WASHINGTON – The 2,500-person Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) is the basic formation of regularly-deploying US Marine Corps units, typically embarked aboard a three-ship US Navy amphibious ready group (ARG) that deploys for six months or more at a time. But the various units that make up the MEU are often called on to carry out missions hundreds of miles apart, even thousands of miles. It's not unusual that the MEU and ARG, which together train before the deployment to operate as a single unit, split up once in theater to the point where the three ships might not even see each other for months.
So does it make sense to continue that MEU/ARG construct? Gen. Robert Neller, commandant of the Corps, says yes.
"The only potentially survivable, valid forceable-entry capability you have is the three-ship ARG," Neller said Tuesday. "It's true, they train together to operate as one, but they also train to operate distributed, or separated," he said in response to a question from Defense News.
"Right now we've got more mission, more task, than capability. So we end up being in multiple places supporting multiple [combatant commanders] at one time," he told a Washington audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Neller noted that single amphibious ships carrying Marines sometimes deploy to training exercises such as CARAT in the western Pacific and UNITAS in Latin America. He did not, however, point to any operational single-ship deployers.
The disaggregated MEU/ARG has become almost a routine situation once the units get in theater, especially since the mid-1990s. The Navy – with heavy input from the Marine Corps – significantly enhanced the design of a then-new class of amphibious ship, the San Antonio LPD 17-class of amphibious transport dock, to be able to operate independently of the ARG for long periods. Nine LPD 17s are currently in service, with more on the way.
But the Marines seem hesitant to take advantage of the greater communications and self-defense capabilities of the LPD 17s, at least ships that routinely deploy independent of an ARG. The ships are operating much as the far-less-capable Austin-class LPDs they replaced.
But ARGs continue to operate apart. At the moment, for example, the assault ship Wasp is in the Mediterranean, conducting anti-ISIS air strikes in support of government forces in Libya using aircraft from the 22nd MEU. The associated landing ship dock Whidbey Island, an older ship carrying other Marines from the 22nd, just completed a series of exercises in the Black Sea and entered the Red Sea earlier this week.
"I'm not saying it would never change," Neller said. "because once you say you've got it all figured out you're probably wrong, but I think the real discussion is do we by design deploy as a three-ship ARG/ MEU and do we, automatically by design not just by happenstance, distribute ourselves across the battlespace?
Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. Robert B. Neller
Photo Credit: Cpl. Samantha Draughon, USMC
"Because we've got to be able to come back together, because one of the ways we would create a larger landing force is to bring multiple amphibious ships, which would come from other Marine Expeditionary Units, together and aggregate them into a whole. They've got to be able to function together, they can't come together and figure it out at that time. They've got to be able to understand the entire landing plan."
Neller acknowledged the Corps is rethinking its force structure and how it matches up to potential future opponents.
"We're in the process of looking at the overall force structure, trying to project to 2025," he said. "I think we've got a pretty good idea with what we've observed with other potential peer competitors, and fights going on around the world.
"We have to figure out how to reshape this Marine Corps, and we are going to reshape it. We have to be able to survive on a modern battlefield, and that will be very different from what we've seen."
