“The Carrier Strike Group remains the premier fighting unit of the Navy, and that force structure is gonna be around for a while,” he said. Paul Schlise suggested today that the carrier, despite some rumblings about the end of their dominance, is here to stay under the emerging new plans.

The capital assets are aircraft carriers, big deck amphibious ships, and nuclear submarines, all of which would be prime targets in any conflict at sea.įormer acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly ordered a deep dive earlier this year to look at the future of the carrier, given these concerns, an effort then scuttled once Modly resigned in the wake of the COVID outbreak aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt. “You know I’ve even talked to our undersea guys about Marines out there sinking submarines so some of our inside forces can stay hidden and let our adversary worry about me and my hundred guys running around crazy on some island, instead of these capital assets that are really the heart and soul of the joint force.” “We’re gonna have Marines out there sinking ships,” King said.

Berger is cutting off a significant portion of the Corps’ traditional strength - artillery, armor, and rotary wing lift - in favor of a leaner, more precise and faster force. The approval could signal Esper’s thinking about the wider shift for the Navy as well. Marine Commandant David Berger has pushed for major changes to happen quickly, and has already won the approval of Defense Secretary Mark Esper, who approved a new Marine force structure plan this spring. The Marines are looking to invest more in longer-range missiles that can be quickly emplaced ashore and begin harassing enemy ships while protecting things like US carrier strike groups. “If we do come to blows with China it’s gonna be very confused for the first 30 or 45 days, and then we must fight in a distributed fashion,” King added.

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