The new top general in the Marine Corps released a 16-page plan on Friday detailing his vision for the service, emphasizing a realignment of troops to meet demands in the Pacific and Africa, better coordination with Special Operations units, and new psychological testing to assess resiliency in recruits.
Commandant Gen. Joseph F. Dunford’s planning guidance is intended to outline how the Marine Corps “will set the conditions to fight and win against future enemies,” he wrote. He took over as the service’s top officer on Oct. 17, replacing the retiring Gen. James F. Amos.
Dunford, who previously served as the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, said in his planning guidance that the need for Marines is strong, citing recent operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Liberia and South Sudan. He outlined broad changes, including a new plan that will provide each four-star geographic combatant commander with a “properly tailored and effective Marine component.
“This will include changes to General Officer assignments and organization/manning of the staffs,” Dunford wrote. “The sources realigned to our components will come from other headquarters elements… The desired end state is the effective employment and support of assigned, allocated and apportioned Marine Corps forces.”
The service will focus heavily in 2015 and 2016 on preparing to fight from the sea in an “anti-access, area denial” environment, military-speak for an area in which enemies can contest U.S. troops reaching it with a variety of weapons. Fighting from the sea has long been considered a Marine Corps mission, but the service did much less of it as it deployed tens of thousands of troops at a time to Iraq and Afghanistan.
The commandant also signaled a desire to have Marine units work more closely with Special Operations troops — something Maj. Gen. Joseph Osterman, the top general overseeing Marine Special Operations, also indicated was coming in a recent interview with Checkpoint. Marines and Special Operations units are “highly complementary,” Dunford wrote, making it “only natural” that the service should improve its ability to operate with U.S. Special Operations Command. 
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