US Navy and Marine Exercise Tests New Island Warfare Concepts
‘Pacific Blitz’ focused on expeditionary bases and naval control.
By Steven Stashwick
March 29, 2019
Ten thousand sailors and marines from the U.S. Navy’s Third Fleet and U.S. Marines’ I Marine Expeditionary Force recently completed a two-week exercise in Southern California to explore new concepts for fighting in littoral environments among small islands like those in the found in the South and East China Seas.
“Pacific Blitz†combined existing large amphibious and logistical exercises for the first time to more realistically demonstrate the “Littoral Operations in Contested Environments†and “Expeditionary Advance Base Operations†concepts that the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps unveiled in 2017. Traditionally, the focus of amphibious operations is on land, and once marines are ashore, the navy shifts to support those landward objectives. But now that peer adversaries are fielding larger and more capable navies and long-range anti-ship weapons, it is increasingly the navy that may have to rely on the support of other services to maintain control of the seas and support logistics requirements deep in contested territory or waters.
https://thediplomat.com/2019/03/us-navy-and-marine-exercise-tests-new-island-warfare-concepts/
