Marine Corps struggles with sea-based supply lines.

• Author: Parsons, Dan

Over the past decade of fighting landlocked wars Marines have developed what leaders have termed "logistical paranoia."

Modern ship-to-shore invasions, unlike their massive predecessors during World War II and Korea, rely on smaller forces that wade ashore then draw supplies and ammunition from a ship. The Marine Corps is designed to perform ship-to-shore operations, but a large portion of the force, including leadership, has little experience with "ship-to-objective" scenarios where supplies and command and control remain at sea.

"What we've seen is that when Marines come ashore, they're carrying 130 pounds of food, water, batteries, ammo, you name it, on their backs

because fundamentally, they don't trust sea-based logistics to keep them supplied," said Vincent Goulding, director of the experiment division at the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory, based in Quantico, Va. "We have got to convince commanders that their Marines can go ashore with one day's worth of supplies and that the system will take care of them."

The Marine Corps has been testing its expeditionary acumen in a series of exercises dating back to 2010, when it attempted to land and keep supplied a combat landing team of about 285 Marines on an island in Hawaii. The exercise, one of several "limited objective experiments" the Warfighting Lab has carried out, was held in conjunction with the international Rim of the Pacific exercises.

"For the first time, we deliberately experimented with attacking from over the horizon into a distributed battlefield," Goulding said. "Once the combat element was ashore, we literally flew the wings off of our aviation element to keep them supplied."

During the RIMPAC experiment, Marines consumed "astronomical amounts" of water, Goulding said. Instead of foraging for more, they were resupplied by air, which proved both successful and problematic. The exercise proved that troops' paranoia about being stranded ashore without resupply was unfounded. In fact, so much food and water was flown to them aboard V-22 Ospreys that they were burdened by abundance.

"We gave them more than they could possibly maneuver with and we immobilized them by doing that, Goulding said. "We learned that what we need to do is figure out how to sustain a mobile, agile force from a sea base without negatively impacting their mobility once ashore. We have to be much more surgical about what we send them."

During Bold Alligator 2012, a massive amphibious exercise held...