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Sea-based artillery doctrine tested at RIMPAC

Marines tested new tactics that could define doctrine for the use of artillery in small-scale conflicts at this year’s Rim of the Pacific international maritime exercises in June and July.

Assault hovercraft landed at the Marine Corps’ Bellows Training Area on Oahu in July with a pair of M777 lightweight howitzer guns. A four-day experiment ensued under the watch of Marine Corps Warfighting Lab which has spent about six years reviewing the future of the Marine air-ground task force.

The exercise is just a small element of this year’s Rim of the Pacific international maritime exercises, which began June 23.

Artillery support on a distributed battlefield could prove critical to the future fight, which officials say could mean a return to more maritime operations.

Upon landing on the beach, artillery crews with 1st Battalion, 12th Marines, will quickly set up firing positions to provide round-the-clock surface-fire support to an infantry company based about 20 miles away, in the Kahuku mountains.

That infantry unit — Golf Company, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marines — is serving as the higher headquarters for the artillery crews during the four-day experiment.

Golf Company, organized with command-and-control functions similar to that of many battalion landing teams, will maneuver from ships to a simulated expeditionary battle space covering 400 square miles.

The pair of artillery guns will serve as “a key ingredient in this experiment,” said Vince Goulding, a retired colonel and director of the lab’s experiment division.

The experiment piggybacks with RIMPAC, which provides a real amphibious environment to test the ship-to-objective maneuver, or STOM, operational concept.

“What we are trying to do is redefine how naval forces conduct anti-access, over-the-horizon (operations) in a complex, distributed battlefield,” Goulding said. “STOM is predicated on finding where the gaps are in the enemy’s defense. Where the challenge is going to be is, where do you sustain that company landing team from the sea base?”

Including the grunts

Unlike previous RIMPAC exercises, which began in 1971, this year’s biennial training is beefed up with a ground combat element to support training scenarios. This year’s RIMPAC has the largest integration of ground forces in its history, as the exercise traditionally has focused on blue-water operations.

About 1,700 Marines, formed as a MAGTF with ground, combat support and aviation units, are integrating with naval and infantry units from Australia, as well as Indonesia and Malaysia.

The lab’s enhanced company operations experiment has drawn particular attention from senior Navy and Marine Corps leaders.

Vice Adm. Richard “Rick” Hunt, who commands San Diego-based 3rd Fleet and is the combined task force commander for the exercise, is pleased to see the Marines take on an expanded role this year and test some over-the-horizon operational concepts in a more distributed battlefield.

The enhanced company operations experiment “is a key part of what we are doing,” Hunt said, speaking July 6 with reporters in a teleconference briefing.

Marines “are right on the cutting edge with where we are going to go in this experiment of company operations,” said Brig. Gen. John Broadmeadow, deputy commander of U.S. Marine Corps Forces-Pacific.

Broadmeadow is the exercise’s ground forces component commander, overseeing an integrated joint force among 14 nations participating this year. His operations officer is a Royal Australian Army officer. The amphibious force is lead by a Royal Australian Navy admiral.

Broadmeadow, speaking by phone from Hawaii on July 7, said that the RIMPAC exercise will “help us refine” the way Marines fight and operate in distributed operations in the Pacific region.

“It’s complicated. I think we’ve got an awful lot to learn,” he said. “This is one step in what I think is going to be a pretty long effort pushing these capabilities. The comm piece of this is going to be a major challenge, to be able to provide the command-and-control capabilities at a company level in order to do the integrated fire support.”

“We are stressing what our current capabilities are. We are stressing … our young (NCOs) and junior commanders out there,” he said. But “we will reap big benefits in the end.”