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Despite budget cuts, Marines remain amphibious

On Target  //  January 9th, 2011  //  By Sgt. Kuande Hall

There is no guarantee we will learn from the bloody combat lessons of the last century.  The current penchant by some for questioning the Marine Corps’ need for an amphibious tracked vehicle suggests an ignorance of history and a lack of understanding of the future; it is unsupported by hard lessons learned, world trends, and a security environment characterized by a high degree of uncertainty.  Our Nation will most certainly require continued global access from the sea, and just as certainly there are forces at work that are actively and aggressively attempting to deny us that much needed access.

The Secretary of Defense clearly stated that his decision to cut the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle program does not call into question the amphibious assault mission of the Marine Corps.  Moreover, he stated the requirement of developing a more affordable and sustainable amphibious tractor to provide the Marines a ship-to-shore capability into the future.

As America’s expeditionary force in readiness, the Marine Corps specializes in rapidly deploying anywhere in the world to develop access through partnership building activities, to create access in response to crises, and to provide the ability to force access to deter and/or defeat threats.  The Corps will never be defined by a program, but rather by the capabilities we bring to the fight.

As a maritime Nation the tyranny of distance, geography, and topography remain constant challenges to our global influence.  As demonstrated countless times, our ability to come from the sea and overcome the challenges of natural and manmade barriers allows us to protect and defend U.S. interests.  Our continued ability to respond is dependent on our ability to operate in uncertain environments, create opportunities and ensure freedom of action regardless of access challenges.

The Marine Corps has learned that amphibious operations should avoid fixed defenses whenever possible.  This option is not always available, however.  In such cases the amphibious tracked vehicle is essential to success.   The tracked amphibious vehicle provides the ability to perform three critical tasks:  ship-to-shore movement, breakout from the beach and protected land mobility and firepower.  As a result, the amphibious tracked vehicle has been a mainstay of amphibious capability.  It has often proven the indispensible, enabling capability that Marines employ to both solve the sea/land mobility challenge and to gain advantage over our enemies.

Recent operational experience and history attest to the effectiveness of amphibious tracked vehicles in providing the capability and capacity demanded by numerous operating environments—permissive, uncertain, or hostile.  Most recently, amphibious tracked vehicles assisted in overcoming the devastated infrastructure in Haiti.  These same vehicles were used to rescue stranded citizens and deliver relief supplies following Katrina’s devastation of the U.S. Gulf Coast in 2005.  In the 1990s these vehicles enabled relief efforts in Somalia during Operation RESTORE HOPE and subsequently provided the key capability necessary to safely withdraw U.N. forces in UNITED SHIELD.  During the Korean War they allowed us to project power from the sea at Inchon to reverse the looming defeat of U.S. forces trapped at Pusan.  Given the proliferation of area denial weapons among both state and non-state actors, we believe that future operations—even those conducted for benign reasons—will be conducted under uncertain and highly dangerous conditions.

Amphibious tracked vehicles employed from ships at sea provide the means to assure littoral access that no other capability can provide.  They are the only combat vehicles built to operate effectively in the littorals:  a complex environment of salt and fresh water, muddy marshes and estuaries, and dry land; rural, suburban and urban landscapes; wildly varying terrain; high to low population densities; and temperature extremes.  They can quickly and seamlessly transit from ship-to-shore as well as swim rivers and negotiate inland water obstacles, providing the ability to achieve tactical and operational surprise. They protect their occupants as they maneuver on sea and land to a position of advantage and can close with an enemy or rescue our friends.  Their known presence off shore historically has been a powerful deterrent and effective capability across the range of military operations.

A modern amphibious tracked vehicle uses the sea as maneuver space, creates opportunities in the littorals, optimizes employment of amphibious forces, and enhances survivability in the face of area denial threats.  An amphibious tracked vehicle is the proven means to overcome access challenges, natural or manmade, ranging from tsunami-ravaged infrastructure to an armed aggressor seeking to oppose our maneuver.  Amphibious tracked vehicles empower a flexible, ship-borne force to wait off shore for the opportunity to shape the security environment or alter an outcome.  This unique capability provides our Nation with a critical power projection asset.

There is no doubt that the sustainment and further development of our Nation’s amphibious capability is important for continued access to strategically vital regions of the world.  We see a clear mandate to be ready to shape, influence, deter, and if necessary defeat would be forces that seek to deny us access.  Meeting this mandate will allow us to profit “by dear bought experience” rather than repeat the errors of the past.

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  • MGySgt

    “Take away the military’s socialized medical guarantee, it’s pension, it’s job security. . . ” How about you take an oath to defend your nation you coward, then you can “suggest” what those of us in uniform don’t rate. Freakin’ liberals, man!

  • reynolds

    Marine trackers will continue to do what we do, with what we have. We have become a multitude of diffrent MOS’s rolled into one. The strong leadership of our commands will continue to push us forward in todays ever evolving theater of operations, regaurdless of what equipment congress decides to approve. YAT YAS

  • ed

    The Marine Corps has no political branch to blame on why we will not get the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle. The problem is with our process to get the war fighter the tools they need to apply their craft. At issue are the setbacks in developing a vehicle and getting that vehicle to production. We allowed the contractor to change deadlines and in some case flat out not meet other deadline all the while increasing production cost. If you look at any business model you can see the program was not set up for success. When setbacks occurred we were very obligatory to allow them to continue and paying for the additional cost. Doing business with the US Marine Corps EFV program became a cash cow for the contractor. Nor did we win the battle for justification, each time a MEU was committed to theatre we lost another round of relevance. Not to argue the merit of committing the Central Command Reserve or if it was the right thing to do or not but in essence we built our own self destruction. Now we have the situation that we are not modernizing our capabilities, giving the current budget restraints we have now we may not be able to. However in looking over the history of this program when we should have been focusing on gaining the advantage we were very content with keeping the status quo.

  • Aggie*86

    We Marines are our own worst enemy. We kept the EFV program alive when better sense should have prevailed. We are consistantly being let down on procurement matters by our General Officers. CMC wouldnt purchase MRAP until SecDef forced the issue. Why? because of the expense, it was a budgetary threat to other ground programs, even though it saves Marines lives. Aviation programs are off the chart mismanaged. We’ve allowed ourselves to get boxed in so that if the VSTOL JSF falters or fails, we have little recourse. Cancel the VSTOL version now! It was a great but failed experiment. It is a capabability that the nation does not need and cant afford. Boeing will sell Super Hornets to the Corps on the relative cheap. We Marines are not institutionally equiped to manage ACAT I weapons programs. Purcase the most tried and true platforms that have already been developed.

  • Stewart

    Increasing our military is isolated from our society. Take away the military’s socialized medical guarantee, it’s pension, it’s job security, and then the military would be feeling some of the insecurities and fears that are currently ripping through our country. Cuts in our military need to be made, so let’s hope they are the correct ones. My hunch is the cutting of this enormously expensive EFV is a right cut.

  • Mark

    It’s an old story to this old Marine. Whenever liberals gain control of Congress or the White House, the story is always the same … attack the military, steal its budget, and spend the money on social welfare programs and getting more liberals elected or re-elected. The left-wing of the political spectrum believes in an anarchistic political model where the U.S. is merely a geographic location rather than a political construct that guarantees individual liberty even when the “greater good” of the political majority must temporarily suffer. They believe that this is an old, outmoded model that must be reconstructed to conform to the “new world order” that our founding fathers had no way of being able to predict or understand. They believe that our Constitution is just a piece of quaint, antiquated history that was written by a bunch of old, dead white guys and should not be taken seriously because it is not able to deal with the realities of modern life. Thus, there is no need for an American military, which is nothing more than the means by which our imperialistic government bullies and subjugates “the working classes of the world.” Sound familiar? If you studied Herr Marx or Comrade Lenin in school, it should. Nevertheless, it is the American military that has consistently fought for the rights of men everywhere to be free from the tyranny of the majority; the tyranny of our fascist brethren on the left of our political spectrum. It is THEY who seek world domination by fomenting bloody revolution, ostensibly to “liberate” the working classes but, in so doing, they give us the bloodiest despots who ever walked the earth; Hitler, Mussolini, Castro, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Mao Zedung, Pol Pot, Idi Amin (all socialists who claimed that the scores of millions of murders they committed during the Twentieth-Century was for “the common good.”). At the tip of the spear in the battle for America’s security from these bloody monsters has stood the United States Marine Corps … a force for good in the world since 1775. Given the size of the Marine Corps, compared to the Army and Navy, or even the Air Force, and the modest cost of the weapons systems they need, and given the fact that it is the Marine Corps that stands on the wall, ready 24/7 to do violence on our behalf and in our defense, it is at our own significant and immediate peril that we deny them the most effective and modern amphibious assault systems that technology can produce. For less than the price of one new Air Force weapons system, the Marines, who will always be the first to face the enemy on the field of battle, while the Air Force is still asleep in their warm, comfortable bunks, can have this new amphibious tracked vehicle and WE NEED TO GIVE IT TO THEM.

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This entry was posted on January 9th, 2011 at 9:07 am and is filed under the On Target category. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.