Marine Corps “Force Design 2030” Pursues Joint, Multi-Domain Attack

By James Holmes, Warrior Contributor, Navy

Let the paradigm shift continue! This week the Biden administration nominated General Eric Smith, the deputy U.S. Marine Corps commandant for combat development and integration, to ascend to the post of commandant or top uniformed marine. 

This comes as glad tidings to those of us who favor “naval integration,” meaning the effort to alloy the American sea services—the Marine Corps, Navy, and Coast Guard—into a single keen-edged implement for denying, winning, and exploiting command of the sea in concert with our fellow armed services and allies.

Fighting jointly is how you prevail in an age when not just fleets of warships, and not just navies, but air forces, strategic rocket forces, and armies boast sensors and armaments able to mold events far out across the main.

If approved by the Senate, General Smith will replace retiring General David Berger, who made naval integration his signature initiative as commandant. General Berger released “planning guidance” to the service almost instantly after taking up his post in 2019. Marine Corps headquarters soon codified these initial rough rudder orders in a family of documents that go by such titles as “Force Design 2030” and “A Concept for Stand-In Forces.” In turn these directives built on associated concepts such as “Distributed Maritime Operations” and “Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations.”

Taken together these concepts put aggressors such as China on notice that the U.S. sea services refuse to be driven out of important combat theaters despite the proliferation of access-denial weaponry and sensors; that marines will fan out at sea and along strategically important archipelagoes, eluding assault while working with the fleet on such crucial functions as scouting and putting weapons on target; and thus that marines intend to help the fleet deny aggressors control of the sea, wrest away control for themselves, and make use of control once they rule the sea.

This is the classic pattern in naval warfare: deny, win, exploit.

If they demonstrate in peacetime that they can do all of that, the chances of their having to prove it in wartime diminish. Hostile leaders will desist from misadventures that look impossible—and deterrence will prevail.