Bold Alligator 2012 (BA12), scheduled for Jan. 30 through Feb. 12, 2012, will be the largest amphibious exercise conducted by the Navy and Marine Corps in at least the last ten years.
The over-riding intent of this large-scale effort is to revitalize Navy & Marine Corps amphibious tactics, technique and procedures and reinvigorate its culture of conducting combined operations from the sea at the the Marine Expeditionary Brigade(MEB)/Expeditionary Strike Group (ESG)-level.
That’s not to diminish the fact that we continually train and deploy Marine Expeditionary Units aboard Amphibious Ready Groups. Indeed, despite the fact that large numbers of Marines have been committed to the fight in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last decade, our Navy-Marine team has been regularly conducting amphibious operations around the world. From providing aid to flood-ravaged Pakistan, to strike operations and a successful TRAP in Libya, ARG-MEUs continue to operate from the sea, across the range of military operations, all over the world.
So why has there been so much recent commentary about the viability of large-scale amphibious operations? I sense that it’s because when many speak of amphibious operations, they think of “storming the beach” like Marines did at Iwo Jima. And, while landing on an island against a heavily-entrenched force of 22,000 is certainly an amphibious operation — it’s very much at the high end of the spectrum, and represents something less than 1/1000th of the cumulative amphibious operations U.S. Naval forces have conducted over the past century.
Of course, because of the iconic images from World War II, and the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps’ cultural connection to that war’s battles in the Central Pacific, discussion of amphibious operations always conjure images of Saipan, Peleliu, Tarawa … all brutal battles where we lost thousands of Marines, Sailors and Coast Guardsmen. While we don’t want to imagine our Nation ever being thrust into such a position again, this context should not be used as the exclusive framework in which to discuss the need for amphibious forces capable of forcible entry.
In today’s world, the Navy-Marine Corps team must remain capable of gaining access to an operational area and projecting and sustaining a sizable landing force ashore. We have the legislated responsibilities to be able to conduct these operations, and we certainly must be ready to do so beyond the ARG-MEU level where we routinely operate today.
At its core, BA12 is a training exercise to ensure that the units presently assigned to U.S. Fleet Forces Command and Marine Corps Forces Command have the capability to plan and execute these operations — how we do this with the forces we have today. As Commander, U.S. Fleet Forces, ADM Harvey has observed, “Revitalizing our amphibious competencies does not mean conducting the operation as we did in 1942, 1950, 1990, or even 2000, but how we should do it now …”
With that in mind, I commend to you the reading identified here. Use it as a resource to build your understanding of amphibious operations history, doctrine, and tactics — then grow it. This is what we are about, and what our Nation needs us to be.