Gen. David Berger, commandant of the Marine Corps, said Tuesday, March 14, 2023, that the service will have to keep adapting and possibly make unorthodox changes if it is going to remain a dominant military force in the world. (Chandler Stacy/U.S. Marine Corps)

WASHINGTON — The Marine Corps will have to keep adapting and possibly make unorthodox changes if it is going to remain a dominant military force in the world, the service’s top general said Tuesday.

Gen. David Berger, the commandant of the Marine Corps, said adaptability is one of the service’s most important attributes because it will come up against evolving enemies on future battlefields. Change is a driving force in the Marine Corps’ budget request for hundreds of millions in additional funding in 2024 to speed up its modernization plan called Force Design 2030.

“We have an obligation to our country to win whatever conflict we’re put in. Or, as we say in the Marine Corps, we have to adapt and overcome,” Berger said during a speech at the National Press Club in Washington.

Force Design 2030 is the Marine Corps’ plan to update and reshape its forces and shed outdated assets and strategies. The plan includes developing new equipment and restructuring on multiple levels so Marines can better respond to near-peer threats, such as China and Russia.

“That is what Force Design is all about. It’s an opportunity,” Berger said.

In the Navy’s $255 billion budget request released Monday, the Marine Corps asks for $705 million in additional funding for fiscal 2024 to accelerate Force Design. As part of the plan, Berger said the Marine Corps is already making many transformations, but he stressed it also must be more open-minded than it has been in the past, especially to new technology and new thinking. That includes, he said, getting rid of things that worked in the past but probably could be useless in the future.

“Basically, our laboratory, where we learn, is out there in the field,” Berger said. “The experimentation, the trial and error are happening at such a fast rate.”

Some of the technologies that Marines are working on include artificial intelligence, merging conventional and smart systems, and autonomous weapons and vehicles that will remove Marines from harm’s way, he said.

Another important step, Berger said, is listening to younger Marines who are more tuned in technologically than their older peers when it comes to things such as computers, tablets and smartphones.

“[They] would reprogram [the phone] and find like seven things it was not designed to do. Then by Friday they would tell me, ‘Those rules you had for the phone, they are worthless. But we came up with these others and we kind of violated the warranty, but it really works great,’ ” he said. “We have to embrace that [type of thinking], not fight it.”

The Marine Corps commandant since 2019, Berger also stressed how important amphibious warships will be. The Navy’s budget request for 2024 didn’t include money for new amphibious ships as the service aims to retire several. The long-term result could be fewer than 31 amphibious ships in the Navy’s fleet, which is the minimum required for full force capabilities. Amphibious ships are critical in swiftly delivering Marines and equipment to conflict zones.

There’s no funding in the request because the Navy has ordered a pause while it studies how many amphibious ships are needed and for what purpose. The Navy said its 30-year shipbuilding plan will be released soon.

Berger on Tuesday compared the amphibious ships to Swiss Army knives.

“Nothing in the world is anywhere like it,” he said. “That is your best chance to prevent a conflict. That is your best chance to respond quickly to a problem that’s brewing.”

“All of that depends on having enough amphibious ships,” he added. “Thirty-one is the bare minimum. We can’t do with any less.”

Berger joined the Marine Corps in 1981 and has held several commands in the past four decades. He is planning to retire in July after serving for four years as commandant. His successor will be nominated by President Joe Biden and must be confirmed by the Senate.