ANGLICO – A Test of Diversity

ANGLICO – A Test of Diversity

by Zacchaeus

There is a great deal of debate underway as to what the Marine Corps will look like as it emerges from our current conflicts and navigates its way through an era of fiscal austerity.  In 2010 General Conway commissioned the Force Structure Review Group to evaluate this issue and one of the key takeaways from the group was the realization of the USMC’s “sweet spot” -the Marine Corps provides the nation a primarily maritime, fully expeditionary, capability between special operations teams and conventional army units. 

In a recent hearing of the House Armed Services Committee, Jim Thomas, Vice President and Director of Studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, noted the importance of examining service roles and missions during the current budget reduction process.  He notes that rather than having all services equally prepared for all contingencies across the spectrum of conflict, the DoD should explore greater differentiation between the services. He then provides an interesting vision for the Marine Corps:

The Marine Corps might reinvigorate its role providing forward presence and optimize itself as the Nation’s premiere on-call crisis response force on a day-today basis. In a state of general war, the Marine Corps might perform two main roles: first, small teams of highly distributed / highly mobile Marines could conduct low-signature amphibious landings and designate targets ashore for bombers and submarines as a vanguard force in the early stages of a blinding campaign; and second, the Marines could play an instrumental role seizing key bases and maritime chokepoints, particularly in peripheral theaters, to enable follow-on operations of the joint force.

The concept that Mr. Thomas, a former naval reserve officer and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, outlines is thematically aligned with the recommendations of the FSRG and other operational concepts, such as Distributed Operations. The capability he describes is resident, in part, in the current Marine Corps’ Air Naval Gunfire Liaison Companies (ANGLICO). Unfortunately this recommendation also duplicates similar capabilities of another service – The USAF Combat Control Teams.

United States Air Force Combat Controllers are ground combat forces specializing in a traditional pathfinder role while having a heavy emphasis on simultaneous air traffic control, fire support and command, control, and communications in covert or austere environments. Since their inception, USAF CCTs have performed admirably in a variety of operations and provided key support to SOCOM over the past decade.  Taking Mr. Thomas’ recommendation into consideration, it appears as though this ground combat role is more aligned to the Marine Corps than to the Air Force. Historically, the USAF may have retained this mission because the USMC was not integrated into SOCOM.  However it appears the USMC – SOCOM relationship will be an enduring one.

While the Marine Corps doesn’t organize for this specific mission, it does maintain those critical skills in a variety of MOSs. As the Marine Corps considers how to reorganize its forces to meet the recommendations of the FSRG, it must evaluate how to transition organizations designed to counter a Cold War adversary to a more agile and distributed one, capable of countering the full spectrum of hybrid threats.  The Marine Corps could create the type of capability Mr. Thomas describes by expanding the ANGLICO concept.

This evolution of USMC forces can be accomplished during this era of downsizing but would involve several tradeoffs. There are approximately 2,500 Marines (Officer and Enlisted) assigned to Marine Aviation Command and Control units.  MACCS units provide procedural control of aircraft, air traffic control and robust expeditionary C4I support among other functions. A significant percentage of these Marines are supporting Low Altitude Air Defense and Air Defense Control Missions. The Marine Corps should be willing to accept risk in these two mission areas and rely on the army and air force to provide mission support in the joint environment. Those Marines with CCT-like skills can be shifted to ANGLICO units resulting in increased capacity for the Joint an Special Forces with no growth in end strength.

For the sake of argument, let’s assume that to this point I’ve persuaded you of three things: 1) The Defense of the nation will benefit from shifting the current CCTs roles and missions to the Marine Corps, by creating an increased number of expeditionary teams with no loss of capability and eliminating duplication across the services; 2) The Marine Corps will benefit by transforming some out dated organizations into a capability that supports more palatable amphibious missions and is better aligned to the recommendations of the FSRG; and 3) The Air Force will benefit by getting out of the ground combat mission, thus allowing the service to focus on much needed cyber, space and air capabilities.

Unfortunately Mr. Thomas’ vision of celebrating the diversity of capabilities among the services will likely never be achieved.  In recent history senior leadership within DOD has done poorly in prioritizing missions and eliminating or realigning capabilities across services. In order to accomplish this, the Joint Staff and services must cooperate and leadership needs to breach some of the parochial obstacles emplaced along this avenue of efficiency. Hopefully the realities of the fiscal environment will force leaders to rethink existing programs and missions in order to optimize capabilities across the services.

Zacchaeus was a Greek tax collector hated by his peers for perceived collaboration with the enemy.  It is the pseudonym of a retired Marine, working at the Pentagon.  He lives in fear for his children, family pet and automobile should his real identity fall into the hands of status quo thinkers in the Marine Corps.