– USNI News – The Marine Corps is learning how to incorporate its new F-35B Joint Strike Fighter jets into its island-hopping concept of Expeditionary Advance Base Operations, with the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit rehearsing this concept recently in the Pacific.

– War on the Rocks – According to the Ptolemaic model, the Earth is at the center of the universe, with the rest of the universe orbiting around it. According to the heliocentric model, the sun is at the center of the solar system, and the Earth and other planets revolve around it. From even before we earn the title of marine, we are indoctrinated with a Ptolemaic view of Marine Corps history that emphasizes the contribution of the Corps above other services, sometimes at the limit of reality.

– War Zone – As Khalifa Haftar’s militia pushes deeper into Tripoli, Americans in the capital to help the UN-backed government are being whisked to safety.

– USNI News – The Marine Corps is accelerating its F-35C carrier variant Joint Strike Fighter procurement and slowing its F-35B vertical landing variant to support Navy deployment requirements.

– USNI Proceedings – In their search for cyber warfare doctrine, practitioners and leaders need look no further than Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication 1, Warfighting.

– USNI News – As amphibious exercise Pacific Blitz 2019 wraps up today, senior commanders already are reviewing after-action lessons and thinking ahead to future exercises that will help develop, train and prepare forces for fights on the move and close to shore.

– USNI News – Military and industry officials gathered at the Marine Corps Museum in Virginia on Tuesday to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Bell-Boeing V-22 Osprey’s first flight and to welcome in the next era of V-22 operations around the globe.

– War Zone – This would give the service its first long-endurance drones and help pave the way for future unmanned aircraft capabilities.

– USNI News – The Marine Corps’ counter-drone defense system is transitioning from an urgent operational need (UON) to a formal program of record, but the program is trying to retain its speed and agility as it moves into testing and fielding.

– National Interest – HIMARS, then, may look like a humble truck. In reality, it is far more: a tactical implement commanding significant strategic import. As the Marine Corps girds to fight in the air, on land, and sea, it ought to procure anti-ship weapons in bulk—and in haste.

– USNI News – After eight months at sea with a squadron of F-35B Lighting II Joint Strike Fighters, the Marines and the Navy are seeing how the next-generation aircraft will expand the effectiveness of U.S. amphibious forces.

– USNI News – The Marine Corps has put the Amphibious Combat Vehicle through its paces in the eight months since the service selected BAE Systems to build the new wheeled vehicles, using the original 16 ACVs to conduct high surf testing and cold weather/cold water testing around the country.

The vehicle has performed so well in these tests that the service is officially ditching the original plan to gradually insert the full ship-to-shore swim capability – that robust in-water performance was not required in the original ACV 1.1 and would instead be introduced in a later 1.2 increment – and has instead certified that these first vehicles can perform all ship-to-shore missions without assistance from a connector.

– USNI News – The Marine Corps wants to select and field a long-range anti-ship missile “as fast as possible” to support the Navy in a fight for sea control.

– Breaking Defense – Threatened by hundreds of precision-guided munitions now in the hands of Russia and China, the Navy and Marine Corps continue to search for technologies and tactics that will allow them to operate close to the coastline without unsustainable losses.

– War Zone – Structural defects continue to plague the F-35B, which could lead to billions of dollars worth of unflyable, but otherwise young aircraft.

– USNI News – The Marine Corps is preparing for a high-end distributed fight inside island chains in the Pacific, and the service is pushing the Navy to invest in additional weapons and systems for amphibious ships to support this kind of battle in a contested environment.

– War Zone – The USMC is putting its new drone defense capabilities to work in creative ways, like protecting a multi-billion dollar capital ship.

– Breaking Defense – The Marines want Vertical Launch System missile tubes on their new amphibious ships — but the Navy isn’t planning to leave room for them.

– Breaking Defense – The Army is looking at this too but probably on a different timeline — the Marine Corps wants to get after this pretty quickly.

– USNI News – Two Navy amphibious ready groups and about 4,500 shipboard Marines are on standby in the Middle East to support an American exit from Syria if needed.

– War Zone – Persistent technical issues continue to hound the program as the Corps’ aging Super Stallions are in ever more dire need of replacement.

– USNI News – A task force of Marines and sailors recently deployed to islands in Oceania, assisted by a Navy maritime prepositioning cargo ship that added to the growing list of places where the Marine Corps stretched its global reach in 2018.

– USNI Proceedings – To ensure Marine Corps competitiveness in the cyber domain, personnel reforms must address policy, training, and organization, without compromising a warrior ethos.

– USNI Proceedings – Medical support of the sick and wounded is a complicated, resource intensive, and vital aspect of every over-the-sea operation. Over the past 15 years, operational deployments in the Middle East have required U.S. Navy and Marine Corps forces to focus on stability and counterinsurgency operations, but looking ahead, traditional amphibious roles likely will be required once again. During these future operations, how long will it take for a latent but “hopefully” functionally effective medical support system to evolve? Will medical support of the anticipated sea-base concept of operations, for example, suffer the same sad evolution of repetitive mistakes committed during prior amphibious conflicts over the past century? It is imperative that those who bear responsibility for ensuring prompt and competent care is provided to the combat injured examine the lessons of history.

– USNI News – More than 4,500 sailors and Marines with the Kearsarge Amphibious Ready Group (ARG) and embarked 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) departed Norfolk on Monday for a deployment that will likely include visits to Europe and the Middle East.