Sea Control - Sea Control 550 - Six Marines Talk Force Design 2030

Episode Date: September 29, 2024

Links: C. Travis Reese, et al. “Trends in Maritime Challenges Indicate Force Design 2030 is the Proper Path,” War on the Rocks (January 29, 2024). “Force Design 2030,” Headquarters US Marine Corps, (March 2020). “Force Design 2030: Annual Update,” Headquarters US Marine Corps, (June 2023). Bios: C. Travis Reese retired from the Marine Corps after nearly 21 years of service. While on active duty he served in a variety of billets including tours in capabilities development, future scenario design, and institutional strategy. Mr. Reese is now the director of wargaming and net assessment for Troika Solutions in Reston, VA.Ian T. Brown recently retired from the Marine Corps after 20 years of service. He frequently writes (and wargames) on modern and future war concepts. Ian currently works as a wargame analyst in the private sector.Zach Ota is an infantry officer and an international affairs officer in the Marine Corps. LtCol Ota is also a non-resident fellow at the Brute Krulak Center for Innovation and Future Warfare who advances issues involving maritime security, alliances and partnerships, and military history in the Pacific. LtCol Ota currently serves as a future operations planner at U.S. Pacific Fleet and U.S. Marine Corps Forces, Pacific.Travis Hord is an infantry officer. LtCol Hord contributed to future concept and capability development while assigned as a planner at the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory.Leo Spaeder is the commanding officer of Combat Logistics Battalion 12 in Okinawa, Japan and a non-resident fellow at Marine Corps University’s Brute Krulak Center for Innovation & Future Warfare. In previous assignments, LtCol Spaeder participated in scenario design and capability development related to Force Design 2030. Brian Strom is an intelligence officer in the Marine Corps. Major Strom currently serves as the Marine Corps Forces Pacific Target Intelligence Officer and as part of the U.S. Pacific Fleet staff.Twitter:@CTReese2@MAGTravF@zach_ota@ian_tb03@WDMills1992@PHLexpat

Welcome aboard the Sea Control Podcast from the Center for International Maritime Security. I'm Walker Mills, and my guests today are Travis Reese, Ian Brown, Zach Oda, Travis Hoard, Leo Spader, and Brian Strom. We've got a large group of active duty and retired Marine officers. We're going to discuss the essay they recently wrote for War on the Rocks, Trends and Maritime Challenges Indicate Force Design 2030 is the Proper Path. And we'll talk about the Marine Corps' efforts at force design generally. You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International Maritime Security. Gentlemen, welcome aboard. Could you start by telling the listeners a bit more about your background? And we'll start with Zach.

Hey, hello, everybody. Lieutenant Colonel Zach Ota here. I'm a Marine Infantry Officer and an International Affairs Officer, currently working at Marford PAC and in support of PAC Fleet as our Naval Integration Officer. Ian Brown. Hi, Walker and everybody. Glad to be back here. I think this is the second time I've been on the seat control we talked about at Wargaming with Sebastian ages ago. But yeah, I recently retired from the Marine Corps after 20 years of service. I was a CH-53 helicopter pilot. I did some other stuff to improve being a forward air controller with Zach when we were all together at 1-7 back in the dark time of 2010.

And I currently serve as a wargame analyst at Group W, which does a lot of wargame and other research analytical work for the Marine Corps and other parts of the UOD. Hey, it's Tech Girl Leo Spader. I am a logistics officer, magtap planner, and red teamer. I'm currently serving as the commanding officer of Combat Logistics Battalion 12, and I'm here because I spent four years in combat development and integration from 2018 to 2022 working for State. Travis Reese. Hi, y'all.

So, Travis Reese, I was a Marine officer for 21 years, artillery primary, and then, of course, like many of the guys on this podcast, did the advanced study course, so I completed saw got my payback with a second marine logistics group uh spent a lot of time between uh infamous deployments combat deployments through the force development process also as a integration officer at cd and i retired out of the commonwealth's office in 2016 went back to work for the marine corps at the warfighting lab with leo and in 2017 doing uh scenarios that eventually were used for force design 2030 and then since then have been uh supporting the marine corps in various positions currently supporting LogCom right now, doing global positioning network and cadet logistics work.

Travis Hort. Hello, everybody. Lieutenant Colonel Travis Hort here, infantry officer, also a MAGTAP planner, currently a student at the Joint Advanced Warfighting School with the other compatriots here. You know, worked at the warfighting lab right across the hallway from VO. He's in plant enzyme and future concept. So also able to see the capabilities development and integration process from a different angle, which has been a very, very interesting thing to do and then go into command and be able to interact with things like small UAS and loitering munitions, you know, and see what we're actually using those things today in reality. So thanks for having me. And Brian Strom.

Major Brian Strom. I'm the Morphor Pack G2 Target Intelligence Officer. I'm with Lieutenant Colonel Oda down at Pack Fleet, providing my time there. I'm a Ground Intelligence Officer, now MAGTAP Intelligence Officer. Awesome. We are excited to have everybody aboard. For the listeners, just a note, I haven't had six guests on the podcast at the same time before, so we're excited to do this. Another note, as always, all the opinions presented here are our own and not reflective of any of the institutions with which we might otherwise be associated. Just to kind of get us started here and provide some context, can we talk about what is the whole force design 2030 thing for the Marine Corps? Obviously, we as Marine Corps officers have been in it for a few years now, and so we're familiar with it. But I suspect that many of the listeners, even if they may have heard of it, certainly don't, aren't as deep in it. So I think I'm the earliest into it and probably have, from my career vantage point, saw the pedigree as it moved forward, particularly coming into the Commandant's office in 2014 after my last deployment in Afghanistan. So General Amos is watching the trends in A2AD. He's got the Ellis Group, which at Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory, so that thicker cell had been formed as a way to do some deep study information on changes in amphibious operations and try to get back to maritime routes, which had always been the struggle for the Marine Corps inside of the global war on terror years and OEF, OIF deployments. So come 2015, as withdrawal efforts are starting to hit, too, within Iraq and Afghanistan, and the intention was to leave, certainly we all saw the aftermath of how that worked out, what was going to have to happen relative to the emergence of Russia and China. So General Amos starts a series of amphibious war games. That gets played out, and he does, just before he and General Dunford transition,

they do a final game, and they do this demonstration of where A2AD, anti-access air denial, is going in terms of maritime trends. That's also influenced in the quadrennial defense review in 2014 with General McKenzie when he did that, also as his assignment for the Marine Corps. So they patch those two issues together, and General Dunford goes into his commandancy and says, all right, I've got an A2AD problem. I also know that I have a naval integration requirement, and so says to effectively the larger body of general officers, I need everybody to start getting naval smart again in the same way that our general officers were true navalists coming into World War II and their services with the fleet. Also, this A2AD problem that's sitting out there is something that can't be retreated from. It has to be overcome. It's the modern challenge.

And then we have to restore freedom of maneuver back to the Marine Corps. Obviously, he gets his one-year tenure in the commonwealth and hands off to General Neller. It just happened to be that I was a writer on General Dunford's commonwealth's planning guidance. And so I'd seen some of this thinking. And then I was the last man standing from that transition team. And so I'd also been assigned to be the lead writer for General Neller's FRAGO-01. So when he made the initial comment into his commandantcy that we aren't trained, manned, or equipped to deal with the near-peer threats that were coming from China and Russia, still with a national defense strategy to be built that included, you know, a little bit more of its characterization of what we see in Korea and Iran, he begins to carry that through his commandantcy and begins his force design efforts, Marine Corps 2025 being the most notable. That layer below that is General Berger is sitting in key positions while he's watching those three commandants come together with the hypothesis about the modern challenge. So he's seeing it from a division standpoint. He's seeing it from a MEF standpoint as a one MEF commander, and he watches it as a MARFOR PAC commander.

So I went out to MARFOR PAC in 2018 or 2019 and saw the Expeditionary Warrior and the MAGTAP Warrior series of war games that were going on. Expeditionary Warrior, which was kind of led by the Ellis Group on behalf of the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory, was an operational level look. And then MAGTAP Warrior would take a tactical question from the EWs, and then it would try to address some particular challenge. In that year that General Berger was Mar-4 PAC, that series was done at Mar-4 PAC headquarters. And then the tactical MAGTAP warrior was actually done at Okinawa, and it was a logistics and transportation challenge. So as General Berger leaves Marford PAC and becomes CD&I and begins looking at that final problem, that's where Leo and I met, working and developing the first scenario that would be used for the wargaming that was tested for Design 2030. And that's because that was directed in the National Defense Strategy, and it was the scenario that Secretary Mattis chose from of the seven that had been selected. somebody had to start the process. And so we did that. And Leo and I actually led a little bit of a joint reform on how some of those scenarios got built. And Leo was my green planner as I was leading the Purple OPT and so built really the Marine Corps' first conception of that. So as General Berger then gets selected for his common oxy and he's writing his CPG because I was

adjacent to the people who'd been tasked to write that and had written the two previous ones or been a writer on the two previous ones, I kind of get consulted a little bit too. We're literally watching the formulation of the last three commandant come together and congeal inside of his commandant's planning guidance with the imperative that is given in the 2018-2019 National Defense Strategy and Defense Planning Guidance. So, Pop, as this thing emerges and he makes his initial announcement that we're going to move into a force design 2030, one, the year had been preselected by Secretary Mattis. And two, most of those changes were pretty well informed before he got there with some nuances about where he wanted to explore and be a little bit more bold. So that's the inception of Forth Design 2030. Just from the near term and the continuum, kind of resolved itself for the planning guidance, and then it goes forward. And so from that point, that's kind of what you're seeing as the start point for Forth Design 2030. Wow. Yeah, I mean, we're lucky to have here, like, multiple folks that were kind of involved through the duration of it. And I think, you know, the important takeaway there is that the Force Design 2030 effort has deep roots in the Marine Corps that, like you're saying, you know, goes back three Commandants and now with Commandant Smith, who's continuing to carry it forward. It's not something that just came out of nowhere. Are there kind of contextual geopolitical changes? I mean, obviously, like you mentioned, the kind of pivot away from Iraq and Afghanistan, but are there other things kind of outside of the Marine Corps that were pushing the Marine Corps to think in this new direction? This is where you really lean into the major pivot that the Trump administration took with the national security strategy, actively laying out that China is being the major adversary that we have.

And then Secretary Mattis, his national defense strategy. I mean, those were the two driving documents that we could talk about this classification. And certainly there are other more specific guidance given at the classified level through the defense planning guidance that really gave the Marine Corps a mandate that undergirds these changes. And then on top of that, I know it's one of the most controversial parts, but the divest to invest portion, there was the study based on how would you execute the 2018 National Defense Strategy. It required a 5% top line addition every year, plus whatever inflation took away from purchasing power. And that just wasn't going to happen. So those are really the major drivers of it. The civilian leadership said, this is where we're going.

The Marine Corps, here's what we need you to do. and then just be able to read the budgetary route and say, hey, this is what is going to drive you a bit on how you are going to do it because you're not talking budgets. I'll pick up on Leo's point that integrated naval force structure assessment to the ANSFA,

which was really a combination between the Capabilities Development Director in the Marine Corps, CDNI, and then the OPNAT M9. And so there was a requirement to reconcile from the beginning where the naval portion of these two would merge because of the dependency on China as the pacing threat

and a lot of water got across it, big geographic problem and also big mobility challenge. Like how do you position yourself towards that? Now, from the planning shop perspective where Leo and I were sitting at the time too, because we were aware of other scenarios that were extensions of things that had been worked on for other adversaries,

it was interesting to kind of watch like, hey, Pacific's really hard and it's really the more difficult challenge, But the closer you get to some of the European challenges or some of the Mideast challenges, some of these solutions are a little bit easier to enact. There's less of a territory distance. The geography is not as difficult. So, which is kind of helping us to peer out the window when we fast forward to what we wrote in the article. But the point being was it was always integrated.

It always had a naval voice involved in it. And there was always a joint assessment going on. And in the end, everybody, you know, as Leo pointed to, had issues with the budget. There had to be a way to recoup monies that weren't there. And the only way to do that was to take that window of risk that General Berger looked at and said, hey, if the adversary is not really going to be ready until 2027 or 2028, I have a very limited period of time where I can take some chess pieces off the table and replace them either with planned procurement or future procurement options through experimentation. the things that we discover, because I can buy that risk right now, because the best assessment is the adversary isn't necessarily ready to go at full max. They're doing other things. They're problematic. They weren't necessarily letting us go, but there was that window to be able to achieve

some of those changes and outcomes. So in a very good calculated way, it was, we've got a window of time where we can do this. For those who think that divest to invest didn't necessarily work, in fact, it kind of worked in the record's favor because we were really the first to come to the table and say, we're willing to get rid of some things. We're ready to recoup this. This is a weird budgetary predicament too. We haven't had really anything between the Budget Control Act and those reductions with sequester and then also with the CRs. And the Marine Corps kind of got rewarded for that too, because they were showing a clear plan forward about where they wanted to invest. And those additional monies that were available were provided into the Marine Corps

2, $2 billion above requested top line. So there was $18 billion for the Marine Corps to continue its current procurement and to also look at experimentation. So that's kind of where we ended up. Well, Travis, you had an ad. Yes. And I'll read a sentence or two directly from an ad manual for Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations here.

While Travis and Leo are working in plans, simultaneously, a manual is being written or capabilities that haven't quite been palmed for for unit structures that actually don't exist to lead the experimentation of this and right up front the naval aspect NDP-1 had

just been updated and came out linked to that, identified that the crux of the challenge for naval forces is fighting an enemy that seeks to avoid direct fleet engagement while offering battle under a mixed umbrella of land-based and airborne long-range precision fires and we leaned heavily on uh you

know captain wayne hughes there in his statement that said with those novel capabilities as they increasingly are proliferated that there will be increased tactical interaction between landward and seaward forces and he nailed that and that that was our anchor uh as we were designing a manual for the fms to think back to that and really get after what does that look like in the modern era because there has been many examples of that in history well i think uh you know travis the second travis brings up a good point and for the sake of being an artist broker you know you'll never find a document that says from the navy this is what i want the marine corps to do uh and then And going to what Travis Reese had mentioned, the initial mandate from General Amos was going back to our amphibious roots.

And then Travis Ward was really talking about going back to our naval roots and not just saying this is the one aspect that we do. But there's a bit of a field of dreams aspect of what do we think that Navy is going to need in our maritime campaign and building it for that portion. Because there was never a requirement document from the CNO to the Commandant saying, I need help on X, Y, and Z. So, you know, I just wanted to make sure that that's added to the record. And the Marine Corps is going out on a limb a little bit and hoping that the Navy is going to want these capabilities. And again, I think the takeaways here for the audience are that there are different things kind of converging that bring us force design 2030. You know, we have a U.S. national security policy shift vis-a-vis China. We have the 2018 national security strategy.

There's more interest in going back to naval routes. Ryan, you also had something you wanted to say kind of about threat-informed stuff going into Force Design 2030. Yeah, I think a key thing from the intel perspective is force design being threat informed. And sort of a backstory to all of this is watching the People's Republic of China and the People's Liberation Army, as well as a bunch of other threats, investing in capabilities that are not only incredibly alarming, but very tailored towards the way we fight wars or fought wars up to this point as an integrated naval service. So that's one of the things that I think is novel. I think it's a point of contention because I think there's this false dichotomy between threat-informed and threat-agnostic. But it was very, very much from the beginning informed by people from the intelligence community coming in with, here's the latest, best guess as to what the enemy's capability is. Here's the direction it's going. Here's our forecasts for how much time we have. And while that pushes you towards being focused on the People's Liberation Army as that key threat, it's not the only threat. And I think that, you know, it's key to note that they're put out as the pacing threat. They're not the only threat. They're the ones running fastest to catch up to us. And I think when you get into the arguments we're making in the article, that's kind of the point we're making is, you know, we're seeing this pattern of enemy or adversary adaptation across the globe, not just with the one hardest problem set, but across the portfolio that was set out in the national security strategy. Pick up on Brian's point. This is first, Travis. You know, one of the things that we also saw when Leo and I were designing scenarios and looking across, you know, the trends in the NDS was there were only so many ways to challenge the US and our capabilities. And so many of the adversaries were doing things that were exactly similar. China having, too, the longest problem and the most volumerific challenge, is the best way to describe it in terms of challenging us and the allies and partners, was the most expansive and the most technically sophisticated.

But when we looked across at Russia and Iran and others that were named adversaries in the unclass side of the house, they were developing precision missile capability, maritime control capabilities, all of the other hypersonic threats, all of the other things, too, that were almost exactly similar. Because there's only so many ways to take on the U.S. and those capabilities that we provide to do. So there was measure and countermeasure getting played along the entire time. And then kind of following back to Leo's point, too, you know, it wasn't necessarily about convincing the Navy per se. That's historically been a similar pattern. There's always been the Marines as the arm of the fleet, landward arm. Here's some things we're trying to develop to make sure that the maritime campaigning is successful for you. the Navy had some focuses and we had to bring them back into this position to kind of understand

where that would change and potentially enable the fleet. And so historically, that's not been a different problem for the Marine Corps too, to get alignment with the Navy initially too. And so to the degree that that pattern had to be repeated, and it's sort of the disposition of both services, the one want to do their own thing until there's some alignment forced. And in this case, Congress probably a forcing function too. We were prepared to see the differences and then kind of work through it through war gaming and experimentation. So now that we've kind of unpacked where force design has come from and the different, I would say, overlapping things that have kind of informed it and influenced it, what is it? And I know that's kind of a loaded question because it's a moving target, right? Initially, the first Force Design 2030 document was released in 2020. They had the General Berger's Commandant's Planning Guidance in 2019 that kind of foreshadowed a lot of those changes. And then we've had annual updates for Force Design in 2021, 2022, 2023. I'm sure that this year we will see Commandant's Planning Guidance from General Smith and an update this year.

I'll try to put links to those beneath the show for listeners if they want to actually read in those documents. And they're not terribly long, and they're written for a general audience, so they're good to look at. What's a good summary of actually the changes that are going on or some of the big shifts that listeners may or may not have heard of? Ian, do you want to take that one? You know, I don't claim any special insight into the details of the changes because I spent all of General Berger's competency at Marine Corps University. However, if I didn't know where I was, one of the efforts I undertook was using the webinar outreach program that we had was to try and capture the many different changes that were coming out of force design to build a better picture that this was not just a been sort of stereotyped as force design means Marine Corps has no tanks and the rest of the Marine Corps is sitting on islands in the Pacific in the defense with a bunch of rockets. And that simply is not the case. And so the wide sweeping aspect of this as an effort to pull all the components of the Marine Corps into the 21st century, whether it's 21st century technology, methods of organizing combat units, or how you handle your own people, that's what I tried to cover. And so these are just some of the entities that force design sort of touches on that I had talked to in the course of that to give you a sense of the diversity and the breadth of the changes.

We talked to McTissa about how force design, how technologies were going to impact how the break for interfaces with JADC2 concepts. We talked with McTogg about how large units are going to train to these settings out in 29 bombs and live exercises. We talked to Weapon Training Battalion about how, even down to the tactical level of the riflemen, what changes are being done to the marksmanship tables to improve the lethality of the individual Marine. Talked to CD&I about the talent management aspect in terms of treating Marines more as not as the interchangeable parts or like, you know, the name that fills a slide or a slot on a spreadsheet, but as individuals who have their own talents and aspirations and how you can maximize the individual achieving those, you know, achieving those aspirations, using their talents where they're helpful and also helping the Marine Corps capitalize on that across the board. You know, we talked to different aspects of the operating forces, how it hit their wheelhouses. So we talked with General Donovan and his senior enlisted or senior enlisted Navy advisor for Task Force 61, TAC-2, which anyone who's ever who's been listening or has read stuff in War on the Rocks or probably on Sea Control has heard about what Task Force 61, TAC-2 did. That was out in European theater. Scott Cuomo or Colonel Scott Cuomo has said it extensively.

But that was the implementation, the practical implementation of the reconnaissance, counter-reconnaissance, using some of the new technologies and widening the aperture of what a Marine force deployed abroad could do in terms of the reconnaissance, counter-reconnaissance to help the fleet fight. We talked with members of the MEP information groups about how the information side hits it. We talked with how does force design hit the Marine Reserve Forces, as well as South Com. And we also looked at some of the aspects of wargaming, different slices of force design changes in an unclassified commercial off-the-shelf environment to sort of go beyond the tagline that there were these wargames that nobody saw, as we don't know what happened, and they all sucked. Well, wargaming has continued in multiple senses, and we helped students do the research projects that were focused on certain smaller aspects of force design, using those unclassified wargames to further explore strengths, weaknesses, and areas of improvement. And I recall one of the most fantastic outputs of that was using the commercial game Command Modern Operations for a, he was captain of the UWS, but he had gotten a problem from one of the artillery regiments out in Indo-Pacom who were shifting from tube artillery to rocket artillery. And they were trying, they were using a student and a CODS war game to look at like low-hanging fruit of what are the big problems in terms of ranging, in terms of resupply, in terms of placement of these things. Let's use a war game to do that. And so we helped this student directly inform the practical application of the horse design changes that fed into what an operational unit was doing and how they were going to make horse design happen for them. Zach, did you have a follow-up?

Yeah, Walker, I wanted to share a personal story about what horse design is, at least to me, in my opinion. I had been in Thermotine and Thermorines when a lot of these changes were coming up between 2015 to 2018. Some would say it's the best of a True Batine in the Marine Corps. It is, in fact, the one true America of the time in the Marine Corps. But I did average on that story. Anyway, so, you know, 2015 to 2018, we're third battalion, third Marines stationed here in Hawaii, the predecessor to, you know, what is now the 3rd MLR, the Marine List War Regiment. And, you know, in that epoch, we had been, you know, deploying to Okinawa, Japan, primarily as part of our unit deployment program, the UDP, as some may know. And in particular, when I was a company commander there, we had the chance to participate in Exercise Valiant Shield in Guam and the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands.

And that had been built and is still built as, you know, the United States' largest U.S.-only venue for training in some of these maritime and expeditionary challenges that we're dealing with here in the 21st century. And one thing that struck me in 2016 when we executed it was that we got tasked to support rapid insertion of high-mobility multiple launch rocket systems and defend a beachhead, right? It's something that you would think is very common or should be expected of an infantryman's height to do. And remember, we're sitting on the beach of Tinian Island, looking out on the shoreline, right, defending at the water's edge, as we like to say as Marines, right? And, you know, my weapons platoon commander comes up to me, a very savvy guy named Pete Corbett, and he comes up to me and says, sir, you know, like, if we were to do this for real, how would we actually defend this beach, right? I was like, well, you give them the standard infantry answers, right? Hop them a lot. Hey, you know, we're going to mass surprise fires. And as they come ashore, we're going to, you know, direct our fires on their critical vulnerabilities. And he goes, yeah, but, you know, really, what is that going to look like with the weapons we have, right? You know, is it going to be 81 millimeter mortars? Like, are we shooting out to 5,700 meters at max range?

You know, are we shooting our toes, but the toes can't shoot over water? Can our javelins lock on to these amphibious craft coming in the shore? Can our heavy machine guns have the PDFs necessary to inflict damage on Chinese ZBDs or whatever may be coming in towards us? And he nailed it in a nutshell, you know, right? If we're looking at the Marine Corps in at least the 2016 epoch, right, when we were out there in Valley Shield, We do not have a lot of these capabilities to do what many people would think is a standard infantry task, to defend against an amphibious assault by a potential adversary in the Western Pacific.

And if you look at it now, right, those capabilities are exponential. You know, the Naval Strike Missile, Rogue Nemesis, these autonomous vehicles and autonomous missiles that can shoot out 10, 20, 30 times farther and have greater effects against amphibious vessels and maritime vessels than we could have ever have dreamed of in 2016. So if you look from 2016 to 2024 where we're at now, and think about all those changes that have occurred to allow us to do one of our most essential tasks is Marine infantry, I think that sums up Fort Stanton 2030 pretty well in a nutshell. Exactly. That makes a lot of sense. And it also kind of speaks to me because I was a platoon commander in 2016, 17, 18, you know, as the Marine Corps started to become a little bit more interested in what was going on in the Pacific and people were asking questions exactly like, I mean, I remember asking questions like that. Like, how would we actually do this? We actually don't really have any of the gear and equipment, let alone the doctrine. And I think you've actually written about for War on the Rocks also the joint doctrine that would be required to do a sort of anti-landing defense or a counter amphibious defense. It's shifting to what you guys actually mostly wrote about in the War on the Rocks piece, which was looking at Ukraine and looking at what's going on in the Red Sea.

But how does that inform what's going on with force design and perhaps validate or not validate some of the changes that have been going on in the Marine Corps? And what does that tell us about the future or changes in the kind of maritime and amphibious environment? I'll jump in there with Travis Fortier. So just from a capabilities-centric view of what these actors in both of these locations are doing, you've got the Black Sea, got an invasion that does not have a Navy, and then look at what the Black Sea fleet is, the state of what it's at right now. You've got a threat actor in a location at a key maritime choke point along the Red Sea, also not having a Navy, employing novel capabilities that are generating effects in the blue part of the map. In both of these, the capabilities and systems that are being employed are presenting a huge cost offset for their opponent. So when you take a look at what force design is getting after, the Marine Corps as the landward component of our fleet, what would you build? How would you design a force with like capabilities that is directly linked to enabling a fleet or a task group in motion?

That's how I see the from a capabilities base view. That is how I see that playing out and just taking that and not cherry picking just those things, because there are other capabilities that are being used in modern conflict that is a high debate. I don't want to walk down the artillery, the tank, is the tank worth it in modern warfare? That it is not. So it was not meant to cherry pick what was working. It was saying, this is what is going on around us right now. Never being afraid to go back to design, never being afraid to update your assumptions. What does sea control and the ability to temporally generate sea denial from the landward side of a littoral area? That's what we're seeing. That was the main crux of what drove me to this and to be a part of this effort. Yeah, and I think that's where the Red Sea scenario really, I think, kind of confirms where force design is going for that portion. It is a very comparable threat in the fact of the Ukraine scenario does have a lot of good portions of it. The problem is it involves Russians that have not shown themselves and draped themselves in glory of warfighting competence. So it's easy to kind of dismiss that. But the Red Sea portion, in terms of on the receiving end, is really the majority is the U.S. Navy. So a very capable adversary who knows how to warfight. And the Houthis are doing a great job. And lest we forget, the Houthis have been targeted by U.S. weapons, essentially, from Saudi Arabia going on nine years now.

So when you talk about survivability of small elements on the landward portion of the littoral and having impacts, I mean, the duties are great, ignoring all their other baggage that they are reprehensible people. But if you look at a capability of a landward littoral, small units having impacts to the seaward, that validates a lot of those portions. And lest we forget as well, the Marine Corps is a very small budget compared to the rest of the DOD. So when you're talking about using the democratization of long-range precision fires, the Marine Corps is in that same conversation, especially against major elements that are building capital-intensive platforms like aircraft carriers, freezers and destroyers, amphibious platforms. That is really a pretty good proxy for the U.S. Navy, which is also a very good proxy for the People's Liberation Army Navy. Brian Strom here. I think one other aspect where you can look at this is not only the sea control from the landward side, but what happens when you don't contest that, right? In the case of the Russian example, exactly correct. They have not been able to have the naval freedom of movement in the Black Sea because they don't have that capability to fight in the West, to counter the complex kill chains or the novel weapon systems that are being arrayed against them.

On the Houthi side, the Red Sea scenario, you can see that it validates this idea of the pacing threat by looking at the most technologically advanced furthest along this technology chain adversary. We've developed capabilities that also allow the naval force to persist in the West. And I think it's important to understand something like the MLR or some of our, you know, other units that are doing reconnaissance, counter reconnaissance, all these different aspects of force design is they're not only looking at the defensive aspect, but they're looking at enabling, you know, the ability for the naval force to gain entry. It's just as big a part of JFAO or joint forceful entry operations as it is, you know, defending allies and partners against these emerging threats. I'm just going to throw one more thing on top of that to sort of zoom out a little bit more in terms of, you know, what the sea control, sea denial from the landward side has been accomplished by both the Houthis and the Ukrainians. It's not just that the Russians or U.S. Navy can't use their military ships in the way they want. It is either the closing or the defense of sea lines of communications that feed into, like, larger questions of how you sustain an intensive ground campaign in the case of Ukraine. You know, but going into things like maritime trade, not just for your economy, but to be able to continue to generate all those things in the background that it takes to keep a force in the field, like the protection of the sea line and communication through the Black Sea. It's embarrassing because the Russians can't move their ships in there and they can't, you know, use their they use their surface vessels initially to do long range fire support from the Black Sea.

And now they've been denied that, which is good because it makes it harder for their innocent missiles to run into the way of those terrible apartment buildings and hospitals. But it is keeping that sea line communication open for trade and economic traffic, allowing grain to flow out from Ukraine and other goods to flow in. That keeps the larger economy of that country in the fight. And also, this is sort of falling off the radar because of the success of this. The access to that grain has staved off serious economic and second-order effect political stability problems in the countries and areas of the world that depend on it. If Russia had successfully closed off the grain route, we would probably be talking about some other problems in Africa and other parts of the world that absolutely depend on that grain. And the fact that that is quiet now is a significant example of why keeping sea lines of communication open and how using a landward force to do that can impact much larger questions than just the immediate naval contest that's going on around a certain maritime domain. I think those are really well-taken points. And we can kind of see as we zoom out that specifically the Red Sea, but also what's going on in the Black Sea is validating kind of a tactical level, some of the logic behind Forest Design 2030. But like Ian and Brian were also saying, it also kind of validates the macro idea that sea lines of communication are important, and they're worth spending resources to defend. The United States and major nations like Russia and China can lose or have their sea lines of communication contested by what should be weaker, less capable forces. So it kind of validates force design 2030 at multiple levels. I mean, I remember when I first read your article, it really spoke to me. I just thought it was a really smart argument and a way to kind of validate force design. But that being said, we also know that there are still folks out there who have strongly criticized force design 2030 and are not in favor of some of the changes that the Marine Corps has been embarking on for the last few years.

despite the context that we talked about and despite those kind of long roots. I think the criticism has kind of slackened a little bit, but there was a period where there were lots of articles coming out against Force Design 2030. And I was just kind of asking somebody to play devil's advocate here, but is there anyone who would want to kind of describe what some of those criticisms were and then perhaps counter them and provide the counter argument? I'll start with the second point first in Zad. It's one of our other questions. Things that could have been improved or done better with force design and i think one of the aspects and this is something general burger and the later forces i update sort of acknowledged was explaining

yourself the in public the initial force design documents and you guys can pull me back on the rails if i'm wrong is that it seemed right it seemed it did not but it seemed to emphasize certain things over certain other things which then became points in which the critics kind of latched on to and then as further force design updates came out there was a you know sort of better explanation of some of the non-long-range fires aspects or the divestiture of certain urban platforms. But at that point, some of the initial negative interpretations had already taken root and proved rather difficult to displace once they'd taken root. So I think better messaging was tacitly realized and tried to be done from headquarters and Marine Corps

after it came out. But in terms of both the criticism campaign as a bandit, I mean, we've all seen it. And then I think anyone who's listened to Exceed Control or Red World War on the rocks where we published our bit is sort of a coordinated article writing campaign from a number of prominent retired Marine Corps, mostly general officers, but there were some, you know, retired field grade as well, who were in there, who felt very strongly that this was a bad idea for the Marine Corps as a whole, and in a sort of a two to three year campaign to make their case, if you will. And as I think, I forget who said it, that campaign sort of peaked last year. And as has run out as has been clear that force design is going to continue, seems very likely to continue with

modification under General Smith. But then in the midst of that, it's also been endorsed by the people who hold the purse rings in Congress. At the height of the criticism a couple of years ago, there were a number or two at least letters that were published by former Marines in Congress who came out publicly and said, no, we agree with what force design is trying to do. We understand the strategic context in which force design has been implemented. And oh, by the way, we think they should do it faster because the challenges abroad with both the pacing threat and other threats are only getting worse. We need more of this and we need it faster, not going back to the drawing board and trying to recreate the best of the late 20th century magtaps and anybody to Jerry

or regulatory constraints. Does anyone else have anything to add there? Yeah, Travis, we're here. In terms of, to Ian's point, the messaging to the internal audience aspect, the initial focus on perhaps geographically because of linked to what the pacing threat meant and some of the long range capabilities. But it also left some functional communities grasping for, you know, I'm an infantry officer. What is the value proposition of the infantry in this endeavor? Truly, and again, this is I'm talking here, it is to locate, close, move, and destroy the enemy. None of that has changed in all of this. How you fulfill that mission statement in 2024 looks fundamentally different than the histories that we study in previous maritime campaigns, right? So from a historic standpoint, sometimes we're our own institutional worst enemies because we study like the 10,000 yards of sea prior to the island, what the beach landing site looked like, and then the subsequent blue arrows once ashore. But we don't really do a good job institutionally of focusing on how did the Marine Corps contribute to getting – how did you get there? How was the larger fleet fighting this problem and what Marine Corps units were specialized at the time?

And I'm thinking Marine Defense Battalions specifically to hold open sea lines of communication and to enable large amphibious landings. You know, taking it back a few minutes where we said there is no one document that says this is what the Navy is telling the Marine Corps to do. In that World War II era, in the run-up to that in the 30s, that clearly wasn't the, you know, Goldwater-Nichols, Title X hadn't occurred yet. The CNO told Commandant Holcomb, well before any of the divisions were even called divisions, that structure existed, the CNO told the Commandant, you will make me Marine Defense Battalions. They will be organized and directly linked to support the advanced base theory of which was being operated on. So bring it back to now, there is huge advances in really every functional community that is benefiting from this larger process. and how do you learn the best from observing current conflict? How do you institutionalize those lessons learned? And how do you work within the system, work within the constraints of perhaps divest to invest? I would argue that no one probably wants to do it that way, but that's the best way to do it right now with just how the joint force and other contributing factors

are playing out, but a Marine battalion that is able to learn from the lessons of how do you employ the aerial robotics to enhance traditional capabilities by way of targeting? How do you obviate the danger of a forward observer by using an aerial sensor to make some really good, effective, responsive fires? That's just one example. And one last point on that, this is not to say that there's any type of meager imaging or short-sightedness on our joint force learning from those current lessons, because there's also dangers there. There's a reason why first-person view striking drones are manifesting in the Donbass today. There is no air dominance or local air superiority in any way, shape, or form. So how do those two belligerents still try to

generate effects to break through relatively static lines. They're using those systems. The takeaway from that is we should get rid of everything and pretend that small UAS or any other type of thing is going to replace on-boarder or a Carl Gustav or something like that. It is taking a real in earnest look of what do these modern capability mean? How do we quickly integrate them within our force? And how do we set up the supporting establishment? How do we transform our doctrine to make this a part of our force? Because if you don't, you're going to end up with a platform-centric view and a lot of wasted time and effort and going back and saying, you know, what was it that we thought we needed this for? And oh, by the way, we didn't train anyone to use it. What the campaign of learning is, combat development integration specific term on how they're learning from this, that's a pretty robust process. The assessments process there is huge. It's good to run fast with scissors and try to break things, but also being very aware of the downstream training requirements and all of the other functional areas that you need to set up in parallel with any type of system or capability being added to the force structures. I think those are all kind of well-taken points. And I would just kind of add that watching this from my own perspective as someone far outside of the halls of the Pentagon and headquarters Marine Corps, it did seem to me criticism of force design somewhat transcended beyond, you know, what you would hope is a kind of a measured debate and critique over large changes to the institution and almost reached maybe like a level of personal animus.

or there was some kind of emotional attachment to some of those critiques, you know, and I think there's some kind of parallels you could draw there anytime that large organizations undergo a period of change, whether transformational or not, there's going to be some conflict, because change almost by necessity means there's going to be winners and losers in the kind of capabilities and vision and communities and even people. So I think it's important to kind of recognize that. But at the same time, like we did mention, the force design, the current changes have kind of been endorsed by the current generation of Marine Corps leadership. And certainly the Marine Corps can't make those changes if they're not endorsed by Congress

and the Department of Defense. So the Marine Corps is just not able to make these changes by itself. And kind of before we wrap up here, I'd like to ask one more question. How did this paper come together? I mean, we've got kind of field-grade intelligentsia of the Marine Corps here, you know, six really smart people that have written probably between the six of you, dozens of different articles and across the different publications. How did this coalesce? Because you're, the listeners can't see, but you're obviously not all in the same place. You're kind of scattered across the globe. Yeah, that's a great question. So to kind of add to how this came together, I think Walker, from your perspective and from the audience's

perspective, you know, Travis Race here again, this is the power of networks and this is the power of generations talking together amongst the Marine Corps and younger and older really coming into the marketplace of ideas and taking off any of those restraints of seniority or experience and just really letting everybody have at it. So into the discussion you talked about, what was the resistance to Force Design 2030? That's really put a lot of people into having dialogue together. Interestingly, Riot Evans, the editor at War of the Rocks, had made a comment about some of the Houthi capabilities in a tweet. I was like, okay.

So I responded and said, yeah, this isn't dissimilar to some of the things that the Marine Corps is trying right now. There's a lesson to be pulled from this. And so he sent me a note and said, would you like to write an article on this? I'm like, no, yes, okay. So at that point in time, though,

I realized that this was not a discussion that I should be controlling, dominating, having, leading in any regard. I've got a perspective that comes from a little bit of that history and experience. But the rest of these, you know, Marines here have contributed intensely to this dialogue and have some insights. You know, we take a couple infantry officers, an aviator, a logistician, you know, an intelligence officer and say, hey, what are you all seeing in terms of this collective trend? Because we really wanted to put out there this understanding that, hey, over the last four or five years of experimentation, it's not time to have an internal dialogue.

It's time to look out the window a little bit, see what's happening in the world, and see if we can't make a determination if that trend is supporting or not supporting what the Marine Corps is doing and what they're being funded and encouraged to do. And so how did everybody come together? Knowing full well that everybody here has participated, like you said, at some point in time in writing an article or leading an interview or helping create the broader appreciation and understanding of what's happening in force design are sitting inside the cells right now trying to wrestle with these problems as they move from conception to practice. Like, you know, the things that Leo and Zach and Brian discovered daily from their different pukas about what it takes to actually make this thing come together with the Navy is

fascinating to me. And so I was like, I can't write this alone. Put up the bat signal, led the flare and said, all right, let's bring in our perspectives. This is also a bit of a payback too, because Leo and I wrote another article for War on the Rocks on the scenario writing process. And Leo was the junior amongst the three other senior co-writers there. So it was my turn to actually take the editing and the ciphering a little bit here, too. But certainly from that perspective, that's how the team came together. But this is how it's been done from the Marine Corps through ages. These kinds of dialogues that started the Marine Corps Association and the wrestling with ideas in Nicaragua and the Banana Wars and that era and then going forward into World War II and all the challenges that happened in the interwar years. This is all how it's been done. We didn't do anything different historically.

We just happen to have a different venue to publish in and to talk about it. It's a great story and all kind of part of it in the Marine Corps. And we're glad that you came together and wrote that piece because now we get to talk about it and people get to know what's going on inside the Marine Corps. But I think that's about all the time we have for today. So I'd like to thank my six guests, Travis Reese, Ian Brown, Zach Oda, Travis Hoard, Leo Spader, and Brian Strom for joining us today to talk about Force Design 2030 and their recent War on the Rocks essay, Trends in Maritime Challenges Indicate Force Design 2030 is the Proper Path. And the question that we always end with on the podcast is, gentlemen, where, if anywhere, can we find you online? And what are you working on next that we can look forward to reading or listening to or engaging with in some other way? All right, I'll lead off. You can find me on the platform formerly known as Twitter at CTReese2. Also LinkedIn, which, you know, where some of the dialogue happens. Things I'm working on right now, so because I'm supporting the Marine Corps on contested logistics questions, I encourage everybody to look at the Association of Marine Corps Logisticians and their summer symposium, where I'll probably do a war game that builds on something we did last year. and so continue to work that question, which is probably the next big issue

that needs to be resolved and probably will take some prominence in this coming year. Zach, I'll turn it over to you. Yeah, thanks, Travis. For those of you who do follow on the platform, follow me on Twitter. I'm at Zach underscore Ota. Obviously, what I'm working on currently and always is, you know, strengthening this approach with our allies and partners and in conjunction with our Navy. And if you want to learn more, I think really the best place to go and look

and learn more about Fort Design is with our allies. So, you know, the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force and their previous Rapid Deployment Brigade, the Australian Army and the Australian Defense Force, who are optimizing for operations in the littorals, turning their 1st Brigade in Darwin into a littoral maneuver brigade with our Filipino counterparts, who are both in the Maricopa Army, focusing on coastal defense and acquiring anti-ship missiles. I think that's the best place to look at how 4C9 is reverberating throughout the world and throughout our theater. and sorry i'll turn it over to ian to make sure it's moving over there i'll take that and i'll hand it off to someone else for shortly where you can find me um i'm probably one of those terminally online people so if you look up entb on most of the media social platforms um in some variation you'll find me on there in terms of what i'm working on aside from getting adjusted to civilian life i'm two years behind on another book about john boyd and some of his ideas about

conflict. Although I think that delay may actually make it more valuable because he talks a lot about, I think, what we've been seeing, unfortunately, in Ukraine, in Israel and Gaza, especially in terms of how information is used to support strategic goals. So that will get done hopefully at some point this year. But also for anyone looking to, on the lighter side, my first commercially available war game is available through the Dietz Foundation. For Marines, you'll immediately recognize the title because it's called maneuver warfare but it's a deck construction type game and i tried to gamify certain marine core concepts um doctrine terminology as well as uh again some of pulling in from real world things that we've been seeing around the

world um especially in ukraine and the indo and the south china sea heavily influenced by that and try and put it in a portable um easy to play easy understand and hopefully fun fashion and leo i'll send it over to you perfect i x or tweet whatever we're calling it now at phl expat you know mostly just shit posting but the occasional nugget comes out of there uh right now uh kind of workshopping with uh zach of a chapter that we have to do as brute crew lack center non-resident fellows for a book that's coming out later this year uh and then also working on a comparative analysis between world war ii era malta and singapore uh versus our current bases in the indo-pacific specifically okinawa i'm not sure what venue yet still need

to find that at home still need to write it run it out of time here uh with command and two little kids so that's what i'm doing try this word yeah thanks you can find me at magtraf the next piece working forward uh trying to hammer out something for proceedings that focuses on the intelligent robotics and autonomous systems not on the platforms themselves but what are the uh the talent management, the manpower approach, something that I alluded to earlier on coalescing requirements for specialization. And what is the, not Navy Marine Corps, what is the naval approach for a robotics occupational field? You'll see some stuff coming out here very soon from the Navy as they're standing up a robotics rating. It's an exciting time. There's some parallels in there,

you know, as Ukraine has announced a separate robotics drone service, if you will. That'll be my next piece as i'm finishing out here in the the school year and then uh we'll be moving back up to the the dc area here in the summer um as i'll find myself in the pentagon so that's where i'm at i think brian i think uh i think you're up nick you can find me i in the gal i'm on twitter with these guys too the thing about social media is it's like smoking except democracy gets cancer so you know it's all of our bad habits together the thing i'm really putting a lot of thought to And, you know, one, I'd like to thank everyone here, Travis, for pulling me into this. I have the most meager DV when it comes to writing. Most of the things I write end up classified. And so trying to break that trend. And the thing I've been thinking about a lot is kind of the asymmetries in C2 that are coming out because of force design, the family integrated targeting cells, how we're fighting with the Navy. And it's very interesting to me that we're building a system where some of our Edge 5 units, you know, at the O5 command level, O6 command level, have more C2, multi-domain C2 capability than we have at Morpho and we would have at Division.

What if it was flat? What if any unit has the same C2 capability? Or also, what does that mean when perhaps your ability to command is different than your ability to control? If C2 or C5 ISRT, if you want to, we can add some more Cs to that acronym. It's going to just keep growing. What does it look like when you have D-based symmetries in that I can provide control, but I can't provide, you know, receive commands, or I can receive, you know, receive commands, but I can't give that bottom-up control? So that's kind of what I've been thinking about a lot based on what I've been doing in my day job, and I'm going to try to put together something in that space to try and

payback being brought in with this fine group of individuals. Thank you all again for joining us. Sounds like we've got a lot of stuff to look forward to reading, and hopefully we can invite you all back on the podcast. Thanks again for joining us. And to the listeners, thanks for tuning in. We'll see you next time. Help me for one bully in the alley, way, hey, bully in the alley, help me for one bully in the alley, bully down the shimbo now.

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