Fiction Week

By Michael Hanson

Summer 2031

When the war that the Marine Corps anticipated for more than a decade finally began in 2031, it didn’t unfold the way the Marines had expected, and certainly not in ways that Marines had trained for over the years leading up to its outbreak. The detour from institutional expectations should have been expected though, because wars rarely go the way they are supposed to. Like many other clashes between great powers, it began over a grave miscalculation followed by an unfortunate escalation. A close encounter in the South China Sea in which one side nervously fired a shot, and after the first missile salvo was released, came the instant response. Both navies had ships burning and slipping beneath the waves. At this point, both sides were powerless to stop the inevitable exchange. Like a machine, long prepared war plans were activated and set into motion. Fleets turned towards one another and land-based forces raced to occupy key maritime terrain.

More great sea battles raged. As missiles skimmed the surface of the blue water, and slammed into the sides of grey hulls, red flames and black smoke mixed to create pastels unseen on the horizon in almost a century. In remote corners of the Western Pacific, the sky seemingly went dark with missiles fired from surface warships, submarines, and aircraft. The flight of the missiles resembled the exchange of arrows between two ancient hordes. The two navies collided like jousting medieval knights. They fought one another relentlessly, like armored juggernauts striving for the knockout blow. Each flailing, neither yielding. But a warrior only has a certain reserve of stamina and a ship only carries so many missiles. Shortly after hostilities exploded, the remains of each fleet limped away to rearm and prepare for the next joust.

A few months later, with diplomatic efforts stalled as each side sought a position of advantage at the negotiating table, the fleets clashed again, repeating their first performance of an indecisive draw. A pattern emerged. The rate of expenditures was staggering, and soon each side would be out of missiles. Each side had enough munitions for one more great clash. Yet rather than have it out, each side held back. Neither wanted to throw their last reserves of strength away like dice. The war settled into a stalemate, with each fleet keeping out of range of the other.

The initiative in the war shifted to the Stand-In forces in the First Island Chain. Here now was the part of the war the Marines had reimagined themselves for. For years, the Marines planned for their Littoral Regiments to be among the first American units to go into action in the looming fight. But the war didn’t take that path. Due to a several years long shortfall in the Landing Ship Medium (LSM) program, the main vessel to get Marine missile batteries into their firing positions on the many disparate islands of the region, the Marine Littoral Regiments were late to the event and largely unengaged.

To be sure, other parts of the Marine Stand-In Forces were involved since the first day, though they didn’t prove as decisive as they were expected to be. The reconnaissance-counter reconnaissance fight was indeed dynamic, displaying great feats of effort and endurance to gain and maintain situational awareness. But getting the expeditionary fires nodes into position proved to be the frustrating part. The Marines could sense but not shoot. With persistence, the Marines got their Fires Expeditionary Advance Bases established, though unfortunately too late to have a decisive effect on many of the passing Chinese ships. The Marines’ role was frustratingly limited as the opposing fleets clashed beyond the range of their land-based fires nodes. They seemed to have missed their chance…at first.

However, the war continued to take unexpected turns. The plus side of not being heavily engaged in the initial phase of the conflict was that by now the Marines still had a lot of missiles. With the fleets low on ammo, the Marines’ stock rose significantly. The Marine Littoral Regiment now appeared to be a trump card for the Americans, after they had played much of their initial hand. Having finally occupied their positions in key parts of the First Island Chain, the Marines stood ready to prevent the Chinese ships from breaking out of the First Island Chain. If the Chinese fleet decided to break for open ocean and come back out for another round, they would face the considerable capabilities of the Marine Littoral Regiment, now fully deployed and ready.

But the war that didn’t follow its envisioned path offered more surprises for the Marines. The Chinese had Stand-In Forces of their own – proxy forces and maritime militia. The Chinese had also planned and wargamed this likely contingency and found the Marine Littoral Regiments to be a formidable adversary.

Not surprisingly, the Chinese made preparations to counter this threat. In the years before the conflict erupted, the Chinese began to plant seeds that would bloom under the typhoon of war. Tapping into long simmering grievances, Chinese agents established contact with disaffected groups across the First Island Chain and offered support. Money, weapons, equipment, and training bolstered the capabilities of local insurgent groups, whether they were the remnants of Cold War Communist insurgencies or the persistent Islamic insurgent groups that the regional governments contested with more recently. The Chinese also enticed criminal gangs and mafia organizations to enlist their foot soldiers in the fight. The “Chinese Proxy Forces,” were to be called “Charlie Papa Fox,” or simply “Charlie” for short, by the Marines. The Chinese had assembled a formidable Stand-In force to conduct reconnaissance, sabotage, and even kinetic strikes on American forces. This was a tactic the Marines were not prepared to deal with.

Throughout the Philippine archipelago, many unsuspecting Marines were caught flat-footed by an adversary resembling guerrillas in a setting they simply didn’t expect to be contested in. If anything, the Marines expected to be dodging missiles, not small arms fire. The Marine Stand-In Forces were simply not prepared for this surprise tactic, as their security posture didn’t anticipate this kind of threat. As was usual practice, most units had posted security but in many cases their defenses were breached or overwhelmed. Isolated communication and logistics nodes, drone launch points, reconnaissance assets, forward arming/refueling points, and even missile batteries experienced the sudden encroachment from fire team and squad sized elements to mobs of armed civilians. Whether through sabotage or outright attack, some critical assets were damaged or destroyed. When the proxies first came out some units held their ground and repelled their attackers, others were forced to displace to save themselves, a few units were even overrun.

The majority of the subcomponents of the Stand-In Force were responsible for their own security, which consisted solely of static positions with weapons oriented outboard. The Marine Littoral Regiment had a Littoral Combat Team, the only organic unit with infantry forces. The LCT was derived from a former infantry battalion and possessed three rifle companies. But these were not complete elements, they had been broken up by platoon and distributed across the regiment to provide security at critical nodes. However, there wasn’t enough infantry to provide security for everything. When attacked, the sites with infantry providing security typically fared better than those that didn’t for the simple fact that units responsible for their own security often didn’t have enough Marines to adequately perform the task. In some places the infantry providing security even counterattacked to finish off broken attackers. In places without attached infantry, a hard lesson often learned from war to war and forgotten in the peaceful years in between was learned again: every Marine must be a rifleman.

Though the Marines were caught off guard by the first massed proxy attack, they wouldn’t be surprised again. Immediately, the Marines began moving their nodes often, constantly displacing and emplacing to keep the proxies off balance. They would stay in a location for twenty-four hours or less and utilized an infantry squad to reconnoiter and occupy the next site before the unit moved. Whereas the previous default security posture had been static, the Marines quickly adapted and adopted a more active defense. The infantry platoons guarding key locations started pushing out patrols to create depth in their defensive plans. They were tasked to interdict any enemy forces who sought to close on them, whether for sabotage or in a massed attack. At night, the Marines conducted ambush patrols on likely areas the proxies would need to cross to close on a MLR node. There were still restrictions, however. The Marines occupied locations devoid of civilians and the security patrols were specifically ordered to stay away from civilian areas. Thus, any civilians encountered were more likely to be proxy forces searching for Marines. Though host nation forces tried to act as a buffer between the Americans and local nationals, inevitably Marines would encounter civilians simply trying to exist in their own homeland. Thus, Marines were once again reminded to be No Better Friend, and No Worse Enemy. All the same, the Marines relearned old rules of engagement as well as hostile act and hostile intent.

As the Marines began to demonstrate success interdicting and ambushing proxy forces, the proxies adapted as well. Proxy force tactics shifted to trying to ambush patrolling Marines in close range direct fire gunfights, and when that revealed predictable results, they moved on to setting out booby traps. The classic pendulum of warfare swung between action and counteraction by each side. As the Marines learned and adapted to the booby traps, the traps became ever more clever and sophisticated. The Marines even began to learn firsthand about something they only heard of in publications and history classes of the desert wars, IED’s.

The Marines also learned that the proxy forces were not their only enemy. The jungle was a formidable adversary in its own right, in fact tougher and less forgiving than the proxies were. The jungle was austere and harsh. It was hell. To successfully fight in the jungle, Marines had to learn how to fight the jungle itself. They had to be both physically and mentally resilient, and well led. The jungle was hot, humid, wet, and steamy, full of poisonous insects and reptiles and debilitating ailments and diseases. It took a toll on the Marines’ minds and bodies, as well as their gear. Nerves ran short, bodies were reduced by sickness and environmental effects. Boots rotted along with the feet inside of them. Weapons rusted, bullets corroded, gear came apart, and waterlogged electronic screens proved useless. Advanced technologies were of little use in this primal environment. Though the jungle canopy protected Marines from the prying eyes of drones, it also denied them radio communication. In the jungle, Marines were on their own. The thick vegetation swallowed large units yet was penetrable only by small ones. To move swiftly and silently, they would have to pack light. To be effective they would have to stay out for more than a few hours. To endure for more than a few hours they would have to bring chow and water on patrol. To do all of these things they would have to leave their heavy and bulky body armor behind. To survive and thrive in this environment, the Marines would need to become masters of field craft. The jungle was neutral, it didn’t choose sides but certainly favored the bold, resourceful, and disciplined.^{1, 2}

The more the war that started out as a contest between missile platforms took unexpected twists and turns, the more the Marines began to learn that what was old was now new again. The few images that made it back to the home front from this isolated combat zone eerily resembled scenes from previous campaigns that Marines won past honors in. The jungle was neutral. Small units had decisive effects. Skills were more important than gear. Field craft staved off culmination. Discipline saved lives. Leadership was paramount. Trust was essential. Commander’s intent and mission tactics were standard operating procedure. Every Marine needed to be a rifleman. Marines fought a wily enemy and endured in extreme conditions while diplomats at long tables endlessly negotiated towards a peace settlement. And in another war in East Asia, Marines once again ventured into the jungle on the hunt for someone they called “Charlie.”

Major Michael A. Hanson, USMC, is an Infantry Officer serving at The Basic School, where the Marine Corps trains its lieutenants and warrant officers in character, officership, and the skills required of a provisional rifle platoon commander. He is also a member of the Connecting File, a Substack newsletter that shares material on tactics, techniques, procedures, and leadership for Marines at the infantry battalion level and below.

Footnotes

1. Michael Hanson, “In the WEZ,” Center for International Maritime Security. Last modified December 2, 2020, https://cimsec.org/in-the-wez/

2. Michael Hanson, “Welcome Back to the Jungle,” United States Naval Institute Proceedings, April 2021 Vol. 147/4, https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2021/april/welcome-back-jungle-0

Featured Image: Art created with Midjourney AI.