(Washington, D.C.) The Marine Corps is divesting itself of heavy, hard-to-transport tanks and massively arming its smaller, lighter and more deployable assets with heavy anti-armor firepower to ensure it remains capable of mechanized armored warfare in a changing threat environment.
The Corps is fast-progressing with a broad strategic and tactical pivot toward its maritime roots and extensively shifting focus toward preparations for major-power warfare, seabasing, sea-control and multi-domain amphibious attack against technologically sophisticated adversaries. A huge part of this, particularly given that it is removing tanks from its arsenal, the Corps is incrementally adding advanced, extremely powerful, yet highly expeditionary and mobile anti-armor weapons, rockets and missiles.
This transition, evolving out of what were primarily land engagements for nearly two-decades, is articulated in an interesting paper called the “Marine Corps Vision and Strategy 2025.”
“We will practice a self-disciplined approach to force design and development. These efforts will strike a balance between being heavy enough to sustain expeditionary warfare and light enough to facilitate rapid deployment,” the essay explains.
More light tactical vehicles are being armed with mobile anti-tank guided missiles such as Raytheon Javelins and TOW missiles as well as new weapons innovations intended to increase speed and lethality at sea and ashore. As part of this, the Corps is now fielding a new reloadable, recoilless rocket called the M3A1 Multi-Role Anti-Armor Anti-Personnel Weapons System to infantry Marines in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, according to a Corps report.
“All Fleet Marines will receive the MAAWS by the end of 2023 and Reserve Marines by 2024. He projects every Marine Corps battalion to have the weapon in their arsenal by 2025.
MAAWS allows platoons to operate in more dispersed environments, supporting Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. David Berger’s vision for lower-level units to control more battlespace area,” Chief Warrant Officer 4 David Tomlinson, MCSC’s infantry weapons officer, said in the report.
