GANGLE: New Threats Demand Thinking Outside the Box

As the director of the Marine Corps’ Center for Emerging Threats and Opportunities (CETO), Quantico, Va., retired Col. Randy Gangle heads a think tank comprising retired officers from almost every service and discipline. Established in 2000 at the direction of a Senate subcommittee on emerging threats, CETO has examined issues as far-ranging as the assessment of foreign marines, training of dogs in roadside bomb detection, base security, rewriting the Corps’ classic Small Wars Manual and identifying global conflicts for the coming decade. Gangle is one of the developers of Distributed Operations, a new concept that will transform the way the Marine Corps trains and deploys its forces in response to unconventional warfare threats.

In an interview with Seapower Associate Editor Sue A. Lackey, Gangle noted sardonically that the forward-looking CETO faces some institutional resistance to change. “There are some people who value what we do, and there are others who think we’re a bunch of nuts who are hijacking the future of the Marine Corps. You have to be thick-skinned,” he said, laughing.

What is the purpose of CETO?

Gangle: To prevent operational surprises to the senior leadership of the Marine Corps. We spend about 30 percent of our time looking way out into the future, and about 70 percent doing quick studies and papers on issues that are of immediate concern. We’ll do a study and turn it around in 90 days or less. We present the ideas, and they’re broad enough, yet specific enough, and have enough background so that the commandant, for instance, can make a decision. The rest of the solution can then be worked in the appropriate section of [Headquarters Marine Corps].

When we look at a problem, we bring everyone together after the first draft and red-cell it within our own organization so we don’t come out with a document that might be good for the ground side of the house, but has some fatal errors for the aviation side. We red-team everything as a Marine Air Ground Task Force, and frankly, as a naval service as well.

Will the Marine Corps change its operational concepts in response to the prevalence of nontraditional warfare?

Gangle: Yes. Distributed Operations (DO) is one example. We developed the concept here at CETO, the commandant approved the concept and it’s now in development and experimentation. DO is an operational concept that expands the battlespace. We envision Marine rifle squads out operating almost independently in the battlespace — they would be “netted” and work as part of a larger entity, but they would be operating at much greater distances from each other than we have ever seen before.

Under this concept, every Marine rifle squad would have the ability to call naval gunfire, to call and direct artillery, to call and direct aviation. The real power is not from the squad and its weapons, but from the firepower of the entire Marine Air Ground Task Force and the supporting fleet. We’re talking about leveraging the firepower we have available today to a much greater degree.

Isn’t that really a Special Operations concept?

Gangle: It is and it isn’t. … We would see these new distributed ops teams having a number of different types of missions. They could be used to enhance our intelligence-gathering capability, they could be deployed as a screening force, any number of things that we don’t use them for today. Counter-guerrilla activities and intelligence are probably the most important. We want to be able to seed the battlespace with a lot more teams that gather intelligence, and then, when necessary, bring those teams back together in squads and platoons to strike the target and actually engage the enemy in the traditional way.

Would DO include an expansion of new Special Operation units, such as Marine Detachment One?

Gangle: There are probably two avenues to pursue. One is to expand the Marine Corps Special Operations Detachment [MCSOCDET] by adding perhaps a [commando-like] organization to do the isolation and containment for the direct action guys, as well as an aviation detachment. CETO also looked at Marine Corps aviation training for special operations, and the possibility of training for specific missions instead of the more generic approach taken by the current (special operations) aviation wing, Task Force 160.

Most of the pilots who show up in 160 have 1,500 to 2,500 hours before they even go into the unit. Without an extreme commitment, it would be very difficult to train to that level for specific missions, though we think we could probably get to a much higher level than we’re at now. We could, however, train to that level for specific missions.

The other option is to expand MCSOCDET in its present form to two or three other locations. We would potentially see these detachments deploying aboard amphibious shipping in conjunction with Marine Expeditionary Units as part of Expeditionary Strike Groups. They would still belong to Special Operations Command, but they would be forward-deployed on amphibious ships and ready to be employed.

Equally as important, we could do work-up training together between the Marine Expeditionary Unit and MCSOCDET so they would be interoperable. If there is support needed from the larger group, they’ve had this training period together so there is greater understanding of what the requirements are. That way, the Marine Expeditionary Unit could do whatever is needed in support of this Special Operations Command force that’s out there.

Small unit leadership is a vital component of the DO concept. What does the Corps need to do to build junior noncommissioned officers (NCOs) into small unit leaders who can make tactical decisions?

Gangle: Many of the jobs that are done by officers today, we’re going to ask NCOs to do tomorrow. Obviously that is going to require a much more highly trained and highly educated NCO. To that end, we’ve looked literally around the world at how other countries are training their NCOs, and we think the best model is the British Army. They put potential NCOs through a 13-week course and it’s basically all fieldcraft, all tactical.

When I look at the amount of time we devote to NCO training today, and compare it to the time we invest in training officers, it almost makes me want to cry. In many respects, it’s remarkable that our NCOs do as well as they do, because the institution is not investing enough in their training. The average officer has six months of Basic School, and then he or she goes off to a specialization course which, in some cases, can last up to two years. The NCO, what does he get? He might get sent to a school, and he might not. Where does he pick up his knowledge of how to be a squad leader or a fire team leader?

Hopefully, he’s being mentored by someone within the organization, but the question you have to ask is where did the mentor learn it? Here we put this young man out on a battlespace, we give him the responsibility for 12 other Marines’ lives — you would think that before we do that we would put him into a course to teach him how to perform to his best ability.

Does that training concept involve an alteration of manpower policies?

Gangle: Perhaps we need to look at our retention policies. Instead of turning over so much of the Marine Corps, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to have a squad full of corporals instead of a bunch of privates. Instead of spending all this money recruiting and doing basic training and preliminary training to get them in the organization, maybe we could spend that money to pay the corporal, who’s been trained, to stay longer in the Marine Corps. We don’t have to go through the basic process again, and we could actually raise the level of training because we’ve retained people.

If we’re going to do Distributed Operations at a tactical level, we’re going to have to become a better trained and better led force. This could force us to make NCO training a reality. It would also require us to train to a much higher level within our organization.

Under DO, would company commanders have greater latitude in unconventional warfare?

Gangle: The Marine Corps’s basic operating philosophy is maneuver warfare. One of the tenets is, work within the commander’s intent; thrive in chaos. Fundamental to warfare is the tenet that techniques and procedures should be standardized, but our tactics should always be different. These young officers have to be willing to think out of the box. Hopefully, we are creating a climate that will enable them to feel they can think out of the box without fear of recrimination or repercussions.