Tag: Marines

This type of arrangement is hardly unprecedented, as Delta Force also worked in the shadows during the search for, and eventual killing of, Pablo Escobar in Colombia. They’ve also served in advisory capacities during hostage-rescue missions in places as diverse as Sudan and Peru.

9/11 has been called this generation’s Pearl Harbor, and I agree, but the cohesion that the attacks in New York, Washington D.C., and Pennsylvania generated was short-lived.

Secretary of Defense Ash Carter has announced that all combat roles in the US military will now be opened to women.  How this will be implemented, despite widespread objections by the Marine Corps and Special Operations, remains to be seen.  Waving a magic wand and announcing that women will now be able to join the […]

This is a great video if you like watching ridiculous amounts of lead getting thrown around! The video takes place over Yodaville, a mock town/village near Yuma, AZ. This brief snippet is part of a larger exercise called WTI or Weapons and Tactics Instructor Course, which Curt Jans covered in a fantastic series of articles […]

An eager crowd poured out of side doors of the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center, straining to catch a glimpse of history as one of the last USMC CH-46 Sea Knights touched down for the final time. Hundreds of iPhones were raised in the air as the onlookers offered their own salute to […]

This week we look at a pair of General Electric F404 engines in afterburner in a VMFA(AW)-224 F/A-18D, brought to you courtesy of the USMC.

For any aviator, military or civilian, one of the most dangerous – or shall we say, incident prone – phases of flight is the approach and landing phase. Even though aircraft spend little time in this regime compared to cruising at altitude, it accounts for a large percentage of aircraft accidents or incidents. It’s rightfully named […]

Lt. Col. Earl Hancock “Pete” Ellis is considered by many to be the “First Reconnaissance Marine,” due to his daring escapade in the Pacific in 1921, over two decades before what was to become 1st Recon Battalion was even formed.  A military genius and a careful planner, he was responsible for much of the war […]

Late Monday evening, while conducting a nighttime live-fire training exercise, several U.S. Marines were killed and injured when a 60mm mortar round detonated in or around the tube. (The caliber has not yet been confirmed but the Marine Corps utilizes 60, 81 and 120mm mortar systems.) The incident took place in the live-fire training area […]

There have been some questions lately as to what exactly the difference is between Force Recon and MARSOC.  Aside from the fact that Special Operations Marines now have their own MOS, a lot of it comes down to recent history. In 2003, MCSOCOM Detachment One was stood up, commanded by a former commanding officer of […]

In the early days of Marine involvement in Vietnam, it quickly became apparent that doctrines drawn from fighting the Japanese and the North Koreans were insufficient for fighting the Vietcong. The Japanese, North Koreans, and Chinese had used defined front lines, something the VC explicitly did not. Stopping small, mobile units of guerrillas with conventional […]

Your life at Recon Battalion is basically broken down into phases. This, of course, is once you’re an operational member of a team. And, with the current level of combat deployments, this “phase” system is not always in place. Of course, when guys aren’t sweating it out training for war, there’s plenty of time off. […]