This book, British Amphibious Operations of the First World War, is the second by Joseph Moretz in my stack. I wrote about the first book, The Development of British Amphibious Operations 1882-1914, in the third part of this series.

These too books should properly be read together and back-to-back as the second is a direct continuation of the first. The reason I didn’t do so is because the second was not released yet when I finished the first. But readers should know that they are essentially written as one long book.

As such, my thoughts are pretty much the same as when I looked at the first book. Moretz is an assiduous historian who hits all the right primary sources, some of which I’d never heard and now go on my list to read myself. Like his first book, he covers British operations that usually get ignored. This time, they are British amphibious operations in Mesopotamia and the east coast of Africa, both of which are important context for the later Gallipoli Campaign. Neither one went well, but the landing in East Africa went particularly poorly as German trained Askari troops had little trouble chasing the British from the beach in less than a day.

Even so, the bulk of the book is Moretz’s analysis of Gallipoli. Placing that campaign in context as the third major British amphibious operation rather than just a singular campaign is vital to understanding British decisionmaking. I don’t have much to add to it and won’t relay it here: it’s a new book and you should buy it!

I only have two minor issues. Like the first book, Moretz and I have very different definitions of amphibious operations. Moretz covers the Mesopotamia campaign in particular well after it ceases to be amphibious in any way. As I reminder, I use General Al Gray’s conception of amphibious versus expeditionary. When the operation involves fighting to reach and secure a contested shore, it is amphibious. Once the shore is secure or the troops are moving from the sea to a friendly shore, it is properly expeditionary warfare and not amphibious warfare. All three of these operations featured amphibious phases, but the Mesopotamia campaign transitions to an expeditionary operation pretty quickly.

Secondly, while Moretz’ analysis of these three campaigns is excellent, it curiously does not cover the later Ostend and Zeebrugge raids. While these two raids were at far smaller scale than the campaigns that Moretz does cover, they fall squarely within British amphibious operations no matter the definition. These are also on my list to get to later, but that will come after I turn to the Ottoman side of the Gallipoli campaign next.

I hope everyone is having a relaxing enjoyable Memorial Day weekend. I’m not one of those who thinks you should refrain for normal long weekend activities to instead be somber despite the reason for the holiday. I for one will be cooking outside, having a cold one, and watching some baseball (Go Guards). But I’ll also take time to reflect on the sacrifices of the fallen. These need not be mutually exclusive. It’s also a good time to read about the origins of Memorial Day in the aftermath of the American Civil War. I reread this article on it every year and recommend the same to you.

Today is ANZAC Day. Named for the Australian and New Zealand Corps who landed at Ari Burnu on the first day of the Gallipoli Campaign. The ANZAC Corps was composed of the 1st Australian Division and the Australian and New Zealand Division, the latter of which was composed of two Australian Brigades and two New Zealand Brigades. While today holds special meaning for Australia and New Zealand, English and French troops also landed at different beaches on this day in 1915.

In 2015, on the centennial of the landings, I was honored to be asked to write an article on the campaign for The Strategy Bridge. It was published a day early here in the U.S. so as to appear for ANZAC Day in Australia. Below is my now eleven-year-old conclusion:

What is questionable is whether the Allies could have succeeded. British historian John Keegan believed that they could not have and that the plan was doomed from the start. Basil Liddell Hart believed that the plan, better executed, could have succeeded, although in history of World War I he ignores the second landing entirely. On the initial landing, he correctly states: “His [Hamilton] oft-criticized choice of landing place could hardly have been improved upon if, by supernatural power, he had been able to know the enemy’s dispositions. By avoiding the natural line of expectation, the pitfall of commonplace generalship, and by distracting the enemy’s attention to that line, he ensured his own troops an immense superiority of force at the actual landing places- although his total force was less than that of the Turks.” That the opportunity created by the inspired choice of assault was squandered was due in part to Mustafa Kemal but probably more so by the amateur execution of key leaders on the ground. Of course, these were not commanders new to combat but they were new to amphibious operations and had no doctrine at all to guide them.

It seems clear that given the weakness of the Ottoman Empire and the poor Turkish and German leadership at every level that was not occupied by Mustafa Kemal that some force could have taken the peninsula, forced the strait, seized Constantinople, and turned the tide of history. But that force was not the Allies. The half-baked plan to dip their toes in with a naval attack and only commit to a land invasion if it failed gave the Turks too much time to prepare. The poor working relationship between the Royal Navy and the Army produced a disjointed effort from the start. The initial landings, if conducted by professional amphibious forces familiar with the unique exigencies of expeditionary operations, could have succeeded. Even the second landing, if conducted by veteran forces, could have turned the tide.

Despite all this, the Turkish leadership made many mistakes as well. If Mustafa Kemal was the commander of the British 29th Division vice the commander of the Turkish 19th, the battle would have been very different. Winston Churchill may have been right when it came to the strategy, but he could not see that the Allies did not have the means. What finally defeated both amphibious landings was the desultory and sluggish leadership of unit leaders actually on the scene. The legendary bravery and tactical prowess of the troops was not enough to overcome these deficits. For the attack to have succeeded, the Allies would have to have had a military used to joint operations and a professional force familiar with amphibious operations. This they did not have.

Before the age of the machine gun and modern artillery, non-specialized troops lacking any kind of amphibious doctrine may have been able to carry an assault from the sea. But Gallipoli marks the point where they no longer could. Across the Atlantic Ocean, a generation of young officers at Quantico would be tasked with developing just such a doctrine and turning a force of Marines used to guarding US Navy posts into a professional, expeditionary corps.

I’d definitely tweak this assessment today, but that’s from the perspective of a scholar-in-training evaluating the campaign in a more systematic way. When I wrote the above, I was a captain on active duty and far from a professional analyst.

First, the machine gun played far less of a role in the initial landings than I assumed, a fact that more modern scholarship has highlighted. In reality there were only two older machine guns available to the Turkish troops who contested the landings, and those only at the Helles landing. This would change later in the campaign, but they did not play a large role in the landings. Second, I discounted the Ottoman defense too much in this piece. While planned by the Imperial German Army officer General Lyman von Sanders, the Turkish defense was a textbook amphibious defense both in intent and execution. I focused more on Mustafa Kemal which, while certainly warranted as he was a standout commander on the Turkish side, unfairly obscured other Ottoman strengths.

Third, and most importantly, is perspective. When I wrote the above article, I was researching the Gallipoli Campaign as a single discrete event. I lacked enough context to properly evaluate it, even as an example of an amphibious operation. Now, when the campaign is just one in a series of amphibious operations stretching back to the 16th century that I’m looking at, I see it in a broader context. Ian Hamilton’s planning phase looks quite different when compared to other British operations, and my initial assessment- that the planning was good but the execution bad- was wrong.

Gallipoli is an example of failure at every level. The Asquith government made the decision to try and force the Dardanelles in a vacuum void of both intelligence and expertise, abdicating strategic thinking to the military. It then largely left the detailed planning to senior professionals who they presumed would fill that gap but were largely overblown tacticians with more rank than expertise. The first attempt was by a Royal Navy whose amphibious and littoral capabilities had been allowed to atrophy by shortsighted leaders more fascinated with high technology than the classic skills required of all navies. Then the responsibility passed to a British Army that had ignored amphibious warfare for decades, one so convinced of its own superiority that it could not account for a capable opponent. The only part of the government that had no part in this planning failure was, ironically, the Royal Marines who might have been asked for their view on the idea given their centuries of experience but were not. The government might have also sought out two well-known British experts on the subject, Royal Marine Major General George Aston and British Army Major General Charles Callwell. Both men had written extensively on the subject and both were in uniform and available. Neither was consulted. The government of Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, so convinced of its own brilliance, committed the military to strategic defeat in a subsidiary theater even while far greater threats loomed elsewhere. First and foremost, it was the troops at ANZAC Cove, Helles, Kum Kale, and at other points throughout the campaign that would pay the price in blood.

But today, as ever, is about Gallipoli and the ANZACs most of all. May we never forget.

Gallipoli was a clash of nations, a microcosm of the larger war. I’ve already discussed the ANZACs, and there were a host of other nations involved. The British brought Indian troops, the French brought Senegalese troops, and the Turkish empire included myriad peoples so even their units consisted not just of Turks but Arabs as well (not to mention their German advisors). But even the British side was more polyglot than it seemed. It was not just an army show, but the Royal Marines and a unique unit called the Royal Naval Division played big parts.

Julian Thompson’s The Royal Marines: From Sea Soldiers to a Special Force is a classic history of the Royal Marines that covers a lot more than just the Gallipoli Campaign. It’s hard to find this side of the pond (I had to order a used copy from the UK) but it’s well worth looking for. It covers the inception of the Royal Marines in the 17th century to its first edition in 2000. Thompson does a great job as a historian and, as a retired Royal Marine Major General who commanded 3 Commando Brigade in the Falklands War, he knows his subject in and out. If you’re looking for a history of the Royal Marines, this is the one. The Royal Marines: A History by Richard Brooks is easier to find and still a good choice, but if you only read one go with Thompson’s.

The Royal Marines are all over the Gallipoli Campaign- except in charge. During the Royal Navy’s attempt to force the Dardanelles in March of 1915, embarked Royal Marines launch a number of amphibious raids to destroy and disrupt Turkish forts and artillery on both shores. There are never enough to end the threat of shore-based artillery as the Turks can both reinforce these forces and move them around at will. However, the Turks also can’t do much to stop the Royal Marine raids. In the coming months, however, that will change as the Royal Navy’s attempt to force the issue does little more than let Constantinople know that the British are coming.

Royal Marines are not a fully amphibious force at this time and still have responsibilities to man the guns of the Royal Navy fleets and perform shipboard duties (the same is true of U.S. Marines in 1915). The service essentially has two components, the Royal Marines Light Infantry (RMLI) and Royal Marine Artillery (RMA). It is RMA Marines that man guns afloat and RMLI Marines that are organized to go ashore as landing and raiding parties. When RMLI units have attached artillery, those Marines come from RMA. However, during World War I, there are never enough RMA Marines for the fleet (given they’re also manning the blockade forces in England). Most RMLI units that go ashore do so without artillery support except for the naval guns manned by their compatriots on ship.

But Marines aren’t the only ground force the Admiralty sent to Gallipoli, there was also the Royal Naval Division (RND). The RND is formed when the war began from a brigade worth of Royal Marines not yet assigned to a fleet and two brigades worth of Royal Navy reservists that did not have ships to man. They were instead told to become infantry and these two groups were amalgamated to form the RND.

This sounds like a recipe for disaster and its first mission did not go well. In the desperation to stop the initial German offensive in 1914, the division is sent with no training (beyond what the one Royal Marine brigade possessed) to defend ports in Belgium. They don’t face any direct combat with the Germans but a unit does get lost during a movement and is subsequently captured. When Belgium falls to the Germans the RND is withdrawn in good order.

At Gallipoli, the RND is not employed as a unit during the initial landings but instead simply spread out across the different landings, even going ashore and reinforcing the ANZACs for a short time. Once the campaign settled into a more conventional land campaign, the commander General Ian Hamilton does start to employ the RND as a normal division.

But the problem is that isn’t a normal division. At this time, the RND has no artillery component. This isn’t an oversight; like with the Royal Marines there just isn’t enough artillery to go around in 1915 and the priority is always the Army in France. But this lack of artillery is just a serious handicap against the Turks as it is against the Germans. Despite this handicap, the RND performs as well as can be expected at Gallipoli. After the campaign it is sent to the Western Front where it will finally receive its artillery and serve out the remainder of the war. There, it develops a reputation as a particularly effective and cohesive division.

The reason for this seems to be its unique culture. Although organized as a conventional army infantry division, its members refuse to shed its naval cultural quirks. They do not adopt army-style authoritarian command styles and instead keep a more collaborative attitude to orders. The officers and “soldiers” keep their naval ranks instead of adopting army ones. Lastly, each battalion of the two “naval” brigades are designated not by a number but by the name of a famous Royal Navy admiral. The Benbow, Collinwood, Hawke, and Drake Battalions were in 1st Brigade and the Howe, Hood, Anson, and Nelson Battalions were in 2nd Brigade. The battalions took great pride in their patron admirals and these cultural quirks created a level of unit cohesion greater than many of the scratch army divisions they would serve with in Europe. The Royal Marine Brigade retained their pre-war designations.

Of course, the Army hated this and once the division fell under Army command on the Western Front they were continually ordered to cease and adopt “normal” army standardization.

In a lot of the Gallipoli sources I’m reading, the RND is treated as just another infantry division. This is a mistake, but an easy one to make since they are performing a conventional infantry mission. So after reading The Royal Marines I read The Royal Naval Division by Douglas Jerrod. It’s from 1923 but follows the RND from its formation through the war after which it is disbanded. It also features a forward by Winston Churchill himself (he was, after all, First Sea Lord when the division was formed and it was his idea).

This dissertation isn’t a work of history but rather international affairs. But I think one lesson I would recommend to both historians and political scientists is not to treat every military unit as equivalent. Whether it’s the regimental system of the British Army, the branch system of the modern U.S. Army, or the MAGTF system of the modern Marine Corps, military units have particular cultures and identities, even though they may serve the same nation or the even by part of the same service. It’s important to identify those differences where they exist: neither the RND nor the Royal Marines at Gallipoli should be seen as just another like-sized unit thrown into the meat grinder, but rather as specific and unique organizations with histories and identities of their own.

This series is composed of quick thoughts as I move through a stack of books as I research a dissertation chapter on the Gallipoli Campaign. They’re not full reviews, just stray thoughts.

The next book on my stack was a brand new one, The Development of British Amphibious Operations 1882-1914 by Joseph Moretz. This book was a great read as it covers a lot of British operations that I wasn’t familiar with and therefore it had a lot of new-to-me material. These include wars in Egypt, Sudan, Burma, Sudan again, South Africa, China, and Somaliland.

This is critical context for my chapter because the book lays out exactly what the British were focusing on in the decades prior to Gallipoli. And the answer is that they were generally wasting their time with Army interventions in unimportant areas against adversary that posed no real threat to the British Empire.

Where I differ with Moretz is in the definition of amphibious warfare. I define amphibious warfare as any case where troops are to be landed on a hostile shore, one that will or can be defended (whether it actually is defended or not). Expeditionary warfare, by contrast, is where there is a non-hostile shore, port, or airport where troops and equipment can be disembarked administratively without opposition. Amphibious warfare frequently transitions to expeditionary warfare once a beachhead is established and follow-on troops can come ashore through that secured beachhead. A good example is Guadalcanal. The first landings by the 1st Marine Division were amphibious warfare because the island was controlled by the Japanese and they had to presumed the landings would be contested. The Japanese did not, in the event, contest the landings but the planners couldn’t know that. Reinforcing Army units that arrived later were not executing amphibious warfare but expeditionary warfare: they could plan to land on a shore already controlled by Marines.

These two forms of warfare are similar but also the difference between landing on a hostile shore and a friendly shore is massive, and planners must treat the two very differently. That being said, the majority of the operations covered by Moretz in this book are fundamentally expeditionary in nature and not amphibious at all. This doesn’t make it any less valuable, just an important distinction for my dissertation.

Of real value here is the chapter on the Russo-Japanese War. Although the UK was not a combatant, they did have observers present throughout the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy. One of these observers, Sir Ian Hamilton, would go on to command the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force during the Gallipoli Campaign. It was an ideal preview of 20th century amphibious warfare which, of course, would go to waste. Another chapter covers joint exercises during the period which is helpful to understand how the Royal Navy and British Army were trained and educated prior to Gallipoli.

Speaking of wasteful military operations in unimportant regions against middling non-threats, there’s a lot going on right now in US defense not all of which I can actually pay attention to given dueling work and school requirements. If you’re looking for insights into how the US keeps getting itself into these messes, I recommend Why America Loses Wars by Donald Stoker. Bottom line up front: when we locked in the arrangements made for unlimited wars via the National Security Act of 1947, it set the country on a path to be very good at unlimited wars but also very bad at limited wars. Hence why the U.S. can kick the Taliban out of Afghanistan or Saddam out of Baghdad or a matter of weeks, but then it struggles with anything other than such unlimited ends. The current administration is rightfully receiving a lot of criticism from both the “left” and the “right” about how this war has been mishandled from the start, but we shouldn’t lose sight of the larger structural problems at play in U.S. strategy. Stoker lays out one part of those structural problems.

The next book on my stack was Gallipoli by Les Carlyon. Les Carlyon was an Australian journalist and award-winning writer. His book on the campaign shows, and it was a pleasure to read. It was deservedly a number one bestseller when it was released in 2001.

This is another book by a journalist and so is more for background on the campaign before deeper research begins. But Carlyon did extensive research on the ground in Gallipoli during the writing of the book. He breaks up the larger description of the campaign, from planning in London to execution, with excellent descriptions of the ground itself that sound like a travel log more than a campaign study. As much as is possible through the written word alone, Carlyon not only tells the story of the campaign but takes the reader on a staff ride with a journalist’s eye for the human element.

Perhaps more importantly, however, is Carlyon’s perspective as an Australian. His book covers every country that participated and the entire campaign, but as an Australian Carlyon brings a visceral understanding of the Australian relationship with the campaign that I, as an American, cannot otherwise access. Unlike Moorehead’s work, Carlyon doesn’t neglect the perspectives of the home fronts in telling the story. Campaigns never stay on the ground where they happen but always affect those at home whether through the participants that return or those that do not.

This was an important perspective to bring into my own research because the dissertation intends to make the case that British methods of amphibious warfare were transmitted to the United States through shared campaigning during the colonial era, especially the French and Indian War. That requires an investigation into other colonial experiences. At the time, the Commonwealth of Australia was composed of six self-governing colonies of the United Kingdom. Despite this, Australia was an independent signatory of the Treaty of Versailles in 1918. Although Australia would not be an independent sovereign nation until the Statute of Westminster in 1931, World War I was an important psychological event on its journey. There are echoes between the American and Australian colonial experiences and transition to independence. Service alongside British troops during the French and Indian War, including many amphibious operations, contributed to a belief in the American colonies that such service deserved recognition by the mother country. The Gallipoli Campaign seems to occupy a similar place in the Australian psyche although in that case full independence did not require a revolution.

While these first two books are focused on the campaign itself, for the next book I’ll take a step back and read a recent release that covers the development of British amphibious warfare in the decades leading up to Gallipoli.

Once again the United States has entered into a conflict with no strategy. This time, there isn’t even a policy (without which you can’t have a strategy anyway). The war with Iran is little more than the joint targeting process unleashed. The Frankenstein’s monster that is the operational level of war, unsatiated after eating strategy, is now feasting on policy.

Tom Nichols, at the Atlantic, diagnoses this as victory disease. It’s a fine article (if you don’t have access he has posted gift links on his socials), but it’s also a misdiagnosis. Victory disease is attempting to replicate a prior victory in a new strategic context where it does not apply. But there is no victory that the U.S. is trying to replicate here. It’s replicating failed strategic bombing campaigns of the past. The strategic logic, such as it is, rests on three fallacies: The first is the ends-ways-means definition of strategy where X number of tactical successes plus Y number of operational successes equals strategic effect. The second is just the classic attrition fallacy, where the destruction of enemy forces is the aim of tactics. The third is that fires alone can be decisive, a fallacy dispensed with by Clausewitz two hundred years ago.

History Does You

Measuring Destruction: The Usefulness of Bombing Surveys

“Perhaps the most valid way to evaluate the bombing effectiveness of a campaign is to compare actual accomplishments against what one might reasonably expect to accomplish given the resources available” - Linebacker II Bombing Survey…

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a year ago · 38 likes · 3 comments · Secretary of Defense Rock

Both sides are successfully employing salvo warfare, leaning on long-range strike systems to prosecute targets in lieu of the use of maneuver forces of any kind. So far anyway. As I wrote last June, the recon-strike tactics made possible by proliferating long-range strike and pervasive sensors, have recreated the conditions of Age of Sail ships that meet and simply blast away at each other, except at the national level. Unlike in naval warfare, however, it is never decisive. Because it’s not decisive, as the war goes on both sides will seek alternative methods, either more conventional uses of ground forces or something else. War naturally encourages such escalation, the idea that one side or the other can control escalation is another fallacy here.

What’s interesting here for tactics is Iran’s underground bunkers that house their missile platforms. This protects them from all but the largest bombs, but it turns out that it also makes their movements predictable since they must exit the bunkers to fire. The U.S. has thus far been able to “spawn camp” these exits with air assets and strike them as they emerge. Thus, most of the damage Iran has been able to do have been through smaller and less capable Shahed drones.

All of the above fallacies are tempting, of course. Modern technology fuels longer-range strike platforms than ever before, that are more precise than ever before, and intelligence that is more exquisite than ever before. Just witness the strike that not only killed Supreme Leader Khamenei. Israel or the U.S. not only knew exactly where he was but where all of his top leaders were and when they would be together. Shouldn’t that mean we will be more successful? That technology has enabled better strategy? Or obviate the need for strategy at all. It’s also tempting in this case because the Iranian leaders, including Khamenei, were all involved in strike campaigns of exactly this type, either by supplying proxies with weapons and intelligence or more directly as part of Iran’s frequent strike warfare against Israel. Iran’s strike warfare in the past has been frequently directed against civilians, not military targets, and they are the largest sponsor of terrorist organizations in the world. It’s like any of these people didn’t deserve a taste of their own medicine.

But strategy doesn’t work like that. The relationship between tactics and strategy is nonlinear. Successful tactics don’t necessarily lead to positive strategic effects and may in fact lead to negative strategic effects. Which does not necessarily mean that it is unpredictable; we have a wealth of historical data on when and what type of tactics lead to positive strategic effects. But that’s only a lot of reading if you do it. And if you don’t have a policy, let alone a strategy, there’s simply no way to know if your tactics are yielding positive or negative strategic effect. There is nothing against which to measure them. They are orphaned.

Which is where rules of engagement come in. Contrary to popular belief, rules of engagement are not some legal or ethical nicety (although crafting effective rules of engagement lean on both disciplines). Rather, rules of engagement are first and foremost an expression of strategy. They frequently (or at least should) limit civilian casualties and guide the strategic use of tactics. Not just because undue harm to civilians is illegal and unethical, but most importantly because it’s bad strategy. Such war crimes and atrocities produce negative strategic effect and make achieving the policy more difficult for your side, not the adversary. Rules of engagement exist to prevent own goals, a dynamic described by John Boyd in his almost unnoticed The Strategic Game of ? and ?. If you still don’t believe that, just witness the failure of Iranian strategy over the past few years. Violence against civilians and the sponsorship of terrorist organizations that also employ violence against civilians has seen their allies like Bashar al-Assad defeated and exiled, their proxies like Hezbollah and Hamas depleted and close to neutralized, and now their immediate neighbors supporting U.S. and Israel actions against them (even if only privately).

Of course, if you don’t have a policy at all, you can’t have a strategy and therefore can’t have rules of engagement either. You also can’t have a win. But if we can’t be strategically better than Iran, we should probably shouldn’t be in the game at all.

This week Fire for Effect passed 3,000 subscribers. I know this is free and effortless, but I truly appreciate every subscriber. Three thousand is a lot for someone who doesn’t write often and on a platform that frankly has a lot of problems. None of the other free platforms work for me though and the paid ones are too expensive for someone paying tuition for himself and soon will have another kid in college too. So thank you.

Unfortunately, my writing pace won’t be increasing this year. This series will most likely be the only thing I write here over the next year. The next chapter I’m researching and writing for my dissertation is the Gallipoli Campaign, and there are far more sources to wade through than previous chapters. It’s also much larger in scale as a case study so I’ve budgeted the entire year to do it. There won’t be a lot of analysis in this series; that’s what the chapter is for. It will mostly be random thoughts and observations as I chew through a stack of book and sources.

The Gallipoli Campaign is the crux of my dissertation. My main argument is that British military forces followed a consistent, tested, well-developed approach to amphibious warfare from the late 16th century through World War II, an approach I'm calling the Anglo-American amphibious warfare doctrine because it was passed to the Americans through the colonial experience. But the Gallipoli Campaign sits like a big scholarly red flag right in the middle of this time period: if the British approach to amphibious warfare was so refined, why did it fail?

So I either have to argue that the British faithfully executed their usual doctrine and it failed (and why) or they did not follow their usual doctrine at which point I have to explain both why they didn’t and what that means for the overall thesis. The latter makes things more difficult for me.

I’m early in the research on this chapter but so far everything is indicating that they just didn’t do their usual doctrine. Like at all. Why that is I’ll have to figure out. Was Ian Hamilton just a dolt of a general? Did Kitchener get too in the weeds from far off London?

The first book on the stack is Gallipoli by the journalist Alan Moorehead. It’s actually a reread for me, but enough time has passed that I need the refresh. Written in 1956, Moorehead approaches the campaign as a storyteller rather than a historian or an analyst which makes it a perfect introduction. Moorehead excels in character studies, so if you’re not familiar with the younger Winston Churchill, Jackie Fisher, Horatio Kitchener, Ian Hamilton, Mustafa Kemal (the future Kemal Ataturk), or the rest of the cast of characters, it’s a great place to start. Moorehead doesn’t neglect the naval aspects of the campaign either and the submarine operations are particularly good reading.

Moorehead does his best to cover the campaign from both sides, especially focusing on Mustafa Kemal and Liman von Sanders, the German commander of the Turkish troops, but this book is still solidly written from the British perspective. The French perspective gets lost in his focus on the Commonwealth soldiers, the British high command, and of course the Turkish defenders.

The perennial question of the Gallipoli Campaign is who is responsible for the British failure? Moorehead places the blame squarely on the British high command and mostly on Winston Churchill himself as the most enthusiastic proponent. While Churchill is certainly the most enthusiastic proponent, the need to open a route to Russia was not his idea (it was the desire of Asquith, the Prime Minister, responding to a request for help from Czar Nicholas II), nor did he have any involvement in the planning for the military side of the campaign, which was dominated by Kitchener. Kitchener’s instructions to the Army commander, Ian Hamilton, are short and simple.

What’s striking about them is the presumption that the troops would get ashore. There is no thought whatsoever that they would not be able to get ashore and then transition to a more conventional expeditionary campaign among any of the high command leaders. And from their perspective, why would this be in doubt? The last time I can find that British troops failed to get ashore and reach their objective prior to Gallipoli is the Battle of New Orleans, exactly 100 years prior. No one alive in 1915 had ever seen a British amphibious operation fail. Why would they think this one would?

But that’s also a weakness. The British were so good at amphibious warfare for so long that either 1) no one had thought to test their doctrine for how to execute an amphibious operation or 2) no one remembered the doctrine given that this was a time before formalized, written doctrinal manuals. Did Hamilton execute the Gallipoli landings in accordance with long-standing British doctrine (informal as it was) or did he not? If he did not, would it have succeeded if he had?

Those are the questions for this series, and we’ll eventually link those questions with the major amphibious warfare theorists of the day, Julian Corbett and Charles Callwell.

Previous posts in this series have each presented a short case study of the Marine Corps’ role in a conflict immediately following an attempt to disband it to underscore its continued value. The case study for this attempt is clearly the Korean War, especially Operation Chromite. However, due to the size and scope of the Korean War I’ve forgone including it in this post. I don’t have the time or space to do it properly.

This post will cover the Marine Corps in the defense unification debate that led to the National Security Act of 1947 and the creation of the Department of Defense (among other new departments). The best source for the Marine Corps’ role in the defense unification debate is The US Marine Corps and Defense Unification, 1944-47 by Gordon W. Keiser. This post is primarily derived therefrom, but a number of other sources should be highlighted. Revolt of the Admirals: The Fight for Naval Aviation, 1945-1950 by Jeffrey Barlow covers the Navy. The Politics of Military Unification by Demetrios Caraley examines the events covered here from a political science perspective. Organizing for Defense: The American Military Establishment in the 20th Century by Paul Y. Hammond takes a highly critical, historical view of the events. Finally, Amy Zegart’s Flawed by Design: The Evolution of the CIA, JCS, and NSC is the most recent and essential academic look at the issues involved in the debate. All of these works would be necessary for a full description of the unification debate, but this post will only cover the issues directly related to the existence and role of the Marine Corps. Issues such as the creation of the U.S. Air Force and the Central Intelligence Agency are omitted are largely omitted except where they intersect with the question of what to do with the Marine Corps.

In 1931 then Colonel George C. Marshall remarked to a Marine First Lieutenant that Marine recruiting practices that focused on professionalism were unfair and that he hoped to change the situation “someday.” That Marine lieutenant was a young Chesty Puller. By World War II, Marshall is Chief of Staff of the Army and declared to Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Ernest King that he was “going to see that the Marines never win another war.”1 This animus was widespread among Army general officers. In October 1942, a group of Marine officers travelled to Hawaii to train the Army’s 25^th Infantry Division in amphibious warfare. By the end of the war, the Marine Corps would train over 40 Army divisions in amphibious warfare, plus a number of other allied divisions. The 25th Infantry’s commander, Major General J. Lawton Collins, spoke to his staff with the Marine team present about how the Army intended to master amphibious warfare and eliminate its dependence on Marines.2 Later at New Caledonia, the team visited with Army Brigadier General Nathan Twining, then chief of staff of the Noumea Army Command, likely because the Marine team included Marine Lieutenant Colonel Merrill Twining, Brigadier General Twining’s younger brother. General Twining launched into a condemnation of the Marine Corps and the Navy which was enthusiastically joined by Collins who described plans to “preclude the Marines from further preempting the functions of the other services.”3 Victor “Brute” Krulak, who relates this story, remarked to the younger Twining that this was surely just brotherly ribbing. Twining, however, said that this was different. It was real.

The First Marshall Plan

And so it was. On 2 November 1942, apparently not busy with anything else at the time, Marshall made his move in a memo proposing a single department after the war.4 The other members of the Joint Chiefs, General Henry “Hap” Arnold and Admiral King, both wanted post-war issues to wait for the war to end.5 The memo generated a report to Congress which in turn produced a House Resolution which was passed in March 1944. Hearings in April 1944 detailed the Army’s plan: a single chief of staff for the armed forces and a single department in the German style, drastically changing the constitutional arrangement of a Department of War and a Department of the Navy with cabinet-level secretaries for each.6

The hearings established the major battle lines of the fight, with Army and Department of War witnesses firmly pressing for military centralization in the name of efficiency and ending duplication, while Department of the Navy witness pointed out that there was no evidence that centralization would increase efficiency. Commandant of the Marine Corps General Alexander Vandegrift focused on the Marine Corps at this time and argued that centralization was hardly necessary for efficiency, pointing out that the Marine Corps at that time the highest percentage of forces in combat operations of any service and had still managed to train Army divisions in amphibious warfare as well as having written the doctrine that the Army used.7

These hearings did not lead to legislation as the War Department hoped but rather to a report on the issues at hand which will be discussed below. The hearings were the initial skirmish of what has come to be known as the Battle of the Potomac. The Marine Corps had previously faced efforts to disband it by the Army, the Navy, and presidents, but never before had it had to do so against a president so firmly aligned with the Army and, at least initially, while simultaneously fighting an actual war. The real battle began when President Harry S. Truman turned his sights on the Marine Corps as well.

Battle Lines and the Birth of the Chowder Society

The goals of the Army and War Department were clear and remained stable throughout the controversies to come. Related by Keiser, they are: “combat effectiveness; military [vice civilian] control; adequate ground troops; establishment of a separate and coordinate air force; economy; and restriction of the Marine Corps.” Restriction here meaning the reduction of the Marine Corps to its ship-board duties. While this allowed the Army to protest that it was not trying to disband the Marine Corps entirely their vision was clearly a death sentence, albeit a slow one. By this time, of course, the role of Marines at sea was essentially only to prepare to fight ashore. The mechanism by which the Army would ensure that the Marine Corps was trimmed out of relevancy was to place the responsibility for entire defense budget in the hands of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Since their plan would also strictly limit the Chairman to non-Marine officers, the outcome would be inevitable.8

The Navy’s goals are equally important although they largely align with the Marine Corps’. The Navy likewise wanted to increase combat effectiveness but also to preserve its organizational integrity. Critically, it wanted to preserve the collective strategy development and civilian control that worked so well during World War II rather than move towards a German model. The Navy felt that the collective strategy development that characterized the Allied victory of World War II was plainly superior to a more centralized system in the style of Germany. It is frankly difficult to disagree with them, but as we shall see the Army tried. The Navy had no problem with the creation of an independent air force so long as it retained the responsibility for naval aviation.

Along with the Army and Navy, the Marine Corps supported the creation of an independent Air Force but also the Navy’s push to retain naval aviation. Of course, its primary goal was its own continued existence. At no point in any of the sources do we see the Marine Corps attempting to expand their power, role, or budget. Instead, it wages a strictly defensive battle to maintain its position as of 1945. It did not even attempt to make a case that the Commandant should join the Joint Chiefs. Its decision to exploit the defense is perhaps the key to its success in this case. The institution’s protective stance was in stark contrast to the Army’s expansive goals to increase its own power and budget at the expense of not just the other services but civilian policymakers and Congress itself. Its other key advantage was simply that it had been here before: neither the Navy nor the Army had ever had to fight for their very existence before. But this was a fight the Marine Corps had already been in and had won many times before.

The thrust of the Army’s argument, at least in public, is that centralization of the U.S. military would increase both efficiency and readiness. The Navy disagreed, pointing to both U.S. success in World War II and German defeat as evidence that these claims could not be supported. This is the major hinge of the debates to follow although this post is more focused on the Marine Corps role.

The Eberstadt Report

Despite failing to push through a quick law to achieve centralization, Marshall and President Truman at this time are in full accord on achieving unification. Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal however, had concerns. He commissioned a report by Ferdinand Eberstadt, a lawyer and banker with extensive commercial experience who had chaired the Army-Navy Munitions Board and had formerly been the Vice Chairman of the War Production Board to examine the Department of War’s claims that unification would foster efficiency and fix problems that arose during the war.9

The Eberstadt Report, transmitted to Congress on 25 September 1945, found the opposite. Eberstadt only agreed with the need for an independent air force but, while warning about the dangers of a unified department in a democracy, instead recommended an additional cabinet-level department to oversee it.

The Collins Plan

While the Eberstadt Report’s findings took some of the wind out of the Army’s sails, so to speak, they would try again. This time J. Lawton Collins, now a Lieutenant General, would be tasked with developing another plan.10

In the Collins Plan, the individual services would be retained but the Departments of War and Navy would be amalgamated into a single department under a “Secretary of the Armed Forces.” The Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Collins Plan would only be an advisory body rather than a German-style general staff with command authority.11 It left the problem of an independent air force to Congress and would retain naval aviation under the Navy.

In Congressional testimony, Army General J.L. Devers blamed a lack of coordination for the Army’s unpreparedness for amphibious warfare prior to the war, despite a number of Army experiments and contributions to doctrinal development, not to mention its long history of amphibious operations. General Dwight Eisenhower also cited centralization as the means to solve the problem of developing landing craft before the war, saying that “it was hard to get anyone interested in the problem.”12 In reality, the Marine Corps and the Army were both interested in landing craft before the war, it was just difficult to get anyone to pay for them.

The strongest testimony against the Collins Plan came from Admiral William Halsey, who focused on the Army’s attempt to push it quickly through Congress without debate as “un-American” and Marine Lieutenant General Roy S. Geiger. Geiger, a pilot by trade, had commanded both Marine and Army units in the Pacific. Geiger was perhaps the most experienced general officer of the war when it came to amphibious warfare. Geiger testified that it was not a lack of coordination that led to the Army’s lack of preparation for amphibious warfare but the Army itself, citing Army and Army Air Service documents that recommended against not only amphibious warfare doctrinal development but also the development of aircraft carriers, dive bombers, and close air support, along with letters from Army generals praising Marine air support during the war. These included General Douglas MacArthur, Lieutenant General Walter Krueger, and General Robert Eichelberger, all of whom were supported by Marine units during the Philippines Campaign.13

George Fielding Eliot, an influential military analyst at the time, was also asked to testify and pushed back against centralization of the U.S. military stating that, “In Germany the Army has always dominated military thought. The results speak for themselves.”14

Although the Collins Plan was a watered-down version of a direct German model, it still directly threatened Marine Corps interests because it would have removed the direct access of the Commandant of the Marine Corps to a secretary. As we’ve seen in this series, Marine Corps advocacy to the Secretary of the Navy was a critical part in maintaining its existence whenever it was threatened. But in the winter of 1945-1946 the Marine Corps realized that this time, the Department of the Navy would not go to the mat for it. Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal, under pressure from both services as well as the President, felt that if it came down to it, the Marine Corps should be sacrificed to protect naval aviation.

The Marine Corps intended to make sure that it would not come down to it. Vandegrift personally felt that the War Department’s plan was more an attempt to abrogate the powers of Congress and concentrate them under the president and a single secretary than it was a direct attack on the Marine Corps. It was at this point that Vandegrift formed the “Marine Corps Board” at Quantico to “study amphibious warfare concepts” but also, and just as importantly, act as a planning organization to protect the Marine Corps in the unification debates to come. This group, which came to be known as the Chowder Society, worked under Brigadier General Gerald Thomas, then Director of Plans and Policies at Headquarters Marine Corps. The Chowder Society was not, as some have claimed, an independent, unofficial organization of Marine mavericks but was quite official and even prepared Vandegrift’s speeches and testimony. While working under Brigadier General Thomas, it was mostly led intellectually and day-to-day by now Colonel Merrill Twining and his primary assistant Lieutenant Colonel Victor “Brute” Krulak, then Director of the Research Section at Marine Corps Schools. These two officers were the most influential in the coming battles.

It was also at this point that President Truman, frustrated with the failure to get anything through Congress, stepped in with a heavier hand. His message to Congress on 19 December 1945 essentially lent his weight to the Collins Plan.

JCS Papers Series 1478

While these events were going on, the Joint Chiefs of Staff produced a series of research papers on various topics. Protected by their classification as top secret, a paper penned by General Eisenhower unveiled the Army’s agenda regarding the Marine Corps in full.

o Limit the Marine Corps to small-scale shore combat in operations where “only the Navy had an interest.”

o Transfer amphibious warfare at any type of meaningful scale to the Army (despite the Army simultaneously claiming that amphibious warfare was obsolete).x

o Limit the total size Marine units to a regiment, and the total size of the service to “50,000-60,000” personnel. It would also be banned from expanding at all during wartime.

o General Carl Spaatz, an Army Air Service officer, also penned a paper, in this case stripping the Marine Corps of aviation units (although not the Navy).15

This full-throated attack on another service of the same country may have no other precedence in history. It was nothing less than an attempted institutional murder and was never intended to be revealed. But as we shall see, it is this report that will cause the most trouble for the War Department’s effort as a whole and Eisenhower personally.

The Bended Knee Speech

Simultaneously, Congress develops another version of the bill, S. 2044, which spurs another round of testimony. Although aware of the JCS papers, Navy and Marine witnesses cannot comment on them given their classification. Admiral Chester Nimitz reiterated the Navy Department’s view that the Army’s proposal for concentration of defense power in a single secretary and the concentration of budgetary power in the Chairman of the JCS would be disastrous. He further testified to the differences between the Army and the Marine Corps, stating that since the Marine Corps is organized as an extension of the fleet and the Army for sustained ground operations, they are complementary rather than duplicative capabilities.16

General Vandegrift matched Nimitz’s concern about the concentration of power and pointed out the possibility that the proposed single department would encroach on Congress’ constitutional powers. He also pointed out the U.S. was not unprepared for the amphibious warfare of World War II given that the Marine Corps had accurately forecast the war’s major muscle movements in 1921, a clear reference to Lieutenant Colonel Earl “Pete” Ellis’ report Advanced Base Operations in Micronesia. He strongly implied that only the Army was unprepared and that centralization would more than likely lead to a lack of preparation, not better preparation.17

It was during this testimony that General Vandegrift delivered what has come to be known as the Bended Knee Speech. The speech was co-authored by Krulak and Twining and was specifically calibrated to cite Army documents to demonstrate its points rather than Marine Corps documents.18

The Bended Knee Speech is largely credited with saving the Marine Corps, but that was only one of its effects. More importantly it was the dagger in the heart of the Army’s push for an Imperial and Nazi Germany style chief of staff and general staff and its consequent reduction of civilian control of the military. Secondarily, it tipped Congress off to the existence of the unhinged JCS 1478 Series of papers that detailed the Army’s goals behind the veil of a top secret classification. Their subsequent release to Congress at its behest was the twist of the dagger, and even President Truman had to give up his original vision. Nor was the speech the end of the war, it was simply a battle where the Army’s desire for a single, uniformed chief of staff with total power over the U.S. national security establishment was defeated.

The Compromised Second Draft

By June of 1946, less than a month after the Bended Knee Speech, President Truman holds a meeting with both the War Department and Navy Department to work out a deal.

It was at this meeting where the current system of one department under one secretary but with three departments headed by a non-cabinet level secretaries was decided. The wartime Joint Chiefs of Staff system would be retained instead of the German-model of a single chief of staff. In exchange for Navy acquiescence to this arrangement, the War Department and Truman dropped opposition to both naval aviation and the continued existence of the Marine Corps, although Truman especially would continue to oppose legislation that protected the Marine Corps.

The outcome was a twelve-point letter to Congress signed by President Truman that laid out the broad outlines of what would become the National Military Establishment. In response to this meeting, the Senate Military Affairs Committee revised bill S. 2044 along these lines, at which point testimony resumed.

If Truman expected smooth sailing thereafter, he was to be disappointed. Admiral Halsey, as was his wont, continued vociferous resistance. General Vandegrift, however, shifted fires to focus on the need for statutory protection of the Marine Corps. He agreed with the roles and responsibilities of the Marine Corps as per the Truman letter but wanted them enshrined in law not just in executive policy. At this phase, the most enthusiastic defense of the Marine Corps came from Admiral Kelly Turner who baldly stated that the Army was attempting to seize the functions of the Marine Corps.19

However, this cooperation between the Navy and the Marine Corps quickly breaks down. Having secured the existence of naval aviation, the Department of the Navy was less willing to go to bat for the Marine Corps. The two secretaries agreed on outlined legislation and left the Marine Corps out of both the discussions and the resulting proposal.20

The Sheperd Panel and the Edson-Thomas Board

Vandegrift, sensing Navy support slipping away, formed a panel to study the future of amphibious operations in the hopes that it would provide an argument for retention. Initially under Major General Lemuel Shepherd, it was subsequently expanded to include a number of officers, including then Brigadier General Merrit “Red Mike” Edson. Many of the officers already involved in the unification battle were also members of this board, officially called the “Board to Conduct Research and Prepare Material in Connection with Pending Legislation.” This board essentially consolidated efforts with the Chowder Society on ongoing research into amphibious warfare and unification.

Both Truman and the War Department expected quick passage of the unification bill for a few reasons. First, in 1947 both the House and the Senate merged their Military and Naval Affairs committees into the Armed Services Committees that exist today, a result of the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946. Presumably, legislative unification would presage executive unification. Second, although there was still resistance to unification in both the Navy and Marine Corps, Department of Navy regulations prevented officers of both services from public statements regarding unification and Secretary Forrestal made it clear that even in testimony officers were expected to support the broad outlines of the agreement. No such restrictions existed in the War Department. Despite modern views that Marine Corps public advocacy was a decisive factor in the unification battle, public media was actually dominated by Army views. The Army had both far more trained public affairs officers than the Marine Corps and their activities were not restricted in the same way.21

Vandegrift continued to focus on legislative protection for the Marine Corps and was aided in this by General Eisenhower’s testimony where he essentially acquiesced to the continued existence of the Marine Corps, repudiating his earlier views.22 This muted testimony by the CMC disappointed many in the Marine Corps and among allies in Congress. Congress then also called Brigadier General Edson as a witness. Edson was known to be in opposition to any diminution of civilian control of the military and his testimony regarding the dangers of unification did not disappoint. Even though still in uniform, Edson did not shy away from honestly appraising the proposal, labelling it as a move towards “dictatorship.”23

By summer of 1947, however, it was clear that the bill could not pass in its current form, at least in the newly organized committees. As a result, its supporters shifted the bill to the Expenditures Committee led by its powerful chairman, Clare Hoffman. Hoffman was a known isolationist who focused on domestic policies and therefore would presumably see nothing of interest in the bill and assign it to a subcommittee. This may have been the bill’s supporters’ worst strategic mistake as Hoffman would do nothing of the sort. Unbeknownst to the bill’s supporters in the War Department, Hoffman was personally close with Marines Lieutenant Colonel James D. Hittle and Lieutenant Colonel DeW. Schatzel, both members of the Chowder Society. Hoffman would turn an attempt to slide the legislation through into an all-out brawl.

In April the first witness, Secretary of the Army Robert P. Patterson, walked right into an ambush regarding the role of the Marine Corps and questions driven by the issues discussed in the JCS 1478 papers. Patterson claimed he wasn’t aware of the papers and specifically referred to the committee to General Eisenhower for questions regarding them.24

Hoffman smelled blood immediately and now grilled witness after witness on the papers, demanding their release to his committee. This could not have been chance; Hoffman either already had possession of the papers or was made aware of their contents by Hittle and Schatzel. In testimony, General Vandegrift continued to play it straight and refrained from strong condemnations of the War Department’s proposal, focusing instead on only advocating for the usefulness of the Marine Corps. This again angered Marine supporters but it is clear in hindsight that Vandegrift’s strategy was brilliant. By limiting himself to defending his service he provided Members of Congress with a clear contrast with the War Department’s attempt to gain power and attempts to withhold evidence from them.25

It was Hoffman who finally forced the Army to turn over the JCS 1478 Series to Congress but did not publicly reveal that he had possession of them until General Eisenhower, who apparently did not know that the papers had been released, testified. Hoffman confronted Eisenhower on his hostility towards the Marine Corps, which Eisenhower denied until presented with the JCS paper that he had authored. Eisenhower backtracked by claiming that he was referring solely to Marines that operate landing craft at Normandy but since writing those reports he had been informed that it was actually Navy sailors, not Marines, who operated the landing craft at Normandy. Thus, his previous stance was moot. In his book, Keiser simply says that it is curious that the commander of the Allied forces erroneously thought that he was actually in command of U.S. Marines who transported his troops ashore.26

But we can go a step further. The after-action report for Operation Torch in 1942, authored by Eisenhower, contains a detailed discussion of issues surrounding the differences in training between Navy crews and Army crews and problems experienced by landing craft during the operation.27 It strains credibility that Eisenhower was so detached from the planning for Normandy that issues he himself identified earlier in the war simply escaped his notice later.

It also strained the credibility of his testimony. While he avoided taking personal responsibility for the JCS 1478 papers he authored, the preposterous nature of his statement that he thought it was actually Marines landing the troops at Normandy undermined the credibility of the War Department to the degree that the legislation could not be passed without an amendment specifically protecting the existence of the Marine Corps.

At this point Truman was fed up with Navy and Marine Corps’ ability to influence the bill. He ordered General Vandegrift to dissolve the Edson-Thomas Board and with it the Marine Corps’ ability to mobilize support. Vandegrift did so formally, although efforts clearly continued without direct involvement by Headquarters Marine Corps.28 But the Marine Corps had one more card to play.

Edson Falls on his Sword

Despite success in Congress so far, the now formally-dissolved members of the Edson-Thomas Board still felt a forceful denunciation of the proposed bill was necessary. Edson asks the Commandant for permission to resign to that his testimony could be unfettered by his status on active duty. Although Edson had proposed this once before and Vandegrift had refused, this time he assented.

Edson’s major focus in his testimony is the dangers of the Army’s proposal in civil-military relations. Although he did not use the term, Edson described the proposed bill as creating a military-industrial complex, a “coalition of the armed services” meant to undermine civilian control of American defense. He stated: “This bill will create a coalition of the armed services. I cannot too strongly stress the fact that there can be a monopoly within the military field, just as there can be a monopoly within the industrial or commercial field, and with the same suppressive effects,” accurately predicting the military-industrial complex that came to be. He also criticized the proposed centralization of intelligence under the Central Intelligence Agency as a “potential Gestapo.” While the Bended Knee Speech and the release of the JCS 1478 papers turned the tide against the War Department, Edson’s testimony was the nail in the coffin. It was described by one Congressman as “an atom bomb in the works”29

Outmaneuvered by Edson, Secretary Forrestal rescinded restrictions on Navy and Marine Corps officers disagreeing with the bill, leading to an outpouring of criticism of the bill in public and in testimony, especially by Navy officers. Edson’s defeat of Department level restrictions on testimony had a decisive effect two years later during the Revolt of the Admirals when the Navy pushed back against attempts deprioritize aircraft carriers in 1949.

After Edson’s testimony, War Department attempts to gain more out of the bill than what had been agreed to with Truman largely collapsed. The isolationist Hoffman ironically became a primary architect of the Department of Defense through a revised bill that he asked Lieutenant Colonel Hittle to draft for him.30

The Marine Corps succeeded in having its function enshrined in law and defeating a German-style centralized chief of staff, but it was not recognized as a full service and had no representation on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Full status as a co-equal service with a seat on the Joint Chiefs would have to wait until the Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1978. Marine Corps concerns about the need for legislative protection were clearly validated soon after the National Security Act of 1947 was passed. Upon becoming the first Secretary of Defense, Forrestal convened a conference in Key West Florida to work out the roles and responsibilities of the different services. The Marine Corps was excluded from participation and unilaterally limited to only four divisions even in wartime. It was only the legal protection that it now enjoyed that saved it.

Once again it was consistent and effective advocacy by the Marine Corps that preserved its existence, not innovation or professionalism. The analysis performed by the various boards regarding the future of amphibious warfare did bear fruit, but not until well after the Battle of the Potomac concluded. The Edson-Thomas Board included then Colonel R. E. Hogaboom and research continued well after the unification debates, leading to the Hogaboom Report in January 1957. This report and Hogaboom’s work in general captured the implications of emerging technology- especially helicopters- for amphibious warfare and later informed the creation of the modern Marine Air Ground-Task Force structure of the Marine Corps.

Once again, the debate is only finally ended when the Marine Corps plays a vital role in wartime. In October 1949, Army General Omar Bradley testifies to Congress that large-scale amphibious operations will never occur again. Less than a year later, the 1st Marine Division lands at Inchon in Korea, turning the tide against the North Korean offensive. They cleared the way for the Army’s 7th Infantry Division in the exact complementary manner mentioned by Admiral Nimitz in his testimony. The landing, dubbed Operation Chromite, was approved by General Douglas MacArthur, one of the Army generals who had always been effusive in his praise of the Marines. After all, he had spent his time during World War II fighting alongside Marines, not against them.

Conclusion

In his book, Krulak states that, “the Marines congratulated themselves on the National Security Act victory.”31 While it was certainly a victory for the Marine Corps as it preserved its existence, was it a victory for the Republic? Obviously, had the Army succeeded in achieving its goal of centralized, uniformed control of U.S. national security in the German style it would have been worse than the eventual National Security Act of 1947. But almost eighty years on has the Act itself been a success? None of the benefits of greater centralization- efficiency, readiness, and strategic direction- have been realized. The Department of Defense remains one of the least efficient and most expensive organizations in history. The readiness system is broken. American strategy since 1947 has clearly been worse than before by any measure. Meanwhile, all of the predicted dangers- made almost exclusively by the two naval services- have come true. The centralization of intelligence has not yielded the promised immunity from strategic surprise, as those of us who lived through the events of 9/11 can readily attest. American foreign policy is increasingly dominated by a Pentagon with significant presence around the world rather than the Department of State which has repeatedly suffered such drastic cuts to its resources and capacities. Even General James Mattis sounded the alarm on Department of State cutbacks. In the end, the Navy failed to preserve the collective strategy development that won World War II and it was instead centralized under the President and the Secretary of Defense. Looking back at U.S. strategy for the last 79 years, there is just no case to say that the Navy was wrong. In fact, it’s difficult not to conclude that the compromise gave us the worst aspects of both systems: the bloat, inefficiencies, and duplication of a decentralized system with the poor strategic direction and brittleness of a centralized system.

The Battle of the Potomac is notable for the absence of another actor: the Soviet Union. Nowhere is anyone involved in these debates advocating their position as necessary to compete with and defeat the Soviet Union. The debates are not at all threat-informed; they are purely internal. This begs the question: is the National Military Establishment put in place by the National Security Act of 1947 the best fit to compete with and defeat the People’s Republic of China? How could it be?

Eisenhower’s role here is especially important and deserves greater attention. His strident advocacy of defense consolidation should be remembered in the context of his later views as president. President Eisenhower is rightly praised for his warning about the power of the military-industrial complex in his farewell speech of 17 January 1961, but it should also be remembered that that military-industrial complex is a monster that General Eisenhower enthusiastically helped create. Perhaps the wisdom he clearly gained while serving as a civilian despite his previous service as a general is a demonstration that civilian control of the military remains an essential pillar of democracy. This is not to criticize Eisenhower for changing his mind, but rather to highlight that even career military officers as talented as Eisenhower lack the perspective to manage the civil-military relationship of a democracy from inside a uniform. Once he became President himself, he gained the broader perspective that the civilian policymaker must apply to strategy.

While it’s certainly true that the naval services raised the alarm about the Army’s plan because it was in their interest to do so, not just because it was a threat to democracy, they should not have been the only ones to do so. Someone in the Army should have known better and spoken up. The same goes for Truman’s administration and for more members of Congress independent of Navy and Marine Corps advocacy. That they did not should give pause and remind us how close we came to an inherently autocratic system being rammed through federal institutions because a single service wanted to protect its budget and empower itself. Checks and balances exist for this very reason, thus it took other institutions standing up and saying no to stop it. This episode also highlights the benefit of having both a military and a naval perspective in the president’s cabinet, a benefit that was destroyed by the National Security Act of 1947. Diverse advice is better than centralized control of that advice.

Although previous efforts to abolish the Marine Corps were defeated by service advocacy on its own behalf, this example saw a new twist. The Marines working on the issue made a deliberate decision to focus first on the civil-military danger presented by the Army’s attempt to consolidate military power in the hands of a uniformed officer vice a civilian and only secondarily on preserving the Marine Corps’ existence. This is not to say that this was an altruistic service for the Nation; it was clearly in the Corps’ best interest and would indirectly achieve its secondary goal. But this strategy lent the Corps’ advocacy efforts greater credibility and animated members of Congress that otherwise would be disinterested in issues relating to the Marine Corps. They were assisted by strategic missteps by both the Army and President Truman. The Army’s use of highly classified documents to vent its institutional feelings came back to haunt it when those documents were released to Congress. President Truman’s blatant muzzling of the Navy Department views while simultaneously publicizing War Department views also hardened Congressional feelings against any proposal he might back.

The Battle of the Potomac was the last attempt to abolish the Marine Corps. At least so far. But it also came closest to succeeding. Arguably, it did succeed in removing its direct access to a cabinet-level secretary until 1978 when the Commandant was elevated to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

This post is almost wholly taken from Jack Shulimson’s excellent history of the Marine Corps during its first modernization, The Marine Corps’ Search for a Mission, 1880-1898. It’s a must-read book to understand the evolution of the service. You should also check out Gilded Age Marines, the blog by John S. Naylor that covers this time period extensively and will be linked below.

In the last post, the Marine Corps performed mostly small-scale amphibious operations in support of the Navy’s blockade and sea denial campaign during the American Civil War and emerged bloodied but stable. It was that stability that would become a threat over the next few decades. The Marine Corps, having whiffed on an early opportunity to make amphibious warfare their most important mission and the root of their identity, would spend the next fifty some years fighting to maintain Marines’ presence on ships at sea rather than focusing on fighting from the sea. This was done in the persistent belief that if Marines were not stationed aboard warships and only on transports then they would be abolished. This refusal to innovate, rooted in conservativism and institutional paranoia, led directly to calls to abolish the Marine Corps.

The Gilded Age Marine Corps

In the 1870s, the Marine Corps was spread around the world in small ship’s detachments of various sizes. Task organization is already in the service’s DNA; whenever a crisis occurs it consolidates these detachments for service in “battalion” or “regimental” size, although there are no staffs or permanent battalions or regiments of any kind. Headquarters Marine Corps is a small grouping of officers working directly for the Commandant in Washington, DC. Training was almost entirely done on the job. Meanwhile, the Corps is frequently tasked with what is today called support to civil authorities, deploying throughout the country assisting with unrest and guarding infrastructure like railroads and postal routes.

In 1876, Congress cuts the Corps’ size even smaller than its post-Civil War demobilization, down to 2,000 enlisted Marines and 75 officers, and even downgrades the Commandant’s rank from brigadier general to colonel. They also appoint Colonel Charles McCawley to replace Brigadier General Jacob Zeilin who had held the post since the Civil War. McCawley focused on quality of life for the enlisted Marines to stem frequent desertions, increased the discipline and training of individual Marines, and continued Zeilin’s policy that the mission of the Marine Corps was to man Navy ships first and fight ashore second.1

In 1881 and 1882 McCawley successfully advocated for a bill to expand the size of the Marine Corps, but it never came up for a vote. The very next year, a bill instead proposes to abolish the Marine Corps. This bill does come up for debate but is never passed. The most significant legislative event for the Marine Corps in these years is the first authorization of Naval Academy graduates to become Marine officers (Naval Appropriation Act of 1882). This bill also initiated the creation of the “New Navy” and greater professionalization for both services.2

During this time, professional military journals emerged and began driving debates about service policies across the armed forces. In professional journals, Navy officers frequently discuss and debate amphibious warfare and expeditionary operations but few Marines do, reflecting the conservative tenure of McCawley.3 Marine “reformers” are generally more focused on the size and professionalization of the officer corps rather than the mission. Navy officers are anxious to eliminate the Marine Corps role as a police force at sea, instead wanting discipline of sailors to be a Navy function, and one of the earliest recommendations is for the Marines to focus on landing operations, echoing Admiral Dahlgren’s visionary thoughts from the Civil War period. While Marine officers rarely write about the issues facing the service, this period saw the introduction of the Marines’ Manual, perhaps the first manual written specifically for the enlisted corps rather than officers. Penned by Marine 1st Lieutenant Howard K. Gilman, the Marines’ Manual is a precursor of MCDP-1 Warfighting. In 1886, Gilman wrote Naval Brigade and Operations Ashore, which did cover amphibious warfare. Most of the tactical principles Gilman identified would find their way into formal Marine doctrine in later years and some, especially a focus on rapid action, surprise, and deception, presage MCDP-1 Warfighting.

By the 1890’s, the United States realized that its small navy focused on coastal defense must become larger and more capable. One of the reasons for this is a more expansive view of the Monroe Doctrine focused on preventing European economic influence in Central and South America, not just European control of territory. This caused the Navy to form the Squadron of Evolution as an experimental unit, and the squadron’s experiments include amphibious operations exercises in Nice, France.4

But it is still Navy officers pushing the Marine Corps to innovate. Then Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan, working on Navy war plans, writes the Marine Corps into the plan as an amphibious force: “Allusion has been made to mobilize the Marine Corps in certain contingencies. If this Corps be kept up to the standard of its former efficiency, it will constitute a most important re-enforcement, nay, backbone, to any landing force landing on the enemy’s coast. Measures should be framed by which the whole body could be collected.”5 A Navy lieutenant, William F. Fullam, leads the Navy’s charge against the Marine Corps in numerous articles. By this point, it seems like everyone concerned realizes that the Marine Corps is destined to become a full amphibious warfare force, except Headquarters Marine Corps.

In 1891, Commandant McCawley gives up the reins after a decades-long running battle to increase the size and improve the discipline of the Marine Corps, but also to prevent any form of innovation or development of new concepts of operation. Heywood would continue McCawley’s quest to increase the discipline and training of Marines, establishing the School of Application (today called The Basic School) which initially trained both officers and enlisted Marines.

The year 1894 proved to be something of a nadir as the Marine Corps under Heywood faced attacks from Congress, the Navy, the Army, and junior Marines of the reform movement. Senator Eugene Hale led a charge on naval reformation in Congress which includes provisions to abolish the Marine Corps. This time, the Navy lent its support since many of the Navy-focused reforms were vital and long-overdue. Secretary of the Navy Herbert makes no effort to prevent the Marine Corps’ abolishment and Commandant Heywood falls back on McCawley’s old argument that Marines are needed to man naval guns on ships at sea. As the reform bill is debated around Washington, Navy officers circulate petitions to abolish the Marine Corps among the enlisted sailors. Hilary A. Herbert, appalled that Navy officers would take actions that amounted to an enlisted sailor mutiny against the Marines, repudiated the petition. In August of 1894, the Marine Corps comes under attack by the Army when a group of officers convinced a group of senators to propose that would fold the Marine Corps into the Army artillery corps. This bill had little support among the senior Army generals however and it never reached the floor. 6

Marines, however, were beginning to attend the Naval War College and to gain exposure to the ideas that will remake the service. These include influential War College studies of Japanese amphibious Warfare by Captain Richard Wallach. NWC exercises increasingly involve landing operations even though the Marine student population is small.

By 1896, Congress began to significantly expand the Navy and legislation includes increasing the size of the Marine officer corps, although not the enlisted corps, causing significant strain on a Marine Corps now even smaller in ratio to the expanding Navy. In June, Heywood successfully advocated for an increase in 500 enlisted Marines.

Marines in the Spanish-American War

None of these issues, neither the small size of the Marine Corps, its focus on old missions, or its many critics are resolved by the time of the Spanish-American War. But the foundation of a disciplined, expeditionary force established by McCawley and Heywood enabled it to immediately respond and expand. But it did receive emergency appropriations to the tune of $106,529.64, an immense sum for the small service, and one million rounds of rifle ammunition.7

The immediate task is to create and deploy two battalions for service in Cuba, but this was eventually reduced to one. East Coast barracks are drained of Marines to composite a battalion under Lieutenant Colonel Robert Huntington, then commander of the New York barracks. The 1st (and at this time only) Marine Battalion stood at 631 enlisted Marines, 21 officers, and 1 surgeon in five infantry companies and one artillery battery. The battalion left New York on 22 April 1898, just over two months after the explosion of the USS Maine that triggered the war. This is the first time a unit of Marines this size is deployed overseas as is routine today. Previous battalions had either been amalgamated from Marines already abroad or formed for duty in the continental United States.

On 1 May, 1898, Marines participate as in the Battle of Manila Bay when Admiral Dewey smashed the Spanish Fleet. Marines are still manning guns on Navy vessels and so participate in the short battle. After the victory, the USS Baltimore’s Marine detachment under 1stLt Dion Williams goes ashore and occupies the Spanish naval base at Cavite. In the future, Williams would become an important amphibious warfare thinker and Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps.

By June, the 1st Marine Battalion arrives off Cuba. On 10 June, after meeting up with the U.S. blockading fleet, Huntington’s battalion was sent ashore to seize Guantanamo Bay as a base for U.S. Navy ships. Marine detachments had already conducted a reconnaissance amphibious raid to select the approach. The battalion linked up with Cuban rebels and faced a rolling Spanish offensive that lasts four days in what the battalion called its “one hundred hours of fighting.”8 In the midst of this offensive, two Marine companies and about 50 Cuban rebels launch a counterattack on the Spanish water source six miles away at Cuzco. Cuzco is defended by six Spanish companies, but the Marines coordinate naval gunfire support from the USS Dolphin and succeed in destroying the Spanish base.9 Despite the length of the fight, the Spanish committed their troops in piecemeal fashion and never seriously threatened to overwhelm the Marines. The battle of Guantanamo Bay is the largest ground action by the Marine Corps in Cuba, but other actions include various amphibious raids against targets ashore like signal lighthouses, cable lines, and cable stations in an early example of maritime reconnaissance and counter-reconnaissance.10

The first rapid, overseas deployment of a self-contained, amphibious, combined arms unit presaged the later Marine Corps, especially the Marine Amphibious Units/Marine Expeditionary Units of post-World War II. But the Marine Corps did not yet see the potential. Although Marines are performing amphibious warfare missions in both theaters, at this point they lack specialized equipment to do so. Ship-to-shore movements were conducted from either Navy transports or Navy warships via general purpose small boats. Codified doctrine and specialized amphibious platforms would have to wait for the interwar period even though the British Army and Royal Marines had been developing specialized amphibious platforms and doctrine for centuries.

Post-War

Based on the Marines’ service in the Spanish-American War and new duties to occupy former Spanish territory in Cuba and the Philippines, Colonel Heywood asked Congress for an increase in end strength. Congress agreed and in 1899 passed a law that included an increase to 6,000 Marines, 201 officers, and the rank of brigadier general for the Commandant. The next year, the Marine Corps’ involvement in China began, and nearly 2,000 Marines would be stationed in the Far East after the Boxer Rebellion. These manpower requirements would continue to strain the small service.

By the end of 1900, the Marine Corps’ amphibious warfare was finally mission codified by the Department of the Navy, but it was not General Heywood who made the change. The post-war General Board, in its first year of operation under hero of Manila Bay Admiral Dewey, signed a memorandum directing a permanent, 400-man Marine battalion dedicated to developing amphibious warfare.11 Once again, the Marine Corps passes through an attempt to abolish to end up with an increase in end strength.

This attempt to kill the Marine Corps was finally settled by Executive Order 969, signed by President Roosevelt in 1909. Roosevelt, like Jackson before him, was actually frustrated with perpetual Marine Corps attempts to protect their own interests, especially their presence on Navy ships. Although signed by Roosevelt, the order itself was crafted by Headquarters Marine Corps under now Commandant Major General George Elliot. Elliot finally acquiesced to a new mission for the Marine Corps in the form of advance basing and expeditionary operations and ends the Corps’ attempts to preserve the now obsolete shipboard mission.

Conclusion

The Marine Corps’ traditional technical and tactical proficiency was not enough to protect it from questions about its relevancy and attempts to abolish it. These aspects of professionalism, while obviously important, are not enough to differentiate the service from others. Its unique nature comes from its connection to and relationship with the Navy, not from its professionalism or discipline.

McCawley and Heywood should be applauded for their work in modernizing Marine Corps professionally, but their singular focus on a traditional and preferred mission put the very existence of the service at risk. The core of the Marine Corps’ value is that by integrating with the Navy, the two are greater than the sum of their parts. At the turn of the century, this synergy was only created at the urging of Navy, not Marine Corps, leadership. A poor relationship with the Navy is self-imposed friction that the leaders of the service should always seek to avoid, even at the expense of other priorities. This episode also shows that it is not innovation that preserved the Marine Corps, but service advocacy.

But it was not just the Navy but also junior officers pushing the Marine Corps to change. By the end of this period, company-grade officers flood professional journals and HQMC itself with recommendations for permanent brigade or regiment units and a new focus on amphibious warfare. Young officers point the way through the crisis but are also repeatedly ignored until the commandancy of General John Lejeune and his elevation of the ideas of Pete Ellis, who began writing about a new vision as a junior captain. But the Marine reformers had to push through an overemphasis on one type of ship (in this case the battleship) as the “right” platform for the Marine Corps. Rather than embrace amphibious warfare conducted from transports, the Marine Corps preferred to focus solely on its role on Navy fighting ships which were not designed for amphibious warfare at all.

This is not to say that the Marine Corps is not innovative as a service; it clearly is. Once the Marine Corps finally accepted its new role, its innovation and modernization efforts were extremely effective. This episode shows that professionalism and innovation, while requirements to maintain its existence, are not enough without service advocacy. This lesson would be needed for the fourth and most challenging attempt to disband the Corps when the Army stops playing and really goes for it.

Just a quick note here before I start another dissertation chapter to highlight a few newsworthy items. Part IV of the Kill the Corps series is coming but is done yet.

Recon-Strike Tactics at Work

RUSI published a new report on combined arms in Ukraine, Emergent Approaches to Combined Arms Manouevre in Ukraine. It’s by Jack Watling who is probably the best observer of ground combat actions in the war.

I was especially struck by the identified limitations of the vaunted FPV drones, which are reportedly changing the character of warfare.

Forces can easily protect positions from FPVs.

EW can effectively deny a part of the battlespace from FPVs which use radio frequency control.

FPVs do not function in bad weather, have too small a payload to engage numerous classes of targets, and are comparatively easy to shoot down.

FPV pilots must have extremely low latency connections to fly FPVs and must be static while flying them. Pilots can be detected and struck, including pilots using fibreoptic cables. As offensive counter-UAV methodologies have started to expand, pilots have been forced further away from the front, reducing their effective range of flight. As a result, the majority of FPV kills occur between -3 km and 3 km from the forward line of Ukrainian fighting positions.

This is above and beyond the manpower tax of FPV drones which is quite high, requiring not just dedicated operators but maintainers, planners, and communications specialists. FPV and other unmanned systems have become a vital addition to combined arms, but in no way a replacement for it.

The observation which immediately takes form is that the number of arms that need to be coordinated has increased, and the level at which C2 must be exercised by the brigade headquarters has moved down an echelon. At the same time, the force has become rebalanced between manoeuvre and fires, with the latter expanding to enable the former.

This is an exact description of reconnaissance-strike tactics.

The report pairs well with this post from Ben Morgan on the ongoing battle for Pokrovsk.

In the last post we discussed how Ukrainian tactics are evolving, including how Ukraine’s use of ‘drone walls.’ A ‘drone wall’ is a sophisticated web of ‘sensors’ linked to ‘shooters’ that can respond almost instantly to targeting information. ‘Sensors’ include drones, ground surveillance radar, human observers and satellites that constantly watch the battlefield identifying potential targets. ‘Shooters’ can be artillery, mortars, missiles and drones respond and attack targets identified by the ‘sensor.’ The system held to together by a digital network creating an integrated ‘kill web.’ Anything moving in this area can be quickly and decisively engaged. Recent fighting in Donetsk indicates that Ukraine’s ‘drone walls’ or ‘kill webs’ are highly effective at stopping Russian advances.

The “drone walls” are recon-strike networks and they’re most effective in more open terrain, leading to the Russian’s use of more complex terrain to mitigate their effects:

Drones appear to be less effective in complex terrain so Ukraine is forced to use more infantry soldiers to track down and neutralise the infiltrators. Essentially, Russian infiltration into urban areas forces Ukraine to fight an infantry led battle of attrition that it cannot maintain.

This reminds me of the fight against ISIS at the height of their power in Syria and Iraq beginning in 2015. Once the U.S. assembled an anti-ISIS coalition, the U.S. provided a recon-strike complex at scale to leverage its airpower, severely degrading ISIS’s ability to move after a few years. But ISIS didn’t quit, instead they focused on defending the complex terrain they had acquired to mitigate the effects of U.S. airpower, leading to the very infantry-centric battles of Mosul (2016-2017) and Raqqa (2017).

An uncontested recon-strike complex makes open terrain extremely dangerous for surface forces. But, as the RUSI report shows, there are ways to address drone-centric recon-strike networks. The danger of open spaces between complex terrain, of course, pre-dates the ubiquity of FPV drones in Ukraine and even aircraft. Far from changing the character of warfare, these systems seem to be just adding to it. Also, drone countermeasures, especially electronic warfare systems, will only get better and proliferate further.

Force Design Update

The Marine Corps released a new Force Design update last month. (Disclaimer: I am not involved in Force Design or these updates and only know what is written here.) Personally, I think the most interesting part is the announcement of Maritime Reconnaissance Companies that will be in the division, equipped with an organic (read: not Navy) vessel paired with an unmanned surface vessel. This is another lesson from Ukraine, whose navy is using Swedish CB90 vessels for a variety of missions and who have leveraged a maritime reconnaissance-strike complex to deny much of the Black Sea to Russian surface vessels.

There’s good coverage of the document here and here, but this update has been depicted as a pivot away from the ongoing Force Design effort. (The “2030” part of Force Design has been dropped because it will just continue beyond 2030 at this point.) I actually think this is an expansion of Force Design. The 4th Marine Regiment won’t become an MLR but will be reinforced with the capabilities and presumably platforms acquired for that MLR. More air defense platforms are also coming online. The recon-strike capabilities of the MLR will likely proliferate across the Marine Corps at some point, based on this part about the MEUs:

MARINE EXPEDITIONARY UNITS. Just as our MLRs are being equipped with NMESIS, MADIS, resilient command and control, unmanned systems, and advanced sensing networks, those same capabilities are now being fielded across the MEUs. This modernization strengthens the MEU’s role as a versatile, multi-domain naval expeditionary force from the sea, able to project power, seize and hold key maritime terrain, sense and make sense of the operating environment, integrate with the fleet, and directly contribute to joint kill webs. Recent deployments by the 15th, 24th, and 31st MEUs have showcased the enhanced capabilities of the MEU.

At this point, Force Design has simply become modernization, a move into the emergent reconnaissance-strike regime.

This won’t actually change much about the Marine Corps. Sensing, command and control, and the coordination of organic and joint fires have been part and parcel of what the Marine Corps does for a long time. In World War II, the Marine Corps, Navy, and Army Air Service combined fire supporters into Joint Assault Signal Companies that managed joint fires for larger campaigns. After the war, the Marine Corps is the only service that maintained that structure and capability, renaming them Air Naval Gunfire Liaison Companies (ANGLICO) of which there are six today. Although they are called companies, they are battalion-sized elements commanded by an O-5 due to the complexity of the task. I expect the ANGLICOs will be exceptionally busy in the near future.

Most importantly, happy 250th birthday to all Marines past and present!

The second major attempt to abolish the Marine Corps occurred during the American Civil War. This attempt was driven by recruiting struggles during the American Civil War (enlistees entering the U.S. Army were paid much higher wages and bounties than recruits entering the Marine Corps) and the dire need to direct military age males into the Army. Again, it was service advocacy, along with support from the Navy, that forestalled the attempt.

As mentioned in the second installment, the U.S. Marine Corps is extremely active throughout the world during this period. Marines are stationed on every Navy ship and frequently employed ashore for a variety of tasks. But by now, perhaps thanks to Congress having clarified their role, its service identity is coming into existence. Its participation in overseas (the Barbary Wars) and closer-to-home conflicts (the Mexican War) are in its past, although not yet immortalized in the Marines Hymn. Marines wear a distinctive uniform, including the famous blood stripes, but not yet a distinctive emblem. The Marine Corps has little in the way of recognizably modern structure. For work ashore, various ship’s detachments are amalgamated as needed. At sea, Marines perform policing duties, protect the ship from borders, and man roughly 1/3 of the guns on most Navy ships.

Like the other services, the beginning of the Civil War split the service asunder. Twenty of 63 Marine Corps officers left the service, with 19 of them joining the Confederate Marine Corps. The enlisted corps mostly stayed, and no units switched sides as units. Marines stationed at Navy posts in the south were either “repatriated” by Confederates, managed to destroy equipment and return north (Norfolk), or helped to hold forts for the duration of the war (Fort Pickens). In the war’s first major battle at Manassas, the Marine Corps provided a battalion of 12 officers and 353 recruits awaiting training from Marine Barracks Washington. The scratch battalion suffered 10 Marines killed, making stands and spoiling attacks three times during the Union retreat from the battle.

Marines and the Anaconda Plan

Although its role in the Civil War is not well-known, the Marine Corps is constantly in action and constantly overstretched for the next four years, mostly in support of the Anaconda Plan, General Winfield Scott’s initial proposed strategy to defeat the Confederacy, which the Union did pursue throughout the war. Entire books have been written about the Navy and Marine Corps’ battles to enact the Anaconda Plan, but suffice to say the Marines are in action all around the Confederacy’s periphery. It starts as crisis response: Marines are sent to Fort Sumter as soon as news breaks that Southern forces fired on it, but their ship does not arrive before it falls. Marines are also immediately sent to garrison Fort McHenry and Fort Washington in Maryland.1

After those immediate actions, more deliberate operations in support of the Anaconda Plan take place.

• 110 Marines are sent to Fort Pickens in Pensacola, Florida and hold it for the U.S. for the remainder of the war.

• A 250-man mixed unit of Marines and Army regulars assault and seize Fort Clark at the Hatteras Inlet of North Carolina on 28 August 1861. The next day, Fort Hatteras on the opposite side of the inlet surrenders.

• On 7 November 1861, a Navy task force pummeled two Confederate forts at Port Royal, South Carolina (future home of Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island) inducing their defenders to abandon the forts. Marines go ashore to occupy the forts.

• On 24 April 1862, A Navy fleet under Flag Officer David G. Farragut fights through two Confederate ports at the mouth of the Mississippi River to New Orleans. The forts surrender and Marines are the first ashore to hold New Orleans against a local mob until U.S. Army troops arrive to garrison the city.

• The Army got in on the action too. Ambrose Burnside, the eventual and unfairly maligned commander of the Army of the Potomac in the winter of 1862, earlier led a successful and well-planned amphibious campaign in Eastern North Carolina.

• On 11 May 1862, the USS Galena was attacking fortifications manned by Confederate Marines along the James River in Virginia during the Peninsula Campaign. It sustains a hit to its ammunition, and Corporal John Mackie organizes the stunned sailors and Marines to put out the fires and get three guns back into action. It is a rare occasion where U.S. and Confederate Marines fight each other, and Mackie earns the Marine Corps’ first Medal of Honor.

• In the spring of 1863, Union forces under Ulysses S. Grant are struggling to reach Confederate held Vicksburg, Mississippi from the north. Farragut sends his senior Marine, Captain Broome. On 23 March, Grant has a private meeting with Captain Broome who convinces him to shift his base to the south of Vicksburg where the Navy can better support a campaign against the city. In an early and excellent example of interservice cooperation, Grant does so, besieges the city, and accepts its surrender on 4 July 1863.

• On 8 September 1863, Marines participate in probably the most recognizably modern amphibious assault of the war. Four reinforced-company sized elements of sailors and one of Marines attempted a night landing via small boats on Fort Sumter, South Carolina. At this time, the U.S. lacks purpose-designed amphibious assault craft and codified ship-to-shore doctrine, although the British pioneered these methods over a century before. The attack proves too complex for a force lacking equipment and doctrine for the job. Of about 500 troops, only about 150 made it ashore and most of them were killed or captured.

• At the Battle of Mobile Bay, where Admiral David Farragut gave his famous order, “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!”, Marines participate in naval combat at sea against the Confederate Navy and go ashore to secure Confederate forts in the aftermath, earning eight Medals of Honor in the process.2

• From December 6-9 1864, U.S. Marines and sailors raid into South Carolina and join with General William T. Sherman’s troops and fight in the Battle of Tulifinney. The same task force fought soon after at the Battle of Boyd’s Neck.

• By the end of 1864, the only port left to the Confederacy is Wilmington, North Carolina. Marines participate in the second assault on Fort Fisher, which protected the port, but do not get the chance to assault the fort itself before it is taken. Wilmington becomes an important logistics port for the Union to support Sherman and Grant’s armies.

With the capture of Wilmington, General Scott’s “Great Snake” is complete, isolating the Confederacy from the outside world.3

In short, the Marine Corps is employed in the Civil War as amphibious forces in support of a naval campaign, a core mission of amphibious forces even well before the United States existed. Marines are fighting distributed, small-scale actions in and around littoral areas to seize and hold key maritime terrain, exert sea (and river) denial against Confederate forces, and enable sea (and river) control for the U.S. Navy.

Sound familiar?

The Congressional Fight

The stress of the Civil War immediately triggered questions for Congress. The first question was expansion. Congress increased Marine Corps end strength to 93 officers and 3,074 enlisted both to provide for wartime expansion and mitigate the losses to defection. President Lincoln used his discretionary powers to increase that number by another 1,000.4

Authorized end strength was one thing, recruitment was another. Congress authorized bounties for enlistment in the Army and states usually added bounties and bonuses for recruits into the units they raised, but the Marine Corps had to constantly advocate to the Department of the Navy and Congress to extend these recruitment measures to the Marine Corps. The Marine Corps was thus perpetually understrength during the war because a recruit could simply make much more money enlisting in the Army.

In 1864, Iowa Senator James W. Grimes, a member of the Committee on Naval Affairs, proposes the following resolution:

“Resolved, That the Committee on Naval Affairs be instructed to inquire into the expediency of abolishing the United States Marine Corps as a naval organization, and of attaching it to the United States Army as the Twentieth Regiment of Infantry, and that they report by bill or otherwise.”

Agreed to by the Senate, the Committee examines the matter.

Before the Marine Corps can react, then Commandant of the Marine Corps Colonel John Harris inconveniently dies. Secretary of the Navy Gideon Wells, who had clashed with Harris on a number of issues, reaches into more junior officer ranks and appoints then Lieutenant Colonel Jacob Zeilin as commandant, forcibly retiring every officer senior to him to avoid complaints about seniority. Zeilin was an aide to Archibald Henderson during the last crisis, and he does the same thing that the Grand Old Man did. Zeilin quickly reacts to the threat, rallies government officials, including Secretary Wells, to advocate to the Naval Affairs Committee to preserve the existence of the Marine Corps. This works, and the resolution dies in committee.

A Future Mission Emerges

Many of the above combat actions were by necessity and tradition performed by shore parties that consist of roughly one-third to one-fifth Marines leading or fighting alongside hastily-formed “battalions” of armed sailors with no training or familiarity in ground combat. This includes even larger scale amphibious assaults like Second Fort Fisher. The infamous retreat of the “Marines” at that battle was actually a group of sailors sent ashore to assault the fort with only pistols and cutlasses, a foolhardy idea from the start. Marines at the battle acted as sharpshooters in support. Marines receive training in fighting as small-units ashore when they are recruited but are not typically organized for shore service. Instead, Marine units are organized for sea duty on their assigned ships. When these ship’s detachments are combined with others ashore, they are typically referred to as battalions but there is no standing organization or even doctrine for such ad hoc units, nor are they necessarily battalion-sized: any amalgamated group of Marines of sailors ashore is just called a “battalion.”

This method was sufficient for both units so far, fighting small-scale skirmishes with indigenous populations or as an add-on unit to the Army, but the Civil War makes it clear that it is ineffective against trained and organized forces. In amphibious warfare doctrine, the Civil War-era U.S. Navy and Marine Corps lag far behind the British (but that’s a subject for my dissertation).

But the first one to realize is not a Marine but a sailor.

Today, Rear Admiral John Dahlgren is remembered for other things, especially being the “Father of American Naval Ordnance” and for the naval base and city in Virginia that now bear his name. Dahlgren would eventually start the process of developing excellent American naval guns. But in 1864 he envisioned a purpose for the Marine Corps beyond even what Commandant Jacob Zeilin, then distracted by the threat from Congress, had then considered.

By November of 1864, General William T. Sherman is cutting a swath of destruction through the south, encountering little meaningful resistance. Looking ahead though, there remained some railroads that might enable a Confederate concentration. Dahlgren, then commanding the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron concentrated off Charleston, South Carolina. Dahlgren proposes to go ashore and destroy the railroads ahead of Sherman’s advance to clear his way. He appoints Commander George Preble to lead an amphibious raid to do so. He finds out that there is a parallel Army effort to do the same thing, so Dahlgren instead assigns Preble to support the Army with a battalion of Marines and two of sailors. Due to the aforementioned recruiting crisis, there is only one Marine officer attached to Dahlgren’s squadron: 1stLt George Stoddard. The rest of the Marine contingent is enlisted Marines and NCOs. Dahlgren lands the “Fleet Brigade” and personally drills with them as the Marines train the sailors in the basic of ground combat. Dahlgren’s theory is that an amphibious force that, if it can combine speed, surprise, and maneuver, can achieve outsized effects against a shore-based adversary.

On the night of 29-30 November 1864, the Navy lands 5,000 troops under Brigadier General John P. Hatch at Boyd’s Neck in South Carolina. This joint expeditionary force is composed of the Fleet Brigade and an assortment of Army troops, including the 54th Massachusetts Regiment. Confederate lookouts detect the landing, allowing Confederate forces to block the movement the following day at Honey Hill, where Hatch attacks but cannot break the Confederate line. Hatch withdraws to the Navy vessels at Boyd’s Neck and reembarks the force.

On December 6th, Dahlgren and Patch try again, landing the joint expeditionary force at Gregory’s Landing. Again the joint expeditionary force moves inland to attack the railroad but they again stymied by a Confederate force at the Battle of Tulfinney Creek.

Despite the failure, Dahlgren’s theory is sound. An amphibious force exploiting speed, surprise, and maneuver can defeat land-based adversaries and achieve strategic effects greater than the sum of its parts. The British had mastered the use of just this type of amphibious warfare over a hundred years before the American Civil War, but they had tested and proven doctrine to connect the theory with actual practice. At this time, the United States does not. Had the Marine Corps been as cohesive and well-organized as it would someday become, complete with the structure, theory, and doctrine necessary to perform these kinds of amphibious operations, the result may have been far different. That it did not and would not for quite some time is an unfortunate failure of leaders like Commandants Harris and Zeilin.

Conclusion

The contributions of the Marine Corps are understandably overshadowed by the titanic battles and campaigns of the U.S Army during the Civil War. As a small and at this time perpetually undermanned force, there was no feasible way it could match the Army’s contribution. Poor showings at the first battle of Manassas and the first attempt at Fort Fisher notwithstanding, its record in small-scale, coastal, and riverine warfare and contributions to sea control throughout the war still shows an organization punching above its weight.

The three main service histories consulted here, by Heinl, Millet, and Moskin, all point out that the Marine Corps played a small role in the Civil War. But this discounts the economic aspects of the conflict. While American industry was concentrated in the north at the beginning of the war, the Southern cotton industry could have been used to offset this deficit, and arms could have been purchased abroad. The South’s inability to use the cotton industry to keep their economy going and purchase arms was in part the result of American diplomacy to prevent Great Britain and France from supporting the south. But the Confederacy also lacked the ports and ships necessary to consistently break the Union blockade through smuggling. That fact was made true by the Marine Corps and the Navy which consistently hampered Southern commerce and steadily reduced its access to the necessary forts and ports to support it. The four-volume The United States Marine Corps in the Civil War series by David Sullivan and the one-volume Combined Operations in the Civil War by Rowena Reed are both excellent sources for this aspect, but both are also hard to find in print.

The popular memory of the Civil War also ignores Marine contributions. The Wikipedia article for the Battle of Tulifinney Creek linked above for example, states that its one of the “rare cases” where Marines fought in combat during the war. In reality, Marines are constantly in combat during the war, but at small-scale and partly at sea, participating in ground combat and naval combat simultaneously. This is not to say that they did as much as the Army which grew to gargantuan proportions by the end of the war, but the Anaconda Plan which kept the Southern economy small and isolated simply would not have been possible without the naval services.

In the course of the war Congress faces another decision over whether to abolish or continue the Marine Corps, although this time brought on by the stress of a civil war rather than presidential desires. Again, Congress views the service as necessary and again expands it. It was not innovation that drove that decision and the Marine Corps misses a chance to take advantage of the crisis to increase its relevancy. Both Harris and Zeilin prefer to preserve tradition at the expense of innovation. But it is not the first time the Navy will come looking for the Marine Corps to step up to a new way of doing things.

This is part II in the Kill The Corps series. Part I, which explains the series, is here. AI (Chat GPT) was used to create the image above but not to write the text.

The first attempt to disband the Marine Corps occurred during the administration of President Andrew Jackson. Jackson proposed that the Army absorb the Marine Corps. Jackson’s request was driven in part by accusations of corruption in the service and by Jackson’s isolationism. Service advocacy directed at both President Jackson and Congress forestalled the attempt.

But the story of Andrew Jackson and the Marine Corps began much earlier. In 1814.

Marines at the Battle of New Orleans1

Among the many other things forgotten about the War of 1812, besides almost everything else about the war except for the destruction of Washington, D.C. and the Star-Spangled Banner, is that Marines fought at the Battle of New Orleans. The battle is fascinating even if you ignore the triumphalism; it featured a large number of factions present in the young United States all coming together to introduce the British to the wonders of a preplanned combined arms defense. These include regular army forces, state militia forces from Tennessee, Kentucky, Louisiana, New Orleans city militia, local militias consisting of free men of color, a naval battalion, a Choctaw Native American militia, and even some local pirates. One of those myriad factions was a small number of Marines stationed at New Orleans under Major Daniel Carmick. It was a true melting pot of a battle and a proof of how multi-cultural the young United States truly was, despite modern attempts to erase this past.

The coming battle wasn’t Major Carmick’s first fight. As a captain during the Quasi War, Carmick had participated in a Trojan Horse style night raid at Puerto Plata Harbor. In command at New Orleans since 1809, Carmick and his unit had recently participated in an attack against Jean LaFitte’s pirate stronghold south of New Orleans in the Barataria Bayou. LaFitte’s pirates, known as Baratarians, would soon be fighting alongside the Marines instead of against them.

As the British approach New Orleans, around 35 Marines fighting from the ships participated in the Battle of Lake Borgne. It was an attempt at sea denial (or at least lake denial) to prevent the Royal Navy from accessing the littoral regions they needed to attack New Orleans itself. Royal Marines formed part of the attacking force, marking the New Orleans campaign as one of the few times U.S. and Royal Marines fought each other.

Meanwhile, Jackson had arrived and taken overall command of New Orleans. He put Major Carmick in command of a battalion of volunteers. That battalion and the Marines- now under the command of Marine 1st Lieutenant Francis Barbin de Bellevue, a Creole2- participated in a night attack against the British vanguard on 23 December 1814, catching the British by surprise and scattering the vanguard forces.

During the first British attack on Jackson’s defensive line on 28 December, the Marines under Bellevue held the right flank and Carmick commanded his volunteer battalion in the center. It was there that Carmick was struck by a Congreve rocket and grievously wounded.

During the main British attack on 8 January 1815, Bellevue’s Marines were still holding Jackson’s right flank when it is attacked by light infantry units from the British 7th Fusiliers, the 43 Monmouth Regiment, and the 93rd Sutherland Highlanders. This attack is intended to support the main British attack against the American center by turning the flank. Marines manning rifles and cannon brought ashore from Navy ships are among the troops that hold the line.

Major Carmick remained in poor health until dying, possibly of complications from his wounds, on 6 November 1816. Carmick and Bellevue clashed after the battle and Bellevue was court martialed, as indicated in this letter from Bellevue to then President James Madison. Bellevue deserves a post of his own if I’m ever able to piece together his full story.

President Jackson

Although stymied in his 1824 presidential campaign, Jackson won the presidency outright in 1828. In his very first message to Congress he recommended that the Marine Corps be absorbed by the Army.

I would also recommend that the Marine Corps be merged in the artillery or infantry, as the best mode of curing the many defects in its organization. But little exceeding in number any of the regiments of infantry, that corps has, besides its lieutenant-colonel commandant, five brevet lieutenant-colonels, who receive the full pay and emoluments of their brevet rank, without rendering proportionate service. Details for marine service could as well be made from the artillery or infantry, there being no peculiar training requisite for it.

This was the whole of his official argument, but the “many defects” he references includes corruption especially after the disastrous commandancy of Anthony Gale.

After Gale’s flameout, President James Monroe turned to then Lieutenant Colonel Archibald Henderson, now known as the “Grand Old Man of the Marine Corps” since he served as acting or confirmed Commandant from 1818 until his death in 1859, a little over 38 years. Legend has it that he tried to leave the Commandant’s House to his heirs in his will, having forgotten that they were government-owned since he had lived in them for so long.

Archibald Henderson presides over the Marine Corps when it is at its smallest point but also extremely active: Marines are in action in Haiti, the Falkland Islands, Sumatra, fighting pirates throughout the Caribbean, fighting fires (literally fires, not engaging in fire fights) in Boston, New York, and DC, and even putting down a prison riot in Massachusetts.

From Jackson’s perspective, however, the Marine Corps is a bother. It falls under Army regulations when ashore but Navy regulations at sea, causing constant friction in disciplinary matters. There are also irregularities in the pay and quartermaster departments, which had only existed for the Marine Corps since 1817. Unlike the Corps of today, Archibald Henderson’s was not passing an audit.

Still, Jackson’s recommendation caught the Marine Corps by surprise.

The Grand Old Man’s Defense

Archibald Henderson, not yet as old as his eventual nickname implies, sprang into action. Henderson constantly advocates behind the scenes to maintain the Marine Corps as its own service, even to the Secretary of the Navy John Branch who had first indicted the Marines for pay and supply irregularities.

Both the Senate and House Naval Affairs committees held hearings on Jackson’s recommendation in 1830, but neither was interested in acting on it. Then Secretary Branch tries again in 1831, making the same recommendation as Jackson in hisown 1831 report to Congress.

These attempts, ironically, lead to the An Act for the Better Organization of the Marine Corps, passed by Congress in 1834. This act fixed the problem of regulation, placing the Corps under Navy regulation both ashore and afloat, increased its size to 63 officers and 1,224 enlisted (its largest point so far), and promoted Archibald Henderson to full colonel. Not too shabby a reward for defending the service.

Jackson signed the bill.

The Seminole Wars

Jackson’s gratitude for services rendered during the Battle of New Orleans was not just denied to Marines but to Native Americans as well. By 1836, the Army is struggling in wars against Creek and Seminole efforts to resist deportation from Florida, Georgia, and Alabama. In 1835, two Army companies under the command of Major Francis L. Dade were ambushed by Seminole warriors. Only three soldiers survived, and the Dade Massacre became a national scandal that was only pushed out of the news by the Battle of the Alamo the following year. Henderson offers two battalions to Jackson which he accepts and orders them south to support the Army. Henderson personally leads the 38 officers and 424 enlisted Marines- over half the Marine Corps.

In the Florida everglades, even more Marines are landed from Navy ships from the West India Squadron. These Marines and sailors, dubbed the “Mosquito Fleet,” performed river patrols and actions using small craft, cutters, and canoes. By late 1836, the Marines are augmented by Creek militias (led by Marine officers) from Alabama who had joined the fight against the Seminoles. In 1837 the overall Army commander, Major General T. H. Jesup, gives Henderson command of one of two Army brigades. Henderson’s brigade included regular Army forces, Georgia volunteers, the Creek volunteers, and the Marine battalions. In 1838, the Marines return to Washington with Henderson wearing brevet brigadier general rank for success as a brigade commander, the first general officer in Marine Corps history.3

Conclusion

While certainly not the most glorious war in the Marine Corps history given what Jackson was doing to the Native Americans, the Seminole War at least proved Congress’ prescience in maintaining its existence and fixing its hazy legal status. Jackson’s attempt to disband the Marine Corps, despite critical service rendered by the Marine Corps under his command during the New Orleans campaign, proved both shortsighted and counterproductive.

But it was hardly innovation or high standards that saved the Marine Corps. Instead, it was Henderson’s energetic defense and the desires of Congress that saved the day. As usual, when the existence of the Marine Corps was threatened, they were shortly needed again.

This is the first post in a series that will examine the four major attempts by the U.S. government to shut down the Marine Corps. It is somewhat based on a paper I wrote for coursework for my doctoral program, although heavily modified and expanded. AI (ChatGPT) was used to develop the image above for this series but no AI was used to for the text itself.

The United States Marine Corps is well known for being a paranoid institution. Four times in its 249-year history, the U.S. government has seriously discussed disbanding the service. Each time, it has decided not to do so, but the attempts have nonetheless fostered a sense of insecurity. Even senior Marines have stated that their own service is not necessary. In 1957, Marine Brigadier General Victor Krulak wrote that, “The United States does not need a Marine Corps. However, for good reasons which completely transcend cold logic, the United States wants a Marine Corps.” The institution believes its existence must be continually earned rather than expected.

In a sense this is justified. Colonel Robert Heinl, a longtime Marine Corps historian, identified nine different times when the Service faced questions about its relevancy. He included times when prominent military voices raised questions in the press or journal articles. But these are less attempts than just discussions. In this series, I include only the four times that attempts triggered legislative consideration: given the oversight role of Congress, it is only with its consent that a military service could be killed. These four are the only serious attempts in its 250-year history.

The first occurred during the administration of President Andrew Jackson. Jackson proposed that the Marine Corps be absorbed by the U.S. Army. This was driven in part by accusations of corruption in the service and by Jackson’s isolationism. Service advocacy directed at both President Jackson and Congress forestalled the attempt. This case was not followed by a significant reorganization of the service. This case will be referred to as Case 1 hereafter.

The second occurred during the American Civil War. In 1863 and 1864, Congress debated disbanding the Marine Corps. This attempt was driven by recruiting struggles during the American Civil War (enlistees entering the Union Army were paid much higher wages and bounties than recruits entering the Marine Corps) and the dire need to direct military age males into the Union Army. Again, it was service advocacy, along with support from the Navy, that forestalled the attempt. This case was also not followed by a significant reorganization. This case will be referred to as Case 2 hereafter.

The third attempt occurred as an extended debate during the late 19^th century. In this case, it was the Navy that proposed that the Marine Corps be disbanded arguing that it was obsolete and therefore a waste of resources. Again, the service advocated for its own existence but in this event, it also engaged in a deep reform and modernization effort to ensure its fitness to the changing operating environment. The concurrent modernization effort earned the service a reputation for innovation and has been cited as a reason why it continues to survive. This case will be referred to as Case 3 hereafter.

Lastly, the U.S. government debated disbanding the Marine Corps immediately following World War II. As the Department of War began a drawdown of the then massive U.S. military apparatus, the Army advocated the abolishment of both the Marine Corps and the Navy’s strategy of investing in aircraft carriers. This attempt led to cooperative service advocacy from both the Navy and the Marine Corps known as the “Revolt of the Admirals.” As in Case 3, this attempt preceded major institutional reforms within the service driven by its own leadership. This case will be referred to Case 4 hereafter.

The history of these attempts to disband the service is relevant well beyond just its meaning in Marine Corps history. Why do attempts to disband military services occur and why do they not succeed? Answering this question may generate insights into organizational theory, why some institutions are targeted for disbandment, when such attempts are likely to occur, and how institutions advocate for themselves when faced with an existential threat. Such threats are not limited to the Marine Corps; Robert Foley’s 2014 book Grounded advocated for the abolishment of the US Air Force. This question thus has implications beyond the Marine Corps itself. However, the history of the Marine Corps is unique in that it is the only American branch of the military that the U.S. government has seriously considered disbanding so many times even though it has declined to do so.

Despite Congressional support, and as General Krulak remarked above, it is not clear that the existence of a Marine Corps is necessary. This begs the question why the United States would continue to invest significant resources into an optional institution and how the Marine Corps has succeeded in protecting itself. Is its ability to innovate and reorganize the reason for its continued existence or is its ability to advocate for itself the reason for its continued existence? Given the fact that its own leaders insist that it is not strictly necessary, necessity can be ruled out as a reason for its survival.

Many factors could lead to a desire on the part of a government to shut down an institution. These include effectiveness, budget constraints, a sense of obsolescence, policy preferences such as isolationism, and corruption within the organization. Many factors could also lead to the decision not to disband an organization even if there is a desire. These include domestic concerns and perceptions, lobbying by the organization itself to forestall its institutional death, or reforms within the service to increase its value proposition to the larger institution. Examining these four cases can reveal commonalities.

My hypothesis is that both isolationist policies and periods of resource constraints have led to attempts to disband the Marine Corps. When these trends coexist, the service is the first on the chopping block which explains the relatively high number of cases where the U.S. considered eliminating the Marine Corps. The only other case in American history is the post-World War II attempt to disband the Navy. These attempts have failed due to service lobbying, not a clear and present necessity to maintain the Marine Corps, confirming Krulak’s belief. Nor does internal Marine Corps innovation, modernization, and reorganization explain the continued existence of the service.

There is a paucity of research into attempts to shutter military services. The simple reason for this is that it rarely happens. Institutions tend to prioritize their own continued existence, and militaries are adept at defending their reasons to exist. It’s therefore rare that military services are disbanded unless the polity they serve is also destroyed in a failed war or internal collapse.

This contrasts with the decisions to create military services, especially after the advent of manned flight which led to the creation of air forces. The creation of major air forces like the U.S. Air Force and the Royal Air Force has and continue to receive extensive academic attention. Most recently, advanced countries have created new military services to manage space-based military assets, including the creation of the U.S. Space Force five years ago.

There is also a paucity of academic research concerning the United States Marine Corps. Most historical works on the service cover the 20^th century and later. The first century and a quarter of the service is poorly researched. Alan R Millet, in his phenomenal history of the Marine Corps, has done the best work on it. But by his own admission in his reference notes, many documents to this day remain completely unexamined.

What research there is covers only some of the four historical cases where the U.S. government considered abolishing the Marine Corps. There are no longitudinal studies of the four cases. Even historical monographs that cover the entire time period in which they occur only mention them in passing.

There are three major modern histories of the United States Marine Corps as an institution: the aforementioned Semper Fidelis: The History of the United States Marine Corps by Allan R. Millet, Soldiers of the Sea: The United States Marine Corps, 1775-1962 by Robert Heinl, Jr, and The U.S. Marine Corps Story by J. Robert Moskin. They cover these events to various degrees, and these three volumes will be the primary texts I’m working from for this series.

Only two other books cover any of these cases in depth, Jack Shulimson’s The Marine Corps Search for a Mission 1880-1898 examines Case 3 in depth, culminating with the adoption of a new mission to secure the Marine Corps’ future and the Spanish-American War. Jeffrey Barlow’s The Revolt of the Admirals: The Fight for Naval Aviation, 1945-1950 covers Case 4 in depth, but from the perspective of the Navy.

In his 2020 doctoral thesis, Innovators or Onlookers? The Marine Corps Journey to the Advance Base Force, Sean Barrett covers Cases 1, 2, and 3 but only through the lens of innovation. Barret does not focus on the institutional response or the reasons why these attempts occurred. Barrett concludes that institutional paranoia fosters not innovation but conservativism. The Marine Corps has been innovative at times in its history, but it usually only acquiesces to innovation when forced. This implies that innovation cannot be the reason the U.S. government has declined to abolish the service but is rather a product thereof. Instead, public advocacy especially through Congress may be the key variable. Therefore, Shulimson’s assertion that the purpose of adopting a new mission may not be accurate.

In How the Few Became the Proud: Crafting the Marine Corps Mystique, 1874-1918, Heather Venable examined the public relations efforts of the Marine Corps, incidentally covering Case 3 in depth. Venable argues, “not only that the Corps could not lay claim to a particular mission but that it did not want to choose one because even its most traditional mission of policing naval vessels always had been under threat… Rather than look forward and actively seek out a mission that could secure their existence, late nineteenth-century Marines looked backward and embraced the past.” She concludes that the creation of the Recruiting Publicity Bureau to manage the Corps’ public advocacy was more influential in assuring the institution’s continued existence than innovative military effectiveness.

Similarly, in an article for the Journal of Military History, With Fidelity and Effectiveness: Archibald Henderson’s Lasting Legacy to the U.S. Marine Corps Joseph G Dawson covers Archibald Henderson, Commandant of the Marine Corps during Case 1. Henderson served as the Commandant of the Marine Corps from 1820 to 1859. Because his tenure was so long, Dawson rightly attributes many innovations to Henderson. However, Henderson’s successful resistance to Andrew Jackson’s desire to abolish the Corps similarly rested on public advocacy, especially to Congress and the Secretary of the Navy.

Finally, the only work that covers all of the cases as a connected topic is Heinl’s The Cat With More Than Nine Lives which examines a wide variety of calls for the disbandment or absorption of the Marine Corps, including those that did not lead to legislative debate. Heinl covers all of the cases in this series and is more explicit in his conclusion that it is public advocacy which has saved the Corps multiple times: “The rock on which all but one of these proposals foundered has been Congress— in other words, the will of the people.”

Marines almost uniformly believe that Krulak was right: the US doesn’t need a Marine Corps, it wants a Marine Corps. But there is less agreement on why it persists. Some believe it persists because it innovates when necessary to survive. Others believe it persists because its standards for recruitment, retention, and promotion, are higher. My hypothesis is that it is actually service advocacy which has preserved the Marine Corps. This series will examine each of the four major cases in turn.

Programming Note: The U.S. struck Iranian nuclear facilities after this post was about 90% written. I’ll wave off analysis of that until we know more.

Naval warfare has long been dominated by salvos, whether delivered by cannon, aircraft, or missile. The famous broadside of the Age of Sail was the entrance music for the modern world, heard on oceans, seas, and lakes alike. Naval gunfire only increased in potency until eventually replaced by the aircraft, but even then naval warfare resembled fleets pitching broadsides of aircraft at each other. The aircraft is now likely being displaced by vertical launch systems although aircraft still have a place. Future naval vessels may be measured not by tonnage but by the number of VLS cells, harkening back to the Age of Sail when ships were denoted by their number of cannon.

But now with the increasing proliferation of the precision-strike regime, naval style salvo warfare is now occurring between nations.

Salvo warfare in action1

Israel versus Iran

The ongoing salvo warfare between Israel and Iran is dominating headlines, especially Iranian A2AD has been surprisingly porous. In roughly a week Israel achieved uncontested air supremacy and freedom of action in Iranian airspace. Both sides have employed drones and missiles, while even non-stealth Israeli aircraft seem to have the run of Iran’s airspace. Strikes by both sides are ongoing as I write this. Israel seems to be hoping for regime change, an outcome well beyond the ability of salvo warfare to deliver, although now that the U.S. has intervened things could change rapidly.

India versus Pakistan

Between 7 and 10 May of this year, India and Pakistan trade air and missile strikes for four days, leading to little more than a ceasefire agreement. India initiated the conflict in order to strike terrorism-related infrastructure in Pakistan, but Pakistan will simply regenerate this capability in the future.

Russia versus Ukraine

There are multiple levels of salvo warfare in the ongoing Russo-Ukraine War. Ukraine, lacking a navy at all, has used aerial and surface drones along with missiles to deny the relevant portions of the Black Sea to Russia’s Navy. Ukraine has also used a variety of long-range drones to strike military targets deep inside Russia. Russia regularly strikes civilian targets in Kyiv. Ukraine’s masterful Operation Spiderweb struck the Russian air force and its infrastructure with drones smuggled into Russia itself. In this case, both sides have turned to salvo warfare because both lack the ability to generate the combat power necessary for a breakthrough on the ground; Ukraine for a lack of manpower and equipment and Russia for a lack of the highly-skilled and technically competent military professionals necessary for modern combined arms warfare.

Houthis versus the US

Now concluded, at least for now, the Houthi rebels based in Yemen employed salvos of drones and missiles (under Iranian tutelage) to strike civilian ships for roughly the last year, with a coalition of navies led by the U.S. Navy both protecting ships and striking back with precision strikes. This conflict petered out as the Houthis could not penetrate modern naval defenses and no one in the coalition had any interest in fighting the Houthis ashore.

What all these examples have in common is a lack of decision imposed by force of arms. Reliance on salvo warfare alone does not seem to generate enough strategic effect to conclude conflicts the way it has in naval warfare. There’s little evidence that these have been effective in changing the political calculus of the target, which is not to say that the strikes themselves are necessarily ineffective. With the exception of the Houthis, all of these combatants can generally hit their intended targets. But accurate targeting is not necessarily connected with strategic effect as the relationship between tactics and strategy is always non-linear.

Fire Combat

There is an important difference between salvo warfare in the naval context and the national context: one can’t sink a nation. You can destroy missile launchers and aircraft and harm civilians, but the nation persists. Warfare through fires alone is indecisive, no matter how technologically advanced the missiles. If you’ve been a longtime reader of this blog or my other work, you can already guess who said this.

In his Guide to Tactics, a work probably written between 1808 and 1812, Clausewitz sets up a dichotomy between two “modes” of combat: close combat and fire combat. These somewhat map onto what we today call fires and maneuver. The difference between the two lies in probability:

(48) Although there are shades of difference, still all modern weapons may be placed under one or other of two great classes, that is, the cut-and-thrust weapons, and fire-arms; the former for close combat, the latter for fighting at a distance.

(49) Therefore it follows that there are two modes of fighting—the close combat (hand-to-hand) and the combat with fire-arms.

(50) Both have for their object the destruction of the enemy.

(51) In close combat this effect is quite certain; in the combat with fire-arms it is only more or less probable. From this difference follows a very different signification in the two modes of fighting.

(52) As the destruction in hand-to-hand fighting is inevitable, the smallest superiority either through advantages or in courage is decisive, and the party at a disadvantage, or inferior in courage, tries to escape the danger by flight.

These terms don’t appear in the same way in On War, written much later. But certainty and probability do, and in much more sophisticated ways. What is important is the differentiation based on the psychological (not material) effect on the target: under threat of fire combat, there is always a chance the odds will be in your favor and you will survive. But the bayonet carries a certainty that strikes at hope itself. One is far less likely to change the target’s mind than the other. Clausewitz at this stage of his life is thinking in maneuver warfare terms rather than attrition warfare.

The bayonet may no longer be the agent of decision but the maneuver forces that once depended on it still are. This is why Iran’s salvo warfare strategy was doomed to fail from the start. Iran attempted to generate strategic leverage over Israel by building the salvo warfare capabilities of two proxies- Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza- and through its own long-range missile and drone warfare. Even when this was working, Iran and its proxies could damage Israel and impose costs like investment in Iron Dome and its ammunition, but it never came close to anything decisive. Once the Assad regime in Syria collapsed, supplying Hezbollah became much more difficult and then Israel’s simultaneous ground assaults against Hezbollah and Hamas largely wiped out the proxy arm of this strategy. Then Iran’s own salvo attempts failed to do much damage at all.

But now the tables have turned. Israel is employing its own salvo warfare and has succeeded, in about a week, in almost entirely taking down Iran’s air defense network to the point that the IAF doesn't even need to rely solely on stealth aircraft. The strategic effect has been largely negligible so far except for inducing the United States to strike Iranian nuclear facilities with more potent weapons. The success of these strikes is not yet known.

However, decisiveness is a squishy term and we should not discount methods based on theory alone: as Carl said elsewhere theory should never establish a “doctrine” i.e. a fixed rule that is always followed. Theory thus tells us that salvo warfare alone is unlikely to be decisive, but it also matters what “decision” we are seeking. Seeking regime change or winning a war through salvo warfare alone is probably not a good bet. But if the effect desired is simply denial of something, it has more merit. Ukraine has completely denied the Black Sea as maneuver space for Russia through the use of an integrated recon-strike system, for example. That alone won’t decide anything, but it constraints Russia’s options to a great degree. Such tactical outcomes are the stuff of strategic effect in the aggregate.

Recon-Strike Tactics

Salvo warfare is likely to continue and grow more pervasive. There will always be someone willing to sell any government that will listen on the efficacy of winning through precision-strike missiles and drones alone. But while drones and missiles are dominant in air and sea warfare, it is rare for airpower and/or seapower to be decisive in wars anyway.2 This is why I’ve defined recon-strike tactics as an emerging method of combining recon, strike, and maneuver together rather than just the mere addition of drones and missile fire to ground combat.

Emerging concepts in both the Marine Corps and the Army apply missiles and drones to ground combat but neither does so absent a maneuver element (despite false accusations that they have). The MLRs have a substantial organic maneuver element and the maneuver force their anti-ship missiles are intended to support are U.S. Navy surface ships. While the Army’s Multi-Domain Task Forces lack a maneuver element, their new Mobile Brigade Combat Teams do not and may in fact be the maneuver element that future MDTFs support. This is the essence of recon-strike tactics. Despite accusations that the Marine Corps and Army have bought into the hype surrounding salvo warfare, both services are approaching the mature precision-strike regime more thoughtfully than their critics portray.

I’m slowly digging out of the fighting hole where I was buried by final papers and assignments for classes, but I wanted to highlight two recent Modern Warfare Institute articles in a series titled How We Fight. And not just because they were kind enough to link my JAMS article on reconnaissance-strike tactics. They’re also great context for the Army Transformation Initiative.

In the first one, The Case for Reconnaissance-Strike Battle, Zachary Spear and Michael Culler lay out what an Army version of recon-strike tactics might look like:

Properly designed and implemented, reconnaissance-strike battle should be built on four core imperatives. First, be a hard target. The enemy can see you and will strike you. You must be prepared to disperse, deceive, cover, conceal, and mask to avoid the enemy reconnaissance-strike complex. If you can’t do so because you are defending a fixed location, dig in and develop a hardened shelter, but never stop aggressive reconnaissance. Second, the reconnaissance-strike complex is the first objective. At any echelon of engagement, if the enemy has reconnaissance-strike complexes and you do not, you die. The first and most persistent priority, therefore, must be the enemy’s reconnaissance-strike complex at echelon. Third, the side that owns the reconnaissance-strike complex duel wins. If you find, fix, track, target, engage, and assess at larger scale, and faster than the enemy, you win. Finally, massing capability must come before massing maneuver. Massing all-domain capability to degrade, disintegrate, or destroy the enemy’s reconnaissance-strike complex is a prerequisite to mass combat power and defeat the enemy in detail. Overwhelming the enemy’s reconnaissance-strike complex with maneuver is possible only through an extraordinary expenditure of lives.

The second article, Manning, Training, and Equipping for Reconnaissance-Strike Battle, focuses on how to prepare units to execute the concept.

Interestingly, the first article mentions moving on from multi-domain operations in favor recon-strike battle as the authors call it. MDO never made much sense to me so bravo.

The Army is not alone of course. The British Army is pursuing a similar concept called Recce-Strike. And the Marine Corps has been moving in this direction since 2018.

Just like the Marine Corps though, the Army is already catching flak for this direction. But like critics of Force Design, they miss the point. Both services, but the Army especially, simply have to get lighter. A lot lighter. The Army is designed to be a heavy force deployable across uncontested seas to uncontested ports to which it has unfettered access. The Marine Corps (pre-Force Design) was designed to operate from untouchable and plentiful Navy amphibious ships which could concentrate wherever and whenever they wanted. In other words, they were both designed for a world that no longer exists and will never exist again. We can quibble over exactly how they should change, but the status quo has been dead for a long time. Frankly, General Krulak’s Sea Dragon innovations should have been pursued immediately rather than twenty years later under General Berger.

The recon-strike terminology is originally Russian, although they never managed to pull it off. But the idea isn’t terribly complex. In On Tactics terms, its designing units for maneuver, firepower, and tempo at the expense of mass. Viewed in that lens, the idea is far older than the Russian recon-strike concepts of the 1970s. Enhancing the idea with modern technology animated General Krulak’s Sea Dragon innovation process in the late 1990s which produced the Hunter-Warrior experiments. In Hunter-Warrior an experimental force organized around dispersed infantry squads equipped with long-range precision fires capabilities, dubbed SPMAGTF(X), manhandled a conventionally-organized mechanized force of 4,500 Marines. The same idea would go on to be the basis for Expeditionary Advance Base Operations and the Marine Littoral Regiments, although the kit required to make them as agile as they need to be hasn’t arrived yet.

If the Russo-Ukraine War tells us anything, it’s that infantry is still the dominant force in land warfare. Both sides are employing unmanned systems, artificial intelligence, and satellite imagery in mass. Russia employs its advantage in armored vehicles, strategic bombers, and ballistic missiles routinely, albeit mostly at civilian targets for the latter two. Despite all of this, neither side can break lines held by motivated infantry. It is still very difficult to break properly-equipped, motivated infantry in the defense.

Let’s hope Taiwan is learning this lesson.

I’ve gotten to the point in my research where I can share some of what I’ve uncovered. This week I completed a first draft of the first case study: the Cádiz Expedition of 1596. It was launched by Queen Elizabeth I in 1596 primarily as a way to disrupt Spanish preparations for another Armada, the first of which had been defeated in 1588. It’s an important case study because it’s the first recognizably modern opposed amphibious operation: undertaken by primarily professional troops and sailors, transported on primarily state-owned ships, primarily funded by the state, and planned and executed based on written doctrine. Previous small-scale raids were largely self-funded and undertaken by privateers like Francis Drake or, like the Norman Invasion of 1066, were unopposed.

Because my dissertation is about the development of doctrine and not a history of amphibious warfare itself, I mostly focus on contemporary documents surrounding the case studies. For this one, I found these orders in an issue of The Naval Miscellany from 1902 in a chapter edited by no less than Julian Corbett himself. They are a reproduction of the pre-landing instructions issued to the troops by the commanders of the expedition. In a footnote, he stated that he believes that these were the first written landing instructions provided for troops involved in an amphibious operation in history. They already show the core of what would become the Anglo-American amphibious warfare doctrine that persists to this day.

The following landing instructions were issued at sea by the naval commander, Lord High Admiral Howard of Effingham, and the commander of troops, the Second Earl of Essex Robert Devereaux sometime before the landing on June 30th, 1596.

Landing instructions:

1. That the admiral of every squadron have all his boats belonging to his squadron in a readiness to land those that are now in the ships of his squadron.

2. That if he have two regiments to be landed by his said boats, he shall of those regiments land equal numbers, for the first, second, or as many times as the boats come to fetch the men.

3. That every colonel, being of those that shall have the point at the landing, shall land a third part of his regiment, which third part shall be of his best men; and those to come without any ensign with them, because no ensign shall be engaged till the place of descent is secured.

4. That the said regiment shall observe the same order in attempting the town or forces, except other directions be given by the generals: viz. That the ensigns be kept where the greatest body and strength of the troops is, till the other third part have tried the possibility of the attempt.

5. That the boats that shall land the troops shall be all marshalled in rank, according to such a front as the place of descent will permit; which order of march in rowing or sailing they shall precisely keep; no boat thrusting out of a hinder rank into a former, nor shrinking out of the former into a hinder; of which order such land-men as command the troops, and such sea-men as direct the boats, shall give a strict account.

6. That all the boat in the hinder ranks shall have their eyes on the boats that lead them; and all the boat in the first rank shall observe the boat that is appointed to be their guide and director; which boat shall carry either a St. George’s flag or a white pennant in the prow, and shall keep in the head of the first rank.

7. That when the drum that beateth [in] the first rank shall beat a march, they shall all row forward such a pace, as the first leadeth; who shall be appointed to row no faster than the slowest boat may conveniently keep company. And if the leading boats stay and the drums cease beating, then shall they all stay. Or if the said leading boat lead backward, or turn her course some other way, he shall do the like.

8. The first boat being landed, they shall be led to a fit place to make a stand to secure the ground of descent, till the ensigns and the goods be landed.

9. That when the admiral at the landing place shall receive his white pennant and set it above his flag in the main-top, then shall the soldiers put themselves into the boats, to be landed as it shall be set down.

There are a few noteworthy points. First, there is already a focus on loading the troops in the best way so that they can fight immediately once ashore (Notes 1-3). This is what distinguishes amphibious warfare from expeditionary warfare where the troops are transported in some manner but can expect an administrative/non-tactical arrival. There’s a lot of focus on command and control and command relationships which is entirely expected for amphibious warfare doctrine of any time. Lastly, there’s even an early foreshadowing of mission command as it leaves space for subordinate leaders to make decisions so long as they “give a strict account.” In other words, so long as they can justify deviations from the plan. There’s a lot more to this chapter but I think the landing instructions recreated above are of some broad interest.

The 1596 Cádiz Expedition is the first recognizably modern amphibious operation in history and has many of the same hallmarks that Normandy and Iceberg did 348 years later. Tracing these aspects of Anglo- and eventually Anglo-American amphibious operations is intended to show that those massive amphibious operations of 1944 are not solely the product of interwar innovation and wartime contingency, but the culmination of a centuries long tradition. Perhaps, and I’m not sure that the research will bear this part out, it may show that modern Western-style combined arms warfare was born as a product not of land warfare but rather amphibious warfare. That we already see proto-combined arms maneuver with a focus on rapid buildup of combat power, intelligence and reconnaissance, combined arms style command relationships (which are inherently multi-domain), and mission command in written form by 1596, before modern armies even existed, is a key indicator.

The world order is rapidly changing. It’s not as drastic as the press would have it, but assumptions that underpinned the old order are now gone and a new order must emerge from the new interactions. This is the edge of chaos. If you’re familiar with complexity science, the edge of chaos describes a point where the level of disorder in a system is high but not yet chaotic enough for it to lose coherence. The edge of chaos is uncomfortable, but it’s also where rapid innovation happens.

That’s where Europe finds itself. The underpinning of NATO- U.S. leadership and materiel support through its defense industrial base- can no longer be assumed as reliable. That’s not to say the U.S. will leave NATO or that support will be completely unavailable. I think that’s highly unlikely. Instead, the U.S. is shifting to a relationship with NATO where it is one among many rather than first among equals.

This is not just a result of the Trump Administration. While it will clearly shift away from heavy involvement in Europe (and towards Asia), that’s not the only factor. The defense industrial base that underpinned NATO for eighty some years simply no longer exists. The U.S. no longer has the manufacturing capacity to support NATO in a major war even if an administration wanted to do so. It definitely cannot do so while also supporting a long-delayed Pacific pivot. While the U.S. still spends a great deal on defense and produces the best high-end weapon systems, everything else has been hollowed out. We can send robots to Mars and develop functionally invisible aircraft, but we can’t make enough pants.

That’s not changing anytime soon no matter who is in office; re-industrialization is in theory possible, but not on any short timeline. And the attempt would ruin the U.S. economy for generations. That is, if somehow the tariffs don’t kill it off first. Even if the Trump Administration decides to continue supporting Ukraine, it can’t do so amidst a recession. Applying mercantilist policies like tariffs to a capitalist economy built on free trade is a recipe for a major economic crash. But that is now the policy of the U.S. government.

So Europe finds itself with an active war on its Eastern Front and the realization that the promised U.S. materiel support won’t be available at the promised levels. European leaders are already reacting to this, whether through NATO or the EU. I won’t pretend to know Europe better than European leaders, but below would be my advice from this side of the pond. (In no particular order.)

European militaries should build military power together, not separately

This is obvious but difficult and time consuming to do in practice: European nations should build military power together not as individuals. Not every country needs to make standard NATO 155mm shells if the right agreements are in place for collective funding and supply. France makes excellent artillery. The Nordic countries make excellent missiles. The Germans (as usual) make great mechanized vehicles, including tanks. Designs, capacity, and DOTMLPF arrangements can all be shared. Indeed, it’s not like this hasn’t been done before: see the Eurofighter Typhoon and the planned Multi-Role Support Ships. Russia’s advantage is capacity, but it can’t make anything nearly as good as any given Western European nation can. Speaking of capacity…

They should build capacity first, capability later

Europe’s defense industrial base probably couldn’t produce platforms like the F-35 or B-21 right now, but it also doesn’t need to do so. Especially given the reduced tactical threat from a Russian Army which can no longer execute modern combined arms and the damage sustained by the Russian Aerospace Forces (which in any case is built to support ground combat, not achieve air superiority), producing such platforms would be overkill. European kit is well-designed, effective, and more than able to handle their Russian equivalents. Europe’s problem isn’t capability (what they can do) but capacity (how much of it they can do).

European militaries should therefore focus on building more of what they currently have rather than developing new platforms. More troops, more vehicles, more aircraft, more ships. This allows them to skip research and development phases and increase their military power significantly in the short term. Once they’ve built up the defense industrial base for capacity, they will then have more of the defense industrial know-how necessary to generate new capabilities in the long-term.

They should still see the U.S. military as an ally but not an example

Lastly, a new European military base- whether that be through NATO or the EU or something else- should not just be an attempt to build a copy of the U.S. military. There are many reasons for this, primarily that the U.S. is oceans away from both Europe and Asia and its military needs to be designed to fight half a globe away from its national base. A European military focused on defending Europe itself does not need to be designed the same way.

But I mentioned another reason a few weeks ago in Stockholm: modern U.S. doctrine built around Jominian principles of linearity, the operational level of war, and an ends-ways-means definition of strategy is a total failure in war. Recreating that doctrine for European militaries will simply recreate that failure. Moreover, the U.S. has spent decades making its military staffs more and more bloated with unnecessary people, infrastructure, and processes and creating more and more unnecessary command levels. The result, as Jim Storr’s recent book describes, is something rotten. The U.S. military is well-resourced but continually makes and maintains horrendous mistakes that only its resources allow it to do. There is no effort that I’m aware to assess what went wrong in Iraq and Afghanistan, let alone fix the problems. Europe should therefore view the American Way of War as a cautionary tale and develop something better and more suited to Europe. The only effort to rethink archaic U.S. command structures and doctrine that I know of is in Australia. That would be a better place to start than U.S. doctrine.

Regardless, I highly doubt the U.S. leaves NATO. It is too deeply integrated with NATO structures for that to be undone quickly, and the president alone could not do so. But given the valid concern Europeans have about the level of support the U.S. would provide in a war and the extant threat on the Eastern Front should Ukraine fall, European militaries need to embark on a tightly integrated build-up.

We can already see the edge of chaos at work creating innovation, albeit in an example only indirectly related to Europe. It’s being reported that Canada is reducing its planned purchase of 88 F-35s in favor of thirty-two F-35s and 60 or more Swedish Gripens.

Why is this actually better? If I was doing force design for Canadian airpower, I’d do so based on a few assumptions:

1. Canada will only be in a war as part of a coalition.

2. China is the primary threat but a PRC level of investment in military power is unrealistic for Canada. Additionally, Canada fighting China outside of a coalition where the U.S. is doing the heavy lifting is improbable. Therefore, Russia is the primary pacing threat for force design.

3. Canada should be prepared to make a meaningful contribution to coalition air campaigns for: 1) suppression of modern integrated air defense systems (IADS) and; 2) air superiority.

4. Canada does not need the capacity to defend its own airspace by itself because of its integration with NORTHCOM.1

Given these assumptions, a purchase of 88 F-35s is overkill. You absolutely need F-35s for a counter-IADS campaign, but thirty-two is a meaningful contribution to either a U.S.-led effort against China or a NATO-led effort against Russia. Once the IADS are taken care of, Canada can then provide much cheaper to operate Gripen squadrons for follow-on air superiority campaigns. They’re excellent airframes and with Western pilot training, more than a match for Russian or Chinese pilots.

The current trade “war” with Canada is misguided, but Canada may come out of it with a much more appropriate force design for its air forces. Chaos is uncomfortable, but it also creates space for innovation. An integrated European military build-up that leverages the strengths of its members is an opportunity for a truly innovative force design.

Earlier this week I was privileged to travel to Stockholm and speak about On Operations. The audience was the students of their Joint Operations Course at the Swedish Defence University. The University uses both On Tactics and On Operations, the former for their cadets and the latter for their early to mid-career officers.

This was the first time I’ve been asked to present the book in spoken form and so developed a presentation just for this event, which I think went well. The students and staff asked excellent questions both during the talk and when I sat down for a discussion with the Land Warfare Course staff the day prior. As Sweden simultaneously undergoes a military expansion and begins integrating with NATO as a member state, the development of modern staffs and the integration of US-dominated NATO doctrine is at the top of their minds.

In this, I counseled caution. I did so for two major reasons: first, U.S. military doctrine built around the three levels of war has been an abject failure in the acid test of war. The U.S. is unable to bridge the gap between tactics and strategy in any meaningful way, and it is now clear that adoption of the operational level in the late 20th century, which was supposed to link the two, has instead proven to be a barrier. (This comes as no surprise to anyone who has read the book.)

Secondly, and this will likely be an additional theme of any future edition of On Operations should there be one, the general staff system in use by every major military is reaching the end of its life cycle. Indeed, it probably should have died already but its natural life has been extended by pushing ever more staff officers, computers, meetings, boards, and working groups into the system to try and deal with the increasing amount of information the staff must process. It has worked so far, but is not likely to work in the future especially as large, concentrated staffs can be targeted by adversaries through an increasing amount of emergent capabilities. Dr. Alex Kalloniatis, an Australian defense analyst, is the first to have identified this problem. Expect to see more on this from me and probably others in the future.

In other words, other countries should not adopt U.S. doctrine and organizations uncritically. They offer lessons both good and bad, and it is up to other militaries to take what will work for them and reject what won’t.

Of course, I can’t travel without seeing the sights and especially cannon. And Stockholm had plenty, including a piece from 1645 at their excellent Army Museum. It’s definitely the oldest cannon I’ve personally seen. I also couldn’t skip the famous Vassa Museum, built around the wreck of the Vassa which went down in 1628 and was not found until 1961. If you’re ever in Stockholm, don’t miss it.

Below are some pictures from the Army Museum, the Vasa Museum, and the Viking Museum, all in Stockholm.

This month we start with the good news: Asia Pacific nations are gearing up for amphibious warfare to repel China. This includes Australia, Japan, the Philippines, and Taiwan. India would like to get in on the action, but their border with China necessarily takes priority. The last navy to figure out that there’s no fight in the Pacific without amphibious warfare is the U.S. Navy. Fortunately, we’re buying amphibs anyway. And improving the economy in the process.

In Marine Corps news, here’s a deep dive on F-35B operations in the Pacific.

The Army validated maritime transport of its Typhon missile system. Translation: they put it on a commercial ship. This is necessary to get it to Hawaii, solutions to get it any further west than that are hopefully forthcoming. The next step is likely validating it for amphibious shipping but even if that occurs, it’s unlikely that any amphibs will be available for this mission.

Lastly, here’s an oldie-but-a-goodie. Friend of FFE and mandatory reading as far as I’m concerned wrote this piece on how Clausewitz’s conception of alliances highlights how important alliance building and maintaining is so for the U.S. approach to Taiwan.

The bonus topic this month is a pair of Air Force focused articles I found interesting.

The Radar

We Need Different Generals

There’s a saying in pilot world. “You don’t know you’ve lost situational awareness until you regain it. And sometimes, it’s too late…

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a year ago · 21 likes · 6 comments · Tony Carr

In the above article, Tony Carr takes a look at recent general officer leadership in the USAF. Saying we need new generals is so hot right now but this critique actually has substance. Tony describes how general officers tend to be beholden to the budget process to the extent that nothing besides interservice knife fights actually get done. Tony has a lot more USAF experience than my paltry three years working on the Air Staff, but I got this sense during my time there as well. I’d only add that this is by no means an Air Force only problem.

The other article is by Jonathan Rice at Over the Horizon Journal on the Air Force’s concept of reconnaissance. In On Operations, I tried to make the point that lumping reconnaissance in with intelligence and surveillance is problematic: these are three distinct missions/functions that work together, but viewing them as one mission obscures the different dynamics of each. Jonathan identifies this problem in an Air Force context and proposes important changes. Once again, this is by no means an Air Force only problem.