MARSOC YEAR IN REVIEW Maj. Gen. Carl E. Mundy III, commander of U.S. Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command, visits students in the MARSOC Combat Support Orientation Course at the multipurpose canine training facility aboard Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, March 22, 2018.
U.S. MARINE CORPS PHOTO BY CPL. BRYANN K. WHITLEY
for change of command in August, Maj. Gen. q AsCarlheE.prepares Mundy III reflected on his two years as commander of Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command (MARSOC) and the legacy of change he is leaving behind. Key to it is the publication of “MARSOF 2030,” which details how MARSOC needs to evolve in the next decade to face a new set of threats and adversaries. (MARSOF – Marine Special Operations Forces – refers generically to the operational force; MARSOC is the Marine Corps’ service component to U.S. Special Operations Command [USSOCOM]; Raiders are what individual members of MARSOC are called since the formal deactivation of Marine Special Operations Battalions and reactivation of the Marine Raider Battalions that took place on June 19, 2015.) Key to MARSOC’s evolution is taking a hard, realistic view of the future and avoiding “fighting the last war.” “We are heavily invested in the current conflict, so our forces have an aggressive operations and deployment tempo. The challenge is having enough time and capacity – human resources – to be able to focus on getting ready for the next threat while dealing with the current,” he told Special Operations Outlook. “That’s the current impediment. “The key success is we were able to focus on the future and come up with a vision that will help us develop more specific innovation pathways or roadmaps to help implement that vision. There is a lot of hard work that needs to go into implementing a vision, but I think we’ve taken a huge step. We have just published the core document, so we are beginning the next step, which is to develop a deliberate implementation plan. From that, we will develop more specific pathways that will put flesh on the bone for each of the four pillars.” Mundy was referring to his four priority areas for MARSOC: • Provision of integrated full-spectrum special operations forces (SOF); • Capabilities integration between SOF and Marine Air Ground Task Forces (MAGTF); • Future force development; and • Preservation of the Force and Families. “Providing our force begins with the recruitment process and continues through our assessment, selection, and individual training
pipeline. We are focused on recruiting the best individuals from across the Marine Corps,” he told the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities on April 11. “Our training is progressive. As individuals earn new special operations specialties, they are moved to teams or special skills training environments. The culminating exercise for Marine Special Operations Companies (MSOCs) and Marine Special Operations Teams (MSOTs) is Exercise Raven. MARSOC created Raven to assess and certify MSOCs and MSOTs for deployment. Held six times each year, the exercise emphasizes realistic decision-making for company and team commanders and provides a venue to practice the full planning, decision, execution, and assessment cycle. “This training continues until deployment and covers everything from individual skill sets to high-end, advanced, complex unit collective training. The training environments we create are dynamic. Not only do they prepare our Raiders for the current operational challenge, but they also evolve based on emerging threats and our expected participation in support of standing operational plans. Another benefit of the Raven exercise is its utility as a venue for integrating conventional Marine Corps resources into what is otherwise a SOF-centric exercise.” “Throughout our internal wargame series, four discrete concepts or themes consistently emerged. Each theme describes a distinct aspect of a vision for MARSOC, but at the same time each built upon the others, such that the four are interconnected and mutually supporting,” said Mundy. “Together, they provide a strong conceptual basis for a future MARSOC force that outpaces changes in the operating environment and remains a reliable force across warfighting and Title X functions.” Collectively, these themes have come together to form Mundy’s “four core pathways of innovation”: 1. MARSOF as a Connector – capturing MARSOC’s facility in building cohesive, task-organized teams to become the ideal integrator and synchronizer of U.S. capabilities with USSOCOM and partner-nation actions 2. Combined Arms for the Connected Arena – recognizing the need to “sense” and “make sense of” what is happening in diverse and multidimensional environments, using cyber and information domains as potential venues for conflict now and in the future and becoming as comfortable operating in those virtual domains as in the physical 3. The Cognitive Operator – touching all other pathways and priorities, the future “requires a SOF operator with an equal amount of brains to match brawn, foresight in addition to fortitude,” presiding over expanded capabilities that include influencing allies and partners; understanding complex problems; applying a broad set of national, theater, and interagency capabilities to those problems; and fighting as adeptly in the virtual space as the physical 4. Enterprise Level Agility – leveraging MARSOC’s small size as an advantage; having its own component headquarters, for example, allows the command to rapidly reorient to confront new challenges as they emerge, an organizational dexterity that can provide USSOCOM with an agile, adaptable force to meet unexpected or rapidly changing requirements The second priority is providing a bridge for routine capabilities integration with SOF and the deployed MAGTF to fully maximize the complementary capabilities of each formation, especially in light of near-peer/emerging competitors.
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