My theory? Manning/Maintenance requirements for the Landing Ship Medium is what really killed Force Design 2030

Many, myself included, are reading the tea leaves and believe that Force Design 2030 is dead or at least dying.

Why?

Check this out via Defense One

Despite the MEU’s proven value in warfighting and deterrence—and its growing combat power under our Force Design initiative—our nation’s maritime expeditionary capability has steadily eroded. Today, we sit at 32 amphibious ships, barely meeting the congressionally mandated floor. With amphibious-ship readiness below 50 percent, we are well short of what’s needed to support three consistently forward-deployed ARG/MEUs. The Marine Corps has identified this gap for years, and leaders within the Department of the Navy are now moving with urgency to stabilize the fleet and drive investment in the industrial base for military shipbuilding.

As Commandant, I am addressing this amphibious capability shortfall through two initiatives outlined in my Planning Guidance. First, we must restore our amphibious capacity through a return to a 3.0 ARG/MEU presence: three forward-postured MEUs, each with three amphibious warships, persistently positioned around the globe. This has long been the standard, and it remains the Marine Corps’ North Star. Our combatant commanders, the Joint Force, and our civilian leaders rely on these formations to campaign, deter, and respond without delay and without any permission needed from a third party for access, basing or overflight.

Second, we are modernizing the MEU through Force Design, ensuring it evolves in stride with the changing character of war. Just as our Marine Littoral Regiments are receiving long-range fires, resilient command and control, unmanned systems, and advanced sensing networks, those same capabilities are being fielded across the MEUs, advancing their role as a flexible, multi-domain force from the sea.

I get it and I know what you're thinking.  

This has been the plan all along.  To that I say NO!  MEU's were not mentioned in Force Design as being an enabler OR A priority.  From the Commandant's Planning Guidance.

The Marine Corps' number one priority is force design, as stated in the Commandant's Planning Guidance. While the Landing Ship Medium (LSM) is a crucial and high-priority project supporting this goal, it is an enabler of force design rather than the overarching priority itself. The LSM is intended to support the new Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations (EABO) concept, which is a key component of this new force design. 

Force design is the number one priority: The Commandant identified force design as the top priority in his 2019 guidance to modernize the Marine Corps for future threats.

LSMs are a vital part of that design: The LSM program is a critical capability that supports the new force design by providing the necessary mobility, particularly for the EABO concept.

EABO concept is key to force design: The EABO concept involves small, mobile units of Marines maneuvering between islands to conduct missions, like firing anti-ship cruise missiles, which requires new types of ships like the LSM to move them around.

LSMs are an outcome of the priority: The development and acquisition of LSMs are a direct result of the force design priority, not the priority itself. The goal is to have a new class of smaller, more lethal, and risk-worthy amphibious ships to support this new way of operating. 

I will give Chowder Society II credit though.  They did start the discussion about the lack of MEUs in other theaters and they did talk about the lack of ground combat power those MEU currently have. 

But the dagger in the heart of Force Design 2030 is the LSM and to a larger degree, the priority of the US Navy in the planned for fight with China.

I believe that the Marine Corps was faced with a choice.

While already backing down from the requirement to push 2 MEBs and the needed naval shipping to support that task they were again told that even the new number of amphibious ships required was too high.

Something had to give and the choice was either the USMC gets a reduced number of Landing Ship Mediums or they could dance with the reduced number of big amphibious ships.

You can have one but not both.

That is the stark choice given and that is why the Commandant is doing what he should have done in the first place.  

Add to the Ground Combat Element instead of reduce it.  The cover for that move at this late date and in this current reduced GCE is the LSM in essence being killed.  Another factor that no one is willing to talk about is that the concept required host nations to agree to station Marine Littoral Regiments on their soil while the US is engaged in a shooting war with China.  That is a discussion for another day.

So what do we have today?

Probably at BEST 2 ARG/MEU on scattered dates available to respond to combatant commanders.

The potential war with Venezuela was probably a shocking indictment of the folly that is Force Design 2030.  Ground forces will need protected mobility, armor if the fight reaches the city or a port/airfield needs to be taken, artillery to keep the bad guys heads down and if anyone is doing the "sensing and making sense" it will be Ranger Recon or some Special Forces Detachment (you know SF is on the ground right now doing their "force multiplier" thing with insurgents...nice to know we have guys that can do to others what so many have done to us).

Force Design 2030 focused on one region.  It ignored the rest of the world.  It took the USMC off the menu of forces that Combatant Commanders could draw from and the USAF, US Navy AND US Army were putting in place real weapons that could be used at distance, reducing the danger to our troops.  At least in comparison to Force Design 2030 that stated that it would operate WITHIN the enemies engagement envelope as a feature and not a bug.

In summary what took so long for Force Design 2030 to be seen as a cosmic joke being played on the USMC?

* 6 years and actually getting past the propaganda of the thing.

* The Navy actually looking at maintenance/cost to bring the enabler LSM into service.

* A new administration that prioritized OUR region instead of regions around the world.

* The US Army putting together hypersonics that could strike forcefully from distance.

* Retired USMC flag officers that called bullshit on two sitting commandant's that went rogue.

And finally (although there is so much more) commonsense overriding a clever marketing campaign.