The Marines Corps’ new warfare concept gets a field test

By MATT HILBURN, Associate Editor

When 1st Platoon, Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 3rd Marines deployed to Afghanistan last spring, its 44 members moved the Marine Corps’ new concept of warfare off the Power Point slides and onto the battlefield.

The concept, called Distributed Operations (DO), hinges on empowering small teams, typically the size of a rifle squad or 12-13 Marines, to operate independently and miles apart within the battle space. These dispersed, fast-moving teams would perform many of the tactical missions normally assigned to companies or even battalions, with younger, lower-ranking Marines making decisions entrusted only to the higher ranks in larger, conventional Marine units.

Yet the DO units would make only a small footprint, presenting today’s adversaries with a confusing, rapidly changing picture of U.S. strength and intentions.

DO was developed in response to the rising threat of terrorists and insurgent forces — the kind of enemy that does not attack in a conventional, centralized manner.

The DO teams are linked by satellite communications and Global Positioning System capability. The teams are able to make tactical decisions and gather intelligence to be fed into a larger network.

Through this communications network, commanders would have an accurate picture of battle conditions over a larger area and be better able to exploit actionable intelligence. If necessary, commanders would then be able to “swarm” units together into clusters as operational requirements dictated, or aggregate the entire group into a conventional fighting force.

“We’re talking about pushing capabilities down to a lower level, having battalions do what divisions used to. Having platoons and squads do what companies and even sometimes battalions used to. Putting joint tactical air controllers down at the squad and platoon level,” said Vice Adm. Evan M. Chanik, director, Force Structure, Resources and Assessment, during the Navy League’s annual Sea-Air-Space Exposition in April.

The 1/3 Platoon took part in Operation Mountain Lion, a coalition operation in eastern Afghanistan . Mountain Lion was a joint effort among U.S. forces, the Afghan National Army and coalition forces to root out and disrupt the movement of resurgent Taliban and al Qaeda forces near Afghanistan ’s border with Pakistan .

About 2,500 troops took part in the operation, which began in early April. The platoon operated predominately in the Korengal Valley .

The 1/3 Platoon received “rave reviews because of what they were able to do,” according to Gen. Mike W. Hagee, commandant of the Marine Corps.

During its five-month mission, a 1/3 Platoon lieutenant called B-52 air strikes against suspected enemy hideouts, and an E-5 sergeant coordinated humanitarian and medical assistance for local villagers in the platoon’s area of operations.

Those examples were described as “mind boggling” by Master Sgt. Jack Sheaffer, a Vietnam veteran who now works for the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab. Sheaffer deployed with the platoon to act, as he put it, as an embedded reporter and provide feedback on its experience as a distributed unit.

“Decision-making was really pushed down to a lower level that normally isn’t done,” he said.

Air strikes, such as those called in by the lieutenant, would normally be done by a specially trained air officer. And humanitarian assistance would be the prerogative of the company commander or higher.

Sheaffer said the platoon received three-and-a-half months of additional training in land navigation and communications relative to that of a conventional platoon. However, 1/3 Platoon’s deployment to Afghanistan was an initial experiment, and it operated under constraints that will not apply once DO becomes the standard method of operation for all Marines.

The constraints on the platoon dictated that “no elements would be further than 500 meters apart, and no patrol or maneuver element would go outside the wire by itself less than a squad or a squad reinforced,” Sheaffer said. “Although that prevented us from going down as far as we wanted to, it still did allow us to distribute” the force in the battle area.

In addition to the air strike on a suspected enemy cave complex, Sheaffer said the platoon detained some possible enemy combatants during the deployment, but he was unsure if any high value targets were among them. He added that the platoon was not involved in much “severe” combat aside from the occasional small arms fire and some improvised explosive devices.

“It was a lot of shoot and run,” he said. “Our platoon was broken up into very small bits and pieces so, in a lot of cases, the enemy couldn’t find us, and in the cases where [we] were visible to the enemy, [we] just weren’t a lucrative target.”