Shaping Distributed Maritime Effects the Marine Corps Way: A Discussion with LtGen (Retired) Heckl

As the United States faces the challenge of the strategic shift in maritime operations in a multi-polar authoritarian world, distributed maritime operations both in terms of force distribution for its capital ships and in terms of being able to generate distributed maritime effects is required.

But how to create synergy in both efforts?

To do so requires organizational innovation which challenges a legacy approach. The first requires new approaches to DMO decision making; the second requires new approaches to force structure development in leveraging new thinking with regard to ship building, the use of autonomous systems and leveraging distributed payloads for the kill web force. This second approach has been at the heart of how the Marines have focused on how they have envisaged what they call EABOs or Expeditionary Advanced Basing Operations.

One of the architects of this approach has been LtGen (Retired) General Heckl, whose last command was as head of the Marine Corps Combat Development Command (MCCDC) at Quantico. One aspect of the work at the command was reworking the relationship between new ships and new approaches to delivering distributed maritime effects.

This means in my words, finding new innovative ways to distribute payloads which can deliver the desired maritime effects.

When it comes to shipbuilding the Marines have suggested new ways to more rapidly put in the water ways to deliver what they consider to be ways to cost effectively deliver desired effects.

For example, in an interview which I conducted with Heckl when he was in command, we discussed innovations with regarding shipbuilding which he saw a enhancing the Marine Corps approach to combat innovation.

LtGen Heck lcited several new platforms they are working with and put those platforms in the hands of Marines to experiment with. The feedback from those exercises and experiments will inform future platform choices.

One platform is the Stern Landing Vessel. As one source described this platform:

“The Stern Landing Vessel program is an interim capability the Marine Corps is funding for experimentation purposes until it more clearly defines all the requirements for its Landing Ship Medium. During a call with reporters on Monday, Tomczak and Lt. Col. Tim Smith, a senior officer at MCWL overseeing the SLV program, said the Marines currently plan to acquire three SLVs.

“The first vessel is under contract with Hornbeck Offshore Services and is being leased with an option for the Marines to eventually buy it if desired. The service has the funding for two more ships, to be acquired in fiscal 2024.”

According to Heckl: “The SLV will participate in Project Convergence, Capstone Four, on the West Coast in the February-March timeframe. And the fleet will use the ship with some new payloads onboard, and this feedback will guide our way ahead.

“Our approach to learning is not based on the OODA loop. Our combat learning is simultaneous and never ends. It is based on exercises. We will send the SLV eventually to the Third MLR in the Pacific.”

A second new platform he highlighted was one based on how the drug lords smuggle in drugs via a low-profile submersible.

This was described in a 6 September 2023 SEA Power story as follows:

“The U.S. Marine Corps is exploring a concept to enhance its ability to supply its forces its forces inside a contested environment: low-profile vessels used by drug-running cartels.  

“The Corps, however, is looking at autonomous low-profile vessels (LPVs), said Lieutenant General Karsten Heckl, deputy commandant for Combat Development and Integration, speaking Sept. 6 at the Defense News Conference in Arlington, who advocated the use of autonomous unmanned systems wherever possible. 

“Drug runners have built and used manned LPVs frequently over the last two decade to carry loads of illegal drugs from Latin America to the United States. The LPVs, called semisubmersibles, are fabricated in secret locations and, with a small crew, carry their payload along the transit lanes, trying to avoid visual and radar detection with their very low profiles. 

“We just copy the drug lords down south running drugs,” Heckl said. “They are hard to find, so now we figure, hey, it works, right?  

According to Heckl: “The two prototypes we have will be tested off of the SLV which can carry a payload of two NSMs.”

He underscored: “To your point about the importance of putting in the hands of Marines, we are focused on doing so and then we learn from them and that informs our campaign of learning. It drives future requirements. It drives programs that are currently underway. It’s a nonstop process of iterating to get exactly what we need to put in the hands Marines.”

The force development being engaged by the Marines is precisely to shape an effective kill web force. As Heckl put it: “The most important pillar of what we are doing in Force Design is enhancing our ability at maneuver warfare. That rests upon pushing decentralized C2 down to the lowest level we can because we trust Marines to make the right decision. We have trained them properly; they understand intent and guidance and they execute.

In a 9 January 2025 discussion, we returned to the theme of the relationship between shipbuilding approaches and what I would call DMO effects. Clearly DMO understood in terms of distributing capital ships is very important in shaping an effective way ahead, but DMO understood in terms of delivering distributed maritime effects is clearly of growing importance given technological developments and given the shortfall in legacy shipbuilding approaches.

DMO in terms of delivering distributed maritime effects is where EABO is best understood. In shaping a way ahead for EABO the air platforms available to the USMC coupled with innovations in autonomous or manned maritime platforms create a clear path to shift from the legacy ship building approach.

In a DMO effects approach one is focused on combat clusters whereby each asset is interactive with other members of the combat cluster and will NOT have the full gamut of capabilities which a maritime task force member would have in terms of organic defensive and offensive capabilities.

A case in point which we discussed in that 9 January 2025 discussion was the DoD consideration of the Marine’s light amphibious vessel which was envisaged by the Marines to provide a cost-effective complementary capability for their evolving warfighting approach.

Heckl highlighted the case of the LSM or the Medium Landing Ship. It was originally called the Light Amphibious Warship or LAW but when Heckl came to the command he saw the need to change the labelling as it was being designed as a landing ship not a warship.

In any case, labelling or not, the attempt to build the ship illustrates why it is difficult to get the U.S. approach to shipbuilding on a new track to deliver affordable ships.

“We built two LSMs for the Israelis at $90 million apiece. But when the legacy naval shipbuilding process in the Pentagon took over the process of reviewing the USMC request, it ended up spiraling out of cost control based on enhancing the survivability of the ship understood in legacy Navy requiremets. The result was that we will not get an affordable ship to meet what we considered to be our warfighting requirements.”

A 2023 article by Crag Hooper in Forbes underscored Heckl’s key argument.

“With an original per-unit price target of $100 to $130 million, the Navy’s “well-intentioned” efforts to add protection and self-defense measures are set to push the estimated per-unit price to over $350 million—a heck of a price increase for a mere transport. Given the current estimated per-ship price, the vessel may now never get built, sunk by the Navy’s insistence on pricey gear and other design tweaks meant to keep the landing boat afloat.”

One way to understand this failure is that this ship concept ran into the organizational barriers of the Pentagon. This recalls the comments made at a recent Sir Richard Williams Foundation seminar by the operational head of the Australian Air Force concerning the gap between his concern with enhancing rapidly the capabilities of his “fight tonite” force and the Department of Defence’s force planners focus on the long-term requirements of futuristic systems.

The gap between a sense of urgency for the capabilities of the operational force and what is required for making “the right systems” in the long term is a key one undercutting rapid force improvement.

But this gap can be understood in another way. The paradigm shifts in maritime operations underway affecting the U.S. Navy and the maritime services involve both the need to distribute capital ships to enhance their survivability or DMO and DMO understood in terms of distributing maritime effects which can be delivered by combat clusters operating in non-traditional ways to legacy task forces.

The LSM  was considered in terms of its role in a legacy task force and the requirements for it to play its role in such a context and not in terms of its participation in a combat cluster designed to deliver a very specific maritime effect.

Put bluntly, the challenge of building a U.S. Navy along legacy lines with a legacy shipbuilding approach simply is beyond the capability of the United States to afford or to deliver. And at the same time, the airpower and autonomous revolutions have delivered capability to shape significant DMO maritime effects capability.

The Marine air packages of F-35Bs, Ospreys, and CH-53Ks can deliver significant maritime effects distributed over a battlespace from amphibious and commercial shipping and from a wide variety of global insertion points. It is understood together as being able to deliver the most formidable, distributed air power ever built.

And when combined with the maritime and air autonomous systems revolution, there is a new revolution in maritime affairs underway. But trying to fund the legacy shipbuilding approach as one’s primary investment simply will not get the U.S. Navy and the joint force where it needs to go.

The Ospreys can deliver a wide variety of the ordinance the Navy will need rapidly including weapons. There is simply no other air platform that can operate like the Osprey which has the foundation element for a tiltrotor enterprise.

The new CH-53K is a heavy lift helicopter but is better understood as a significant capability capacity provider to a point of your choosing at a speed no ship can match, and it can deliver that capability capacity when you need it and where you need it.

The Marine Corps version of the F-35 can operate in austere locations with a mobile expeditionary force and can deliver unique C2 and ISR capability along with delivering lethal effects.

Heckl also underscored in our discussion the digital character of the CH-53K which he emphasized gave it significant upgradeability opportunities that were cost effective going forward. And he argued that this approach was necessary for any new platform coming into the force.

The future of the U.S. Navy is not simply its capital ships: it is the ability to leverage the significant innovation available via innovative airpower, cost effective capital ships built with the autonomous revolution in mind and new air and maritime autonomous systems.

Featured graphic: State-of-the-art AI Maritime Cybersecurity Operations Center Ensuring Naval System Security. AI generated

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