Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

4. Department of Defense · Notable

Eliminate most USMC tube artillery (M777) batteries

Not started

116 4. Department of Defense

“Eliminate the majority of tube artillery (M777) batteries.”

What has happened

  1. Not started

    Already true before the evidence window: Force Design 2030 reduced Marine cannon artillery batteries from 21 to 5, and the Commandant's 2021 update records that the Corps had "eliminated most towed cannon artillery" from future plans. CRS reports the reduction as executed. The only in-window movement is in the other direction and is not a restoration: the Commandant's 2024 planning guidance lists "refinements to our quantity of cannon artillery" among the adjustments the Corps has been willing to make, and the FY2026 NDAA funds $2,429,000 of M777 modifications in the Army account, not new Marine batteries.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

Instrument: a service force-structure decision; CRS R47614 v7 (2025-11-24) is the readable allowlisted record. The single M777 line in the enacted FY2026 NDAA was checked and is an Army modifications line, not a Marine Corps battery.

  • The item is marked Already true because the Quote’s “majority of tube artillery (M777) batteries” were eliminated before the window (21 batteries to 5).
  • The Commandant’s own October 2025 update was read in full on 2026-09-03 on marines.mil. It touches this ask once, and against it: “M777” appears exactly once in the whole document, as a retained capability — “HIMARS and M777A2 howitzers provide complementary ground-based rocket/missile fires support to the MAGTF.” That is not a battery count, so it is not evidence about how many remain; it is the Commandant stating inside the window that the system is in service, which runs the other way from the ask and is attached as Evidence, as action against an ask is. “Tube artillery” returns zero hits.
  • Confirmed 2026-09-01, Already true kept. An eliminate ask, not a preserve or continue ask, so Already true is available; 21 batteries down to 5 is the majority the Quote asks for, and it was done on 2025-01-20.
  • Checked 2026-09-06, in a review of every Already-true item: the mark stands. The 2026-09-06 amendment to the rule for Already true pulls the mark where the object is undone inside the window; the majority of cannon artillery batteries eliminated before it (21 down to 5) have not been restored. The single in-window M777 line in the Commandant’s October 2025 update - “HIMARS and M777A2 howitzers provide complementary ground-based rocket/missile fires support to the MAGTF”, confirmed on a fresh read of the PDF on 2026-09-06 - describes the surviving batteries’ system as in service. Retaining what survives a cut is not reversing the cut: a change of degree at most, not the change of kind the amendment requires. Contrast #219 on the same printed page, where the Corps directed a new company into every infantry battalion and the mark came off.
Action
eliminate
Object
USMC M777 tube artillery batteries
ID
221