CAMP ELLIOTT, SAN DIEGO, Calif. -- The Marines are alert and edgy, their lumbering 7-ton truck bristling with weapons as it winds its way through the dusty convoy course at Camp Elliott. The path is clear for now. Suddenly, the whole sky seems to burn, and the road is obscured in a cloud of dust, debris and the acrid smell of burning sulfur. They’ve been hit.
As 3rd Battalion, Third Marine Regiment continues its high-speed training with special effects support from Segall Studios in San Diego; they are getting a taste of the convoy operations and Security and Support Operations (or “Small Wars”) missions. These are the possible missions they will soon undertake as part of a contingency deployment.
“This training is the culmination of the SASO exercises we’ve been practicing,” said Capt. Skyler Mallicoat, commanding officer, Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment. “The scenario is that we’re going into an Afghani town and supporting voting operation there during an election.”
The mock Afghan town the Marines are operating in and around, is the brainchild of Segall Studio’s production design team and Ken Kirven, construction coordinator.
Ringed by contradictions like aircraft doing touch and go’s at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar and the occasional civilian on horseback, the “town” in question nevertheless looks, smells and feels like a remote village in the Afghan hills.
“We specialize in realism,” said Kirven, “gesturing to the adobe walls, brightly painted with Pashtun and Arabic phrases and signs, and the marketplace filled with bags of grain and trinkets for sale.
No detail is overlooked to provide Marines training here with an experience as close to being there as possible.
Kirven, who is dedicated to making a difference with his construction, was working late into the evening to complete the entire village before the field exercise began. Miraculously, the entire multiple street village was put up by a handful of his men in less than a week.
“We could be working on movies right now, but working with the Marines is far more fulfilling,” said Kirven, as he placed another retaining wall onto a hut. “You can make a movie for a target audience, or you can do something to help out the troops and give them training that will keep them alive.”
And the Marines of America’s Battalion are bent not only on staying alive, but accomplishing the mission at hand. Through the different scenarios, each platoon took different tactical approaches to entering and securing the village and keeping the peace once they were there.
“We’re watching the Marines to see how they interact with the heads of households as well as their individual tactics, techniques and procedures for dealing with the scenarios we throw at them,” said Stewart Brown, observer and controller for 3/3’s training here.
“This is not a pass/fail exercise. This is just another stop along their training and hopefully they can pick up some extra tools,” Brown continued.
According to the “3-block” theory of war fighting, Marines must be ready and capable of handling humanitarian assistance on one block of a city, peacekeeping on the next, and full-on urban fighting on the third.
“We’re trying to slow Marines down a little bit out here,” said Brown, “A lot of them come into this with a ‘third-block’ mentality. The worst thing you can do is go in, be too forceful and find nothing and then have to apologize for your actions. These Marines need to remember that an individual’s actions can send an entire village to the Taliban recruiting office.”
The Marines of 3/3 don’t plan on letting that happen. Instead, they are becoming increasingly confident they know how to properly proportion their use of force for any and all manner of situations they may face. America’s Battalion is ready for anything.