Second Lt. Alex Willbanks first came to Hawaii as a rifleman after he enlisted in the Marine Corps in 2008 as a member of the 3rd Marine Regiment. Over the course of his career in the Corps, he did several combat tours in support of the sprawling global war on terrorism.
Recently, he commissioned as an officer and has returned to Hawaii leading the same platoon he had first served in as an enlisted man. But a lot has changed in 16 years.
The 3rd Marine Regiment has since been reorganized into the 3rd Marine Littoral Regiment — or MLR — as the Corps looks to reorganize for the 21st century.
It’s the first Marine unit to adopt the new tactics and equipment that reflect the vision for Force Design 2030 — a plan to reshape the Marine Corps and return to its roots as a naval fighting force focused on coastal and island fighting, but with a high-tech twist. The Oahu-based unit is testing the waters and is set to serve as a blueprint for how the rest of the service will reorganize its forces.
“The MLR is still rooted in infantry tasks but has a new flavor to it,” Willbanks said. “It still does the same things that every other unit would do, but now we’re looking at the Indo-Pacific region and deploying there as opposed to what we did in the GWOT.”
The Marines are training in preparation for a deployment in 2025 to the Western Pacific to train with military forces around the region.
The MLR was in many ways tailored for operations in the Pacific. Force Design 2030’s architects were Marine leaders who served in Hawaii who wanted to make a hard shift for the Marines from their past two decades of hunting terrorists and insurgents through mountains and deserts to potentially standing up against the Chinese military in a potential Pacific conflict.
Tensions have boiled in the South China Sea, a critical waterway that more than a third of all international trade travels through.
Beijing has claimed the entire waterway as its exclusive maritime territory over the objections of neighboring countries, and used increasingly aggressive tactics to assert its claims. Chinese forces have built bases on disputed islands and reefs, and have frequently been accused of harassing and attacking fishermen and other maritime workers from neighboring countries — especially the Philippines.
The vision for the MLR is a force of Marines using long-range missiles, drones and other tech tools to sink enemy ships, disrupt naval operations and hold onto critical island and coastal positions.
As they train, they’re developing the new force in real time. As they do, they’re navigating a changing world, new technologies and generational divides. The Honolulu Star-Advertiser recently spent some time with the Marines on the ground in Kaneohe for an up-close look.
Future force
By design, MLR Marines will often operate in relatively small groups spread across wide distances. Staff Sgt. Dylan Greene, who has been in the Corps for 13 years, said, “That’s the problem set: How do we maintain that decentralized posture, but also still being able to report back when we do have our sensors out there?”
Greene is a member of the MLR’s Banjo Company, which on deployment will be tasked with reconnaissance. It will extensively use drones and high-tech communications systems to move and relay information as quietly as it can.
It’s a far cry from how Marines have fought recent wars with air support almost always nearby to resupply them, evacuate wounded or drop bombs on enemy forces. Now they’re training for the potential of a fight against what they call a “peer force” that has the same tools they do.
“The most challenging thing is going to be, we do not have air dominance,” Greene said. “I would argue, we don’t even probably have air superiority.”
First Lt. Seth Benscoter, a Naval Academy grad who was assigned to the MLR as a platoon commander a year ago, said he’s been working with his Marines on how to be keep a lower profile when they operate.
“I’m sure the regimental level is working on all kinds of (high-tech) stuff, but at our level I think it’s really finding ways to sort of take a hard look in the mirror and seeing what are we actually putting out,” he said. “Like how obvious is it when we’re transmitting on radios? How obvious is it when we’re in our formations in the jungle?”
Recently, a fellow officer from a drone unit arranged for his Marines to send drones overhead while Benscoter’s Marines trained.
“They came out with us and provided us the opportunity where they flew the (drone) over our field op and would look at us with the thermal optics to see what could they actually see. What could potentially an adversary with a similar capability see?”
They’re also dealing with the potential reality of operating from isolated locations with limited opportunities to be resupplied. Benscoter said they are “trying to kind of push ourselves to be able to find ways to sustain ourselves for longer and longer periods of time.”
With the MLR’s highly specialized focus on coastal fighting, it’s working more closely with other military branches that have different capabilities to ensure they can work together. In Hawaii the MLR is working closely with the Army’s 25th Infantry Division.
Willbanks said it’s a major change, noting that when he served in Hawaii as an enlisted man, “we never thought of training with them or trying to understand what that was that they were surging to go do. … The Army had a presence in Afghanistan, and the Marine Corps had a presence in Afghanistan.”
Maj. Brent Kreckman, a Marine reservist who was formerly an officer in the MLR, said that’s forcing leadership to wrestle with new challenges as it integrates its systems and its tactics. He explained, “Are the Army radars tying in to the point that they can shoot (the Littoral Combat Team’s) missiles at the target? Are the MLR’s radars, conversely, doing the same thing for the Army systems? That’s something the Marine Corps hasn’t typically had to worry about until the MLR came around.”
Greene said of the evolution, “I don’t think we’ve reached a 100% solution just yet, so it’s a lot of just trial and error.”
But ultimately, U.S. military leaders want to be able to fight and win a Pacific conflict. They insist that they hope that by demonstrating their capabilities and strengthening alliances, they will ultimately prevent war.
Over the past year, U.S. and Chinese diplomats have been working to cool tensions. In September, Gen. Wu Yanan, the Chinese military commander responsible for operations in the South China Sea, attended a meeting of top military leaders held in Hawaii and met with Adm. Samuel Paparo, commander of all U.S. forces in the Pacific.
U.S. officials said it was positive sign nearly two years after Beijing cut off most dialogues between U.S. and Chinese military commanders. But after the visit, the Chinese military tested a ballistic missile that landed in the Pacific Ocean south of Hawaii near the island nation of Kiribati.
Generational divides
The push to reshape the Corps has been controversial and drawn the ire of some of the Marine Corps’ old guard, with retired officers — and some senior leaders still in the service — expressing deep skepticism. In particular, a decision to get rid of all the service’s tanks to focus on missiles and amphibious forces raised eyebrows.
Among criticisms are charges that that the emphasis on missiles and drones will put Marine Corps infantry in the role of mostly protecting those assets instead of attacking the enemy, and that it will gradually erode the service’s culture of aggression that it has been famous for.
“I can understand that,” Willbanks said. But he defended the training that the Marines are undergoing.
“Everyone, at some point, was training to do a certain thing,” Willbanks said. “Then we pivoted immediately to direct ourselves at what new threat was … I think that everyone’s going to have their own preference of what they think the Marine Corps should be doing. But I think at this time, from my understanding, we’re doing what is needed.”
“I think the infantry is going to stay the infantry, regardless of what its actual role and mission is going to be,” Benscoter said. “The best part of the Marine Corps is that no matter what the mission is, no matter what the time period, the technology, whatever, our whole goal is to be ready when we’re called on. I don’t think that culture’s going anywhere.”
Greene said that in his opinion the quality of training in the Marine Corps has improved significantly since he joined.
“Guys that are here now are smarter than I was, just from a level of how we train, how we approach the coaching, teaching method,” he said. “(We’re) spending a lot more time actually hitting those milestones that we need to that are super important to hit prior to getting out the door for deployment.”
Kreckman said the world has changed a lot, pointing out that that some of the service’s top leaders are Gulf War veterans whose view of the conflict has been shaped by the wars they fought.
“They’ve been around prior to most of the types of munitions we use, and in some cases in the era of dial-up internet,” he said. “Now you’re bringing in 18- (and) 19-year-old kids that are so well versed in technology that the things they see going on in Ukraine and Israel and all these places are not foreign to them. In fact, they understand it at a faster rate than, say, the generals and the colonels.”
He said that even junior Marines are proactively doing their own research on trends and developments in conflicts around the globe, explaining, “Information is so publicly available, right? And they have access to Instagram posts, podcasts, YouTube.”
Some older service members and veterans have criticized younger recruits, charging that the military has gone soft and succumbed to “wokeness” rather than discipline and aggression. Some also have accused younger recruits of being undisciplined and lazy.
“Young guys will fact-check you, but I think that’s because kids are smart,” Kreckman said. “It’s not Clint Eastwood in ‘Heartbreak Ridge’ anymore, where you can just beat somebody up (and) make them do pushups.”
Kreckman added that he believes it’s on leaders to explain to Marines why they are doing things the way they are, arguing that “if they can trust the leadership motivation through habit of being explained ‘why,’ in the future they question less because they trust the leadership.”
“They require it,” Willbanks said. “If you don’t give them it, they’re going to find their own ‘why,’ and it may not be the ‘why’ that you were aiming for in the first place, right? And you’re now backtracking and you’re trying to fix something. It’s like this whole domino effect that could have been avoided if you just gave them the ‘why’ in the first place.”
