Vandergriff Introduction and Analysis of "The Marine Corps Could Not Fight Fallujah Today It would take a decade to undo what Force Design has wrought" by Gary Anderson November 18, 2025, 10:10 PM

Force Design 2030 is not the disease; it is a particularly visible symptom of a much older institutional inertia.

Begin Vandergriff Introduction and Analysis:

Colonel (Ret.) Gary Anderson’s powerful article is a sobering wake-up call, and he is absolutely correct in his assessment: the Marine Corps, as currently postured under Force Design, has divested itself of the tanks, heavy bridging, engineer capabilities, and even the institutional sniper expertise that were decisive in the brutal urban fights of Najaf and Second Fallujah.

The raw footage and veteran testimony in The Last 600 Meters make painfully clear what a superbly prepared, combined-arms force the Corps fielded in 2004. Today, that capability has been deliberately dismantled, and Anderson rightly warns that it would take a decade or more to rebuild even if the decision were made tomorrow.

Yet while Colonel Anderson accurately diagnoses the symptoms, he stops short of naming the root disease. The deeper problem is not merely the loss of platforms and force structure; it is that the Marine Corps remains, at its core, a Second Generation Warfare institution—centralized, attrition-oriented, and rigidly hierarchical—despite having declared Maneuver Warfare (and Mission-Type Orders) as doctrine since 1989.

The Marines are like a football club that changed the playbook in 2021, a sports team that has officially adopted a revolutionary, fast-paced, free-flowing style of play but still recruits, trains, pays, and culturally rewards players exactly as if it were still playing a rigid, grind-it-out, 1950s-era game. The doctrine is modern; the institution that has to execute it is still stuck in the attritional, centralized, compliance-heavy logic of the Somme and the Pusan Perimeter.

The manpower system, the Professional Military Education pipeline, the promotion boards, the force-development process, and the acquisition bureaucracy are all still unmistakably 2nd Generation: they produce obedient executors rather than adaptive thinkers, reward zero-defect careers over initiative, and prioritize inputs (time-in-grade, fitness reports, program milestones) over outputs (mission accomplishment in complex, decentralized environments).

The Marine Corps can buy new missiles or even reintroduce tanks, but as long as its culture, personnel system, and leader-development architecture remain frozen in the French Army model of 1932-1940 (“Méthode de bataille méthodique” (Methodical Battle)) , it will never truly become a Third Generation Warfare force—one that lives and breathes Auftragstaktik, rapid OODA-loop decision-making, decentralized execution, and the mutual trust required to out-think as well as out-fight adaptive enemies.

Ironically, the Marine Corps is the one service best positioned to make this leap. It is the smallest, most cohesive, and most proud of its separate identity. It has no legacy Army or Air Force baggage weighing it down. If any American service can break free of industrialized, top-down, 2nd Generation warfare and institutionalize a genuine 3rd Generation culture—one that not only understands 4th Generation war but can actually win it—the Marines can and must lead the way.

Force Design 2030 is not the disease; it is a particularly visible symptom of a much older institutional inertia. Tanks and bridging assets can be bought back in a few years. Changing a culture and a personnel system that still worship compliance over competence will take a generation—unless the Corps seizes this crisis as the burning platform it is and begins the real transformation now.

The question is not whether the Marine Corps can fight another Fallujah today. The deeper question is whether it still knows how to produce leaders and units that can improvise, adapt, and overcome tomorrow—against any enemy, in any kind of war.

Donald E. Vandergriff
Major, U.S. Army (Ret.)
Author, Adopting Mission Command: Developing Leaders for a Superior Command Culture

Begin Gary Anderson Article:

My colleague Roger Kaplan recently wrote an excellent review of the PBS documentary, The Last 600 Meters, which is an excellent description of the battles of Najaf and Fallujah during the Iraq war. The primary assault troops in both battles were U.S. Marines, and the primary figures in the narrative are Marines whose tales are told in their own words. The program is gripping and vivid. It is “must-see” viewing for anyone interested in what really happened in the war. (RELATED: Rolling Them Up in Iraq)

Marine Corps tactics in those battles were not an accident. The Corps had been carefully refining its approach to urban warfare since the events in Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1993. Through wargame simulations and physical experimentation culminating in the 1998 Urban Warfare experiments in cities such as Charleston, SC, Jacksonville, FL, and Oakland, CA, the Marine Corps developed new tactics and technologies designed to limit both U.S. and civilian casualties while inflicting unacceptable losses on the enemy. (RELATED: Real Leadership in the Unsung Men of the Armed Forces)

These efforts resulted in a philosophy called the “Three Block War,” where Marines were taught to be prepared to fight high-intensity battles in one part of a city, do police-like peacekeeping in another, and humanitarian operations in yet a third. This was particularly important in Najaf, where the Grand Mosque, sacred to Shiite Muslims, was s key objective for both sides. It was critically important to U.S. planners that the U.S. forces not further anger the Shiite majority of the country.

The Second Battle of Fallujah was not a Three Block War. American psychological operations effectively caused the vast majority of civilians to evacuate temporarily to refugee centers on the outskirts of the city with the clear message that anyone choosing to stay did so at their own risk. Then the Americans began an urban brawl reminiscent of Stalingrad or Hue City. The disproportionate casualty rate of American to enemy casualties to that of the enemy was a testimony to the thoroughness of Marine Corps preparations.

Discerning viewers will note the key role played by Marine Corps armored vehicles — particularly tanks — in the Fallujah fight. The infantry marines used the tanks as rolling pillboxes to cover their maneuver. They also skillfully used snipers and heavy engineers to support them, and that combined arms cooperation is vividly illustrated. (RELATED: US Marine Leader Misread History and the Patterns of Conflict)

Today, however, the Marine Corps lacks the tanks and heavy engineers to fight another Fallujah-like battle.

Today, however, the Marine Corps lacks the tanks and heavy engineers to fight another Fallujah-like battle. The Sniper School, which produced the expert marksmen so critical to countering Islamist guerrilla snipers, has been closed. If today’s Marines were committed to an intense urban battle, they could not replicate Fallujah. (RELATED: The Feather Merchants: Senior Leaders Subverted the Marine Corps)

The reason for this drastic decline in capabilities is a radical shift in the Marine Corps’ mission focus that began in 2019. The then-commandant — General David Berger — decreed that the Marine Corps would put its primary focus on assisting the Navy in gaining control of the South China Sea in any future conflict with the Chinese. He envisioned small units of Marines occupying small islands in the South China Sea, firing missiles at Chinese warships in a defensive concept called Force Design 2030 (now just Force Design). (RELATED: We’ll Need Innovation to Fight China, But Will We Have it?)

To buy the new equipment needed to implement this new strategy, Berger divested the Corps of all of its tanks, heavy engineers, and reduced other aviation and field artillery capabilities. The elimination of the Sniper School remains a mystery to informed observers because it was such an incredibly small line item in the Marine Corps budget. (RELATED: The Marine Corps Has Gone Off the Rails)

Force Design has come under increasing criticism from retired and active duty Marines — writing anonymously — as well as informed military critics. Its overall effectiveness, logistics sustainability, and the survivability of troops engaged have been systematically eviscerated with very little credible pushback from the current Marine Corps Leadership.

However, the current commandant is obviously feeling the heat. He has drastically reduced the number of regiments originally designed to be converted into Littoral Combat Regiments, designed to support Force Design. He has also cancelled the buy of the increasingly vulnerable Tomahawk cruise missile system, and there are rumors that he will also revisit the procurement of the near-obsolete NEMESIS anti-ship missile system. (RELATED: The Best Birthday Present for the Marine Corps)

Unfortunately, there are no plans to replace the lost armor and heavy engineer systems lost and the Sniper School remains closed. The capability to wage urban combat in the Marine Corps has reverted roughly to what it was in 1921, with light infantry assaulting heavily fortified positions without adequate combined support. Marine aviation can help, but its capabilities have also been severely curtailed.

Even if it started to rebuild its combined arms team to 2018 levels today, it would take a decade. Worse still is the psychological impact. After six years of fostering a defensive mindset, one wonders how that will impact the traditional offensive mindset of the Marine Corps that has been manifest in places like Tripoli, Montezuma, Iwo Jima, and — most recently — Najaf, Fallujah, and Ramadi.

In the documentary, one can see on the faces of the young Marines the eagerness and determination to close with and destroy the enemy. The only time the Marine Corps units have ever been forced to surrender was when they were forced into defensive situations against impossible odds at Wake Island and in MacArthur’s failed defense of the Philippines. I don’t think the damage will be permanent if it can be reversed soon, but it must be reversed.

Recently, the Marine Corps celebrated its 250th birthday. I sincerely hope it will see another 250, but it cannot afford another six such as it has endured since 2019.”