Maritime Prepositioning Force 2010 and Chaos in the Littorals

Abstract

With the end of the Cold War each of the armed services faces a daunting task. How do they develop relevant operational concepts for dealing with threats, the nature of which is not certain yet? A pessimistic, almost apocalyptic, vision of the future has been chosen by the Marine Corps in its capstone operational concept, "Operational Maneuver from the Sea" forecasting "chaos in the littorals" and the "worldwide breakdown of order." *Operational Maneuver from the Sea" envisions the application of maneuver warfare principles to amphibious operations. The capabilities required for the key component of the force structure to implement this concept, "Maritime Prepositioning Force 2010 and Beyond," are currently being formulated. The force it would replace is a carryover from the Cold War, which was adapted for the dual major regional conflict national security strategy. The Marine Corps approach to "Maritime Prepositioning Force 2010 and Beyond" lacks rigor, ignoring futures other than the "chaos in the littorals" which is its focus. The original idea for this research was to determine how relevant such a force would be if the future were to turn out differently from the "worldwide breakdown of order." Four widely held scenarios, to include that in "Operational Maneuver from the Sea," were examined. What surfaced, however, was not a problem adapting MPF 2010 to other threat environments. "Chaos in the littorals" indeed looks like the shape of things to come. The problem turned out to be the lack of a coherent link between the increasing frequency of what are now called "smaller scale contingencies" and MPF 2010's requirement for "revolutionizing forcible entry operations." The Marine Corps' forecast of the future looks fairly accurate, but the MPF 2010 concept is ill-suited for that environment.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Apr 30, 1997
Accession Number
ADA514808

Entities

People

  • J. E. Kruse Jr.

Organizations

  • Marine Corps War College

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • C4I
  • Counter WMD
  • Engineered Resilient Systems
  • Ground and Sea Platforms
  • Space

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Aircrafts
  • Amphibious Operations
  • Combat Areas
  • Command And Control
  • Construction
  • Contingency Operations (Military)
  • Deployment
  • Humanitarian Assistance
  • Intergovernmental Organizations
  • Military Organizations
  • National Security
  • Navy
  • Second World War
  • Transport Ships
  • United States
  • War Colleges
  • Warfare

Readers

  • Educational Psychology
  • Maritime Combat Support and Expeditionary Logistics.
  • Strategic Security Studies