Navy, Marines Demonstrate ‘Blue-Green’ Future of Expeditionary Logistics at Pacific Blitz 2019
Some 10,000 Marines and Sailors stretched their
logistical muscles to support and supply sea-based operations during a major
exercise to prepare naval expeditionary forces for enemy threats and a
potential future fight across an island-dotted battlespace.
During Pacific Blitz 2019, they built expeditionary
bases, cleared and repaired an airfield and seaport, resupplied units on land
and warships at sea, and created medical care, refueling and rearming
positions. The exercise, held March 12 through March 31 in Southern California,
combined two regular training events — maritime prepositioning exercise Pacific
Horizon and amphibious integration exercise Dawn Blitz.
The force-level training event for I Marine Expeditionary
Force and the Navy’s 3rd Fleet, supported by Naval Expeditionary Combatant
Command (NECC), focused on distributed maritime operations with emphasis on
expeditionary logistics and sea control. That includes operational capabilities
to refuel, resupply, repair, and rearm expeditionary forces dispersed at sea
and ashore — and likely against capable, peer-like enemy forces. Those missions
are critical to the Marine Corps and Navy concepts of Distributed Maritime
Operations (DMO), Littoral Operations in a Contested Environment (LOCE) and
Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations (EABO).
The campaign-level exercise required fleet and force
battle staffs to integrate and “action officers work through the pains of: how
do you actually do this, how do you coordinate, do our systems talk well to
each other and how do we get better at those pieces,” said Lt. Cmdr. John
Ruggiero, a lead planner at NECC headquarters in Virginia Beach, Virginia,
exercise liaison to 3rd Fleet and I MEF. Both sides want “to ensure that we
continue to build on what we’ve learned, to make sure we document what we’ve
learned and keep that going.” Lessons learned will wrap into follow-on
exercises such as Large-Scale Exercise 2020, Ruggiero said.
NECC provided something of a bridge supporting fleet and
force missions in the battlespace, where expeditionary advanced bases, advanced
naval bases, sea bases, airfields and ports provided logistical hubs to support
and sustain operational forces.
“We are constantly looking for opportunities like Pacific
Blitz where we can demonstrate this capability,” said Cmdr. Brian Cummings,
NECC explosive ordnance disposal planner and exercise liaison to 3rd Fleet and
I MEF. “When people think Navy, they think airplanes, they think carriers, they
think DDGs and they think submarines — but they’re not necessarily thinking
expeditionary teams of four to 10 people that are thinking of putting missiles
back on DDGs in disassociated locations.”
Sailors worked with 1st Marine Logistics Group to
construct advanced naval bases and facilities at simulated “islands” in the
scenario-based exercise. In a first, they removed and unpacked an Expeditionary
Medical Facility from the roll-on/roll-off cargo ship USNS Sgt. William R.
Button (T-AK-3012), set it up at an expeditionary base at Camp Pendleton,
California, and later broke it down, packed it up and reloaded it onto Button.
“When people think Navy, they think airplanes, they think carriers, they think DDGs and they think submarines — but they’re not necessarily thinking expeditionary teams of four to 10 people that are thinking of putting missiles back on DDGs in disassociated locations.”
Cmdr. Brian Cummings, NECC explosive ordnance disposal planner, exercise liaison to 3rd Fleet and I MEF
Navy Seabees at five sites built several berthing areas,
did concrete slab and masonry work, repaired a damaged airfield, repaired and
rebuilt a 3.5-mile gravel road and, in a proof-of-concept, built a
90,000-square-foot heavy equipment storage area with a 24-foot wide, 8-foot
tall berm.
“The best part of this exercise was all these projects were
real-world projects, with the exception of the berm … being utilized by their
customers,” said Builder 1st Class Jacob Kusay of Naval Mobile Construction
Battalion 5.
But it wasn’t just about construction. The road and berm
projects were part of the realistic battle scenarios, Kusay said, so “we set up
our own 360-degree security, maintained their own security watch 24/7 until the
project was completed.”
More than 100 Marines with Marine Aviation Logistics
Squadron 16 packed their mobile facilities onto aviation logistics ship SS
Curtiss (T-AVB-4) at Port Hueneme, California, and got underway to do aircraft
maintenance at sea, a new experience for maintainers accustomed to working in
hangars and airfields.
“That’s kind of why we do this, to operate outside our
comfort zone to expand our capabilities,” said Capt. Mark Stone, supply officer
with 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing’s aviation logistics department. Stone helped
coordinate movements by boats and MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotors and CH-53E Super
Stallion heavy-lift helicopters to and from the Curtiss.
The Marine Corps relies on Curtiss and SS Wright (T-AVB-3)
on the East Coast to provide at-sea intermediate-level maintenance of rotary
and fixed-wing aircraft. Marines repaired, tested or maintained aircraft parts
brought to the ship. Those they couldn’t fix were sent to the depot for
overhaul. Marines “repaired a significant amount of components for us to get
back to MALS-16 to support the flight line,” Stone said. By the end of the
exercise, Marines on the ship had fixed or repaired 134 components, Maj. James
Moore, MALS-16 operations officer, said in an email.
Pacific Blitz “gave us a great overview, start to finish, of how would we do this down range as far as transportation, getting equipment supplies and ordnance from point A to point B.”
Chief Aviation Ordnanceman Raymond Gibree
Pacific Blitz provided a rare, hands-on training in an
expeditionary ordnance reload operation typically handled by Navy Munitions
Command teams. It was the first time Navy Cargo Handling Battalion 1 did the
rapid resupply mission, a new capability the Navy is weighing expanding since
the future distributed battlespace may require other units to rapidly resupply
and reload warships.
Sailors used a forklift and crane to load an SM-2 missile
into a vertical launch system tube on guided-missile destroyer USS Michael
Murphy (DDG-112) March 13 at Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station, California.
“It gave us a great overview, start to finish, of how
would we do this down range as far as transportation, getting equipment
supplies and ordnance from point A to point B,” said Chief Aviation Ordnanceman
Raymond Gibree, senior adviser with the reload team.
“We garnered a tremendous amount of experience with the reps
and sets we got, under the oversight of NMC,” Gibree said. “We are expected to
do this mission in many different locations, under many different circumstances
and under permissive, hostile and uncertain areas.”
The scenario
included transporting the team on two Navy ships and utility landing craft to
reach Michael Murphy. It helped “make sure we can provide that capability to
the fleet in more locations, more responsive to their requirements,” Ruggiero
said, “wherever they happen to be.”