Meet the Ultra Heavy-lift Amphibious Connector, or UHAC, currently being developed by the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab as a potential replacement for the Navy’s current ship-to-shore hovercraft. The photo above is just a half-scale model: a full-scale version will sit some 34 feet high and 84 feet long. The secret behind this machine is foam tracks with captive air cells, which allow it to propel itself through the water at up to 20 knots, and then move onto land. Because it has a very low ground pressure footprint–about one pound per square inch–it can cross marsh land and mud flats…
Browsing: Life at sea
About 850 Marines headed to the remote Australian outback to test the capabilities of a training range as the U.S. prepares to deploy a battalion-landing team-sized unit there next year. Exercise Koolendong 2013 kicked off on Tuesday at Bradshaw Field Training Area outside Darwin, Australia. The two-week long exercise will be conducted with about 1,000 Australian and U.S. troops. It is designed to assess the capabilities of the training field to accommodate live-fire training for a battalion-sized unit, according to a Marine Corps news release. Included are about 700 members of the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, based out of Japan,…
NEW YORK – Mounds of garbage and debris are piled along the streets in Staten Island, pick-up being just one of the many services residents haven’t had access to in Hurricane Sandy’s aftermath. Evidence of people living normal lives just a week ago now lines the curbsides of the New York borough devastated by last week’s superstorm. Appliances, furniture, children’s toys and other everyday items are just dumped at the edge of the streets, since residents ran out of garbage bags to pack them into days ago. The smell of rotting trash lingers in the air. Power lines hang down…
HOBOKEN, N.J. — Residents of a community ravaged by this week’s super storm had some unexpected guests landing in one of their parks today in Sea Dragon-style. About 20 Marines and sailors left the amphibious assault ship WASP this morning and traveled to a city hit hard by Hurricane Sandy to help restore a ferry terminal that hasn’t been functional since the storm hit. The Marines were with the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit out of Camp Lejeune, N.C., which deployed Thursday in support of disaster relief efforts. After completing the work they needed to do in the harbor, the Marines and…
Marines are definitely getting back to their expeditionary roots. The 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit just returned to Camp Lejeune, N.C., following a seven month deployment. But as Marine Corps Times’ Gidget Fuentes reported, when the 24th MEU was still in the Persian Gulf, there were more Marines on Navy ships than in the combat zone in Afghanistan in late-October. That’s a pretty interesting shift. Check out the map below to see what Marines are doing around the world. [HTML1]
The Marine Corps Times interactive map showing what Marines are doing around the world has been updated with new information provided by public affairs for the week ending Oct. 5. [HTML1]
The Navy’s once-mighty fleet of battleships plied the seas with more than 2,600 sailors, and a few Marines. The leathernecks weren’t just aboard to keep the sailors in line. In true character as riflemen, Marines assigned to battleships’ Marine Detachments manned some the ship’s 10 five-inch guns. Not quite the firepower of the main massive 16-inch gun turrets that gave battleships their famous, and lethal, silhouette, the twin gun mounts were formidable naval guns nonetheless. The Iowa, a 887-foot battleship commissioned in 1943, now sits at Berth 87 in the Los Angeles port of San Pedro, Calif., where in July it…
When the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit sets sail aboard three Navy ships from San Diego, Calif., on Monday, its departure will mark the start of the final stateside MEU deployment for the Marine Corps’ fleet of CH-46 Sea Knight helicopters. The tandem rotor helicopter, nicknamed the Battle Phrog for its quirky silhouette, is getting replaced by the MV-22 Osprey tiltrotor, and the Camp Pendleton, Calif.-based 15th MEU will be the last stateside MEU to deploy with the Phrogs as part of its aviation combat element. The next unit that follows, the 13th MEU, is slated to have an Osprey squadron…
You have to wonder how quickly these Marines devoured that ice cream. Amphibious assault ship Makin Island held an ice cream social for Marines and sailors aboard the San Diego-based ship, which has been deployed in the Arabian Sea region with the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit and a three-ship amphibious ready group. As these junior Marines are learning, sweets like ice cream, cakes and cookies are often readily available aboard many if not all ships at sea, yet they still are familiar, comforting. Besides, you can’t really ruin ice cream, or most any dessert for that matter. Ice cream is…
Last week, some 4,000 Marines and sailors on the East Coast furiously worked to get themselves and their units and ships ready for a scheduled deployment overseas. The 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit and its 2,300 Marines and sailors headed out March 30 from Camp Lejeune, N.C., aboard amphibious assault ship Iwo Jima, dock landing ship Gunston Hall and dock transport ship New York. It will be an eight-month deployment to the Mediterranean and the Middle East for the U.S. European and Central Command regions. You can bet during that last weekend home, just about every Marine and sailor made the…
