Archive: June 29, 2023

Sexually harassed sailors and Marines will get more support resources

Sailors, Marines and midshipmen subjected to sexual harassment now have access to resources available to sexual assault victims, according to a new Department of the Navy policy signed June 9.

Those who’ve experienced sexual harassment may now receive crisis intervention, safety assessments, counseling resources and victim advocacy support, and they may discuss reporting options with personnel from the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Program.

“This policy reflects the department’s commitment to creating a culture of dignity and respect, and strengthening victim support services,” said Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro in a statement accompanying a June 26 press release. “We take victims’ experiences seriously, and we are committed to creating an environment where victims of sexual harassment are heard, validated and feel safe to report their experience and receive supportive services.”

Sailors, Marines reporting sexual assault will not be punished for related ‘minor misconduct’

The Department of the Navy defines sexual harassment as unwanted sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature that impacts an individual’s employment.

The policy aligns with recommendations included in the FY22 National Defense Authorization Act.

“Preventing sexual harassment within an organization requires a comprehensive and multifaceted approach,” said Andrea N. Goldstein, acting director of the DON Office of Force Resiliency, in a statement. “We will continue to implement policies and procedures that clearly define sexual harassment, improve victim response, and educate members on the importance of bystander intervention, to reduce the likelihood of sexual harassment occurring.”

The change is one of several the Navy has unveiled in the past 18 months regarding sexual harassment and assault. In April 2022, the department announced it was stripping commanders in the Navy and Marine Corps of investigative authority over sexual harassment allegations within their own units.

Rare firing of flag officer for sexual harassment came after unwanted kissing

Two months later, in June 2022, it announced that sailors, Marines and midshipmen who report a sexual assault will no longer be punished for “minor collateral misconduct.”

That policy change means those who make an unrestricted report of an assault through the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office or the Family Advocacy Program will not be penalized if they were engaging in underage drinking at the time, or near the time, of the alleged assault; were involved in an unprofessional relationship with the accused perpetrator; or were violating other orders, such as curfews, at the time of the alleged assault.

President Joe Biden signed a January 2022 executive order requiring that sexual harassment be included in the Uniform Code of Military Justice under Article 134. While sexual harassment previously could be prosecuted as dereliction of duty under Article 92 of the UCMJ or as conduct unbecoming under Article 133, the executive order specifically lists sexual harassment as an offense under Article 134, the “general article.”

Carrier Abraham Lincoln suffers electrical fire in port

Editor’s note: This story originally incorrectly identified which ship was affected. It was the Abraham Lincoln.

WASHINGTON — Sailors from the crew of aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln extinguished an electrical fire that broke out on the ship around 2 p.m. on June 28, according to the Navy.

Non-essential personnel were evacuated from the ship for a short period, but no one was injured during the event, Cmdr. Zach Harrell, the spokesman for Naval Air Forces, told Defense News.

According to a statement from Harrell, “the in-port emergency team aboard aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) responded to an electrical fire in the forward emergency diesel generator compartment.”

He said the fire was extinguished within about 10 minutes.

Harrell noted that no foul play is suspected, and an “assessment is underway to determine the extent of the damage to the ship.”

Congress aims for faster arms sales with defense bills and task force

WASHINGTON ― Congress is ratcheting up legislative efforts to accelerate the lengthy U.S. Foreign Military Sales process mere weeks after the Pentagon released a series of its own proposals to help untangle the byzantine system.

Both chambers last week advanced their respective defense policy bills with provisions lawmakers hope will speed up arms sales, and the House this week established a bipartisan task force to zero in on the issue.

“It is vital that when we make a deal with our partners and allies to send military systems that we provide them as quickly as possible,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Mike McCaul, R-Texas, said in a statement on Tuesday upon announcing the task force. “I look forward to moving forward any legislation that comes from the task force within my committee’s jurisdiction.”

Numerous U.S. allies and security partners have complained about delays in foreign military sales in recent years, including a multibillion-dollar backlog of arms sales to Taiwan. After the State Department reviews and approves a sale, the Pentagon leads what can be a monthslong or even yearslong process of signing a final contract with the manufacturer to produce the weapon for delivery.

“Once the sale is approved, there’s nobody in [the Defense Department] that then rides herd on the contract to actually get it done,” Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., told Defense News in an April interview.

Gallagher, who chairs the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, said the Foreign Military Sales, or FMS, process “exists in this weird no-man’s land” between the Pentagon and State Department. An overlapping jurisdiction has sometimes complicated congressional oversight between the committees overseeing each department.

But McCaul’s tiger task force — a term that stands for technical, industrial and governmental engagement for readiness — includes lawmakers who sit on both the Foreign Affairs and Armed Services committees.

McCaul tapped Rep. Mike Waltz, R-Fla., who sits on both committees, to lead the task force alongside Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., a member of the Armed Services Committee. Foreign Affairs Committee members Reps. French Hill, R-Ark., and Jason Crow, D-Colo., also sit on the task force alongside defense appropriator Rep. Mike Garcia, R-Calif.

Waltz in a statement vowed that the task force would “examine why many of these shipments have been delayed or have seen increased costs, putting the security of some of our most critical allies at risk, and implement legislative solutions to streamline these sales.”

Tiger teams

A separate Pentagon tiger team examining foreign military sales released six of its own proposals earlier this month to speed up the process. They included the establishment of a Defense Security Cooperation Service to better liaise with foreign customers, streamline technology release reviews, develop processes to facilitate sales for weapons the U.S. no longer purchases itself, and accelerate the Pentagon’s acquisition of items sought by its security partners.

To help cut down on acquisition time, the Pentagon said it would increase use of the Special Defense Acquisition Fund, a revolving account the department uses for FMS procurement.

The Senate’s fiscal 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, which the chamber’s Armed Services Committee advanced 24-1 last week, would create a special account within the Special Defense Acquisition Fund.

The proposed account, called the Foreign Advance Acquisition Account, would allow the Pentagon to receive contributions from NATO members and Australia to procure the weapons they buy faster.

The Senate bill would also strengthen the role of combatant commanders in the arms sale process, authorizing each of them to hire up to two acquisition specialists to advise on foreign military sales. It would also require each combatant command to provide a list of weapons systems that could be exported to friendly countries within their region.

McCaul noted last year that Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, the former head of U.S. Central Command overseeing forces in the Greater Middle East, informed him of several Gulf countries complaining about a backlogged delivery of weapons systems they had purchased.

Sasha Baker, the deputy undersecretary of defense for policy, said while unveiling the Pentagon’s proposals that combatant commanders receive the most feedback about the arms sale process from U.S. security partners. However, she acknowledged their input can take a while to travel back to Washington. Accordingly, the Pentagon has started a monthly meeting on foreign military sales with combatant commanders to receive feedback on specific cases.

The Senate bill would also require the Pentagon to collaborate more closely with weapons manufacturers on arms sales by requiring it to designate points of contact for the Foreign Military Sales process, create a senior-level advisory group with industry and hold an annual industry day.

It also seeks to improve training and education for Defense Department officials involved in the arms sale process.

The House’s FY24 NDAA draft would require a review of staffing needs to implement FMS and technology disclosure reviews for Australia and the U.K. as part of the trilateral AUKUS agreement. Gallagher successfully added the amendment when the House Armed Services Committee advanced its bill 58-1 last week.

The bill also includes an amendment from Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va., that would require the Pentagon to report to Congress on FMS contracts that have yet to be delivered to Indo-Pacific customers, including “Australia, Japan and other key allies and partners.”

The Pentagon has also established a second tiger team to address the Taiwan arms sale backlog, though that panel has yet to formally release recommendations.

How the outgoing Marine commandant will spend his retirement

Marine Commandant Gen. David Berger has helped concoct lots of plans in his time as the top Marine: Plans to restructure the force. Plans to retain more Marines. Plans to overhaul outdated logistics.

But now, as he looks ahead to July 10, the end of his time in the Corps, he is without a clear plan for what he will do in his retirement. And that’s exactly as he wants it, he told reporters Wednesday.

The top devil dog said he has spoken with several of his retired peers to get advice about life after military leadership.

“The common thread among them were, people approached them with opportunities, and each one sounded awesome, and then like six months later, they were, ‘Holy cow, I got no time. I’m more busy than I was before,’” Berger recounted at a media roundtable at the Modern Day Marine conference in Washington. “And they’re such nice people — genuinely, sincerely nice people — that they couldn’t figure out how to back out of stuff.”

So, for now, Berger’s plan is to say, “Yes,” to nothing for a while.

“Think. Read,” he said. “And then after a few months, I will know what’s next for me.”

Berger loves teaching and coaching, he said, so he would like to do that in some form.

James Mattis gets married — leaving behind his love, the Marine Corps

Will he write a book? “I haven’t given it any thought,” he said.

There’s plenty of material from his four years as commandant. He led the Marine Corps during the Trump administration (when the Pentagon and the White House didn’t always see eye to eye); the COVID-19 pandemic; and Force Design 2030, an ambitious, controversial remaking of the Marine Corps.

“There’s a confluence of big things,” he said. “Maybe capturing that might be fun to do.”

Berger, who received his commission in 1981, said he does know that he plans to make time for his family. As a Marine leader, he hasn’t spent as much time with them as he wanted to, he said on the Marine Corps’ BruteCast podcast June 21.

“Now family comes first,” he said. “In terms of my time: visit with our kids, spend time with my wife.”

The general and his wife, Donna, have four sons, two of whom have served as Marines, Military.com reported in 2019.

Berger reiterated that point to reporters Wednesday, sketching on a piece of stationery a pie chart of how he plans to allocate his time.

One slice of the pie chart: giving back. Another slice of the pie chart: making money, as needed. But the most important slice: family.

“I have three parts of this pie, but they’re not all equal,” he said. “One part is family. Protect that, not going to encroach on that at all. Zero. No negotiation.”

One thing he implied he won’t do in retirement is micromanage his successor, Gen. Eric Smith, who is currently assistant commandant.

The White House in May nominated Smith to replace Berger. Although a hold on senior military nominations by Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Alabama, means the Senate can’t confirm Smith by the time Berger must step down, Smith will take the job of acting commandant July 10.

As commandant, Berger faced a fierce backlash from a group of retired Marine leaders who have publicly denounced Force Design. The commandant has insisted that he, unlike the retirees, has access to a wealth of classified intelligence that back up his plans.

So once he is retired, Berger said, he will have faith in his successor to make decisions.

“Two weeks later, I’m at a degree of separation,” Berger said on the BruteCast. “So I will absolutely trust that the sitting commandant has the benefit of everything I’ve had for four years, every day.”

A squad corpsman: How Marine planners are seeking better combat care

WASHINGTON ― Marine leaders aim to put a Navy field corpsman at the squad level as part of ongoing reconfiguration and experiments with of the service’s infantry battalions.

Exact manning numbers and distribution are still in early stages, but staff with the Marine Corps Warfighting Labratory shared initial work on increasing medical assets to the infantry battalion during a panel discussion at the Modern Day Marine Expo in Washington.

“That’s a tough problem to solve and something we’re really just starting to incorporate into our experimentation,” said Col. Christopher Bronzi, director of the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory Experiment Division.

Beyond corpsmen, the Corps is looking for ways to add more medical officers and physician’s assistants and ensure more robust medical training for all members of the battalion for immediate care.

How the new Marine infantry battalion fits into the littoral regiment

Bronzi and Capt. Mike Hogan, head of Marine Corps Warfighting Lab’s infantry battalion experiments, each cautioned that the lab is at its early stages of working through the increased medical assets needed. Phase I of the battalion experiments concluded recently with the announcement that 21 active-duty infantry battalions will transition to a manning of 811 Marines and 69 Navy support staff.

“We are hoping to move corpsmen down to the squad level,” Hogan said. “So that is moving a medical capability, someone who’s trained, purpose-built and professional at medical care forward, closer to the tactical edge.”

It’s not yet clear how many of those support staff would be medical, what billets would be created and what capabilities they will have. That’s a major focus of Phase II of the battalion experiments, set to kick off with 3rd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, out of Twentynine Palms, California, by January 2024.

The Phase II portion will last approximately 18 months, Brig. Gen. Kyle Ellison, Marine Corps Warfighting Lab commander, said during a June 2 call with reporters covering the Force Design 2030 annual update.

Force Design 2030 is the Corps’ yearslong effort to transition the service into more disparate, highly technically capable force to combat peer adversaries and ensure U.S. Navy access to currently access-denied areas such as spaces in the Pacific region to counter Chinese military efforts to control sea access in their nation’s areas of interest.

Historically in the Marine Corps, Navy corpsmen resided at the platoon level, and more senior corpsmen and medical assets stayed at the battalion level with headquarters and service companies and at higher-level units such as the regiment or in an attached, support capacity.

In war-gaming and exercises during Phase I experimentation it was difficult to get the medical personnel and technology needed to the tactical edge where Marines needed them most, the captain said.

He emphasized that the problem didn’t reside only with the infantry battalion experiments. Separate areas of focus such as littoral mobility, contested logistics and work on the Corps’ newest formation, the Marine littoral Regiment, also will contribute as the work continues.

The increased medical move also has roots in long-standing concerns about how great power competition combat with peer rivals could deny access to medical care and casualty evacuation that most of the military grew accustomed to in the past decades of fighting counterinsurgency and counterterrorism wars.

That’s because peer and near-peer adversaries have invested in air defense, strike capabilities and other ways to contest U.S. military airpower dominance that has reigned mostly unchallenged since the Persian Gulf War.

Marine Corps Times and other defense media have reported for years about warnings that the “golden hour” of immediate, high-level medical interventions for casualties isn’t guaranteed.

Various research initiatives are seeking ways to pipe in video and audio communication from stateside military doctors to advise medics with advanced training, such as in U.S. Special Operations Command, so that a skilled medic or corpsman could even conduct more complex field expedient surgeries if the patient couldn’t be evacuated from an austere location.

In another example, the Army has conducted multiyear review of autonomous drones capable of carrying a soldier off the battlefield for medical care.

House bill calls for test of Space Force budget flexibility

WASHINGTON — House appropriators want the Space Force to try out a new budgeting approach that could give the service more flexibility to shift funding as needs change and threats arise.

The House Appropriations Committee’s fiscal 2024 defense spending bill includes a provision directing the service to submit a supplementary exhibit next year that consolidates budget lines for each of its programs into mission-area portfolios.

Lawmakers expect the move would give greater insight into how the service’s capabilities align with the National Defense Strategy and give the Space Force flexibility to move funding around within those portfolios. The measure would be a trial for the fiscal 2025 budget cycle but could be continued and expanded across the Department of Defense in future years.

“The committee recognizes there may be potential benefits to an approach that more directly connects national security strategy and goals to the Department’s budget priorities, program plans, and ultimately to capabilities,” the committee said in a report accompanying its bill. “Such an approach may also bring greater transparency and accuracy to the true total cost and resources needed to accomplish mission goals.”

The provision echoes proposals from former and current DoD officials, including the Space Force.

Following the creation of the service in 2019, Space Force leaders submitted a report to Congress detailing recommended reforms to the acquisition system. Chief among those proposals was to consolidate budget items based on mission areas.

“The primary benefits are enabling rapid responses to emergent threats in the year of execution that drive a need for realignment of funds and increase overall space purchasing power,” the Space Force said in the 2020 report.

An Atlantic Council commission of defense experts, convened to consider how the department can better integrate new technology into its arsenal, included a similar recommendation in an interim report released in April.

The Commission on Defense Innovation and Adoption, which includes former leaders like Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James and Defense Secretary Mark Esper, suggested that Congress should authorize DoD to begin implementing the model in fiscal 2024.

“DoD should adapt the way it conducts its acquisition programs to provide additional flexibility in the year of execution, and Congress can authorize that flexibility,” it said. “Congress should appropriate money to DoD with fewer but larger discrete budget line items and reset reprogramming authorities so that acquisition professionals have greater flexibility.”

For the FY24 Space Force pilot effort, House appropriators want the service to include a “clear statement” of its plans for each mission area, justification for its budget request and details on the civilian and military personnel needed to support each portfolio.

The bill also calls for the Space Force to submit a draft plan for the budget exhibit by September of this year.

Revitalize laws to turn Eastern and Northern Europe into porcupines

With the NATO summit set for June 11-12, the focus will rightly be on Ukraine as member states debate a potential path for the country to join the alliance. But the alliance should look beyond Ukraine and turn a mirror on itself to consider how its own front-line states would fare in a Russian invasion.

The image is cloudy and full of risk, as the countries bordering Russia or Belarus are largely too small in population, funds and depth to mount an effective defense on their own, while NATO’s relatively minimal deployment of forces in the region merely serves as a tripwire. Taking a page from the 1940s, the United States can fix this rather hopeless situation by revitalizing and updating its lend-lease and military aid programs, helping turn each front-line state into a porcupine.

NATO’s front-line states that border Russia and its satrapy Belarus comprise Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Norway. Each, while highly committed to the alliance, possesses weaknesses when it comes to its own defense. Money is a common problem, despite increases in defense spending that have followed Russia’s invasion, and the majority struggle to meet NATO’s goal that members spend 2% of their gross domestic product on defense.

None of these countries (even a country as wealthy as Norway) are spending or can spend enough to deter or fight a large-scale war against Russia. As an example, if these countries were to somehow muster the economic strength to spend 5% of their GDP on defense, none would breach $38 billion. On the low end, Estonia and Latvia would spend just over $2 billion, while on the high end Poland would spend $37 billion.

Compare these numbers to the cost of war in Ukraine. According to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, worldwide defense commitments to Ukraine stood at about $74 billion between January 2022 and February 2023, with the U.S. accounting for nearly $47 billion of this amount. These totals aren’t meant to imply that NATO’s front-line states must spend this much on their defense, as each countries’ defense needs vary based on geography, manpower, existing equipment and other factors. But they are to say that defense spending is an insurance policy; and what small NATO countries are capable of spending now is inadequate for the defense needed.

External help is essential. That’s where the United States comes in as provision of loans, leases and grants of military hardware can equip each state with the sort of defense that’s realistic for deterring Russia: that of a porcupine. More commonly associated with Taiwan, the aim of a porcupine defense would be to arm these countries to the teeth so that it would be painfully hard for the Russians to swallow them in an invasion. The weapons that are key to such a defense are comparatively cheap and asymmetric like loitering munitions, mines and High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems — all of which have been effective in Ukraine.

Congress can help supply these and other weapons by first delinking its current legislation allowing lend-lease authorities to Ukraine and passing a separate bill expanding its scope beyond the law’s vaguely defined “Eastern European countries.” This new bill should apply to NATO’s front-line states for at least the next decade, allowing for the lend, lease and donation of American defense articles beyond the two-year time limit in existing statute. Necessary appropriations should follow to support this commitment.

Next, Congress should take advantage of laws that are already on the books to provide hardware directly from U.S. contractors. It should specifically employ a little-used authority enacted decades ago: the Defense Export Loan Guarantee Program provided under 10 U.S.C. 4971. This program fully insures private sector lenders against potential losses of interest and principal in the sale or lease of defense articles — basically an Export-Import Bank mechanism for defense goods.

While the DELG Program has been used only once, Congress can breathe new life into the program, revising it to help supply NATO’s front-line states. It can do so by adjusting DELG’s current authorization that the U.S. can make $15 billion in loan guarantees. While $15 billion is no small sum, especially for countries that spend well less than that on defense, this limit should be dramatically increased to $100 billion. That will buy the asymmetric weapons needed to mount a credible porcupine defense.

Congress should also examine long-standing issues with DELG along with Foreign Military Financing and Foreign Military Sales to ensure these programs can rapidly move weapons systems to the front-line states.

The U.S. can play a significant part in helping NATO’s front-line states defend themselves with the same fervor, and similar weaponry, that the Ukrainians are using to repel Russia. As we have learned time and time again, it is much cheaper to deter aggression than it is to fight a war. Nothing would help NATO’s deterrence credibility more than loans, leases and the transfer of American weapons to those countries directly in harm’s way.

Bill Greenwalt is a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute think tank, a former senior staffer on the Senate Armed Services Committee and a former deputy undersecretary of defense for industrial policy. Charles Rahr is a research assistant at AEI.

Autonomous drones may help Air Force slash aircraft inspection times

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Air Force is experimenting with a mix of drones, artificial intelligence and cloud collaboration to find ways to slash the time it takes to inspect aircraft for wear and tear.

In trials backed by aircraft manufacturer Boeing and Near Earth Autonomy, a developer of drone operating systems, service technicians at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii are launching autonomous uncrewed aerial systems with mounted cameras to catalog the condition of Boeing C-17 cargo planes that transport heavy weapons, such as tanks, and passengers.

The goal is to reduce the complexity of aircraft checkups while also improving the accuracy and reliability of information. Whereas traditional exterior examinations can take hours and still miss tiny details, the drone-centric approach, fueled by pattern recognition and 3D models, is far quicker and feeds verified observations to a secure repository, officials said.

“A preflight inspection right now can take up to four hours. We can do it in 30 minutes. That is a significant time savings for airmen and making sure that the aircraft is available, ready to go,” Alli Locher, with Near Earth Autonomy, told reporters June 27 at an event in Virginia. “Eventually, you’ll be able to just pull up a tail number, click anywhere on that 3D model of that aircraft and be able to see a history of images of that exact part you clicked on, from anywhere in the world over the life of the aircraft.”

As the U.S. Department of Defense prepares for potential fights in the Indo-Pacific or Europe, the Air Force is pursuing a concept known as agile combat employment. ACE, as it’s referred to, envisions a hub-and-spoke layout of bases: some larger and fixed, some smaller and mobile.

Lockheed bests General Dynamics for Army long-range jammer contract

Such an approach will spread out manpower and know-how — resources already in high demand. So having a reliable, centralized means of collecting and evaluating aircraft status will be all the more important, according to Scott Belanger, a Boeing Global Services executive. Boeing is the third largest defense contractor in the world when ranked by revenue.

“The pictures are, literally, instantaneously live, sent to a cloud environment, where they can be analyzed by Near Earth Autonomy software and our automated damage detection software,” he said. “We’re not trying to replace the human inspection. We’re trying to inform it. We’re trying to upskill that human inspection so when they do go on the tail, they’re not guessing. They know exactly what to bring, they know exactly what to expect.”

In testing, the drones and associated routines have detected “up to 76%, 78% damage,” according to Belanger. While that’s a “high C,” he said, it beats out the human-only metric of 50%.

Moving forward, Boeing and Near Earth Autonomy are eyeing more payloads for the drones, to potentially catch subsurface damage, as well as adding more aircraft to the inspection roster. Lockheed Martin’s C-5 plane was most recently programmed, according to Locher. Boeing’s KC-135 and KC-46 could be next.

“Our secret sauce here, that we use, is we have an autonomy backend on this drone that always knows where it is relative to the aircraft, not the environment around it,” Locher said. “With that, you can pretty much run any sensor and get a map of that sensor.”

Marine Corps considering changes to how it allocates officer jobs

WASHINGTON — The Marine Corps is mulling some alternatives to its system of matching new officers with military occupational specialties. But it appears changes, if any, aren’t coming soon.

Second lieutenants at Quantico, Virginia’s The Basic School, the training course for new Marine officers, get divided into thirds based on performance in the six-month course, as has been policy for decades.

Those in the top of each third get first pick at receiving their preferred military occupational specialties, Brig. Gen. Farrell Sullivan explained at the Modern Day Marine conference Tuesday in Washington.

Civilian or prior-enlisted experience and individual suitability also come into play, according to the Marine handbook on military occupational specialties for officers. Some specialties have particular requirements like normal color vision, U.S. citizenship or heightened physical standards.

Here’s what’s in the Corps’ new training and education plan

The Corps’ Training and Education 2030 planning document, released in January, tasked Training Command leaders with analyzing whether the policy based on thirds makes sense.

“What evidence or analysis supports the continuation of the quality spread model for MOS selection used at TBS?” the document reads. “Are we discouraging achievement and performance by giving preference to Marines in the top of the bottom third of the class over Marines in the bottom of the top third?”

Sullivan said Tuesday, “I’m not sure what an alternate process would be that would be more effective than what we’ve done up to this point. But we’re looking at that, because we were tasked to look at that.”

Before 1977, new officers were allocated jobs based solely on lineal standing at The Basic School. The switch to the thirds system was meant to ensure that each occupational field “received a fair share of the most competitive lieutenants,” according to the handbook on job allocations.

These days, although nearly 95% of Marine officers receive one of their top five choices, only approximately 44% receive their first choice, according to the handbook.

Maj. John Bailey’s 2021 master’s thesis for the Naval Postgraduate School found a “modest, but positive, statistically significant relationship” between job preference received and performance.

Bailey suggested The Basic School follow the lead of the U.S. Military Academy, which assigns Army officers to jobs more holistically, incorporating the desires of the occupational fields’ leadership and the officers’ specific skills.

US joint forces lack a ‘common goal’ for the future, says top Marine

The U.S. military branches need to establish a concerted development plan if they hope to effectively modernize, the Marine Corps’ outgoing commandant said during a symposium speech Tuesday morning.

“I think the speed of the joint force and a common goal in the future is what’s lacking right now,” Gen. David Berger said from the exhibition hall of the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in downtown Washington. “And we also don’t have the speed, the velocity to get us there.”

Berger’s address headlined the first day of Modern Day Marine, an annual three-day exposition showcasing the Corps’ latest gadgets and end goals. The commandant, set to retire mid-July, spent much of his speech touting his branch’s progress on Force Design 2030, a sweeping revamping of Marine structure, strategy and capability.

“Marines are leading the joint force in innovation, modernization, and that’s exactly what you would expect Marines to be doing,” Berger said.

Next commandant says he will accelerate Marine Corps’ transformation

Berger debuted his new vision for the Marine Corps in March 2020 to a mixture of criticism and celebration.

The plan reimagines the Corps as a trimmed-down, expeditionary force geared for the fast-paced amphibious combat that, U.S. military minds suspect, would be the focal point of a conflict in the Pacific.

Leaders from other branches have echoed Berger’s calls for greater coordination among the joint force: the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, Space Force and National Guard.

“The current environment requires the joint force to strengthen and integrate deterrence across domains, theaters, and the spectrum of conflict,” Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley wrote in the Joint Chief’s 2022 National Military Strategy.

Other military branches have unveiled similar modernization initiatives; for many, improving joint force collaboration is a stated priority.

The Army published an “Army Modernization Strategy” in 2021. The plans detailed in the document are, according to its authors, “interdependent and require corresponding updates to global force posture, facilities, and policies to ensure the Army’s modernization efforts remain synchronized over time and with the rest of the Joint Force.”

The Navy’s 2022 “Navigation Plan”— and its corresponding Force Design 2045 plan — highlighted its plans to coordinate with the Marine Corps on developing littoral combat units and other initiatives to “support Marines in contested areas.”

Future Marine operations will hinge on effective cooperation with assets and teams from the Navy, Berger stressed, as the Corps focuses again on being a “naval force.”

A corollary “Joint Force Design” plan that “says this is where we need to be five, six or seven years into the future,” Berger said, would help facilitate this alignment.

“I think what would help would be a common aim point,” he added. “But I’m not here to judge the other services.”