Is a Company Landing Team too small, or just right?

The Marine Corps is experimenting with a Company-sized Landing Team this summer. The COLT experiment will look into what a reinforced company can do. They will launch from ships far from shore (20 miles or more out) with minimal indirect fire support with them (60mm, 81mm, maybe two artillery pieces). The Navy likes being farther from shore, but the Marines are kind of on their own out there. Having only a company-sized force might leave you a little exposed for some missions.

This is a big deal for us because we normally think only of battalion-sized units as being able to operate independently. In addition, we'll be launching the CoLT from over the horizon (20+ miles out), that's the first time we're doing this over the horizon thing, although we first talked about it in 1997....what took us so long?