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Marines to deploy on warships

Leathernecks could deploy aboard various Navy and Coast Guard ships to provide force protection and conduct boardings at sea, according to language in the sea services’ new maritime strategy. The announcement comes nine years after the Corps disestablished its shipboard Marine detachments.

“Marines will continue to be employed as air-ground task forces operating from amphibious ships to conduct variety of missions, such as power projection,” says the maritime strategy, released by the Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard on Oct. 17. “But they will also be employed as detachments aboard a wider variety of ships and cutters for maritime security missions.”

It remains to be seen which specific ships would get Marines, but possibilities include Arleigh Burke-class destroyers and the littoral combat ship as it comes online, a Navy officer familiar with the discussions told Navy Times. The officer asked to remain unnamed because no decisions have been made.

“The Marines are looking at new and innovative ways to deploy,” the source said.

A possible scenario is the placement of a detachment of 10 or 11 Marines on a destroyer to form a “force protection cell” and conduct visit, board, search and seizure operations, the source said. These Marines also could go onshore to conduct training of police and other security forces on land, the source added.

Col. Doug King, director of concepts and plans at Marine Corps Combat Development Command and the lead Marine author of the strategy, said Marines could deploy on “anything from a destroyer to an LCS.”

Missions could range from security cooperation to humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, and from small-scale operations to large, King said.

He said experimentation is underway to evaluate how Marines fit into the Navy’s new Global Fleet Station concept, which is in the testing phase and is aimed at training other militaries and building partnerships around the world.

“We used to do this all the time,” King noted referring to Marines deploying on Navy ships.

In January 1998, an AlMar message announced the disestablishment of Marine Corps detachments serving as part of Navy ship crews — something Marines had done since the Corps was established in 1775. These Marine detachments provided force protection, and in some cases guarded nuclear weapons.

Since 1998, Marines have deployed exclusively on amphibious ships as part of their own units.

The announcement marking the return of Marines to warships was part of the overarching maritime strategy, unveiled Oct. 17 in front of naval representatives from more than 100 countries who attended the International Seapower Symposium at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I. Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead, Marine Commandant Gen. James Conway and Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Thad Allen spoke to the new document and took questions from the audience.

In his speech in Newport, Conway emphasized the need for the Marine Corps, bogged down on land in Iraq, to return to its expeditionary roots.

“We are an expeditionary force by our nature,” Conway said. “We go down to the sea in ships. But right now we are very much taking on the profile of a second land army. We have to go through what I call an expeditionary filter, when we come out of there, to get back to a lighter, faster more hard-hitting kind of capability that is deployable aboard our nation’s ships. That is a necessary filter I think we will have to endure.”

The strategy states maritime forces will be concentrated in the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

“My service has its ties traditionally to the Pacific,” Conway said. “We are not there now in the numbers we used to be, but we see the day coming when we have the opportunity to go back, so of course we have interests that remain there.”

The document is the first naval strategy since the Cold War and the first of its kind to involve all three maritime services. The strategy elevates preventing conflict to the same level as war-fighting.

“We believe that preventing wars is as important as winning wars,” notes the document, titled “A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower.”

Interoperability between the maritime services is an essential part of the strategy, said Capt. Sam Neill, head of the Coast Guard’s office of strategic analysis and the lead Coast Guard author of the strategy.

The document is “sending the signal” that the services must work closer together in the future, but there is still work to do as far as implementation goes, Neill said.

Another key component of the strategy is international partnerships. Foreign naval leaders questioned the service chiefs on practicalities of the new document and what their role(s) will be under the broad doctrine, a Navy official who attended the event said. The official asked for anonymity because the question-and-answer session was closed to the press.

Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy Joe R. Campa told Navy Times through a spokesman that building relationships with fellow sailors around the world will promote solidarity between maritime forces worldwide.

“Forming those relationships at the deck-plate level will help us leverage the fact that we share many of the same customs, abilities and a tradition of serving our nation from the sea,” Campa said. “This strategy clearly recognizes that.”

Implementation of the strategy will be the test, King said.

“The big piece is implementation,” he said. “How does the strategy impact programming, planning and budgeting? If it doesn’t, it’s just a piece of paper.”

Discuss: The maritime strategy