Posts Tagged marines

V-22 Fights it’s First Gun Battle

From: Jacksonville Daily News and Danger Room

V-22

It was June 12 in the Sangin Valley in southern Afghanistan. U.S. Marines had been fighting the Taliban all day and had suffered heavy casualties, including two killed. Several resupply convoys had been turned back by enemy attack. The Marines were running low on food, water, ammunition and medical supplies.

That’s when the Marines’ V-22 Osprey tiltrotor swooped in, carrying life-saving supplies — and machine gun fire.

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Flaws Continue to Plague F-35

Wired’s Danger Room has the coverage on the Joint Strike Fighter and it’s many problems:

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, meant to replace nearly every tactical warplane in the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps, was already expected to cost $1 trillion dollars for development, production and maintenance over the next 50 years. Now that cost is expected to grow, owing to 13 different design flaws uncovered in the last two months by a hush-hush panel of five Pentagon experts. It could cost up to a billion dollars to fix the flaws on copies of the jet already in production, to say nothing of those yet to come.

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Pentagon’s New China Plan

From The Washington Times:

The plan calls for preparing the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps to defeat China’s “anti-access, area denial weapons,” including anti-satellite weapons, cyberweapons, submarines, stealth aircraft and long-range missiles that can hit aircraft carriers at sea.

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M27 IAR vs HK416

From GearScout:

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Hesitation Kills: A Female Marine Officer’s Combat Experience in Iraq

From: CSPAN

Major Jane Blair talked about her memoir Hesitation Kills: A Female Marine Officer’s Combat Experience in Iraq. She kept a journal of her and her fellow Marine officers’ experiences in the Iraq war. The guest interviewer was Representative Loretta Sanches (D-CA).

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Lance Cpl. Robert Greniger of Greenfield, Minnesota dies in combat in Afghanistan

by: Mark Brunswick

The remains of servicemen, including Marine Lance Cpl. Robert Greniger of Greenfield, Minn., arrived Thursday at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. Greniger, 21, was killed in combat Tuesday in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province. Photo: Steve Ruark, Associated Press

Lance Cpl. Robert Greniger of Greenfield had been in Afghanistan only a few months, a friend said.

“He talked about getting to know some people, especially some of the natives around the main base where he was at. He had met a little girl that looked just like his youngest sister, Greta, who’s 8. He was teasing her about getting him some bread, and the girl went home and got him some bread,” his father recalled.

Kurt Greniger said his son had been in Afghanistan since March.
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Marines’ tour was one of the most brutal of the entire war

“These Marines’ tour was one of the most brutal of the entire war. In its first three weeks in Afghanistan’s Sangin district, the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines got into more than 100 firefights, and sustained 62 casualties. The insurgents managed to negate the Marines’ night-vision gear, and rendered their traditional close-combat tactics useless. Things got so bad, the 3/5’s superior officers even suggested pulling their troops back.

That didn’t happen. Instead, the 3/5 went after the militants, hard. They went on the offensive constantly. They leveled booby-trapped compounds without apology. They didn’t bother with school-building until the insurgents were back on their heels. Nor did they mess with the poppy growers; the Marines had more than their fair share of enemies.”

Danger Room

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Marines Begin To Field M27 Infantry Automatic Rifle

From Military Times:

Commandant Gen. Jim Amos has approved the full fielding of the M27 Infantry Automatic Rifle, a sleek, 5.56mm weapon that will become the new standard for automatic riflemen. There will be one IAR in virtually every four-man fire team, with three per squad, 28 per company and almost 4,476 across the Corps.

The IAR is a variant of Heckler and Koch’s HK416 assault rifle, which is popular with special operators and frequently used with suppressors. It weighs 9.2 pounds loaded, less than half the weight of SAW, made by FN Herstal. It has an adjustable butt stock and runs on standard 30-round magazines, although the Corps also is exploring the possibility of a high-capacity magazine that would carry between 50 and 100 rounds.

 

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Reagan (CVN-76) Cleanup

U.S.S. Reagan DECON

Marines wash the surface of an F/A-18C Hornet

Lance Cpl. Juan Olguin, from Lakewood, Calif., sprays the surface of an F/A-18C Hornet assigned to the Death Rattlers of Marine Fighter Attack Squadron (VMFA) 323 aboard the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan during a countermeasure wash down on the flight deck. Sailors scrubbed the external surfaces on the flight deck and island superstructure to remove potential radiation contamination. Ronald Reagan is operating off the coast of Japan providing humanitarian assistance as directed in support of Operation Tomodachi.

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More than 2,000 U.S. Marines are on the ground in Libya

“An ABC affiliate in North Carolina says more than 2,000 U.S. Marines are on the ground in Libya.

WCTI-TV in New Bern reports those Marines, assigned to the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) at Camp Lejuene, are “preserving the sanctity of the city [of Ajdubiyah] and the safety of the civilians within it.”

Capt. Timothy Patrick with the 26th MEU told the station: “In Libya right now they are doing exactly what we need them to do. They are doing what they are told, and right now that’s protecting Libyan people against Qadhafi forces.”

http://www.onenewsnow.com/Security/Default.aspx?id=1316884

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Marines rescue downed pilot in Libya

From: Marine Corp Times

The pilot of a downed Air Force F-15 Strike Eagle fighter jet in Libya was reportedly rescued by Marines in an MV-22 Osprey, media reports said.

The jet crashed late Monday after two crew members safely ejected, U.S. Africa Command said in a statement. The aircraft, based out of RAF Lakenheath, England, was flying out of Aviano Air Base, Italy, in support of a no-fly zone approved by the U.N.

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Counterinsurgency

Your company has just been warned for deployment on counterinsurgency operations in Iraq or Afghanistan. You have read David Galula, T. E. Lawrence, and Robert Thompson.  You have studied  FM 3–24 and now understand the history, philosophy, and theory of counterinsurgency. You have watched Black Hawk Down and The Battle of Algiers, and you know this will be the most difficult challenge of your life.

But what does all the theory mean, at the company level? How do the principles translate into action—at night, with the GPS down, the media criticizing you, the locals complaining in a language you don’t understand, and an unseen enemy killing your people by ones and twos? How does counterinsurgency actually happen?

– Excerpt from,  Counterinsurgency by David Kilcullen  -2010

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The Rifleman’s Creed

This is my rifle. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My rifle is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life. My rifle, without me, is useless. Without my rifle, I am useless. I must fire my rifle true. I must shoot straighter than my enemy who is trying to kill me. I must shoot him before he shoots me. I will…

My rifle and myself know that what counts in this war is not the rounds we fire, the noise of our burst, nor the smoke we make. We know that it is the hits that count. We will hit…

My rifle is human, even as I, because it is my life. Thus, I will learn it as a brother. I will learn its weaknesses, its strength, its parts, its accessories, its sights and its barrel. I will ever guard it against the ravages of weather and damage as I will ever guard my legs, my arms, my eyes and my heart against damage. I will keep my rifle clean and ready. We will become part of each other. We will…

Before God, I swear this creed. My rifle and myself are the defenders of my country. We are the masters of our enemy. We are the saviors of my life. So be it, until victory is America’s and there is no enemy, but peace!


Major General William H. Rupertus

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New Light Machine Gun for Marines

Military.com reports on the introduction of the IAR (Infantry Automatic Rife) to replace the SAW (Squad Automatic Weapon).

The introduction of the M-27 is a return to the roots of the Marine infantry squad, Flynn argued, which featured an “automatic rifleman” that eventually evolved into a light machine gunner with the introduction of the SAW in the 1980s.The Corps’ adoption of the IAR has been fraught with controversy, with critics arguing the limited firepower of an M-27 — which shoots a 30-round magazine — would leave Marines vulnerable. The lead-spitting power of the M-249 and its 200-round drum helps keep bad guys in place while grunts maneuver in for the kill, skeptics argued.

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M1 Abrams Tanks Arrive in Afghanistan

In another increase of force, a small contingent of Abrams tanks are headed to Afghanistan.

From The Washington Post:

The deployment of a company of M1 Abrams tanks, which will be fielded by the Marines in the country’s southwest, will allow ground forces to target insurgents from a greater distance – and with more of a lethal punch – than is possible from any other U.S. military vehicle. The 68-ton tanks are propelled by a jet engine and equipped with a 120mm main gun that can destroy a house more than a mile away.

The Marines had wanted to take tanks into Afghanistan when they began deploying in large numbers in spring 2009, but the top coalition commander then, Army Gen. David D. McKiernan, rejected the request, in part because of concern it could remind Afghans of the tank-heavy Soviet occupation in the 1980s. As it became clear that other units were getting the green light to engage in more heavy-handed measures, the Marines asked again, noting that Canadian and Danish troops had used a small number of tanks in southern Afghanistan. This time, the decision rested with Petraeus, who has been in charge of coalition forces in Afghanistan since July. He approved it last month, the officials said.

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