Photo Information

A Marine Raiders with Marine Special Operations Company Charlie, 1st Marine Raider Battalion, U.S. Marine Corps Forces, Special Operations Command, breach a conex box with a saw during Visit, Board, Search and Seizure training, as part of a Company Collective Exercise, Oct. 15, 2015, in San Diego, California.

Photo by Cpl. Steven Fox

Marine Raiders demonstrate competency, reliability during company collective exercise

24 Nov 2015 | Cpl. Steven Fox The Official United States Marine Corps Public Website

Marine Special Operations Company C, 1st Marine Raider Battalion, U.S. Marine Corps Forces, Special Operations Command, recently completed its three-week Company Collective Exercise held Oct. 5-21.

The company trained across California and Arizona at several different training sites, as the battalion’s training cell assessed the company in numerous functional areas. 

Marine Raiders in the battalion’s training cell implemented a new style of CCE, which ran the company through a battery of exercises and notional operations representing its projected mission sets and responsibilities while deployed to U.S. Pacific Command. The exercise featured three phases concentrating on Foreign Internal Defense, Maritime Crisis Response, and direct-action night raids, centered on clearing multiple urban structures. 

Charlie Company began training in FID on Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, Calif., for the first phase of the exercise. The Marine Raiders taught a notional partner nation force, made up of 1st Marine Raider Support Battalion Marines, basic marksmanship and tactics simulating work that the company will be expected to perform while deployed. 

Prior to the CCE, each team had trained for direct-action raids of various disciplines.

“What we haven’t done, up to this point, is work on mobility,” said the company’s Operations Chief. “So we chose this opportunity to incorporate vehicles since, I would say for the past two or three years, that knowledge is experiencing some atrophy, and we didn’t want it to disappear, so we coordinated some ground-assault force missions for the teams to complete.”

The scenarios spanned three nights, and each team had a designated night they were to raid the training compound aboard Camp Pendleton. They inserted to the raid location via Humvees, in search of an individual considered to be a high-value target, and were greeted by a hostile rebel force. 

What made this particular scenario more unique was the bilateral specification of the operation. The teams planned and conducted the raids with their partner FID force they had trained and built a rapport with during the day, explained the operations chief. 

When day turned to night, the operational focus of the FID mission shifted to more kinetic bilateral operations. For phase two, personnel moved south to San Diego, Calif., where they conducted static-line water jumps into the ocean, and a direct action hit on a floating vessel, as part of a visit, board, search and seizure exercise. The teams trained extensively for two days, in preparation for the final night of phase two. 

“Phase two was simulating the Maritime Crisis Response Force-type of mission, where they’re jumping in, getting onto an Afloat Forward Staging Base, joint planning and then hitting a vessel out in the ocean,” said the 1st MRB Training Cell Chief. “The likelihood of them doing maritime operations is high. We are part of the Task Force Maritime, and we’re also part of the Maritime Crisis Response Force, so that’s one of the tenants we have to train for.”

With its completion of the maritime mission, the company left San Diego, in route to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz., for the third phase of the CCE, which focused on direct-action night raids. The raids simulated the larger targets they would be expected to see in PACOM, and integrated full-spectrum operation planning to facilitate effectively carrying out the mission. 

“During (phase three) we put in friction, whether that’s enemy positions that weren’t accounted for in the initial intelligence analysis of the target site, or different things on the deck that they maybe haven’t encountered in the past packages,” said the T-Cell Chief. “They were very successful on the ‘X’; once they got the ball rolling, and got the cordon set up, they were very successful at conducting direct operations.” 
The teams’ rate for success was heavily reliant on their ability to work through problems they ran into at the target site. 

“Their problem solving skills are good, and that’s one of the things we look at during Assessment and Selection, and we ultimately foster that when they’re here at the battalion as well,” said the T-Cell Chief. 

“During training, we give them tools to use to fix problems, and they’re able to then go through their whole observe-orient-decide-act loop process, and then figure out what the best tool is to pull out at that moment, and they’ll usually correct it pretty quickly.”

Though each team has likely established proficiency in many of the CCE’s functional areas during their own training evolutions, the CCE often offers the teams in a company their first opportunity to cohesively work together, and gives the newly attached enablers an opportunity to become acquainted with the operational workings of the company. The T-Cell Chief sees this as being one of the most valuable aspects of the CCE. 

“The CCE is an opportunity for the company to exercise all the facets within the company, from the enablers, to the explosive ordinance disposal operators, to breaching and sniping – the CCE brings all those things together and gives everybody a workout,” said the T-Cell Chief. 

After being assessed at the CCE, the company can look at the strengths, as well as their deficiencies, and address any potential issues they may have to improve on. 

As these exercises are being assessed in accordance with likelihood of success, if applied to a real-world mission, it’s of the upmost importance the participating companies perform well to show their competence and reliability to SOCPAC.