Defense News – A study on amphibious warship requirements that will help inform upcoming budgets is looking less likely to yield the results the U.S. Marine Corps wants.

USNI News – About 200 soldiers with the JGSDF’s 2nd Amphibious Rapid Deployment Regiment are training with I Marine Expeditionary Force and Amphibious Squadron 5 for the bilateral exercise that began in 2006.

Marine Corps Gazette – James Holmes reminds us that the home team has the advantage

1945 – James Holmes says that the US Marines are right to downplay fixed facilities and defenses as a warfighting implement.

Naval News – In order to cover the “tyranny of distance” problem of hundreds to thousands of miles from the objective(s), attacking nations will require a naval force for amphibious assault.  Thus, the USMC is developing Land-based Anti-ship Missile units centered on the 6×6 HIMARS, the Tactical Maritime Tomahawk missile, and the 4×4 JLTV.

USNI News – The Navy and Marine Corps are testing out whether Littoral Combat Ships armed with anti-ship missiles could be key to how the Marines employe their island-hopping strategy in the Pacific.

War Zone – With the Marine Corps deeply overhauling its combat doctrine, the F-35C could become more relevant, leading to shifts in procurement.

USNI Blog – Long-range precision fires (LRPF) is one of the five modernization areas that the U.S. Army is focusing on for future ground battlefield dominance, and for the longestLRPF, we’re mainly discussing missiles.

USNI Proceedings – The Marine Corps should leverage its security cooperation expertise to gain and maintain persistent access during expeditionary advanced base ops.

USNI News – The Marine Corps will keep its fleet of decades-old Amphibious Assault Vehicles out of the water except in emergencies, the service announced on Wednesday.

Defense News – The U.S. Marine Corps is in a vulnerable position as it prepares for fiscal 2023, having made enough progress on its Force Design 2030 effort that it shed a significant amount of outdated capabilities but is lacking replacements.

Breaking Defense – The Marine Corps today published a new warfighting concept, dubbed “Stand-In Forces,” describing the need for small, “lethal” forces that can also work at levels below combat to counter what’s often referred to as “gray zone” aggression from rivals like China.

USNI Proceedings – Marines can be part of the solution to countering China’s antiaccess/area-denial strategy.

Naval News – The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in collaboration with Lockheed Martin are developing the OpFires mobile medium-range hypersonic missile assembly to fit on the back of an U.S. Army’s Palletized Load System (PLS) 5-axle 10×10 truck. OpFires will provide the U.S. Army with a highly mobile vehicle for firing hypersonic missiles that is independent of the tractor and trailer combination for the longer-range (strategic) hypersonic missiles. The U.S. Marines may also be interested in OpFires as they use the similar Logistic Vehicle Replacement System (LVSR) 10×10 truck.

USNI Proceedings – For expeditionary advanced base operations, Marine Corps littoral regiments must be less infantry-centric, designed to intercept ships and aircraft, and be able to establish forward arming and refueling points.

Defense News – As the U.S. Marine Corps continues to reshape the force through the commandant’s Force Design 2030 effort and the recently released Talent Management 2030 plan, cyber and information warfare Marines in the future may be further empowered to use their digital skills to create operational advantages for kinetic forces.

War Zone – Just as with the aging CH-53Es it will replace, scenes like this aboard CH-53Ks will become a staple of Marine infantry for decades to come. 

War Zone – The ‘suicide drones’ will allow Marine light armored units to surveil the battlefield and strike targets with pinpoint precision from up above.

Breaking Defense – The Marine Corps has dubbed its new ground-based, anti-ship missile as a top modernization priority and integral to the commandant’s Force Design 2030 efforts. Having progressed from an idea inside the Pentagon to a functional weapon on the shores of Hawaii in roughly two years’ time, NMESIS has quickly made a name for itself even beyond the tortured acronym.

USNI News – The LCS might be ready for a new mission – moving Marines across the Indo-Pacific. As the U.S. Navy navigates a new era of strategic competition with China in a constrained fiscal environment, the service could turn to one of its pained ship programs to help perform the Marines Corps’ Expeditionary Advanced Based Operations (EABO) island-hopping campaign in the Pacific.

Defense News – Raytheon Technologies is pushing its aircraft precision landing system out to more customers globally, making it easier for allied navies to cross-deck on each other’s ships and for Marine jets to island-hop as high-end warfare concepts push the fleet in those directions.

Naval News – The Navy/Marine Corps Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System (NMESIS) is set to become operational in 2023, Naval News has learned from Marine Corps Systems Command.

USNI News – Ten Marines and at least one Navy hospital corpsman are among the 13 U.S. troops dead following the two suicide bomb attacks on crowds struggling to get into the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul on Thursday.

USNI News – More than 2,000 Marines were supporting evacuation operations and security in Afghanistan, a senior official said Thursday, as the U.S. military hopes to maintain a semblance of control to process more Americans, Afghans and other evacuees onto military transport planes at the Hamid Karzai International Airport.

Meanwhile, more than 200 infantry Marines along with detachments of heavy vehicle crews are embarked on USS Arlington (LPD-24) to support humanitarian aid and disaster relief operations in Haiti after the devastating Aug. 14 magnitude-7.2 earthquake, the service said.

War on the Rocks – It is time to station marines in Alaska. The Marine Corps needs Alaska to train. It needs Alaska to deter aggression in vital U.S. littoral regions such as the Bering Strait and the Northwest Passage. And, most importantly, it needs a location from which it can respond in a controlled manner to crises and hostile actions in the Western Pacific.