Thread: MARINES IN GULF PREPARED FOR CRISIS TOP GENERAL IN PERSIAN GULF, REAFFIRMS COMMITMENT

MARINES IN GULF PREPARED FOR CRISIS TOP GENERAL IN PERSIAN GULF, REAFFIRMS COMMITMENT THERE

Marine commandant reminds personnel: ‘This is a dangerous world’

By Gretel C. Kovach12:01 a.m.Dec. 29, 2013

Aboard the USS Boxer — An MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor swooped over the Persian Gulf and dropped the commandant of the Marine Corps onto what military commanders like to refer to as four floating acres of diplomacy.

When the threat of force fails to avert a crisis, however, the amphibious assault ship Boxer and its force of nearly 5,000 Marines and sailors carries a battalion of infantrymen in its belly and fighter jets on deck, among other aircraft and logistics support.

Gen. James Amos flew onto the warship last week during a tour of Marine forces deployed by land and sea in the gulf, a footprint that has expanded in recent years amid the drawdown in Afghanistan and end of the war in Iraq.

For military commanders like him, proximity is the buzzword for the “new normal” of the post-Benghazi era. They hope to position personnel close enough to respond before another tragedy unfolds like the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya that killed the U.S. ambassador and three people with San Diego ties.

To that end, the Corps has committed to an enduring presence in the gulf, even as it carries out the president’s rebalance, or pivot, toward the Asia-Pacific region, Marine commanders said.

The war in Afghanistan may be ending next year, but “what is not going to stop is all this other stuff going on around the world,” Amos told the Boxer personnel, standing on the flight deck as the ship gently pitched on the sea. “Whether it be Sudan, a potential crisis up in Iran, instability in Pakistan … this is a dangerous world.”

For the president and secretary of defense, “We are their stopgap. We are the ones who are the insurance policy for America,” Amos said.

Buildup

The U.S. Navy Fifth Fleet presence in Bahrain dates back more than 60 years. In 2009, the Marine Corps moved a temporary headquarters onto the gulf island. In summer 2012, the foothold grew as Marine Corps Forces Central Command (Forward) was established with a one-star general posted full time at Naval Support Activity Bahrain.

That fall, a Marine aircraft group composed of mostly San Diego-based personnel from the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing also deployed to the region. The current rotation deployed there, MAG 50, and its fleet of F/A-18 Hornet fighter jets, KC-130 Hercules cargo and refueling planes, and EA-6B Prowlers flies combat missions supporting the war in Afghanistan and trains alongside allies throughout the Middle East and Africa.

Today about 1,500 Marines are deployed to the gulf as well as an additional 2,200 passing through aboard the Boxer group.

“The ability to respond to crisis is often a physics problem. And one of the things about being here is that you’re here. Our deployment time is shortened by being present, forward,” said Brig. Gen. Gregg Olson, commanding general of the Marine force headquartered in Bahrain.

“Having some Marines forward … we’re here in the same time zone as the potential crisis.”

Tour

Amos, Sgt. Maj. Michael Barrett and Medal of Honor recipient Dakota Meyer also brought their “poor man’s USO show” to visit trainers of the United Arab Emirates presidential guard, security guards protecting the U.S. Embassy in Bahrain, and a fighter jet squadron deployed aboard the aircraft carrier Harry Truman.

The U.S. Embassy in Bahrain is among many in the region whose Marine security guard detachment grew after the Benghazi attack. An additional 1,000 Marines were called up to guard embassies around the world, even as the overall size of the Marine Corps is shrinking from about 202,000 to 175,000.

Although the Bahraini government is a strong U.S. ally, Cpl. Jeremy Shupe, a Marine security guard assigned to the embassy there, said the detachment operates as if an attack is imminent.

“They always try to keep us on our toes. It could happen at any moment. There have been attacks on embassies that no one thought would be attacked … so we should always be prepared,” said Shupe, who served at Miramar before deploying to Bahrain.

Amos visited the Truman and its embarked Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 312, a unit he commanded 22 years ago, while docked on a liberty call at Bahrain halfway through the deployment. The carrier and its 70 aircraft have been flying about 100 launches daily, including missions in support of the war in Afghanistan.

On the drive to Isa Airbase, located on a sand-bitten and barren southern swath of the island that has hosted Marines on and off since the first Persian Gulf War, Amos’ motorcade passed black smoke from a tire-burning protest.

Although their day-to-day work is essentially a goodwill mission, Amos reminded Miramar Marines working at Isa Airbase to remain alert. “Look at what is going on around the world. If you’re reading the paper, you have a sense of what is happening in the gulf region and you understand why you are here,” he said, standing in a hangar paved with fold-up rubber matting.

You might think, “I’m not in the fight, the fight’s across in Afghanistan or down in Sudan. But the fight could very well come here or you could be an integral part of it, and it could happen tonight. That’s why you’re here … as a hedge against uncertainty.”

Boxer

The Boxer Amphibious Ready Group, which includes Camp Pendleton’s 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit and the amphibious ships Harpers Ferry and New Orleans, deployed from San Diego in late August. It was the first West Coast Marine unit to sail with the Osprey hybrid aircraft that flies like a plane and lands like a helicopter.

Amos flew aboard as the Boxer steamed past oil rigs in the turquoise waters separating Saudi Arabia and Iran. The ship serves as an untethered command center for a broad range of engagements honing military and political alliances throughout the Middle East and into Africa.

Their missions have included everything from ship-to-shore operations alongside Emirati marines to disrupting the movement of weapons meant for terrorist groups and educating civilians in the Horn of Africa on avoiding land mines.

An already-volatile region of the world plagued by Islamist radicalism has been newly unsettled of late in the wake of the Arab Spring, sectarian tensions stoked by the Syrian civil war, Iranian nuclear aspirations, violence over the horizon in South Sudan, and political tensions over arms deals between the United States and gulf allies.
In this restive region, security forces deployed at sea serve as a quick-reaction force for many embassies at once, while providing a lower profile than land-based troops, said Col. Christopher Taylor, commanding officer of the 13th MEU.

Using amphibious forces, “if you’re Department of State, then you don’t look like an occupation force. If I have HESCO barriers up and machine guns pointing, nobody is going to want to come talk to me. We can be off the coast in places where they want to lower signature and still offer them some insurance,” Taylor said.

Stationing fighter jets or infantry on land is especially problematic in the Middle East, a region where anti-Americanism runs strong among some citizens whose governments are allied with the United States.

Amphibious assault ships provide a seaborne U.S. sovereign solution to that problem, Marine and Navy commanders said.

“We don’t have to ask permission for overflight for a certain country.

We can go and do power projection right off the coast in any particular hot spot in the world, and that’s the value of the Navy-Marine Corps team,” said Navy Capt. John Gumbleton, commanding officer of the Boxer.

“You are standing on the United States of America,” Taylor said.

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