Overview Of The United States Marine Corps

Amphibious operations have been a core capability and identity of the United States Marine Corps since its inception. However, the changing nature of war and the ever evolving near-peer threat environment demands that the Marine Corps re-evaluate its traditional amphibious approach and posture itself to address the emerging potential challenges. The future operating environment is likely to require a different and enhanced set of capabilities, tactics, and technologies to succeed. In this essay, I will discuss possible steps that the United States Marine Corps should take to best position itself to conduct amphibious operations in the future.

First, the Marine Corps should invest in long range amphibious ships and surface connectors. In the

Asymmetric warfare often involves unconventional tactics and strategies, such as guerilla warfare, terrorism, and cyberwarfare. The Marine Corps needs to enhance its situational awareness, intelligence, and counterterrorism capabilities to identify, disrupt, and defeat asymmetric threats to amphibious operations. As we learned in the second semester of Expeditionary Warfare School, stand-in forces would be well positioned to work with joint and multinational partners to combat these threats. The commandant defines stand-in forces as forces that are, “small but lethal, low signature, mobile, relatively simple to maintain and sustain forces designed to operate across the competition continuum within a contested area as the leading edge of a maritime defense-in-depth in order to intentionally disrupt the plans of a potential or actual adversary” (A Concept for Stand-in Forces, 2021). The Marine Corps needs to adapt its doctrine to address this evolving threat environment and develop new tactics and technologies. These forces would be able to be spread throughout the first island chain via clandestine amphibious operations and would have an immediate positive impact if a conflict arose with a nearby

This includes investing in advanced training technologies and equipment to enhance the combat readiness and effectiveness of Marines. The Marine Corps should also maintain a high level of readiness across the force by conducting frequent training and exercises with joint and coalition partners. These training events can help identify capability gaps, test new tactics and technologies, and enhance interoperability across the force. There is an opportunity to learn from other world-leading militaries to develop our amphibious operations