Duplication and obsolescence: The Marine Corps’ missile dilemma

By James Conway
and Jerry McAbee 
Real Clear Wire

In 2019, the 38th Commandant of the Marine Corps began restructuring and reorganizing the Marine Corps to better assist the United States Navy in deterring and, if necessary, defeating the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) in a joint naval campaign. Central to this effort was the total divestment of some Marine Corps combat capabilities and significant reductions in others, all made to help fund the cost of new weapons and equipment. 

The cornerstone of the new capabilities is ground launched anti-ship missiles. This new Marine missile force comes at the loss of substantial Marine Corps combined arms capabilities needed to fight and win against global threats other than the PLAN. The loss of tanks, assault breaching equipment, and every type of bridge in the inventory along with significant reductions in infantry, cannon artillery, and fixed, rotary, and tilt-rotor aircraft were not balanced against any new systems replacing them.  For some items like tanks and bridging, there was no plan to provide Marines with alternative capabilities. As a result, the Marine Corps is acquiring too many and the wrong types of missiles and associated systems at the expense of other necessary weapons, especially those necessary to support the requirements of combatant commanders outside the Indo-Pacific region or perform a different type of mission.   

Does a modern Marine Corps need rockets and missiles?  We believe it does.  However, this capability should be aligned with the broader roles they play on the modern battlefield and not primarily against naval targets.  This includes protection against manned and unmanned aircraft and ballistic missiles in addition to fires in support of Marine Air Ground Task Forces (MAGTFs) across the range of military operations.  The number, unit cost, and types of missiles acquired must be fairly weighed against other Marine Corps requirements, and more importantly, in concert with the missile arsenals and concepts of employment of the other services.  In this regard, two questions are worth asking: how much duplication is wise and what type of missiles are needed for the future?

The answer to the first question is more centered on cost and risk than sufficiency.  Most combat veterans would quickly agree that “there is no such thing as a crowded battlefield.”  More is always better, providing the nation can afford it.  The U.S. industrial base and congressional appropriations do not have the luxury of supporting unnecessary duplicative, overlapping capabilities in the services. Nor can the Nation afford the risk of divesting combat power needed to deter and defeat a wide range of sophisticated global threats in an increasingly unstable world. Given the limitations of the U.S. defense industrial base, the Marine Corps’ current path forward places it in direct competition with other services and allies for a limited number of anti-ship precision missiles.

In his March 28, 2023 statement before the Senate Appropriations Committee, the Commandant of the Marine Corps asked Congress for 14 medium-range missile batteries and 774 subsonic Naval Strike Missiles (NSM), with an unclassified range of about 115 nautical miles. The Commandant also asked Congress for three long-range missile batteries and 153 subsonic Tomahawk (Land Attack and Maritime Strike) missiles, with an unclassified range of  approximately 1000 nautical miles. Only 4 of the 17 batteries will be permanently forward deployed in the Pacific. The remaining 13 batteries will be based in the continental United States to support rotational deployments and other missions.

As stated previously, the Marines need a balanced force, which includes some missiles that are best suited for the Corps’ global response mission and to protect against the threat posed by enemy long-range precision strike weapons.  Moreover, long-range air and land (and soon, maritime) attack missiles are already in Army, Navy, and Air Force arsenals.  Each of these services have developed highly sophisticated and comprehensive operating concepts employing state of the art warfighting platforms that operate globally. For example, just one of the Navy’s four Ohio-class SSGN submarines carries 154 Tomahawk missiles. 

And these services are upgrading their current missile force and buying more.    The Marine Corps cannot and should not try to compete with them in this realm.

The answer to the second question is more straightforward. One of the lessons the U.S. Navy is learning today in the Red Sea is that its ships can easily acquire, target and destroy anti-ship ballistic missiles and one-way attack drones.  One must assume that a near-peer or peer competitor has similar capabilities today and will have even better capabilities tomorrow.  By 2030, subsonic cruise and supersonic ballistic missiles may be obsolete against the PLAN and other navies, which is why the Army, Navy, and Air Force are actively pursuing hypersonic missiles. The Army, in close coordination with the Navy, is accelerating development of long-range hypersonic weapons (LRHW). Once the Army fields the LRHW, it will incorporate them into its Multi-Domain Task Forces. The Army has already stood up the first LRHW battery and assigned it to U.S. Indo-Pacific Command.  With a range of over 1700 nautical miles and a speed five times the speed of sound or 3800 miles per hour, the LRHW may be effective against Chinese warships and other targets within China’s air and missile defense systems well into the future. The NSM and Tomahawk will not.

We believe the Marine Corps is at a crossroads. Senior leaders need to look closely at the numbers and types of missiles the Corps is procuring and where in the Marine Expeditionary Forces (MEF) they will reside.  We also believe the Marine Corps is currently imbalanced.  It will soon have too many relatively obsolete missiles and currently has too few traditional combined arms weapons. In today’s unstable world, the requirement for global, expeditionary crisis response forces is more critical than ever. It’s time to reassert the Marine Corps’ primary role as the Combatant Commanders “mailed fist” to deter hostile actors throughout the world and set conditions for conflict termination on terms favorable to the U.S., its allies, and partners.

General Conway (USMC, ret.) is a career infantry officer.  His last assignment was the 34th Commandant of the Marine Corps.

Brigadier General McAbee (USMC, ret.) is a career artillery officer.  His last assignment was Deputy Commander, United States Marine Corps Forces Pacific, and Deputy Commander, United States Marine Corps Forces Central. 

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