Marine Corps Sees Initial Successes With Restructure Despite Critics.

• Author: Roaten, Meredith

The Marine Corps is making strides toward achieving Commandant Gen. David Berger's controversial vision for transforming the force, as it prepares for great power competition and expeditionary warfare operations.

In 2020, Berger unveiled his Force Design 2030 blueprint as a way to ready the service to deter China and prepare for potential conflict in the Indo-Pacific region. The strategy laid out an ambitious plan to cut end strength, divest from legacy systems and procure new platforms needed for extra operational flexibility.

"We're two years into it, largely successful so far in the leadership here in Congress allowing us to keep those [freed up] resources and plow them back into the Marine Corps of the future," Berger said at an event sponsored by the Center for a New American Security.

Carrying out the objectives of the plan by 2030 will be difficult, but it is necessary so the service can be an asset in a future fight, he said.

Looking forward, Berger's top priorities for the upcoming fiscal year 2023 budget include the light amphibious warship, also known as LAW, he said. The new class of warships would enable greater flexibility for maritime operations.

"If you're a maritime naval force, and you don't have the mobility on the water to go places on sovereign ships that you need, then you're in trouble," Berger said.

While the vessel is a top priority, the planned fleet of 30 to 50 warships has faced criticism. Some observers say the ships as designed may not be survivable enough for Marine Corps operations, which could add costs to production down the road.

The Navy is targeting a per unit procurement cost of $100 million to $150 million, according to the Congressional Research Service.

"The trade-off is that, because of the LAW's small size, they will not be able to support the customary level of global forward deployments, which may decline as a result," according to a Center for Strategic and International Studies report titled "U.S. Military Forces in FY 2022," which was released in November.

Another critical Force Design 2030 technology that has made progress over the past year is the Navy Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System, also known as NMESIS. The Marine Corps successfully demonstrated the system in early 2021.

The platform--which features a missile launcher attached to a ground vehicle--will target and kill ships, adding to the service's existing fleet of long-range precision fires that can threaten adversaries' ground or maritime systems.

"Now you've got a whole set of kill chains that you can use to complicate Chinese targeting, or to threaten Chinese...