Ground Work: Despite Budget Cuts, Marine Corps Modernizing Ground Vehicles.

• Author: Luckenbaugh, Josh

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- With the U.S. pivot to the Indo-Pacific, the Marine Corps is prioritizing investment in maritime capabilities, rapidly reducing the resources for its tactical wheeled vehicles.

In his opening remarks at the National Defense Industrial Association's Tactical Wheeled Vehicles conference in February, Marine Corps Systems Command's portfolio manager for Logistics Combat Element Systems Col. John Gutierrez succinctly summarized the goal of the Marine Corps' Force Design 2030 initiative: "to reestablish the Marine Corps as a naval expeditionary force that's prepared to operate in contested maritime spaces in support of the fleet."

In fiscal year 2021, the service's budget for its light tactical vehicle fleet was $383.2 million, according to slides shown at the conference by Gutierrez. In fiscal year 2023, the budget dropped to $251.7 million, a decrease of more than 34 percent in two years. The budget for medium and heavy tactical vehicles also dropped more than 32 percent in that same span.

Examination of how Marines conduct reconnaissance and counter-reconnaissance missions has prompted the service "to reassess the [Ground Combat Tactical Vehicle Strategy] and current and future investments tied to our ground portfolio," the Marine Corps' annual update on Force Design 2030 from May 2022 said. "While we must retain appropriate ground mobility capabilities and capacities, the principal theater is maritime and our core competency is naval in nature. Heavy ground vehicles do not align with these priorities because they are difficult to transport and operate in the littorals, they require significant quantities of fuel and they are challenging to maneuver on fragile host-nation infrastructure."

To continue modernizing its ground fleet while facing funding shortfalls, the Marine Corps is "divesting of a significant amount of equipment," Gutierrez said, including bridging systems and vehicles like Humvees and the Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected, or MRAP, fleet. Divesting systems allows the Marine Corps to "get credits and apply that to other new and emerging technologies," he said.

The key capability for Marine Corps ground vehicle systems going forward will be their ability to enable "logistics in contested environments," he said. "The opportunities and challenges we face are really in this space, and how we can equip and modernize our Marines and sailors."

On the medium and heavy tactical vehicle side, the Marine Corps' top...