The U.S. Marine Corps is currently obsessed with a magic number: 31. They claim that anything less than 31 traditional amphibious warfare ships—LHA/LHDs and LPDs—is a recipe for national catastrophe. General David Berger and his successors have hammered this requirement into the halls of Congress, insisting that without this specific count of massive, hulking steel targets, the Marines cannot respond to a crisis in the Indo-Pacific.
They are wrong. They aren't just slightly off on the math; they are fundamentally misreading the character of modern war. Recently making waves lately: The High Cost of Loyalty and Taiwan’s Shrinking Map.
By clinging to the 31-ship floor, the Navy-Marine Corps team is preparing to fight a high-end conflict using a strategy that peaked in 1944. They are asking for billions of dollars to build a fleet of "exquisite" targets that will be detected by a $500 commercial drone and sunk by a $2 million shore-based missile before they even get within sight of the "contested littoral" they claim to dominate.
The Logic of the Sitting Duck
The argument for more amphibious ships rests on the "Requirement for Readiness." The idea is that you need a certain number of ships in the maintenance "barn," a certain number in training, and a certain number deployed. This is basic math for a peacetime force. Additional information regarding the matter are covered by NBC News.
But we aren't in a peacetime procurement cycle anymore. We are in a technological sprint.
A traditional San Antonio-class LPD 17 Flight II costs roughly $1.9 billion. It carries about 600 Marines. It is nearly 700 feet long. In the South China Sea, that is not a warship; it is a signal. It screams "hit me" to every long-range precision fire system within 1,000 miles. When the Marines argue they need 31 of these, they are arguing for the preservation of a massive, slow-moving logistical tail that is increasingly impossible to defend.
I’ve watched defense contractors and mid-level officers nod along to these requirements because they are comfortable. They know how to build big ships. They know how to command them. But I have also seen the simulations where a single volley of DF-21 missiles turns a billion-dollar amphibious ready group into a multi-billion dollar reef in under fifteen minutes.
The Killing of the LCS and the Wrong Lessons Learned
The Navy’s failure with the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) has traumatized the Pentagon. Because the LCS was a modular disaster, the pendulum has swung back toward "big, heavy, and proven." The Marines are using this trauma to justify the LPD-17 line, arguing that we should stick to what we know.
This is a logical fallacy. Just because the LCS was poorly executed doesn't mean the concept of small, distributed, and lethal is wrong. In fact, it's the only way to survive.
The current Marine Corps leadership wants the Medium Landing Ship (LSM) to supplement the big 31, but they are treating the LSM as an afterthought. It should be the priority. We don't need 31 floating targets; we need 100 or 200 low-cost, expendable, littoral maneuver vessels that can blend into commercial traffic.
If you lose one LPD, the mission is over, and the political fallout is a decade-long scar. If you lose one of fifty small maneuver ships, you keep moving. The Marine Corps’ "Force Design 2030" (now just Force Design) correctly identifies the need to be small and fast, yet they refuse to let go of the big-ship security blanket. You cannot be a "Stand-In Force" if you arrive in a ship that can be seen from space.
The Missile Gap Nobody Wants to Discuss
Let’s talk about the math of the "Contested Environment."
An amphibious ship is designed to put "boots on the ground." To do that, it has to get close. How close? Close enough that it enters the range of every shore-based anti-ship cruise missile (ASCM) the enemy possesses.
- The Cost Curve: A $2 billion ship versus a $2 million missile.
- The Probability: To survive, the ship has to be right 100% of the time. The missile only has to be right once.
The Marine Corps argues that the ships provide "organic air defense" and "command and control." This is 20th-century thinking. In a modern electronic warfare environment, that big ship is a lighthouse. Its "command and control" is a radio frequency beacon that says, "I am the headquarters, please sink me first."
We are building a fleet based on the assumption that we will have air and sea superiority. If we have that, we don't need 31 amphibious ships; we could land Marines in a fleet of rented Carnival cruise ships. If we don't have superiority—which is the entire premise of a conflict with a peer competitor—then those 31 ships are just very expensive ways to lose thousands of Marines in a single afternoon.
The Amphibious Rigidity Trap
People often ask: "If we don't have these ships, how do we respond to a hurricane in Haiti or a non-combatant evacuation (NEO) in Africa?"
This is the "Swiss Army Knife" trap. The Marines have branded themselves as the world’s 911 force, and they use that branding to justify ships that are over-engineered for disaster relief and under-armored for real war.
If the mission is humanitarian aid, you don't need a $2 billion LPD with a stealthy radar cross-section. You need a cargo ship and a pier. If the mission is high-end combat against a near-peer, the LPD is a liability. By trying to buy one ship that does both, the Navy ends up with a fleet that is too expensive to risk in combat and too specialized for routine operations.
The counter-intuitive reality? The Marine Corps would be more lethal with zero traditional amphibious ships and 500 small, autonomous, or semi-autonomous supply craft.
The Bureaucracy of "The Floor"
Why does the number 31 keep coming up? Because it's a statutory requirement. It’s a political anchor.
Congress likes the number 31 because it keeps shipyards in Mississippi and Virginia busy for the next twenty years. The Marine Corps likes 31 because it justifies the number of Colonels and Generals needed to command those units. It is a jobs program disguised as a national security necessity.
If you want to actually win a fight in the Pacific, you have to embrace the "attritable" model. You have to be willing to lose things. You cannot be willing to lose a $2 billion LPD. Therefore, you will never actually use it in a high-threat zone. And if you won't use it where the fight is, why are we paying for it?
Logistics is the New Lethality
The "31 ships" debate is a distraction from the real problem: logistics.
In a fight for the First Island Chain, the issue isn't getting the Marines there; it's keeping them alive once they arrive. A large amphibious ship is a single point of failure for a whole regiment's logistics. When that ship stays 500 miles offshore to avoid missiles, the Marines on the island are out of water, fuel, and batteries in 48 hours.
We need a "Mosquito Fleet."
- Thousands of unmanned undersea vehicles (UUVs) for resupply.
- Small, fast surface craft that look like fishing boats.
- Long-range drones that can drop a crate of ammunition on a jungle coordinates.
The Marine Corps’ insistence on the LPD-17 is an admission that they are scared of a future they can't control. They want the comfort of a big deck and a flight line. They want the "presence" that a massive ship provides. But "presence" is just another word for "target" when the shooting starts.
The Hard Truth of Naval Integration
The Navy doesn't even want these ships. The CNO (Chief of Naval Operations) has repeatedly tried to cut the amphibious ship budget to pay for submarines and destroyers—the things that actually win naval wars. The Marines have used their political capital to force the Navy to buy ships the Navy knows it can't protect.
This isn't "synergy." It’s an internal hostage situation.
We are sacrificing the ability to control the undersea domain and the ability to strike from a distance so that we can maintain a legacy capability that hasn't been used in a contested environment since the Korean War. Inchon was 76 years ago. It’s time to move on.
Stop Buying Yesterday’s Victories
The Marines need to stop asking for 31 ships. They need to ask for 31 capabilities.
If you can move a battalion's worth of lethal force across a strait using a swarm of 50-foot autonomous boats, you have achieved the requirement. The obsession with the hull count is a failure of imagination. It’s an indicator of a leadership class that is more interested in maintaining the structure of the institution than winning the next war.
The "31-ship floor" is a ceiling on innovation. Every dollar spent on an LPD is a dollar not spent on loitering munitions, mobile sensors, and the distributed logistics that will actually decide the fate of the Pacific.
Stop building the floating graveyard. The future of the Marine Corps isn't on a big deck; it’s everywhere and nowhere at once.
Build the swarm or prepare for the slaughter.
