In U.S. Navy circles, a huge debate exploded around the Marine Corps’ surprise effort to procure Light Amphibious Warships. The LAW, envisioned in 2019 as a class of 24 to 35 small-but-cheap $150 million amphibious ships, were proposed as a cost-effective means to move small groups of Marines around the Pacific. But, in Washington, the idea has gone over like a lead balloon,
with many naval bureaucrats hoping the project will go away when the LAW’s biggest advocate, General David H. Berger, the smart, reform-minded Marine Corps commandant, retires.
Some theorists believe the LAW concept is already sunk.
The Navy’s powerful shipbuilders, vested in building bigger and far more expensive amphibious assault vessels, despise the LAW concept and see it as an existential threat. The Navy’s high-end warfighters, disinterested in escort duties, scoff that the LAW is just a “Large, Slow Target,” leaving many Marines to wonder just how they’ll survive ashore if they are supported by the smaller, slower craft. Even Congress—which is eager to grow the Navy—seems skeptical.
Many D.C. insiders consider the LAW as something of a vanity project, dismissing it as a weakly thought out effort to keep the Marine Corps relevant.
There’s also some ill will; Distributed Maritime Operations—a strategic framework to try and spread small warfighting platforms around areas of potential conflict, irking and vexing rivals—
was a Navy concept, and yet, the Marine Corps has been far more successful in exploiting the idea, promoting the platform as a key enabler of their Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations concept.
The Marine Corps sees the LAW as a
route to modern warfighting legitimacy—a way for expeditionary troops to support the fleet, using “mobile, low-signature, persistent, and relatively easy to maintain and sustain naval expeditionary forces” to “conduct sea denial, support sea control or enable fleet sustainment.” It is a risky proposal—akin to giving World War II Coast Watchers, operating in secret, often behind enemy lines, anti-ship guns and fleet support tasks. But the LAW, if built in numbers, gives the Marine Corps a way to engage in almost every single activity required to sustain a modern, island-hopping force.
No warfighting concept is perfect, but
Washington’s disregard of the LAW is extremely short-sighted. In the worst case, the LAWs will be relegated to useful, utilitarian tasks, handling the myriad of things “big” Navy likes to pretend it doesn’t need. LAWs can certainly facilitate inter-theatre transport, and, at best, the LAW puts the Marines front-and center, where they can grab headlines while worrying away at rivals and fretting the opposition—just like Vladimir Putin is doing with his old and decrepit
Ropuchas.
www.forbes.com
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