– 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.

– 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.