Understanding the US Marines’ Dramatic Plans to Deter China

Since arriving as its new commandant a year ago, General David Berger has embarked on the most radical transformation of the U.S. Marine Corps in decades. His plan sees the Marines shedding legacy equipment in favor of new missile systems, refocusing from the land wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to working primarily with the U.S. Navy in the maritime environment, and developing forward-leaning strategies to help deter aggression in the Pacific, implicitly from a potentially hostile China.

The force structure changes that the Marines released this spring propose significant cuts over the next decade, including a total divestment of its heavy tanks, massive cuts to its traditional artillery, and reductions in the number of infantry units, heavy lift helicopters, tilt-rotor aircraft, and amphibious vehicles. These cuts will enable the procurement of new capabilities, especially electronic warfare, unmanned, and mobile missile systems. 

The Marines’ top general has explained in guidance for his planners what the new force and concepts are for: “[T]o facilitate sea denial and assured access in support of fleet and joint operations.” 

Many critics are wary of such extreme changes, especially the loss of traditional weapons and vehicles that would be difficult to reintroduce if predictions about the missions and tools the Marines will need in coming decades prove wrong. Still others contend that the transformation is not enough to do what the Marines say it will: deter China and prevail in any potential clash with the People’s Liberation Army.

On its own, this new Marine Corps likely would not be enough to deter China from seizing islands in the East or South China Seas by force, or invading Taiwan. It probably could not repel those invasions on its own, either. But key to understanding the Marines’ proposed reforms is understanding that it isn’t intended to do any of those things on its own, or necessarily even be the principal effort.

The Marine Corps did not embark on this transformation only because its leaders decided to. They were directed to prioritize new missions and theaters in overarching strategic instructions like the Pentagon’s National Defense Strategy, whose unclassified summary outlines a transformation in the way that the entire U.S. military operates and the tools it must prioritize to face the challenges it foresees from great power competition.

In the concept outlined in the Pentagon’s National Defense Strategy, Marine units deployed in the Western Pacific would be “contact” and “blunt” layers of forces. As a contact force, the Marines would help compete in the “gray zone” prior to an armed conflict, and ideally, help deter any potential clash with China. If that clash does occur, then those Marine forces would be part of the blunt layer to delay the PLA’s progress toward its goals, and perhaps even deny them those objectives. But at a minimum, the blunt layer is intended to provide time for so-called “surge” forces like additional warships, warplanes, and more heavily armed Army units to arrive.

And despite the headline grabbing news of drastic cuts to legacy programs, the ideas beneath the proposed cuts and new equipment have been germinating for several years.

Even before the Trump administration, the Marines were working together with the Navy on shallow water and expeditionary basing concepts that reverse the role Marines have played since World War II. In past decades, the Marines were supported by the Navy to accomplish their missions ashore, and in recent ones it has operated in theaters like Iraq and Afghanistan largely on its own. But against a force as capable as the People’s Liberation Army, and in the Western Pacific’s largely maritime and littoral geography, the Department of Defense sees the Marines as more of a supporting player, using missiles perched on small islands to help protect the Navy’s warships, defend the Air Force’s jets and bombers, and give the Army space to move in heavier forces and equipment.

As to why the Marine Corps, the smallest of the U.S. military services, isn’t simply proposing to add to existing capabilities, Berger made his recommendations under the assumption that the Pentagon’s budget will not grow appreciably over the timeframe it needs to enact these reforms. To buy the new missiles, smaller amphibious ships, and unmanned systems that the Marines’ planners and wargamers think they need, deep cuts have to be made elsewhere. It’s a good assumption. The Pentagon itself is expecting to have flat budgets in coming years, with the coronavirus likely to leave lasting economic damage, and progressive groups in the U.S. Congress proposing cuts to the defense budget to redirect funds to economic recovery.

It is important to understand the missions that the Marines would no longer be able to perform if these reforms are completed, or at least the ways that they would perform those missions differently. It is more important to understand the force structure and conceptual reforms that the other services need to complete, especially the Navy and Army, to take advantage of the operational opportunities that the Marine Corps is transforming itself to provide. Strategically, the limiting factor on the Marines’ new vision is not its own organic capabilities, but whether the other services -- the Navy, Army, and Air Force -- successfully complete their own transformations and hone their ability to work jointly against anticipated PLA threats.

The commandant’s guidance states clearly that the Marines’ primary mission is supporting broader, joint operations. Marine mobile missile units on sparse islands in the Western Pacific don’t have to win in a long, drawn out battle of attrition with PLA missile units on the mainland; they just have to provide time and space for the Navy’s warships and the Air Force’s bombers to arrive, and for the Army’s planned new long-range weapons to come to bear, including rockets, missiles, hypersonic weapons, and even a “strategic” super-cannon with a 1,600 kilometer range.

The Marines themselves are planning to add extraordinary firepower in place of tanks and traditional artillery. In addition to anti-ship missiles like the Naval Strike Missile with a 100 nautical mile range, the Marines are also buying ground-based Tomahawk missiles with a range of roughly 1,600 km, which until a year ago had been limited to sea-based platforms by treaty restrictions. There are also talks to procure mobile, ground-based hypersonic weapons alongside the Army. Deployed to small expeditionary bases on islands in the South or East China Sea, those hypersonic weapons, anticipated to be deployable by the mid-2020s, could hit targets deep in mainland China.

Even with new and proposed capabilities, plenty of questions remain about the Marines’ proposed role in a new Pacific conflict. Small, exposed positions in the South China Sea, a so-called “inside force,” might prove a thorn in the side of regional Chinese ambitions. The addition of a capability like hypersonic weapons that could threaten command and control or nuclear forces on China’s mainland might make them a much higher priority target, and make the integration of the Marines’ plans with the support of sea, air, and land-based capabilities from the other services even more important to ensure that they deter the escalation of a potential conflict with China instead of encourage one.