more effective ways to do things with fewer numbers.
If we do have to reduce — take
a Marine who does mission X and move him to mission Y — whatever we remove has got to be something we can rapidly reconstitute. It takes several years to create someone to do electronic or cyber warfare or to be a targeteer or do intelligence data exploration. It’s a shorter pipeline to regenerate an infantry or artillery Marine or a tanker or amphibious assault-vehicle operator. We might mitigate the eff ect by putting more of these skills in the reserves to be ac- cessed in a major confl ict.
Neller, right, speaks with a group of Marine Corps reservists during Exercise Northern Strike 2016 at Camp Grayling, Mich.
First, we would like to have our budget number — whatever it is — be for more than a year at the time, so we can plan for the resources we’ll have.
Second, our equipment is getting old. The age of a number of aircraft types, particularly CH-53 [Super Stallion heavy-lift helicopters] and the F/A-18 [fi ghter-attack jet], is in some cases beyond projected life ex- pectancy, and we’ve kept fl ying them. We need to recapitalize. Third, we’re committed to
leveling off our active force at 182,000 but with puts and takes on capabilities. Some Marines do one thing today, and we believe they’re going to have to do something else. The tension is over what we have to give up if we don’t get more people to [fi eld new capabilities]. Some things we probably could do if we were better organized. We have a force structure study looking at capabilities we think we’re going to need and what do we give up to fi eld them.
What capabilities do you want to add? Primarily command and control, information and electronic warfare, [and] more electronic attack, elec- tronic defense, and cyber warfare ca- pabilities. The entire ground combat element should have better ability to see the battle space.
We’re working on a large UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] that doesn’t need a multi-thousand- foot runway to launch and recover. We also want small UAVs that rifl e squads could operate. We need air defense against enemy UAVs, which can be bought online to gain sur- veillance of our positions. We need to suppress that. Can we add these capabilities through reorganization, without growing the size of units? We’re trying.
What might you forfeit to make room? I don’t want to say yet. But in looking at what we’re considering giving up, we’ve tried to figure out if, just through reorganizing mission sets, we can find
PHOTOS: ABOVE, LANCE CPL. DEVAN BARNETT, USMC; PREVIOUS SPREAD, USMC/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
How was the restructuring study conducted? We convened a group of about 200 Marines in January to talk about the issues. They then broke down into two groups, one of more senior officers and the other junior officers, staff NCOs, and warrant officers. [The] rules were to list capabilities we need and those we’re willing to take risks on. But end strength had to be 182,000. So what does that Marine Corps look like?
They came up with two diff er- ent courses of action. We merged into a hybrid, taking things from each. I wasn’t happy with some trades, so we are looking at whether [there are] other ways we can buy structure to create capabilities and minimize the risk. Eventually, I will brief the secretary of the Navy and secretary of Defense on what we think we need to look like. Then we want to test it. So we
have an infantry battalion — 3rd Bat- talion, 5th Marines — involved in an 18-month experimental evaluation, using diff erent organizational struc- tures and tools, to ensure the hypoth- esis on [what capabilities we need and where we need them] will work.
NOVEMBER 2016 MILITARY OFFICER 51
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