CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C.
— After nearly a decade of fighting in Iraq and
Afghanistan, the Marine Corps has been inappropriately branded as a
second land army.
In response to this misconception, the Corps returns to its
amphibious roots Dec. 11 with exercise Bold Alligator 2011, an operation
with the Navy's Sound Fleet which reestablishes Marines in their
traditional role as "fighters from the sea."
Initiated by Navy and Marine Corps leadership, Bold Alligator ‘11 is a
two-part exercise leadership designed to reacquaint brigade and
group-level commands with their amphibious doctrine, tactical skill sets
and logistical requirements.
"Though we have focused (at this
level) almost exclusively on land warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan for
the last decade, amphibious operations continue to be the mainstay of
our Corps’ mission," explained Col. Scott D. Aiken, operations officer
for II MEF. "We have been working toward this for more than two years
now and it’s one of the first of many steps in the direction to
revitalize our core competency."
During these two years,
planners from the Marine Air-Ground Task Force Staff Training Program
located in Quantico, Va., have been busy engineering scenario-based
environments to test the Navy/Marine Corps team on their amphibious
competence and the dozens of different missions that fall under
amphibious operations.
"Amphibious operations are much more than
just assaults," said Lt. Col. Bowen Richwine, lead action officer for
the MEF’s part in the exercise.
In fact, since 1990, the
Navy/Marine Corps team has conducted more than 110 amphibious operations
throughout the world - many of which were non-combatant evacuations,
disaster relief, or similar crisis-response operations conducted in
austere and uncertain environments.
"While assault is one reason
for maintaining amphibious capabilities, the utility in conducting
raids, demonstrations and amphibious support to noncombatant operations
is immense," Richwine explained. "Amphibious forces also have enormous
deterrent value against potential adversaries."
Bold Alligator
‘11 is the first installment in what will be regularly scheduled
large-scale amphibious exercises involving the 2nd Marine Expeditionary
Brigade and the Navy’s Expeditionary Strike Group 2. This December,
Marines and sailors will conduct the exercise from two Navy landing
helicopter assault amphibious ships, the USS Iwo Jima and USS Bataan,
and multiple simulation centers which will provide in-depth analysis of
landing timetables, weather conditions and fires effects. The next
scheduled event for the training cycle is a live exercise scheduled for
February 2012.
The scenario for the exercise includes the
conduct of a forcible entry operation to enable a noncombatant
evacuation in the midst of a violent sectarian conflict. This complex
but realistic mission requires the ability to respond rapidly, project a
credible security force ashore, and organize the evacuation of
thousands of noncombatants.
In many cases, these capabilities
can only be provided by amphibious forces. Bold Alligator ‘11 is not
only designed to retain proficiency in amphibious operations for the
Navy/Marine team, but also to update concepts, procedures and
techniques, and to incorporate the new enablers developed since the
units last focused on amphibious operations at the MEB/ESG level in
2001.
"We need to continuously refine our thinking and our
training with amphibious capability," explained Richwine. "We have the
opportunity to develop new skill sets across the entire range of
military operations - from humanitarian assistance to contested beach
assaults, and everything in between."
WHAT ARE AMPHIBIOUS OPERATIONS?
In
a doctrinal sense, the term "amphibious operations" is a broad concept
that covers a great range of military actions involving land operations,
sea operations and the confluence between the two. Generally,
amphibious operations are launched from the sea by naval shipping onto
foreign or domestic shores in order to conduct a host of missions
ranging from humanitarian assistance and disaster relief to full-scale
assaults in combat environments. There are some misconceptions that
amphibious operations are synonymous with beach landings or that the
U.S. has not conducted an amphibious operation since Inchon during the
Korean War.
In the past two decades, our nation has conducted
more than one hundred amphibious operations in response to international
security threats and crises with the vast majority of these falling
into noncombatant evacuations, disaster relief or similar crisis
response operations – a response rate more than double that during the
Cold War era. Amphibious operations are more than just assaults. The
utility in conducting raids, demonstrations and support to other
noncombatant operations is immense.
Some amphibious
operations/missions include: raids, counter-piracy, security
cooperation, show of force/deterrence, humanitarian assistance,
demonstrations, assault, withdrawal, crisis response, noncombatant
evacuation and disaster relief.
WHY ARE AMPHIBIOUS OPERATIONS IMPORTANT?
Amphibious
forces offered by the Navy/Marine Corps team are the only viable option
that can assure access to littorals, straits and many other parts of
the world to conduct robust military operations across the spectrum of
conflict.
The world’s oceans account for nearly 90 percent of
all international commerce. Straits are geographical areas littered
across the oceans near land masses that constrict the passage of
shipping to narrow passages. These straits often serve as strategic
chokepoints that offer potential control of the world’s sea lanes of
communication. Because international shipping lanes are forced to go
through these specific vulnerable locations, they are often referred to
as the "geographical Achilles heels of the global economy."
Many
straits are in close proximity to politically unstable nations, which
increases navigation risks and compromises access and use. These
strategic passages can be mined, blocked by sinking ships, or
interdicted by naval forces, artillery or missile systems.
Additionally,
the littorals are home to 80 percent of the world’s population, most of
which lives in urban areas beleaguered with poverty, lack of food,
water, education and reliable medical care, making these locations most
susceptible to influence of violent extremist ideologies that use these
conditions as a basis to generate popular support for their anti-Western
actions and rhetoric.
Because of these factors, amphibious
forces have an enormous impact on the international security
environment. Our distinctive ability to gain access to critical areas
anywhere in the world with ground, air and logistics forces enables the
Navy and Marine Corps to shape actions across the range of military
operations to resolve conflict, conduct humanitarian assistance or
combat the enemy in remote, austere environments that would otherwise be
inaccessible.
STRAITS AND MARITIME CHOKEPOINTS
Examples
include: Strait of Hormuz – provides transit for 88 percent of all the
petroleum exported from the Persian Gulf Strait of Malacca - one of the
most important strategic passages in the world because it supports the
bulk of the maritime trade between Europe and Pacific Asia Strait of Bab
el-Mandeb - a strategic link between the Indian Ocean and Red Sea that
controls access to the Suez Canal, which in turn accounts for 14 percent
of global commerce Passages of Bosphorus and Dardanelles – the only
links between the Black Sea and Mediterranean Sea, thus one of the few
passages for commerce and petroleum from the Caspian Sea to the
Mediterranean community Panama Canal - handles nearly 12 percent of the
American international seaborne trade.
AMPHIBIOUS OPERATIONS SINCE 1990
1991:
A large amphibious assault force, composed of United States Marine
Corps and naval support, was positioned off the coast of Kuwait and
Saudi Arabia. This force was composed of 40 amphibious assault ships,
the largest such force to be assembled since the Battle of Inchon in
1950. The purpose behind this amphibious maneuver (known as an
amphibious demonstration) was to prevent six Iraqi divisions poised for
the defense of the littorals, during the Gulf War, from being able to
actively engage in combat at the real front. The operation was extremely
successful and kept more than 41,000 Iraqi forces from repositioning to
the main battlefield. As a result, the Marines maneuvered through the
Iraqi defense of southern Kuwait and outflanked the Iraqi coastal
defense forces.
1991: Marine Expeditionary Units, serving as
part of an Amphibious Task Force and returning to the U.S. after the
Gulf War were diverted to the Bay of Bengal after the region was struck
by a tropical cyclone. This was part of Operation Sea Angel, one of the
largest military disaster relief efforts ever carried out. The efforts
of U.S. troops are credited with having saved as many as 200,000 lives.
1992:
The 13th MEU conducted amphibious operations when it provided disaster
relief in the wake of earthquakes in the Philippines. The 13th MEU also
arrived off the coast of Somalia in early October 1993 in response to
increasing hostilities there, and served as a temporary deterrent
against civilian and nonpartisan violence.
1996: Elements of the
Guam Amphibious Ready Group and the 22nd MEU, were ordered to the
vicinity of Monrovia, Liberia to help defend the U.S. embassy and
facilitate evacuation of friendly and allied civilians, as part of
Operation Assured Response. Through the combined efforts of Navy, Air
Force, Army and Marine Corps personnel, 309 noncombatants were evacuated
— including 49 U.S. citizens.
1999: The 15th MEU, along with 17
other nations, contributed forces to the United Nations to create the
International Force for East Timor, aimed at ending the surge of
violence within the country. The task force landed in East Timor in
September and brought the bloodshed there to an end.
2001: The
Marines and sailors of the 15th MEU set new standards for Marine Corps
amphibious doctrine when they conducted an amphibious assault more than
400 miles into the land-locked country of Afghanistan. Landing at a
remote airbase 90 miles southwest of Kandahar, the Marines established
America’s first Forward Operating Base while maintaining the first
significant conventional ground presence in Afghanistan.
2003:
Elements of the 26th MEU were ordered into northern Iraq in support of
Operation Iraqi Freedom, where the unit joined coalition forces in the
vicinity of Mosul. The mission of the MEU was to promote stability in
the region and eliminate any remaining Iraqi forces still loyal to
Saddam Hussein and the Baath Party regime.
2004: The 15th MEU
was on station in Southeast Asia to support the relief efforts in the
wake of the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami which inflicted
catastrophic damage to Sri Lanka, India and Thailand.
2005: The
USS Iwo Jima served as a sea base off the Gulf of Mexico, where the 24th
MEU supported recovery and relief efforts in response to Hurricane
Katrina, bringing much needed supplies, logistics and medical support to
the flood victims.
2009: Off the coast of Somalia, when pirates
boarded the Maersk Alabama, the 13th MEU and the USS Boxer were on
station to support the counter-piracy operations.
2010: With
Haiti’s airfield overwhelmed and their seaport disabled by wreckage
following an earthquake, the USS Bataan and Nassau ARGs and the 22nd and
24th MEUs were mobilized to provide relief, as one of the few viable
options for the delivery of humanitarian aid. Within three days, 5,000
Marines and sailors arrived, bringing much needed manpower to the
disaster area.
2010: Marines with the 15th MEU liberated the
Magellan Star, a German- owned cargo ship, and rescued the crew from
Somali pirates without firing a shot.
2010: Naval ships and
assets from more than 20 nations, along with 26th MEU comprise the
Combined Maritime Forces, tasked with stemming piracy in the Gulf of
Aden, the Gulf of Oman, the Arabian Sea, Red Sea and the Indian Ocean.
2010: The 15th and 26th MEUs were involved in providing relief support to flood victims in Pakistan.
