– War Zone – The training exercises come amid a new spike in hostility with Iran, which uses its own nearby islands to stage various naval operations.

– War on the Rocks – While the world is worried about pandemics, trade, and migration, U.S. defense leaders remain laser focused on treating China as the new pacing threat. Each service has marched in step to the 2018 National Defense Strategy and linked their force modernization to great power competition. The focus of the Marine Corps Commandant’s Planning Guidance and new force design report illustrate this trend. Are the concepts and formations called for in these documents flexible enough to respond to other, more likely conflicts?

– RAND – Naval surface fire support (NSFS) has been a traditional mission of U.S. Navy surface combatants. Although naval guns have been viewed as a major instrument of sea control, they have also been seen, and widely used, as ways to directly influence the battle ashore by providing the equivalent of artillery support for U.S. Marine Corps (USMC) forces operating ashore. Although there is no denying that the Navy and the USMC have viewed NSFS as important, the actual requirements are sometimes vague.

– Traditional Right – William Lind comments on the U.S. Marine Corps future direction.

– War on the Rocks – Marine Commandant Gen. David Berger’s recently published Force Design 2030 has riled up both the “old guard,” who fear for the service’s future, and industry lobbyists, who fear for the future of contracts for amphibious ships and F-35s. The document rationally outlines the changes necessary for the Marine Corps to play its role as the nation’s naval expeditionary force-in-readiness while meeting the modernization and operational requirements laid out in the 2018 National Defense Strategy. Overall the proposal has been positively received, but critics have expressed concern that the proposed force does not hedge for the sorts of wars fought in contingencies like Vietnam, Korea, and Iraq.

– USNI News – The Marine Corps’ new force design may allow East Coast expeditionary units to look much different than West Coast or Japan-based units, a nod to the complex but different environments they’ll operate in and threats they’ll face in the future.

– USNI News – A Marine Corps decision to reduce the number of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters per squadron from 16 to 10 won’t lead to a cut in the total number of planes the service wants to buy just yet – but the commandant warned industry that external factors could lead to programmatic changes down the line.

– Breaking Defense – “Our continued inability to build and sustain an adequate inventory of F-35 pilots leads me to conclude that we must be pragmatic regarding our ability to support” the program,” Gen. David Berger says in a blunt new 10-year force design plan.

– US Marine Corps – This report describes the progress of the Marine Corps on my watch in preparing for the sweeping changes needed to meet the principal challenges facing the institution: effectively playing our role as the nation’s naval expeditionary force-in-readiness, while simultaneously modernizing the force in accordance with the National Defense Strategy (NDS) – and doing both within the fiscal resources we are provided.

– USNI News – The Marine Corps will soon lay out its path to achieve a 2030 force optimized for conflict with China in the littorals – a force that will completely divest of its tanks and slash most of its artillery cannon battalions, instead focusing on developing light mobility options to get around island chains with the assistance of unmanned systems and mobile anti-ship missiles.

– CDR Salamander – Bryan McGrath opines on the USMC’s recent decisions on unmanned air systems.

– USNI News – Navy and Marine Corps leaders are confident a pair of ground-based anti-ship missile programs in support of the Expeditionary Advance Base Operations (EABO) concept is leaving China “just scratching their head” trying to figure out how to counter U.S. naval force advancements.

– CIMSEC – So, with all the calls for integration, where is the Naval Expeditionary Combat Command (NECC)? After all, the Marine Corps itself is a naval expeditionary force according to the Commandant.

– USNI News – The Marines have ditched their plan to field a very large drone on amphibious ships, instead breaking the four-year-old MUX program into a family of systems that will include a very large land-based unmanned aerial vehicle and a medium-sized one for shipboard operations.

– National Interest – Emplaced on islands dotting the Pacific Ocean, HIMARS and kindred missile launchers could give Chinese ships of war a very bad day.

– Defense News – The Marine Corps is all in on fielding mobile anti-ship missiles in the Pacific to challenge China’s growing Navy, declaring it in written testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee’s seapower subcommittee to be its highest ground modernization priority.

– CIMSEC – The path to the level of integration blazed in the interwar period provides a blueprint for integrating today’s Navy and Marine warfighting and warfighters.

– USNI Blog – Among the long list of Navy challenges resulting from cumulative program and budget decisions, two are of particular concern to Marines. The first is near term and centered on the poor availability of the current amphibious force. The second is the growing concern that the present amphibious force, even if funded to a better availability rate, may not be well suited to the likely conditions of modern peer warfare in regard to its primary purpose: the execution of amphibious assaults.

– USNI News – The Navy’s research and development portfolio will devote $30 million to a “next-generation medium amphibious ship design” that will likely be based on an Australian designer’s stern landing vessel.

– Defense News – The U.S. Marine Corps is getting into the ship-killing business, and a new project in development is aimed at making their dreams of harrying the People’s Liberation Army Navy a reality.

– USNI News – The Marine Corps is on a course to overhaul its force design in just a matter of years to better position itself to deter and, if needed, defeat China in the Pacific, the commandant said today. The outcomes of two future force reviews should be publicly released within the next month, he said, though they’re currently waiting for final approval from the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

– War on the Rocks – The Department of the Navy offers the United States the ability to operate forward in the strategically decisive first island chain and its surrounding seas and littorals. If the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps adopt a unified concept of operations, and if they are willing to make big changes to truly integrate as a forward-positioned naval force, they can deny America’s primary adversary, the Chinese Communist Party, its core objectives.

– War on the Rocks – What impact will the team leader, squad leader, platoon commander, and company commander have in the Marine Corps’ future? What can the small-unit leader do to make a difference within the organization?

– War on the Rocks – Setting the Marine Corps back on the right path first requires fixing the structural ways in which the service’s decisions are made and implemented within Headquarters Marine Corps. Without addressing the major imbalances that have led to the service “not [being] organized, trained, equipped, or postured to meet the demands of the rapidly evolving future operating environment,” future commandants will likely find themselves in the same predicaments again and again.

– Breaking Defense – The Marine Corps is moving out on a new land-based missile designed to hold Chinese warships at bay.