Overnight Defense & National Security — A new plan to treat Marines ‘like human beings’

by Ellen Mitchell - 11/04/21 7:43 PM ET

It’s Thursday, welcome to Overnight Defense & National Security, your nightly guide to the latest developments at the Pentagon, on Capitol Hill and beyond. Subscribe here: digital-release.thehill.com/newsletter-signup.

The Marine Corps is moving away from its previously held recruitment and retention goals, targeting individual talents rather than massing in high volumes of personnel.

We’ll share details on what’s changed, plus the repercussions of the submarine accident last month and what GOP lawmakers are demanding of the Pentagon’s top officer.

For The Hill, I’m Ellen Mitchell. Write to me with tips: emitchell@digital-release.thehill.com.

Let’s get to it.

Overhauling recruitment

The Marine Corps on Wednesday released a new plan detailing significant changes to recruitment and retention, focusing on individual talents instead of pushing high volumes of personnel.

“The most important element of this report is the individual Marine,” General David H. Berger, commandant of the Marine Corps, said in a press release. “Transitioning to a talent management system will enable us to better harness and develop the unique skills and strengths of our Marines, improve the performance of our units in competition and combat, and ensure that we remain ‘most ready when the Nation is least ready,’ today and into the future.”

Details on the plan: The plan, called “Talent Management 2030,” redesigns fundamental aspects of the Marine personnel system. Key elements include retooling how individuals with special skills can join the service without starting in lower ranks, incorporating a talent marketplace to give Marines a say in the trajectory of their careers and adopting tools to improve the efficiency of the talent management system.

No more ‘recruit and replace’: For the past 35 years, the Marine Corps discharged approximately 75 percent of first-term Marines every year and recruited an equal number of replacements, according to the plan.

Berger said the service essentially adopted a “recruit and replace” personnel model rather than an “invest and retain” one after decades of working in a system that has prioritized massing a “young, physically tough, replaceable force” that was “not all that highly skilled,” The Washington Post reported.

He also said that the Marine Corps will have to “treat people like human beings instead of inventory.”

What’s still unclear: While it is unclear whether the Marines will shrink to accommodate the more focused recruitment plan, Berger said they are “in the market” for talent and are working to retain personnel, such as increasing the duration of parental leave.

Berger previously signaled changes last year in his contemporary plan Force Design 2030, which sought to cut the service to 174,000 Marines by 2030. It is unclear how much the new plan will cost.

Read the full story here.

GOP presses Milley over military moves

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley speaks during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the conclusion of military operations in Afghanistan and plans for future counterterrorism operations, Tuesday, Sept. 28, 2021.

Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee are pressing Gen. Mark Milley on the cost of military initiatives focused on issues like climate change and white nationalism within its ranks, questioning whether the issues are being prioritized over readying a lethal fighting force.

In an Oct. 21 letter to Milley signed by 12 Republicans and obtained by The Hill, they alleged that the Department of Defense was more worried about combating issues like critical race theory than training and recruiting forces.

The grievances: “At each hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, we acknowledge that the world is a more dangerous place than ever in our lifetime and reaffirm our committee’s steadfast support for the 2018 National Defense Strategy,” committee ranking member Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) and 11 other senators wrote.

“Yet today, efforts to recruit, train, and equip a ready and lethal force often appear to take a back seat to the Department of Defense’s (DOD) ‘Climate Adaptation Plan,’ ‘Countering Extremism Working Group,’ and discussions of critical race theory. DOD touts its ‘Climate Adaptation Plan,’ while a viable counterterrorism strategy in lieu of our presence in Afghanistan after a chaotic exit goes wanting,” they continued.

Other criticisms: The Republican senators also criticized a Pentagon initiative aimed at weeding out domestic extremists and white supremacists within the military ranks. Earlier this year, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a memo that a working group within the department would be established to review and update their definition of extremism and provide new screening for potential members of domestic extremist groups.

“All this is taking place despite clear data that pegs the number of extremists in our military as miniscule,” the Republican senators wrote. “Several members of the Senate Armed Services Committee have solicited feedback directly from service members about the working group and have also shared growing concern about the focus directed towards social issues and away from lethality.”

Who signed on?: The letter was signed by Sens. Deb Fischer (Neb.), Tommy Tuberville (Ala.), Thom Tillis (N.C.), Rick Scott (Fla.), Mike Rounds (S.D.), Roger Wicker (Miss.), Dan Sullivan (Alaska), Tom Cotton (Ark.), Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.), Joni Ernst (Iowa) and Kevin Cramer (N.D.).

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