Tag: United States Marine Corps

U.S. Military Returns to the Jungle, Training for Future Threats

Media Library

One by one, the American soldiers slid down a muddy hillside to a river deep in the Hawaiian jungle. With guns on top of rucksacks, they kicked their way across, wobbling in the current, trying to stay quiet. It was a sluggish advance stinking of sweat and silt — reminiscent of Vietnam, and similar to what they might face in a potential fight with China almost anywhere in the Pacific. “It’s incumbent on us to become resident professionals,” said Col. Christopher D. Johnson, who traversed the river arm in arm…

To Prepare for a Pacific Island Fight, Marines Hide and Attack in California

Chin@Strategy

TWENTYNINE PALMS, Calif. — Sitting around a plastic folding table in a dusty tent, a half-dozen officers of the Hawaii-based 3rd Marine Littoral Regiment took a very short break from days of fighting on little to no sleep. The war, they said, was going well. The unit, newly created and innovative in nature, was facing its toughest test yet — a 10-day mock battle across Southern California, where a series of military bases played the role of an island chain. Though outnumbered by the regiment it was fighting, the team…