The US is sending an amphibious assault ship, the USS Tripoli, and its Marine expeditionary unit to the Middle East, a senior US official confirmed to Axios on Friday, as the Iran war continues into its third week.
The deployment offers Marines and the rest of the US military a chance to finally engage in “littoral warfare,” which has been discussed for decades.
During the Cold War, when the concept of two large conventional armies going toe-to-toe with nuclear arms became less relevant, there was a sense that warfare might shift toward smaller operations.
In 1993, Ralph Stokes and Richard Thompson wrote in the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory’s APL Technical Digest that “the end of the Cold War and the potential increase of worldwide regional conflicts have produced a significant change in US military and maritime strategy. Many future conflicts will involve joint operations of all forces and will include situations that culminate in massive and highly coordinated power projection operations from the sea.”
They noted that “littoral operations present many stressing and unique challenges and require some rethinking of the broad range of naval roles and missions. This article examines the naval roles, missions, and implications of littoral operations, and identifies key technologies and capabilities required to meet the objectives with maximum effect and minimum losses.”
In their paper, they were prescient. They noted that “by definition, littoral warfare involves operations near shore as well as in more confining sea regions, such as the Strait of Hormuz or the Persian Gulf. Near shore means close enough to bring force to bear on the adjacent land, and may range from a few kilometers for covert surveillance or naval gunfire support to hundreds of kilometers for aircraft carrier strike operations.”
Currently, the Strait of Hormuz is in the spotlight, and so is littoral warfare. The US carried out airstrikes on Kharg Island in the Persian Gulf on Friday, hitting military sites there.
The island is responsible for more than 90% of Iran’s oil exports, with oil reaching the island via pipelines. There are other small islands that may soon be in the spotlight.
Time magazine noted that “three strategically located islands – Abu Musa, Greater Tunb, and Lesser Tunb – positioned at the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz are at the center of a decades-long dispute between Iran and the United Arab Emirates.”
An issue going back decades
Although there are arguments in the media about whether the US planned for Iran to block the Strait of Hormuz, it is clear that the military has been concerned about this issue for decades.
In an article at the US Naval Institute in 2012 by Capt. Robert Carney Powers, he noted that “blockage of the Strait of Hormuz by a hostile power was a frequent scenario. The "US-supported nation" (the "Blue" coalition nation) needed timely reinforcements to succeed. Red could best succeed by using its significant land forces to seize key objectives before the United States could get more troops and equipment into position.
“Breaking through the choke point at the Strait of Hormuz was essential to ensure the flow of logistic, amphibious, and troop ships into Blue ports,” he wrote. “It also was essential to maintain the flow of oil from Middle East nations to the world economy.”
When wargaming how the US Navy or a friendly one would break a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, it became clear the operation would take “weeks, not days.”
As time went by, “this resulted in a logistical bottleneck; troop ships and supplies couldn’t get through the choke point. Large ships piled up waiting for the order to proceed. No oil was transported out of the Persian Gulf. The world economy suffered. Meanwhile, Red ground forces were moving toward their key objectives,” noted Powers in 2012.
The US realized it needed smaller ships, leading to the concept of a “littoral combat ship.” This resulted in two types of vessels, the USS Freedom and USS Independence, launched between 2006 and 2008.
However, the results of investment in the littoral ships didn’t lead to solving the problem.
“As currently configured (weapons, manning, concept), is the LCS [Littoral Combat Ship] up to the tasks it could soon face (in the Strait of Hormuz and elsewhere)? The answer is regretfully ‘no,’” noted Powers. “It has taken 17-plus years since the LCS concept was born to come up with a flawed ship.
“What must go to accommodate the systems needed to make it relevant to its tasks?” he asked. “The LCS is, after all, a 3,000-ton ship (much larger than a World War II destroyer escort, and three-fourths the size of a Perry- or Knox-class frigate). The space for needed capability can be found.”
Littoral combat in the Indo-Pacific
Recently, the questions about littoral combat have shifted to focus on the Indo-Pacific, “where China’s militarization of artificial islands, deployment of hypersonic anti-ship missiles, and expansion of naval and coast guard assets have turned the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait into potential flash points,” an article at the US Naval Institute noted in 2025.
Sebastian Bae, who served six years in the Marine Corps, designed a wargame called Littoral Commander to simulate the challenges in the Indo-Pacific.
As noted by Andrew Feickert, who has written about America’s Marine Littoral Regiment (MLR), “in March 2020, the US Marine Corps announced a major force design initiative planned to occur over 10 years, originally referred to as ‘Force Design 2030,’ which is now known as ‘Force Design.’ Under Force Design, the Marines are redesigning forces to place a stronger emphasis on naval expeditionary warfare. As part of the redesign, the Marines originally planned to establish at least three Marine Littoral Regiments (MLRs) organized, trained, and equipped to accomplish a number of missions within contested maritime spaces.”
It’s now possible that the Marines, and the US military in general, may get to engage in the kind of littoral combat that has been discussed for decades.
Dan Lamothe, who writes on military affairs for The Washington Post, noted on X the kind of units being sent to the Middle East today: “A Marine expeditionary unit [MEU], a foundational force for the Marine Corps that typically deploys on ships but also goes ashore as needed.”
He notes that an “MEU typically has an infantry battalion, an aviation unit with jets and helicopters, and a logistics component. In this case, it’s the 31st MEU from Okinawa, Japan. The infantry battalion training with this MEU is 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines, of Camp Pendleton. They are assigned on a rotational basis. Total number of personnel in the full MEU: About 2,200 to 2,400.”
It will arrive with the Tripoli Amphibious Ready Group with the “USS Tripoli and two other vessels (in this case, USS San Diego and USS New Orleans),” Lamothe said. “Navy personnel in an ARG typically number about 2,000, though it can vary. Counting the Marines, that’s 4,200 to 4,400 total additional deployers. They work hand-in-hand.”
Decades of American thought, planning, wargaming, and training have gone into this moment. Far from being a scenario that was shocking, the closure of the Straits has been imagined for decades. This is unsurprising considering that the 1980s Iran-Iraq war provided a blueprint for many of the challenges we are seeing today.