Navy, Corps return to joint amphib training

Navy, Corps return to joint amphib training

(NAVYTIMES 6 FEB 12)

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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.”

Marines, sailors take in Super Bowl at sea

(MILITARYTIMES 6 FEB 12)

ABOARD THE AMPHIBIOUS ASSAULT SHIP WASP -– If you’re going to watch your favorite NFL team lose in the Super Bowl, it may as well be somewhere interesting.

That’s the scenario I found myself in last night as I continue to cover Bold Alligator 2012, a massive amphibious exercise involving at least 14,000 personnel and 25 ships off the coast of North Carolina and Virginia. Like many of the sailors and Marines aboard this gator ship, I had accepted there was a strong possibility the game wouldn’t be on while underway –- only to find out the exact opposite.

Not only did the Wasp have the Super Bowl, the ship’s leadership went out of its way to make sure as many people as possible could see it. From the wardroom, to the barber shop, to the mess deck, several thousand personnel took a break to watch the game, in which the New York Giants beat the New England Patriots, 21-17.

The liveliest place to view the game was the hangar bay. A movie theater screen and hundreds of chairs were set up, and Marines and sailors turned it into a concert-like environment in which the game and the commercials alike received howling cheers and boos.

The crowd was polarized when it came to sports, with any close-up shot of Patriots quarterback Tom Brady or Giants quarterback Eli Manning receiving a loud, mixed response. It was less so when it came to the commercials, as the raucous response to a new ad for the Fiat 500 Abarth showed. It depicted a tall, exotic woman flirting with a short, awkward man – until he realized he was simply daydreaming. The Marines and sailors howled.

In the ward room, dozens of officers aboard gathered over chicken wings, mozzarella sticks, coffee and soda to watch the game on two big-screen TVs. Several foreign officers asked questions about the rules of American football, and U.S. personnel cheerfully explained.

As a Massachusetts native, I took all this in with a red Patriots T-shirt poking out from underneath my half-zipped fleece. A few people noticed, but no one poked fun. They understood the draw of the game.

In the hangar bay, Lance Cpl. T.J. Miller, 20, told me he found out he’d be involved in Bold Alligator two days before the ships launched earlier this month. A Patriots fan, he assumed he’d miss the game for the second year in a row.

“They told me two days before, ‘Pack your stuff. You’re going,’ and I thought it was possible I’d miss it,” the CH-53 mechanic said. “The signal has gone out twice for about 30 seconds, but if it happens again I’ll go see what happens in the mess deck.”

Ah, the signal. Late in the game, it did go out again. Shortly after Giants receiver Mario Manningham reeled in a spectacular sideline grab that put New York in position to win the game, the screens on board went dark.

“Are you kidding me!” several Marines and sailors yelled in the mess deck, frustrated with the timing.

The signal came back a few moments later, and stayed true through the end of the game. When Giants running back fell into the end zone with the game-winning score with about a minute to play, much of the hanger bay exploded into cheers.

Brady’s last desperation heave into the endzone fell to the ground a few minutes later, and Giants fans on board erupted. A sailor began blowing a whistle as though it were a musical instrument, and a group of Marines and sailors began jumping up and down in celebration.

Lance Cpl. Alex Ovide, 23, was one of the most boisterous. An amphibious assault vehicle crewman from Queens, N.Y., he’ll be involved in the amphibious unfolding over the next few days, but was glad to watch the game. He missed it last year while he was in the field, he said, and didn’t know the Wasp would have the game until it was already underway.

“I was just hoping to get a phone call out and find out the score,” Ovide said. “There was a rumor mill at first that we’d be able to see it, and then it came together.”

The result of the game, Ovide said, was “simply beautiful.” He congratulated the Patriots on a great season, knowing that I was a fan.

“This was great,” he said. “All of us came together, and all of the branches of service on board, too. It’s something you can really appreciate.”

I couldn’t agree more. Other than the final score, of course.