Shots fired. The Marine Corps’ seven Marine Expeditionary Units are designed to deploy at a moment’s notice for combat or emergency response, but it seems two of the MEUs have been waging a war a little closer to home. The 15th MEU, out of Camp Pendleton, Calif., has had an official account on Twitter for over a year, tweeting a regular stream of Marine Corps news and photos. But when its neighboring 13th MEU joined Twitter in July, things started heating up. On Aug. 23, the 13th MEU account issued a friendly shout-out to all the MEUs on Twitter. [HTML1]…
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The Marine Corps released a new graphic at the recent Sea Air Space expo that highlighted the way it will respond to future crises around the world. I picked up a copy of this poster at the Sea-Air-Space exposition last week, where several generals discussed how Expeditionary Force 21 will work. The graphic diagrams a Marine expeditionary brigade that is forward deployed and can be scaled to whatever size needed to respond to various crises. The first slide shows a crisis breaking out on land, but not too far from the shore. Expeditionary Force 21 points out that most of…
Top leaders of the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit said they were preparing to put boots on the ground in Syria during their eight-month deployment, which wrapped up last month. Col. Matthew St. Clair, the MEU commander, and Navy Capt. Jim Cody, who led the Kearsarge Amphibious Ready Group, spoke to a group of reporters at the Potomac Institute in Virginia on Thursday. When President Obama discussed a military strike in September against the Bashar al-Assad regime following an apparent chemical weapons attack on civilians, St. Clair said Marines were preparing for a situation that would require them to make landfall, according to U.S. News…
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,…
This Fall The 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit will become the first West Coast MEU to deploy with the Osprey. Set for a pump through the Asia-Pacific region, the 13th MEU will depart with a compliment of 12 MV-22 Ospreys aboard the amphibious assault ship Boxer, according to a Navy news release. The aircraft will be piloted and maintained by Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 166 out of Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, Calif. While the 13th MEU is not the first to have ever deployed with the Osprey, it is the first that will take it afloat in the Pacific — the…
Check out what Marines are up to around the world, as of Aug. 7: [HTML1]
The storied “Nightmares” are set to deactivate this summer after 69 years of service during which the unit’s Marines saw combat in the Pacific, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. Formally designated Marine Attack Squadron 513, the unit which flies AV-8B Harriers out of Marine Corps Air Station Yuma, Ariz., will be deactivated July 12, 2013 after their most recent deployment to Asia which concluded with their participation in Exercise Foal Eagle. The annual exercise is among the largest in the world and aims to strengthen interoperability between South Korean and U.S. forces in the region. The unit deployed to Asia…
[Updated: High winds and strong seas churned by that winter storm the National Weather Service dubbed Saturn has pushed the deployment start by several days, the Navy announced. The three ships of the Kearsarge Amphibious Ready Group will depart the Norfolk, Va., area on Monday, March 11, according to U.S. Fleet Forces Command. That will give a few extra days at home for the sailors and Marines before they take their final equipment aboard and begin the scheduled deployment with, hopefully, smoother seas and calmer stomachs.] The federal budget crisis has put a halt to some ship deployments, but the 2,200…
The first of 2,300 Marines and sailors will be streaming home starting Sunday as the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit closes out an overseas shipboard deployment that’s stretched eight-and-a-half months. On Sunday, crews aboard dock landing ship Gunston Hall and transport dock New York, which is wrapping up its maiden deployment, will offload Marines and their vehicles and equipment at the port in Morehead City, not far from the 24th MEU’s home in Jacksonville at Camp Lejeune, N.C., officials announced today. The Marines will load buses and head over to the base later in the afternoon to reunite with their family and friends. On…
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…
