XPost: sci.military.naval, soc.veterans, alt.politics.republicans   
   XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, talk.politics.guns, sac.politics   
   From: democrat-criminals@mail.house.gov   
      
   https://news.yahoo.com/marine-commandant-berger-became-poster-   
   185839042.html   
      
   WASHINGTON — In the small town of Newport, Rhode Island, a U.S. force   
   lacking in capabilities was about to face off against well-armed and   
   advanced Chinese troops.   
      
   It was 2018, and then-Lt. Gen. David Berger was putting four years of   
   simmering thoughts to the test in a wargame at the Naval War College, in   
   hopes of figuring out a better way to employ forces in the Pacific.   
      
   His last two assignments had put him at the forefront of the Marine Corps’   
   shift away from ground wars and back to sea. And he now had a chance to   
   see how all these ideas would play out in a fight against an advanced   
   competitor.   
      
   In the wargame, the adversarial force was based on China’s current   
   capabilities plus expected growth in the next couple years. The friendly   
   force was played by the U.S. joint force strictly as it was — no future   
   capabilities, no aspirational readiness levels and not even the F-35 Joint   
   Strike Fighter, as it wasn’t fielded in great numbers at the time.   
      
   Though the wargame’s details and results are classified, Berger had clear   
   takeaways for the Marine Corps: Anything heavy was a liability; mobility   
   would be a huge challenge, as would sustaining a force operating so near   
   to China’s shores; and Marines, with the right command-and-control   
   structure, could be a game-changing tool for sea-control and sea-denial   
   missions.   
      
   However, Berger told Defense News in a June 8 interview that his primary   
   takeaway from that wargame was the importance of already having forces in   
   the theater before a conflict starts.   
      
   “If we didn’t have something forward, then I think [then-Commandant Gen.   
   Robert] Neller is exactly right. He said we should expect to fight to get   
   to the fight — but this fight to get to the fight was getting to be a   
   slaughter [in previous wargames]. So more and more it was clear to not   
   just me, [but to] a bunch of people, the imperative of being forward all   
   the time, persistently,” Berger said.   
      
   In the wargame, that pre-positioned force included special operations   
   units and submarines. But Berger wanted Marines already in theater, too,   
   as something of a stand-in force.   
      
   “And if they’re going to be in there, then you have to answer the question   
   of: How are they going to survive? How are you going to resupply them? So   
   these became real thinking efforts for a lot of us,” he explained.   
      
   Fast forward a few years, and the takeaways from the 2018 wargame directly   
   led to Berger’s Commandant’s Planning Guidance, released the day after he   
   became the Corps’ top officer in July 2019; the Force Design 2030   
   modernization program, first released in March 2020 and updated annually;   
   the Stand-In Forces concept, released in December 2021 and brought to life   
   by the 3rd Marine Littoral Regiment that was activated in March 2022; and   
   a contested logistics concept released earlier this year, among them.   
      
   These changes were met with resistance. In fact, Berger faced vocal   
   opposition from the retiree community, unusual for the small service that   
   “was always taught that we did our laundry in private,” said former Navy   
   Secretary and Marine pilot Richard V. Spencer.   
      
   Spencer called Berger “the poster child for change, urgency and   
   deliberation,” and said the general fully embodied the phrase “talk softly   
   and carry a big stick.”   
      
   “His demeanor is so calm and so collected because it’s based in thought   
   and data,” he told Defense News in a June 21 interview.   
      
   A flurry of opinion pieces — some signed, some nameless — began   
   circulating in March 2022, accusing Berger of creating a one-trick pony of   
   sorts, a force optimized for a fight against China but no longer capable   
   of conducting other types of missions around the globe.   
      
   “I’m saddened beyond belief knowing that our Marine Corps soon will no   
   longer be the ready combined-arms force that our nation has long depended   
   upon when its interests were threatened,” former Marine Corps combat   
   development head Lt. Gen. Paul Van Riper wrote in Marine Corps Times. “It   
   will be a force shorn of all its tanks and 76% of its cannon artillery,   
   and with 41% fewer Marines in its infantry battalions.”   
      
   Despite additional pushback from the likes of former Commandant Gen. James   
   Amos and former Navy Secretary James Webb, Berger has continued undeterred   
   to overhaul his Corps.   
      
   Retired Adm. Scott Swift, who commanded U.S. Pacific Fleet when Berger led   
   U.S. Marine Corps Forces Pacific, had observed how the ideas behind Force   
   Design 2030 were validated in the 2018 wargame.   
      
   Berger “understood the challenges he was taking on and how he would be   
   criticized, but he had done enough study — this wasn’t just, he showed up   
   as commandant and decided to do this; this came out of his experiences,”   
   Swift said in a June 23 interview.   
      
   “He was there when they were using armor and long-range artillery in the   
   Middle East; he saw what the value of it was, but that’s a different   
   warfight” than what the joint force was to prepare for in the Pacific, the   
   admiral said, adding that Berger combined his experiences and a campaign   
   of wargaming to reform the Marine Corps “in a much more consequential way   
   than I think other leaders really had the courage to do.”   
      
   Berger took command of the Marine Corps on July 11, 2019. He relinquishes   
   command on July 10, after four years of reforms that will shape the Corps   
   for years to come.   
      
   Becoming commandant   
   The 38th commandant of the Marine Corps almost became a Navy officer.   
      
   Ahead of his 1977 graduation from high school in rural Maryland, Berger   
   applied for ROTC scholarships at the advice of his father, who Berger   
   called “the smartest person that I know.” His father had gone to Duke   
   University on an Air Force ROTC scholarship, and Berger ultimately chose   
   to attend Tulane University on a Navy ROTC scholarship due to his interest   
   in the school’s engineering program.   
      
   That fall, Berger began school as a naval cadet, but quickly noticed the   
   Marines.   
      
   “If you’re a college freshman and don’t know anything about the military,   
   they [Marines] were just a poster. And they not just looked the part —   
   they were clearly different from the Navy instructors, the way they   
   handled themselves, the way they taught their classes, and it was clear   
   that the [cadets in the Marine Corps program] were different, too. So I   
   was drawn to that,” Berger told Defense News in the interview, and he   
   switched to the Marine Corps program as soon as he was assured his   
   scholarship would allow it.   
      
   Berger graduated and was commissioned a Marine Corps officer in 1981. He   
   spent his first two tours on the West Coast, with deployments to the   
   Pacific on amphibious ships.   
      
   Though separated by geography, he said two formative events happened in   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)