mindset into the rest of the Corps, perhaps a dedicated infantry training cell that adds infantry style training into a workup cycle might be a good path. And honestly, skills like that atrophy quite quickly. I was out in the field for three weeks practicing that skill, especially motorized convoy operations. And I've been out of that course for about six months, and I tried to remember what BAMSIS was today, and I couldn't remember what M was. So I think to instill that skill, I think non-infantry units need a certain cell of competent infantry Marines to add that training basically every workup cycle to keep

those skills sharp. Yeah, I think that's an interesting point. And I do think there are some units that have a couple of representatives that work on that. And certainly when during the workup cycle for a MEU or a larger deployment, these non-infantry units get kind of integrated in for some of the training. But definitely the questions about what kind of skills do units need and what kind of skills do we need to be hosted at an EAB, I think are really good questions. I want to ask about integration between the Seabees, Naval Construction Battalions, and Marine Corps Engineers, right? Because I think a lot of Marines understand that the Seabees exist and they understand that the Marine Corps has engineer communities, but they're not exactly

sure how those organizations work together. And I think I saw recently a Marine Corps general saying that there might be kind of hybrid organizations formed, or I think he used the term pioneer battalions. And certainly our commandant has messaged that EABO is going to have a lot tighter Navy and Marine Corps integration. So I was just wondering if on your and in the naval, in the CB community, you've seen movement or exercises or conversations about integrating Navy and Marine Corps engineering.

Yes, I'll talk to that. So traditionally, per the MAGTAP concept operations, a Mew will actually deploy if they are to, with a company-sized CB organization called an air detachment. It forms the fourth component on top of the ground combat, air combat,

logistics combat elements, and it engineers the battlefield for the Mew Commander. I mean, that's the traditional role that a frontline line CB unit will play in a traditional MAGTAP unit. We still fill that role, but moving forward, I think we are in a tighter communication and cooperation with the marine engineering community.

Most closely, we work hand-in-hand with marine wing support squadrons and also engineering support battalions. Currently, in our AO, as we are forward deployed, I don't think I want to say exactly where, but we actually have Marine Corps Marines in our sites, augmenting our capabilities, and they are an essential part to our organization, even in peacetime, and I'm sure even more in times of conflict. um in terms of more terms of integration i think that um we're in that process but we have to make

sure that there are some things that marines are really really good at and there are something that stevies are very very good at and the difficulty or the devil in the detail will be to identify where that is and to build organizations that complement each other um as you said the pioneer battalions that that are going to be coming up in the marine corps maybe i'll talk to perhaps a few of those strengths and having being around um marines both in the esb and the mwss i think marines are extremely competent in in battle skills if you tell a marine engineer to go build a berm this high and this much they will execute it and they'll get it done no matter what i think what cbs do better at is as a community is to integrate it for example cbs have both a tactical

organization formed the fire team squads and platoons and we also have our construction organization which we where we have titles such as crew crew leaders project supervisor quality control and safety supervisor the same same way a construction site would and we jump around on that depending on the needs of the projects or needs of the task while the marines stick to their military organizations in despite in engineering and military tasks the cbs do a good job of of integrating specific parts that battle drills that marines do very well and basically making into a product that the entire battle space commander might need So basically, if a new commander says, I want to land aircraft here, I feel like a marine captain, engineering captain would be like, okay, sir, I have this FARB site all kitted up in my, like in a Tricon, I could spread it out for you and set it up to you in three days.

while a cb lieutenant a detachment oic will be like okay um let me go draw up a print let me go buy some stuff off the off the local land and i'll build you one that will last you maybe two months but i won't need any any total from you and we'll design it and we'll make it work and we'll tape it together so i think that's the kind of differences that we have and i don't know exactly where we will interface the best. And that is actually going to be probably my next project and a project that my community is very interested in solving in the next few years. I think that's really interesting because, yeah, I wanted to kind of know what's the capability difference, but it seems almost like you're suggesting that it's as much as a kind of a

cultural or a mindset difference in how the Marine Corps engineer community is different from the the Navy CV community so as we're kind of getting to the end of the podcast here I wanted to kind of leave you with like a general question do you know do you have any kind of final recommendations for for EABO or the Marine Corps Force Design 2030 from the perspective of a Navy engineer I mean, what, you know, what do you, besides obviously what you've laid out for us already and in your article, what other kind of general recommendations do you have from where you sit? I guess I will make this recommendation more as an engineer than someone in the Navy. I know that change is very drastic. And from everything I've read, I haven't met the man,

but it seems like General Berger is bent on transforming the Marine Corps in his tenure. And I know a lot of people, it was frightening to see infantry battalions get smaller. It was frightening to see tanks disappear. but i would say that this is absolutely necessary in as we retool and refit for the next fight ahead and lastly i want to give out a basically a shout out to a kind of an often unseen part of the navy it's called the naval expedition combat command and in a sense that's the type type command that It consists of my fellow Seabees, Coastal River Marine Forces, and a lot of logistics people, a lot of the people that's honestly going to set up the EABs and the Advanced Naval Bases that is going to serve as the link between the Marine Corps and the Navy. So I think we're up to some great stuff and I want to make sure that everyone sees us on the horizon as they go about in their careers.

we usually have pretty faded nw type uniforms because we've been wearing it longer than the other rest of the navy has and um sometimes we look like marines that are in less good shape but look like marines so say hi to us when you have a chance the listeners can't see it John, but obviously you know that I'm smiling. Another piece of writing that I did was basically what is the NEC, the NECC, which is what was called before they reorganized it into the NECF, the Naval Expeditionary Combat Forces, because I think, like you're saying, that's going to be an absolutely essential organization that is often, I don't want to say forgotten because that sounds too strong, but sometimes not remembered, I guess, in conversations. And I think that's an absolutely key piece of the Navy for the Marine Corps to be integrating with. And I would, I guess, challenge you a little bit because I, you know, instead of scary or frightening, I think it's a really exciting time to be in the Marine Corps. And I think that the change is creating a lot of opportunities. But at the same time, I think, you know, there is a cost of change.

And I think this is kind of what you were getting at. there is a cost of change. And there are going to be, I guess you could say casualties of change, whether or not they're career casualties or something like that for Marines that don't want to or have a more difficult time adapting. But I do think that it's an exciting time to be a Marine. And unfortunately, we're almost out of time for today. But before we go, I'd just like to ask, you know, what you're working on. You mentioned you were working on something for your community. But if you're working on any more writing that you intend to publish and anywhere that our listeners might be able to find you online. Currently, I do have a couple more

pieces that I think it's at a readable stage. I've sent it around to periodicals that I regularly read. And if they think it's good, you might see more works from me. They'll primarily be about eabos and another big interest that i have is the shore infrastructure that sustains the afloat fleet so that's another academic interest of mine and that's another thing i'll be writing on and hopefully getting good enough writing to publish awesome well we look forward to seeing it obviously it seems like we understand the uh the tension between having a having a day job and and trying to get content out there on the web as well. I'd like to thank my guest, Jong-Soo Kim, for joining us today to talk about his recent essay, Design the Littoral Combat Team Around Its Core Mission,

that was published in USNI Proceedings and won first place in the Marine Corps Essay Contest. Take care. © BF-WATCH TV 2021 We'll be right back.