The Marine Corps of 2025 will fight and win our Nation's battles with multicapable MAGTFs, either from the sea or in sustained operations ashore. Our unique role as the Nation's force in readiness, along with our values, enduring ethos and core competencies, will ensure we remain highly responsive to the needs of combatant commanders in an uncertain environment and against irregular threats. Our future Corps will be increasingly reliant on naval deployment, preventative in approach, leaner in equipment, versatile in capabilities, and innovative in mindset. In an evolving and complex world, we will excel as the Nation's expeditionary "force of choice."
Bolded emphasis by SWJ.
The purpose of the vision and strategy document is to inform all Marines where we intend to take our Corps to give combatant commanders a concept of how we might best be employed, and to provide our civilian leadership a reference point as to how we see Marine Corps contributions to national defense in the coming years and decades. This document is grounded in the Marine Corps' identity, ethos, values, and competencies. It serves as the principal strategic planning document for our Corps and reflects our legislated roles, functions, and composition. Derived from strategic guidance at the national and departmental level, it illustrates our utility and value within the joint warfighting community.
The vision section describes a Marine Corps adapting to fulfill our role in the Nation's defense in an inherently unpredictable future. It is founded on our enduring characteristics and capabilities, but also reflects shifts in posture and practice designed to enhance today's Corps for tomorrow's challenges. The strategy section lays out a strategy statement as well as a set of institutional objectives to realize the vision and meet the challenges of the 21st century.
Our Service capstone concept and supporting operating concepts will flow from the vision and strategy, as will the more detailed plans of the deputy commandants and subordinate commanders. The development of these plans will be directed by the Implementation Planning Guidance which will be published in a subsequent document.
Enduring Principles
Every Marine a Rifleman. Every Marine - regardless of military occupational specialty - is first and foremost a disciplined warrior.
Expeditionary Naval Force. Marines are "soldiers of the sea," an integral part of the naval Services - lean, versatile, flexible, and ready. We are organized, trained, and equipped to conduct naval campaigns and operate on and from naval platforms, or to fight in protracted campaigns ashore.
Combined Arms Organization. In 1952, Congress directed the Marine Corps' composition as an air-ground combined arms force. This integrated force, known as the MAGTF, has unique and incomparable warfighting capabilities. Our MAGTF contains organic air, ground, and logistics elements under a single command element, making it an effective and integrated combined arms force.
Ready and Forward Deployed. Congress' intent that the Marine Corps serve as the "force in readiness" was founded on a recognized national need for a force capable of rapid response to emerging crises. This requirement mandates high standards of readiness across the force. We are routinely forward deployed around the globe and stand prepared to respond quickly in times of crisis.
Agile and Adaptable. The Marine Corps' agility is based on its expeditionary mindset and flexible structure, able to operate either from the sea or in sustained operations ashore. We can adapt quickly with unparalleled speed across an extraordinary range of military operations. Our organizational design and training facilitate a seamless transition between these operations, providing the necessary capability to operate effectively.
Marines Take Care of Their Own. We are stewards of the most important resource entrusted to us - our Nation's sons and daughters. We make Marines, imbue them with our Core Values, and offer them the opportunity to serve a cause greater than themselves. Marines live up to the motto, Semper Fidelis. We are faithful to those who fall and we care for our wounded Marines and their families.
Objectives
1. Focus on the Individual Marine. The individual Marine will remain our most important warfighting asset...
2. Improve Training and Education for Fog, Friction, and Uncertainty. Our realistic training and education system will prepare Marines for complex conditions and to counter the unexpected...
3. Expand Persistent Forward Presence and Engagement. The Marine Corps will develop a plan to provide a tailored, persistently engaged, contingency-capable MAGTF in five prioritized regions...
4. Better Posture for Hybrid Threats in Complex Environments. Without sacrificing its conventional capabilities, the Corps will prepare to conduct operations against hybrid threats in complex environments; such as urbanized littorals, mountainous terrain, and dense jungles...
5. Reinforce Naval Relationships. We share with the Navy a remarkable heritage and a common perspective on the fundamental necessity of maintaining the ability to operate freely in the littorals...
6. Ensure Amphibious Force Levels Meet Strategic Requirements. We are resolved to maintain the requisite capacity of modern amphibious lift to support the Nation's ability to execute forcible entry operations from the sea and other combatant commander missions...
7. Create Joint Seabasing Capabilities. We will improve our ability to cross wide expanses of ocean and remain persistently offshore at the place and time of our choosing...
8. Lead Joint/Multinational Operations and Enable Interagency Activities. A clear changing characteristic in the modern battlespace is the shift from a primarily military focus to one that achieves a greater degree of operational integration of all instruments of national power...
9. Maintain a Ready and Sustainable Reserve. We will employ a total force approach to meet the Marine Corps' force generation requirements...
10. Build and Deploy Multicapable MAGTFs. Our MAGTFs will be decisive across the range of military operations with their capacity tailored to combatant commander's requirements...
Comments
As all Commandant's before him, General Conway speaks to the Corps unique naval expeditionary force heritage, reinforces the Navy/Marine Corps Team relationship, while generally mentioning amphibious sealift importance.
Unfortunately, amphibious the Corps ain't! Over eight years of land-locked warfare has seen an atrophy of those amphibious skills.
Further, the Corps has gotten away from its model of truly light infantry and leaned more toward the heavier side of the establishment as a secondary land Army. Of course, the Corps fights where the conflict is and is a victim of circumstances.
However, all conflicts come to an end and resetting and refitting will occur, but with all due respect, I question to what extent the Department of Navy is actually interested in pursuing strategic amphibious lift and the accompanying surface fire support that is non-existent now.
I further question whether when that time comes for the Marine Corps to truly get back to its heritage as Soldiers from the Sea, they will find themselves behind the horizon, unable to maneuver over it?