Marine Corps Force Design 2030 Keeps Some Heavy Armor & Calls for Agile, Fast, Flexible, Multi-Domain Force

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Kris Osborn – President, Center for Military Modernization

The Marine Corps’ future warfare document is written to be a fluid, adaptable text as the service surges decades into the future, as it is written with a tacit understanding that threat variables and weapons technologies will evolve in coming years.

The Corps’ Force Design 2030 represents a thinking shift for the Corps as it looks toward future threats likely to involve a clear need for amphibious, multi domain operations with vast expanses of ocean, islands and coastal areas. While the Corps has been returning much more fully to its Maritime, expeditionary roots in recent years following the ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the most recent document extends this transformation to another level. In an effort to become more agile, expeditionary and driven by fast-emerging technologies, Marine Corps Force Design 2030 calls for a massive reduction in Abrams tanks, heavy helicopters and other larger mechanized platforms and weapons systems in favor of mobile, yet highly lethal anti-armor weapons, drones and longer-range precision fires.