 |
| A US Navy ARG Underway |
Christopher P. Cavas
Marines train to deploy together, but often operate apart
WASHINGTON – The 2,500-person Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) is the basic formation of regularly-deploying US Marine Corps units, typically embarked aboard a three-ship US Navy amphibious ready group (ARG) that deploys for six months or more at a time. But the various units that make up the MEU are often called on to carry out missions hundreds of miles apart, even thousands of miles. It’s not unusual that the MEU and ARG, which together train before the deployment to operate as a single unit, split up once in theater to the point where the three ships might not even see each other for months.
So does it make sense to continue that MEU/ARG construct? Gen. Robert Neller, commandant of the Corps, says yes.
“The only potentially survivable, valid forceable-entry capability you have is the three-ship ARG,” Neller said Tuesday. “It’s true, they train together to operate as one, but they also train to operate distributed, or separated,” he said in response to a question from Defense News.
“Right now we’ve got more mission, more task, than capability. So we end up being in multiple places supporting multiple [combatant commanders] at one time,” he told a Washington audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Neller noted that single amphibious ships carrying Marines sometimes deploy to training exercises such as CARAT in the western Pacific and UNITAS in Latin America. He did not, however, point to any operational single-ship deployers.
The disaggregated MEU/ARG has become almost a routine situation once the units get in theater, especially since the mid-1990s. The Navy – with heavy input from the Marine Corps – significantly enhanced the design of a then-new class of amphibious ship, the San Antonio LPD 17-class of amphibious transport dock, to be able to operate independently of the ARG for long periods. Nine LPD 17s are currently in service, with more on the way.
Read the full story at DefenseNews