If you follow military news, you’ve likely seen the phrase littoral a whole lot. Hell, I didn’t even know the word until 2020, so you’re not alone. The Marine Corps commandant’s vision for a streamlined Marine Corps is still in full effect. That involves raising a Marine Littoral Regiment that will have a low signature, be hard to detect, fast-moving, and an efficient fighting force for littoral areas.
So what exactly does littoral mean? Well, according to the internet.
“A littoral zone is the part of a sea, lake, or river that is close to the shore. In coastal environments, the littoral zone extends from the high water mark, which is rarely inundated, to shoreline areas that are permanently submerged.“
This force will be truly amphibious, constantly working shorelines and beaches, and be primarily located in or along the water. It’s the perfect mission for the Marine Corps. A mission like this isn’t applicable to the whole world but makes sense in the Pacific region. That’s why the first Littoral regiment will be based out of Hawaii.
The first Marine Littoral Regiment was launched earlier this year. Today we are looking at what the regiment is, what it means, and what these littoral Marines will do.
The makeup of the Marine Littoral Regiment
The 3rd Marine Littoral Regiment will be made up of three distinct elements. There will be the Littoral Combat Team made up of an infantry battalion and a Missile Battery. The second element will be a Littoral Anti-Air Battalion; this new Anti-Air battalion is now known as 3rd LAAB. Finally, its third element, a Combat Logistics Battalion, will keep the Marine Littoral Regiment supplied.
These units will use small Littoral Combat Ships.
The Marines and Navy are currently developing a Navy Light Amphibious Warship designed specifically for the new Littoral Regiment and its mission set. While ship-to-shore will still likely be a real need, it will be more on LCACs and little boats than AAVs. These new amphibious ships will be able to essentially back up, drop a ramp and directly unload Marines, vehicles, and more.
These small vessels will have a low signature and be capable of beaching. They will be defined as shore-to-shore vessels and be capable of operating independently or with the larger fleet forces. These ships will allow Marines to establish Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations or EABOs that act as a foothold in an island-hopping campaign and serve to deny access to the sea for America’s enemies.
Related: The ultimate Marine Corps Recruit Training Survival Guide 2022
The Littoral Combat Team
The Littoral Combat Team will conduct offensive operations with reinforced platoons into littoral areas.
These Marines can establish a foothold and form EABOs that will allow for a variety of tasks.
These EABOs will act as forward bases to rearm and refuel aircraft, allow Marines to conduct recon, surveillance, and gather intelligence on maritime terrain. They can also act as air-defense sights and early-warning stations.
They will also be able to host long-range anti-ship missiles. This includes working with their attached missile battery to potentially spot and sink ships. Imagine something as simple as a Marine platoon being capable of sinking enemy ships of the littoral areas. It would be a game-changer to have a small, precise, and lethal force that acts as a scalpel to our enemy’s Achilles’s heel.
The reinforced platoons will be 75 to 100 Marines. They will likely be a combination of rifle platoons with machine gun, mortar, and anti-armor attachments. I wouldn’t rule out Scout Snipers or Weapon’s Company heavy machine gun and mortar platoons coming along either.
The missile battery will be using vehicle-based missiles. The vehicles, known as ROGUE-Fires equipped with the NMESIS anti-ship missile system. This system actually allows the crew to be separate from the vehicle. They can teleoperate the vehicle and launcher. This avoids losing Marines when the launcher is targeted. Instead, the Marine Corps will be able to kill ships with remote-controlled vehicles equipped with missiles.
Related: A brief history of military rockets and missiles
3rd LAAB missile battery
When air threatens the Littoral Regiment, the Littoral Anti-Air Battalion will act to reduce and eliminate that threat. They can engage and eliminate aircraft and employ air surveillance, early warning, air control, and forward rearming and refueling capabilities.
This is a force multiplier and will act to ensure a relatively small force of Marines can maintain control over a littoral zone. This adds a degree of efficiency to the littoral regiment that will make them the regiment a thorn in the side of peer forces.
Combat Logistics Battalion
Combat Logistics Battalions (CLBs) are nothing new. They’ve long provided the logistics necessary for Marines to conduct long-term operations in all climes and places. As much as it hurts my grunt heart to say, logistics do win wars.
CLBs will bring the ability to resupply these EABOs, and provide fuel, ammo, and even advanced tasks. This will provide a higher level of maintenance for vehicles and weapons as well as Role 2 medical forces. Further, it will allow the littoral regiment to operate mostly autonomously and maintain a high degree of efficiency with a low signature.
Will it work?
I certainly can’t say. I’m a grunt with five years of experience merely examining the Marine Corp’s new Littoral Regiment. I’m not general, and the guys with stars have conducted thousands of hours of war games. It seems like a great idea to me.
I’m picturing a platoon of 75 to 100 guys wreaking havoc across the pacific. They will be mobile, hard to detect, able to shut down an entire warship and just disappear back into the sea or jungle. This force could be impossible to plan for, and even sending infantry or rotary aircraft to deal with it will be near impossible. They will deny the land and enable the Marines to deny key strategic points of interest to the enemy.
I’m excited to see the program continue and develop. The changes to the Marine Corps are fascinating to watch, and I’m envious of the Marines currently serving.
Read more from Sanboxx News
- The M16A2 – Why the Marines’ rifle wasn’t that great
- MQ-9B STOL: A new Reaper cousin could help Marines win the Pacific
- What does the invasion of Ukraine mean for China and Taiwan?
- ‘Missile barges’ could be US secret weapon in the Pacific
- With an eye on China and Russia, the US Army wants to make its smart munitions more lethal
What you are seeing is the Senior Marine Leadership creating a throwback to the pre-WW2 Marine Defense Battalion. MDB’s were equipped with coastal gun batteries, several anti-aircraft batteries, a detection battery (searchlights and radar), and machine gun units. Composite infantry companies were attached to provide security and self-defense. MDB’s were commonly sited on friendly islands or arrived after the island was secured by the real Marines. Wake Island is a good example of a MDB’s capability. All defense but absolutely no offensive capability. If the Marine Corps starts going this way, they will lose their primary identify as a elite mobile “storm trooper” strike force. Congress will start looking at the Marines as nothing more then a specialized Army unit. This almost happened over WW2 and is still being called for today to eliminate the huge cost of maintaining a specialized “amphibious assault ” force. There are calls now to absorb aviation units into the Navy and ground forces into the Army. If the current Senior Marine Leadership stays in power, we may be seeing the final current for the U.S. Marines.
There’s no weapons plt, no weapons coy, there’s not even “rifle” plt as we no it in the Littoral Combat Team.
The LCT is the true Manifestation of the Infantry Marine Concept.
Any Squad can be a Rifle Squad, a Machine Gun Squad, a Javelin Squad, split in half to become two Reconnaissance Teams, and even a Sniper Team built into each platoon (0315 program that was shelved until they work through the IMC program).
So you are not going to see a 75man Rifle plt (rein) that’s not the concept. They keep repeating over and over what the primary mission of the LCT is……RXR
Reconnaissance and Counter Reconnaissance
Don’t confuse the LCT with IBX30, they are two different concepts working in parallel.
So if you want to conceptualize the LCT, picture a Reconnaissance Bn where every 0321 is trained in Recon….and in every Infantry Weapons System.
Where every Squad is trained in Reconnaissance to FIND the enemy, can request another squad in the IMC plt to gear up as a machine gun squad to FIX the enemy….and the other Squad to equip with SMAWs or Javelins for a combined direct assault/raid with the original recon squad to FINISH the enemy…..All Organic in one platoon transitioning seamlessly through every role in the infantry (read the IMC)
Also that 75-100 won’t be only Infantryman, maybe as few as 50. The others will be a small comm team (network enablers), electronic warfare team including basic hackers, and probably 2x 0481s, and an 0231 for SIPR and SSE.
Again in my opinion it will look much more like an MSOC than a 75-100man Rifle Coy.
Where IBX30 differs is…The LCT/MLR are specifically 3MEF constructs uniquely focused on RXR.
The Infantry Bn of 2030 or IBX30 will still need to conduct the tasks of a Marine Infantry Bn.
In IBX30 one Bn was unchanged, they just added some personnel, training, and equipment.
Another Bn was an exact structural copy of the 3rd MLR LCT’s 735man BN….They’ve already ruled this out as not an option.
The 3rd was an in-between mixed BN. It kept the basic structure of a Marine InfBN but got rid of the Weapons Co and replaced each Weapons Plt in the Rifle Coys with an RXR Plt, what they’re calling a Hunter-Killer Plt (Article by Major General Julian Alford, “Implementation Of The Hunter Killer Platoon” in the Marine Corps Gazette Feb 2022).
So built into each IBX30 Rifle Coy would be 3 Traditional Rifle Plts and one new Multidisciplinary RXR/HK Plt which allows the Infantry BN to maintain its Tradition Role while still being manned and equipped to do EABO.
So the MLR’s LCT and IBX30 will run in parallel but shouldn’t be confused as the same thing.