as well as fresh-faced “boot” Marines, undertook a vigorous long-term training package to fully ready themselves for combat in the mountains of the three provinces, including drills at their home base and a live-fire exercise at the Puhakuloa Training Area on Hawaii’s Big Island. Their predeployment workup would culminate, however, at two bases in California, the Marine Air Ground Combat Center at Twentynine Palms and a base that would prove critical for acclimatizing ⅔’s Marines to the rigors of mountain combat, the Marine Corps Mountain Warfare Training Center, located in a remote nook of California’s eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains with an adjunct training area in the mountains outside of Hawthorne, Nevada.
Marines often zealously proclaim that they “take the fight to the enemy” like no other military service branch—of any country. Capable of sending self-sufficient combat units to any location on the globe, the U.S. Marine Corps codified the very essence of their expeditionary warfare tactics into a doctrinal approach known to all Marines by five letters: MAGTF —an acronym for Marine Air-Ground Task Force, the rubric defining the modern USMC war-fighting construct that integrates all of their elements of combat power—from aircraft, to heavy artillery, to mortars, to logistical support, to tanks, everything —around Marine infantry.
Explained simply, a MAGTF (pronounced Mag-Taff) defines how Marines fight in their “organic” state: synergistically “force-multiplied” by Marine aviators above (usually very close above), heavy artillery batteries in the rear, tanks flanking them, and a host of other elements in direct support, a battalion—or larger unit—of infantry Marines can thunder onto an enemy position with devastating power. The physical embodiments of the MAGTF concept come in three primary forms, each based on infantry unit size: the Marine Expeditionary Unit, or MEU; the Marine Expeditionary Brigade, or MEB; and the MEF, the Marine Expeditionary Force. The largest of the three, the MEF typically has at least a division—and sometimes more—of Marines composing the infantry component. The MEB has as its infantry core a regiment (three battalions) of Marines, and the MEU is built around a single battalion. MAGTFs, each of which is made of four elements, a Command Element, a Logistics Combat Element, an Aviation Combat Element, and of course, the Ground Combat Element (the grunts themselves) can, however, be stood up in other sizes, too, for a variety of purposes.
The utilitarian elegance and explosive potency of a MAGTF derives from the smooth integration of all its components as well as its straightforward leadership structure—one commander runs the entire show. Military theorists speak of a variety of tenets vital to waging a successful military campaign, and the two most important about which they speak, write, and ponder are intimately related to each other: unity of effort and unity of command. When the commander of a Marine Expeditionary Unit (a full colonel), says “go,” everyone “rogers up” and does just that: they go —the grunts, the heavy lift helicopters, the TACAIR and rotary-wing close-air-support components—everyone; the Marines of an MEU (or any other MAFTF) work together as a well-oiled and devastatingly effective machine, all unified in mission orientation and goals, and each resolute in his specific task, bonded throughout by their infantry-centric, ethos-driven mind-set. Dissent, unsolicited or irrelevant input, and compromise simply don’t exist in the Marine Corps command structure, and while a commander works closely with and seeks the ideas of his senior leadership during the planning phases of an operation, upon execution, the Marines of the task force act in symphonic harmony under the sole directorship of the boss.
As the Marines of ⅔ pushed through the weeks of training at Twentynine Palms and their Afghan deployment loomed ever closer on
Marines often zealously proclaim that they “take the fight to the enemy” like no other military service branch—of any country. Capable of sending self-sufficient combat units to any location on the globe, the U.S. Marine Corps codified the very essence of their expeditionary warfare tactics into a doctrinal approach known to all Marines by five letters: MAGTF —an acronym for Marine Air-Ground Task Force, the rubric defining the modern USMC war-fighting construct that integrates all of their elements of combat power—from aircraft, to heavy artillery, to mortars, to logistical support, to tanks, everything —around Marine infantry.
Explained simply, a MAGTF (pronounced Mag-Taff) defines how Marines fight in their “organic” state: synergistically “force-multiplied” by Marine aviators above (usually very close above), heavy artillery batteries in the rear, tanks flanking them, and a host of other elements in direct support, a battalion—or larger unit—of infantry Marines can thunder onto an enemy position with devastating power. The physical embodiments of the MAGTF concept come in three primary forms, each based on infantry unit size: the Marine Expeditionary Unit, or MEU; the Marine Expeditionary Brigade, or MEB; and the MEF, the Marine Expeditionary Force. The largest of the three, the MEF typically has at least a division—and sometimes more—of Marines composing the infantry component. The MEB has as its infantry core a regiment (three battalions) of Marines, and the MEU is built around a single battalion. MAGTFs, each of which is made of four elements, a Command Element, a Logistics Combat Element, an Aviation Combat Element, and of course, the Ground Combat Element (the grunts themselves) can, however, be stood up in other sizes, too, for a variety of purposes.
The utilitarian elegance and explosive potency of a MAGTF derives from the smooth integration of all its components as well as its straightforward leadership structure—one commander runs the entire show. Military theorists speak of a variety of tenets vital to waging a successful military campaign, and the two most important about which they speak, write, and ponder are intimately related to each other: unity of effort and unity of command. When the commander of a Marine Expeditionary Unit (a full colonel), says “go,” everyone “rogers up” and does just that: they go —the grunts, the heavy lift helicopters, the TACAIR and rotary-wing close-air-support components—everyone; the Marines of an MEU (or any other MAFTF) work together as a well-oiled and devastatingly effective machine, all unified in mission orientation and goals, and each resolute in his specific task, bonded throughout by their infantry-centric, ethos-driven mind-set. Dissent, unsolicited or irrelevant input, and compromise simply don’t exist in the Marine Corps command structure, and while a commander works closely with and seeks the ideas of his senior leadership during the planning phases of an operation, upon execution, the Marines of the task force act in symphonic harmony under the sole directorship of the boss.
As the Marines of ⅔ pushed through the weeks of training at Twentynine Palms and their Afghan deployment loomed ever closer on
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