Marines prepare modular force for future rife with conflict.

• Author: Parsons, Dan

MEI Despite a dozen years of combat operations coming to a close, the next decade likely will provide no rest for the war-weary Marine Corps.

Commanders see the potential for conflict, natural disasters and other events that will require the service's attention on every continent except Antarctica.

Lt. Gen. John TooIan, commander of -1st Marine Expeditionary Force, and recent appointee to command all Marines in the Pacific, laid out in February various threats the Marine Corps is already facing outside of Afghanistan.

"What is today's fight? Today's fight is Benghazi," he said, referring to the attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya that left four Americans dead. "Today's fight is Lebanon. Today's fight is South Sudan. Today's fight is really all over the globe in an awful lot of places that are in pretty bad shape."

Many of the regions Toolan listed are wary of prolonged U.S. military presence within sovereign nations. The Marine Corps will have to perform all of those missions from floating bases, said Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. James Amos.

"A lot of what is going to take place in the world in the future is going to come from the sea. It's going to come from a sea base," Amos said in February at the AFCEA West conference. "We tend to think of a sea base as some huge floating armada, like the invasion of Normandy with 5,000 ships."

The Marine Corps' plan for the future, called Expeditionary Force 21, envisions scalable units that will employ a variety of Navy ships to accomplish its laundry list of missions, from forcible entry to disaster relief

The plan "recognizes the need for living, operating, sustaining and maintaining people and equipment in Spartan conditions where large support bases are unacceptable" or not feasible and "promotes the economical employment of forces of almost any size and configuration with capabilities appropriately matched to the mission."

Amos is preparing the Marine Corps for a world in which its services are in demand nearly everywhere. At the same time, troops will respond to natural disasters and other contingencies in areas of the globe where no permanent U.S. infrastructure or bases exist.

"The world we are going to be operating in over the next two decades is going to be a world where America is not just welcomed on the sovereign soil of other nations," Amos said. "They are going to want to train with us. They are going to want help with their borders and setting up their militaries. But they are...