The Marine Corps’ top officer said yesterday his service does not have all the ships it needs to in the Asia-Pacific region and, because of scant shipbuilding dollars, may be force to use commercial vessels.
Commandant Gen. James Amos told the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington that “to do what needs to happen in the Pacific with regards to strategy…there isn’t enough (sea) lift.”
“That’s one of the things we’re struggling with,” he added during the nighttime address.
That’s in large part because of the Budget Control Act of 2011, which lowers planned defense spending by $487 billion over the next 10 years. The act also could spur an additional $500 billion in so-called sequestration cuts starting next January, if lawmakers don’t stop them.
Meanwhile, the new defense strategic guidance–which President Barack Obama released in January–calls for strengthening the U.S. presence in the Asia-Pacific region and shrinking the size of conventional ground forces (Defense Daily, Jan. 6).
“If you have a strategy that talks about the Pacific, and the importance of it,…and the ability to be able to build capital ships is reduced markedly as a result of budget pressures and sequestration or whatever,…then there’s probably little hope, certainly within the budget, to be able to build the lift that you need to have,” Amos said.
Thus, he said: “I’ve even told my commander in the Pacific (Ocean), I’ve said, ‘Look, don’t wait for a perfect solution set to move forces around in the Pacific. If we have to hire commercial ships to do that I’m willing to do that in the meantime. But let’s not wait, because the strategy is too important.’ And what we’ll do is we’ll work…in hopes that the resources catch up with it.”
He said the Marine Corps has “creative ways” for moving around in the Asia-Pacific region–including using current ships as well as the Joint High Speed Vessels (JHSV) being built now. Yet he noted the JHSVs are limited in terms of the sea state they can traverse.
Amos acknowledged that the Marine Corps has historically struggled with wanting more amphibious ships, considering the service’s finite budget and high cost of the massive vessels. His comments at the Atlantic Council came a month after he visited several Pacific nations–including Australia, the Philippines, Japan, and South Korea.
The Marine Corps is attempting, after a decade of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, to return to its roots as an amphibious and expeditionary force that quickly responds to emerging threats.
The commandant, meanwhile, has been sounding alarms in Washington about the contracting defense budget, saying he is struggling to determine how to scale back the service’s equipment purchases.
“Probably the greatest challenge I have right now is just making sure the Marine Corps gets back to being balanced and understands that we are in a period of austerity, and we need to be asking ourselves what’s good enough,” Amos said Aug. 28 during a speech last month at the National Press Club (Defense Daily, Aug. 29).
At the time he said the Marine Corps has made tough decisions as a result of the Budget Control Act, including planning to buy 5,000 instead of 23,000 of the future Joint Light Tactical Vehicles to replace existing Humvees.
Amos said at the Press Club that sequestration would “disproportionally” affect the Marine Corps, because the service comprises only 8 percent of the Pentagon budget. The Budget Control Act calls for the sequestration cuts to trim the same percentage–in the range of 10 percent–from every applicable program, project, and activity in the Pentagon’s budget.