Amphibious assaults: antiquated or awe-inspiring? That's the question Stars and Stripes posed as it covered an amphibious assault during BALTOPS 2017, NATO's annual military exercises in the Baltic Sea.
The exercise capped off with an amphibious invasion by U.S. Marines from Marine Corps Europe Africa. Marine reservists from the 1st Battalion, 23rd Marines disembarked from the landing ship USS Arlington, coming ashore on the Polish coast in LCAC hovercraft and Amtrac amphibious vehicles.
The last major amphibious invasion took place during the Korean War at Inchon. Since then the U.S. has threatened a seaborne assault. For example, U.S. Marines on ships tied up thousands of Iraqi troops during the 1991 Persian Gulf War who expected them to storm Kuwait from the sea. But the U.S. hasn't actually staged one of these in an active conflict in decades. During 1991 and the 2003 Iraq wars, the Marines invaded over land.
The Marines would argue that the percentage of coastline hasn't changed, and with the importance of megacities in modern global society—most of which are within twenty miles of the sea—the need for the ability to land troops on a foreign shore is more important than ever.
It's also more dangerous than ever. The proliferation of anti-ship missiles among even small countries and non-state actors such as Hezbollah and Yemen's Houthi rebels is forcing the Navy and Marines to rethink the distance from which they launch amphibious landings. Easily concealed, shore-launched anti-ship missiles such as the ones that heavily damaged the UAE transport catamaran ex-HSV Swift and the Israeli missile corvette INS Hanit can reach out and strike ships loaded with sailors and marines sitting five miles off the coast in less than 30 seconds. This gives defenders little time to prepare, and as a result both services are modifying their amphibious doctrine to launch assaults at a safer distance.
The slow shift away from fighting in landlocked Middle Eastern regions and Afghanistan and towards China in the Asia-Pacific and Russia in the Baltic region will likely make America's amphibious capabilities more relevant than ever. As for whether a major amphibious assault ever takes place again is an open question and perhaps even irrelevant: the true success of Navy/Marine amphibious team might not be in a successful assault, but in appearing formidable enough that potential adversaries are deterred from starting a conflict to begin with.
Read more at Stars and Stripes
Kyle Mizokami is a writer on defense and security issues and has been at Popular Mechanics since 2015. If it involves explosions or projectiles, he's generally in favor of it. Kyle’s articles have appeared at The Daily Beast, U.S. Naval Institute News, The Diplomat, Foreign Policy, Combat Aircraft Monthly, VICE News, and others. He lives in San Francisco.
