Neller's Mismatch

Marine Corps Commandant Neller offers some amazing views of future combat as reported in a Marine Times article. (1)

“… the next fight will be far more complex and deadly than the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan that have shaped the force and its leadership over the past 16 years.

“I don’t think the next fight is going to be a stability op/counterinsurgency: It’s going to be a violent, violent fight,” Neller said …”

Neller is saying the right thing but his actions, meaning the acquisitions the Marines are pursuing, the developmental path they are on, and the doctrine/tactics they are pursuing, all indicate the wrong things.  There is a mismatch between his words and the Corps’ actions.  Despite the Nellers verbal recognition of where the Corps needs to be, the reality doesn’t match.  Even Neller acknowledges this.

“In June, Neller told Congress that, right now, the Marine Corps is “not currently organized, trained and equipped to face a peer adversary in the year 2025.”

Further indicative of the mismatch between words and actions is Neller’s assessment of the strength of the Marines.

““The center of gravity that we have to protect is the network, and the network is dependent on space.”

“The opening salvos of future wars will likely be fired in space, Neller believes.”

Neller fails to grasp that future peer warfare will be incredibly brutal and violent and victory will go the side that can muster and apply the most explosives.  In contrast, Neller believes that victory will go to the side with the best network.  Ironically, he also acknowledges that space will be contested and compromised which means the network will fail and yet he believes this failure prone construct is the Marine’s center of gravity!  Unbelievable.

Consider further … Neller claims to see a “violent, violent fight” as the future of combat but the Marines are shedding tanks, artillery, and heavy vehicles, leaving tanks out of MEU/ARG loadings, emphasizing aviation, pursuing battlefield lightness over armor, and becoming a light infantry force.  How is that preparing for a “violent, violent fight”?  There’s a mismatch between words and actions.

China and Russia, on the other hand, see the future of warfare quite clearly.  They’re developing families of heavy armored vehicles, massive artillery forces, advanced cluster munitions (while we are unilaterally eliminating our ours), mobile anti-aircraft vehicles, and battlefield electronic warfare.  They’re preparing to fight and win a “violent, violent fight”.  We’re still preparing to fight another insurgency.

Neller needs to heed his own words, end the mismatch, and start preparing the Marines to fight and win a “violent, violent fight”. 

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(1) Marine Times website, “The Next Fight: The commandant is pushing the Corps to be ready for a ‘violent, violent fight’”, Jeff Schogol, 18-Sep-2017,

http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/your-marine-corps/2017/09/18/the-next-fight-the-commandant-is-pushing-the-corps-to-be-ready-for-a-violent-violent-fight/

Modern Day Marine 2016

In the course of researching other posts, I happened across Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Neller’s speech at the Modern Day Marine Exposition 2016 and it offered some interesting insights into his views of the future combat and the role the Marines will play in it (1).  Here are some of the highlights.  Rather than transcribe long passages, I’ve summarized most of the salient points.  If you want to hear the speech, you can follow the link below.

Neller astutely noted that recent enemies have had very little modern combat capability.  This seems like a “duh” moment but I call it an astute observation because so many people in and out of the military have come to believe that we’ve been fighting actual wars against valid opponents.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Nothing we’ve done the last couple decades has been remotely like a real war.  Sure, there has been the odd firefight but, for the most part, it’s basically been a live fire exercise.  This is not to take anything away from those who served and especially those who gave their lives.  However, there’s no getting around the reality that our opponents, while deadly, offered no real military opposition.  Any success they had was because we foolishly allowed it – but that’s a topic for another time.  Thus, I give Neller credit for recognizing the basic truth about the utter lack of military competency in our recent enemies. 

Neller went on to describe future combat which, according to him, would involve the electromagnetic spectrum, space, complex terrain / urban sprawl, coastal regions, dense population centers, and slums.  This is superficially likely but completely fails to enumerate the fundamental characteristics of future peer combat which include, on our enemy’s part, if not our own,

• Wanton destruction
• Profligate use of high explosive and cluster munitions far beyond all pre-war estimates
• Complete disregard for collateral damage including civilian casualties
• Focus on explosives over technology
• Shocking willingness to sacrifice troops to achieve objectives
• Heavy use of artillery and armored vehicles
• Military barbarism on a scale we will have trouble believing

Thus, we see that Neller, while recognizing that we haven’t been militarily challenged and therefore need to prepare for more challenging combat, then fails to correctly anticipate what those challenges will actually be!  You can see from his list of future warfare characteristics that he’s still anticipating the kind of nation building, anti-insurgency warfare that we’ve been fighting.  Reread his list of characteristics and you’ll see the complete lack of high end combat references.

He then goes on to describe what he feels are the future domains (I hate buzzwords!) of combat and notes that there are six:

• Air
• Sea
• Land
• Cyber
• Space
• Information (public relations - PR)

Note that he’s added PR to the common domains.  This, yet again, demonstrates that he is fixated on fighting a low end battle and replaying the “hearts and minds” nation building that we’ve been doing for the last couple of decades.  This is all the more baffling given that there is absolutely no evidence that “hearts and minds” works!

Neller devoted a significant portion of his speech to the subject of winning the PR battle in various ways.

His lack of acceptance or recognition of the reality of high end combat can be summed up in this phrase in which he referred to how we will deal with enemies.

“… defeat the enemy, destroy them, if necessary …”

Again, this betrays a mindset that has not recognized and accepted the reality of the sheer brutality of peer warfare.  Destroy them “if necessary”????  That’s the only way to defeat an enemy!

Gen. Neller  - No Grasp of Peer Warfare

Neller referred to Gen. Krulak’s three block war and cited the three blocks as humanitarian assistance, counter insurgency, and training partner nations and added a fourth block, the public affairs officer.  Note that this is a slight modification of Krulak’s concept which contained full combat as one of the blocks.  Again, though, note the utter lack of reference to full combat and destruction of the enemy.  He appears to believe that future peer warfare will be a “hearts and mind” PR exercise with isolated bits of low end combat.

To sum up, Neller correctly recognizes that the US military, and Marines in particular, have not been facing militarily competent opponents and need to begin preparing for more challenging warfare but then goes on to describe an only somewhat higher end combat.  He betrays his utter lack of understanding of what a peer war will really be like.  Thus, the Marines are going to be unprepared for peer combat.  We already see this with the Marine’s and Neller’s focus on light infantry, mobility, and flexibility at the expense of firepower and armor.

We will relearn what peer warfare is like and will pay a bloody bill doing so.

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(1)wn.com website, Modern Day Marine Exposition 2016, Commandant Gen. Neller speech,

https://wn.com/gen._robert_neller_speaks_at_modern_day_marine_expo