Marine Corps commandant nominee lays out case for more ships amid transition

General Eric Smith, President Biden’s pick to be the next commandant of the Marine Corps, told Congress on Tuesday that he needs a minimum of 31 amphibious ships in order to carry out the service’s mission as it undergoes a major transformation of its mission to help confront a rising China.

Testifying at his Senate confirmation hearing, Gen. Smith told a friendly panel of lawmakers that a ready fleet of amphibious ships for the Marines isn’t a luxury, it’s a requirement.

“When a crisis begins to erupt, that is not the time to begin to move to the pier, to begin to load a ship, and to train your pilots to land on a pitching, rolling deck at night,” Gen. Smith said. “Thirty-one [ships] will enable us to train and to deploy and to stay deployed so we can tamp those crises down.”

The Marines have been trying to replace their aging dock landing ships, known as LSDs, with the newer and better-performing “amphibious transport docks,” or LPDs, he said. The total sought by the Corps is also the number called for in the 2023 defense authorization law already passed by Congress.

“This is a one-for-one swap,” Gen. Smith said.

While the Marine Corps considers 31 amphibious ships the bare minimum it needs, the Pentagon plans to reduce the fleet below that number in fiscal 2024. Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi, the ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee, reminded Gen. Smith that having 31 amphibious ships in the Navy’s fleet is the law, not merely a goal for the Pentagon to aim for.

“Many of us are frustrated that [Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin] has not set in motion processes to actually get this done,” Sen. Wicker said.

Gen. David Berger, the outgoing Commandant, set in motion “Force Design 2030,” a wide-ranging plan intended to transform the Marine Corps from a force focused on the threat of global terrorism groups such as Islamic State to one focused on China and other traditional “great-power” rivals. Gen. Smith, currently the assistant commandant, has been intimately involved in the concept from the start.

“It’s an effort to modernize the Marine Corps after 15 years of being focused on counter-insurgency operations to focus us on state-on-state conflict,” he said. 

Like most infantry Marines in uniform today, Gen. Smith served extensively in Iraq and Afghanistan. Like the other services there, the Marines built large logistics hubs to allow them to carry out its mission. But that won’t be the case if they are involved in a fast-moving fight across great distances in a region such as the Indo-Pacific Theater, he said.

“When you don’t have deep water ports and weeks to move equipment, you have to modernize [and] become more agile,” Gen. Smith said. “This is peer-on-peer conflict that we have not experienced at this level since 1945.”

The nomination is not expected to encounter trouble. Armed Services Committee Chairman Sen. Jack Reed, Rhode Island Democrat, told Gen. Smith that he was “well qualified” to be the commandant of the Marine Corps. 

But a parliamentary hold on rapid approval by the Senate of military nominations from Sen. Tommy Tuberville, Alabama Republican, may cause the same delay that has affected other incoming Pentagon leaders, such as Air Force General Charles Q. Brown, Jr., nominated to be the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Mr.. Tuberville has raised the parliamentary hurdle to protest the Pentagon’s policies to ease access to abortion services for those in the military in the wake of the reversal of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court last year. Sen. Angus King, an independent from Maine who caucuses with the Democrats, asked Gen. Smith at Tuesday’s hearing if blocking the promotion pipeline was affecting military readiness.

The general said it had, with less experienced junior officers forced to take on large command duties as the promotions are blocked.

“I think it certainly compromises our ability to be most ready,” Gen. Smith said.

Mr. Tuberville signaled at the hearing he was ready to support Gen. Smith’s confirmation, but gave no signal he was abandoning his delaying tactics over nominations in general.