Navy crews to again train at sea with Marines

[unhappycamper]

Marines and sailors assigned to the amphibious assault ship Kearsarge man the rails as they pull into port in Palma, Spain, in 2005. Under a new agreement between Navy and Marine leaders, more Marines will be going to sea when ships get underway for local unit-level training.


Navy crews to again train at sea with Marines
By Gidget Fuentes - Staff writer
Posted : Monday Dec 10, 2007 6:27:53 EST

SAN DIEGO — More Marines are going to sea when ships get underway for local unit-level training, under a new agreement between top Navy and Marine commanders here.

It’s a goal that Vice Adm. Samuel Locklear, the 3rd Fleet commander, and Lt. Gen. Samuel Helland, who commands I Marine Expeditionary Force, have set for what they call “collaborative shipboard familiarization training.”

Under a memorandum of agreement, officials want to maximize cooperation between sailors and Marines through shipboard familiarization training, publicly show the capabilities of the amphibious fleet/Marine expeditionary force war-fighting team, and continue the Marine Corps’ maritime heritage — a tradition that includes its primary mission of combat operations “from the sea.”

It’s not a new concept: Marine security detachments deployed on carriers until a decade ago, and leathernecks routinely went to sea for short training periods and some experimentation in the early 1990s. But six years of deployments and combat rotations, largely to Iraq, have kept Marines — those who aren’t part of Marine expeditionary units or carrier-based squadrons — on land.

“A lot of these guys have never seen a ship ... after three or four deployments” to Iraq, said Lt. Cmdr. Paul Sumagaysay, the Navy liaison to I MEF at Camp Pendleton, Calif. Getting them to sea “is really about supporting the blue-green team here on the West Coast.”


Rest of article at: http://www.navytimes.com/news/2007/12/navy_shipmarines_071210w/

[izzie]

1. I did not know they had stopped doing this.

I am sure the navy men will not let them leave their coffee cups sitting around. Sorry I was married to a navy guy who also was a marine hospital man and it was an old joke that popped into my mind. It is hard to get old. Take my word for it. Odd things keep jumping into your mind you were sure were gone.