– 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.

– War on the Rocks – In the post-Cold War era, amphibious assault forces have not been the most capable part of the U.S. Navy. In the years after 9/11 — while the Marine Corps was engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan and not embarked in amphibious ships — the amphibious-assault fleet was, at best, an afterthought. Today, the Marine Corps is largely disengaged from land-centric conflicts and, in a move spearheaded by two former commandants, is “returning to its amphibious roots,” signaling a new emphasis on amphibious warfare.

– USNI Blog – It is important that the Marine Corps quickly take the lead in the expeditionary fires realm. However, it needs to leverage Army air defense and artillery capabilities and contacts to bring the idea to fruition and ultimately link-up under a Navy command and control umbrella.

– USNI News – The Marine Corps’ ongoing Sea Dragon experimentation campaign is working on one of the most pressing issues the naval force faces: how to incorporate the Marine Corps into the Navy’s battle for sea control.

– War Zone – Using the cargo ship helps reduce demand on warships and puts more Marines in more places at any given time.

– USNI News – The Marine Corps may have expanded its use of ground-based Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Forces (SP-MAGTFs) in response to a shortage of amphibious ships to carry Marines around the globe, but Marine Corps leadership says the service is committed to these units even as the number of available amphibious ships is rising.

– USNI News – Today’s sailors and Marines have grown proficient at operating in the heat and sands of the Middle East, but the bitter cold and jagged lava rocks of Iceland in October is a new challenge to most of them.

– War on the Rocks – As other great powers rise and swaths of the world fall victim to civil war and instability, policymakers are reconsidering and debating the roles and missions of America’s military services. The U.S. Marine Corps, of course, is not immune. What should the Marine Corps of the future look like? How can it deter and wage war against advanced peer competitors? And how can it do so in a way that complements the needs and efforts of the other services, most especially the U.S. Navy?

– War on the Rocks – The Warbots concept is certainly creative, but it is a right of boom solution for a left of boom world, and consequently risks ceding strategic ground.

– UPI – About 700 Marines have deployed to Norway, the first deployment of a larger Marine Corps presence in the country following a request earlier this year.

– Marine Corps Times – The winner of a contract to develop the Marine Corps new amphibious combat vehicle, the first of its kind in four decades, showcased a potential variant that would give commanders eyes on all areas of the littoral battlefield, on-board drones and targeted hand offs to any ACV in their formations.

– USNI News – Striking the right balance between funding today’s force and funding new capabilities for the future has always been a challenge, but Marine Corps leaders have firmly come down on the side of favoring modernization to win in a future fight.

– War Zone – The debut combat missions for American Joint Strike Fighters came after the same jets conducted armed reconnaissance patrols near Somalia.

– War on the Rocks – The purpose of this article: a dispatch from four marines to our naval service leadership and the American people sharing ideas on how the Marine Corps can help the Navy, the joint force, and our allies win by averting — or, if necessary, succeeding in — the speculative Great Indo-Pacific War in 2025. This can be accomplished by maximizing the use of lethal, coordinated, and swarming Warbot combat teams. These distributed marines will be able to strike adversaries from every direction, both within the littorals as well as at stand-off range. In so doing, they’ll enable friendly naval maneuver, reassure allies, create countless “no win” dilemmas for adversaries, and buy space and time for U.S. policymakers.

– USNI News – The Marine Corps has canceled its Amphibious Assault Vehicle Survivability Upgrade effort with SAIC and will instead focus its efforts on the Amphibious Combat Vehicle that will eventually replace the AAV.