Expect Explosions, Aircraft and Water Landings at Camp Pendleton During Steel Knight Training

Marines fortified and evacuated an embassy. Navy Corpsmen will triage mass casualties and Recon Marines will take a beach on San Clemente Island.

These fictional scenarios meant to teach real-world encounters are part of an annual 1st Marine Division training exercise known as Steel Knight now underway at Camp Pendleton. Residents of the communities near the base might hear live-fire training, including explosions and see aircraft and amphibious landings.

The two-week exercise, ending on Dec. 19, will bring together several units to form a Marine Air Ground Task Force and work as a team as they prepare for an upcoming deployment to Australia that begins in April.

"It's the first time all players are under one command," said 1st Lt. Samuel DeRobertis, a spokesperson for Marine Rotational Force Darwin. "It's perfecting our ability to do what we do."

Steel Knight has been around since 1991 and the scale of the exercise fluctuates depending on what's happening in the world. The first units that trained then were tanks -- now all but obsolete in the Marine Corps -- as the United States was involved in the Gulf War.

In 2005, the exercise prepared troops for pre-deployment as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom, and it was much smaller because so many units were already fighting in the Middle East. In 2010, the exercise focused on counter-insurgency.

And now, as threats continue to accelerate in the Indo-Pacific, the exercise is preparing Marines for deployment to train with the Australian Defense Force, an ally that Marines have partnered with since 2012, but has become even more important as tensions with China increase, officials said.

The training area terrain -- 60,000 square miles -- replicates actual distances in the Western Pacific where the U.S. can access bases, with Australia being a staging area. While much of the exercise training is being done on Camp Pendleton, it also includes San Clemente Island, Marine Corps Air Station Yuma and Beale Air Force Base in the Central Valley.

Scenarios over the next week will include amphibious assaults, reconnaissance and counter-reconnaissance and expeditionary advanced base operations. The exercise also includes fire support planning and targeting, command and control, and logistics support to geographically dispersed forces.

For the past few years, Steel Knight has focused on the Marine commandant's 2030 Planning Guide, which envisions future conflicts that include utilizing long-range firepower; deploying smaller infantry units that can swiftly respond, packing their own arsenal of surveillance drones and anti-aircraft missiles; and fully integrating with the Navy.

To that end, the exercise will be introducing Marines to more Navy operations to help smooth the communication, operation and integration between the sister service branches, officials said.

Because Marines provide security for embassies around the globe, the exercise to reinforce and then evacuate the fictional embassy set up on Camp Pendleton is very real. In 2011, for example, Marines, then with the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, secured a U.S. embassy in Tripoli and evacuated Americans from it successfully as civil unrest in Libya grew.

On Thursday night, about 150 Marines participated in the exercise, which also included Ospreys and crew from the 3rd Marine Airwing at Miramar.

Out on a training range, Marines simulated a fictional town in which one of the buildings was the fenced-off embassy. As chaos ensued, a group of fictional protestors began causing problems.

Ultimately, reinforcements were brought in to secure the embassy. But, not all went well; corpsmen had to deal with a mass casualty and were evaluated on how effectively they treated their wounded while also getting them evacuated.

The exercise included Marines from the 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines, and Combat Logistics Battalion 1, who had to determine the logistics for getting the civilians out through security and safely evacuated.

The fictional embassy scenario and the mass casualty incident planned for Friday are just two of many others designed to give commanders a picture of how the elements work together.

"The exercise is designed to evaluate how we plan it, combine our ground, air, and logistics functions, and align us to one objective," DeRobertis said, "while testing our ability to relay information to commanders as things happen to enable them to make the best decision possible for the force."

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