Beege Welborn

Holy CRAP

Someone needs to be planning on hauling Berger and every last sumbitch associated with this in front of Congress the second Trump's hand drops after the oath.

BEEGE UPDATE: Since there is a bit of confusion in the comments and I haven't really covered this disaster on the blog yet - way complicated - let me share this primer with you all.

A new Congressional Research Service report brings harsh scrutiny to the Marine Corps’ Force Design 2030, with many in Congress and the Department of Defense reportedly having buyer’s remorse. What they thought was a modernization effort has rapidly become an embarrassment — with the Marine Corps’ preparedness hanging in the balance.

When former Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. David Berger unveiled his radical new vision for the Corps in 2019, many in the administration and Congress hailed it as a bold step toward confronting China. Berger’s Force Design vision was to place small groups of Marines armed with anti-ship missiles on islets and shoals in the South China Sea where Malaysia, Vietnam, and the Philippines have territory. The same territory is now claimed by China.

The commandant believed that the U.S. Marine Corps had wandered from its traditional mission and legal directive to conduct amphibious operations in support of naval campaigns. Berger was concerned that 20 years of land warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan had reintroduced the “second land army” stigma that followed the Corps after World War II and Vietnam. He wanted to get the Marines back to their naval roots and prepared for conflict on small islands in the Indo-Pacific region.

In order to pay for the anti-ship missiles and associated sensors needed to implement Force Design, Berger divested the Marine Corps of all its tanks, heavy engineering equipment, much of its cannon artillery, and numerous combat aviation capabilities. In addition, Berger dropped the number of amphibious ships the Navy was required to maintain from 38 to 31, reducing the fleet by nearly 20 percent.