PFC Nathaniel Jackson, a mortarman with 3d Littoral Combat Team, 3d Marine Littoral Regiment, 3d Marine Division, demonstrates how to adjust the alignment of an M252 81mm mortar system to a member of the Philippine Marine Corps during familiarization bilateral with arms during Balikatan 2023 in Santa Juliana, Philippines, April 10, 2023. U.S. Marine Corps Photo
The Marine Corps is ready to use its new formation developed for inter-island combat of the future in a major joint exercise in the Indo-Pacific for the first time.
After conducting a service-level exercise in California and Arizona earlier this year, the Marine Corps will now expand that experimentation to naval and joint force levels during Exercise Balikatan in the Philippines.
“Instead of developing a force…we are now employing, integrating and employing a capable littoral marine regiment into ongoing operations,” Maj. Gen. Jay Bargeron, commanding general of the 3rd Marine Division, told USNI News in a statement. interview last month.
This year’s Balikatan — which kicked off this week with more than 17,500 Filipino, American and Australian Marines, sailors, soldiers and airmen — is the largest iteration of the annual U.S.-Philippine exercise. This is one of many exercises that Hawaii’s 3rd Marine Littoral Regiment will participate in this year as it transitions from experimentation to operations.
“We now have a capable headquarters, so we’re not focusing so much on capability development…but we’re at the point where we’re actively planning how to use MLR alongside other formations. So how do you actively use the MLR within the Navy Air-Ground Task Force—alongside other infantry forces, alongside aviation and logistics forces,” and integrated into fleet headquarters that l unit supports, Bargeron said.
Last year, the Marine Corps converted its 3rd Marine Regiment to 3rd MLR to continue its island-hopping strategy, in which smaller units of Marines would move between islands and the coasts of Indo- Pacific – within range of Chinese weapons in the region. first and second island chains – to fire anti-ship missiles and perform reconnaissance and counter-reconnaissance missions for the fleet.
“What 3rd MLR brings to the Marine Air-Ground Task Force as a whole is a ground combat unit capable of precision strikes beyond the horizon. It’s just not something we really had in our repertoire. We were able to contribute to this fight – for different purposes,” Brig said. Gen. Joseph Clearfield, the deputy commanding general of Marine Corps Forces Pacific, said last month at an event with Defense One.
“What the MLR can do is – if it had to – be a self-sustaining kill chain, a combat formation that can deliver precision strikes over the horizon,” he said.
Service level training
A U.S. Marine with the 3rd Marine Littoral Regiment, 3rd Marine Division uses an unmanned aircraft system during Marine Air-Ground Task Force (MWX) 2-23 combat exercise at Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, Twentynine Palms, Calif., February 23, 2023 U.S. Marine Corps Photo
In February, the 3rd MLR faced the 7th Marine Regiment in a three-phase exercise in which the MLR had to defend coastal terrain from an amphibious landing.
“I think both sides – my understanding is – have a really, really deep understanding of warfare on what it will take to shoot, move, communicate, preserve, prevail and win in a combat situation,” he said. Clearfield said of the 7th Marines and 3rd RML.
The February exercise had three stages: training small units, testing the Marine Corps Expeditionary Forward Base Operations concept, and an amphibious landing that 3rd MLR was to prevent. The Marine Corps force largely operated out of Twentynine Palms, while Bargeron’s headquarters operated out of Naval Amphibious Base Coronado and the Marines simulated a naval headquarters.
While the Marine Corps considered the exercise a success, Bargeron said future exercises must not only go beyond service-level participation and extend to the joint force, but must have place in the first and second island chains, where the US military expects a potential future. that the conflict with China takes place. This makes Balikatan a key opportunity for Marines, as the second island chain includes the Philippines.
U.S. Marine Corps 1st Lt. Jacob Schultz, an intelligence officer with 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, looks through a rifle combat optic on an M4 service carbine to observe potential movements of opposing forces during Marine Air-Ground Task Force (MWX) 2-23 Combat Exercise, at Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, Twentynine Palms, Calif., Feb. 23, 2022. US Marine Corps Photo
“We can now, I think with these capabilities, in a more meaningful or perhaps more comprehensive way, contribute to what the joint force needs from us, which is from our position advanced, from our forward crisis response position, we can contribute joint force and contribute naval force in terms of situational awareness, targeting, data, and even some – when fully realized – we will have some of our own long-range precision fire to contribute,” Bargeron said.
Bargeron had several takeaways from the exercise: The Marine Corps must have an organic capability to manage airspace in its command and control headquarters by leveraging capabilities such as the Common Command and Control System aviation (CAC2S). The service must also have a way to extract all of its sensing data and relay it to the joint force, which it could do by leveraging the capabilities of Marine Expeditionary Force information groups. Finally, Marines must have a means of logistically supporting distributed forces operating on the brink of conflict.
“This exercise was about taking the capability that we have now with the MLR, integrating it into how we would fight in the replacement force, which is part of the Marine Air-Ground Task Force, and then identifying the unique The C2 demands that entails,” Bargeron said of the drills in Twentynine Palms, Calif.
The drills also helped the Marine Corps learn about signature management and the need to understand what their sensors are emitting – so an adversary can’t find Marine units – what those sensors can detect. and how they move, according to Clearfield.
With the Marines who are part of III Marine Expeditionary Force already operating in Okinawa, Japan, in a potential conflict in the region, these forces would give the fleet situational awareness and expand the reach of the U.S. military and its allies and partners, according to Bargeron. But in future exercises, the Marine Corps needs to more effectively replicate fleet headquarters to understand how it would feed Navy data into a potential conflict.
“We need to more fully simulate naval headquarters. We did it this time, but I think the way we did it was very rudimentary. We need a more complete participation and simulation of a naval headquarters that we would have to support. What are the communication requirements? What are the staff processes? How do you effectively share all of this data not just with Navy headquarters, but with the rest of the joint force? said Bargeron.