SoD 2020 (do not use; old CSS)

If we had written this State of Defense report two months ago, it would have been almost entirely different. For better or worse, President Trump brings the nation into 2019 with a new sdfkj sdalfkda slkfj salkjlksadjldsa and attention to the U.S. military’s ground wars.

His sudden decision in December to withdraw U.S. forces from Syria was so radical a departure from his own previous policy — and so opposed by his own team leaders and many if not most national-security professionals — that Defense Secretary Jim Mattis finally decided he’d had enough of his erratic commander in chief, and resigned in protest. So followed Brett McGurk, the president’s envoy to the ISIS war. Both wrote scorching exit notes that explained what the United States should be doing to keep the influence it bought with blood and treasure in Syria, that geographic and strategic crossroads of Russia, Iran, Middle East powers, and the West. Mattis in particular urged a strong American presence abroad and strong alliances, the two things Trump most often threatens to quit.

Clearly, Trump enters his third year in office emboldened — whether by the arrival of a national security adviser who shares his disdain for collective action, by the swirling of the many investigations of his sphere, or simply by having settled into the job. Decisions to limit America’s military interventions could eventually force drastic changes to the military services’ sizes, shapes, fleets, and arsenals. To make those decisions, Trump will have a new defense secretary (likely Patrick Shanahan, who wants to remove “acting” from his title), a new Joint Chiefs chairman, three new service chiefs, several new combatant commanders, and, presumably a new round of Pentagon policy staffers to replace a wave of departures.

Trump also faces a new Democratic majority in the House, eager to challenge his Pentagon team on the record and on camera. For two years, defense leaders hid from the public, avoided interviews, and were even restricted from public appearances, in part to keep from saying anything to contradict or disagree with Trump’s erratic policy swings and tweets. But less than one month into the new Congress, DOD officials forced to testify are already getting into trouble. After Defense Undersecretary John Rood’s Jan. 31 appearance before the House Armed Services Committee Chairman, Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., suggested that Rood may have broken the law by not disclosing Pentagon plans to increase troops at the Mexico border. Then the Pentagon’s top civilian in charge of special operations forces publicly disagreed with the president’s Syria pullout order. Why did he say it? He had to. A member of Congress asked him under oath, on camera.

Shanahan already has said that he won’t travel as much as past secretaries, which would severely limit his press availability and the most intimate time for defense secretaries and reporters to build relationships, but he may do more public events. Unless he withdraws his restrictions on other senior leaders, the E-ring will remain in the shadows. The HASC and other committees promise to bring much greater attention to all Pentagon policies and proposals, from missile defense increases to updating 18-year old authorizations for deploying U.S. troops abroad, the fate of ISIS war detainees, and whether Trump will request a bottom line of more $700 billion or $750 billion, or somewhere in between.

Trump might have used his State of the Union address to explain his bolder path, but instead said little new in the 82-minute speech. A White House press release declared that Trump’s national-security accomplishments were, roughly, keeping defense spending high, caring for troops, cajoling NATO allies to spend more, shrinking ISIS territory, calming North Korea, and hurting Iran by withdrawing from the nuclear deal and enacting additional sanctions. He also promised, within months, to offer a new plan for Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Most importantly, the release said Trump was “fulfilling his promise to stop the cycle of endless wars that have burdened our nation.” In other words, the United States will bring an unspecified — one suspects, undecided — number of U.S. troops home.

Nobody knows how. Nobody knows when. Perhaps their positions on the front lines will be filled by America’s allies and partners.

The messages from the administration remain confusing. The day after the State of the Union, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo convened officials from the 74 member countries of the counter-ISIS coalition. The meeting aimed, in part, to determine which countries may step up to replace exiting American troops and capabilities. In a brief appearance at the meeting, Trump touted the loss of ISIS territory, but declined to repeat his earlier assertions that the group was defeated and that U.S. forces would immediately withdraw. Pompeo said the president “has also made clear that we’re ready to come back in full force if ISIS reorganizes and reemerges.”

But the next day, Pompeo suggested to Fox News that nothing had changed at all. “That’s the challenge, I think, for our time. In Syria, we will simply do the same mission we’ve had for my two years in this administration,” he said. “It’s to identify, make sure we understand where they are, and go after them, whether that’s us directly or through our partners and coalition partners.”

Pompeo’s Syrian-policy dance follows his Mideast tour last month where he similarly and clumsily argued that the Trump administration would keep America engaged in the region despite troops withdrawals and empty embassy offices. Trying to please allies, sound tough, and retreat at the same time will remain a hard sell for Trump’s security team.

In next month’s budget hearings, expect service leaders to argue that too much is being asked of too-few troops with too-few resources. But that means some hard choices and some exciting ones. The Navy’s top officer is having a come-to-John Paul Jones moment, conceding that the fleet is simply not going to get its requested 355 ships. So, if you can’t get the ships you want, maybe you can get the next best thing: robot ships. Also, throw on new lasers, new naval aircraft, and make sure you’re buying things that keep your edge over your fast-growing adversary, China. The Marines aren’t counting ships as much as they’re counting months – as in too many months spent deployed. Corps leaders worry the pace is unsustainable and are watching Trump closely; if he draws down deployments, that’s good news for dwell time and training.

In the Air Force, set to grow by 4,000 airmen this year, Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein is focused on developing the networks that are changing how air war is fought. And he too is awaiting the Syria drawdown, anticipating that fewer troops on the ground will mean more drones keeping watch from the air.

Meanwhile, the Army has thousands of troops coming or going in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, South Korea, Somalia, and…Texas…all while recruiting showed struggles, retention rules are changing, and a raft of new leaders will take the reins.

Read more details of what to expect from all the Defense Department’s four service branches below in this year’s State of Defense. Next year, it could be five. (Space Force!)

We’ll start with the good news: The U.S. Army is in a much better position than it was one year ago. For starters, there’s no recruiting shortfall like there was last year. And so the service now appears poised to become the flexible, well-equipped force former leaders like current Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley envisioned less than two years ago when he was Army chief. But there is a long way to go still before the service is ready for the sort of “great power competition” in the Pacific envisioned by the latest National Defense Strategy.

That’s partly because the Army is still trying to build up its special brigades — Security Force Assistance Brigades, or SFABs — designed for deployments to a variety of hot spots around the globe. The eventual plan is to build up six SFABs, one for each of the five combatant commands — Central Command, Southern Command, European Command, Indo-Pacific Command, and Africa Command — plus an additional brigade for the National Guard. So far, three have been stood up; and the units have only deployed to Afghanistan, where attrition problems were particularly brutal. But that’s due to change very soon: AFRICOM will receive the 1st SFAB in just a couple of weeks, the Army announced Wednesday.

China’s backyard could be next. In line with NDS “great power” planning, Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy told reporters at a Defense Writers Group breakfast in January that an SFAB for the Pacific region could begin to fall into place as early as Oct. 1 — with advisers possibly from the 5th SFAB out of Fort Lewis, Wash., arriving to Indo-PACOM first, and the full brigade getting staffed over the course of the following months. None of this is terribly clear or very public just yet. And that’s just for one combatant command. Officials aren’t talking about possible ready dates for the SFABs eventually assigned to AFRICOM, EUCOM and SOUTHCOM, or when the NG brigade, known officially as the 54th SFAB, will be ready to roll.

At any rate, “Just because [SFABs are] aligned to Africa or Europe, doesn’t mean they aren’t going to go to Afghanistan,” McCarthy said. “At the end of the day, if we have troops in contact — we have a commander that needs a capability — [Defense Secretary Mark Esper] can pull forces from anywhere in the world. And maybe at the dismay of a combatant commander in another region, but they’re going wherever the sound of the guns are.”

And SFABs, of course, aren’t the only ones going toward the sound of the guns. The 101st Airborne’s 3rd Brigade Combat Team just surged to Kenya in response to the Jan. 5 al-Shabaab attack on the U.S. base in Manda Bay. That unit is assigned to AFRICOM as a crisis response force. Another of the Army’s global response units is in Kuwait. Some 3,500 paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne’s 1st Brigade Combat Team arrived at CENTCOM’s area of operations immediately after the Jan. 3 U.S. airstrike on Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani.

Also notable about those recent deployments: Soldiers were ordered to leave laptops and cell phones behind. This is at least partly because the Army is deliberately broadening the way it fights to what it calls Multidomain Operations — incorporating plans and actions across space, cyber, air, sea, and the Army’s natural domain, land warfare. That’s all because, as Milley wrote in 2018, “Strategic competitors like Russia and China are synthesizing emerging technologies with their analysis of military doctrine and operations… Therefore, the American way of war must evolve and adapt.” The idea is to have an entirely new way of conducting warfare by 2028, which is enormously ambitious; but, as Milley wrote, would also be just “the first step in our doctrinal evolution.”

According to the Army’s new chief, Gen. James McConville, the changes ahead are going to feel as different as a rotary phone is from an iPhone. McConville even brought a rotary phone to help make his point during a recent speech he delivered to the Association of the U.S. Army at Fort Belvoir, Va. Part of those changes, too, involve changing the name of the service’s Cyber Command to Information Warfare Command by 2028. McConville’s got his eye on that one in particular, he said, since it “will enable us to compete below the level of armed conflict.”

Some of the Army’s loftiest goals of 2019 — modernization priorities like extending the range of its weapons and improving the variety and quality of its air defenses — remain little more than visions one year later. But McConville told the crowd at Belvoir, “I’m confident we are going to be able to engage targets at ranges of more than 500 kilometers very soon.” It could happen as soon as 2023, he said, and it could even involve hypersonic missiles.

“Transformational change is how we get overmatch and how we get confidence in the future,” McConville said. “It’s how we compete. It’s how we deter our great power competitors. And if required, it’s how we win on the future battlefield.”

And there are big bucks in transformationally changing the U.S. Army for a future war in the Pacific. That’s exactly why Army and Navy secretaries had a mild public feud over whose branch is more important for the U.S. looking to win or at least deter a conflict on China’s doorstep.

"We've got three ground wars in the last century in that part of the world," Secretary McCarthy said at the Defense Writers Group. "The greatest deterrent is boots on the ground with our allies shoulder to shoulder worldwide, and that is proven very well for us in Europe. And we are going to do more of that in East Asia over the course of this calendar year."

Meantime, here are a few questions that loom for the Army in the months ahead:

How long will U.S. air defense units remain on Iran’s doorstep in case of a conflict or more Iranian missile attacks?
Will Iraq expel American forces, as the parliament voted to do after the Soleimani strike?
Can the White House strike a deal with the Taliban in Afghanistan?
Will the U.S. military reduce its presence across Africa in 2020?
Are the nearly 17,000 American soldiers in Korea going to be there next year given failed negotiations between Washington and Seoul?
When will the thousands of soldiers redeploy from the U.S.-Mexico border?

When U.S. Navy leaders announced two years ago that they would seek to grow the battle force — then comprising about 275 submarines and surface warships — to 355 vessels, they received huzzahs from analysts who noted that the fleet was already having trouble keeping up with combatant commanders’ demands and predicted that it would be inadequate by 2030.

But Congress has shown little desire to fork out money for this larger fleet, which would require boosting annual shipbuilding funding by about 50 percent, according to calculations by the Congressional Budget Office. Now, it seems, the Chief of Naval Operations is acknowledging fiscal gravity.

“In light of the new National Defense Strategy and changes in the security environment since that was put out, we’re doing a new force structure assessment,” Adm. John Richardson, the chief of naval operations, told reporters at the Pentagon in early February. “We’ll see where that goes.”

One direction it seems certain to go is toward unmanned craft. Navy officials had consistently declined to say whether unmanned ships or subs might count toward the 355, perhaps still holding out hope that Congress might fund a separate purchase of drones. But Richardson seems to have opened the door to such accounting: “Technology is starting to come to play, so what counts as a naval platform is going to be an interesting discussion in this new force structure assessment.”

So let’s look at the state of the Navy's robot warships. The most recent news comes from the Office of Naval Research, whose 132-foot robot trimaran, Sea Hunter, has completed a roundtrip voyage between San Diego and Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. No humans went along for the ride, save “very short duration boardings by personnel from an escort vessel to check electrical and propulsion systems,” builder Leidos said in a Jan. 31 press release.

The more-than-5,200-mile journey was a big step for autonomous seamanship, though we don’t know much else about the voyage — including its date. A classified curtain descended over the Sea Hunter program last April, when it was transferred from DARPA after an eight-year gestation. (Here’s a video of the vessel’s 2016 launch and early tests, complete with pulsepounding score.) But we do know that the Navy is thinking big.

“We might be able to put a six-pack or a fourpack of missiles on them. Now imagine 50 of these, distributed and operating together under the hands of a flotilla commander,” former Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work said last April. “This is going to be a Navy unlike any navy in history, a human-machine collaborative battle fleet that will confound our enemies.”

Sea Hunter and its follow-ons were originally envisioned as cheap eyes and ears to help find and keep tabs on the ultra-quiet air-independent-propulsion submarines that are proliferating throughout the world’s navies, including the Chinese and Russian fleets. “Sea Hunter’s $20 million price tag is a fraction of the cost compared with a new Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, which would require approximately $1.6 billion in defense funds,” NBC News reported last year. “The drone ship also has an estimated operating cost ranging from $15,000 to $20,000 a day whereas a destroyer costs $700,000 a day to operate.”

Leidos officials are still talking up the antisubmarine mission. Their post-Pacific-voyage press release said Sea Hunter “can shadow dieselelectric submarines for months, without human contact, across thousands of miles of ocean and chase them out of strategic waters.”

But as Nevin Carr, then the one-star chief of naval research, put it, “What we learned along the way is that the real power wasn’t in any particular mission, it was having an autonomous pickup truck that could go away for long periods of time and have a persistent capability for whatever mission the Navy wants to do.”

Next steps for the 145-ton Sea Hunter include another “long-duration voyage.” And Leidos is already building a follow-on Sea Hunter II.

But the Navy is thinking beyond these “medium” unmanned vessels. By 2023, service leaders want to award a contract for a much larger drone ship, one whose descendants could be packed with missiles like a 21st-century version of the Arsenal Ship concept.

Of course, the sea service is still buying manned ships. Indeed, the next half decade will see a flurry of orders of prototype and first-in-class vessels. CNO Richardson laid out the timeline in his “Design for Maintaining Maritime Superiority 2.0,” released in December as an update for a similar January 2016 document. Under the plan, 2020 will see an award for the Future Frigate, while 2023 will bring contracts for the maybe-cruiser, maybe-destroyer Large Surface Combatant and a pair of new auxiliary ships dubbed Large and Small. And despite some analysts’ misgivings about the utility of aircraft carriers in a world where China and Russia are seeking ship-killing missiles that can cross half an ocean, the service just placed its first two-carrier order since the Reagan administration.

Unmanned programs on the docket include the aforementioned Large Unmanned Surface Vehicle, with first contract slated for 2023; and a whole family of robot submarines dubbed Orca, Snakehead, Razorback, and Knifefish, to be fielded by 2025.

The Navy, of course, operates in the air as well. This year’s main planning goal is figuring out what will replace the Super Hornet and its jammer-spoofer-electronic warfare variant, the Growler. The service’s marquee drone program is Boeing’s MQ-25 aerial refueling drone, which will operate among the manned aircraft on bigdeck carriers, freeing up as many of them as possible from tanker duty. The CNO wants to see the Stingray’s first flight in 2021. Boeing’s CEO recently said he expects it to fly this year.

New weapons round out the timeline: Richardson wants to start arming warships with the Surface Navy Laser Weapons System, a family of low- and high-power directed-energy arms, between 2019 and 2025; and a hypersonic weapon by 2025.

And what of the Navy’s global competition? China and Russia might just be ahead in the race to develop hypersonic weapons, but for now at least, U.S. developers of robot warships seem to have the edge on Chinese efforts like the 7.5-meter, 3.7-ton Liaowangzhe-2 self-driving boat unveiled in November.

Still, the cost of technology is coming down in robot ships, just as it is in everything else. “Any boat can be fitted with a kit that allows it to act autonomously and swarm on a potential threat,” Adm. Matthew Klunder, then the head of the Office of Naval Research, said last fall.

As Capt. Dave Goldfein taxied his F-16 to the runway at Nellis Air Force Base just north of Las Vegas in the 1990s, the U.S. way of war was far more siloed.

To lead 100 warplanes into a mock battle in the skies above the U.S. Air Force’s premier training rage, Goldfein and his other Weapons School classmates had one basic piece of communication technology: a radio.

“It was a very mechanical process by which we would choreograph this large force going in to do to do a mission,” Goldfein, now a general and the Air Force’s top officers, said in a broad-ranging Jan. 18 telephone interview from Nellis.

“I was just responsible for orchestrating 100 aircraft to get into and out of a heavily defended target area,” he recounted. “Then determining through the combination of radio calls and radar tapes and other things just piece it all together so we can learn from it.”

It’s a far cry from that now, as technology is preparing the Air Force for the potential battles with Russia and China described in the National Defense Strategy, a year-old document that guides just about every decision military leaders make today, hoping it helps them win the battles of tomorrow.

Those battles — which Goldfein, as the Air Force chief of staff, is responsible for making sure airmen are properly trained and have the right equipment — are not just expected in the air, on the ground or at sea, but all those area at one in addition to space and cyberspace. The Air Force is investing in weapons that enable what Goldfein calls the the “joint penetrating team.”

Today at Nellis, and other bases, the Air Force’s wargames are a much more networked affair than the ones Goldfein flew more than 25 years ago. Instead of that radio, pilots in the cockpits of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters have a far better picture of the battlefield being pumped in from satellites, planes and other types of airborne sensors. That battlefield picture allows the plane to act as a “quarterback,” allowing the pilots to guide other aircraft to their targets, much like its predecessor, the F-22 Raptor, has done in the skies over Syria.

“There’s no figuring out through radio calls and other things — it’s right there,” Goldfein said of display presented to F-35 pilots. “When we call the F-35 the quarterback of the joint team, it’s because it’s this fusion machine that brings it all together and they do that right here at Nellis on these ranges and bring in virtual and constructive as well with the simulators. It’s a different game. It’s truly a joint fight and it’s an all-domain fight. And they do that here at Nellis every day.”

Growth on the Horizon

After calling for growth in recent years, it’s happening, albeit at a modest pace. The Air Force plans to add 4,000 to its ranks in 2019, bringing its end strength to just over 329,000. Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson last year announced even more ambitious plans to add 40,000 more airmen and 74 new squadrons by 2030. Service officials are expected to offer more details about that goal in the coming months.

In 2018, the Air Force locked in deals for new pilot training jets and security helicopters from Boeing. It just received its first KC-46 aerial refueling tanker, also built by Boeing. In secret, Northrop Grumman is building the service a new stealth bomber, which completed a major design review late last year.

“The secretary and I right now are focused on precise execution and to ensure that we continue to deliver on time and on budget and where we can under budget,” Goldfein said.

Being able to strike targets that are guarded by advanced surface-to-air missiles and electronic jammers is how the Air Force views the future, which is driving how its investing its money now.

“No country on the planet can place a block of wood over themselves to keep us out,” Goldfein said. “Any adversary on the planet, the best they can do is a block of Swiss cheese. There are holes that can be exploited and it’s our job to know where they are and how to get in and how to hold targets risk and to ensure that we can do so. And there’s nothing our adversary can do about it.”

Thus, the Air Force is spending its money on weapons built for that type of scenario.

“You’re going to see a significant investment in that penetrating capability across the Air Force portfolio,” Goldfein said. “It’s an all-domain portfolio.”

Among the projects he mentioned: space assets, manned and unmanned aircraft, F-35s, F-22 upgrades, the B-21 bomber — all part of the “joint penetrating team.”

“When you take a look at what National Defense Strategy tells us we need to prepare to do, I think you’re going to see a significant investment in those capabilities,” he said.

By year’s end, the service’s F-35 fleet, currently north of 165 aircraft, will surpass the 183-plane F-22 cohort.

The Air Force is still short pilots, partly due to demand from airlines which offer more predictable schedules, but the service will train 1,300 new pilots this year, up from 1,100 last year, Goldfein said. That should rise to 1,400 next year and 1,500 in 2021.

“I’m the 21st chief. [The 22nd chief] after me is gonna still deal with it a bit,” he said. My goal and the secretary’s goal is that Chief 23 won’t be dealing with this because we’ll have produced and brought into the Air Force the number of pilots we need to sustain the force.”

Goldfein, who in his two-plus years as Air Force chief has pushed to delegate authority to squadron commanders, wants to “make flying in the United States Air Force as rich an experience for the pilot and the family as we possibly can.”

High Operational Tempo

For more than four years, the Air Force has been at the center of the airstrike campaign against Islamic State militants. As U.S. ground forces in Syria prepare to carry out President Trump’s unexpected December 2018 order to withdraw, Air Force drones will likely be among the eyes overhead keeping watch.

“What naturally happens is that we become top cover for forces that are on the move,” said Goldfein, who commanded coalition air forces in the Middle East during the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq in 2011.

“I actually plussed up forces in 2011 to provide top cover for our orderly withdrawal,” he said. “I’m expecting that we’ll do the same over time going forward.”

But after years of surges to meet the insatiable demand from commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Air Force trimmed its drone operations in 2015. The change helped to alleviate staffing problems and to normalize a career field of thousands of airmen that was born out of battlefield needs.

Goldfein recently visited Creech Air Force Base, where most Air Force MQ-9 Reaper drones are remotely piloted. He said the career field has made a “significant improvement,” but that there is “still work to be done.”

“As we’ve been moving to normalize this community, the demand signal has not gone down,” Goldfein said. “In fact, it’s gone up and there’s a good chance it will go up even further” to support the drawdown in Syria.

“As we as we complete the strategy of removing ISIS as a physical caliphate, I think history will show that the MQ-1 [and] MQ-9 community ... has had a significant role to play on you know how to find, fix and finish and take bad people off the battlefield to ensure we accomplish our objectives,” Goldfein said.

The general touted the “innovation that I saw [at Creech] and what they're coming up with on how to use that weapon system in ways that we actually never envisioned when we designed it.”

Last year, a Reaper, which was originally built to capture video of the battlefield below and drop guided bombs on enemy targets, shot down a small drone during a test.

Airmen are “looking for ways of using that weapon system differently,” Goldfein said.

The Space Force

One big wildcard facing the Air Force right now is Trump’s calls to create a Space Force, a new branch of the military. Congress must approve such a move and it’s unclear whether it would support such a move.

The Pentagon had been planning to ask Congress for an independent service, with a secretary and chief of staff, however, a Defense News report indicated it would be included within the Air Force, just like the Marine Corps is part of the Department of the Navy.

A formal Space Force proposal is expected to be part of the Pentagon’s fiscal 2020 budget request, which is supposed to head to Congress in February.

Is the Marine Corps overstretched? That’s a question not seen in many headlines since the height of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, when Marines were used to supplement the shortstaffed U.S. Army. But it was the central concern of a stark new assessment in January given by the Marine Corps’ top planner.

If the United States wants the most ready-to-fight Marine Corps possible, the service needs to upgrade its weapons, fleets, vessels and vehicles, said Lt. Gen. Brian Beaudreault, deputy commandant for plans, policy, and operations. The service needs new skills, technology, and flexibility to keep experimenting with the shape and size of the force. And if the United States wants rested and ready Marines, then it needs to let them slow down.

“We’re going to need to decrease our operational commitments,” said Beaudreault in a Jan. 16 speech to U.S. Navy and Corps leaders gathered near the Pentagon.

An ideal “dwell time” would allow Marines three months at home for every month deployed, he said. Currently, that ratio is just 2-to-1.

President Trump’s oft-stated desire to end some U.S. military operations abroad would seem to offer hope for a lighter load. But one month into 2019, there is little clarity about how long or how often the commander in chief will keep deploying Marines for America’s wars, counterterrorism ops, or other missions. At present, Trump has directed the Pentagon to plan for a withdrawal of U.S. troops in Syria, and decrease forces in Afghanistan and Somalia.

As ever, the Marines are planning to meet whatever mission is asked of them.

“I’m kind of the guy that makes sure the Marine Corps can deliver today,” Beaudreault told reporters after his speech. “So, we’re doing what the nation needs us to do today, be that in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Africa, but if we can recover those forces back to the United States, it gives us an opportunity to work higher-level training.”

Politics is already changing some Marine Corps training. While Trump put large exercises in South Korea on hold as part of his outreach to North Korea, the United States plans to inaugurate massive Pacific exercise from February through April to rehearse long-distance amphibious warfare skills with the Army, Navy, and Coast Guard. It comes amid the Marines’ neverending plans to move forces out of Okinawa and distribute them across Guam, Hawaii, and Australia, in part to be less of a single target in a conflict.

In his final annual message to the Corps, outgoing Commandant Gen. Robert Neller outlined a series of hard choices and changes he said the Marines must make to remain the most ready and lethal possible.

“Our legacy of fighting and winning is not attached to any piece of equipment, but to our creativity and resolve to defeat our enemies,” Neller said in his Jan. 25 message. Everything from vehicles to squad sizes to drunkenness and alcohol use need reviewing, he said. That’s a long list for whomever Trump picks as the next commandant.

The year ahead for the Marine Corps does not appear to have any major weapons changes but some familiar storylines continue. An internal Pentagon report reportedly said in January that the F-35B, the Marines’ version of the fighter that can land vertically, may only last a fraction of its planned service life. The service will continue to test and request upgrades and variants to the forthcoming Amphibious Combat Vehicle, or ACV, which will replace the legendary Amphibious Assault Vehicle. And controversy hangs over the decision and cost to replace the M4 rifle with the M27 from foreign gunmaker Heckler & Koch.

As Neller looks toward his final months as commandant, he said the Corps is doing some things well, others need work, and others were, well, “challenges.” The good news: recruiting is great, Marines can deploy into battle wherever they’re needed, and they’re adapting to modern needs by networking the force from F-35s to individual riflemen.

But Marines can do better at being ready to deploy with better training and better self-care, including “fitness and medical readiness.” His message came about the same time as the service revealed its suicide rate had hit a 10-year high.

If the average American read any news about the Marine Corps in 2018, however, it likely was about Marines behaving badly. Neller wrote passionately of his concerns about the example Marines set for Americans, and its effect on readiness.

“When the American people hear or read about Marines who don’t meet our standards of honor, courage, and commitment, they are both confused and disappointed.”

Gen. Jay Raymond, the chief of space operations, is the only official member of the Space Force, even though some 16,000 servicemembers and civilians who were previously part of U.S. Space Command are now assigned to the Space Force.

We “have the opportunity to look at a new approach to creating a 21st century service,” Air Force Lt. Gen. David Thompson, vice commander of the Space Force, told reporters Wednesday at the Pentagon. “Our intent is to make it focused very much on the things that are required for a force to operate effectively, even as we look to others to provide support functions that we need to operate.”

A Pentagon team is putting together the Space Force headquarters staff. It’s expected to look different than the makeup of the elder services, which each have numbered directorates dealing with personnel, intelligence, planning, requirements and other specialties. By comparison, the Space Force will initially have three directorates:

Human capital and logistics (led by a senior civilian).
Operations, cyber and logistics (led by a three-star).
Plans, programs, requirements and analysis (led by a three-star).

“[I]f we think about being” smaller than other services, flatter than other services, more agile than other services, that may not mean that you adopt the standard, Napoleonic headquarters organizational structure,” Air Force Maj. Gen. Clint Crosier, director of the U.S. Space Force Planning Office.

Pentagon officials expect some 6,000 Air Force service members to transfer into the Space Force by year’s end.

Pentagon leaders are determining which parts Army and Navy — and even additional Air Force billets — will be transferred to the Space Force in the coming years. Right now, the Army plans to transfer at least 100 soldiers into the Space Force.

“I think the Army’s 100 personnel is just a down payment,” said Todd Harrison, who directs defense budget analysis and the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “They likely have 1,000 or more space operators that should ultimately transfer to the Space Force, along with the satellites they are developing and operating. The struggle to get them to let go of that stuff will be an ongoing challenge.”

It’s unclear how many Navy personnel will transfer into the new service.

Gen. David Goldfein, who is expected to retire this summer, wants to ensure a good working relationship between the Air and Space forces.

“The objective for Chief Raymond and I are: how do we build a service on a foundation of trust and confidence and focused on integrated joint warfighting, but at the same time allow the Space Force to develop its own, unique service culture,” the Air Force chief of staff said Jan. 27 at the Center for a New American Security. “Because we could hug it too close and slow it down or we could allow space to get seperated too much as we build a separate service. There’s a sweet spot that we have to find and we’re driving at.

“The question is: what did we build? Did we build two services on a foundation of trust, confidence and focused on integrated joint warfighting or did we allow others to make this some kind of a divisive split. Is this a marriage or a divorce? This is a marriage.”

Oh, and Pentagon officials are trying to find out what to call members of the Space Force. Some of the suggestions floating around include Spacers, Guardians, Sentinels, and Vanguards.