101st Airborne completes embarkation onto MSC ships for a Sealift Emergency Deployment Readiness Exercise

A U.S. Army Soldier from the 3rd BCT, 101st ABN DIV (AASLT) watches a Humvee from the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) ‪#‎Artillery‬ pull an M119A3 Howitzer onto the U.S. Naval Ship Benevidez, a Bob Hope class roll-on, roll-off vehicle cargo ship at Jacksonville Port Authority , Fla. April 19. The Benevidez is loading more than 1,000 vehicles and cargo containers from the 3rd Brigade Combat Team (BCT) as part of the brigade's Sealift Emergency‪#‎Deployment‬ #Readiness Exercise that is designed to test the brigade's ability to rapidly mobilize and deploy personnel and equipment. The 3rd BCT equipment will be moved by the Benevidez to ‪#‎PortArthur‬, ‪#‎Texas‬, where it will be offloaded and driven by Soldiers from 3rd BCT to the‪#‎JointReadinessTrainingCenter‬ (JRTC and Fort Polk), La. for the brigade's combined training center rotation.

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I hope someone in HQMC is watching this.  The US Army is trying to drink our milkshake.  Worse?  By forming ourselves into bastardized Marine Air Ground Task Forces (yeah I'm pointing my knife hand at SPMAGTF-CR) we're taking the number of missions we're capable of performing off the table.  We need to stop moving forward with the SPMAGTF-CR concept, admit that it is ill equipped to deal with hybrid terrorist organizations like Hezbollah or ISIS (or even ragtag military forces that are well equipped as the Saudis have seen in Yemen), much less conventional enemy forces and build on the Enhanced MEU!

Sidenote:  I wrote Army PAO at the 101st to see if they'd let me attend the 101st' training evolution at JRTC, but haven't gotten a response.  I hope they say yes (confidence is not high) it's not far and would be quite interesting to see.

Sidenote 1:  I am really getting tired of the Army drinking our milkshake!