New Corps Formation: Marine Littoral Regiment?

via Marine Times

Major changes seem to be coming for the Marine Corps’ force structure, as the commandant and his top leaders have given a range of new design possibilities.

There’s reconfiguring the Marine Expeditionary Unit for new types of missions, and ways to change the Marine Air-Ground Task Force to better fit the needs of the force. Commandant Gen. David Berger has talked about small teams of Marines taking out ships in hotly contested areas.

But recently an entirely new formation was mentioned that could cause its own ripples across the force: a Marine littoral regiment.

“It’s looking at creating the Marine Littoral Regiment and how that’s going to resource and help make (Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations) successful,” said Maj. Gen. Mark Wise, deputy commanding general of Marine Corps Combat Development Command.

Here. 

I've been pounding my head trying to remember where I've seen all this before.  Not in the USMC but in history.

Then it hit me.  The US Army tried this during the 1950s when the "pacing" threat was the USSR.

via Wikipedia...

Pentomic (cf. Greek pent(e)- and -tome, "of five parts") refers to a structure for infantry and Airborne divisions adopted by the U.S. Army in 1957 in response to the perceived threat posed by tactical nuclear weapons use on the battlefield.

"Pentomic Division" was "a public relations term designed to combine the concept of five subordinate units ('penta') with the idea of a division that could function on an atomic or nonatomic battlefield."[1]

Here. 

What do I remember from my limited reading?  Everything got tracked.  Tracked supply vehicles, tracked mortar carriers, you get the idea.  Additionally we had cannons of every type that all fired some type of nuclear projectile.

What happened next?

A few short years later the war that we wanted didn't come knocking, it was the one we didn't called Vietnam.

All the planning, modeling etc...got thrown in the trash in the quagmire that was Vietnam.

Even worse?

Because the Army (and the US military) was on the wrong foot and not prepared for the fight they would get, things went badly.

I have to wonder.

Is this wise?  Are we seeing a generation of flag officers that are trying to get it right or are they trying to leave a legacy other than failure in the Middle East?

Harsh I know but think about it.  We have a couple of generations of officers that were unable to get the job done.  That have us involved in the longest wars in American history and historians will not be kind.

They presided over several debacles from the F-35 to the LCS to the KC-46 to the Ford class to the EFV to the Bradley replacement and the Stryker program.

I guess what I'm saying is that I wonder if this isn't a legacy building exercise or a real need.  Also consider that the USMC is wagging the dog on this one. The Navy doesn't even have its ship building program together but the Marine Corps is already making plans on how it will deploy and fight in the littoral zone?

I find it all curious.

Drastic changes are being proposed instead of commonsense ones like getting our organizational model ironed out.  Check out this EXCELLENT article.

I end with this.  There is low hanging fruit that should be picked...where cuts should be made BEFORE we make these wholesale changes.