This week I weirdly saw a lot of comparisons to the Maginot Line. So here’s your periodic reminder that the Maginot Line worked; it did exactly what it was supposed to do. It was a trap and the Germans took the bait.
The purpose of the Maginot Line was not to stop the Germans from invading. Its purpose was to force them to go around it through Belgium, enabling the French Army to concentrate on a single axis of advance and stop the Wehrmacht in their tracks. The Maginot Line’s purpose wasn’t purely defensive, but rather to enable the counter-offensive, ironically right in line with Prussian conceptions of the best defense being a good counter-offensive. It ended up not working because French command and control couldn’t keep up with the pace of the German offensive and therefore weren’t able to concentrate on their axis of advance, but that’s not the fault of the Maginot Line. That’s a leadership problem.
The purpose of the Marine Littoral Regiments is similar. They’re not intended to stop PLAN sorties, but rather put them in a dilemma. Either expend a massive amount of time and munitions finding and striking small Marine squads or just go around. If they choose the first, that opens them up to counter-offensive by the Navy and Air Force as they lock themselves down in one operating area. If they choose the latter, then they are channeled into one or just a few predictable axes, making them vulnerable to Navy/Air Force assets. If PLAN ships start taking naval strike missiles between the eyes in the process, that’s even better.
So the MLRs are a bit like the Maginot Line: a way to facilitate counter-offensives. They’re not analogous to the World War II era defense battalions that had no offensive purpose. It requires a little faith that the Navy and Air Force can react faster than the French Army, but it is a direct application of combined arms at the joint level and the creation of dilemmas from MCDP-1 Warfighting. Deny key maneuver space to the enemy and force them to do what you want. It’s nothing the Marine Corps hasn’t done forever, now it’s just doing so at sea too.
The MAGTFs didn’t, and aren’t, going away. No one has ever said that, or that they wouldn’t be in the fight. The only thing that went away is antique M1A1s that don’t work on the modern battlefield anymore.
The PLA doesn’t have the ability to deploy or sustain forces larger than a battalion or two at a time outside the narrow region in and around Taiwan. They’re not designed for that. Even if they could, MLRs aren’t going to be alone. Traditional MAGTF formations will also be there. Isolated PLA battalions (which are all they have the ability to do) are not a threat to US forces.