Lieutenant General Robert S. Walsh, a top US Marine Corps commander, told a US Senate subcommittee on Tuesday that his service is busy “modernizing” against a military threat from Russia and China now that Congress has authorized higher defense funding.
The Marine Corps deputy commandant for combat development and integration noted to the Senate Armed Services seapower subcommittee that the corps can now focus on developing long-range precision firing capability, technology to communicate in a degraded environment, protected mobility, air defense and information warfare.
Walsh said one project involved improving the existing High-Mobility Rocket Artillery System (HIMARS) to give it up to three times the current range, according to USNI News.
When queried by a senator about the relevance of amphibious ops in an age of long-range missiles and other defenses, Walsh reportedly said: “when we look at the new threats, new weapons, we have to look at it in different ways.”
“We’re not going to be storming the beach like Iwo Jima,” he said, and noted a technology demonstration last year at Camp Pendleton, California, in which the initial assault waves were all unmanned vehicles.
Chinese cyber threat
When asked how the Marines are dealing with a cyber threat from China, Walsh said the steps included making cyber part of their increased stress on information warfare. The general said this also includes electronic warfare, communications management and intelligence. Wash added that an “Information Group” has been created in the three Marine Air Ground Expeditionary Forces. The information warfare capability is said to have been inserted down to the company level.
The Marines are also reportedly bolstering their “organic” air defense capability “after decades of not having to worry about enemy air attacks” – in an apparent reference to declining US capability to ensure air superiority over beachheads and other conflict zones.
A good offense is a good defense.. you invade if you want to take source of an attack..
Yes there is no debt of offence. Only Defence Department….
Marines are designed and trained for offensive operations.
The American Dream at Work in all aspects in the Changing World of Technology to lead it’s Allies with Power and Superiority over it’s Potential Archarivals -And that’s the Only Way to go we travelling through this Dark World.
Shane Tarr Did you read what i wrote? It ended in 1973, not when we went back with the 9th MEB in 1975. That was a humanitarian operation. Should we have gotten involved? No. Did our forces perform and win the batlles? Yes. Was there a South on Jan 27, 1973? Yes. Mission Accomplished.
William Perkins sorry William but the US lost its own war in Vietnam and the spectacle of the US ditching helicopters off its aircraft carrier/s offshore of Saigon in April 1975 epitomizes this loss. A war that the US should never have been involved in. But the irony is that Americans are better liked and welcomed in Vietnam than in most other countries they tried to rearrange. So, it pays to be "defeated" or at least "sue for peace".
Thomas Daniel Kuhn I am personally aware of Frequent Wind.
It was an evacuation of personnel living there and others. All conbat troops had been withdrawn in the year prior.Politically it was a defeat, but militarily, mission accomplished when we left in ’73.
More mediocre leadership. Funding does not solve an issue that’s been with us for at least 17 years. Losing in Afghanistan has nothing to do with inadequate firepower.
Meanwhile US infrastructure rots.
William Perkins
Do you like turning history on it`s head much? The US was soundly beaten in Vietnam and the sight that I would refer you to prove that was the last of the US personnell scrambling aboard helicopters from the top of the US Embassy, if that was not a total defeat by any defination of the word I don`t know what would be.
What beach ? The ones in China or Russia? That is invasion not defence!