Marines "Urban Warrior" in North Carolina.

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MarineLINK > Marine Corps News > SWANSBORO OFFERS 26TH MEU CHANCE TO TRAIN IN URBAN PATROLLING,
ESTABLISHING CHECKPOINTS >
Posted 04/05/2000 06:42:21 AM --- More 26 MEU news articles

SWANSBORO OFFERS 26TH MEU CHANCE TO
TRAIN IN URBAN PATROLLING, ESTABLISHING
CHECKPOINTS

Colonel Kenneth J. Glueck Jr., 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit Commander, far right, and LtCol.
Lawrence D. Nicholson, far left, Battalion Landing Team 2/2's commanding officer, talk to local
officials, left to right, Swansboro Mayor Paul W. Edgerton, Town Manager Bill Price and Police
Chief Harry Pugliese. The Marines of BLT 2/2 have been meeting with Swansboro, N.C. town
officials to prepare for their upcoming training in that city. From April 10-14, BLT 2/2 will establish
checkpoints and conduct urban patrols in Swansboro, giving them the unique experience of training
for these types of missions in a real town vice a controlled training facility.

Photo by Cpl. Derek A. Shoemake

(high resolution photos attached at end of article.)


By Cpl. Derek A. Shoemake

CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. (April 5) -- Marines with the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit's
(MEU) Battalion Landing Team (BLT) 2/2 will be moving in to Swansboro, N.C. April
10.

Marines and Sailors will be in the town for four days for what Maj. James Christmas,
BLT 2/2 Operations Officer, calls a "very unique training opportunity."

While there, the BLT will train in both checkpoint security and urban patrolling. What
makes that training unique, according to Christmas, is its real-world likeness.

"This is dynamic stuff," he said. "We'll be working in an environment with everyday
people. You don't get things like pets and kids in a training facility."

It is this reason Christmas said the BLT chose to train in a real city like Swansboro,
and Chief of Police Harry Pugliese couldn't be happier about it.

"Camp Lejeune has done so much to help our local law enforcement," he said. "This
is our chance to give back."

According to Pugliese, his police officers have been given several training
opportunities aboard Camp Lejeune. In addition to various live-fire exercises, the
Swansboro police have even participated in specialty training, like a recent hostage
scenario conducted here.

"If I sent my guys to school for this type of stuff, we'd deplete our budget," he said.
"Thanks to units like (BL 2/2), we don't have to."

Christmas said the town's welcoming attitude should make the training for the BLT
run much smoother.

"We have to work closely together," he said. "Daily our commanding officers will meet
with the town officials to go over that day's plans. So far they have given us any help
we need."

During the urban patrolling scenarios, the BLT Marines will learn to move strategically
though developed areas. Establishing checkpoints will give Marines an opportunity to
learn proper checkpoint security, and how to search vehicles or personnel. Christmas
points out that residents of Swansboro will not be affected by the training, as the BLT
has designated role players to be stopped at the check points.

"Another good thing about what we are doing is that we are staying in Swansboro,"
said Christmas. "That makes it much more realistic than if we just drove down here
every day."

Overall, Christmas said that realism should make for better trained Marines when the
real thing comes. That real thing could come when BLT 2/2 deploys with the 26th
MEU to the Mediterranean Region in July.

"They are going that extra mile by training in Swansboro," said Col. Kenneth J.
Glueck, Jr., 26th MEU Commander. "That type of dedication is what makes us the
best."


-30-

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HIGH RESOLUTION PHOTOS BELOW. CLICK TO DOWNLOAD/VIEW.
swansboro.jpg (640K); swansboro.gif (45K); swansboro2.jpg (856K); swansboro3.jpg (2144K);
swansboro4.jpg (586K)
 
I don't have a problem with it, so long as its out in the open. They've done a few of these where the locals, including LEOs and government, were totally in the dark.

So long as the Marines play by the rules and make sure the citizenry knows what's up, what's the harm?
 
Jack, I'm sorry, but I *do* have a problem with this.

"For training purposes," they say. Training for WHAT? The job of the Marines is to secure hostile territory by overwhelming force. Doesn't that scare the hell out of you?

THINK, man, THINK!
 
Our boys are expected to oversee developed ares when deployed overseas these days. So I don't have a problem with it. The objejction I would raise is where "domestic" emphasis is given. But so far as urban and suburban training goes, that in and of itself is no cause to panic.
 
Coinneach,

With all due respect, the whole operation is out in the open, local officials and citizens are informed and I assume the locals are OK with the exercise. I'm as paranoid as the next guy, but this just isn't a concern.

Right or wrong, we are sending our troops into urban environments with low-level conflicts more and more often and the troops need to practice in the most realistic scenarios possible.

Now if you're talking about the exercises they conduct without citizen knowledge, that's a whole different story. That stuff is going to get someone killed eventually, and of course, the confused citizen that shoots some soldier will be portrayed as some kind of "gun nut."
 
No, I think it's great. The military's main job any more it seems is securing an area like a city in an urban environment. As long as the citizens aren't dragged from their cars and questioned at gunpoint, and PsyOps isn't playing weird music and flashing lights at peoples houses, it will be excellent training. They have roll-players that will be used for scenarios and the locals all seem to be supporting it, or at least the police chief was.

On the other hand they probably could do this on their own base and "secure" it in the same manner. I think as long as they are on the up and up about it there shouldn't be any harm.

We have to remember that war has changed. We aren't going to storm beaches, walk through jungles, or play in the sand. Our future wars will be staged in cities primarily and once those cities are taken they have to be secured. May as well be the Marines. The Army does this all the time.

[This message has been edited by HukeOKC (edited April 07, 2000).]
 
I have a problem with this and mainly for this reason.
Soldiers and Marines, outside of specific units (i.e. Military Police) are charged with taking and holding ground. Their primary job is Killing the enemy and destroying his ability to fight. Peace keeper is not a term that should be used to describe combat arms types. We are increasingly militarizing our police forces and police forcing our military and the two jobs are separate not the same.
The US Military should be this big meen junkyard dog trained to terminate the enemy with extreme prejudice. We keep this dog one a short rope until the time comes we need him then we point the dog at the enemy and cut the rope.

This LEO training for Combat arms types, and Combat arms training for LEO types, detracts from the way they should conduct their jobs and it pollutes their execution of what their mission should be. LEO's deal with Law enforcement, soldiers and marines deal with combat

[This message has been edited by Alan B (edited April 07, 2000).]
 
We had one of theses out in San Francisco a couple months back. It was supposed to be held in montery, but there were some objections. It seemed to me that if became more of a circus than a training exercise. You had the press out there filming part of it, you had protesters protesting the military training in city. The protesters thought like many here do, that the training should be kept on base. And you have family who had brought their kids out just to watch what the marines were doing.

Alan B
I agree that "Soldiers and Marines, outside of specific units (i.e. Military Police) are charged with taking and holding ground." But increasingly, it involves taking and holding urban areas as urban sprawl has invade much of the world. Wars are no longer gonna be like Desert Storm. We will rarely get the chance to mass troops for 5-6 months in the desert. Wars will be more like stalingrad in WW2 and chechnya or kosavo. Urban settings where are troops have to do the house to house thing.

In San Francicso, they were practicing amphibious landing on small beaches with the ubran setting right on the beach. That is hard to practice if the base doesn't have a beach to land on. ok I'm done


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It ain't mah fault. did I do dat?
 
Yes, one of the tasks of the military is to take ground. And the ground that they take usually has one or more cities or towns planted on it.

It's a safe bet to say that the cities and/or towns still have enemy personnel, Resisitance, Special Forces, whathaveyou, etc., lurking amongst the population. It's also a safe bet to say that there people do not have the best interests of America or her warriors in mind.

This mandates a strong patrol prescence in these occupied towns.

And it's generally considered bad manners to be killing civilians and breaking the things they need to survive in a captured and/or capitulated town.

Therefore, any military brass who does not plan or practice for the eventuality of taking an enemy town is guilty of negligence at the very least.

Military bases and personnel are a very poor simulator of civilians.

So, it kind of behooves them to practice with actual civilians, don't you think?

LawDog



[This message has been edited by LawDog (edited April 07, 2000).]
 
Sorry, But I am going to have to count myself among those who dislike these type of excercises. The job of the military, especially the USMC is NOT to search houses , arrest people, man relocation camps and such. Which is mostly what the other "Urban Warrior" excercises turned into. This should never be the role of a fighting unit. Someone stated that the reason for this is that soldiers need training in how to handle themselves in an urban setting where there might be civilians among the resistance. Or how to not destroy civilian items while engaging the enemy. This is the type of thinking that go our asses kicked in SE Asia and we are still at war in Korea. The concept of a kind and gentle was does not exist. It protects the lives of citizens we are not responsible for at the cost of soldiers lives we are. We had no problems taking a tank and leveling a building that housed snipers during the WW2 invasions. Why should it be any different today??? It shouldn't. There is a threat to your soldiers and you should use the most effective and least risky method to end the threat. PERIOD. Who cares if Granny Gorbachev used to live there. Look where stupid rules of engagement got US soldiers. 288+ killed in Beirut, 13 killed in Somalia, God knows how many killed in SE Asia. The only purpose for this type of exercise is in training to fighton home soil where you dont want to kill US citizens and destroy US property. But that is not the stated case. As far as I am concerned, I dont give a rats a$$ about some Serb home, or Haitian mother standing over a sniper. All I care about is completing the mission with the fewest possible casualties to my men, anything else is irrelevant. This is why these hair brained Liberal causes are killing, both figuratively and really, the military.

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"Liberty is never unalienable; it must be redeemed regularly with the blood of patriots or it always vanishes."
-R.A. Heinlein
 
Umm...TAZ, you're going to have to show me where that article mentions...
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>search houses , arrest people, man relocation camps and such.[/quote]...
because I don't see where those things are mentioned.

Now...an invasion or an assault is very different from occupying a captured town. Now that your troops have occupied a town that has surrendered, if I read your response corrcetly, you want them to continue to kill civilians? Civilians who have surrendered under the Geneva Conventions and Hague Accords that you as an officer are sworn to abide by?

My, my, my. My Lai tends to come to mind.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>There is a threat to your soldiers and you should use the most effective and least risky method to end the threat. PERIOD.[/quote]

Carpet bombing a town because of one sniper would be the most effective and least risky method. And if you don't see a problem with that, it's filed under 'War Crimes'.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>288+ killed in Beirut,[/quote]

The Marines were killed in Beirut because the sentry manning the post that the truck-bomb went through had orders not to keep a magazine in his weapon. Which has diddley-squat to do with patrolling a town.
I take that back, if the Marines had known how to patrol a city and the perils involved in patrolling a city, then that bombing might not have occurred.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>13 killed in Somalia,[/quote]

They were killed precisely because they didn't know a damn thing about Urban Warfare. In simple language, TAZ, the mindset you are proposing here, is what got those men killed.

A keyphrase I learned while working for Uncle was: Improvise, Adapt, and Overcome.

Seems to me that the Military is trying to adapt to the changing face of war. This is to be commended. It also seems to me that way too many Chairborne Rangers are stuck in the campaigns of the past.

The campaigns of the future are not going to be in the Normandy hedgerows, the Vietnam jungles, or the mountains and hills of Korea. The campaigns of the future are going to be in the streets of Taiwan, in the city blocks of the Baltics and the cul de sacs of Chechnya.
The military can either adapt to the new terrain, or our sons can come home in bodybags until we do finally adapt.

No argument of the liberals killing the military, just not for the reasons you propose.

LawDog
 
Some support for those guys (marines) might be in order. Hopefully it would never be necessary for them to have to deal with a foreign adversary in our streets, but..shouldnt they have some experience of maneuvering in a real city? As long as it is above board and citizens rights aren't violated it might benefit the public to see our guys training, maybe the development of a bit more trust.
 
Guys I get the feeling that Marshall Law, is the motivating force behind the Marines doing search and seizure type of operations. The Government wants to be prepared for ALL emergencies by getting the Marines used to the idea of imposing force on us Americans. It could also be that just want to play with their friends like good little marines!
 
One cannot blame the grunts for these exercises, one must look higher up the chain of command. The questions that need to be answered is, what do these exercises "really" accomplish?...and who is ordering them?

What I believe they are "being used" for is to slowly make more and more of these ops common place here inside our own borders. The presence of Marines doing "training exercises" in small towns across America is being presented as a "necessity". Americans who get used to having combat ready soldiers walking down their streets, could only prove disasterous should their SOP change. What is certain is, the next phase of these training exercises will include NATO, UN, or some other foreign national troops participating. This further indoctrinates (and intimidates) our citizens to the presence of military personnel in our streets.

Our military should be trained to defend our borders. They should not be used to perform policing (especially domestic) functions. Our Constitution prohibits such operations.

Each time our troops are sent overseas to police some 3rd World shiphole, our national debt expands, and we (the people) gain nothing (except more debt piling up, which we ultimately have to pay). Our military should be used to defend Americans, and never be used as some Global police force, serving some UN Supreme Commander who never took an oath to protect, preserve, or defend our Constitution.

Smells like very dead fish to me.
 
Coinneach, you read my mind man.

While I have to admit, it's been quite a few years since I was overseas, I do remember this.
Most roads there are NOT like the roads here.

Most homes, and buildings are NOT like the ones here.

Most people, and their actions, are NOT like they are here.

So, I have to ask myself. What purpose is served by training troops in 'Urban Patrolling in America, except to be used in America.

When the troops in Desert Storm were in training, did they train in the United States?
In over 2 years in Germany, and in many MATO exercises, I NEVER remember training in , say Antartica, or in Hawaii.
The point is, to get the most out of a training for an intended purpose, you train in the area where the effect is to maximized.
Desert survival isn't accomplished by dropping soldiers off in downtown Tucson.
Likewise, arctic training isn't accomplished by introducing troops in Bangor.

If this "Urban Patrolling" is to be used in, say Bosnia. I could think of a lot better places to simulate realworld conditions closer to Bosnia, than Swansboro, NC.

BTW, are these Marines answering to the UN, or the citizens of these United States?

Best Regards,
Don

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The most foolish mistake we could make would be to allow the subjected people to carry arms; history shows that all conquerers who have allowed their subjected people to carry arms have prepared their own fall.
Adolf Hitler
 
There really isn't enough information in the article to convey the scope of the exercise. I can understand the concerns of folks regarding its potential use. I also realise that house to house combat has historically been very dangerous stuff. I do not want good guys to get hurt.

These soldiers come from communities, not government smelters (yet). I want them to have the best training to ensure both their safety and success. They are are relatives and friends.

What if in the parameters of the likely theater, we utilize the resources of many local willing civilian "resistors" who become equal trainees using modern wargame technology? Cheaper than alot of training options. Yes the GOV may get intel from the scenario, but so could everyone involved. It would be enlightning and for a good cause. "We have to work closely together," he said. "Daily our commanding officers will meet
with the town officials to go over that day's plans. So far they have given us any help
we need."
Sounds like cooperation to me. Let's do it and learn.

Honestly, I think the story potential here is great. If I was the novelist I hoped to be in grade school this would be an interesting premise for a story.
 
G-Freeman,

Isn't the type of operations that are taking place,in N.Carolina assigned to, and for the National Guard or SWAT Teams, and not the active Marine Corp?
 
Gentlemen:
Swansboro, NC is about 15 minutes north of Camp Lejeune, NC. It population is over 50% active duty Marines (or civilians that work at) stationed at MCB Camp Lejeune, MCAS New River or MCAS Cherry Point. It is a pretty good place to train the Marines in “small urban” patrolling, since there are very few civilians there that can go irate because of misconceptions.
This is not Urban Warrior. UW is an advance warfighting lab part of the Marine Advanced Warfighting Experiment/Lab and Special Purpose Marine Air Ground Task Force-X. The purpose of the AWE/SPMAGTF-X was to experiment with and develop TTP, Doctrine and systems to assist in the future battles that would occur in urban environments. The field portions of UW ended last year in the culmination phase exercise in San Francisco. All that is going on now with UW is the analysis of the results of the experimentation. After this is done the AWE will move on to the next project (the first was Hunter Warrior to experiment with fighting in the desert, the second being Urban Warrior, and third is tentatively Forest/Jungle Warrior).
And in reality UW was at Camp Lejeune in the summer or 1998 (I was a fires officer in the TTECG), used a BLT to do some experiments and moved out to the West Coast for a bigger city, different unit for a different perspective and conducted some experiment and had the culmination phase exercise

The reason these experiments are so important is that revolution in military affairs has changed how wars will be fought. However, the old doctrine and TTP is still being trained. And UW specifically, is that in the near future 90 percent of the world population will be living in the cities, the enemy know if they leave those cities America’s masses fire power will eliminate them. So the will stay in the cities and wait for us to come to them. An example of the doctrine look at what happen to the Russian Malakopft Bde that went into Grozny, Chechna, it was eliminated. The Russians latter went back to the an even older doctrine, mass firepower and took the city, however got some real bad press on it

For those that say the mission of the Marine Corps is seize terrain, etc. You are only partially correct, the Corps has been doing America’s operation other than war since the “shores of Tripoli,” in the Marine Corps hymn. Since the end of the cold war the Marines, as part of Marine Expeditionary Units (Special Operation Capable) have done 60 or so Non-combatant Evacuation Operations. These didn’t involve taking ground, the involved projecting power into a nation that was unstable, establishing a security area around a facility (normally an embassy or air port), hence setting up roadblocks. Pulling all the westerners in, and extracting them. Followed by a withdrawal.

The incident that occurred in Beirut and Somalia were not a case of not knowing how to do their mission, but a case when politics set ROE and force packages that didn’t meet the requirements. That is what one of the flaws of overt civilian control of the military, you get politicians in place, that are more interested in political power and advancement than warfighting.


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God truly fights on the side with the best artillery
 
STLRN,

I will try and make this short and to the point. The Marines will be staying in the American town all during their operations. This sets very bad precedence for future towns or cities to have the same operations done in our country. The National Guard is our unit of defense for such training domestically. Finally if the marines want to learn new tactics and strategies,they should be sent over to Kosovo and learn what the real world is doing over there, on foreign soil.!!!
 
Longjohn:
The MEU is on a training workup to go to the Med, when they arrive on station they will sit in the Adriatic waiting to go ashore, this is predeployement training. If you send them into hostile enviroment to train, then how many will be killed? Do you know any of those Marines? I do and I rather have them train prior to the deployement than to get the kind of training that will kill a few, because of a few paranoid types are too worried.
The same applies for UW, it was done in a non-hostile enviroment to test doctrine and systems, some worked really well some not at all. The ones that didn't work well in the real world would have meant a lot of dead bodies coming home in body bags.
 
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