Corpo de Fuzileiros (MUNDO)

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US approves possible Assault Amphibious Vehicle sale to Spain

WASHINGTON, March 15, 2019 - The State Department has made a determination approving a possible Foreign Military Sale to Spain of Assault Amphibious Vehicles and related equipment for an estimated cost of $107 million. The Defense Security Cooperation Agency delivered the required certification notifying Congress of this possible sale on March 14, 2019.

The Government of Spain has requested to buy eight (8) Assault Amphibious Vehicles, Personnel (AAVP-7A1) Reliability, Availability, Maintainability/Rebuilt to Standard (RAM/RS); two (2) Assault Amphibious Vehicles, Command (AAVC-7A1) Reliability, Availability, Maintainability/Rebuilt to Standard (RAM/RS); and one (1) Assault Amphibious Vehicle, Recovery (AAVR-7A1) Reliability, Availability, Maintainability/Rebuilt to Standard (RAM/RS). Also included are Enhanced Armor Applique Kits (EAAK), spare and repair parts, tools and test equipment, technical data and publications, training and training material, U.S. Government and contractor technical and logistics support services, and other related elements of logistics and program support. The total estimated program cost is $107 million.

This proposed sale will support the foreign policy and national security of the United States by improving the security of a NATO ally which is an important force for political stability and economic progress in Europe. It is vital to the U.S. national interest to assist Spain in developing and maintaining a strong and ready self-defense capability.

The proposed addition of these eleven (11) vehicles to Spain’s fleet will afford more flexibility and maintain Spain’s expeditionary capability to counter regional threats and continue to enhance stability in the region. Spain currently operates 19 Assault Amphibious Vehicles (AAVs) and is proficient at using them to their fullest capability. Spain will have no difficulty absorbing these additional vehicles.

The proposed sale of this equipment will not alter the basic military balance in the region.

The principal contractor will be BAE Systems, York, Pennsylvania, and Anniston, Alabama. There are no known offset agreements proposed in connection with this potential sale.

Implementation of this proposed sale will not require the assignment of any additional U.S. Government or contractor representative in Spain.

http://defence-blog.com

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https://www.dvidshub.net/video/653538/i ... ll-package

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New changes will see Marine grunts humping farther distances while testing combat effectiveness
By: Shawn Snow

In September 2018, the Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. Robert B. Neller directed that various Marine Corps units incorporate forced marches into combat readiness evaluations.

That directive has resulted in new changes to training and readiness manuals that will see grunts moving farther distances while also testing combat effectiveness after a long hike carrying considerable weight.




According to an administrative message posted Friday, the Corps is updating the “forced march” portion of the training and readiness manuals for grunts and reconnaissance units.

The changes now require these Marines to be able to move 32 km carrying an assault load of roughly 31kg in eight hours.

“The forced march will culminate and transition directly into an evaluated tactical exercise to test the unit’s ability to execute an extended foot movement under load and remain combat effective,” the MARADMIN reads.

According to the Marine Corps order covering the Marine Corps Combat Readiness Evaluation, or MCCRE, the evaluated tactical event can be “offensive or defensive exercise, NBC [nuclear, biological, chemical] exercise, patrolling exercise” or an event related to a unit’s mission essential tasks. That order was signed in Feb. 2019.

The forced marches are intended to be part of and integrated with a unit’s MCCRE, which tests a unit’s ability to carry out core tasks. Marine units are required to conduct a MCCRE every two years or once during a deployment cycle.

The change impacts infantry regiments, infantry battalions, reconnaissance battalions and Force Reconnaissance Companies, according to the MARADMIN.

Prior to the changes, the infantry training and readiness manual required grunts to move 20 km carrying an approach march load of 40 kg in five hours.

The new change will see a lighter load, but an extended distance for the forced march requirement and an added tactical exercise.

But it’s not just grunts that will see changes to forced hikes.

Other ground combat elements to include artillery regiments, assault amphibian battalions, combat engineer battalions, light armored reconnaissance battalions, tank battalions, air and naval gunfire liaison companies and low altitude air defense battalions will now be required to complete forced timed marches.

These Marines will need to be able to move 15 km in four hours carrying a fighting load of 55 pounds, “with 95 percent of the force remaining mission capable,” according to the MARADMIN.

Many of these units like artillery, tanks, engineers and AAV Marines already had requirements for a four-hour 15 km movement in fighting load, according to their individual training and readiness manuals.

The infantry training and readiness manual breaks down hike loads into four categories: assault load, fighting load, approach march load and sustainment load.

The assault load is roughly 31kg and includes gear needed to carry out an assault.

The fighting load is roughly 25 kg and includes combat gear necessary for the immediate mission at hand.

The approach march load is just more than 40 kg and includes gear necessary for extended operations when resupply is still available.

The sustainment load is nearly 68 kg but is intended to supply a Marine from their pack when resupply is not available. The massive weight limits mobility and distances a Marine can march.

While the Corps is extending hike distances for some infantry Marines, it’s also working on reducing the load burden on grunts. The Corps is about to field lighter .50-cal polymer ammunition and is seeking lighter body armor.

Marine Corps Training and Education Command signed off on the new training and readiness manual changes in November 2018.

https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/y ... rce=clavis

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Future force in crisis? How Marine shortages threaten the Corps’ high-tech war plans
By: Shawn Snow
May 21

In a rapid push to check the rising military capabilities of Russia and China, the Marine Corps has stretched its budget on a slew of costly high-tech aircraft like the F-35B and new amphibious combat vehicles.

While much of the new gear and experimental fighting concepts are rapidly coming to fruition for what the top Marine has dubbed the “Force 2025” initiative, the Corps is struggling to place Marines in high-end positions to man the force.

According to data obtained by Marine Corps Times, serious manpower gaps appear to be impacting fields like cyber, intelligence, drone operators, ground combat leadership and F-35B pilots — occupations Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. Robert B. Neller often has highlighted as key to building the future fighting force.

High-tech stealth F-35B pilots are only manned at 33 percent, according to 2019 data. Some cyber fields are as low as 17 percent. Drone officers are manned at only 53 percent. Counterintelligence operators are at 67 ­percent, and some signals intelligence fields are manned at 69 percent.

The Corps is also in a race to plus up its low altitude air defense, or LAAD, Marines as it faces increasing air threats. In 2005, the Marine Corps eliminated 4th LAAD Battalion, and in 2007 it eliminated 1st Stinger Battery. Now the Corps is seeking an increase of 214 LAAD counter-drone Marines through fiscal year 2021 and 2022, according to documents obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request.

Other fields appear grossly overmanned: Ground ­intelligence officers and signals intelligence officers are manned at more than 140 percent. And enlisted drone operators are hitting 138 percent manning.

The data obtained by Marine Corps Times via a Freedom of Information Act request is current as of February.

The manpower crunch and overpaced demand for ­high-end fields may create new opportunities for Marines in the form of retention bonuses and a slew of new occupations for Marines to progress into, as the Corps ratchets up efforts to meet the demands of a world amid great power competition.

But the Corps’ push to build the future force may also ­result in shrinking it to reinvest in what incoming ­Commandant Gen. David Berger wrote in prepared remarks to senators during his April 30 confirmation hearing as “constrained resources.” It’s an issue Berger noted as one of his “most significant challenges” as he modernizes the Marine Corps.

The Corps says these manning numbers only provided a limited snapshot of a more complex manning ­calculus, which involves juggling school seat requirements, ­building new occupations and getting Marines through career progression courses.

For schools that don’t belong to the Marine Corps, like the 7315 unmanned aircraft system or UAS officer field, seat requirements have to be registered at times two years in advance, according to Brian ­Gahagan, deputy branch head for Manpower Management Integration Branch.

Gahagan says the surface numbers are “not an accurate depiction” and that some numbers will look “skewed.” It is a multiyear build, he said.

“As new modernizing or divesting [occupational fields] mature through the process many will reflect numerically low staffing levels that, to someone outside the manpower profession, paint an ­unrealistic perspective of some primary MOSs,” Manpower and Reserve Affairs told Marine Corps Times in an emailed statement.

“It may take several years to meet the accession and training levels to fully meet the requirements and build of Marine Corps Force 2025,” Manpower and Reserve Affairs said.

Still, the challenges for the Corps to meet the demands of a dynamic world and rapidly rising ­adversaries may come with considerable sacrifices.

“We will need to conduct a deliberate redesign of the force to meet the needs of the future operating environment,” Berger said in remarks to senators.

Neller’s decision to cut the rifle squads to 12 Marines may be a glimpse of manpower changes the Corps will have to make to plus-up billets in high demand fields and to cut costs to the force.

In many cases, fields that look poorly manned actually have an adequate number of people in the occupation, but those Marines simply need to attend various career progression schools within their tracks to officially obtain some leadership billets.

Still, those Marines have yet to attend ­specific ­follow-on training for leadership positions the Corps has deemed as necessary for obtaining the occupational field, despite already sitting in the billet.

Some of those fields are simply feeder MOSs, where Marines need to attend various schoolhouses to ­obtain the occupation.

As is the case with the 0202 field or Marine ­air-ground task force intelligence officers, which is only manned at 57 percent, according to data obtained by Marine Corps Times.

Capt. Will Dunst, an unrestricted officer ­promotion planner with Manpower and Reserve Affairs, says the “assignable inventory is healthy.”

The 0202 is a feeder occupation within the 02XX field that includes other intel occupations. Dunst says the 02XX occupational field is actually manned at 87 percent, but some Marines need to attend an underutilized school known as the MAGTF [Marine air-ground task force] Intelligence Officer Course, or MIOC.

It is an issue that the Corps is addressing and has slated for action, Dunst said.

High barrier for entry

A lot of the Corps’ manning issues are solved by simply pushing Marines through their feeder MOSs and getting them to schoolhouses.

But for some fields, high barriers to entry are ­preventing Marines from obtaining the occupation; and in other cases, demand for the field is simply creating pipeline logjams, real manpower concerns that can’t simply be addressed by stamping billet assignments for Marines who have not actually ­obtained the primary field.

The 0211-counterintelligence field has ­historically had manning problems associated with a ­multitude of barriers that hinder Marines entering the field.

The field is a lateral move primary occupation that requires a top secret sensitive compartmented information clearance and a high ASVAB test general technical score of 110, which Maj. Lucas Crider, end strength planner and enlisted plans for Manpower and Reserve Affairs, described as a “historically very high” barrier.

To complicate the matter, Marines wishing to enter the field were often put through overly subjective evaluations, like essay writing and interviews.

Crider says the Corps has since removed some of the more subjective requirements and standardized the screening process.

Data obtained by Marine Corps Times says the field is manned at 67 percent, but Crider says the overall inventory of counterintelligence Marines is at 82 percent and that the field has been trending ­upward for the past couple of years.

Within the aviation community, new job fields like the 7315 unmanned aerial system officer field and the 7518 F-35B occupation are outpacing the demand and available school seats.

For the drone field, the Air Force runs the ­schoolhouse, and the Corps only has a finite number of seats.

According to Dunst, the Corps is working with the Air Force to increase seats. But increasing seats also comes with opportunity costs in manpower from the fleet, as often pilots have to staff cadre schoolhouse ­positions.

For the officer drone field, the Corps is also ­looking at leveraging redesignations for pilots, who for ­whatever reason may not have completed ­pilot ­training. This could allow the Corps to recapitalize on skills the Marine may already have learned.

unst called it a “good use of taxpayer money.”

From the enlisted side of the house, the 7314 UAS field is overmanned at 138 percent. But Dunst says that growing requirements will eventually balance it.

The F-35 pilot training is running into similar problems where the demand is simply “outpacing training capacity,” Dunst said.

The Corps is pushing a number of initiatives like pilot bonuses and a program called “2P captain ­continuation” to help shore up the F-35B field.

The captain continuation program, for those Marines selected and recommended by a board, allows captains passed over twice for promotion to be offered a chance to continue.

The newly minted 1700 cyber field, ­according to data obtained by Marine Corps Times, is critically short.

The 1705 cyberspace warfare development officer is manned at only 17 percent, the 1721 cyberspace ­defensive operator is staffed at 63 percent, and the 1799 cyber operations chief field is manned at 55 percent, data show.

While the numbers look bad, the cyber field is barely a half year old and many of the fields are only in their first year of MOS production.

The requirements to get these Marines through the pipeline training have been registered, Dunst said.

For the cyber defensive operator field, the Corps just kicked off the first accession school in the second quarter of fiscal year 2019 and simply hasn’t graduated the Marines from that course, according to Dunst.

In some cases, manpower numbers are crunched because the Corps has created new schools.

In 2019, the Corps created the new 0521 psychological operations field, or psyops, which according to data is only manned at 63 percent. Officials at Manpower and Reserve Affairs say the inventory of psyops Marines is actually at 67 percent.

The field used to be an additional MOS and only recently became a primary field, but after completing a tour in psyop, those Marines would leave the field. That has caused the numbers to appear low.

While bleeding talent, Crider says the field has a “difficult school to get through.”

To make the field healthy, the Corps is trying to ­entice psyops Marines who left the field to come back. And now, once Marines laterally move to the field they can stay in the community, Crider said.

Crider said that the field is on track and should hit its authorized billet number of 49 Marines by the end of this fiscal year. There are currently 33 psyop Marines.

The Corps also has created new signals intelligence fields such as 2611 cryptologic cyberspace analyst, manned at 3 percent, and 2629 signals intelligence electronic warfare tech field, manned at 76 percent.

For the 2611 field, the schoolhouse is new and has yet to graduate anyone. And the 2629 field is a feeder occupation within the 26XX signals intel field, where Marines just need to attend follow on leadership and career progression schools.

While a lot of manning issues for the Force 2025 initiative can be solved by pushing Marines through the career progression schoolhouses, there are some serious concerns for fields like cyber, drone operators and F-35 pilots.

The Corps says it is addressing the issues, registering ­schoolhouse requirements and working with sister ­services to increase class seats, while also offering bonuses and job redesignations to help plus up the fields.

At the end of the day, the future force has several years to hit its goals.

New gear, tech, weapons, vehicles and aircraft are already hitting the fleet. And the Corps has signed off on its new expeditionary advanced base operations concept to confront a rising China in the Pacific.

The manpower to staff the new fields to put all the new toys and fighting concepts is slowly catching up.

“The NDS [national defense strategy] forces us to establish strategic priorities and make difficult choices — which will mean doing less in certain areas so we can do more in others,” Berger wrote to senators.

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Marines of Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines Regiment, with a Weaponized Multi-Utility Tactical Transport vehicle

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Congress wants a review of the Corps’ plan to distribute forces across the Indo-Pacific
By: Shawn Snow and Todd South

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are asking for a review of the U.S. military’s plans to distribute forces across the Indo-Pacific in places like Okinawa, Japan, Guam, Hawaii and Australia, among other locations.

Noting a “pressing need” to redistribute Marines from Okinawa in the Senate’s recent version of the annual defense legislation — lawmakers want an update on costs of the redistribution of forces in the region and an “assessment” of those forces’ ability to “respond to current and future contingencies."

According to the Senate’s version of the National Defense Authorization Act, details of “alternative locations for basing” in places such as Alaska, Hawaii, the U.S., Japan and Oceania, among others, should be included in any recommendations or revisions to the planned redistribution of American forces across the Indo-Pacific.

The new assessment of the U.S. military’s force posture in the Pacific follows a call for a review of a plan to relocate Marines to Guam made by outgoing-Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. Robert B. Neller during a May Senate hearing.

During that hearing, Neller expressed concerns about the availability of amphibious ships to move Marines to the fight.

Neller told lawmakers that high speed vessels could move Marines and gear around, but that option would not be adequate to move a larger force.

Marines would need strategic lift, but "you’d have to resources it and pay for it or you’d have to have ampibs come from either Japan or the U.S. mainland or you would have to contract for it,” Neller said.

In December 2018 the Corps briefed to Congress its Pacific posture and force redistribution plan known as the Defense Policy Review Initiative, or DPRI.

That DPRI brief — obtained by Marine Corps Times through a government record’s request — highlighted that “further distribution of the force exacerbates a shortfall in Navy amphibious shipping and dedicated sea surface lift capacity.”

The brief also noted that “sustainment for Guam is a significant bill which must be addressed and balanced across other DoD priorities.”

The Corps is seeking to trim its nearly 20,600 Marines stationed on Okinawa in half down to roughly 11,500.

The redistribution is part of the Corps’ effort to ameliorate tensions and return land occupied since Wolrd War II back to local Okinawans.

But the redistribution of Marines across the Indo-Pacific is also strategic.

Decentralizing Marines across the region complicates any attack by Chinese forces in the region. Moving the mass concentration of Marines off Okinawa means China can no longer concentrate ballistic missile attacks in one region.

According to the DPRI brief, the Corps wants to relocate about 1,300 Marines to Australia, 4,100 to Guam and about 2,700 Marines to Hawaii.

The Corps plans to have a total force of about 5,000 Marines on Guam by 2028. The first Marines are expected to start arriving by 2024.

The Navy and Marine Corps have already sunk considerable investments into building ranges and facilities on Guam.

According to the DPRI, nine projects have been completed, 12 construction projects are underway, another 30 projects and contracts are expected to be awarded over the next two years and an additional 50 projects are slated for future planning.

The Corps wants training ranges on Tinian, Pagan and separate islands in the Northern Marianas.

The training ranges on Pagan will provide a “premier US-controlled Pacific venue” for amphibious training, Marine Expeditionary Unit-level live fire combined arms exercises and “uniquely meets” training deficiencies identified by U.S. Pacific Command in the areas of close air support, naval gunfire and artillery direct fire, according to the DPRI.

The current Senate version of the annual defense legislation has about $226 million slated for Navy construction on Guam and the Joint Region Marianas.

The new force posture review in the Indo-Pacific region also calls for an assessment of the “adequacy of current and expected training resources at each location” and “ability to train against the full spectrum of threats from near-peer or peer threats,” the Senate version of the NDAA reads.

The review also calls for an “assessment of political support for United States force presence from host countries and local communities and populations,” the Senate version of the NDAA states.

https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/y ... o-pacific/

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The Commandant’s Planning Guidance (CPG)
38th Commandant’s strategic direction

https://www.hqmc.marines.mil/Portals/14 ... 200152-700

[FilipeREP]

Fuzileiros navais americanos, britânicos e português realizam assaltos anfíbios em Tróia, Portugal, durante o exercício conjunto Trident Juncture, da OTAN, em 5 de novembro de 2015.

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Fuzileiros navais americanos, britânicos e português realizam assaltos anfíbios em Tróia, Portugal, durante o exercício conjunto Trident Juncture, da OTAN, em 5 de novembro de 2015.

Os USMC tem toda uma unidade em Morron - Espanha, por isso todos os anos há exercícios entre as três unidades. Na verdade por vezes há vários exercícios por ano, ou em Portugal ou em Espanha.

O último:

Terminou hoje a primeira fase do Exercício bilateral Wild Crocodile 19 que envolveu Fuzileiros portugueses e Marines norte-americanos. A segunda fase decorrerá em janeiro de 2020.
Fique com as últimas imagens do exercício.

[FilipeREP]

Ótimas fotos!

[FilipeREP]

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[J.Ricardo]

Esse uniforme dos Mariners americanos não esta muito "deserto" pra atuar em Portugal?