Until a few days ago, I was convinced that the expeditionary advanced base operations concept was one of the dumbest ideas to come down the pike in a long time. This developing concept envisions the Marine Corps seizing and establishing a persistent presence on key maritime terrain (islands and chokepoints). By emplacing long range weapons systems within these bases, marines would create an anti-access envelope, within which enemy ships and aircraft would find it difficult and hopefully impossible to operate. As far as I was concerned, this concept, known in military circles by its acronym, “EABO,” was another of those...