Exhibit_B_-_MCOC.pdf

The Marine Corps Operating Concept How an Expeditionary Force Operates in the 21st Century

The Marine Corps Operating Concept (MOC) describes, in broad terms, how Marine Corps forces will conduct the range of military operations in accordance with our Title 10 responsibilities. The MOC provides the foundation and context for subordinate operating and functional concepts, guides analysis, wargaming and experimentation and informs capability development and budget programming decisions. Concepts in their simplest forms are ideas that are matured and refined through exploration, debate and discussion.

i

DEPARTMENT OF THE NAVY

HEADQUARTERS UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS

WASHINGTON, D.C. 20380-1775

September 2016

FOREWORD

As a warfighting organization, we must recognize the challenges of the future and develop an operational approach to fight and win. The MOC embraces our naval character, expeditionary mindset, and professional approach to constantly improve and build on our foundations of maneuver warfare and fighting as a combined arms force. The challenges of the future will impact how we organize our Corps and ultimately fight our Nation’s battles. The MOC describes the steps we will take to design, develop, and field a future force for the 21st century. The success of this concept depends on our Marines and Sailors. Our people have always been the Marine Corps center of gravity and the key to our success as warfighters. Their ability to think critically, innovate smartly, and adapt to complex environments and adaptive enemies has always been the key factor we rely on to win in any clime and place.

The profession of arms is unforgiving; mistakes are paid for in blood and incompetence can lead to catastrophic defeat. When we fight, we must win. There is no alternative. The American people expect and deserve nothing less from their Marine Corps. Our preparation for the inevitable conflicts of the future begins with this operating concept. It charts how we will transform ourselves to deter and defeat the threats of tomorrow. Yet the MOC also acknowledges the timeless, violent nature of war and reaffirms our primary purpose. The Marine Corps exists to defeat our Nation’s enemies. Even in a world of ever-increasing technology, we must continue to provide combat formations capable of closing with and destroying the enemy. This imperative drives us to demand physical toughness and resilience in our Marines and Sailors, and expect their brilliance in the fundamentals of warfighting. While the means and methods we use to wage war will evolve, we must always be prepared for the violence of combat.

The MOC does not provide an answer to every problem. Rather, it is intended to generate professional debate and discussion about our future challenges. We need every Marine and Sailor to seek creative solutions to today’s and tomorrow’s complex problems. We need your ideas and your critical thinking.

We need to change where it makes sense, adapt as quickly as possible, and constantly innovate to stay ahead of our adversaries. Our ability to adapt more quickly than our enemies will be vital to our future success. We need all Marines to read, discuss, and challenge the ideas in the MOC. As steel sharpens steel, your review and professional recommendations will sharpen our concept of how we will fight in the future. Your proactive involvement in validating our operating concept is critical to ensuring we can Innovate, Adapt, and Win!

ii

Table of Contents

1. Looking Ahead – How We Will Operate and Fight in 2025

2. Purpose and Context

3. The Future Security Environment: Key Drivers of Change

4. Statement of the Central Problem

5. Our Operating Concept: Maneuver Warfare in Every Dimension; Combined Arms in All Domains

5.1 Executing the Concept

5.2 Pursuing Change: Priorities and Risk

6. Creating the Future Force: Critical Tasks and Issue Areas

6.1 Critical Task: Integrate the Naval Force to Fight At and From the Sea

6.2 Critical Task: Evolve the MAGTF

6.3 Critical Task: Operate with Resilience in a Contested-Network Environment

6.4 Critical Task: Enhance Our Ability to Maneuver

6.5 Critical Task: Exploit the Competence of the Individual Marine

7. Conclusion

1. Looking Ahead – How We Will Operate and Fight in 2025 1 May 2026 – Warner Center for Advanced Military Studies, MCB Quantico. Good afternoon and welcome to the last warfighting session of Command and Staff Class 2026. Over the last week, we’ve formally studied OLR – Operation Littoral Resolve – the largest integrated Naval force operation since Inchon. As you know, in OLR we deployed a MEF – a Marine Expeditionary Force – as part of a Combined/Joint force to assist one of our key allies in repelling an aggressive neighbor and quelling a proxy-force insurgency. Today we’re going to hear from veterans of that operation and have a frank, Marine-to-Marine discussion of lessons learned. Let’s get started.

Moderator: Capt Pierce, you were a company commander on the MEU. How did OLR start for you?

Well, up to the point that the enemy started crossing the border, we were on the ground training the locals. Teaching them basic tactics, but also gathering current info on the culture, politics and situation, ‘who’s doing what to whom,’ and doing some messaging so that if we had to come back, the populace would understand why. When things started deteriorating, we were pulled back to the ships and re-tasked to set up an EAB – an Expeditionary Advanced Base – on an island at the fringes of the enemy keep-out zone. The idea was to establish a sensor line to get a better read on enemy signatures and movements. It helped that the island had a decent patch of paved road to use to arm and refuel aircraft.

So, it was a good target, but now we had to take it. With the new moon and zero illum, we came in fast from long range on small boats. Worst beaches you’ve ever seen. Windward side, rocks everywhere, shoving boats in between the breakers. Really high-risk in the dark – probably impossible without recon and unmanned systems confirming the landing sites. Fortunately, recon swimmers were there to greet

us. We infiltrated by platoon towards the objective area. GPS access wasn’t so hot, but we had maps and compasses and knew how to get where we were going. Our unit humped through some really rough ground to the assault position. In a few hours, we were right on top of the enemy and they didn’t have a clue. Working from our F-35 feeds, we sent up our UAS killers to take out their crew-served positions and command posts. The mortar section got fire capped and was able to drop precision rounds right where the squad leaders told us to put ‘em. They tapped the app and had rounds on target. The fight lasted about 45 minutes before we had things under control and the EAB was ready to take the first aircraft.

Moderator: LtCol Winchester, you commanded one of the BLTs during the amphibious assault. How did you put that force ashore, particularly given the enemy’s capabilities? Our battalion was one of two that went in vertically. Two others came in via surface. Units coming across the beach had to worry about mines and hasty obstacles, which they had a good set of unmanned capabilities to help them breach, and massed fires, which could have been catastrophic. While the landing force didn’t get ashore unscathed, they mitigated the damage by using numerous small landing sites and emphasizing speed and dispersion. For our force, the key was ensuring that we could get in without being shot to pieces by the IADS. We were supporting and supported by MARSOC/SOF raids to give us secure movement corridors. We went into multiple LZs vice a single big one, inserting a good ways away from the actual objectives to disguise our intent and present a tougher targeting problem for massed enemy fires. To deal with the extra distance and additional weight from our organic precision fires – from our 120s – we utilized a mix of ultralight vehicles and robotic cargo systems. During the actual vertical assault, information coming in from manned recon elements, unmanned ground sensors and overhead ISR feeds let me understand the state of the LZs and gave me near real-time targeting data. By L+2 hours, the entire battalion was moving out to our objectives. Despite the fact that the enemy was jamming us pretty hard and we were sensitive to the risk of coming up on the net too often, we were able to maintain comms and supported one another as we moved to contact.

Moderator: Why so dispersed? Weren’t you worried about being too small to be effective?

No – our smaller units not only have more organic combined arms capabilities – like Group 1 UAS munitions, EW, and ISR – they also have the connectivity to reach out for almost every capability in the Joint force; plus they have trained with it. The squad leaders and platoon commanders employed assets and capabilities that, when I was a lieutenant, resided only at battalion, regiment, and brigade levels. It is all about relative combat power at the point of attack – not writ large across a theater. Plus our integrated C2 really boosted our operational tempo and gave us the fluidity to concentrate, disperse, and re-concentrate when necessary. We were able to make sense of what was going on and act quickly. This is KEY. All the information in the world is useless if you can’t act on it. In OLR, we could and did.

While the battalion was maneuvering south towards the capital to deal with the proxy forces in there, the rest of the assault force pushed north to cut off the enemy’s ground forces that had crossed the border. The battalions landing over the beach came in heavy enough to block the advancing enemy mechanized force. They had a mix of armor, artillery, air defense and precision weapons – more than enough firepower to deal with anybody ready to make a run at them. They also had significant aviation – on-line 24/7 – coming from their own organic unmanned assets as well as ACE and Joint platforms.

Moderator: You said that your battalion pushed south to deal with proxy forces in the city. Give us some insights on the urban fight. In OLR, we were invited into a densely populated friendly area to support local security forces and police in rooting out proxy forces intermingled with the locals. We used all of our tools, just slightly differently. It was Gen Krulak’s classic “three-block war”– fighting enemies, helping friendlies, and enforcing peace – all compressed into one block. And there wasn’t a single block in that town where we weren’t doing information warfare all day every day. Real-time ISR and precision fires are the only way to engage the enemy in this environment without turning the population against you. On the non-kinetic side, we were sensing and making sense of social media patterns and fighting the constant battle of the narrative. Our non-lethal capabilities were critical for certain situations, for example, controlling and moving crowds without escalating.

Moderator: To get a higher command perspective, let’s turn to some folks who were in the Maritime Operations Center. CAPT O’Reilly, what is your view having been the Chief of Staff? Well, it seems clear that fighting as an integrated Naval force against a peer validated 10 years of experiments and exercises. A decade ago, we were still trying to integrate the Naval Services and struggling for training opportunities. I think the effort we put into learning how to conduct littoral ops made us appreciate the linkages between sea control and power projection.

Once we really committed to operating with integrated Naval capabilities, things began falling into place. Lots of things – putting more Marines aboard different types of ships, studying Naval warfighting, integrating our operational staffs, merging our component staffs, and manning the Maritime Operations Center – with permanent staffing – eliminated the seams that had plagued us for so long. We made a Marine the Expeditionary Warfare Commander – certainly a big change. This resulted from the evolution of the Navy’s Composite Warfare Doctrine for decentralized command to meet the requirements for 21st century maneuver warfare in the littorals. Having a Marine in this command position ensured we could composite MAGTFs that would fully mesh with the Naval force. With integrated staffs at the component and Maritime Operations Center level, the JFMCC was better able to bring the entire weight of the Department of the Navy to bear on the fight.

Moderator: Col Griffith – you were the G-3. What about OLR stands out in your mind? Creating littoral combat groups really accelerated our ability to establish local sea control in blue/green/brown water. In OLR, groups combined the ARG/MEU, a Surface Action Group, and a Coastal Riverine Force with Marines aboard. The ARG/MEU’s Maritime Raid Force and SOF conducted raids and reconnaissance to set conditions for Naval littoral maneuver. When the Carrier Strike Group came into position, the Maritime Operations Center established the Sea-Air-Ground Task Force. This was really important for compositing and unifying the Naval force.

Moderator: Col Lawton, you were the MAW OPSO. Talk us through how the ACE’s mission evolved as OLR progressed. As things began to escalate, the integrated Naval plan folded in Marine aviation. The idea of having Marine air involved in fleet air defense and sea control took years to work out but proved its value. We started out supporting Navy aircraft in those missions before transitioning to degrading enemy A2AD capabilities. We knew that even with significant kinetic shaping we couldn’t zero out the entire IADS and coastal defense systems, but we could create ‘bubbles’ for small periods. We had our birds emit so we could stimulate and collect on their early warning systems and the F-35s could hammer them. Ashore, the EABs were essential to Naval maneuver – there simply isn’t enough deck space to handle the number of airframes for these types of ops. The EABs sped up deck cycles and increased sortie rates. Once we started shaping for the landings, the F-35’s sense-and-strike capabilities let them act as quarterbacks on manned-unmanned hunter-killer teams with UAS providing persistent ISR and ordnance.

As the landings commenced, the years of focus on digital interoperability between our aviation and ground assets paid off. Passing immediate messages, graphics, and threat overlays between our platforms kept our awareness high en route. Even so, it was hard to keep up with an adaptable enemy, and doing CAS in that urban sprawl was a huge challenge. Here again, digital interop was a big help, but even more so were the air-ground integration experts – talking JTACs and JFOs here – down at company and platoon. Especially in a contested EM environment where GPS couldn’t be relied on 100% and our comms were periodically disrupted, having seasoned and experienced Marines understanding intent and working targeting and fires problems let us maneuver and engage the enemy with a lot more confidence.

Moderator: Col Ramirez, you commanded the Combat Logistics Regiment. How did you support the OLR scheme of maneuver? We recognized the complexity of sustaining lots of small units, getting them the things they need at the right time and in sizes they can use. The way not to do it is adding logistics structure ashore and building the inevitable ‘iron mountain’ that always follows, which is just a big high-value target. Our expeditionary logistics concept let us tailor “right-sized” packages for the supported command – company, platoon, squad – and deliver them by cargo-capable UAS. In OLR, we kept the Combat Operations Center and the bulk of the logistics afloat. That helped us do two key things.

Obviously, it reduced the logistics footprint ashore and lowered the associated risk. Second, and maybe even more importantly, it gave us actual integrated C2 with the Navy. Planning together, we synchronized logistics across the entire Naval force, not for just one Service or the other.

Moderator: Great stuff, gentlemen. Before we leave, does anyone want to make some closing comments? How about you, Col Griffith? Sure. You have to understand that the Marine Corps you see now is radically different from a decade earlier because we fully embrace ‘Naval.’ Back in 2016, the MOC

– the Marine Corps Operating Concept – helped us to understand how an expeditionary force operates in the 21st century. It really pushed the boundaries of the future force, and it’s not clear we could have pulled off something as challenging and complex as OLR under our old constructs. The MOC established a conceptual vision for the future, exposed it to debate, and then through a Campaign of Learning drove towards the capabilities that would bring that vision into being. The MOC defined an objective – posing questions and pointing towards possible answers – and Marines, being Marines, took that objective.

2. Purpose and Context The purpose of the Marine Corps Operating Concept (MOC): How an Expeditionary Force Operates in the 21st Century is twofold:

Describe in broad terms how the Marine Corps will operate, fight, and win in 2025 and beyond;

and

Shape our actions as we design and develop the capabilities and capacity of the future force.

The MOC guides our collective efforts to ensure the Marine Corps’ future readiness and relevancy. The Marine Corps, as an integral part of both the Naval force and the Combined/Joint force, must be a tailorable, flexible, and versatile force capable of responding to any crisis across the full range of military operations (ROMO). We must be a coherent and fully integrated Naval Force that can contribute to deterrence, provide maritime security, perform sea control, and project power ashore to impose our will upon adversaries. We must be an Expeditionary Force that is trained and equipped and able to operate in austere conditions and hostile environments. We must be an Agile Force that can navigate the physical and cognitive dimensions of complex situations and seize the initiative. We must be a Lethal Force with a 21st century approach to combined arms that integrates information warfare and seeks to destroy and defeat our enemies across five domains– air, land, sea, space, and cyberspace. Ultimately, we must continue to be a Winning Force. As Marines have always done, when our Nation calls upon us, we must fight and win regardless of the dimension or domain. Victory is our legacy — in the past, now, and in the future.

The MOC builds on proven concepts and practices such as Operational Maneuver from the Sea, Ship-to- Objective Maneuver, Seabasing, and Expeditionary Force 21 (EF 21). In 2014, EF 21 provided an initial heading to move the Marine Corps forward as a Naval expeditionary force in the 21st century. It offered waypoints to stimulate further creative discussion, formal analysis, and focused experimentation and brought about improvements and enhancements in how we organize, train and equip our Marine Air- Ground Task Forces (MAGTFs). Two years later, in the face of emerging threats and adaptive adversaries, the MOC supersedes EF 21. The MOC reflects the Commandant’s guidance to leverage the full capabilities of the MEF to support Naval maneuver and Combined/Joint operations, reinvigorate our emphasis on maneuver warfare, and integrate information warfare into our combined arms approach.

The MOC will drive capability and capacity decisions to produce the future force.

The MOC was developed through a design approach that:

Distills key drivers of change from the future environment;

Identifies the central problem confronting the Marine Corps as it prepares for the future;

Reinforces our enduring commitment to the principles of maneuver warfare in describing our concept for how we will operate and fight in 2025 and beyond; and

Sets critical tasks to inform how we will develop the future force to execute the concept.

3. The Future Security Environment: Key Drivers of Change The MOC proceeds from the assessment published in June 2015 by the Marine Corps Intelligence Activity (MCIA): Future Operating Environment (FOE) 2015-2025: Implications for Marines. Looking out to 2025 through the lens of the FOE, the MOC focuses on key drivers of change in how we organize, train, and equip the Marine Corps to execute its assigned functions, roles, and responsibilities. The five key drivers are:

Complex terrain;

Technology proliferation;

Information as a weapon;

Battle of signatures; and

Increasingly contested maritime domain.

Complex Terrain. The growth of crowded, poorly governed, or lawless areas, particularly in and around the world’s littorals, will confront future commanders with the need to consider complex terrain.

Complex terrain adds informational and human aspects of the battlespace to the traditional geo-physical factors. Our opponents have learned that fighting in complex terrain offers opportunities to undercut our advantages in technology, mounted maneuver, and firepower. Collateral damage in highly urbanized areas will be difficult to avoid. Densely populated areas with constricting topography and poor infrastructure will make vehicular and aerial movement readily observable and easily disrupted.

Urban areas will also challenge our ability to find cover and concealment and achieve surprise.

Mission demands in complex terrain will place a greater requirement to conduct sustained, foot-mobile operations in and among populations. We must also be prepared to simultaneously fight, keep the peace, and provide humanitarian assistance – the familiar “three-block war” – and on every block conduct information warfare to protect friendly forces and networks, deceive the enemy, and create a cognitive advantage.

Technology Proliferation. Peer and near-peer state adversaries have and will continue to refine sophisticated anti-access/area denial (A2AD) capabilities that threaten our strategic reach and operational freedom of maneuver. Technology proliferation will ensure numerous non-state adversaries and individuals gain at least some capability at the tactical level. Many will be able to gain access to engineering knowledge for specialized weapons, commercially available unmanned systems, chemical and biological weapons, and new “intelligent explosive devices” that can hunt down their targets. Stand-off weapons such as anti-ship cruise missiles, precision-guided munitions, armed and persistent unmanned aerial systems (UAS), networked ISR and targeting systems, and surface-to-air missiles – all once the province of only the most modern militaries – are becoming commonplace. Increasingly lethal counter-air weapons and their growing availability even to non-state actors will further challenge our use of low-altitude airspace for maneuver, supply, and fire support.

Any monopoly we might have on “breakthrough” systems will likely be short-lived. Designs can be stolen from compromised information environments and cutting-edge equipment can be captured or illicitly acquired and reverse-engineered. Advances in computer controlled machining and the maturation of 3D-printing/additive manufacturing will enable competitors to quickly transition designs into production and introduce systems into operation at a pace far faster than our current acquisition process allows.

We need to streamline our ability to evaluate and acquire advanced technologies to ensure we gain advantages from innovations faster than our competitors and adversaries.

It is critical to emphasize, however, that technology will never override the human dimensions of war.

Like conflicts of the past, wars of the future will be characterized by their destruction, bloodshed, and suffering. No level of automation or use of robotics will replace the fact that war will always center on violence directed by humans against other humans. Killing is inherent to fighting, and war’s violent essence will never change. Hence, war will continue to be an extreme trial that will test our strength, stamina, and endurance. On the battlefields of tomorrow, our Marines and Sailors will still have to contend with danger, fear, exhaustion, and privation. While new technologies and scientific advancements may grant us advantages, ultimately, it will be our hardened resolve and will to win that will prove decisive in future combat.

Information as a Weapon. An ever-increasing part of people’s lives is taking place in the information space, adding informational and human dimensions to the battlespace. Globally networked and information-enabled populations now react to viral versions of events and ideas moving at the speed of the internet, complicating our ability to gain and maintain an accurate, up-to-date, intelligence-driven understanding of conflicts. Today’s adversaries already leverage every type of information as an arm of both “hard” and “soft” power to mask their actions, mislead unwitting publics, and undermine the legitimacy of their opponents. Threat organizations routinely exploit intentional violence and collateral damage and disseminate their narrative through a wide range of outlets. With greater connectivity, competing arguments fueled by identity politics, economic grievances, and extremist causes will continue to produce turbulence and confusion.

Marines must understand that controlling physical terrain is no longer a sufficient condition for battlefield success; we must also navigate the landscape of knowledge and perception. Operating in the information domain will not only require us to protect our networks but take actions that inform, promote, persuade, coerce, dissuade, convince, compel, deceive, mask, and intimidate.

Battle of Signatures. Tomorrow’s fights will involve conditions in which “to be detected is to be targeted is to be killed.” Adversaries will routinely net together sensors, spies, UAS, and space imagery to form sophisticated “ISR-strike systems” that are able to locate, track, target, and attack an opposing force. In complex terrain, adversaries will collect targeting information through eyes and ears and spread it through social media. No matter the means of detection, unmanaged signatures will increasingly become a critical vulnerability.

We must acquire the offensive capabilities to raise and detect enemy signatures across the spectrum, quickly and accurately assign meaning to what we observe, and rapidly take action to exploit any opportunity. Defensively, our units will need to adapt how they fight, emphasizing emissions control and other means of signature management to increase their survivability. We will also need deception capabilities that cause an adversary to form inaccurate impressions about our actions and intentions.

Further, we will need to improve our counter-intelligence capabilities and social media discipline.

Increasingly Contested Maritime Domain. We no longer enjoy presumptive sea control. Although the U.S. Navy-Marine Corps Team remains powerful, its ability to control the seas and project power is increasingly in question. Near-peer competitors are now openly challenging previously unmatched U.S.

Naval air, surface, and subsurface capabilities. Potential adversaries are currently striving to contest our ability to gain access to specific regions of the global commons. We should expect future adversaries to pursue military objectives without crossing the threshold of open conflict, applying pressure across multiple domains of competition to produce a fait accompli contrary to our interests. We will face more challenging combinations of cyberspace warfare, economic influence, political shaping, and legalistic “lawfare” to control the escalation and de-escalation of crises in ways that undermine our influence and increase our reaction times. The deep-water ports and high-throughput airfields we once relied upon are also increasingly vulnerable to attacks with long-range fires. These challenges will only grow as competitors pursue concepts for holding our forces at bay at greater distances and denying our ability to maneuver in both littoral and landward areas.

We must develop capabilities and training that reflect the mutually reinforcing relationship between sea control and power projection. The Naval Services’ maritime strategy, A Cooperative Strategy for 21st

Century Seapower, states that establishing sea control may require projecting power ashore to neutralize threats or control terrain in the littorals. Similarly, projecting and sustaining power ashore requires establishing sea control in the adjoining seas and airspace. The Marine Corps must enhance its power projection capabilities and contributions to sea control as part of a Naval campaign.

4. Statement of the Central Problem Over the past 15 years, we have been continuously involved in both major combat and crisis response missions. All that time, our competitors have observed and learned much from how we operate. As a result, our future enemies will use that knowledge to oppose us in the physical and cognitive dimensions of conflict. In contrast, we have not been able to adapt at the rate of change required to ensure our success in future conflict. Restoring our advantage requires to us address our central problem:

The Marine Corps is currently not organized, trained, and equipped to meet the demands of a future operating environment characterized by complex terrain, technology proliferation, information warfare, the need to shield and exploit signatures, and an increasingly non-permissive maritime domain.

The MOC is the starting point to address this problem by reaffirming the primacy of maneuver warfare and combined arms for the 21st century and identifying the critical tasks to develop the future force.

5. Our Operating Concept: Maneuver Warfare in Every Dimension; Combined Arms in All Domains

Our doctrine defines maneuver warfare as “a warfighting philosophy that seeks to shatter the enemy’s cohesion through a variety of rapid, focused and unexpected actions which create a turbulent and rapidly deteriorating situation with which the enemy cannot cope.”1 This warfighting philosophy was, is, and will remain our foundation. In the past, we successfully conducted maneuver warfare primarily in the physical dimension and employed combined arms in the air, land, and sea domains. Now, changes in the operating environment and adversary capabilities drive us to increase emphasis on maneuver in the cognitive dimension and expand our employment of combined arms to the domains of space and cyberspace. This expansion and enhancement of our warfighting approach is necessary to ensure that we maintain our ability to defeat our enemies and win our Nation’s battles.

To address our central problem and reaffirm the primacy of maneuver warfare and combined arms, our operating concept is:

The 21st century MAGTF conducts maneuver warfare in the physical and cognitive dimensions of conflict to generate and exploit psychological, technological, temporal, and spatial advantages over the adversary. The 21st century MAGTF executes maneuver warfare through a combined arms approach that embraces information warfare as indispensable for achieving complementary effects across five domains – air, land, sea, space, and cyberspace. The 21st century MAGTF avoids linear, sequential, and phased approaches to operations and blends maneuver warfare and combined arms to generate the combat power needed for simultaneity of action in its full range of missions. The 21st century MAGTF operates and fights at sea, from the sea, and ashore as an integrated part of the

Naval force and the larger Combined/Joint force.

1 Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication (MCDP) 1, Warfighting, June 1997.

5.1 Executing the Concept

Our ability to successfully execute the concept will depend greatly on the extent to which we have:

Integrated as a full partner with the Navy, Special Operations Forces (SOF), and the Joint force – because Marines both contribute and benefit from unique and complementary capabilities across the ROMO and across all five domains.

Devised and refined an approach to operate from more diverse platforms and expeditionary advanced bases as part of a Naval campaign – because fighting at and from the sea was, is, and will remain a core competency that the Nation requires.

Exploited the ability of our largest MAGTF, the Marine Expeditionary Force, to serve as a reservoir of capability from which to tailor the force at every level – because the Marine Corps is unique in its ability to task-organize for any situation.

Mastered the implementation of 21st century combined arms as our means to conduct maneuver warfare across all domains – because we will exploit every opportunity to gain an advantage.

Organized, trained, and equipped all echelons to integrate information warfare as a combination of creative thinking and advanced technology – because conducting information warfare is what we all do, every day.

Designed and protected our C2 and ISR networks as a multi-source information sharing architecture that reliably serves disparate MAGTF elements – because distributing actionable information keeps operations in chaotic environments from becoming chaotic operations.

Configured the MAGTF to fight and win when it fluidly distributes and concentrates elements – because maneuver warfare and combined arms create combat power at any scale.

Enabled small units to achieve greater effects – because they can leverage the full combat power of the MAGTF and Naval/Joint forces

Redesigned our logistics to support distributable forces across a dynamic and fully contested battlespace – because iron mountains of supply and lakes of liquid fuel are liabilities and not supportive of maneuver warfare.

Learned how to use unmanned systems and automation at all echelons and in every domain – because mastering the man-machine interface offers a revolution in military operations.

Set the mental and physical standards for Marine infantry through a mission-driven perspective that fully recognizes the demands on foot-mobile forces conducting operations in austere environments – because superior infantry is a Marine Corps asymmetric advantage.

Developed leaders at all echelons who know how to fight in the complex terrain of densely populated urban environments and understand the power of information and information warfare

– because “fighting hard” and “fighting smart” are not mutually exclusive.

Designed and implemented manpower systems, policies, and processes to attract, develop, retain, and support highly qualified Marines and civilian employees prepared for the rigors of 21st century expeditionary operations – because we are in a fight for the best and brightest talent.

Overcome the enduring obstacles to leveraging and sustaining “commercial-off-the-shelf systems”

– because affordable “70%” solutions now are better than outdated solutions 10 years from now.

5.2 Pursuing Change: Priorities and Risk

The Nation requires a Marine Corps that can fight and win in the future operating environment. To meet that requirement, the MOC outlines a force capable of conducting maneuver warfare with a 21st century approach to combined arms that leverages the additive and complementary effects of information warfare. This force cannot be realized in part – forgoing one element to focus on another will compromise the whole. It must be created as a coherent solution, comprising to some degree all of the requisite capabilities and capacities.

Our greatest risk is that we become unbalanced in our development of a future Marine Corps that is at once Naval, expeditionary, agile and lethal. Nevertheless, we will have to contend with the limiting effect of budgetary constraints, account for technological hurdles, and promote a shared sense of urgency to fend off any argument that “business as usual” is a viable option going forward. We will consider the timelines, resources and effectiveness associated with competing ideas and alternative methods for realizing the necessary capabilities and capacities. We will look for the intersection of the highest levels of military utility, technical feasibility and institutional affordability to establish priorities for bringing this future force into being as a coherent whole.

6. Creating the Future Force: Critical Tasks and Issue Areas The MOC identifies five critical tasks and associated issue areas to guide our effort to change how we organize, train, equip, and sustain the Marine Corps to operate, fight, and win in the 21st century. The five critical tasks are:

Integrate the Naval force to fight at and from the sea;

Evolve the MAGTF;

Operate with resilience in a contested-network environment;

Enhance our ability to maneuver; and

Exploit the competence of the individual Marine.

The scope and scale of the implied changes are not trivial; they cut across the Marine Corps as an institution. The tasks associated with these changes require us to come to terms with new missions, acquire and master new capabilities, and evolve or create organizations. As a warfighting organization, we must continue to innovate and adapt to ensure that we restore and then maintain our competitive edge across the spectrum of conflict over all adversaries.

6.1 Critical Task: Integrate the Naval Force to Fight At and From the Sea As described in A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower, Naval forces perform these essential functions: all-domain access, deterrence, sea control, power projection, and maritime security. The Marine Corps, as an expeditionary force in readiness, provides the Naval force with both unique and complementary capabilities to perform those functions. MAGTFs give the Naval force the ability to rapidly deploy, employ, and sustain versatile combat power to accomplish a wide range of missions. As we prepare for future operations as a more integrated Naval force, we must understand the implications of the Naval functions for organizing, training, and equipping MAGTFs to operate and fight.

6.1.1 Role of Forward and Ready Naval Forces

The Marine Corps and Navy provide a credible and capable forward presence that gives national authorities immediate response options while buying time for distant elements of the Joint force to mobilize and deploy. There is a strategic relationship between forward presence and access, and the extent to which we maintain and enhance the former improves our options and ability to ensure the latter. Operating with partners forward builds and develops access to protect and promote our national interests. The Naval force’s investment in forward presence reduces the challenges we will face if we have to create access in crisis and force access in hostilities. To preserve the credibility and capability of our forward presence, we must:

Structure exercises to provide actionable feedback on the effectiveness of our integrated command relationships, including under realistic conditions where our use of space, cyberspace, and communications is degraded or denied.

Explore alternative approaches to power projection given the limited capacity of the Naval force to deploy Marines in a standard ARG/MEU formation, which results from the fixed inventory of L-class amphibious warfare ships.

Integrate MAGTFs operating from amphibious warfare ships, expeditionary land bases, and auxiliary ships with other forward-postured Navy and SOF elements.

Ensure the ARG/MEU operating distributed or disaggregated retains its capabilities and its ability and authority to operate as a cohesive Naval force.

6.1.2 MAGTF Role in Sea Control and Power Projection

The Naval force can draw on the combat power of afloat Marine forces to support maritime security by contributing force protection, ISR, fires, and maneuver forces to execute visit, board, search, and seizure (VBSS) missions or counter-piracy operations. Marine forces can also support sea control through anti-surface warfare missions and counter-fast attack craft/fast inshore attack craft missions. Establishing sea control may also require projecting power ashore to neutralize threats or control terrain in the landward portion of the littorals. Navy and Marine Corps units can be task-organized to provide scalable and distributed options to defeat land-based threats with the forcible entry capability provided by up to two MEBs, deny enemy use of key maritime areas or terrain, or establish EABs. To improve our ability to support an integrated approach to sea control and power projection, we must:

Develop integrated ISR packages with the Navy to produce a comprehensive and shared understanding of the littoral environment.

Integrate our fifth-generation aviation capability into the MAGTF and forward-deploy this capability in sea- and shore-based roles, including from EABs.

Coordinate the development of USMC TTPs for integrated sea control missions.

Examine ways to increase the use of Marines on Naval warships such as DDGs, ESBs, and LCS/FFs as well as HSVs, T-AKEs, and MPS to support sea control and power projection operations.

Develop a CONOPS for the distributed MAGTF in support of Naval operations.

6.1.3 Integrating Command Structures

The objective of command integration is to ensure the Naval force can rapidly and flexibly engage threats whether they are based on land, air, surface, subsurface, or originate in the cyberspace and space domains. This will require our amphibious, ground, and aviation platforms to have the requisite C2 capacity and interoperability within the Naval force and Combined/Joint force. To provide the unity of command that is necessary to operate most effectively as an integrated Naval force, we must:

Enhance our contributions to the forward-postured force by strengthening our partnership with the Navy, Coast Guard, and SOF in both the seaward and landward portions of the littorals.

Examine the Composite Warfare Construct or alternative C2 arrangements with the Navy to promote unity of effort in littoral warfare.

Focus on strengthened Naval habitual relationships at the tactical and operational level.

Explore and exercise with Joint and regional partners in support of building partner capacity and promoting interoperability in forcible entry and sustained major combat operations ashore.

Increase the number of Marines assigned to staffs supporting the Combined/Joint Force Maritime Component Commander (C/JFMCC) or fleet commander.

Explore the effectiveness of creating a single Naval component for the Combatant Commands (CCMDs), tempered by the recognition that each Service has independent requirements.

6.1.4 Creating Lodgments

The Marine Corps will continue to organize, train, and equip the force with a focus on capabilities required to achieve lodgment conditions and/or seize and secure advanced Naval bases. To enhance our understanding of what these operations entail, we must:

Coordinate closely with follow-on forces to identify the necessary conditions for establishing future lodgments and the equipment and capabilities required to safeguard and hold them.

Explore when and how the Combined/Joint force and the Marine Corps could maximize efficiencies in seabasing and lodgment operations.

Refine our concepts for using the Maritime Prepositioning Ships squadrons as a “seabased lodgment” to force an adversary to confront both the possibility and the reality of multiple avenues of approach.

6.1.5 Littoral Operations in a Contested Environment

The developing Navy and Marine Corps concept for Littoral Operations in a Contested Environment will describe how an integrated Naval force operating from dispersed locations both ashore and afloat will achieve local sea control and power projection into contested littoral areas. The concept will address the differences between “rolling back” an A2AD threat versus creating gaps/seams by location and/or time that can be exploited through a maneuver warfare approach. From this conceptual baseline, we must:

Experiment as a littoral maneuver force that embraces the full power of Naval, Joint, and Combined forces to provide a greater capability than an amphibious force alone.

Embrace a holistic approach to protecting the Naval force in a contested environment, striking a balance between point/area defense and offensive action.

Conduct pre-deployment training with all forces in the littoral fight to cultivate mission command, integrate warfighting skills, create agility, and foster operational cohesion and confidence.

6.1.6 Expeditionary Advanced Base (EAB) Operations

MAGTFs may be task-organized for missions to seize, establish, and operate multiple EABs. We must improve our ability to:

Employ EABs for offensive actions in support of sea control.

Reinforce and defend EABs with manned and unmanned long-range strike, anti-ship, anti-air, and C2-extending systems to transform a site into a sea-denial outpost.

Use EABs as hubs supporting the integrated Naval logistics network, providing temporary forward and intermediate staging areas for MAGTF follow-on echelons and sustainment operations.

Leverage the NECC, Naval Beach Groups, and Joint capabilities to complement the MAGTF.

6.2 Critical Task: Evolve the MAGTF

The MAGTF will remain our "first principle" for force organization. Given the diversity of potential missions and adversaries we will likely face in the future, we must retain the essential advantages conferred by the inherent flexibility and adaptability of the MAGTF. The MAGTF of the future will most likely be composed of some combination of forward-deployed forces, rapidly deployable forces, and land and maritime prepositioning forces. The specific combination of forces used will depend upon, among other things, the factors of time, distance, and strategic mobility of resources available. While the idea of the MAGTF is enduring, we cannot afford to allow our thinking about MAGTF constructs to be static. We must examine how we organize and employ MAGTFs as units capable of meeting the challenges across the ROMO, including how to structure a MAGTF to fight as an integrated partner with the Navy in sea control and maritime superiority missions.

6.2.1 MEF-level Operations

The MEF remains our most capable MAGTF and is and will remain capable of conducting major operations in the littorals, ashore, and inland. These may include exploiting success in amphibious landings, turning an adversary’s flank, or creating opportunities for future Joint force actions. The Marine Corps’ ability to fight and win in major engagements is essential for our Nation – and required by law. The MEF’s structure is required to form other MAGTFs, especially the MEF (Fwd) and the MEB. 2 Essentially, it takes a MEF to deploy a MEB. Accordingly, we must:

Remain ready to simultaneously employ a MEF in sustained operations and up to two MEBs.

Be prepared to perform large-scale, forcible entry operations.

Continue to wargame challenging scenarios to draw out and understand the implications of the future operating environment for MEF-level operations.

Employ tailored MAGTF Command Elements (CEs) in addition to our standing MAGTF CEs for specific missions.

Configure the MEF CE to serve as a Combined or Joint Task Force HQ.

2 A MEF (Fwd) is normally the lead echelon of a MEF or, for some contingencies, it can be a stand-alone MAGTF capable of sustained expeditionary operations. A MEF (Fwd) is normally smaller than a MEF and larger than a MEB.

6.2.2 Integrating Command, Control and Informational Tools

Mission success more than ever depends on the ability of commanders and forces to act quickly and effectively based on the most accurate and timely data available. The challenge is to resolve barriers to trusted information sharing and collaboration; the goal is to provide more convenient, assured, and ready access to information on a wider range of devices, under diverse conditions. To improve our C2 and information integration, we must:

Evolve our approach to information sharing and information availability to ensure units large and small, operating dispersed or concentrated, have the awareness to employ the full range of combined arms at a tempo enabled by the distribution of timely and actionable information.

Drive innovation by combining a mission perspective with commercial developments that allow information providers to collaborate on a situationally dependent architecture that lets information users opt-in to access or create tailored data streams.

Better integrate all forward-deployed and garrison MAGTF elements into the globally netted ISR architecture to increase awareness, preparedness, responsiveness, and effectiveness.

Balance the need to move information across and within a more diverse base of users and producers with the need to reduce vulnerabilities induced by electronic signatures.

Explore ways to preserve data integrity when and as hierarchical constraints on collection, production, and dissemination are loosened.

Be prepared to make effective decisions in a degraded or denied C2 environment.

Take advantage of commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) network and data solutions.

6.2.3 Unified Action

The Marine Corps will continue to train and experiment with the other Services, nations, governmental agencies, and non-governmental organizations to develop and sustain Combined/Joint capabilities. We will focus on command information, intelligence, reconnaissance, and networked information architectures to achieve a more unified approach for operations. We will align our efforts with the Joint Information Environment concept as well as the Mission Partner Environment3 framework for sharing information between U.S., non-U.S., military, government and non-government organizations responding to missions across the ROMO. Expanding on recent experience, we must:

Examine the combat-multiplier effect of integrating more Marines into key nodes of the Joint force and global SOF enterprise.

Ensure all MAGTF operations have information warfare capabilities.

Provide MEUs and Special Purpose MAGTFs (SPMAGTFs) secure networks capable of extending to/integrating with the Joint,…