Marine Corps

By Robbin Laird

The CH-53K comes into the USMC and into the Israeli Defence Force as both are in the process of transformation.

The two forces are on different transformation paths with different adversaries as focal points, but this platform is coming to both forces as they are working new ways to operate and evolving their concepts of operations.

And the two forces clearly interact with one another and will certainly cross-learn thereby taking lessons being learned about using the new aircraft as they shape their evolving concepts of operations approaches.

Last year, I did an interview with a Marine who indeed spent time in Israel training with the IDF. And notably, this Marine was working directly on the USMC transformation process. This is what I have written in my new book on the USMC transformation path about our conversation.

“II Marine Expeditionary Force supports service and Combatant Commander’s initiative as required. At the same time, II MEF is in transition and must focus on preparing for future operations and shape new ways to do so while being able to operate now. This is hardly an easy challenge, but one which II MEF must meet head-on. At the command, the head of G-35, Future Operations is Colonel Ryan Hoyle.

“He noted in our discussion that for the command, a look ahead in an 18-to-24-month period is the focus of future operations.

‘But as we discussed, the focus on change was coming through exercises but also working ways to rework the Marines’ ability to integrate with the Navy and with allies to shape evolving capabilities for the future fight. His background is diverse, and very impressive. I mention this because if you want someone to work through how to work a way ahead with the force in being, it is clearly an advantage to have someone with wide-ranging experience with the current force and enough experience in working with non-Marine joint and allied forces focused on change. Among other experiences, he has been aide to camp to the Deputy Chairman of the NATO Military Committee, Amphibious Staff Officer and exercise planner at NATO’s Special Operations Headquarters.

“And he has a Master of Science in Political Science from the Israel National Defense College. There is probably no force in the world which has work joint integration in a more challenging political and military environment than the Israeli Defense Force (IDF). He brings this experience to the current challenging task of transitioning and preparing for the future fight while reshaping the force in being. How do you do this? And how is II MEF approaching this challenge?

“The Israelis provide an interesting case because post–Abraham Accords, they are focusing on their ability to have a strategic reach to be able to deal with threats on their periphery. It is no surprise than that the IDF is operating a core USMC capability, the F-35, and are adding the latest capability, namely, the CH-53K. The IDF is increasingly focused on becoming more mobile and expeditionary, which brings them closer to the USMC trajectory of change as well.”

For the Marines, the CH-53K will be a key element for working mobile basing for the expeditionary force, a focus of my series on mobile basing as a strategic capability and the subject of.book in progress.

For the IDF, the flexibility of the CH-53K is clearly important and part of their working an enhanced combat capability for distributed operating teams as well.

The ability of the CH-53K as a digital aircraft to manage data in the context of operations and operate either as a provider of information or a user of information is crucial to what the IDF is looking for in its focus on a force which can deploy in a distributed manner but be integratable through C² and ISR systems or what we have focused on as kill web enabled concepts of operations.

Ed Timperlake and I have focused on these concepts of operations in our forthcoming book entitled Maritime Kill Webs: Deterrence and Warfighting in the 21^st Century.

In his assessment of the transformation of the IDF, Avi Jager quoted Benny Gantaz, then serving as Israel’s alternative prime minister with regard to that transformation:

“[T]he purpose of [these changes] was to create a smaller yet deadlier army, capable of confronting non-state adversaries in complex environments and on multiple fronts. . . . The ability to be a smaller yet deadlier military depends primarily on the ability to obtain accurate intelligence, process and analyze it effectively, and transfer it to the combat forces in real time.”

Jager went on to underscore that the focus of the transformation was away from countering direct adversary occupation threats to Israel to countering specific adversary threats wherever there are located in the broader perimeter of the air-ground-maritime environment of Israel.

As he noted: “The IDF’s missions no longer were to occupy vast adversary-state territory but, instead, to gain operational control over geographically limited hostile areas and eliminate localized threats….” This led to establishing brigades as independent battle groups instead of operating as division-sized formations.

He added that “The driving forces behind these changes were fire support. To allow better control and coordination between the different battalions, groundbreaking innovations in military each brigade battle group was technology. given its own command-and- control headquarters. These headquarters were in continuous communication with other field forces, as well as with parallel forces and the senior commander. Brigades were now responsible for managing their own logistics, rearmament, and tactical extractions.”[1]

These changes were made starting in 2011 to deal with the dispersed threats from the Hezbollah and Hamas.

Now innovations enhancing the combat power of a CH-53K enabled force package can draw directly on the C2/ISR capabilities of the F-35 as well upon the capabilities over time for the CH-53K to evolve its ability to work with various autonomous systems and weapons through its onboard digital management capabilities.

And the ability of the aircraft to manage itself with the significant automation onboard allows the flight crew to take on broader tasks of mission management, rather simply being spending much of your cognitive capabilities on simply operating the aircraft effectively and safely.

This is especially important given the key role reserves play in the IDF. With the shorten training cycle to operate the K versus the legacy CH-53 and the ability to learn the new capabilities delivered by the aircraft through software upgrades on the new simulators, the reserve force becomes much more rapidly a frontline capability for the IDF.

And given the twin impacts of the Abraham Accords and the evolution of the Iranian threat, an ability to move combat formations to specific areas of interest rapidly is of increasing significance.

With the Abraham Accords, the IDF has more potential locations from which to operate, and that, in turn means, that they need to move support for an insertion force, as they will have to use General Carlisle’s famous phrase, “places not bases” from which to operate.

And with the growing threat from Iran, not only are they facing a diverse range of operating bases for missiles, and the potential for marrying that to a nuclear payload, but the Iranians operate through surrogates all around the periphery of Israel. And air strikes are not always the most effective means to eliminate pockets of Iranian operational capabilities.

In short, the CH-53K will both benefit from the USMC and IDF transformation processes and contribute to them.

And both experiences can be significant for the German military as Germany deals with the impacts of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on its own defense and its ability to move force to deal with its proximate neighbors most threatened by direct Russian actions in the future.

[1] Avi Jager, “The Transformation of the Israeli Defense Forces,” Naval War College Review,” (Vol 74 (2021), No. 2. https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review/vol74/iss2/4/

The USMC Transformation Path: Preparing for the High-End Fight

Heads-down arrival makes that moment when a drill instructor like Sgt. Simone Dennis steps onto the bus screaming “Get Out! Get Out! Get Moving!” even more of a shock.

As recruits stumble out, three more drill instructors bellow orders to form up on yellow footprints painted on the pavement, to keep heels together and feet 45 degrees apart. And that there are only three things a recruit can say: “Aye, sir.” “No, sir.” “I don’t understand.”

Then Staff Sgt. Evelyn Esquinal, in the role of “heavy hat” (No. 2 on a typical team of four or five platoon drill instructors) has “recruits” (actually teachers from across Virginia and Tennessee) half-running a few steps before she’s yelling:

“Stop. Go Back.”

Then:

“Eyeballs!” meaning look at her.

The teachers are participating in a Marine Corps outreach program to give educators a taste of what recruits around them are undergoing, so they can tell students what it involves.

The drill instructors are part of it — and over the next few days, so is listening as other D.I.s set real recruits off on pre-dawn runs and push them through daunting obstacle courses. They’ll get some of the same briefings recruits do for the firing range and other combat skills training that are part of Parris Island’s 13 weeks of training.

Now, for the teachers, just arrived at Parris Island and in a formation already falling apart, Esquinal is barking rapid-fire orders again:

“Move!” And seconds later: “Stop … Go Back!” And again. And again. And again. At the same time, Dennis and fellow drill instructor Sgt. Matthew McGill run circles around the group hollering directions.

“Get better, get better. Go! Go! Go!” Dennis shouts. It’s what they do with each new busload of recruits, she said.

Marine Corps boot camp hasn’t changed much in 130 years, says Col. Bradley Ward, commander of Parris Island’s Recruit Training Regiment.

But it has changed some. Four years ago, the Marines launched a unique mentorship program for the final two weeks of basic training that the Navy just adopted. The first sailors to experience it could be arriving in Norfolk as early as this summer.

Even so, arriving at Parris Island is everything you’ve imagined about Marine basic training: the same kind of hard-as-nails Marine sergeants who stormed the beach at Iwo Jima yelling at recruits.

“I’m a finance tech — really an accountant,” Dennis said.

D.I.s must lead recruits to take on previously unimaginable feats — such as easing themselves down a rope from a 47-foot tower.

With D.I. McGill’s last platoon, he, rather than one of the specialist basic combat training instructors, demonstrated the rope descent — then held the bottom of the rope, as his recruits tried the frightening descent. That second role is standard practice.

“We have their drill instructors down there because they are the one person on Parris Island that the recruits really trust,” said Sgt. Scott Loveall, who runs the rappelling tower.

The first question Loveall asks recruits as they line up at the tower is if any are afraid of heights, or even a bit nervous. He then asks them to turn their shirts (the Marines say blouses) inside out, so he and his instructors know to give them special attention.

Encouraging his recruits not to be scared of really scary challenges — and watching them closely with shouted instructions and how to use their right hands and feet to slow their rope descent — is part of what’s typically a 3:30 am to sometime well after the official 8 p.m. day — and that’s when a D.I.rs doesn’t pull overnight duty, McGill said.

The role is demanding — Marine Corps sergeants don’t usually spend all their time hollering.

“Sometimes, you just need to step away, as the senior drill instructor to take over for a while,” McGill said.

The tower was the worst part of boot camp for Pvt. Christian Dunphy, in his dress blues for graduation, after shaking hands and joking with Staff Sgt. Ty Clark, his senior drill instructor through the 13 weeks.

“It’s really about building trust, trust in your team, trust in your drill instructor,” Dunphy said.

One thing that the Corps has tweaked is to launch its “Phase 4” mentoring program in late 2017. Phase 4 takes up the final two weeks of boot camp.

It comes after the “crucible” — a 54-hour simulated war scenario that features 30 miles of maneuvering with full packs, rifles and gear through Parris Island’s pine woods and marsh, something like four hours of sleep, lots of obstacles and several scenarios of tactical problems for small fire teams of four to five Marines to solve.

“That was the best part of boot camp for me,” Dennis said.

It was up to her and her fire team to figure out what to do and how to do it — no drill instructor to holler directions, the basic mission in the first four weeks of boot camp, the easing back to focus on correcting mistakes in next three weeks, and basically, the watchful backstop of recruits pretty much doing what they need to on their own.

The crucible tests recruits’ ability to operate as a small team, in which each is ready to step up and act like a leader.

Dennis remembers one challenge in particular — a tower with three platforms that her fire team and another had to get a heavy load of gear and equipment up and over.

“Normally, I might have just put my pack on and climbed,” she said. “But instead we decided to send some of us up to each platform and pass everything up.”

“It’s really about thinking like a team, — each of us capable of being a leader.”

Laying the foundation for a mission for all Marines — the Corps calls it small group leadership — starts in boot camp, when a senior D.I. designates recruits as leaders of smaller squads.

“At first, you look for anyone who maybe had JROTC. You look at how they carry themselves — straight up, not slouched and nervous,” said Esquinal, whose normal job is that senior D.I. post. “Then, once they’re a success, you fire them, to give someone else the chance.”

Private 1st Class Connor Patton, who served as “guide” overseeing the three squad leaders in his platoon, said he and they would become the ones responsible when one of their fellow recruits was lagging. Sometimes, the answer was a demonstration, sometimes a helping hand, sometimes some harsh words.

“But as guide, I don’t look to punish a recruit for doing something wrong. It’s the squad leader who gets that. It’s their job that was done wrong,” he said a few days before graduation.

“You’re learning selflessness. … You’re learning accountability,” he added., “And being fast. We eat fast, we move fast. We sleep fast. I can fall asleep right away.”

When the crucible is over, recruits who passed the test get the globe-and-anchor device that says they are Marines, and that’s where Phase 4 begins — that the Navy implemented at the start of this year.

At Parris Island, drill instructors deliberately take off their broad-brimmed campaign hats — the ones that look like what old-time Boy Scouts wore — and tell new Marines to drag their footlockers into a circle to talk.

“It’s Marine to Marine,” said Cpl. Joswald Bastita, on a ground crew at nearby Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort, remembering his boot camp Phase 4 two years earlier. “It’s mostly tips — we talk about things like setting up a bank account, some of these kids, they don’t learn things like that in high school.”

It’s actually a bit more.

Ward, the colonel, said Phase 4 is a chance to drive home some of the “core values” classes that are a central feature of the first weeks of boot camp — the classes that outsiders, unsettled by those shouting drill instructors, can miss.

“We’re really about teaching,” he said.

When drill instructors set aside their campaign hats, conversations turn to tough topics, too — including sexual harassment and assaults, extremism and racial prejudice. Addressing these is a priority across the military; last spring, for instance, the Navy conducted a 60-day stand-down to make sure sailors and civilians understood the damaging effects of extremism and to work on more effective ways to eradicate its impact.

Some of what senior Navy leaders heard during stand-down sessions from sailors affected by extremism and prejudice wasn’t easy to hear, they’ve said. But they believe what they learned will make the Navy better.

At Parris Island, Phase 4 can tackle issues such as dealing with sexual harassment. Learning how to respond to fellow Marines dealing with depression or suicidal thoughts, for instance, are priorities.

“We talk about everything, what’s going on in the world, what our responsibilities are as Marines,” said Esquinal, whose usual job is to act as a senior drill instructor.

Sometimes, it involves working through a scenario. Sometimes, it’s just basic advice — the bank account tip that Bastita mentioned, or to avoid triple-digit-interest rate payday loans, or how to deal with the bureaucracy of moving to a new post or the challenges of fitting in with a team of Marines when you get there.

But it is not as if mentoring is something new at Paris Island. Capt. Stephen Sigmon, who went through boot camp a decade ago — before Phase 4 — and served four years as an enlisted radio specialist before earning a commission, still remembers the time his senior drill instructor pulled him aside for a one-on-one.

“He must’ve spotted something. But I told him things I’d never told anybody, not even family,” Sigmon said. “My father left when I was 8 or 9 and I think I kind of latched on to my drill instructor like a father figure … we still talk to this very day.”

What drill instructors teach is a lot more than close order drill and what they do involves much more than yelling and “I.T.” — incentive training, Marine-speak for extra push-ups or sit-ups for recruits who aren’t keeping up with the training pace.

Taking a break from leading a “grass week” marksmanship class, going over the four basic safety rules and the four basic weapons conditions, Sgt Chase Day says the call and response approach he used was not really how those rules are are taught. The platoon drill instructors have been teaching the rules for the six weeks before grass week.

His call-and-response session is about making basic safety steps — checking the safety, looking to see if the chamber is empty, keeping index finger off the trigger when carrying a rifle — as automatic as possible.

And, as a platoon of Phase 2 recruits — they’re the ones wearing desert camo uniforms — come marching out of the mess hall heading for the firing range simulator, it’s the four safety rules they’d chanting as cadence.

“I talk to the platoon drill instructor before they come over,” Day said. “I want to get a sense of who’s comfortable with firearms and who’s maybe not.”

That comfort goes a long way to ensuring recruits are safe as they learn marksmanship. It’s when Day learns from a drill instructor that a recruit has never fired a rife so that he takes special care in the simulator — demonstrating how to tuck the butt of an M-16 into the shoulder, where to lay your cheekbone by the stock.

With nervous recruits in a properly braced position in the simulator, he’ll tap just hard enough on the front sight post give them a feel for the way an M-16 will recoil. The idea is to make sure recruits don’t let rifle buck upward because they’re shocked by the recoil, which could make the next shot endanger a nearby Marine.

“We’re not doing a lot of shouting in PMI (primary marksmanship instruction),” Day said. “We don’t want them always looking over their shoulder because they’re afraid they’re going to be yelled at.”

“When I first had a rifle, I was shaking like this,” Dennis, the D.I., remembers, swinging her fingers in nearly foot-long arcs. “I’d never fired a gun before.”

The pool is another no stress zone — with signs posted every few feet on the walls as a reminder. Recruits have to be able swim 25 meters, jump from a 10-foot platform to simulate getting safely off a sinking ship and shed heavy gear while underwater. They do all this in their utility uniforms, while wearing boots.

That was the scariest moment in boot camp for Dennis.

“But I learned to swim in three days,” she said.

“It’s really not a physical thing at all,” said Pvt. Lyric Manley after graduation with Fox Company this month before he and his family headed back home to Norfolk after a boot camp that kept him and nearly 300 others on Parris Island through the holidays.

“It’s really all mental.”

Retired Maj. James Capers Jr. is a man of mythic status within the Marines’ Reconnaissance and special operations communities. In October 2010, he became one of the first US service members added to the US Special Operations Command’s Commando Hall of Honor. 

Maj. Gen. Paul E. Lefebvre, then-commander of Marine Forces Special Operations Command, called Capers “the spiritual founder of Marine Corps special operations.” 

Capers served in Force Recon half a century before the Corps officially fielded a unit under SOCOM. As a member of 3rd Force Recon Company in Vietnam, Capers led or participated in dozens of missions, pioneering and refining unconventional and jungle warfare tactics along the way. Many of his missions were top secret and remained so for decades. 

The recently released documentary Major Capers: The Legend of Team Broadminded provides a detailed account of Capers’ life and career in the Marines.

The film follows Capers, the son of South Carolina sharecroppers, from the harsh realities of the Jim Crow South to Baltimore, where his family fled after Capers’ father faced “harsh punishment” for a crime he didn’t commit. From Baltimore, Capers joined the Marines, launching the storied career at the center of the film. 

After he became the first member of his family to graduate high school, Capers enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1956. Two years later, he deployed to Lebanon where, the film claims, Capers’ squad held off more than 100 enemy insurgents. The impressive feat earned him a meritorious promotion to sergeant.  

As a staff sergeant in Vietnam, Capers earned a battlefield commission and was promoted to second lieutenant in November 1966. His jump to the officer corps made Capers the first African American Marine to receive a battlefield commission, according to the film.

In Vietnam, Capers and his team of Recon Marines — nicknamed “Team Broadminded” for their ability to think outside the box — developed a deadly reputation as one of the most reliable unconventional units in the US military. Their combat exploits grabbed the attention of America’s top brass and even the White House. Despite its rapidly decreasing numbers of combat-effective Recon Marines, Team Broadminded was continually tapped for the most dangerous missions.

Through interviews with surviving members of Team Broadminded, military historians, retired officers, and others, the documentary provides a summary of Capers’ life and some of his most harrowing missions. In a mostly chronological narrative, the accounts are cut together with sometimes-repetitive archival footage. 

The film’s most powerful sequence comes when Capers describes his last patrol. In March of 1967, Capers led his Recon team through the mountainous region north of Hue City known as Phu Loc. Sgt. Richard Crepeau, one of Team Broadminded’s original members, described the four-day mission as “the worst fucking patrol Force Recon ever went on.” Their mission: find an enemy regiment and draw them into a fight with a larger American force, including the 3rd Battalion, 26th Marines, which Capers’ team was assigned to support.

By the second day of the patrol, Team Broadminded had racked up 20 confirmed kills while suffering two wounded Marines, including Capers, who refused to leave the patrol. Two days later, everyone in Capers’ team was badly wounded in a complex ambush. A series of Claymore mines and unrelenting machine-gun fire left Capers with 19 wounds, including two broken legs. In a desperate attempt to turn back the enemy, Capers called fire missions on the patrol’s position. The gamble worked, and the men of Team Broadminded were able to escape. 

“How do you see such a scene and stay sane?” Capers says in the film. “How do you get the smell of death out of your clothes? And when you come home or go back to your base, and you’ve got blood and whatever else on you that you can’t wash off. I could take my rifle and put it in a barrel of oil to clean the rust off my weapon, so it would work, so when I squeeze the trigger, somebody would fall. But how do you wash your soul? How do you wash your body when other men, parts of their bodies are there? You know, it’s madness. It’s madness.”

More than 40 years after his actions on his last patrol in Vietnam, Capers was nominated for the Medal of Honor, but he received the Silver Star after the medal recommendation was downgraded two levels. During his 22 years of service in the Marines, Capers served in all three of the Corps’ active-duty Force Recon companies, finishing his career as the commanding officer of 2nd Force on Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.

While the film’s editing and production value don’t always reflect the gravity and grandeur of the story being told, the film provides an important chronicle of a highly accomplished and widely revered combat leader.

Read Next: The Legend of Jim Capers: The Hero Who Never Was

The Marine Corps activated its first regiment-level Communications Company at a ceremony here, Feb. 24, 2022. The Communications Company will be a subordinate element of the future 3rd Marine Littoral Regiment, which will administratively activate in a ceremony on March 3.

In March 2019, General David H. Berger, Commandant of the Marine Corps released his “Commandant’s Planning Guidance,” which outlined the changes needed to operate from inside contested areas with joint forces, partners, and allies. He emphasized that an effective and resilient command and control system is critical to warfighting success. “Our communications nodes will be hunted and targeted…We must be capable of plugging into naval, joint, and combined communications networks and seamlessly sharing data that enhances situational awareness, targeting, and force synchronization.”

“Our key to success will be our ability to task-organize our communicators into agile teams that support the command and control of the MLR in distributed operations. Our team is excited to shape the way our Marines are trained, equipped, and educated to best meet this task.” Capt. David Noble, Company Commander, Communications Company

The 3rd MLR will be centered on the ability to effectively integrate with the Joint Force for all-domain operations and conduct expeditionary advanced base operations in support of the fleet. The Communications Company will serve as a critical enabler to the MLR, capable of integrating with the Joint Force, and will provide command and control capabilities to Marines distributed across wide areas of the Indo-Pacific region. To meet the intent, the MLR Communications Company will field equipment and personnel that is not organic to a traditional infantry regiment communications section.

While experimentation for how the company will operate is still ongoing, the company is organized into four platoons: Wideband, Data, Radio, and Maintenance. The company will transition to a Joint Task Force enabler-like construct where each platoon will be composed of a mix of different skill sets that can be task-organized to support different missions.

“Our key to success will be our ability to task-organize our communicators into agile teams that support the command and control of the MLR in distributed operations. Our team is excited to shape the way our Marines are trained, equipped, and educated to best meet this task,” said Capt. David Noble, Company Commander, Communications Company.

When many people think ‘Marine,’ they might imagine a square-jawed buff guy who looks like he eats ammo belts (and crayons) for breakfast. That stereotype may be why a new Marine Corps recruitment poster of a smiling anime girl wearing dress blues is going viral on social media. 

“Damn, they know their clientele,” wrote one commenter on the popular Facebook page Air Force amn/nco/snco, where the image was shared on Tuesday, as well as on Reddit, Twitter and the news website Anime Hunch.

“Is it too late to join the Marines?” wrote another.

The image brings a modern twist to a 105-year-old poster titled “U.S. Marine Corps – Service on land and sea.” According to the Library of Congress, the poster was illustrated in 1917 by the artist Sidney Riesenberg. More than a century later, Staff Sgt. Arthur Chou got the idea to make his own mark on classic recruiting posters while sitting in Marine Corps recruiting school. A lifelong anime fan, Chou wanted to combine his passion for the medium with his new career.

“I was like, ‘I want to put something on my walls when I get to recruiting,’” Chou told Task & Purpose. 

“Service on land” is the fourth anime-style Marine recruiting poster Chou has commissioned. He contacts artists through the freelance business website Fiverr, shares his ideas with them, then lets them get to work. It started with “Ready,” inspired by a 1942 poster of a Marine standing at parade rest.

“I see the old ‘Ready’ poster everywhere,” Chou said. “What if I just made it with a cute anime girl?”

“Ready” was followed by a poster for the Marine Corps Band with more anime girls in dress blues and the words “Play with honor” in bold over them. That was followed by “Over the top,” another modern take on a WWI poster showing an anime girl in fatigues, flak jacket and rifle with her hair flowing out beneath her helmet.

“I’m not sure if any of the hairstyles are in regs,” said Chou, though he added that his explanation for the girl’s flowing hair in “Over the top” was that her hair-tie had fallen off.

The four posters are just one element in a collage of anime paraphernalia framing Chou’s desk. There are decks from the card game Yu-Gi-Oh!, a small statue of Yamato, the human avatar of the eponymous World War II battleship from the game Kantai Collection, and a plush doll of Snubbull, a pink, bulldog-like Pokémon. Snubbull wears a camouflage patrol cap on Chou’s desk, which works well because the Marine Corps mascot is a bulldog named Chesty. Rarely does a potential recruit walk in and not connect with something in Chou’s office.

“Literally everybody that comes in and sees my corner they’re like ‘oh this is cool,’” the Marine said. 

Chou clearly has a talent for connecting with new recruits, known as “poolees” in Marine parlance: his Instagram page is filled with images of young Marines-to-be posing with Snubbull, or like characters from the anime JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, or with the Yu-Gi-Oh! cards on his desk. Chou even prints out copies of the posters and gives them to poolees as a reward for graduating boot camp. 

The University of Maine unveiled the largest boat made by a 3D printer on Friday, and a Marine Corps official said the military branch plans to test the vessel for its war-fighting capabilities.

UMaine’s Advanced Structures and Composites Center pulled back the curtain on two new 3D-printed vessels Friday that it’s been working on in partnership with the U.S. Department of Defense and the Marine Corps. The boats could be used for other purposes but were designed as an option for the U.S. military to consider as it looks to diversify its arsenal. 

The two vessels — made with the world’s largest 3D printer, which is located at the composites center — can transport two shipping containers and a squad of Marines with up to three days of supplies. 

Marksmanship Training Branch, Marine Corps Installations West hosted The 2022 Marine Corps Marksmanship Competition West on Feb. 7 through Feb. 14, 2022.

The competition held on Pendleton was the fourth of six, each being held in the five largest regions where Marine Corps Installations are located. The finalist from Camp Pendleton will go on to compete at the sixth and final competition on Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia.

The competition consisted of ten total training days over a two-week period. The first week is packed with classroom instruction, firing positions, dry fire, instruction on advanced pistol and rifle positions, dynamic target engagement and individual marksmanship practice. The second week was an individual competition with rifle and pistol, team competition, annual rifle and pistol qualification and award ceremony.

All officers and enlisted Marines of active and reserve components who meet the criteria are eligible to participate in the Competition-In-Arms-Program.

“The idea is that by putting someone in a competition and enforcing performance on demand, you bring out what the shooter has as potential on the spot. There’s no prep time,” said U.S. Marine Sgt. John Glomba, a marksmanship instructor with the Marine Corps Shooting Team, Training Command, Marine Corps Base Quantico. “On match day, what it comes down to is can you perform on time. You have one opportunity to get it right and see how well you can do and it brings out 100 percent performance from shooters and shows where their faults or where their best performances might be.”

The program is designed to significantly enhance participants’ proficiency in the use of individual small arms by refining fundamental marksmanship skills, learning marksmanship techniques, and pushing through mental and physical boundaries in a competitive setting.

U.S. Marine Sgt. Tyler Arellano, a marksmanship instructor with the MCST, TECOM, MCB Quantico, comments on the progress he’s seen in the Marines competing, “It’s night and day from the first day. You can see Marines somewhat uncomfortable, maybe a little bit gun shy, but after a week of really exposing them to this, I think they really bought in and really want to see themselves get better. They love competing with each other.”

The MCMC isn’t limited to just active duty Marines. Reserve Marines, sailors and civilian law enforcement officers are also encouraged to participate, and share their experience.

“When I heard the opportunity that as a sailor I’m able to compete in this I had to jump on it right away because, you know, these opportunities are so few and far between, I might not get the chance again,” said U.S. Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Michael Jay, a religious program specialist with MCI-West, MCB Camp Pendleton. “My main goal here is to learn and refine my skills and just to be better.”

At the end of the competition, Marines were awarded for their hard work. The top 10 percent for rifle and pistol stages earned a MCMC medal and the best performing rifle and pistol teams were awarded a trophy. Other service members and civilians also received certificates.

As 3rd Marine Division commences Jungle Warfare Exercise 22, a large-scale, joint force exercise, Marine Wing Fighter Attack Squadron 314 is integrating the capabilities of the F-35C Lightning II. VMFA-314 will be supporting ground operations from their position deployed onboard the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, displaying their ability to deliver long-range strike capabilities and close air support from an aircraft carrier.

VMFA-314, the first Marine squadron to deploy the F-35C, continues to demonstrate its proficiencies during JWX 22 by conducting simulated offensive and defensive air support, as well as air to ground support training missions alongside the Marines of 1st Marine Air Wing, Japanese Air Self-Defense Forces and the Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group in support of Expeditionary Advance Base Operations.

“The opportunity to work alongside Navy and Japanese Self Defense Forces allows us to demonstrate our forward presence and to showcase our readiness to support real world operations.” Lt. Col. Brendan M. Walsh, VMFA-314 Commanding Officer

“Leveraging the Marine Corps’ decade of experience with the F-35B, we have spent the last two years working with the Navy to ensure the successful integration of the F-35C into the Carrier Air Wing and are now able to provide improved battlespace awareness and unmatched lethality,” said Lt. Col. Brendan M. Walsh, VMFA-314 Commanding Officer. “The opportunity to work alongside Navy and Japanese Self Defense Forces allows us to demonstrate our forward presence and to showcase our readiness to support real world operations.”

The integration of VMFA-314 and the F-35C into the Carrier Air Wing enables U.S. naval forces the ability to launch and recover fifth generation aircraft from nearly anywhere in the world and to relocate to new strategic locations. The employment of the F-35C provides Marine ground units stealth capabilities and combat power to create the conditions for follow on operations within key maritime terrain.

Exercises such as JWX 22 allow squadrons operating the F-35C to integrate tactics in conjunction with ground forces to help advance expeditionary capabilities such as EABO. These rehearsals of engagements will serve to reduce response times of forward-deployed units and support the continued prosperity, security and promise of a free and open, rules-based order for the U.S. and its alliances and partnerships.

With continued deployments of fifth-generation fighters onto highly mobile aircraft carriers, the F-35C is able to provide precision long-range strike capabilities to allies while also garnering valuable intelligence from areas of operation, all while operating from at-sea or shore-based austere environments.

VMFA-314 was the first Marine Corps squadron to transition to the F-35C variant of the joint strike fighter after retiring its legacy F/A-18A/C aircraft and receiving its first F-35C on 21 January 2020. Now as the Marine Corps continues to develop as a modernized naval force, deploying squadrons, such as VMFA-314, to key strategic maritime locations demonstrates the Marine Corps’ capability to deter adversary aggression, and, if required, decisively win in conflict.

For questions regarding this release, please contact the 3rd MAW Communication Strategy and Operations Office at [email protected].