Does the Littoral Combat Group sound useful in Africa, the Middle East or Europe?

via USNI News.

USS Somerset (LPD-25), USS Wayne E. Meyer (DDG-108) and Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force (SP-MAGTF)-Peru deployed together as Littoral Combat Group 1 in November and December.

While at sea, the operations the group conducted leveraged both ships’ bread and butter missions: supporting Marines and pushing them ashore, embarking a Coast Guard law enforcement detachment, hosting a surgical team for humanitarian assistance work, and more. The two ships sailed to Valparaiso, Chile, for the Eleventh International Maritime and Naval Exhibition and Conference for Latin America (EXPONAVAL) and the 200th anniversary of the Chilean Navy. Also during the deployment, the 1,000 sailors and Marines from LCG-1 worked with the Peruvian Naval Infantry in a humanitarian assistance and disaster relief exercise in the disaster-prone Chorrillos district outside Lima, and conducted a maritime patrol exercise with Ecuadorian navy assets to counter illegal, unregulated and unreported (IUU) fishing, among other activities.
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The goal of the LCG-1 deployment was to work out the command and control, which placed a Navy captain as the commodore of two ships and the SP-MAGTF, as is the case with the commodore of an amphibious squadron (PHIBRON) who oversees an Amphibious Ready Group and Marine Expeditionary Unit, or a destroyer squadron commander (DESRON) commanding a surface action group. Still, though the focus of the deployment was on command and control and not the actual missions that a DDG and an LPD could conduct together, it’s easy to see how the Littoral Combat Group could be useful higher up the range of military operations: the DDG firing missiles at an enemy defense system to allow the Marine forces to move ashore, the Marines using their MV-22B aircraft in support of the DDG’s maritime security missions at sea, and so on.

Story here. 


This is in connection with the Brute Talk that I posted earlier this week.  Go back and watch that vid then read this article.

Does this formation sound like it would be useful anywhere besides the Pacific (if there)?

I don't think so.

This concept is a failure.  That's why the Commandant is shedding units as fast as he can.  He knows that once the cheerleaders stop cheering and start thinking they'll all be asking "WHAT THE FUCK!"

By the time that the yes men, kiss asses and sycophants realize their mistake and join others who are questioning this abomination it'll be too late.

The die will be cast and the future of the Missile Marine Corps will be too far along to change.  China is gonna eat this force alive.