🇺🇸🇨🇳 US Marines risk isolation and paralysis in any western Pacific clash with China, officers warn Forward-deployed US Marines along the first island chain could find themselves cut off, immobile and short of supplies if conflict erupts with China, according to assessments by a retired three-star general and a serving lieutenant colonel. China’s anti-access/area-denial systems and precision strike networks could turn dispersed Marine units into fixed targets rather than a maneuver force, argue retired Lt. Gen. Stephen Sklenka and Lt. Col. Merritt Mitchell, writing separately in the US Naval Institute’s Proceedings. Sklenka argues that: 🔴 mobilization would have to occur from bases under simultaneous cyber and missile attack 🔴 force closure would take place at the edge of contested zones rather than secure ports or airfields 🔴 marines would need to sustain themselves for up to 75 days without traditional air or sea superiority 🔴 if reinforcements cannot punch through, Marines already positioned along the first island chain risk being left to fight an isolated, terminal engagement Mitchell focuses on the political and operational constraints of the stand-in force: 🔴 detection increasingly equals destruction: units that cannot reposition faster than Chinese retargeting cycles become fixed targets 🔴 many potential operating sites lie in allied territory where governments may withhold permission for offensive operations 🔴 without those permissions in place before crisis, the stand-in force cannot maneuver when it matters 👍 Substack | Chat | @geopolitics_prime