– 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.

– Defense News – The Marine Corps could soon get the Navy’s new Naval Strike Missile for use as a shore battery.

– Defense News – The U.S. Marine Corps is looking for long-range unmanned surface vessels to resupply Marines on islands scattered around the Pacific, and Textron Systems thinks it has a solution.

– USNI News – Amphib USS Bataan (LHD-5) is operating in the Red Sea as tensions between the U.S. and Iran continue to simmer.

– US Marine Corps University – The first graphic novel of short stories about future war released by the Krulak Center via Marine Corps University Press.

– War on the Rocks – The Marine Corps is embarking on a 10-year restructuring to align itself with the National Defense Strategy, but in doing so, it risks ignoring the last 70 years of its history.

– USNI News – Amid rising tensions with Iran, the Navy is scrapping an exercise with Morocco as it redirects amphibious assault ship USS Bataan (LHD-5) and embarked 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit to the Middle East

– War on the Rocks – As the Marine Corps reorients towards great power competition in the Pacific, it faces the harsh reality that the uncontested maritime maneuver-space it once took for granted — upon which more than $3.4 trillion of annual international maritime trade and America’s most influential companies increasingly depend — is now blanketed with dense layers of Chinese long-range missile weapons engagement zones.

– War on the Rocks – The rapid and creative combination of small, cheap, flexible systems represents a new theory of victory: mosaic warfare.

– USNI News – The Bataan Amphibious Ready Group (ARG) is now deployed after picking up Marines from the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) on Thursday.

– USNI News – Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. David Berger previewed a shift in focus for the Marine Corps soon after taking over the job this summer, with his Commandant’s Planning Guidance. Now, he’s previewing what that shift will mean for the gear the Marines use and how they spend their money, writing in an essay in War on the Rocks that the service is over-invested in gear to support traditional land wars and under-invested in naval expeditionary capabilities.

– C4ISRNet – The Marine Corps is building new information command centers that will help commanders better understand the information environment.

– C4ISRNet – To keep up with the changing nature of war and in response to nations such as China and Russia restructuring their militaries around a consolidated information warfare discipline, senior leaders at the Navy and Marine Corps recently said they are looking to boost their own prowess in that area.

– War on the Rocks – The Commandant says the Marine Corps is not optimized to meet the bold demands of the National Defense Strategy.

– USNI News – After an eight-month deployment to the Middle East and Indo-Pacific, one thing the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit won’t offload this week is a platoon of M1A1 Abrams main battle tanks.

– USNI Proceedings – Land-based weapon systems hold tremendous promise in helping the Navy control the littorals.

– CIMSEC – Because of its size and relative lack of contribution to Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations, the Ground Combat Element and Marine infantry are the right places to start divesting to make room for the future.

– USNI Blog – A short story about a fictional Marine operation in 2020.

– Breaking Defense – The ambitious USMC Commandant says the exercises are shock testing “what we will expect to see in a realistic fight where large forces are spread out over great distances.”

– Marine Corps Times – The concept that set the Marine Corps apart from the other services decades ago, the one that set up a particular way of warfare for generations of Marines, is no longer untouchable. The Marine Air-Ground Task Force may remain the way the Marines want to fight but increasingly it may not be what they will deliver when steel meets steel, especially in maritime spaces.

– CIMSEC – The strength of the Navy and Marine Corps team is the use of seaborne mobility to achieve effects on land. New aviation platforms can reinvigorate this for the 21st century, making both the Navy and Marine Corps more survivable, deadly, and integrated.

– War Zone – The Marines are inching closer and closer to executing their “Lightning Carrier” concept that would see amphibious assault ships bristle with F-35Bs.