A Marine Corps for a Global Century: Expeditionary Maneuver Brigades

Frank G. Hoffman

A globalizing world will place new demands on the U.S. Marine Corps. In such a world, the requirement for rapidly deployable expeditionary forces that are adept at complex contingencies will be much greater and certainly more frequent than the need to engage in simultaneous major theater wars. Developing preventative strategies and shifting locations of potential instability highlight an increased need for rapid strategic deployability and politically viable presence. It also demands greater readiness over a broader mission spectrum, but much of this mission spectrum is in the middle of the scale, in the “small wars” where Marine culture, experience, and history have evidenced a very nuanced and successful performance.

Operational Concepts

The Marines are well aware of the strategic context facing them and have been developing a strategy for matching their contribution to a changed national security emphasis. A new strategic vision and a number of innovative operational concepts have been developed to meet emerging demands. Marine Corps Strategy 21 was recently issued to address how the Marines intend to respond to the complexities of the global century, and two concepts have particular utility in the coming decades.¹

Expeditionary maneuver warfare (EMW) is the latest Corps capstone operational concept.² It is an umbrella concept that incorporates previously published operational concepts including Operational Maneuver from the Sea (OMFTS) and its supporting concept, Ship to Objective Maneuver (STOM). Expeditionary maneuver warfare frames these concepts and their application across the entire spectrum of conflict and combines the Marine warfighting philosophy of maneuver warfare with the Marine expeditionary mindset and culture. Expeditionary maneuver warfare focuses on:

The Marine Corps developed the operational concept OMFTS beginning in the late 1980s, and the Commandant signed it in 1996. It applies maneuver warfare to expeditionary power projection and relies extensively upon the tightly integrated capabilities of the Navy-Marine Corps team. The major underlying tenet of OMFTS is the use of sea-based naval forces. Seabasing facilitates maneuver warfare by eliminating the requirement for an operational pause as the landing force builds combat power ashore, thereby freeing the Marine air-ground task force (MAGTF) from the slow build-up and protection of a traditional beachhead. This allows the force to exploit the sea as maneuver space while applying combat power ashore to achieve the operational objectives. Such a concept affords surprise, the ability to generate mass at a point of choosing, and much greater force protection. The latter is especially valuable in a weapons of mass destruction (WMD) environment or when enemy forces retain a ballistic missile capability.

OMFTS is applicable across the range of military operations, from major theater war to smaller-scale contingencies. It reflects the Corps expeditionary maneuver warfare concept in the context of amphibious operations from a sea base, as it enables the force to maximize effects, exploit opportunity, maintain tempo and initiative, while striking unexpectedly against enemy critical vulnerabilities. OMFTS provides increased operational flexibility through enhanced capabilities for sea-based logistics, fires, and command and control. If this increased operational flexibility is going to be achieved, the deliberate design and integration of naval capabilities is a must.

Operational Forces

Given the complexities of military operations in this millennium, and the revolutionary concepts being offered to drive combat development efforts, it should come as no surprise that the size and shape of military forces must adapt. While new concepts and technologies are clearly called for, equally innovative force designs are needed to maximize the overall impact of these concepts and systems. The Marines understand this, and several experiments have explored various tactical organizational designs from the basic Marine rifle squad to regimental structures designed to conduct widely dispersed operations. Some of these have been controversial.³

However, the full benefit of the technological revolution will never be incorporated if industrial age forces try to laminate new systems on old tactics or outdated structures. A sharply new strategic context mandates new capabilities that are the composite of concepts, technologies, and organizations. Changing only one component of the elements of innovation will retard progress and limit the contributions that the Corps makes to the Nation’s security. Expeditionary maneuver warfare builds on existing concepts of organization, deployment, and employment, and adapts them to the future strategic landscape. Ultimately, adapting the Marines for the dynamic security environment that we find ourselves in will require serious evaluation of new organizational concepts. A fundamental principle in such an evaluation will be the need to view operations as a continuous event from the port of embarkation to the operational objective ashore.

The remainder of this chapter focuses on a proposal for adapting Marine forces to the future strategic landscape and designing forces that are fully ready and capable of executing operations seamlessly from deployment to decisive operations aimed at the operational objective. This proposal details a strategy-driven force structure that is optimized for the latest Corps operational concepts.

Proposal: Expeditionary Maneuver Brigades

The essence of this proposal is a transition from the Marine Corps basic structure of Marine expeditionary forces (MEFs) built around division and wings to MEFs comprised of two expeditionary maneuver brigades (EMBs) each. The active Corps would total 3 MEF headquarters and 6 EMBs of roughly 15,000 marines each. These organizations would not resemble a current Marine expeditionary brigade, as detailed later, nor would they be a mirror image.

In the past, there have been numerous proposals to organize into brigade-based systems.⁴ Earlier proposals were rejected in the 1980s because of the Cold War threat environment and the need for robust combat forces for high-intensity conflict. Proposals made immediately after the demise of the Soviet Union were delayed due to the uncertainty of the emerging security environment and since then to assess new technology and innovative tactics. Proposals also face significant political obstacles since the Marine Corps is shielded by statutory provisions set out by Congress nearly half a century ago.⁵ This legislation prescribes a specific force structure of three divisions and three aircraft wings and associated support. The Marine Corps has been officially reticent to discuss force structure changes but has been willing to debate internally and examine wide-ranging proposals in its experimentation program. In particular, the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory has postulated significantly different force designs in response to threat and technological developments.⁶

Sufficient granularity has been achieved now with respect to U.S. strategic interests and available technologies to evolve toward new organizational alternatives that are more modular and adaptive. Such modular force designs are being used by the Army and should have even greater utility for the Corps given its assigned missions.⁷ In fact, given the tremendous costs postulated for the Army transformation initiative and the growing interest in joint response forces as part of the 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review, there seems to be a growing market for capabilities that the Marine Corps could and should provide the Nation, at a substantially lower cost.⁸

The expeditionary maneuver brigade would still contain the four basic elements of the MAGTF concept.⁹ Each element would be altered, however, as outlined below.

Command Element. Each EMB would be commanded by a major general. The headquarters staff must be robust enough for continuous operations, be capable of independent operations, or serve as a joint task force headquarters. The staff would be kept to a minimum and redesigned to support a joint task force headquarters capability and support rapid and continuous staff planning and oversight processes.

Ground Combat Element (GCE). The GCE would be built around four infantry battalions and a tactical mobility battalion. The infantry battalions would be modified to be lighter and smaller with 11-man rifle squads and the elimination of 81-millimeter (mm) mortars in the battalion. The regiment would contain unmanned tactical vehicles including ground robotic systems and tactical unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The size of the infantry battalion would be 700 to 750 marines versus today’s 882 officers and enlisted personnel. Four infantry battalions per EMB are necessary to support rotating forward deployments and also reflect the manpower requirements for stability operations, humanitarian crises, and urban combat.

One EMB in each MEF would be oriented toward amphibious assault and would have an amphibious assault battalion with the new advanced amphibious assault vehicle (AAAV). The other EMB would be configured for rapid movement by strategic air assets and would contain a light armored battalion as its principal tactical mobility asset. These brigades would be responsible for planning and executing missions employing maritime prepositioned assets. There would be no tanks in either formation.

The organic fire support for the EMB would be provided by a fire support battalion comprised of 2 batteries of 155 mm howitzers, a 120 mm battery of 8 systems, and a high mobility mobile rocket battery for deep and area denial fires.

Combat Service Support (CSS). A brigade service support group would provide the requisite combat service support to its parent EMB. The CSS element would be shaped by reduced deliberate engineering, maintenance, and supply functions. It would focus instead on providing tailored expeditionary support with greater precision and velocity. It would have to be carefully tailored to be able to operate from a sea base. Extensive engineering and maintenance capabilities would be transferred to supporting establishments, outsourced, or shifted to the Marine Corps reserve.

Aviation Element. The aviation component of the EMB would contain three composite Marine aviation groups (MAGs). One MAG would be an assault support MAG, comprised of 3 MV–22 Osprey squadrons, a squadron of light attack helicopters, and a heavy support squadron with the CH–53. The fixed wing MAG would contain three squadrons of the short take-off, vertical landing (STOVL) version of the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF). The final group would contain air control and air defense assets, as well as operational UAVs. Consideration should be given to naval support elements that combine common Navy and Marine aircraft to a greater degree, perhaps in UAVs, utility and electronic warfare aircraft, and aerial refueling assets.

Budget and Programmatic Impacts. The principal purpose of an EMB proposal is to align the contributions of the Marine Corps better with the emerging strategic environment. Secondarily, the proposal has significant budget and program impacts. These will narrow the capability/resource gap that has plagued the Marines for the last decade. However, the emphasis must be on creating a better Marine Corps, not a smaller or cheaper force. Of particular note, the end-strength of the active Corps could be reduced by approximately 15,000 marines to roughly 159,000. However, this study recommends that manning of the fleet Marine force be increased from its resource-constrained level (roughly 90 percent) to 100 percent. This manning level is consistent with the Corps role as a force in readiness. An end-strength of 165,000 is projected, with the savings of this reduction focused on training and education enhancements.

The Marine Corps has been operating for a decade at about 80 to 85 percent of its necessary funding. Near-term readiness was achieved for a decade by deferring investments and eating seed corn. The barn and field are both now barren. Resource realignments will ensure that limited resources are allocated to the greatest operational priorities. The annual $1.5 billion budget shortfall that the Commandant of the Marine Corps has identified will not be eliminated, but it certainly will be narrowed appreciably. No longer should the Corps struggle with inadequate manning of its operating forces, and the fielding of trucks and helicopters that are older than the marines driving and repairing them. In an age of resource constraints, this focus on operational priorities will become more valuable every year. For the first time in many years, the Force in Readiness will be ready in more than name.

Reductions in major ground programs reduce the coming modernization “train wreck” and speed the introduction of improved capabilities into the force.¹⁰ The elimination of tanks and a reduced purchase of AAAVs will lighten up the Corps and reduce its operating and support costs.¹¹ Resources could then be used to introduce enhanced light armored and fast attack vehicles sooner. Capabilities lost through conventional artillery reductions are more than offset by enhanced Marine aviation and naval surface fire support, as well as the 120 mm mortar and rocket systems.

Aviation requirements will have to be carefully considered. Marine aviation is an expensive but valuable commodity, and its relevance in a naval or joint context must be evaluated as such. Some analysts have recently challenged the need for Marine fixed-wing support.¹² However, such analyses overlook the synergy of combined arms and its suitability to the types of expeditionary operations that are anticipated in the coming decades. Currently programmed assets such as the V–22 and the JSF are ideally suited to meet the emerging strategic environment, and while acquisition objectives have been reduced somewhat, these systems remain crucial to both expeditionary maneuver warfare and OMFTS concepts. Options to integrate Marine air assets into carrier air groups are viable, but not at the expense of losing the capacity to conduct expeditionary operations.

While the force design of the EMB is lighter and somewhat leaner than its MEF predecessor, there appears to be no major impact on amphibious lift requirements. Troop berthing spaces may be saved, and some vehicle lift is reduced by the tank cuts. These are offsets by necessary additions, and naval support requirements for ship-to-objective mobility. Thus, current amphibious fleet requirements seem sound. Space savings can be employed to enhance habitability, command spaces for embarked staffs, and training. Furthermore, the combat service support community will need additional flexibility in accessing supplies and consumables to support OMFTS and STOM operations and for mobility assets to increase the velocity of CSS.

Rationale

This proposal is consistent with the strategic context generated by globalization and U.S. security interests. In an age stressing speed, flexibility, adaptability, and versatility, expeditionary maneuver brigades offer a responsive solution. Additionally, it is more consistent with the Marine strategic organizational concept and major warfighting doctrine. Maneuver warfare is an approach that stresses speed of thought and action over mass and attrition. For these reasons, the proposal has merit for further refinement and implementation.

Strategic Consistency. Realigning the Corps standing forces toward the middle end of the conflict spectrum will optimize the Marine Corps for the most probable conflicts of the global century. Instead of structuring for high-end, sustained land combat, as it did during the Cold War, the Marine Corps will be positioned and fully prepared for more likely scenarios. Instead of absorbing risks by trying to be all things, the Corps will be tailored to a more specific role, within a strategic and joint context. This proposal aligns the most enduring and unique core Marine competencies to the strategic context facing the Nation. This will ensure its strategic relevance, as well as ensuring the country has an agile instrument of national power focused on preserving stability or suppressing conflicts.

Part of the strategic consistency is supported by ensuring rapid deployability of Marine forces through configuring them for amphibious shipping and by airlift. It does not size the overall active duty Marine Corps to available lift, but it does size and shape the Marine force structure to its principal deployment modes. This will simplify planning and logically tie the Corps structure to strategic mobility means, while increasing Corps utility to commanders. More than “first to fight,” commanders will increasingly be able to depend on the Corps as the “first to respond.”

Conceptual Consistency. In response to Congressional direction, the Marine Corps has consistently framed its purpose and raison d’etre as the Nation’s Force in Readiness.¹³ While not codified in Title 10, there is clear historical precedent and legislative intent for this strategic concept. However, this rationale was laid out in the early 1950s, and the strategic context has been altered by time and legislation. The original concept made sense given the strategic culture and strategy, but both have changed. Containment was originally designed to address Soviet vulnerabilities along its periphery at a time and point of our choosing. Amphibious striking power was tailored to operationalize the strategy of containment. Furthermore, the underlying strategic culture of the United States precluded creating a large standing Army. The solution was to frame a single service force in readiness of combined arms that was posed for rapid deployment. Framing it so was a way around the mobilization dilemma. Yet ultimately, the extent of the ideological struggle with the Soviet Union produced a strategic synthesis that avoided creation of a garrison state, while still developing a national security system of substantial size and complexity.¹⁴

In the midst of the Cold War, such an institutional rationale for the Marines made sense. However, it was a concept borne of the Cold War over half a century ago. Today’s national security planners need not think that all our Cold War constructs are outdated or carved in stone. We live within a new context today, and a fresh evaluation of the role of the Marine Corps and naval expeditionary forces is warranted. Furthermore, with the passage of Goldwater-Nichols legislation in 1986, previous Congressional direction about service roles and functions should be reconstituted in light of the need for a greater rationalization and integration of the armed services.¹⁵

However, the emerging security environment—what is known and that which is enshrouded by wild cards—still clearly calls for highly ready, rapidly deployable expeditionary forces that can stand poised near an incipient crisis to deter or contain the problem or that can forcibly enter and respond to a contingency, whether it is a humanitarian disaster, a civil disorder, or a violent armed conflict. Rather than containing communism and Russian hegemony, we are now containing chaos and instability. In a globalized world, specific Corps competencies retain great utility. However, greater strategic focus on its principal role will narrow the gap between its concept and its force structure and facilitate rapid deployment and higher readiness levels. In short, the EMB design retains those core competencies associated with historic Marine roles and enhances them for a new century.

Doctrinal Consistency. The force design articulated as part of this study is also consistent with fundamental Marine Corps philosophy and doctrine of maneuver warfare. Maneuver warfare stresses decentralized decisionmaking based on the commander’s intent and understanding of the mission. Underlying this approach is an appreciation of the chaos, uncertainty, and friction of combat, and the concomitant desire to offset these factors with organizational cohesion, a common understanding of the commander’s intent and initiative at the lowest organizational level. Command and control (C2) doctrine inherent to maneuver warfare mandates that subordinate commanders make their own decisions at the lowest level possible. The ability for senior commanders and their subordinate elements to communicate through a mutual understanding and to anticipate reactions is fundamental to this approach.¹⁶

Mutual understanding and implicit communications cannot be gained just through shared doctrine or occasional exercise. They can only be generated through extensive interaction in peacetime and through the familiarity and trust that are produced through established and regular interaction. The ad hoc nature of the current brigade task-organizing approach fails to support this regular interaction since brigade commanders do not have designated forces and subordinate commanders, and their staffs and even some of the commanding generals are dual-tasked in other positions. Thus, the long-term daily working relationships necessary to underwrite the fundamental warfighting doctrine of the Corps are undermined by the current approach of task-organizing the subordinate elements of the MAGTF in the midst of a crisis. Permanent MAGTF structures as proposed herein will correct this readiness gap and facilitate the further institutionalization of maneuver warfare.

The apparent rigidity of Marine warfighting units warrants examination in light of the dramatic doctrinal changes that the Marines have undergone. Looking back over the basic force structure of the Marine Corps since World War II, there is remarkably little change. The fundamental structures of the squad, rifle platoon, company, battalion, regiment, and division have remained remarkably stable. A division commander or a rifle platoon commander from the World War II battle of Tarawa would instantly recognize and be entirely comfortable with the current organizational design.

However, the Corps does not fight the same way, nor does it have the same doctrine it employed at Tarawa. The basic squad and platoon designs of that generation were constructed with the high attrition inherent to high-intensity amphibious assaults in mind. In the 1980s, the Corps formally adopted maneuver warfare as its basic doctrine, an approach that was formulated in many ways as an antidote to the reliance on mass and attrition inherent to Vietnam and the American way of war. Yet the basic organizational structure remains. It is difficult to square the sharp changes in basic doctrine and warfighting approaches with the stability of Marine ground force structure from 1945 to the present. This gives credence to critics who define maneuver warfare as an aborted innovation in the Marine Corps.¹⁷

The Case for Strategic Adjustment

This volume began with an overview of numerous challenges and changes in the evolving strategic environment.¹⁸ We face an age of nonlinearity, vulnerability, and intense competition. There is little reason to believe that America will be immune to the resentments of this age. Nor is there any reason to suspect that America will be able to disconnect itself from leadership responsibilities or critical interests around the globe. Our own interests are too globally distributed, and we cannot easily separate them for judicious or selective involvement.¹⁹ Instead, the United States will become increasingly involved in preserving or reestablishing stability in many forms.

“A persistent and repeated error through the ages,” Don Kagan reminds us, “has been the failure to understand that the preservation of peace requires active effort, planning, the expenditure of resources and sacrifice, just as war does.”²⁰ This is even truer of the future than the past. We cannot afford to shrink from the active effort, planning, and sacrifice that it will take to preserve U.S. interests.

The conflicts of this era will shock us with their violence, unconstrained by Western norms. Globalization has a leveling effect for our adversaries, and we should take little comfort in the litany of past Western success.²¹ Nor should we accept the notion that we live in an age of virtual warfare in which success can be guaranteed by warfare from afar.²² Technological advances in conventional warfare are impressive but offer few advantages to the most probable intervention cases. American forces excel at their preferred operational paradigm; however, our more likely and most dangerous intervention requirement will place Americans on the ground in an incipient crisis. Most likely this will occur in an urban setting, probably along the world’s littorals, with an ambiguous admixture of protagonists to contend with. This is not something that we typically excel at, but as Michael Howard recently warned:

Peoples who are not prepared to put their forces in harm’s way fight at some disadvantage against those who are. Tomahawk cruise missiles may command the air, but it is Kalashnikov sub-machine guns that still rule the ground. It is an imbalance that makes the enforcement of world order a rather problematic affair.²³

If peace is actually an invention, as Howard suggests, then the evolving era will challenge that invention in many ways. Given the sharp differences between the age that the current national security system was created to address and our new environment, a strategic adjustment is needed if we are to enhance our chances of preserving peace in a world order of such problematic circumstances.²⁴ A strategic adjustment is:

The business of refining security objectives when established ends no longer bear a compelling relation to evolving circumstances, and of altering the relation between ends and means, resources and security needs, when changing conditions make these relations obsolete.²⁵

Much of our present military remains relevant to the Nation’s security interests. It would be a sweeping exaggeration to assert that the U.S. military is obsolete. However, it would be an equally sweeping claim to argue that evolving circumstances have not changed conditions and weakened the fit between political ends and military means.

The Challenge of Change

A period of national strategic adjustment mandates that civilian and military leaders face up to the challenge of change. Such periods produce tensions and risks for bureaucratic and professional institutions such as the military. The most acute tension is between continuity and change, “between preserving that which has met the needs of the past and adapting to the challenge of change in a confusing and uncertain future.”²⁶

This confusing and uncertain future can be used to justify strategic and operational stasis. Uncertainty about future requirements and constrained resources can combine to produce a protracted paralysis in planning and organizational change. Yet military history is replete with successful innovations, even revolutionary and discontinuous leaps in capability under similar circumstances. The strategies for dealing with uncertainty and abetting progressive change are fairly clear. Neither perfect intelligence about enemy intentions or capabilities nor massive resources are required.²⁷

Leadership, vision, and an organizational proclivity to debate fundamental assumptions are the principal ingredients to successful change. Credible military leadership is the most important element. Additionally, the ability and willingness to cope with ambiguity is a distinctive attribute. Finally, the most adaptive military organizations cultivate a culture that combines intellectual curiosity and relentless improvement. They tolerate diversity and the rigorous evaluation of both old assumptions and new proposals.²⁸

Scholarship on military innovation frequently points to the Marines as an example of institutional adaptation in the face of dynamic environmental change.²⁹ Much of this reputation was established 50 years ago when the Marines created the doctrinal foundation and capabilities for amphibious warfare. Pressed by the Navy in 1920 to take on the mission of seizing and defending forward bases, the Corps ultimately created the fleet Marine force in 1933.³⁰ By 1941, out of an effort of two decades, the requisite components for meeting U.S. strategic needs in the Pacific campaigns were in place.

Today, a similar effort is required. This time, however, we do not have the luxuries of our predecessors. We do not have the time or the certainty of a predetermined opponent and War Plan Orange. The challenge of change in the global century requires embracing greater uncertainty. Historically, this is not an anomaly. As one highly regarded historian put it, the one aspect of military science that should be studied above all others is “the capacity to adapt oneself to the utterly unpredictable, the entirely unknown.”³¹

Greater Institutional Adaptation

Given the emerging security environment, the Nation’s interests strongly suggest that greater institutional adaptation and organizational change are necessary. The Corps does not have to adapt itself to “the utterly unpredictable or the entirely unknown.” Both chaos in the littorals and small wars are something that the Marine Corps has experience with, and the EMB concept is not a radical departure from its combined arms and MAGTF philosophy. But if Corps commitment to being ready whenever the Nation calls is immutable, it must adapt to new demands for complex contingencies, greater strategic deployability, higher readiness levels, and far greater operational agility. If the Corps is to provide combat-ready MAGTFs as an adaptive instrument of national power, it must evolve in response to the strategic, political, and technological revolution that swirls around it.

This chapter has explored the parameters of the new security environment and the corresponding need for new capabilities and adaptive institutions to meet the country’s interests. Alterations are needed in our current national security architecture to match the pressures created by globalization.³²The Marine Corps is neither immune to these pressures nor vaccinated against the need for change by its past contributions. Tomorrow’s complexities portend a heightened need for ready expeditionary forces that are organized, trained, and equipped to advance America’s interests in a nonlinear and unpredictable world.

As in the past, a ready, relevant, and capable Marine Corps fulfills a vital role in the Nation’s security. However, this role is never a constant one. To better prepare for a global century, the Marines should evaluate the expeditionary maneuver brigade to ensure that it remains as ready, relevant, and capable tomorrow as it has been in the past.

Frank G. Hoffman is a civilian strategic planner at the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory in Quantico, Virginia. He is also a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve. In addition to his service on the staff of the Commission on Roles and Missions of the Armed Forces and the Hart-Rudman Commission, he has held policy planning positions in the Department of Defense. He is also the author of Decisive Force: The New American Way of War (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1996).

Notes

¹ James L. Jones, Marine Corps Strategy 21 (Washington, DC: Department of the Navy, November 3, 2000). [BACK]

²James L. Jones, Expeditionary Maneuver Warfare (Washington, DC: Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, November 10, 2001). [BACK]

³ John F. Schmidt, “A Critique of the Hunter Warrior Concept,” Marine Corps Gazette, June 1998, 13–19. For an overview of the experiment, see James A. Lasswell, “Assessing Hunter Warrior,” Armed Forces Journal International, May 1997, 14–15. [BACK]

⁴ See Joseph H. Schmid, “Reorganizing the Fleet Marine Force: From Division-Wing Teams to Marine Expeditionary Brigades,” (M.S. thesis, Marine Corps University, 1989). The current author has also proposed similar arguments in Frank G. Hoffman, “Strategic Concepts and Marine Corps Force Structure in the 21st Century,” Marine Corps Gazette, December 1993, 70–75. [BACK]

⁵ The best history for this period remains Allan R. Millett, Semper Fidelis: The History of the United States Marine Corps (New York: Free Press, 1991), 445–474. [BACK]

⁶ The original “Green Dragon” concept paper that was the progenitor for the hunter-warrior experiments postulated a division-based structure comprised of one heavy Marine regiment and two light regiments. The heavy regiment contained five battalions, including two infantry battalions plus all mechanized division assets (tanks, light armored vehicles, and amphibious assault vehicles). The lighter regiments were composed of battalions almost half the size of today’s force, with each battalion designed to function as a highly maneuverable reconnaissance assault battalion whose mission was to seek out enemy forces and targets and to engage them with long-range supporting arms. [BACK]

⁷ Douglas A. Macgregor has proposed a widely cited modular design for the U.S. Army. See Breaking the Phalanx: A New Design for Landpower in the 21^st Century (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1997). For another brigade-oriented approach for Marine units, see James T. Quinliven, “Flexible Ground Forces,” in Holding the Line: U.S. Defense Alternatives for the Early 21^st Century, ed. Cindy Williams (Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 2001), 181–204. [BACK]

⁸ Department of Defense, Report of the Quadrennial Defense Review (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, September 30, 2001). [BACK]

⁹ The Marine Corps organizes its operating forces into Marine air-ground task forces (MAGTFs), which are task-organized entities that can be tailored to specific contingencies. Each MAGTF has similar organization, containing a command element, a ground combat element, an aviation combat element, and a combat service support element. The largest MAGTF is the Marine expeditionary force that is normally composed of a Marine expeditionary force command element, a division, a Marine aircraft wing, and a force service support group. These elements are the standing forces. Other smaller MAGTFs are formed by detaching battalions and subordinate units from the major MEF components. [BACK]

¹⁰ Daniel Goure and Jeffrey M. Ranney, Averting the Defense Train Wreck in the New Millennium (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1999). [BACK]

¹¹ The AAAV would not be prepositioned aboard maritime prepositioning force shipping, thus reducing the Marine acquisition objective of 1,013 vehicles to roughly 600 units and saving more than $3.6 billion in acquisition and life cycle costs. [BACK]

¹² Michael E. O’Hanlon, Defense Policy Choices for the Bush Administration 2001–2005 (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution Press, 2001), 103; Thomas Donnelly, Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century (Washington, DC: Project for the New American Century, 2000), 63–71. [BACK]

¹³ Samuel P. Huntington, “National Policy and Transoceanic Navy,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings (May 1954), 483. Huntington has spoken in the past on the importance of a strategic concept for each of the military services. He noted, “If a service does not possess a well-defined strategic concept, the public and political leaders will be confused as to the role of the service, uncertain as to the necessity of its existence, and apathetic or hostile to the claims made by the service upon the resources of society.” [BACK]

¹⁴ For superb scholarship on this issue, see Aaron L. Friedberg, In the Shadow of the Garrison State, America’s Anti-Statism and Its Cold War Grand Strategy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000). [BACK]

¹⁵ William Owens with Edward Offley, Lifting the Fog of War (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000). [BACK]

¹⁶ Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication 1, Warfighting (Washington, DC: U.S. Marine Corps, 1997). [BACK]

¹⁷ Terry Pierce, Disguised Innovation (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 2001). [BACK]

¹⁸ See in particular chapter 2. [BACK]

¹⁹ Jonathan T. Howe, “A Global Agenda for Foreign and Defense Policy,” in The Global Century: Globalization and National Security, ed. Richard L. Kugler and Ellen L. Frost (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 2001), 179; and Hugh De Santis, “Mutualism: An American Strategy for the Next Century,” Strategic Forum 162 (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, May 1999). [BACK]

²⁰ Donald Kagan, On the Origins of War and the Preservation of Peace (New York: Doubleday, 1995), 567. [BACK]

²¹ For an alternative view, see Victor Davis Hanson, Culture and Carnage: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power (New York: Doubleday, 2001). In a brilliant overview of the development of Western military power, Hanson argues that Western military supremacy is predicated on more than superior technology. Culture, rather than chance or geography, plays the dominant role in his explanation. Traditional institutions, consensual government, individual freedom and initiative, free inquiry, and rationalism have produced the individual initiative, discipline, social cohesiveness, and tactical adaptation that is the hallmark of Western military history. [BACK]

²² Michael Ignatieff, Virtual War: Kosovo and Beyond (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2000). [BACK]

²³ Michael Howard, The Invention of Peace: Reflections on War and International Order (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 102. [BACK]

²⁴ Peter Turbowitz, Emily O. Goldman, and Edward Rhodes, eds., The Politics of Strategic Adjustment: Ideas, Institutions, and Interests (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999). [BACK]

²⁵ Miroslav Nincic, Roger Rose, and Gerard Gorski, “The Social Foundations of Strategic Adjustment,” in The Politics of Strategic Adjustment, ed. Turbowitz, Goldman, and Rhodes, 176. [BACK]

²⁶ Harold R. Winton, “Introduction on Military Change,” in The Challenge of Change: Military Institutions and New Realities, 1918–1941, ed. Harold R. Winton and David R. Mets (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000), xi. [BACK]

²⁷Stephen Peter Rosen, Winning the Next War: Innovation and the Modern Military (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991). [BACK]

²⁸Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett, Military Innovation in the Interwar Period (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Additionally, see James Corum, “A Comprehensive Approach to Change: Reform in the German Army in the Interwar Period,” in The Challenge of Change, ed. Winton and Mets, 35–73. [BACK]

²⁹ Emily O. Goldman, “Mission Possible: Organizational Learning in Peacetime,” in The Politics of Strategic Adjustment, ed. Turbowitz, Goldman, and Rhodes, 243–247. [BACK]

³⁰ For a concise overview of Navy and Marine innovation in the development of amphibious warfare, see Allan R. Millett, “Assault from the Sea: The Development of Amphibious Warfare between the Wars,” in Military Innovation in the Interwar Period, ed. Murray and Millett, 70–95; Rosen, 59. [BACK]

³¹ Michael Howard, Chesney Memorial Gold Medal Lecture, October 3, 1973. [BACK]

³²For one perspective on needed changes to the U.S. national security architecture, see U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century, Road Map for National Security: Imperative For Change (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, March 2001).