Force Design 2030, also known as FD2030, is an ongoing force restructuring plan by the United States Marine Corps to reshape its combat power for future near-peer adversary conflicts that was introduced in March 2020 by the Commandant of the Marine Corps, General David H.
The plan's key goals are to modernize equipment, to work closer with the United States Navy and become more amphibious, to become more of a light strike force, and to manage personal talents better.
[3][4] Force Design will see the Marine Corps create a new formation called littoral regiments, consisting of infantry, rocket artillery, logistics, and an anti-air battery, which will be highly mobile and have a long range precision strike capability.
[5] A group of about thirty retired generals, including every living former Commandant of the Marine Corps, has criticized the plan and tried to lobby against it.
[11] The main criticisms from the group of retired generals are that Force Design makes the Corps too focused on one theater, is based on new ideas that have not been thoroughly tested, and weakens its overall capability by the removal of tanks and the reduction of cannon artillery.
[1][12][13][14] The advocates of Force Design have argued that recent events in the Russo-Ukrainian War and the Red Sea crisis prove the viability of the plan.
In June 2017, then-Commandant Robert Neller told Congress that the Marine Corps was not ready to face a peer-adversary.
[10] In July 2019 his successor as the commandant, General David Berger, published the Commandant's Planning Guidance to set out his vision for the Corps, which included making it capable of operating inside of the range of China's weapon systems (such as the first island chain and the South China Sea).
[7] One of the key points of the restructuring is to create small units of Marines equipped with missile systems that would be placed on islands in the Western Pacific to assist the Navy with sinking Chinese warships.
For example, it will modify its use of OPFs "Organic Precision Fires", a missile system that ranges in size from a mount on a vehicle to a mortar round carried by a Marine.
The Marine Corps has drifted away from the Navy in recent engagements like the fight against ISIS, but it now needs to work closer and focus more on amphibious warfare.
To do this, the Marine Corps will divert resources away from heavy components like the infantry and towards flexible things like reconnaissance.
[4] However, the biggest change is the dissolution of all 7 tank companies,[4] with the expectation that the army will be the primary armour source.
However, the most significant difference is that they will allow people in specific fields, like engineering, to skip basic training and a few ranks.
[19] Politico wrote in April 2022 that as many as thirty retired Marine Corps generals oppose Force Design.
Among the critics of the plan were every living former Commandant and other notable generals, including Jim Mattis, Anthony Zinni, John Kelly,[10] Charles Wilhelm, Terrence Dake,[20] Walter Boomer,[13] and Paul Van Riper.
[21] The group of retired senior Marines that opposed Force Design 2030 called itself "Chowder II," a reference to the "Chowder Society" in the late 1940s, which opposed any efforts to limit or eliminate in the Marine Corps in the years after World War II.
[12] Force Design has been criticized by the retired generals for making the Marine Corps too focused on the Pacific at the expense of its global expeditionary capability, and for dispersing small groups of Marines on remote islands in the Pacific that would be vulnerable to Chinese attack and without a viable way of resupplying or moving them.