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Navy, Corps return to joint amphib training

ABOARD THE AMPHIBIOUS ASSAULT SHIP KEARSARGE — All eyes were focused over the port side of the amphibious assault ship Kearsarge, where three unknown ships had been spotted bobbing in a ghostly mist Sunday.

They did not appear to be friendly — much less so when a small orange-colored boat or two appeared at the stern of the closest ship. Navy spotters and Marine Corps snipers trained high-powered scopes on the boats while the ship’s watchstanders scanned the horizon in other directions.

Kearsarge would be a high-value target for an enemy force, but it wasn’t the only one in the area. It was sailing in the midst of a six-ship convoy and trailing a similar convoy, both in a line formation simulating the transit of a strait while actually operating off the North Carolina coast.

The small boats did not come any closer. As it began a series of evasive maneuvers, the formation slipped out of sight into the mist, which covered much of the ocean on a blustery, overcast day. They’d thrown a diversion at the ships and prepared to launch a landing battalion of U.S. and British Marines ashore to help repel notional ground troops advancing north into an imaginary friendly nation’s territory.

Down in the allied ships’ cavernous well decks, the Marines were staged to be launched early Monday. Their light armored vehicles and trucks would be transported from amphibious ship well decks aboard Landing Craft Air-Cushioned vehicles that would drive them onto the beach.

The Navy and Marines haven’t practiced this type of operation on this scale in at least a decade, which was the impetus for holding Bold Alligator 2012, running from Jan. 30-Feb. 13.

And it is big. A total of 21 ships, including the aircraft carrier Enterprise, a French dock landing ship certified for U.S. well deck operations, Navy and Marine Corps air assets, and Naval riverine craft are dedicated to the training.

They haven’t practiced, save for Marine Expeditionary Unit deployment training, because a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan turned the Corps away from its traditional expertise in amphibious warfare into a second land army.

Now, said Kearsarge commanding officer Capt. Dorian Jones, “We’re doing the things amphibious ships are supposed to do.”

The mission’s renewal is playing out in new collaborations on multiple levels, including the sailors and Marines on Kearsarge and the three Navy and Marine battle staffs involved, who were learning or refamiliarizing themselves with a rarely practiced form of warfare.

The wars’ demands also have been exacerbated by the Corps’ attrition rate.

“Every year, the Marine Corps turns over about 16 percent of our personnel,” said Brig. Gen. Christopher Owens, commanding general of 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade. “So if you do the math, we’ve got a new generation of Marines about every five years or so. And because of that, we have a lot of Marines who do not have amphibious experience.

“Those who have been going aboard ship have been doing the three-ship Amphibious Ready Group as part of a Marine Expeditionary Unit, and it is different,” Owens said. “We load the ships differently. The MEUs go out for six months, and they have to be loaded for flexibility and for long-term aboard ship. We’re practicing in this case to load for a single mission. And we’re loading in the United States, much like Task Force Tarawa loaded up in 2003 and went to the Persian Gulf.”

Staffs, in turn, have not been used to working with each other and are becoming familiar with the skills each brings to such operations.

“It’s about the relationships,” said Rear Adm. Kevin Scott, commander of Expeditionary Strike Group 2. And not just on a staff level, he said. The exercise’s scale has also connected warfare communities that have lost touch — in some cases, using notional forces that seem real on the computer screens in combat operations centers.

“We are more integrated than we’ve ever been before,” Scott said. “We’re not just within our own amphibious cocoon. We’ve integrated the Enterprise Carrier Strike Group, forces ashore and synthetic forces to make this a more engaging opportunity.”