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The capability to come ashore where the enemy is not present, then, move quickly with sustainable combat power great distances over land to operational objectives in the interior, is essential. Subsequently, in 1991 Marines were used ashore to augment the Army where Marines followed an Army armor brigade from Fort Hood, Texas, all the way to Kuwait City. The use of Marines to assault Iraq’s southern coast during Desert Storm was dismissed out of hand as too dangerous, particularly when Navy surface combatants struck sea mines in the Persian Gulf. This Marine force is designed for use in the developing world against incapable opponents from Haiti to Fiji, but not much else.

Most of today’s Marine force consists of airmobile light infantry. These mobile reserves will attack within the range of the defending forces’ own artillery and airpower to destroy elements that attempt to come ashore whether over the beach or through ports. They’ll employ their ground forces, particularly mobile armored forces, inland, away from the coast. Today, enemy forces will mine approaches from the sea, and rely on stand-off attack to drive surface fleets away from coastlines. aircraft from the Air Force and the Navy will easily target and destroy the defenses. No one will set out to establish a defended beachhead because U.S. The only wet-well ships they need are LSD 41s - and those need to be kept in production to gradually replace older LSDs and the troublesome LPDs.

The only amphibious craft they really need are the next-gen LCACs and LCUs. In truth, the Marines have a low-end warfare niche, but a very small one for extremely limited and unusual types of operations. They have company in the Army’s XVIII Airborne Corps. The Marines as currently organized and equipped are about as relevant as the Army’s horse cavalry in the 1930s and the Marines are not alone. In shorthand, “Rah, rah, the Marine Corps is awesome, and all we have to do is make sure they have the equipment & training & facilities they need so they can always be awesome Marines, rah, rah!” Follow Commandant James Amos’ recent remarks on the future of the corps can be summed up as: nothing new.