Compass Points - Get Real
Genuine training for genuine skills.
Compass Points - Get Real
Genuine training for genuine skills.
July 3, 2025
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There is no way to cyber a river. A river is wet, and often deep and impassable. To cross a river requires physical work and real world solutions. To get hands-on experience in river crossing requires getting away from the virtual world of computers and into the wet and mud of the real world.
It is the same with close quarter combat. Long before the US Marine Corps first gave the command, "Fix bayonets!" Marines have been taught how to fight face to face and nose to nose. Today, the Marine Corps' Martial Arts & Fitness Center of Excellence (MAFCE) helps Marines learn how to fight face to face. What is the difference between Marine Corps martial arts and one of the most popular video games of all time, Mortal Kombat 9? Marine Corps martial arts involves genuine fighting. Mortal Kombat 9 is only pretend; it is only a video game.
For decades the Marine Corps has been the world's premier crisis response force. To maintain crisis response capabilities requires, not only the right units and equipment, but also constant study and constant training.
Marines are facing two exercises on opposite sides of the globe. One exercise is underway now, Atlantic Alliance 2025. The other exercise, Large Scale Exercise 2025, is about to begin, The two exercises are very different. One exercise is on the ground, on the beach, and in the mud. The other exercise is merely virtual.
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On a hot morning in late June, U.S. and Dutch landing craft sped toward a hostile shoreline and dropped their bow ramps, sending Joint Light Tactical Vehicles rumbling into the surf and Marines leaping into the shallow seawater and storming up the beach in an amphibious assault.On this day, no enemies were lying in wait for the assault force, which spread out into the seaside dunes of Onslow County Beach at Camp Lejeune, NC, securing the area and establishing expeditionary advanced bases in a fictitious scenario conducted as part of the Atlantic Alliance 25 exercise. With heightened tensions in the Middle East, Eastern Europe and the Indo-Pacific, this amphibious landing rehearsal provided Marines with a relatively rare opportunity to embark on amphibious warships and practice a full-scale, ship-to-shore landing alongside international allies, working through maneuvers and logistics critical to a real amphibious assault.
-- Inside Defense
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The Marine MAGTF is powerful and flexible with a comprehensive and unequaled mission set. To attain proficiency in MAGTF operations requires repetition, rehearsal, and practice - real world practice. In exercise Atlantic Alliance 25 Marines are getting valuable real world MAGTF training.
On the other hand, the upcoming exercise Large Scale Exercise (LSE) 2025 is not the type of exercise that builds calluses, muscles, and real world experience. Instead, LSE 202 is only a virtual exercise.
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The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps are planning for execution later this month for Large-Scale Exercise (LSE) 2025, the third of such exercises since 2021. The LSE will largely be conducted through Live Virtual Construct (LVC) environment but will encompass units from around the world, including—for the first time—allies and partner nations. LSE 2025, scheduled to begin on August 30, will be conducted “nearly fully virtual” over 22 time zones, said Rear Admiral Kenneth Blackmon, vice commander, U.S. Fleet Forces Command, during a briefing to reporters on the exercise, pointing out that LVC allows for safer exercises and conserves resources.
-- Seapower
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In the Atlantic, a real world exercise. In the Pacific. a virtual exercise. Each type of exerciser has its uses. There is a time for both. When the question is the Marine Corps' controversial plan to establish a string of sensor and missile units off the coast of China, however, the time for real world exercise is necessarily now. Too many theoretical capabilities of the sensor units have never been demonstrated, as they need to be, repeatedly in exercise after exercise. The simple movement of the NMESIS launcher unit needs to be demonstrated in the real world over and over again. The Marine Corps needs to demonstrate the NMESIS relocating under its own power from location to location on the same island. Then, demonstrate the NMESIS launcher being transported again and again from island to island.
Only through repeated exercises can Marines build the actual capability to set up all the equipment, including the launchers and radars, tear it all down, move it to a new location, and set it up again. Many critical tasks have not been repeatedly demonstrated in exercise after exercise - as they need to be. It is unclear whether some crucial tasks have ever been demonstrated even once.
For example, when is the Marine Corps going to demonstrate in a real world exercise how to hide the constant signal from the AN/TPS-80 Ground/Air Task Oriented Radar? The G/ATOR radar is an active radar always sending out an bright signal easy for any enemy to find and target. The signal from the G/ATOR radar is like the Krispy Kreme's "Hot Now" light coming on - a crowd will gather.
There is nothing wrong with a virtual military exercise. Nothing wrong with testing the interoperability of joint and combined communications. To develop real capabilities on the ground, however, requires real world exercises.
Nothing puts more fear into foes, or puts more faith into friends than when the US demonstrates military proficiently over and over again, in large scale, real world exercises.
There is no way to cyber a river. A river is real, wet, and often deep and impassable. To cross a river requires physical work and real world solutions. If the Marine Corps wants to add sensor and missile capabilities to the global combined arms MAGTF, it will take more than virtual exercises, it will take constant, strenuous, real world exercises and rehearsals. There is no other way.
Compass Points salutes all the Marines working in exercises and operations around the world to restore and enhance the Marine Corps 9-1-1 units, equipment, and worldwide capabilities.
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Seapower - 07/01/2025
Navy, Marine Corps In Planning For Third Large-Scale Exercise
By Richard R. Burgess
https://seapowermagazine.org/navy-marine-corps-in-planning-for-third-large-scale-exercise/
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Inside Defense - 07/01/2025
Atlantic Alliance 25 Gives Marines Rare Opportunity To Practice Key Ship-To-Shore Operations
By Nick Wilson
Canard - - “a false report or piece of information that is intended to deceive people.”
Telling folks that Marines who are forward deployed aboard amphibious ships and aircraft carriers for routine operations, engaged in typical joint/combined training and exercises, and other normal theater security cooperation event activities are something new and different is a good example of a canard.
Marines have been training and operating with joint forces and coalition partners for years. It’s business as usual. And it’s also extremely important work and should be applauded for it builds relationships, facilitates interoperability, ensures access, and promotes U.S. interests. It’s a good thing and Marines typically do it better than anyone else.
But it’s a stretch to tout every TSC event, training exercise, deployment, and routine peacetime operation as validation of EABO, FD, and SIF. Folks who have served in the military know the difference. Others may not and can be fooled (canard).
We have been almost 6 years into FD. If it’s a good concept, deploy a fully equipped and manned SIF to an expeditionary location. Engage and sink derelict ships with anti-ship missiles at distances that matter. Position, reposition, and logistically support the force with LSMs in a simulated contested environment.
Until then, let’s go back to describing routine training, exercises, deployments, and TSC events as what they are and what they are intended to accomplish.
Part of the deceit involved in FD-2030 has been executed by the public affairs and media representations of “demonstrating a capability” “conducting an exercise” without specificity as was once the norm. Simulations and command post exercises or communications exercises used to be clearly advertised as such and distinguished from true field exercises just as simulations and live fire differ.
All have their purpose when portrayed honestly. The Marine Corps has purposely muddied the waters in that regard to make it seem that some capabilities exist when they do not. Firing blanks does not put holes in targets.