While one part of the US Navy argues for a next generation of frigates, elsewhere a small band of reformers in the USN including US Marines are experimenting and adapting to new missions:
Colonel David Coffman, Commander of the Marines, USS Boxer (yes, it does have its own website)
“We don’t see [humanitarian missions] as a ‘that might happen.’ We’re preparing for that as a fundamental tasking of what expeditionary strike groups and Marine expeditionary units are forward-deployed to do.”
As David Axe suggests: In other words, humanitarian “soft power” now has taken its rightful place alongside old-fashioned, firepower-heavy “hard power.”
