Tuesday, January 27, 2015
15th MEU conducts heliborne extraction training. Photos by Cpl. Steve H. Lopez
Note: According to the caption on these photos, the Combat Logistics Element was doing "external extraction" training. I don't know what that is. If anyone knows, feel free to get me up to speed. My Google skills let me down and I don't know if this is some kind of fancy vehicle recovery or what!
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What LAV variant is that? If its' a scout/command unit with a mast and/or some means of launching UAVs then the Marines have started to wise up to the notion of COE. Contempt Of Engagement.
ReplyDeleteYou put down a single or small platoon of armored vehicles (hopefully including a screen of UGCV micros) /behind/ the enemy and then you either monitor a TCP choke or roll up cautiously on a depot operation or even keep pace with a main force element advance.
All with 3-5 vehicles doing nothing but sneak'n'peek.
Calling down the lightning.
With NLOS and netcentrics as secure, directional, comms nodding, there is NO REASON for main force to meet main force if we are moving into a theater where the enemy already has or is in the process of seizing their chosen dirt.
Let them bleed for dirt. Let their predilection for static emplacement to 'hold ground' be what makes them predictable.
And shower them, regularly, with systems designed to make their little world as miserable as possible.
This gets us faster into the fight without the idiocy of come-kill-us 'speedbump' formations like the 82nd drop into Desert Shield Saudi. It allows us to start working on their LOCs and killing their C2 and CS/CSS while our main forces are still entering the theater.
HOPEFULLY, it even allows for these 10 day independent ops units (Mounted Special Forces) to make use of the likes of emergency transited SSN/SSBN with large quantities of _Missile Not Fixed Wing_ targeting so that we can talk 300nm in 10 minutes at Mach 3.5 (Hoplite) or 800nm in 10 minutes at Mach 8 (HSSW).
Because you never want to be loitering someplace for 60-100 minutes waiting on a Tomahawk or an F/A-18 to make range point. Not least because the latter will then have to turn around and RTB for a reload which makes it as useful (to you) as a 747 during that window.
But whatever the kill effector, before you can do any of this, you have to first prove that you can do the insertion, reliably, repeatably, past any frontal defenses. So that the persistent ground unit can drive to the sound of gunfire and away from the sound of rotor blades in a sufficiently useful distance that neither it nor the Stallion are exposed.
Draw a radius ring around ANY objective equivalent to a 5 minute march by foot. Then do it again for a similar distance for 30mph vehicles. The difference between the two is the ability drop in to one of X-many LZs, beyond the range of the defender to coordinate a defensive overwatch with remote fires of their own.
That is the nature of airmech as a 3D envelopment capability.
Always send a bullet rather than a Marine. Always drive armored rather than walk naked. Always roll your warfighter, never carry it. And whatever you do, bleed for time, bleed for lives or bleed for victory. But maintain that COE margin. And never bleed for dirt.
Strange the USMC didnt show off their Osprey's capability in lifting that vehicle..
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