Commandant talks expanding the force but touches on lack of ground based air defense.

via National Defense.

These new billets would include: information operations, intelligence analysis, electronic warfare, cyber, communications, air defense, engineering and areas where there are shortfalls such as maintenance, he said. Even if the Marines don’t receive this boost in personnel, it will still be adding these capabilities, he said. They will just have to be taken out of other units, he added.

And then this.

“We have to change our training and our mindset to almost where it was in the 80s,” he said. Marines will have to learn to maneuver with uncertainty as to what the enemy is going to do. They will have to mask their signatures, expect to receive accurate indirect fires and expect that the adversary will have aviation, battlefield sensors and robust electronic warfare capabilities, he said.
“They are going to fly their planes over you. And we’re going to have to create that training environment so the soldier, sailor, airmen, Marine sees that and they know what it is … It’s an airplane and its not yours and he’s coming here to bomb you.”

Just plain fucking wow.

Could HQMC be starting to see the future fight the way that I've been screaming about on these pages?  It means that we're gonna need to increase the number of ACVs that are being bought...at least if we intend to keep our "amphibious nature" intact.  It means that a family of vehicles will be needed.  An anti-air, electronic warfare and maybe even a command post variant.

Of course I'm assuming that he's talking about ground based maneuver.  If the idea is still to stuff everything into the back of MV-22's and fly 1000 miles from ship and engage enemy armored formations then the Marine Corps thinkers are still smoking illegal shit.