Thank you, General Chiarotti, for inviting me to speak here tonight, and to everyone behind the scenes who make these events happen. I also want to extend my appreciation for the work that the Marine Corps Association is doing in fostering the growth and development of Marines. Congratulations as well to the Marine Corps Gazette’s Distinguished Authors being recognized this evening. It is an honor to be here tonight, and I would like to take some time to discuss my vision for the future of the Marine Corps with you all.

About a month ago, I released my Commandant’s Planning Guidance. My intent in releasing this document is to make sure our Marines understand where we are going.

Bottom line upfront: We are moving ahead on Force Design. But make no mistake, we are in perhaps the most difficult phase – implementation. Looking back, we have come a long way in a short amount of time. From Talent Management, to Installations and Logistics, to Training and Education, the team has made great strides. At the same time, there is still much to accomplish.

After reviewing the state of our Marine Corps, I decided the five priorities in last year’s Message to the Force are correct, so those remain our priorities.

My planning guidance details these five priorities: 

1) Balancing Crisis Response and Modernization, 

2) Naval Integration and Organic Mobility, 

3) Quality of Life, 

4) Recruit, Make, and Retain Marines, and 

5) Maximize the Potential of our Reserves.

Today, I would like to discuss these priorities and their context with you in detail. If you read the CPG, you may have noticed that instead of starting with my Number One priority, Balancing Crisis Response and Modernization, I began instead with Discipline and Core Values – this was intentional.

We must remember that our values are the lifeblood of our Corps. They are what set us apart from the other services. Our values make us the lethal warfighters that we are and give us the critical advantage to fight and win our nation’s battles. As you know, discipline makes all the difference in combat. 

Before every artillery fire mission, we check zero mils, we know our immediate and remedial actions for our weapon systems from memory, and Marines treat enemy prisoners of war in accordance with the Geneva Convention and Laws of War.

The Marines who came before us have passed this ethos down to us, and it is now our responsibility to retain, maintain, and pass our discipline and core values on to the next generation – if we don’t, nothing else will matter.

Priority #1 Balancing Crisis Response and Modernization 

While we strengthen our discipline and corps values, we must also acknowledge the rapidly changing character of war. Through our efforts to implement Force Design, the Marine Corps is postured to be on the cutting edge of this change. As we continue down this road, however, we must acknowledge the necessity to balance crisis response and modernization.  

Our nation is currently faced with a complex international security environment. From our pacing threat, the PRC, to other malign actors such as Russia, Iran, North Korea, and Violent Extremist Organizations, the United States stands as the main defender of the rules-based international order.

We are implementing Force Design in a volatile world. It is a strategic imperative that the Marine Corps be ready to respond to crises whenever the call comes. Our challenge is to prepare the service for future wars, while remaining ready to respond to crises and contingencies today. 

We have a finite budget and must continue to make hard choices with the resources we have. I remain committed to our modernization efforts through implementation of Force Design and our campaign of learning. We will continue to make refinements to align our force to the future battlefield. 

We are learning from simulation, experimentation, and observing current conflicts. Even as we learn and adjust, we are already witnessing some of our early Force Design investments beginning to bear fruit in the operating forces.

Priority #2 Naval Integration and Organic Mobility

Critical to our ability to respond to crises are Amphibious Ready Groups and Marine Expeditionary Units. These are our premier force offerings to our Geographic Combatant Commanders, and demand for our MEUs exceeds the number of ARG/MEU teams that have deployed.

I am committed to providing our Combatant Commanders with a continuous 3.0 ARG/MEU presence. That means heel-to-toe deployments of one MEU from the East Coast, one MEU from the West Coast, and the 31st MEU from Okinawa. To accomplish this, we must also have a 5-ship naval task force forward-deployed in Japan to ensure the 31st MEU can sustain its forward presence mission.

Therefore, 31 Amphibious Ships is the bare minimum required by law for the Marine Corps to fulfill our Title 10 responsibilities in our crisis response mission. 

This bears repeating: 31 Amphibs is the minimum. The true requirement is 3.0 MEU presence. Our MEUs remain our premier crisis response force. They provide unmatched flexibility in not requiring access, basing, or overflight permission when conducting operations. 

Additionally, they provide a combat-credible force, appropriately postured, and capable of contributing at every point on the spectrum of conflict. MEUs are not static and they too must modernize, just like the rest of the service. There is ample opportunity to use the flexibility of the ARG/MEU to employ new capabilities. These include unmanned systems, Combined Joint All Domain C2, and additive manufacturing. Regarding our organic connectors, we remain committed to building 35 Medium Landing Ships in order to ensure freedom of movement in the contested battlespace of the Western Pacific.

Additionally, as a service, we are seeking to procure a short-term Littoral Maneuver Bridging Solution to give our Marines the surface mobility they need now while we wait for the arrival of the Landing Ship Medium.

Priority #3 Quality of Life

Nothing is more important to me than the quality of life and the well-being of our Marines and their families. To this end, we are continuing the work laid out in the Barracks 2030 plan. Improving the quality of our facilities will take time and money. Some of our facilities have years or even decades of deferred maintenance.

We are moving as fast as we can to fix, build, or right-size our existing infrastructure, and we continue to achieve success in funding infrastructure over topline. However, this problem will not be completely fixed overnight. On this point, I am committed to getting our Marines whatever quality of life improvements we can in the interim. 

We all know that morale is more than a new building, and I encourage you to seek out ways to improve our Marines’ well-being in other meaningful ways. When you find success, pass it up the chain of command so we can learn from your success. The saying goes: We recruit the Marine, we retain the family.  Our policies need to match the realities of the 21st century family so that we can live up to this saying. 

To this effect, we need to expand family-oriented policies that allow for spousal employment, better access to childcare, as well as better stability, predictability, and transparency in the orders assignment process.

Priority #4 Recruit, Make, and Retain Marines

Recruiting is existential to our Corps. If we don’t recruit, then we don’t have Marines, end of story. I want to say upfront that I am immensely proud of our Recruiting Stations and Substations. 

Through recruiting and retention, we met our end-strength goal. In fact, due to high retention, we not only met our end strength goal, we also have a head start on the new year.  We decreased the number of Marines awaiting training, we saved taxpayer dollars, and we increased the size of next year’s recruiting start pool by deferring shipping on 600 recruits. 

Our message to the American people is clearly resonating and it’s making the Marine Corps more capable—now and for the future. I want to note that we did this without lowering our standards. Talent management is moving forward at speed.  

We continue to modernize our Talent Management Information Technology which has improved our retention by better matching the Marine to the needs of the Service. We cannot rest on our laurels, though. 

We must continue to recruit the best of America’s sons and daughters, we must continue our efforts in talent management to retain high-quality Marines, and we must find our best Marines to fill the ranks of our recruiters.

Finally, I want to remind the group that everyone here is also a recruiter.  We must convey the value and importance of service to America’s young men and women.

Priority #5 Maximize the Potential of our Reserves

My final priority is our Marine Corps Forces Reserve. Our operational reserve. Our reserve component is a critical force provider that can reinforce, augment, and sustain our MEFs in peace and war. They provide the operational flexibility we need in the current environment.

We will continue to utilize our reserves to support SOUTHCOM and 4th Fleet requirements within their organic means, while also prioritizing their battalion-level deployments. We will also continue to prioritize and utilize our reserves throughout the force as critical enablers.

If you read my CPG, you will know that these five priorities are not the only topics discussed in the document. I also discuss the Marine Corps’ critical capabilities and future investments, the importance of our allies and partners, the necessity of the Maritime Prepositioning Force, and the roles of our MEFs.

These sections lay out some of the specific critical capabilities we need and how I see us moving forward both in modernization and crisis response. I encourage all of you to read, discuss, and provide feedback as we move forward together implementing Force Design.

The international security environment remains difficult, and the Marine Corps faces many challenges in our road ahead.  To meet these challenges, however, we have one critical capability in our favor – Our Marines – active, reserve, civilian, and retired. 

With discipline and our Corps Values of honor, courage, and commitment, we will face down every challenge, while adapting and overcoming, just as the generations of Marines who came before us did.  

To LtGen Chiarotti, the Marine Corps Association and all in attendance today, thank you for what you do for our Marines and for inviting me to speak to you tonight.  

Semper Fidelis!