What Is NMESIS, The Marine Corps’ New Ship Killer?

WASHINGTON: The Marine Corps has dubbed its new ground-based, anti-ship missile as a top modernization priority and integral to the commandant’s Force Design 2030 efforts. Having progressed from an idea inside the Pentagon to a functional weapon on the shores of Hawaii in roughly two years’ time, NMESIS has quickly made a name for itself even beyond the tortured acronym.

In August, the service was able to demonstrate NMESIS — full name Navy Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System — during the Navy’s Large Scale Exercise off the coast of Kauai in Hawaii. Marines twice fired and hit a decommissioned vessel, as well as practiced loading and unloading NMESIS aboard a C-130 aircraft, according to Joe McPherson, program manager for long range fires at Marine Corps Systems Command.

Now, a Marine unit at Camp Pendleton in California will receive NMESIS assets in October to put the weapon through its paces for the next two years and provide the service with ground level feedback, McPherson said.

But what exactly is the Navy/Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System? Why is the Marine Corps so intent on deploying it to Marines in the field quickly? And, as one analyst asked, how does it fit into a broader military strategy?

At its core, NMESIS is a combination of several proven capabilities, a key reason why the service has managed to bring it online so quickly. The weapon itself uses the anti-ship Naval Strike Missile made by Kongsberg; a control system operated remotely, dubbed ROGUE-Fires; and the chassis of a Joint Light Tactical Vehicle.

“Marines can control the ROGUE-Fires with a game-like remote controller or command multiple launchers to autonomously follow behind a leader vehicle,” according to a recent Marine Corps statement. “The ROGUE-Fires vehicle, built on a Joint Light Tactical Vehicle platform, provides the Corps with a robust expeditionary system capable of operating anywhere.”

That ability to move quickly and over rough terrain is important because the fight the Marine Corps is envisioning for NMESIS will be one focused on “scoot and shoot” engagements, said John Ferrari, a former Army two-star general and now a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

“This is all part of the … pivot to the Pacific,” he said. “How are you going to keep the Chinese navy bottled up inside, if not the first, the second island chain?”

The service’s premiere concept of operation, Expeditionary Advanced Basing Operations, envisions a fight where Marines are spread throughout the battlespace and rely on a multitude of smaller bases quickly constructed as necessary.

Those bases can serve logistics and intelligence purposes, but they also act an as a location from which Marines can deploy NMESIS.

The bases allow the Marine Corps “to project kinetic combat power to support what’s called sea denial, sea control,” said Billy Fabian, vice president of strategy at the data analytics firm Govini. Prior to NMESIS, he said, the “United States lacked a land-based, anti-ship weapon. This is [the] first system that’s able to do that, so it is a big step up in capability for what they see these bases doing.”

Ferrari added the Army has previously considered missile systems in the past that could be launched from ground to sea as well as ones that could be deployed from Navy ships. However, those weapons often either lacked the guidance systems necessary to hit moving targets at sea or were too large to fit the Marine Corps’ desire for a highly mobile weapon.

Still, Ferrari said that while NMESIS fits clearly into the commandant’s vision for a future, it’s less certain how it be relevant to the Pentagon’s broader strategy in the Indo-Pacific.

“The two unanswered questions are … explain to me how this fits into the [INDO-PACOM] commander’s warfighting plan,” he said. And “do we need NMESIS plus the Army systems? Can we afford all of them?”

Given that it is assembled using technology from other established programs, NMESIS’ overall costs should be less expensive compared to most new weapon systems. That said, the Marine Corps has always been a budget-tight service and senior brass know that won’t change in the near future.

The service’s latest budget request includes $28 million in research and development funding to continue to developing the weapon system; the Pentagon received $42 million in fiscal year 2020 and $25 million FY21 for NMESIS.