Pentagon budget 2024: USMC plans to boost Force Design 2030 spending

ACV is an eight-wheeled armoured personnel carrier designed to fully replace the USMC's ageing fleet of Amphibious Assault Vehicles. The USMC budget request includes a boost for ACV procurement in FY 2024. (USMC)

The US Marine Corps (USMC) is asking for USD705 million more in discretionary spending for its Force Design 2030 priorities in fiscal year (FY) 2024 than enacted in FY 2023, according to budget documents.

The USMC topline request for the modernisation experimentation campaign, which calls for a more agile force, was USD17.1 billion in FY 2023 and could be bumped up to USD17.8 billion for FY 2024, according to documents released on 13 March. The additional funding would go toward programmes the service has already invested in, USMC Commandant General David Berger said on 16 March.

While Force Design is a campaign of modernisation and experimentation, the plan also laid out guidelines for divesting from less mobile, expeditionary capabilities, such as main battle tanks (MBTs). Gen Berger said the time for divesting is over.

“The first two years where we had a pretty rapid and deliberate approach to divesting of certain things – that is all complete now,” Gen Berger said. “It's field these systems now. Get them out to the field as quickly as we can.”

He highlighted the budget requests contributions to command and control, fires, and sensors as some of the biggest accelerations. The USMC intends to spend USD16.9 billion on equipment modernisation overall, a growth from the USD16.4 billion approved for 2023.

Command-and-control efforts would receive USD201 million if the request was enacted, an increase of nearly USD50 million from the enacted FY 2023 levels.