Photo Information

Marines with Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, board an MV-22 Osprey after recovering a downed pilot during a tactical recovery of aircraft personnel mission as part of Integrated Training Exercise 1-16 at Marine Air Ground Combat Center, Twentynine Palms, Calif., Nov. 5, 2015. Marines with Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, are participating in a wide variety of exercises throughout ITX to prepare for their upcoming deployment with Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force Crisis Response-Africa.

Photo by Sgt. Tia Nagle

1/8 Marines participate in tactical recovery of aircraft, personnel during ITX 1-16

9 Nov 2015 | Sgt. Tia Nagle The Official United States Marine Corps Public Website

Marines with Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment executed a tactical recovery of aircraft and personnel scenario as part of Integrated Training Exercise 1-16 at Marine Air Ground Combat Center, Twentynine Palms, California, Nov. 5, 2015.

“The purpose of this exercise is to get some repetitions practicing for a tactical recovery of aircraft and personnel,” said 1st Lt. Micheal Boyle, team commander of 1st Platoon, Bravo Company, 1/8. “[TRAP] is something that we’ll be covering down on for this next deployment and it’s something we could foreseeably be executing in the real world.”

The platoon split up into three teams in order to recover the aircraft personnel, a landing zone element, recovery element and site security element. The landing zone element will be the first team off the aircraft and responsible for securing the landing zone. The recovery element is made up of a search team responsible for locating the aircraft personnel. The site security element will move forward with the search team to provide additional security during the recovery efforts.

“Once we get the receipt of mission that there is a down pilot or aircraft that we need to recover, we’ll get the boys briefed up and get on the bird,” said Boyle. “We’ll land in the vicinity of the isolated personnel. We will authenticate their identity and then we’ll pick them up and bring them back here.”

Marines with 1st Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment are participating in a wide variety of exercises throughout ITX to prepare for their upcoming deployment as part of Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force Crisis Response-Africa and the Black Sea Rotational Force.

“There are a lot of different operations happening [in our area of operations] so having our company as a crisis response is kind of a backstop for anybody that’s out forward operating in aircraft or on the ground,” said Boyle. “We’re there as a quick response force in case they get themselves in trouble, they know that we’ll be on the ground ready to pick them up.”