U.S. Marine Corps Is Getting Back to Its Amphibious Roots

After more than a decade fighting land wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Marine Corps wants to regain its role as America's middleweight expeditionary force

By Otto Kreisher - November 8, 2012

Marines assigned to Amphibious Assault Vehicle Platoon, Combat Assault Company, 3rd Marine Regiment, make their way to the amphibious assault ship USS Essex (LHD 2) during Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) 2012. The world’s largest international maritime exercise, the biennial RIMPAC provides a unique training opportunity that helps participants foster and sustain the cooperative relationships that are critical to ensuring the safety of sea lanes and security on the world’s oceans. The Marine Corps, after more than a decade as a de facto second land army, is working to return to its amphibious roots. U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Mike Meares

Designed primarily to train the staffs of Expeditionary Strike Group 2, 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade (MEB), and Carrier Strike Group 12 in the complex and interrelated tasks of a combined arms amphibious operation, BA12 also gave thousands of Marines and sailors their first exposure to such activities.

A reporter who covered the exercise aboard the amphibious assault ship Wasp (LHD 1), the flagship, found that most of the Marines interviewed had never been on an amphib before and found just getting around the ship challenging.

Harvey told reporters the exercise was the beginning of “a revitalization of what the Navy-Marine Corps team are supposed to bring to the nation.”

“You hear a lot about the Navy-Marine Corps team,” Harvey said. “My goal is to make that more than a bumper sticker – to make that team what it was in the past, needs to be in the future.

Pilots fly a CH-46E Sea Knight from USS Makin Island to USS Pearl Harbor, May 6, 2012. The pilots serve with Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 268 (Reinforced), the aviation combat element for the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit. The unit embarked USS Makin Island, USS New Orleans and USS Pearl Harbor in San Diego, Nov. 14 beginning a seven-month deployment to the Western Pacific, Horn of Africa and Middle East regions. The CH-46 “Phrog” is being smoothly phased out of service as more new MV-22 Osprey’s reach the Corps. U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Tommy Huynh

“It’s enormously important for the Navy to start learning an awful lot about Marine Corps operations and getting a landing force ashore, and how that land force operates,” Harvey said. “And it’s enormously important for the Marine forces to understand what it took to get the naval force to the position where you could land the assault forces and sustain those assault forces,” he added. “That part of this education, I think, will be the greatest benefit to this exercise.”

“In today’s world, the Navy-Marine Corps team must remain capable of gaining access to an operational area and projecting and sustaining a sizable landing force ashore,” Hejlik said. “We have the legislated responsibilities to be able to conduct these operations, and we certainly must be ready to do so beyond the ARG-MEU level where we routinely operate today.”

The exercise included nearly the full range of sea-based combat operations, scouting missions and coastal raids at night, extensive beach assaults using amphibious tractors, Landing Craft Air Cushion (LCACs) and helicopters, and a deep raid 150 miles inland using Ospreys for the first time in an amphibious exercise.

Since then, a smaller amphibious assault by water and air involving U.S. Marines and allied troops was staged into Hawaii as the concluding act in the large Rim of the Pacific exercises that ended Aug. 1, 2012.

A larger exercise, Dawn Blitz, was planned for later in the year on the West Coast, with Marines storming the beaches at Camp Pendleton, Calif., and conducting live-fire training on the base’s ranges.

Interwoven with these larger exercises, the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory’s Experiment Division has been conducting a series of limited objective experiments (LOE) testing new technologies and concepts that would expand the combat capabilities of sea-based forces.

An MV-22 Osprey assigned to the Fighting Griffins of Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron (VMM) 266 makes a historic first landing aboard the Military Sealift Command dry cargo and ammunition ship USNS Robert E. Peary (T-AKE 5). The Osprey landed aboard Robert E. Peary while conducting an experimental resupply of Marines during exercise Bold Alligator 2012. Photo by Lt.j.g. Michael Sheehan

One of the lab’s LOEs, held as part of BA12, included that deep raid by an enhanced Marine infantry company from the sea into the Fort Pickett, Va., Army National Guard training center. One of the lab’s goals was testing new systems that would enable the landing force to communicate, by voice and digitally, to its commanders at sea 150 miles away and among its own widely scattered units conducting distributed operations.

Another key purpose was testing how to supply that force from the distant sea base, and systems that reduce the landing team’s need for resupply of water and batteries.

It included the first-ever test of an MV-22 picking up supplies and being refueled by the primarily civilian crew of a Maritime Sealift Command (MSC) T-AKE-class supply ship.

Col. Vince Goulding (Ret.), the Experiment Division director, suggested that using some of the T-AKEs to provide food, water, and similar supplies to the landing force would free up the limited space aboard the amphibs for more warfighting material.

Marine Corps leadership has started another, more extensive effort to open space aboard its amphibious ships. It ordered the disposal of more than 10,000 of its ground tactical vehicles, including most of the ponderous mine-resistant, ambush-protected (MRAP) vehicles it acquired to address the deadly IED threat in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Amphibious shipping obviously is an essential enabler of the Marines’ drive to get back to sea. And it has been a source of constant, but deliberately low-key conflict between the Corps and the Navy, which controls the funds that determine how many and what kinds of ships it has.