Marines will play key role in any Pacific war with China

 Washington Examiner:

...

The urgent, immediate objective of all the branches of the United States military is to prepare for a new age of warfare dominated by artificial intelligence, quantum computing, hypersonics, unmanned systems, and cyberwarfare.

And the looming threat focusing the collective minds at the Pentagon is China, which is expected sometime in the next decade to make a move on Taiwan in a way that could draw the U.S. into an all-out war.

For its part, the Army has established the Army Futures Command in Austin, Texas, to work with entrepreneurs, scientists, and academics to fast-track the development of new warfighting technologies, several of which are on the cusp of moving from the lab to the field.

“We are at the beginning phases of the largest Army modernization effort in the last 40 years,” said John Whitley, the acting secretary of the Army. “The Army is now a DOD leader in technology and concept development and is at the forefront of fielding new technologies.”

But with the Biden administration proposing a Pentagon budget for 2022 of $715 billion, basically freezing defense spending at this year’s level, the competition among the services for a bigger slice of the same-size pie is getting cutthroat.

“Many strategists and budgeteers are looking at the Army, particularly its end strength, as an offset to fund air and maritime priorities,” said Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “They question the Army’s role in the Indo-Pacific region.”

As the Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marines all jockey for more funds, their arguments are often centered on the role each service would play in any future war with China.

The Marine Corps has already outflanked the Army as the “ground force of choice” by ditching its 1980s-era tanks and towed artillery in favor of a radically revamped warfighting concept aimed at thwarting China in its own backyard by operating from islands and ships in the South China Sea.

With the Navy providing the ships, both manned and unmanned, and the Air Force and Navy providing precision fires, again from manned and unmanned platforms, the Army has been struggling to explain what value-added capabilities it would bring to the fight.

...

In an article last month in Foreign Policy headlined, “Give the U.S. Navy the Army’s Money,” Blake Herzinger, a defense analyst and lieutenant commander in the Navy Reserve, argued that it is time to reassess the traditional roughly one-third split between the Army, Navy, and Air Force.

In a future war with China, he said, the Navy will be the linchpin.

“In terms of any contingency related to a rising China seeking to displace the order of the free world, there are no realistic options without a strong, revitalized Navy,” Herzinger argued. “To have all the modern tanks in the world surrounded by soldiers with augmented reality helmets stuck on U.S. shores or sunk hundreds of miles from land is not a winning scenario.”

The Army, seeing the handwriting on the wall, has already given up its ambition to increase the active-duty force from the current 485,000 soldiers to 550,000.

...

There is more.

The Marines played a key role in the Pacific in World War II island-hopping campaign against Japan.  It looks like they will be a key force in dealing with Chinese aggression in the Pacific.  The Marines' modernization effort makes them lighter and more mobile than Army units.  The Air Force and Navy and Marine air will also be used in this mobility effort.