The Marine Corps' Plan for the Future of Ground Combat

you are listening to the war on the rocks podcast on strategy defense and foreign affairs my name is ryan evans i'm the founder of war on the rocks in this episode i speak to two fantastic marines major general jason morris and colonel eric clark they were key members of the team that put together ground combat element 2040 a brand new framework designed to guide the tactical evolution of marine ground forces through the next 15 years if you care about the future of warfare this episode is for you i start the episode by getting to know them a bit starting with you why did you join the marine corps i grew up in nebraska we were rather poor so i got to understand what poverty was like so one of the reasons i joined the marine corps was for a steady paycheck and a place to eat but really i think the opportunities that i got even as growing up poor in the midwest that i was able to do that was because i was able to do that because i was able to do that because education opportunities and i was exposed to the armed services really created a sense of patriotism that i really saw being a marine as a calling i transitioned to be an officer after about eight years i've stuck with it now i'm coming up on my 36th year in the marine corps next year did your enlisted buddies give you a hard time when you became an officer some of my best friends are retired corporals quote unquote retired corporals one got njp'd by mattis so he still has the paperwork and now he's up hanging up on his wall in the end they're all tremendously proud some of my scariest friends are retired corporals i don't know if my best but yeah definitely some of my scariest what was your best job in the marine corps before the one you have now oh to steal it from joan kelly squad leader yeah i freaking sticking love being a squad leader the immediacy of the leadership there and the impact you have every day on every aspect of a young marine's life and really well at the same time you're figuring out yourself and i just learned so much about being a leader from doing it wrong as a young corporal and a young sergeant that was the very basis of some of the successes that i've seen as an officer i've learned so much about being a leader from doing it wrong as a young corporal and a young sergeant that was the very basis of some of the successes that i've seen as an officer because i had the opportunity to get it wrong so often when i was younger and got to work with a quite a few unique personalities as a young squad leader who is the best boss you ever had that wasn't a general officer bill vivian he's out now he was my regimental commander when i was a battalion commander the way he engaged and the latitude and freedom he gave his commanders and the willingness to absorb the friction sometimes that that caused him personally now that i look at it from the other end i really think that he definitely earned my respect and on some of the very difficult things that happen when you're in in that position and the way he would have he would approach me when i was i was explaining a mistake that had been made or that i had made always really stuck with me so yeah bill vivian he lives out in colorado now and you general why did you become a marine i became a marine because i wanted to serve my country and i wanted the challenge of leading marines to accomplish missions and really my father was a marine so i kind of had the marine culture in me i was raised in a family that was not active duty my father had gotten out before i was born but i always respected his marine buddies who were his closest friends throughout his life and he served six and a half years he was a company commander in vietnam decided to resign his commission after that and then he got out and went into business so again i was born after he had transitioned from the service but the marine corps was something that i always highly respected and i wanted to be a part of something bigger than myself the patriotism the opportunity to do physically challenging things and lead people at a very early age had a strong attraction to me so i took a little bit of a different path from colonel clark i went to the naval academy graduated in 1992 and when it came time for me to decide what service i wanted to choose i really looked around because my father kind of knew the challenges associated with leading marines he had been to war he wanted me to look around but ultimately we made the same decision to join the marine corps so i wouldn't change a thing a lot of our listeners might not know that when you go to the naval academy it is not preordained that you will become a sailor or marine necessarily that's correct you get to choose yeah yeah it is the department of the navy's academy so you can go navy or marine corps it's limited by law to i think 24 or 25 percent now of graduates can go into the marine corps but you have to compete for those slots and they've got a really really good process for screening people now to ensure that they want to be marines and have the physical mental and moral aptitude to lead marines it was a great move for me and and i wouldn't change a thing at this point just to ask you about you know father's service i think it's an understatement to say that being a marine in vietnam being a company commander in vietnam was not an easy time to be serving our country how did he talk to you about the war that he had served in before you became a marine and how did that make you think about your future he did not talk about it very much certainly not before i made the decision he was a company commander of golf 2-4 in 1966 to 1967. his company took a lot of casualties some about 70 casualties and it was just a meat grinder and he decided after that experience that he had had enough and was moving on so he really didn't want to talk about it very much but like i told you he was always exceptionally close to his first sergeant to his gunnery sergeant i grew up with those people in my life because they had had such a strong impact on him that company command that senior staff nco relationship and i would just say that it certainly made me i wouldn't necessarily say cautious but fully aware of the potential burdens of what it is to lead marines in combat and i think i drew some strength from that later on during combat deployments to iraq and afghanistan because i know that people had been through tougher campaigns suffered more casualties and come home and dealt with it but it really made me proud and and he started talking to me about it a little bit more like when i got back from the march up in 2003 he wanted to know some more and we talked a little bit more openly and then when i got back from my tour to afghanistan in 2011 he was interested in some of the things that we were doing and how the campaign was being conducted so that that was a lot of the discussion that we had what was your favorite job before you were a general officer you know i talked about battalion command and that was really a dream job it came with its costs and its burdens but i think my favorite job as we were kind of talking about beforehand was being a company commander i had a company in one five before 9 11 and i was on a mu out in the western pacific it was 31st mu we were blt 1 5. i was the mech company commander so i had this platoon of amtrak's attached to me i had engineers i had all the things that we needed to do or that we needed to do what marines do which is really going a direction and break things and it was just a lot of fun i mean we we did tandem thrust down in australia so i landed at night on a beach and fought the aust fought the australian uh yeah quote unquote fought the australian defense forces for three or four days and then i had the opportunity to land on iwo jima on green beach number two out of the back of the uss debate and we pulled up on the beach put the ramps down did a very curtailed you know amphibious assault and then we formed up and marched to the top of mount suribachi that must have been an emotional moment it was and just unique events that you can't and experiences that you can't get anywhere else i was really blessed to to lead that company at that time and like i said that's probably my favorite job because i didn't really have all that much responsibility either at the time but to be in command brings a lot of responsibility and your favorite boss before you who was not a general officer perhaps my favorite boss was my battalion commander when i was that company commander lieutenant colonel baker craig baker was the battalion commander and he was just really good natured level-headed gave the company commanders a lot of rope supported us but provided us sort of that close-knit relationship that we had with the company commander closed-door mentoring that most aggressive marines require every once in a while and he was not somebody with a whole lot of fanfare he ended up retiring as a colonel he's down in huntsville alabama but he was a great boss and he built a great unit and actually that unit was a key part of the fifth marine regiment that formed prior to the march up because the battalion commander the xo and two company commanders including me went up to the regimental headquarters and worked for general dunford or colonel dunford at the time it's great we've been talking around and about ground combat a bit and that's actually what we're here to talk about is ground combat element 2040 gce 2040. you were both intimately involved key parts of leading and writing this document starting with where does this document fit in so you know our listeners are very familiar with force design 2030 with eabo with other marine concepts and doctrine and this evolving trail of documents that came out of force design where does this fit in why did we need this now what is this meant to do so this document really nests well under force design i think you're aware and your listeners know that force design was published in march of 2020 it was general berger's plan to iterate and move the service towards being able to compete with peer competitors because general kneller before him had said that the marine Corps is not organized, trained, or equipped to really take on a pure adversary. So this was a journey we were already on. Ground combat element 2040 really is a recognition that there was a need for an organization of prioritized and validated requirements for the ground combat element that needed to be documented and aligned based on everything that we were working on within PP&O, who was the advocate for the Marine Division and the ground combat element. And we need to capture that in a document that allowed us to really make the case for fighting for resources within the organization on those things that would enable us to accomplish our core mission essential tasks as Marine Divisions, as part of a MAGTAF, as part of a joint force. So recognizing that the force design journey, had really changed the direction of the Marine Corps and had organized 3rd Marine Division specifically to be able to conduct sea denial, participate in sea control missions, and to help us contribute to fleet maneuver against a pure adversary. But a couple of years ago, as we were working through what's called the Marine Requirements Oversight Council Review Boards, also known as the MROC, you may have heard that term thrown around, it was apparent that things that were associated with force design were getting funded, they were the Commandant's priorities. And then there were a number of other things that were really kind of securing resources from the aviation combat element, especially from the information side, if you think, or the command element side. If you think CJAD C2, when you think about command and control at Echelon, we were having a really hard time. Justifying why we needed things. And there are certain things that the Marine Division can do, and only it can do. Pieces and portions of that, the regiments, the battalions, the separate battalions, they have certain kit that enables them to operate in the littorals, to seize and hold terrain. And force design put us squarely back into the naval formation, where we would support littoral maneuver operations and support the joint force as a sense and make sense capability that would empower the joint force to bring combat power to bear, all the while kind of looking at ourselves as a stand in force. But as we looked at our core mission essential tasks, conduct offensive operations, conduct defensive operations, conduct expeditionary operations, it was apparent to the collective that we needed to better define and validate requirements that would allow us to do the things that Marine formations have already always, I should say always, have done in the last several decades. And I grew up on the desert floor doing deliberate breaching operations with 7th Marines. I had participated in the march up where it was very intensive ground combat operations. And even force design, as it moves us towards a direction the commandant and the joint force needs us to go, is something that we've been working on for a long time. There are still going to be, in our minds, the need for Marine formations to be able to seize, hold, and defend key maritime terrain primarily. And so this really was our effort to memorialize those requirements that we need to make sure that we can dominate the enemy and take a look at it in a very, well, as long a term as you can look. Three FDIPs, so three fiscal year defense programs out to 2040, that's where that moniker comes from, is to make sure that we are keeping the long view and we're not getting sidetracked by things that are happening in the moment, but we have an azimuth and a course that we're going to be on and we're going to stay on to help defend those capabilities that the ground combat element needs to win. In addition to the generalist comments, really where we started was strategic guidance. And then as you move down to service guidance, going back to General Berger's guidance to the force under force design, and then going to General Smith's first to fight documents, I think this nests very well underneath the first to fight document in that it specifically more specifically and discreetly describes how we envision the future ground combat element operating. And then to put it adjacent to a document, I'd say I'd lay it adjacent to the aviation plan. And the aviation plan is more platform centric, I would accuse it of. I think accurately we see inside the ground combat element is that this is more human centric. Yeah. I want to return to that. Definitely. It's something that really comes out in the document as you read it. Just for our list of listeners who are less familiar with Marine formations, because it can get a little confusing for them, layout, we have the Marine Expeditionary Force, you have the Marine Expeditionary Unit, you have the Marine Division, which fits in the Marine Expeditionary Force, you have the Marine Literal Regiment. So just a little 101 for our listeners on this. I would say the Marine Corps historically has task organized for the mission at hand. It has also oftentimes been required to conduct missions independently with its own organic units and hence the need for a logistics combat element, an aviation combat element, a ground combat element, and a command element. So think of that as the basic template for a Marine Air Ground Task Force, the MAGTF. Those four combat elements, command, ground, aviation logistics, are the way the Marine Corps organizes. At the largest level in the fleet Marine Force, you have the Marine Expeditionary Force. And that is a three-star lead command element. It has major subordinate commands of a Marine Division, a Marine Aircraft Wing, and a Marine Logistics Group. It also has under the command element right now what's called a MEF Information Group, or a MIG. And that's a recent development, probably in the last, I would say, eight years. That is the largest formation that the Marine Corps can field for a conflict. The last time we did that was really during Operation Iraqi Freedom. And then if you go a level below that, you have a Marine Expeditionary Brigade. And a Marine Expeditionary Brigade is led by a one-star. And it has its own command element. It also has a O6 headquarters. So these major subordinate elements are O6 headquarters. You have a Marine Regiment, you have a Marine Aircraft Group, and you have a Combat Logistics Regiment. And then the smallest element of that is an O6-led Marine Expeditionary Unit, the MEWS that you hear a lot about, coupled with Amphibious Ready Groups most of the time. That is the smallest normally organized MAGTF formation. And you have a Battalion Landing Team led by an O5 Lieutenant Colonel. You have a Composite Squadron, which is led by a Lieutenant Colonel. And then you have a Combat Logistics Battalion. Logistics folks reorganize every couple of years, so it's hard to keep up sometimes. But that is the general organization. And when you have missions that require maybe tailored capabilities, or a different mission that we don't necessarily have a normal formation, it's called a Special Purpose MAGTF. And that is normally done at the O6 level. That is an example of what is currently operating down in the SOUTHCOM AOR right now during the ARGMU presence gap, because we don't have ships enough to put that formation on, but we're operating land-based as well as with platforms of opportunity that the Navy can provide. I think there's an LPD, and I think there may be another platform that they may be utilizing. But that's kind of how the Marine Corps typically has organized. So that MAGTF template is the way Marines like to fight, understanding that we will plug into the larger joint force and be subordinate to either a joint land force component commander, or a joint maritime force component commander at the joint level. And the MLR? So the MLR is a tailored organization, Marine Littoral Regiment, that has the Littoral Combat Team. Sorry, that's the battalion equivalent. They are supposed to contribute to fleet, sea control, and sea denial missions. And they are specially equipped with radars, with special long-range fires, and with anti-air capability, and with a lot of command and control and intel surveillance reconnaissance capability to be able to fight in the littorals and deter an adversary's fleet from being able to maneuver in the littorals and out into the blue ocean. So reading this document, which is very well written, Marines are great at writing clear documents in ways that the other services are not. So congratulations. And Colonel, I think you led the writing, so. Colonel Lonnie Wilson was heavily involved, and we had a lot of help. Let's talk about dominating peer level ground combat through 2040. Dominating is one of those words that I think can be not intentionally deceptive, but slippery because in one sense, it's obvious what that means, right? It's like to beat the tar out of the opponent, take them out of the field, make sure they're not able to achieve their objectives. But what does that mean operationally to you thinking through this entire document and the future of the Marine Corps? What do you want Marine ground combat elements to be able to do in a few years, maybe by 2040 or wherever between now and 2040 that they may not be able to do as well today? When you think about what a formation needs to be able to do, I'll just boil it down to shoot, move, communicate. and survive. We want formations to have the weapon systems, both kinetic and non-kinetic, so lethal and non-lethal means, all domain. So from the space, cyber, aviation, ground, surface, on the ocean, on land, we want to have the ability to sense an enemy. We want the ability to reach out and touch that enemy with lethal or non-lethal fires. We've got to be able to communicate and we've got to be able to displace quickly and not be stationary too long. We have seen the longer you stay in position with the building of large-scale ISR complexes by our adversaries who can sense where we are operating and see where we are operating and pass that information back to their own formations to shoot on our positions, we know that we can no longer set up in a fob and be safe. We're going to have to be safe. We're going to have to be maneuverable. We're going to have to be survivable. And that brings in tactical deception, management of electromagnetic spectrum, making sure that we have a layered surface or system of systems air defense so we can defend against the group one through three drone threat, as well as deal with some cruise missile threats that might come our way. So I think we are looking at making sure that marine formations have the ability to survive on the modern battlefield. And when we say dominate, make it an unfair fight. We do not want to be trading blows tit for tat with an enemy that we should be able to and must be able to outmaneuver, outthink, outflank, and outperform. And a key part of that, I think, as we look at the future is the leveraging of technology that is proliferating throughout the world, not just AI machine learning for command and control and decision making, but also the ability to be able to do that. So I think that's a key part of that. And I think that's a key part of that. But robotics and autonomous systems, there is a view that we do not want a human being to be at risk when a machine can assume the risk, whether it's for sensing, shooting, maneuver. We want to make sure that by the time we reach 2040, at the end of this, we have integrated human machine teaming that takes a lot of the risk to the humans down to the level where it's acceptable and we can shoot, move, communicate, and survive on the battlefield. When I think about your question related to dominate specifically, I think about something every Marine in boot camp learns, the mission of the Marine Rifle Squad is to locate, close with, and destroy the enemy by fire and maneuver, or to repel the enemy's assault by fire and close combat. We kill people and we break things. And that's fundamentally what the nation wants the Marine Corps to do. As you take the Commandant's planning guidance and you begin to apply the Marine Littoral Regiment and some of the force design concepts and modernization that we brought into the Marine Corps, as we begin to focus more so than in the deserts that the General and I grew up in. And so, as we begin to focus more so than in the deserts that the General and I grew up in, as we begin to focus more so than in the deserts that the General and I grew up in, and into the maritime aspect of Littorals, location matters. And that's the value proposition of the Marine Corps. We will be other places that other people will not be. We will stay when other people will go. And if you do that, and then you have an actual impact through your sensing and your fires and your incorporation of joint and partner capabilities, you've got to be ready to fight for that terrain and you've got to be able to defend that terrain. And I think that's a key aspect that sometimes we wash past as we talk about modernization, and we might become too focused on aspects of fires and sensing. And one of the things that really influenced this document was Ben Conable's book, Ground Combat, in which he researched 400 different ground combat scenarios from World War II to 2022. And the ubiquitiveness, the absolute persistent element in each of those events was close combat. And I think that's a key aspect that we've been able to push forward. I think the future is going to have robots, and we're going to have unmanned ground vehicles, and we're going to have unmanned service vehicles, and we're going to be shooting at surface vessels of the enemy, and we're going to be sensing inbound missiles. And at the same time, we've got to be able to have a Marine behind a machine gun that can lay down azimuth of fire, that can fight for and hold that terrain, so that we can maintain that valuable positioning in order to be able to affect the enemy in a way that matters. Yeah. Part of me wondered, I mean, my own thoughts on the war matter of public record, and we don't need to get into that. If the MLRs were ready yet, they're still going through their fielding. They're not a deployable unit in a wartime scenario yet. But part of me couldn't help but wonder what an MLR, fully mature MLR, could have done in the Strait of Hormuz. Although, I guess we'll never know. Or maybe we'll never know. Maybe we will again one day. Who knows? It seems like we can't get out of the muck of the Middle East. So anyway. Yeah. I think your point, though, is that the Marine Littoral Regiment has applicability with its capabilities worldwide globally. There are a lot of littorals. There's a lot of key choke points where we could play a significant role helping the Navy control that maritime terrain and also deny its use to the enemy. And I think you'll probably hear in the future that while the Marine Littoral Regiments have not been deployed to the current fight, there are capabilities that have been developed in support of force design that are contributing to the current fight. You touched on maneuver warfare and the intensity of the modern and future battlefield with robots and pervasive ISR and really short windows for breakthroughs. So what does maneuver warfare mean in that era? How does it change? We don't want to. I know we all admire the tenacity and adaptation of the Ukrainian military. We certainly don't want to end up in a situation where we're fighting in the sense that these fixed lines that move very slowly with no air superiority and et cetera, et cetera. So we would want to fight differently there. But what are we learning from this experience about how to maintain maneuver and movement on the battlefield? That's a great question. I mean, for the Marine Corps, I think it's a little bit back to the future. The whole reason why maneuver warfare became the way the Marine Corps fought back in the late '80s and early '90s was because our mission was going to be contributing to the Northern flank against the Soviet army. We expected to be outnumbered. We expected to be outgunned. And we had to look at historical ways that captains of history have fought and won on the battlefield against larger, more numerically advantaged foes. So this is in our blood, you know, just tempo, dealing with fog, friction of combat, mission command, empowering junior leaders and NCOs to take the initiative and move out based on commander's intent. These are all things that we are really encultured or enculturated to perform. So I think, you know, you're spot on. We do not want to fight like the Russians and the Ukrainians are being forced to fight right now. I think our continued challenge is going to be to leverage the capabilities that we have more quickly, more precisely, and with more lethality than the adversary to focus those on key terrain key gaps that we can exploit. And then we're going to have to be ruthlessly exploiting maneuver and fires and doing it in a very contested electromagnetic cyber and space environment. So there's a lot of the all domain aspect of that that we continue to experiment with. We continue to refine. But that's kind of where I see maneuver warfare going. We can't go toe to toe as a Marine adversary like China, but we can play a huge part in not just maintaining that key terrain that General or that Colonel Clark talked about, but being at decisive points, attacking critical vulnerabilities and really enabling the joint force, the larger joint force to penetrate and deliver decisive firepower and effects. I appreciate how you framed the question. I think sometimes people reference Ukraine, but they don't apply our method of warfighting to it. In the future, the document admits up front, we're going to get the future wrong. Everybody gets the future wrong. The key is going to be adaptability and resilience. And the ace in the back pocket that the Marine Corps always has is maneuver warfare. And when we go into a future where maneuver warfare becomes even more important, I think that will exist because the sensing environment, the precision fire, the level of lethality, the abilities to fight in different domains and different spectrums are going to make maneuver warfare even more important. And really also in the document, one of the things we highlight is the need to gain decision advantage. Technology, not for the sake of technology, technology to turn results into tempo. And when we talk about tempo and decision advantage, we've got to sense it. You've got to make sense. You've got to communicate it across resilient and reliable communication pathways. And then you've got to have the ability to maneuver in the spectrum on the ground and the air on the surface in order to take advantage of that sensing information. And so I think in the future, maneuver warfare decision advantage, it's going to become tighter and more critical and really the force that can adapt the quickest and the force that has most resiliency when somebody turns the lights off. And now you're fighting absent technology because of either weather, enemy action or just mistakes, equipment failures. That will be the force that finds success on the battlefield. How do you think about the logistics element? Because this way of fighting, edge computing, drones, spare parts, fuel, you know, this is an enormously hungry logistics problem. And in some ways, autonomous vehicles will help, whether it's ground, air, you know, rotary, I imagine we'll see a lot more autonomous rotary lift in the near future, the narco boat style stuff that we've read about. But how do you think about this? Because we can't just rely on autonomy to solve our power-hungry autonomy problem, you know? That's a great point. And in GC 2040, we do reference the absolute need to bring the logistical combat element along with us. It's not even from a protraction standpoint. If you look at maneuver warfare and some of the challenges that, for example, the Ukrainians or the Russians are having on their front, they might be able to occasionally make a breakthrough, but they can't exploit it. So I think our ability to have a resilient logistics network, to live off the land, expeditionary logistics, use autonomous systems and other sources of supply to resupply units and keep them moving forward so they can have the effect we're looking for, I think is critically important. But there's no doubt, that that is probably one of the more challenging things we have from an operational standpoint, is bulk fuel and water. You can probably find in a lot of places, you got to make sure that it's filtered. But bulk fuel and reducing our power requirements, but making sure that we can leverage alternative or new modes of power and smaller form factor command and control, smaller, you know, more fuel-efficient vehicles and other systems. I think it's kind of the whole system that needs to be made more efficient. We got to make sure that we can support that at the time of need, so we can actually exploit and have the effect that we want on the adversary's combat formations. Colonel, you mentioned the human-centric element before. It's a phrase that appears a lot in this document. At the same time, you also talk about how increasingly we want robots to take on the risk of first contact, where, you know, maybe landing on a beach or the first echelon anyway, or are there other examples? Yeah. We are living through this age of tremendous technological advancement, where things are, conversations often are very platform-centric, as you talked about earlier, not just with aviation. Why is it important to emphasize the human-centric element of this still in the face of that? I think one is the planning horizon that we're dealing with. So, 2040, just being less than 15 years away, war will undoubtedly, from my point of view, still be in a human endeavor at that point in our advancement. And so, it being a human endeavor and having to understand that, that you've still got to fight with what I referred to earlier as when the lights are off, when the energy gets shut down, when signals are interrupted, when cyberattacks are conducted against your equipment, that we're looking to technologically enable the human warfighter to be faster in decision and action on the battlefield, and then to de-risk that very valuable piece of organization, the human being, de-risk their actions through the use of machines where we can. We've got to have the ability to put an unmanned sensor out there, and there needs to be a reconnaissance unit. An all-weather, when I say all-weather ground reconnaissance, I'm talking about a Marine with a pair of binos and a camera, that's still going to be very much part of our warfighting ethos in 2040. That will give us, when we say resilience, sometimes we don't, we may not take the time to explain it, but resilience is the MQ-9 that gets taken down by anti-air fire, and then underneath that, maybe you have a Group 3 or a Group 2 UAS, and the wind's blowing too hard, or it's nighttime and you don't have thermals, or night vision, but you've still got a Marine reconnaissance team in the right location able to observe that, and then through reliable and resilient communications at work, pull that information out and plug it into the joint force, into the partner force, so that you can capitalize on that information and take credible action against the enemy. We have a lot of Marines who listen to this show, and what do you want them to hear about this that you haven't said already, especially people serving in combat units? What I would want them to know is that there is a very deliberate effort to make sure that our Marine division and the formations inside that division are supported by a well thought through vision of where we want that division to be in the next 15 years, taking into account that we're not going to get it right like Colonel Clark said, but we need to have a roadmap to go forward to make sure that all the things that we have historically done that really are the Marine Corps' unique value proposition of the joint force, which is to seize, hold, and defend key maritime terrain that they will be fully prepared, trained, and equipped to be able to do those missions in the future around the world. So I think this provides that roadmap. It is something that after the first iteration last year, we used to really fight within the budget battles for capabilities that were prioritized. Because we had either divested of some of those during the original force design, but we wanted to make sure that the rest of headquarters Marine Corps was fully aware of what the Marine ground combat element needed to do those core mission essential tasks. So I hope people read this and say, "Wow, there's a lot of requirements lingo in this. Why did they make it so complicated?" I appreciate you saying it was well written, but it is something that we have to do. It's something that when you think about concept required capabilities, those words are kind of the acquisition side, the acquisition speak for how you justify a requirement so you can resource it and so you can get the Marines what they need. And we're really trying to iterate on this, maybe not annually, because there's a lot of work that goes into this on the backs of Marines that have day jobs, but I think this really does set a great roadmap. It's a great roadmap for the future that we can use to make sure our Marine grunts and artillerymen, AM trackers, light armor reconnaissance Marines and our recon Marines have what they need to fight and win in the future. This is always, as you just said, an evolving set of ideas and the world changes and things change and we don't have all the answers yet. And as you said, Colonel, we're going to get the future wrong, almost certainly, we always do, but we hope we get it wrong in a way that allows us to adapt. Where are you still looking for ideas? Well, one of the things I admire the most on the Marine Corps is how open they are to ideas from the ranks and where some of the Marine Corps' best ideas have come from. Maneuver warfare is a great example, of course. So where are you still looking for ideas? Where do you want to hear from Marines and others? I would like Marines to look at this as a shot group into the future and then actively, which Marines, as you say, aren't too shy about it, you can go on Compass Points and get some feedback about GC 2040 on there as well. I don't bother reading Compass Points, not to talk about another media topic. There's a whole other media platform on your show. No, no. Other media platforms are fine. I just don't read Compass Points. I read all the others, though. But to get back to my point, this is a benchmark, right? So if you make it through an interview without ever quoting Yogi Berra, you probably did something wrong. If you don't know where you're going, you never know when you get there. It's important for the ground combat element underneath force design and modernization to have a clearly, as clearly as possible, identified benchmark to carry themselves in the future. And we've got to grade ourselves against that. So I would ask the young Marine Corps to look at this as a shot group into the future. We've got a lot of young Marines out there that are carrying 120 pounds with UAVs and batteries and a radio and a weapon system that now it takes you three hours to check out the armory because you have 15 custody cards. I would ask that young Marine and their leaders to hold us accountable to that and say, "Are we meeting that benchmark?" Not just in giving them stuff, not just in equipping them with the state of art equipment, the best rifle that we can put in their hands, the best body armor, the best logistics support, but also in the training and education side of it. Yeah. I think it's important for the young Marines to be able to train them for that future fight. We talk about a complicated enemy. We talk about peer adversaries. Where are we on that side? The general was the CGO of training command, now he's at National War College. We invest some of our very best leaders into that environment and I would expect that they hold us accountable on that and that the Marines that are carrying that gear hold us accountable to whether we actually deliver it on what we've written here and then force us to change. Yeah. And I would just add, I think this document. I think this document was really the result of a lot of good work that took place over a couple of years through what we call the ground board process. So there are groups of communities that meet and talk at the major lieutenant colonel level, the senior staff NCO level, the gunner level, to bring ideas up from the grassroots level and say, "Hey, this is a challenge that we've got. We've got a problem. We need your help." And that kind of bubbles up through the ranks. It's a lot of good work. It's a lot of work. It's a lot of work. But it's a lot of good work. And it's a lot of good work. turned pretty quickly, but we need to move faster. And I think the good ideas of those who are operating in the fleet, experimenting at the lowest level, help feed that into the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab, help bring those ideas up to the headquarters so we can fight for the resources required to get you what you need. You hit it, Marines. Don't hold back. Talk to your leaders, submit articles to the Gazette, Connecting File, War on the Rocks, of course. Gentlemen, this was great. Thanks so much for joining me. Ryan, thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this episode of the War on the Rocks podcast. Do not forget to check out our membership program, which has a show called Marine Pulse, among other things, if you're interested in Marine issues, that comes out every week on a bunch of different Marine stories from Marines by Marines. Stay safe and stay healthy.