SOUTHCOM SPMAGTF?

Gen. John Paxton, the assistant Marine Corps commandant, said this morning that it is still in the service's plan to establish a Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force-Crisis Response unit to support U.S. Southern Command but "we don't have the depth on the bench to do it right now." As InsideDefense.com reports:

"It's on the boards, it's on the plans, there's a demand for it," he added.

Paxton called SOUTHCOM a "red-headed stepchild" and said Gen. John Kelly, SOUTHCOM commander, knows when assessing the threats in U.S. Pacific Command and day-to-day threats in U.S. Central Command and AFRICOM there is more of a need in those areas.

"Gen. John Kelly knows he won't get a lot of answers to his Christmas card from us," Paxton said. "That doesn't diminish the fact that he has legitimate missions down there whether it's counter-drug or human trafficking."

In May, the Senate added $57.5 million to the Marine Corps budget to resource two SPMAGTF-CR units in CENTCOM and U.S. Southern Command -- $10.9 million more than the service requested in its fiscal year 2015 unfunded priority list for the effort.

Last week, Paxton said a SPMAGTF-CR was limited because it does not include any Navy ships. As Inside the Navy reported:

"It's almost exactly like a MEU except it doesn't have Navy shipping, and that to us is a serious inability, disability, inhibition, whatever you want to call it, because we have no sovereign space from which to launch and recover," he said.

"It' a great capability and it helps the combatant commander out but it's a suboptimal capability because what we'd really like to have is a Navy ship," Paxton added.

Despite the lack of inventory and availability of Navy shipping due to the current fiscal environment, Paxton said the Marines must still provide forces.

"We have a paucity of amphibious ships and many of us in the Marine Corps are not happy with it," he said. However, "we still have to provide forces because we are the nation's 911 force."