In an interview with USNI News, the head of the U.S. Marine Corps Gen. Robert Blake Neller, says he wants his men to have the capability to sink ships using a long-range anti-ship missile “as fast as possible.”
By Suradnik13 (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0], via Wikimedia Commons
“We’ve done it with airplanes historically in World War II. Marines’ traditional mission is the seizure and securing of advance naval bases for the prosecution of the naval campaign. But if the air space is more contested and you want to be able to keep ships away at some distance because they’ve got long-range strike, you’ve got to be able to strike them. So you need to have a capability to control the maritime space. So I think we’re in a good place to control the air space – we need more air defense, we need more counter-missiles capability – but we’ve got to be able to attack surface platforms at range, and so that’s what the capability requirement is.”