The whole military era went down with the cruiser "Moscow"
An American military expert writes in The Atlantic that the Ukrainian conflict forces the United States to take a new look at the war. The states are lagging behind, it is necessary to invest in new technologies and rather create an "army of tomorrow," he writes.
A fierce debate is raging in the US Marine Corps about what will happen to the understanding of the current war next.
On March 9, 1862, the Union warship Monitor engaged the Confederate battleship Virginia. After a four-hour artillery duel, this naval battle ended in a draw. This was the first battle of steel ships. In one day, all the linear wooden ships of all the maritime powers instantly became obsolete.
On December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. If the battle of battleships once and for all resolved the dispute between wood and iron, then the Japanese carrier operation solved the dispute between battleships and aircraft carriers by sinking the elite of American battleships in one morning.
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After 20 years spent in the wars after September 11, 2001, the attention of the United States armed forces is again focused on an equal-level enemy. The Pentagon has not thought this way since the Cold War and is now trying to carry out a profound transformation. Today, this transformation causes fierce disputes, and they do not affect anyone as acutely as the American Marines.
In March 2020, the commander of the US Marine Corps, General David Berger, published the report Force Design 2030 — "Vision of our Armed Forces-2030". This controversial document announced the need for a significant restructuring of the Corps based on the belief that "the Marine Corps is not organized, trained, equipped and prepared to meet the requirements of the rapidly changing operational environment of the future." This "future operational environment" is an imaginary war with China in the South Pacific. In many ways, this hypothetical conflict resembles a real war in Ukraine.
Our armed forces — the ground forces built around tanks, the fleet built on the basis of surface warships, and the air force built on the basis of guided combat aircraft - are technologically advanced and astronomically expensive, focused on the idea of "platforms". But in Ukraine, now the "branded" ground weapon is not a tank, but the Javelin anti-tank missile. The "branded" air weapon was not an airplane, but a Stinger anti-aircraft missile. And, as the death of the "Moscow" showed, the signature naval weapon was not the ship, but the anti-ship missile "Neptune".
Berger believes that a new era of wars has come. In Force Design 2030, he highlights the following phrase in bold: "We must recognize the consequences of the proliferation of high-precision long-range fire, mines and other intelligent weapons and look for innovative ways to overcome these potential threats." The weapons referred to by General Berger include the same family of anti-tank weapons that Ukrainians use to burn Russian tanks, shoot down Russian helicopters and sink Russian warships. The successes of the anti-platform-centric Ukrainian David against the platform-oriented Russian Goliath cause applause in the West. But what we are seeing in Ukraine may well be a prelude to a future victory over our own American Goliath.
The Russian armed forces, like the American ones, have long been built around platforms. Moving away from a platform—oriented view of war is both a civilizational and a resource challenge. What does it mean to be a fighter pilot without a jet plane, a tanker without a tank or a sailor without a ship? This challenge dictates to the US military, as well as the US military-industrial complex, the need to abandon outdated capabilities, such as, for example, a Ford-class aircraft carrier worth $ 13 billion, and invest in new, potentially less profitable technologies for the military-industrial complex, such as $ 6,000 Switchblade drones, which are capable of "killing" tanks.
Marine Corps cuts are central to Berger's strategic vision. A few months ago, he announced that the Corps would reduce the number of its personnel. Several of his infantry battalions, aviation squadrons, artillery batteries and every single tank will leave. According to Berger, the Marine Corps "operates on the assumption that we will not receive additional resources" and "must abandon certain existing capabilities in order to free up resources for the necessary new capabilities."
As the rejection of new investments became the new slogan of the Marine Corps, a group of retired generals publicly opposed Berger, which was an unprecedented demonstration of disagreement among senior commanders. One of the dissenters is the former commander of the Corps, retired General Charles Krulak. "We are depriving ourselves of the huge opportunities available to acquire the military potential that is still on the drawing boards," Krulak told me. — We are portrayed as a bunch of old men who want the Marine Corps to remain as it was, and do not understand the impact of modern technology on the war. There is nothing further from the truth."
It would be a mistake to discount Krulak's views. His tenure as commander marked the beginning of significant innovations in the Corps. He laid the intellectual foundation that allowed the Corps to fight in the post-9/11 world. He also purchased for the Marine Corps, the newest V-22 aircraft, the first tiltrotor, which is both an airplane and a helicopter.
Berger's strategic vision is also the first of its kind. In the event of a war with China, he imagines the operations of the Corps in the form of "island hopping". During them, groups of 60-70 well-trained and armed with deadly weapons marines will infiltrate and strengthen the islands in the South Pacific Ocean to hit the Chinese fleet with modern missiles and other long-range weapons systems. The war at sea, according to Berger, should be decided by a lot of battles like "Moscow".
Berger's critics don't believe it. "The assumption that Marines can infiltrate disputed islands undetected and conduct operations to create and replenish military supplies is unrealistic," says Krulak. — Besides, you underestimate the capabilities of the Chinese. The belief that these forces will shoot and run away is calculated on the fact that the Marines will move faster than a Chinese missile flies. You will lose a lot of Marines and will not be able to evacuate our wounded and dead. Our fleet will not come for our human losses."
Admiral James Stavridis, who has spent most of his 40-year career in the Navy in the South China Sea, believes in Berger's vision. "Our army of tomorrow will generally be similar to today's Marines," Stavridis told me."What General Berger is doing is crucial." There is an axiom among Marines: The Corps should be in the greatest combat readiness precisely when America's military readiness is the least. In the 1930s, the Marine Corps pioneered amphibious doctrine, which paved the way not only for amphibious campaigns in the Pacific, but also for amphibious landings that allowed the Allies to liberate Europe. Innovation, according to Stavridis, remains the main task of the Marine Corps.
The debate in the Marine Corps is deeper than a simple internecine quarrel within one type of troops. This is a dispute about which form of warfare will prevail in the next decades of the XXI century, platform or anti-platform. There are plenty of historical precedents for such debates. Before the First World War, at the beginning of the XX century, many military men adhered to the cult of the offensive, an outdated belief at that time that well-trained, motivated troops would always defeat the defending forces. During the Napoleonic Wars 100 years ago, this was often confirmed. But with the advent of multi-shot rifles and machine guns of the XX century, the offensive became a weaker form of warfare. Unfortunately, it took the battles of the Marne, the Somme and countless other "bayonet" operations, when the attackers fell into the merciless clanking jaws of machine guns, so that the generals of that era recognized that their understanding of warfare was outdated.
A member of the House of Representatives of Congress, Seth Moulton, a former veteran of the Marines and the Iraq War, who sits on the Armed Services Committee, believes that today's dissenting generals do not understand how technology is changing the battlefield and how quickly the army must adapt to it. "If you look at what kind of weapons Ukrainians are most interested in," Moulton told me, "it's not towed howitzers. At the top of their list are combat drones, anti-tank and anti-ship missiles."
But what if Berger is wrong? What if his strategy of "giving up now to invest in the future" leads to over-involvement of the Marine Corps in a very specific vision of war that will never come true? According to Moulton, in many ways this may be dampened by the role that the Marine Corps has traditionally played as an incubator of new ideas as the smallest and most flexible branch of the US armed forces. "Our country can afford even excessive Marine Corps investment in a new type of war that will never be realized," Moulton explained. "What our country cannot afford is for the Marine Corps not to invest enough in the new type of war that will actually take place."
It seems that the events in Ukraine confirm Berger's anti-platform-centric view of modern warfare. In many ways, this is similar to how the First World War confirmed the correctness of those who claimed that defense has become stronger than attack. Of course, no form of warfare holds the primacy of any of the parties forever. Krulak made this remark when we were finishing our conversation. "We must be careful not to draw the wrong lessons from Ukraine. Even if we have some special means, we need to understand that the next thing you will see after using them will be effective countermeasures from the enemy. Therefore, together with the new measure, you must come up with counter-countermeasures."
One of the most famous countermeasures developed after the end of World War I was the French Maginot Line, a physical shrine to the primacy of defense. What the French did not take into account was that in two short decades, new developments — more advanced tanks, aircraft and the doctrine of combined arms weapons — again changed the balance, allowing offensive actions to once again assume the role of the dominant form of warfare. The result was the German Blitzkrieg in June 1940, when German troops simply bypassed the fortifications of the Maginot line.
The bet that Berger and the Marine Corps are making is that anti-platform systems will not be the new American Maginot line, but the best way to save future generations of Americans from their own battles at the Somme or the fate of the cruiser Moskva.
Elliot Ackerman is a former U.S. Marine Corps officer who has served five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. A regular contributor to The Atlantic magazine.