Marine: A Guided Tour of a Marine Expeditionary Unit

he fought for during his tenure as Commandant that / must now fight to replace.

General Alfred M. Gray [29th Commandant of the Corps].

General Gray gave the Marine Corps a brilliant mind that saw beyond the immediate moment. He saw a need to totally revamp the way we think, train, and educate ourselves. He cultivated our maneuver warfare mind-set, so that when we went into Desert Shield/Desert Storm, we didn't see the minefields that we faced as insurmountable obstacles; we just searched for the gaps, breached them, and went on. He gave us the doctrine to do that job, and more since then. A great, great man, and a real thinker. Everyone who looked at him saw this rough, tough son-of- a-gun; but he was, and is, smart as a whip.

General Carl E. Mundy [30th Commandant of the Corps].

General Mundy was a kind, wonderful man, but he knew how to fight. Some wondered if he was going to be able to defend the life of the Corps in the post-Cold War drawdown, and he proved to be a bulldog. His leadership in the battle for an end-strength 174,000 Marines was remarkable. General Mundy will also be remembered for his great moral courage and deep love of Corps and country. He articulated the ethos of our Corps as well as any Commandant. General Mundy and his wife Linda brought real meaning to the Marine Corps family and to the concept that Marines take care of their own.

When General Krulak took command in mid-1995, he inherited a Marine Corps whose strength had been for the most part preserved, but which was facing many new challenges: aging equipment, personnel issues, and basic questions about the role of the Corps in the run-up to the 21st century. Grabbing the bull by the horns, he rapidly took control and began to exert his own unique ideas onto the structure of the Marines. He published his now- famous Commandant's Planning Guidance, so that every Marine in the Corps would know what the new boss had planned for them. He also opened up new channels for direct communications of ideas, including Internet access directly to himself. Let's hear his thoughts on this.

^{General Charles 'Chuck' Krulak (right) with the author during a recent visit to the Commandant's office in the Pentagon.}

^{JOHN D. GRESHAM}

Tom Clancy: What has been your philosophy in these early days (summer and fall of 1995) of your tenure as Commandant?

General Krulak: I felt that I had one year from the start of my tenure as Commandant to set the course and speed for what I believed needed to be done. The remaining three years are to be for follow- through. We now have major projects and initiatives started and have generated momentum. During the next three years, we will continue to give course and speed corrections to the things that we see as important. I tried to get us going, with some clear-cut, definitive goals to make sure that everybody involved knew our plan and was prepared to step out and act. That's what the Commandant's Planning Guidance was all about. To let everybody know what my philosophy was and is and then get on board and charge!

Tom Clancy: Okay, let's talk about some of the things you are working on within the Corps. First, let's hear what you think of the state of the force that you have inherited. Currently, your authorized end-strength is 174,000 active duty personnel. Will you be able to hold onto that?

General Krulak: I think that it [Marine Corps end-strength] will be under attack almost immediately. In fact, it already is. The Administration [of President Bill Clinton] is locked into the force levels defined by the Bottom-Up Review of 1993; but we have major budget problems in the Department of Defense. Part of the problem is that DoD has more infrastructure [bases and facilities] than there's money to support that infrastructure. I am concerned that there will be pressure to make each of the services smaller, both by reducing personnel and infrastructure, and utilizing the money saved to modernize the armed forces. For the nation, a drawdown of the Marine Corps would be a terrible mistake. The Marine Corps was never a Cold War force. Our mission did not change with the end of the Cold War era, so there is no need for other major changes in the Marine Corps specifically in response to the demise of the Soviet Union. Where we can assist this nation as the other services adjust to the post-Cold War period is to be this country's 'risk-balance' force. We provide to the nation the ability to take a risk — in this case allowing the rest of the military services to draw down quickly while still having an organization that is ready to respond. We are the most ready when the nation is the least ready, and you don't want to reduce the only force that provides this nation the capability to react while at the same time assuming the risks associated with the rapid post-Cold War drawdown.

Tom Clancy: There has been some envy on the part of the other services at your success at holding on to a relatively high percentage of your Cold War end-strength. Will you please tell us your perceptions of drawdown process with regard to the Marine Corps?

General Krulak: What General Mundy and the Marine Corps did right was create the Force Structure Planning Group that I spoke of earlier and build a plan that made sense. It was a tremendously rigorous effort to analyze the national military strategy and then balance our capabilities against that strategy. From this we came up with the requirement for a Marine Corps with a personnel base of 177,000 active-duty personnel, of which we actually kept 174,000. Now, when people say that we did not cut our strength, they fail to look at the facts. They fail to see that we went from 198,000 active-duty Marines to 174,000. We cut 50 % of our tanks and 33 % of our tactical aviation strength. We lost a third of our artillery, as well as all six of our Marine Expeditionary Brigade Headquarters units and a quarter of our combat service support units.

What is really critical is that most of our cuts had to come out of our muscle — our combat power — because as a service, we were already very lean. When we did identify our requirement for 177,000, a hard number with no fluff, we still had to cut. That's why at this point, I'm determined to keep our end-strength at 174,000. Having said that, we can't get stuck on a number, because our challenge today is to determine what we need to fight and win the battles of the 21st century. That's my problem: to get to the 21st century, making the best use of technology and our remaining personnel base, while still giving the nation what it needs.

One of the biggest challenges faced by General Krulak is maintaining the flow of new Marine recruits into the Corps. The combination of public perception regarding the drawdown of the military as well as a limited pool of recruiting dollars has made this task ever more difficult. Let's hear the Commandant's thoughts on this tough problem.

Tom Clancy: Talk a little about the raw material of the Marine Corps — the recruits — and the recruiters and the recruiting process. What are your thoughts on the recruiting problems facing the Corps as you continue to search for qualified men and women?

General Krulak: First of all, my respect and love for recruiters knows no bounds. As the former head of the Personnel Management and Personnel Procurement Divisions at Headquarters Marine Corps, recruiting was one of my responsibilities, so I have a very good sense of the recruiting process. We have great recruiters and they're doing a tremendous job.

Nevertheless, we have a couple of problems. First, not all of the American people know that we're hiring. They see the military cutting back, they read about the reductions-in-force, and wonder why they should allow their sons or daughters to join the Corps. They just don't see any career possibilities or longevity in the service today. We can tell from our various youth-attitude surveys that America's youth doesn't know we are hiring. So, the first thing I need to do is to enhance our recruitment advertising. That takes dollars. But at the same time, we need to reach our target market with our message. That message is embodied in our new commercial called Transformation. Transformation symbolizes what the Marine Corps does for this nation: We take America's youth, what you called 'raw material,' and we transform them into Marines. We instill in them our core values — honor, courage, and commitment. We teach them to be the leaders of tomorrow's Corps and the leaders of their communities and country the day after tomorrow. We recognize that we are recruiting a different kind of American today. They're coming from a different society, with different values than those that have been the hallmark of the Corps' value system. We transform them, and that transformation lasts forever. That's important for our nation and our nation's youth. But they have to know we will do that for them, and that is where advertising comes into play. I won't sacrifice quality for quantity, and I believe the 'Wilsonian Doctrine' was the right approach. Like General Wilson, we will willingly sacrifice numbers to get the very best of our youth. Then we will transform them forever…into Marines and, more importantly, productive citizens of this great nation of ours.

Tom Clancy: On to another personnel matter. Could you talk a little about the changing roles for young women in the Marine Corps?

General Krulak: Our women make tremendous contributions to the Corps. I had 201