This post is prompted by an interview by SeaPower Magazine of General Gleuck. Read the entire article for yourself but this part has me punching walls...
It was planned to travel in the water at 25-plus knots. That was all predicatedWhat has me pissed off and shouting at the moon is that several exercises were done that looked at the anti-access threat. Even if the threat has us moving back to 100 miles off shore that does not mean that the EFV was not viable. It does not mean that amphibious assault vehicles are not viable. It just means that you transport them to a launch point. But the bigger problem is that the Marine Corps seems to rapidly be forgetting its history.
on launching from 25 miles, having the sea base at 25 miles and understanding that the EFV would leave the water and maneuver deep inland. Under some conditions, we may start operations from further out to sea, changing our previous EFV assumption and increasing the importance of speed and range.
Given current technology, we could not achieve the ability to maneuver through the sea from beyond 25 nautical miles and seamlessly maneuver inland with protection and firepower. More significantly, in the time of reduced budgets, the EFV became unaffordable. Maneuvering in the littoral sea-land environment means maneuvering in tough, complex terrain. Most of that mission occurs on the land — about 90 percent. We relooked at that 90 percent on the land mission and the EFV fell short given today’s technology.
Similar problems with current technology and high cost forced a halt in the EFV replacement program, the original Amphibious Combat Vehicle [ACV].
Everyone forgets the name of one of the Marine Corps greatest minds. General Paul K. Van Ripper.
General Van Ripper made the term asymmetric warfare popular in the Pentagon and his work (read that to mean brilliant strategic thinking) in Millennium Challenge 2002 war game is estimated to have cost the Navy a sunk Carrier Battle Group, a sunk Amphibious Ready Group AND 20,000 servicemen dead.
But now you're asking me, what does this have to do with "delivery of a mechanized raid force to a launch point"? Its simple. We've been dealing or rather learning to deal with anti-access threats in the Marine Corps for quite a while now.
We've been planning on moving amphibs further offshore for quite a while now. I talked about this in 2012 but consider this a refresher. This page is from MCRP 3-31.1A Employment of Landing Craft Air Cushion.
We have the tools, we had the doctrine, the only thing we're lacking is the understanding of leadership that air power alone will not win the next war.
Then off we both go to the temple of fast heavy-lift Connectors and pray for good tidings.
ReplyDeleteIf you Americans are so jacked up about anti-access and winning contested beach landings against the chinese, the chinese also must be shitting in their pants about the same given the toys at your disposal for the same anti-access and area denial mission which they WILL have to encounter IF they have to TAKE TAIWAN by force and the US responds forcefully by siding with Taiwan.
ReplyDeletethis anti-access thing is just the latest boogey man to justify a couple of buys. the USMC used it to justify the MLP, which they don't know what to do with now and will become mostly AFSBs, the F-35 which is a flying piece of shit and so on and so on.
Deletebut you want to know what really scares the Chinese? the thought that India, Japan and the US will team up and send them back to the stone ages.
haha, Solomon, I get your point. But you must realize that the Chinese are....uhmm...whats the word for it. Since i cant find a word let me describe them for you. They are the same people they were 2000 years back. With minor/cosmetic changes they wear the same traditional dresses, eat the same food, talk the same language, follow the same culture etc. that they have been for the past 2000 years. When people say that the only thing constant is change itself, the chinese have been mind bogglinlgy constant with minor changes. Even Communism had to change and adapt to the chinese way of life.
DeleteImagine the western world wearing the same old roman togas and greek miniskirts for men and speaking latin till this day, building their buildings in the roman column/arch style, eating the same food, having the same society and norms for those many years. The chinese have maintained all of that till this day.
Deletewhich is why they will lose any war against a technologically capable foe. let me add this though. warrior spirit never changes. if my reading of history is correct the Indians had some very powerful and feared warriors from their past...the spirit remains, only the tools have changed...and the buildings and the dress!
DeleteSponge....thats the word. A big sponge. They have taken all that the world had to give them and absorbed everything with minor changes. Mongol raid's and invasions, plague, constant civil wars for a millenium or so, japanese imperialism, british mischeviousnes(Imperialism also), opium wars and even cheap chinese karate action movies. All those invasions and use of terrible force and god awfull Massacres on a biblical scale by the japs and mongols has but just dented them, not broken them. They have absorbed it all. They know they can absorb everything short of a Nuclear Strike. I am sure they have lost more people to japanese bullets than the japs have lost in hiroshima/nagasaki combined.
DeleteI am not Defending China...just sizing up the country and its people and its leadership/culture which shares its largest land boundry with my country.
Deletethey've endured. not prospered. this new generation is catching a glimpse of the possibilities and they're becoming as decadent as the rest of the west. the problem for China is two fold. first they're still communist which means that they must keep the masses happy but at the same time they depend on trade with the rest of the world to ensure prosperity.
Deletediametrically opposed stances. to keep the masses happy means more people in cities and less in the farms. which means they need more trade, which means that more countries will become leery OR countries like Vietnam, Malaysia, or any number of S. American countries will be able to undercut their human labor advantage.
they can't and won't win if we get decent leadership.
well, wether building cities or airports or dams or the Great Wall...the Chinese Leadership Elite....or CLE have always been big fans of gigantic industrial projects involving millions of everything. Its their version of the Trickle Down effect. Massive CLE patronage going into might industrial institiutions being built by the masses who for better or for worse....build them and are employed. The only thing that has changed is that the CLE terminology has been renamed to various communist names. But the mentality of the leadership and the masses stil remains.
DeleteAnd yes, we still have the Gurkhas and the Sikhs forming a noticable bulk of the Indian Defense Forces. I myself am a sikh and come from a long family of military tradition dating back 4 generations to the British Empire. Given a pinch of good leadership, we can rival China as well......maybe even the US ?
DeleteAnd I am certain that the US defense servises have a long tradition of grooming good leaders like General Van Ripper, and after grooming them, giving them ample opportunities for combat, growth and resources to try out new doctrines and combat styles.
ReplyDelete