Introduction
The connective tissue between the achievement of political objectives via military action is the men and women who serve in uniform.[i] People are the means, applying their specific capabilities, or ways, to achieve an objective, an end. Therefore, how militaries recruit, assign, and retain men and women remains an important aspect of strategy for militaries and states. Effective personnel management is becoming increasingly crucial due to current recruiting challenges, the growing dependence on technologically advanced roles within militaries, and unfolding global events. All of these factors are encapsulated by current events in Ukraine, being equal parts World War I trench warfare and off the shelf technologies. The need for personnel has not been diminished by technology, only increased, as evinced by calls for conscription by Russia and Ukraine.[ii] This essay argues how culture can adversely impact the management of personnel, degrading a military’s ability to generate sufficient readiness and diminishing the achievement of political objectives. This essay examines a single branch of the US military—the US Marine Corps, while its conclusions apply broadly across the Defense Department.
Marine Culture and its Origins
General Gray, the 29th Commandant, ushered in the era, “Every Marine is, first and foremost, a rifleman.”[iii] As scholar and Air Force Colonel, Jeffrey Donnithorne noted, “[T]he embodiment of Marine culture is…the enlisted Marine with his rifle.”[iv] Rifleman stresses the primacy of the infantry as foundational to Marine culture, a culture so strong other occupations and senior leaders within the Marine Corps uphold this hierarchy.[v] This essay argues rifleman was one of many Marine Corps identities throughout history suggesting, “No single quality is a true personification of the Marine Corps.”[vi] While rifleman undoubtedly added value, if maintained, it preserves personnel management processes detrimental to military effectiveness.
Determining how long rifleman has existed within the Marine Corps is required if this essay suggests divesting from it. To accomplish this, this essay uses a novel dataset to analyze the journal of the Marine Corps, the Marine Corps Gazette. For those unfamiliar with the Marine Corps Gazette, it is the Marine Corps’ professional journal with authors ranging in rank from enlisted service members to four-star generals. Using an open-source computer program known as “R,” text analysis was conducted to determine keyword frequencies. [vii] Every article from 1916 until 2022 was downloaded to create what is known as a corpus, or collection of documents.[viii] The corpus was searched for “rifleman,” with the results below.
Figure 1: Graph created by the author plotting the frequency of “Rifleman” from 1916-2022 using every article from the Marine Corps Gazette. The area in yellow highlights General Gray’s tenure as Commandant. The X-Axis is calendar year. The Y-Axis is frequency.
The graph indicates two trends. First, rifleman hit a peak frequency around 1960 before Gray’s tenure. Second, there is variation in the frequency of rifleman before and after Gray’s tenure. This indicates the rifleman identity, while not officially proclaimed until Gray, has existed in some capacity even before Gray’s tenure. Even with rifleman existing before Gray, this essay argues the rifleman identity being more ephemeral than enduring evinced by a lack of action taken by the service to formalize such an identity. The Marine Corps failed to formalize marksmanship training, the epitome of the rifleman identity, for the first half of the service’s existence.[ix] Therefore, rifleman, despite the current cultural identity, was not formalized into training requirements until the latter half of the Marine Corps’ lifespan. This lack of emphasis on formal training requirements is what underpins the preservation of ineffective personnel management practices that negatively impedes the generation of military readiness. Given this context, rifleman plays an outsized role in the management of personnel. This essay suggests a more apt cultural identity is the one espoused by the 13th Commandant, General Lejeune. Lejeune suggested “marine” be associated with “all that is highest in military efficiency.”[x]
The Importance of Culture
If rifleman is fundamental to Marine culture, then an overview of what culture is and how it impacts an organization is required. Peter Katzenstein, a political scientist and culture scholar, defines “organizational culture as the set of basic assumptions, values, norms, beliefs, and formal knowledge that shapes collective understandings.”[xi] Sociologist and scholar Ann Swidler indicates “culture consists of such symbolic vehicles of meaning, including beliefs, ritual practices, art forms, and ceremonies, as well as informal cultural practices such as language, gossip, stories, and rituals of daily life.”[xii] Culture also includes four categories, one being identity. Identity is “the character traits [a] group assigns to itself, the reputation it pursues, and individual roles and statuses it designates to members.”[xiii] This essay argues the rifleman culture is included in Marine Corps “beliefs” reflected by the “language” of general officers, to include written and spoken word.[xiv] The rifleman identity influences the “individual roles,” or personnel management, used by the Marine Corps. Plainly, culture influences policy preferences, including personnel related ones.[xv]
An example that encapsulates the rifleman culture is the published writing of two Marine Corps general officers. Generals Cooling and Turner note, “[T]he Marine Corps seeks to train every Marine as a rifleman. In other words, regardless of a Marine’s military occupational specialty (MOS), he or she is expected to be able to proficiently fight hand-to-hand and with infantry weapons systems up to and including heavy machine guns.”[xvi] A second example that reflects the emphasis placed on the rifleman culture is the selection of officers to lead the service, specifically general officer promotions. A majority of Marine Corps generals are infantry officers. This includes the highest office of the Marine Corps, the 4-star general leading the service, known as the Commandant. The office of the Commandant, in theory, is open to every occupation within the service, although data indicates the pathway to Commandant runs through the infantry. Even though infantry officers make up one of the smallest populations of the lower officer ranks for O1-O6, they make up a disproportionately high percentage of general officers and Commandants.[xvii] In fact, of the 15 Commandants that have led the Marine Corps during the US military’s volunteer era from 1973-present, 13 have been infantry officers by formal training, equating to 87 percent.[xviii] If a majority of general officers have an infantry background, selecting them as the senior leaders of the service is a means to preserve service culture through a solidified promotion pathway.[xix] This promotion pathway preserves personnel management practices that reflect training timelines that require little in terms of resources, specifically time and money, when compared to more advanced occupations, imitating an infantry career.[xx]
The Management of Personnel: A GRUNT Approach
The acronym “GRUNT,” stands for “General Replacement Unit, Not Trained,” a common reference to infantry Marines.[xxi] The acronym indicates infantry replacements required little if any training.[xxii] The failure to account for infantry training is reflected in a 2003 article written by Major David Edson. Edson concludes, “Currently, there is no requirement for formal infantry enlisted occupational training beyond the entry level. We treat advanced occupational training more as a hobby than a necessary professional requirement.”[xxiii] This essay suggests the GRUNT acronym is no longer valid for two reasons. First, it yields personnel policies that “make no distinction between an infantry soldier, whose youth can be an extremely desirable asset, and a computer network troubleshooter, whose skills generally continue to grow with experience.”[xxiv] Ignoring training requirements, specifically the time, costs, and resources required to generate a proficient service member providing the ability to capitalize on a subsequent return on a developed capability, may be better reflected by the fact that the Marine Corps did not establish formal training requirements for combat occupations until the 1990s.[xxv] While the first ground training manual was focused on tanks, it would take another decade for the first infantry training and readiness manual to be published in 2005.[xxvi]
Second, technology has permeated every occupation, to include infantry, now requiring a different approach to personnel management that accounts for the training requirements associated with adopting and successfully implementing such technologies. The historic approach, relied upon by the Marine Corps, results in the lowest level of personnel with more than four years of military service.[xxvii] This problem has been left to persist despite Commandant testimony revealing high turnover has been problematic since the 1960s.[xxviii] Even with the Marine Corps recently announcing a shift to an “invest and retain” strategy for personnel, frequent personnel turbulence as a result of relocation perpetuates the inability to generate readiness.[xxix] In 1958, Major General Weller, the general officer responsible for Marine Corps personnel, identified, “The undesirable effects of personnel instability are widely recognized. The individual is less competent and less confident. The family is adversely affected. The major damage, however, stems from the reduction in readiness.”[xxx] If the acronym is no longer valid, the personnel approach to satisfy this anachronism is also invalid, producing two unfavorable outcomes.[xxxi]
Figure 2: Created by the author using data from Martin Binkin, “Military Technology and Defense Manpower,” Brookings Institute 1986, p.127.[xxxii]
First, high turnover associated with historic military career timelines is no longer congruent with the training requirements, operating concepts, and technologies being advanced by infantry units and adjacent occupations required to support the infantry.[xxxiii] More importantly, such an approach is incongruent with the military operating concepts pursued by the United States since the late 1990s.[xxxiv] A Marine Corps infantry expert, Chief Warrant Officer Stephen LaRose, illustrates the growing complexity at the tactical level with infantry units leveraging organic technologies that include small unmanned aircraft systems and loitering munitions.[xxxv] LaRose admitted the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are removed from the wars the US military is now preparing for with infantry units responsible for harnessing greater technology.[xxxvi] A reliance on more advanced technologies equates to longer training timelines.[xxxvii] While this trend is more evident now, the Marine Corps has relied upon advanced technologies, specifically aviation, requiring longer training timelines, since the beginning of the 20th century.[xxxviii] Aviation was cemented in the Marine Corps’ primary organizational structure, the Marine Air Ground Task Force, in 1962, without ever changing the management of personnel to support the service’s pinnacle warfighting organization.[xxxix]
Figure 3: Eric Reid, “The Courage to Change: Modernizing U.S. Marine Corps human capital investment and retention.” Comparative Annual Active Duty Enlisted Force Turnover by Service (FY2017), p.29.[xl]
Second, a universal approach to personnel that fails to discern between occupations poses challenges as the service seeks to leverage more technical occupations that require longer training timelines.[xli] For example, the useable time for a Marine at an operational unit, where a Marine builds experience and proficiency, has decreased over time.[xlii] Unfortunately, as the Marine Corps increased its reliance upon advanced technologies and weapon systems, useable time decreased through the continued use of generic tour lengths.[xliii] This problem is not unknown to senior leaders. In a 1999 memorandum to the 32nd Commandant, General James Jones, it was noted, “The Marine Corps seems to be shifting very much towards occupational values focused more on specialization.”[xliv] Failing to accommodate such an approach results in the inability to generate, but more importantly retain experience, proficiency, and readiness. Marine Corps doctrine states, “Technical proficiency—especially in weapons employment— matters more than cunning or creativity.”[xlv] Marine Corps doctrine also emphasizes the management of personnel as a key to success seeking “to achieve personnel stability within units and staffs.”[xlvi] The current management of personnel is at odds with the Marine Corps’ pinnacle doctrine, MCDP-1, Warfighting, reflected by the 38th Commandant, General David Berger. In Talent Management 2030 the 38th Commandant noted “when it comes to personnel management, we flip our warfighting philosophy and combat-tested model on its head.”[xlvii]
While the focus of this article is military effectiveness, it would be foolish to ignore the mounting budgetary resources required to develop technical occupations with militaries facing the fiscal realities of constant or declining budgetary resources. Senior leaders whose careers required minimal training when compared to technical occupations must overcome a desire to treat each individual universally, ignoring the variable costs, training requirements, and capabilities Marine Corps operating concepts and doctrine rely upon that infantry centric management practices discount. A universal approach to personnel that ignores these costs will require the reallocation of funds from other budgetary accounts, specifically modernization or readiness. Diverting funds from readiness or modernization accounts produces a less capable and less prepared force for the future. Preserving inefficient personnel management practices that ignore the time and resources various occupations require absorbs additional monetary resources at the expense of other service priorities. The consumption of additional budgetary resources degrades from the service’s ability to pursue ongoing modernization efforts to include Force Design 2030 and perhaps the more important and essential quality of life improvements found within Barracks 2030.[xlviii]
The Counterargument
The likely counterargument is to maintain the rifleman culture at the expense of changing the Marine Corps’ approach to personnel management. This counterargument knowingly accepts the degradation of military effectiveness. A common denominator found within the counterarguments regarding Talent Management 2030 penned by retired Marines is the personnel changes would degrade Marine culture.[xlix] While these arguments seem well-intended, they fail to address the degradation of military capability the current approach to the management of personnel yields. To address such counterarguments there are two points worth emphasizing. First, rifleman was not the cultural identity for the Marine Corps’ entire history, nor was it a consistent topic of discussion as depicted in the graph above. The culture of the Marine Corps has always been one of high military proficiency emphasizing the human element of war while having to satisfy the Congressionally mandated requirement to remain the nation’s force in readiness.[l] Second, technology will continue to evolve, and centering an organization around a piece of equipment dismisses the required adaptations for modern warfare while diminishing the human element of war. The current Commandant, General Eric Smith, emphasized the rifleman identity in the most recent Marine Corps birthday message, “Every Marine a Rifleman and Everyone fights.”[li] While the message by General Smith emphasizes the Marine Corps’ commitment to every Marine being a rifleman, this essay questions how well everyone will fight if the current personnel system, centered around the rifleman, is left in place. The latter aspect of General Smith’s message being the metric to which all military forces must measure themselves against in the achievement of political goals, not just that everyone fights, but how well they fight.
Lastly, infantry occupations comprise a fraction of Marine Corps personnel.[lii] As Mansoor and Murray identify in their extensive work on military culture when discussing the occupational breakdown within the Marine Corps, “The distribution of officers by MOS [military occupational specialty] suggests a force of technological and operational sophistication and complexity.”[liii] This occupational assortment produces a military service with a majority of personnel whose occupations differ dramatically from infantry occupations, who are unable to develop the required capabilities and military readiness the Marine Corps must possess to be successful. The inability to develop and retain sufficient capability to support infantry forces stands in opposition to the Marine Corps’ priority of building a force whose sole purpose in life is to support the infantry. If everything the Marine Corps does supports the rifleman, having a personnel management system that allows for requisite capability development is step one to achieving broader organizational and strategic goals.
Conclusion
This essay seeks to accomplish two things. First, stimulate the evolution of a military service that prides itself as being adaptive with an institutional paranoia for remaining relevant while highlighting the relationship between the achievement of strategy and the management of military personnel.[liv] Divesting from the rifleman moniker may seem anathema, but maintaining a culture that degrades military capability is a far greater affront. As scholar Jeannie Johnson noted, “An overconfidence in the “every Marine a rifleman” mantra may have serious consequences when stretched too far.”[lv] The problem will continue as units increase the levels of computer programmers, robotics experts, electronic warfare experts, and drone operators required for future operating concepts and warfare.[lvi] This essay suggests General Gray would be the first to welcome such a discussion as a self-proclaimed “maverick” willing to discuss and pursue “new ideas.”[lvii] As Marine officer Leo Spader noted, “Our history demonstrates that marines can envision what the United States needs to face the challenges of the future. We just need a coherent, inspired identity to implement.”[lviii] The Marine Corps must avoid a past replete with failed militaries who ignored technological advancements to preserve cultures dependent upon outdated weaponry compromising military effectiveness.[lix]
Second, and more broadly, apply the conclusions of this article to the broader strategic topic of personnel management for the Department of Defense. The Defense Department is preparing for a variety of challenges across the globe while rapidly pursuing technologies across various domains that will fundamentally challenge organizational and intraservice cultures.[lx] Shifting from manned to unmanned systems will not lessen the need for personnel; successful implementation requires all military services objectively view the ability to generate military readiness through new personnel management practices while divorcing themselves of historically sacrosanct occupations and cultural identities.[lxi] As military innovation scholar Stephen Rosen noted, militaries are often prone to preserve ineffective technologies to safeguard “tradition” with culture preventing required personnel reforms from taking hold.[lxii]
[i] Carl von Clausewitz et al., On War (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1984).
[ii] Raphael S. Cohen, Return of the Military Draft, Foreign Policy, July 10, 2024, https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/07/10/military-draft-conscription-soldiers-technology-nato-europe-russia-ukraine/, accessed October 10, 2024; Putting Orders Conscription of 133,000 servicemen in Russia’s autumn draft, Reuters, September 30, 2024, https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-orders-conscription-133000-servicemen-russias-autumn-draft-2024-09-30/; Samya Kullab and Illia Novikov, Ukraine’s parliament passes a controversial law to boost much-needed conscripts as war drags on, Associated Press, April 11, 2024, https://apnews.com/article/ukraine-parliament-recruit-army-russia-war-5b7d9f58bb398b4ad1296311b8130b92.
[iii] United States Marine Corps, Training and Education Command, ‘Every Marine A Rifleman’ Begins at Recruit Training. May 11, 2012. https://www.tecom.marines.mil/In-the-News/Stories/News-Article-Display/Article/528587/every-marine-a-rifleman-begins-at-recruit-training/#:~:text=MARINE%20CORPS%20RECRUIT%20DEPOT%2C%20San,Alfred%20M.
[iv] Jeffrey W. Donnithorne, Four Guardians: A Principled Agent View of American Civil-Military Relations (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018), Introduction, Kindle Edition.
[v] Irene Loewensen, No. 2 Marine, a pilot, insists on continued primacy of infantry. Marine Corps Times. May 13, 2024. https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/your-marine-corps/2024/05/13/no-2-marine-a-pilot-insists-on-continued-primacy-of-infantry/.
[vi] Lieutenant General (Ret.) Victor H. Krulak, First to Fight: An Inside View of the U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Naval Institute Press, 1984, 3.
[vii] For information regarding the computer program used in this essay, please see: https://www.r-project.org/about.html.
[viii] For more information regarding text analysis, please see: Justin Grimmer, Margaret E. Roberts, and Brandon M. Stewart, Text as Data: A New Framework for Machine Learning and the Social Sciences (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2022). The corpus was created through the database Proquest Central using the Marine Corps Gazette (pre-1994), Mar 1916 (Vol.1, no-1)-Dec 1993 (Vol. 77, no.12), Marine Corps Gazette, Jan 1994 (Vol.78, no.1)-Dec 2022 (Vol. 106, no.12) Marine Corps Association, Quantico, VA.
[ix] David J. Ulbrich, Preparing for Victory: Thomas Holcomb and the Making of the Modern Marine Corps, 1936-1943 (Annapolis, Md: Naval Institute Press, 2011).
[x] Headquarters Marine Corps, General John A. Lejeune’s Birthday Message, https://www.marines.mil/Portals/1/Docs/lejeuneMessage2004.pdf.
[xi] Peter J. Katzenstein and Social Science Research Council, eds., The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics, New Directions in World Politics (New York, NY: Columbia Univ. Press, 1996), 202.
[xii] Ann Swidler, “Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies,” American Sociological Review 51, no. 2 (April 1986): 273, https://doi.org/10.2307/2095521, 273.
[xiii] Jeannie L. Johnson, The Marines, Counterinsurgency, and Strategic Culture Lessons Learned and Lost in America’s Wars (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2018), Chapter 1 Kindle Edition.
[xiv] Johnson, 151. As Johnson highlights, Marine culture is reflected and communicated in various written and spoken mediums to include, “Commandants’ speeches, training manuals, official histories, and doctrinal texts are all rich repositories of additional values, norms, and beliefs officially pursued by Marine Corps leadership.”
[xv] Donnithorne, Four Guardians, Introduction, Kindle Edition.
[xvi] Norman Cooling and Roger Turner, “Understanding the Few Good Men: An Analysis of Marine Corps Service Culture,” n.d., 8, http://www.darack.com/sawtalosar/USMC-SERVICE-CULTURE.pdf.
[xvii] Kimberly Jackson, Katherine L. Kidder, Sean Mann, William H. Waggy II, Natasha Lander, and S. Rebecca Zimmerman, Raising the Flag Implications of U.S. Military Approaches to General and Flag Officer Development, RAND Corporation, August 10, 2020, 30, 160, https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR4347.html. Figure 3.6 indicates that over 80 percent of all 4-star generals are infantry officers for the Marine Corps and make up a majority, or largest percentage of 1–3-star generals. Take this into account when considering infantry officers comprise one of the smallest categories of officers for the ranks of O1-O6 (Figure 7.1). Even making up the smallest percentage of non-general officer ranks, infantry make up a majority for all general officer ranks.
[xviii] The two exceptions to this are General Gray and General Amos. General Gray, by formal training was an artillery officer and General Amos was a naval aviator. See Headquarters Marine Corps, Alfred M. Gray Jr., USMC (Retired), https://www.usmcu.edu/Research/Marine-Corps-History-Division/People/Whos-Who-in-Marine-Corps-History/Gagnon-Ingram/General-Alfred-M-Gray-Jr/; Headquarters Marine Corps, James F. Amos, USMC (Retired), https://www.usmcu.edu/Research/Marine-Corps-History-Division/People/Whos-Who-in-Marine-Corps-History/Abrell-Cushman/General-James-F-Amos/.
[xix] Stephen Peter Rosen, Winning the next War: Innovation and the Modern Military, Cornell Studies in Security Affairs (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991). Rosen discusses the use of promotion pathways to allow military innovation to take hold. The same promotion pathways can preserve certain aspects of a military, to include its culture as evinced by the outsized selection of infantry officers to the highest ranks within the Marine Corps although they make up a numerically small proportion of the total force.
[xx] For a more detailed analysis of the role of culture and military policy decisions, see Elizabeth Kier, Imagining War: French and British Military Doctrine between the Wars, Princeton Studies in International History and Politics ; 153 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017), 4, https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400887477.
[xxi] Todd Neikirk, Did the Term ‘Grunt’ Originate in Vietnam or During WWII? War History Online. Mar 21, 2022. https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/grunt-origins.html.
[xxii] See General Robert E. Cushman, Green Letter No. 1-73: CMC conference, Quantico, Virginia; 30 Nov – 1 Dec 1972, 6 Feb 1973, Headquarters Marine Corps. General Cushman identified discussions of senior general officers within the USMC gathered and 6 priority education initiatives were discussed with the second priority being “Establish an infantry follow-on course at the Basic School”,6. See also, Statement of General Louis H. Wilson, Commandant of the Marine Corps, On Marine Corps Posture, Plans, and Programs for FY 1980 through 1984, Marine Corps Posture Statements, 1976-1986, Box 1, 33 / A / 1 / 2, US Marine Corps Archives, Quantico, VA. General Wilson noted Infantry training was frequently conducted using on the job (OJT) training, and infantry Marines were not “sufficiently trained.” Wilson established a 4-week infantry training course on October 1, 1978.
[xxiii] Edson, David W. "Infantry Enlisted MOS Progression Training." Marine Corps Gazette 87, no. 2 (02, 2003): 43-45. https://www.proquest.com/trade-journals/infantry-enlisted-mos-progression-training/docview/221412575/se-2.
[xxiv] Cindy Williams, ed., Filling the Ranks: Transforming the U.S. Military Personnel System, BCSIA Studies in International Security (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2004), 17. See also Rostker, Bernard D. “I Want You!: The Evolution of the All-Volunteer Force.” RAND Corporation, July 17, 2006. https://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/MG265.html, 319. Even with this emphasis on the infantry, since the mid 1970s, the Marine Corps was comprised of “75 percent” of occupations being “in the support category.”
[xxv] Training and readiness manuals provide the time and resources required to take an individual without any training and develop them into someone with advanced training and qualifications within their primary occupation.
[xxvi] Headquarters Marine Corps, NAVMC 3500.44, Infantry Training and Readiness Manual, 30 Aug 2013, https://www.marines.mil/Portals/1/NAVMC%203500.44B.pdf. The first ground training manual was for tanks in 1995. See MCO P3500.72A, Marine Corps Ground Training and Readiness (T&R) Program, 18 Apr 05, https://www.marines.mil/portals/1/Publications/MCO%20P3500.72A.pdf. Ground occupations mirrored aviation occupations through the adoption of training and readiness manuals, 1.
[xxvii] Bernard D. Rostker, “I Want You!: The Evolution of the All-Volunteer Force” (RAND Corporation, July 17, 2006), https://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/MG265.html; Eric Reid, “The Courage to Change: Modernizing U.S. Marine Corps Human Capital Investment and Retention,” Brookings Institute, June 2021, 62; Martin Binkin, Military Technology and Defense Manpower, Studies in Defense Policy (Washington, D.C: Brookings Institution, 1986).David Berger, “Talent Management 2030,” United States Marine Corps Flagship, November 2021, 6, https://www.hqmc.marines.mil/Portals/142/Users/183/35/4535/Talent%20Management%202030_November%202021.pdf. In this document, the 38th Commandant recognized the Marine Corps’ approach to personnel when compared to other military services, “The Marine Corps is unique among the services in embracing an enlisted force model that perpetuates this remarkably high turnover rate. Indeed, while the other services have matured their forces over the last few decades, the Marine Corps has remained committed to preserving its bottom-heavy grade structure and youthful character, maintaining the largest percentage of teenagers among the services.”
[xxviii] Statement of General Wallace M. Greene Jr. US Marine Corps, Commandant of the Marine Corps, Before the House Committee on Armed Services, 1965. US Marine Corps Posture Statements, 1960-1975, Box 1, 33/A/1/1, US Marine Corps Archives, Quantico, VA. General Greene stated, “We need to slow down these expensive turnovers of trained technicians,” 8.
[xxix] See Headquarters Marine Corps, Marine Corps Crushes Fiscal Year 2024 End Strength with Historic Retention, Recruiting Success, 23 Sep 2024, https://www.marines.mil/News/Press-Releases/Press-Release-Display/Article/3913938/marine-corps-crushes-fiscal-year-2024-end-strength-with-historic-retention-recr/#:~:text=This%20year%20was%20historic%20for,over%205%2C700%20subsequent%2Dterm%20Marines. It should be noted, this was only an announcement, there was no formal policy associated with the announcement formalizing an “invest and retain” strategy and how the Marine Corps would preserve such an approach.
[xxx] Donald M Weller and William R Collins, “Personnel Readiness,” Marine Corps Gazette (Pre-1994) 42, no. 12 (December 1958): 8.
[xxxi] See also Cameron, Craig M. American Samurai: Myth, Imagination, and the Conduct of Battle in the First Marine Division, 1941-1951. Acls Humanities E-Book. Cambridge [U.K.]: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Cameron notes during the build-up to World War II, Marine Corps personnel replacement was an “afterthought” with training initially being two weeks of physical conditioning eventually elongated to 8 weeks, 85.
[xxxii] Martin Binkin uses Fiscal 1972-1976 data from Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manpower, Reserve Affairs, and Logistics, America’s Volunteers: A Report on the All-Volunteer Armed Forces (DOD, 1978), p.82; fiscal 1978-87 provided by Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manpower, Installations, and Logistics, August 1985. Of note, 1987 is indicated as projected per the footnote associated with the graph.
[xxxiii] David Berger, “Force Design 2030,” March 2020, https://www.hqmc.marines.mil/Portals/142/Docs/CMC38%20Force%20Design%202030%20Report%20Phase%20I%20and%20II.pdf?ver=2020-03-26-121328-460; Scott Cuomo, “On-the-Ground Truth and Force Design 2030 Reconciliation: A Way Forward,” War on the Rocks, July 12, 2022, https://warontherocks.com/2022/07/on-the-ground-truth-and-force-design-2030-reconciliation-a-way-forward/; Robert Work, “Marine Force Design: Changes Overdue Despite Critics’ Claims,” May 10, 2023, https://tnsr.org/2023/05/marine-force-design-changes-overdue-despite-critics-claims/.
[xxxiv] Office of the Secretary of Defense Historical Office, Quadrennial Defense Review, https://history.defense.gov/Historical-Sources/Quadrennial-Defense-Review/. The first Quadrennial Defense Review was published in May 1997, noting a decline in the sizes of military forces while relying upon technology. For example, the report states, “But it has become clear that we are failing to acquire the modem technology and systems that will be essential for our forces to successfully protect our national security interests in the future,” iv.
[xxxv] Stephen Larose, “A View From the Trenches on the Debate Wracking the Marine Corps,” War on the Rocks, May 6, 2022, https://warontherocks.com/2022/05/a-view-from-the-trenches-on-the-debate-wracking-the-marine-corps/.
[xxxvi] See also Controversy & Clarity podcast with Marines from Alpha Company, Infantry Battalion-Experiment (IBX), https://open.spotify.com/episode/4i49YtjUGdBgYetgKYxw4L?si=vHjSfgM1Se6fbEIh1R4vDA.
The podcast reveals the requirements of operational concepts being tested by the Marine Corps. Sep 9, 2022. Stephen Biddle also reveals modern military requirements and the noticeable increase in skillsets required of servicemember, “Among the most serious drawbacks of the modern system is its tremendous complexity, and the high levels of skill it therefore demands in soldiers and officers,” Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle, Princeton University Press, 97.
[xxxvii] An example of longer training timelines and useable time by the services, see Government Accountability Office (GAO), Military Cyber Personnel: Opportunities Exist to Improve Service Obligation Guidance and Data Tracking. December 2022. https://www.gao.gov/assets/d23105423.pdf.
[xxxviii] Edward C. Johnson, Marine Corps Aviation: The Early Years 1912-1940, History and Museums Division, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, Washington, D.C., 1977, https://www.marines.mil/portals/1/Publications/Marine%20Corps%20Aviation%20The%20Early%20Years%201912-1940%20PCN%2019000316800_1.pdf.
[xxxix] Douglas E. Nash, Sr., The “Afloat-Ready Battalion,” Marine Corps History, Vol. 3, No. 1, Summer 2017, 82, https://www.usmcu.edu/Portals/218/Marine%20Expeditionary%20Unit%2C%201898-1978%20.pdf.
[xl] Eric Reid has the following endnote associated with the figure provided concerning US military service turnover. “Derived from “Appendix B: Active Component. Table B-1: Non-Prior Service (NPS) Active Component Enlisted Accessions, FY16: by Service, Gender, and Age with Civilian Comparison Group” and “Appendix B: Active Component. Table B-15: Active Component Enlisted Members, FY16: by Service, Gender, and Age Group with Civilian Comparison Group,” in “Population Representation in the Military Services: Fiscal Year 2016,” Office of the Under Secretary of Defense, Personnel and Readiness, U.S. Department of Defense, https://www.cna.org/pop-rep/2016/summary/summary.html.”
[xli] For example, see loitering munition priority given by the 38th Commandant, General David. H. Berger. Jon Harper, Marine Corps commandant gung-ho about loitering munitions. Fed Scoop. May 10, 2022. https://fedscoop.com/marine-corps-commandant-gung-ho-about-loitering-munitions/. See also General David H. Berger, 38th Commandant who discusses abandoning manned aviation operating concepts if sufficient pilot levels cannot be maintained. Berger, David. “Recruiting Requires Bold Changes.” U.S. Naval Institute, November 1, 2022. https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2022/november/recruiting-requires-bold-changes.
[xlii] GAO report indicates Marine Corps does not “track staffing data by work role,” when examining cyber occupations (p.2). Government Accountability Office (GAO), Military Cyber Personnel: Opportunities Exist to Improve Service Obligation Guidance and Data Tracking. December 2022. https://www.gao.gov/assets/d23105423.pdf.
[xliii] For an illustration of how technologically advanced occupations increased since the 1980s across the military services, to include the Marine Corps, see Martin Binkin, Military Technology and Defense Manpower, Studies in Defense Policy (Washington, D.C: Brookings Institution, 1986); For information regarding the growing complexity of warfare requiring greater intellect and training, see Stephen D. Biddle, Military Power : Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 2004).
[xliv] James L. Jones Collection, COLL/4482, Box A-10-A-7-4, CMC Suggested Comments for CMC Briefs to HQMC Briefs, July 13, 1999, Marine Corps History Division, Quantico, VA.
[xlv] Headquarters Marine Corps, “Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication 1, Warfighting,”, 2018, 2–15.
[xlvi] Headquarters Marine Corps, “Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication 1, Warfighting,” 64, https://www.marines.mil/Portals/1/Publications/MCDP%201%20Warfighting.pdf.
[xlvii] Berger, “Talent Management 2030,” 9.
[xlviii] David Berger, “Force Design 2030,” March 2020, https://www.hqmc.marines.mil/Portals/142/Docs/CMC38%20Force%20Design%202030%20Report%20Phase%20I%20and%20II.pdf?ver=2020-03-26-121328-460; Irene Loeweson, Corps seeks $274M to fix billions-dollar barracks problems, Marine Corps Times, Mar. 11, 2024, https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/your-marine-corps/2024/03/11/corps-seeks-274m-to-fix-billions-dollar-barracks-problems/.
[xlix] Gregory Newbold, “Talent Management 2030 Will Hurt the Marine Corps More than It Will Help,” April 21, 2022, https://taskandpurpose.com/news/marine-corps-talent-management-critique/; Col James K. Van Riper (retired), “Marine Talent Management 2030: Flawed Foundation, Flawed Document,” November 1, 2022, https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/your-marine-corps/2022/11/01/marine-talent-management-2030-flawed-foundation-flawed-document/; Col Warren Parker (retired), “The Unintended Consequences of Marine Corps Talent Management 2030,” Marine Corps Times, October 14, 2022, https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/opinion/2022/10/14/the-unintended-consequences-of-marine-corps-talent-management-2030/.
[l] US Marine Corps, Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication 1, Warfighting. April 4, 2018. https://www.marines.mil/portals/1/Publications/MCDP%201%20Warfighting%20GN.pdf?ver=2019-01-31-110543-300. “Fixing The Personnel Strength of the United States Marine Corps, Adding the Commandant of the Marine Corps as a Member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” June 30, 1951.
“Fixing The Personnel Strength of the United States Marine Corps, and Establishing the Relationship Of the Commandant of the Marine Corps to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.” US Congress, April 17, 1951.
“Fixing the Personnel Strength of the United States Marine Corps, and Establishing the Relationship of the Commandant of the Marine Corps to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.” US Congress, June 19, 1952.
[li] Headquarters Marine Corps, The 249th Marine Corps Birthday Message, Oct 15, 2024, https://www.marines.mil/News/Marines-TV/videoid/940854/dvpTag/birthday/.
[lii] It is worth referring to a comparison made by Mansoor and Murray about Marine Corps personnel and occupational breakdown. Mansoor and Murray state, “The distribution of officers by MOS suggests a force of technological and operational sophistication and complexity. Infantry officers number 2,281 while the total number of artillery and mechanized vehicle officers is only 1,319. Logistics and supply specialists number 2,502. The fields that blend ISR and communications have 2,536 officers. The single largest officer MOS category remains pilot or naval flight officer: 5,233, or about twice the number of infantry officers. The number of aviation specialists is enlarged by another 1,735 officers who have anti-air missions and non-flying ground missions. The distribution of enlisted MOSs likewise exposes the Marine Corps’s technical complexity. It is no surprise that 28,619 enlisted men are infantrymen, working in concert with 4,312 artillerymen and 2,477 crewmen of tanks and amphibian assault vehicles. At this point, “the Sands of Iwo Jima” vision fades, despite the Marine Corps’s insistence that “every Marine is a rifleman.” If one aggregates all the troops in the MOS 60-category of aviation services, they number 29,287 aviation specialists. The MOS aggregation of ISR-cyberwar-communications personnel produces a total of 20,725 specialists. Another large MOS is the 35 field; 13,003 personnel are in motor transport as drivers or mechanics,” 384.
Mansoor, Peter R., and Williamson Murray, eds. The Culture of Military Organizations. New York, NY : Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2019.
[liii] Mansoor, Peter R., and Williamson Murray, eds. The Culture of Military Organizations. New York, NY : Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2019, 383.
[liv] Jeffrey W. Donnithorne, Four Guardians: A Principled Agent View of American Civil-Military Relations. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018, Introduction, Kindle Edition. See also Frank Hoffman, “The Marine Mask of War - Foreign Policy Research Institute,” 2011, https://www.fpri.org/article/2011/11/the-marine-mask-of-war/.
[lv] Jeannie L. Johnson, The Marines, Counterinsurgency, and Strategic Culture Lessons Learned and Lost in America’s Wars (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2018), Chapter 4, Kindle Edition.
[lvi] Irene Loewensen, New robotics job filed may be coming to the Marine Corps. Jun 5, 2023. https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/your-marine-corps/2023/06/05/new-robotics-job-field-may-be-coming-to-the-marine-corps/. Seth J. Frantzman, US Marines buy 200 tactical robots from Israel’s Roboteam amid all-time high demand: CEO. Breaking Defense. May 30, 2024, https://breakingdefense.com/2024/05/us-marines-buy-200-tactical-robots-from-israels-roboteam-amid-all-time-high-demand-ceo/.
[lvii] Edgar Puryear Jr., Marine Corps Generalship (NDU Press, 2009), 47.
[lviii] Leo Spaeder, “Sir, Who Am I? An Open Letter to the Incoming Commandant of the Marine Corps,” War on the Rocks, March 28, 2019, https://warontherocks.com/2019/03/sir-who-am-i-an-open-letter-to-the-incoming-commandant-of-the-marine-corps/.
[lix] See Rosen, Stephen Peter. Winning the next War: Innovation and the Modern Military. Cornell Studies in Security Affairs. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991, 2-3. Rosen discusses how the calvary, although no longer militarily effective was left to persist because it was the seat of tradition.
[lx] Ashley Roque, Pentagon announces 4 drones, loitering munitions now under Replicator, Breaking Defense, November 13, 2024, https://breakingdefense.com/2024/11/pentagon-announces-4-drones-loitering-munitions-now-under-replicator/.
[lxi] Paul Scharre, Yes, Unmanned Combat Aircraft Are the Future, War on the Rocks, August 11, 2015, https://warontherocks.com/2015/08/yes-unmanned-combat-aircraft-are-the-future/.
[lxii] See endnote 54 and Cindy Williams, ed., Filling the Ranks: Transforming the U.S. Military Personnel System, BCSIA Studies in International Security (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2004), Chapter 13, 292.