US Marine Corps conducts massive war games for potential "major-country confrontation"

Source
China Military Online
Editor
Huang Panyue
Time
2019-10-29 18:10:37

By Fang Xiaozhi

An American military website reported that the US Marine Corps is preparing for a large-scale military exercise. Nearly 10,000 American marines and military personnel from other North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members will assemble at the Marine Corps Air-Ground Combat Center in the desert of California.

This largest-scale military exercise by American marines in 30 years, which is set to kick off before this November, will help them adapt to large-scale combat and test their ability to cope with “major-country confrontations” in the future.

Over the past decade or so, the US military have taken terrorism as their main target and are deployed in the Middle East and certain regions of central Asia, where their military operations against Afghanistan, al-Qaeda and its branches have proved effective and fruitful.

However, since the Trump administration released the National Defense Strategy, which replaced the “international terrorist threats” with “national strategic competition” and shifted the top concern of America’s national security from anti-terrorism to high-intensity confrontation between major countries, its national defense security and military strategy has veered dramatically.

The White House has turned its focus from the sustained global anti-terrorist war caused by the September 11 attacks to coping with large-scale military confrontation between traditional major countries.

This required a modernization of US military’s “key combatant forces” in order to build “integrated armed forces that are more destructive, adaptive and innovative” and guarantee its superiority in “major-country confrontation”.

How to achieve its military goals in such confrontation? The Pentagon believed that given major countries’ growing ability of “anti-access” and “area-denial”, it needs to deploy massive combatant forces that can carry out strategic assaults to suppress the enemy, which, however, may easily escalate the situation and push it out of control. The best way to deal with this contradiction is deploy more small-scale combat forces to properly handle conflicts.

To that end, the flexible and highly competent Marine Corps can be mobilized to carry out sea, offshore or beach-landing operations in intense confrontation. This will offset the major countries’ growing ability of “anti-access” and “area-denial” and reinforce the deployments needed to maintain regional deterrence and deal with future crisis at the same time.

Guided by this thought, the US Marine Corps (USMC) has concentrated its efforts of dealing with “major-country confrontation” on information advantage, air forces and underwater combat in recent years. As its transformation has been targeting such fields as “informationized combat” and “new-generation combat”, the Marine Corps has largely improved its organizational structure, front-line situation, integration with the navy and offshore maneuvering, in a bid to better cope with the new challenges.

At present, the US Marine Corps is conducting a series of tests and drills of advanced technologies to ensure its full-range combatant forces and equipment on high-tech battlefield, so as to adapt to future high-end conflicts.

According to its official information, the upcoming exercise will include subjects such as Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), cyber warfare and electronic warfare, so as to address “unique challenges on all levels”, and the ultimate goal is getting ready for “major-country confrontation” in the future.

To adapt to the strategic needs of “major-country confrontation”, the US Marine Corps will also continuously upgrade its weapons and equipment, actively develop unmanned systems and organize efficient combined operation of manned/unmanned systems.

With this, it strives to adapt to any rival or threat in a flexible and swift way and foster a new-type combatant force capable of conducting amphibious operations during high-intensity confrontation, which will have a significant bearing on the future combat approaches and operational modes of the US military.

(The author is a researcher at the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) Institute of Strategy and International Security, Fudan University)

 

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