Amphibious Warfare Is Not Dead, It's Only Sleeping

Eighty years ago, U.S. Marines stormed ashore at Iwo Jima a battle that became immortalized with a statue in Arlington Cemetery. Seventy-Five years ago, they took Inchon in the last great amphibious operation of modern times. Some would-be strategists think it will be the last one in history. I say Not so fast.

When former Marine Corps commandant David Berger claimed thar the traditional amphibious operations were no longer possible, he set off a chain reaction of events that adversely impacted national defense in ways that he could not foresee. As was the case in most of Berger's decisions and pronouncements, he was wrong. Berger's decisions to allow the Navy out of its long-standing commitment to maintain thirty amphibious ships and his decision to drastically cut Marine Corps offensive combat power has caused a radical decrease in peacetime readiness and wartime flexibility that the Pentagon leadership and Congress have been slow to recognize and remedy.

Berger defended his decisions by pointing out that missile technology has shown the defense had once more become the stronger form of war using heavy tank losses on both sides and the sinking of the heavy Russian cruiser Moskva in the current Russo-Ukraine conflict as proof his prescience. Later events in Ukraine, Gaza, and Yemen showed that premature reading of military events as "proof' of anything can be very dangerous. Tanks and artillery -the very things Berger eliminated or drastically reduce in the Marine Corps' inventory- are high on the wish list of the Ukrainians when they ask for western resupply. Tanks remain the key to Israeli combat power in the Gaza war.

Likewise, despite firing scores of ant-ship missiles at U.S. combatant vessels by the Houthis, not one has been seriously damaged or sunk in the waters bordering Yemen. These are the kind of subsonic missiles Berger and his successor Eric Smith bought to "modernize" the Marine Corps at the expense of ground combat power that marines will need in any long-term war with a modern foe such as China.