Range of possibilities

Pendleton upgrades ranges for deploying leathernecks
By Gidget Fuentes - Staff writer
Posted : April 02, 2007

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. — The months before Marines deploy into a combat zone are filled with training in the field to sharpen their individual combat skills and hone unit tactics and techniques.

And now, the arena for that pre-deployment training is going through a major growth spurt.

Marines will see more options and variety as Camp Pendleton expands its inventory of ranges and facilities with more makeshift towns for urban warfare, assault courses, live-fire firing positions and instrumented ranges that provide quicker feedback.

Leathernecks will aim at high-tech target systems, search or raid new buildings with shock-absorbing walls that can handle live-fire small arms and grenades, and face a challenging gantlet of combat scenarios and drills over a 16-kilometer convoy assault course.

In the next two years, Camp Pendleton will see $53 million worth of range improvements and continue to expand training offerings to provide more combat realism closer to home.

“This home station is going to be a desired location to complete their training,” said John Carretti, the base’s training resource director and head of operations and training management for Marine Corps Installations-West. “Our end state is to make this as valuable to the customer so this is where they want to come.”

“Camp Pendleton is like a Swiss Army knife of training,” Carretti said. “We have to do a little bit of everything.”

Base officials this spring will open the newest facility, Range 132, a live-fire “military operations in urban terrain,” or MOUT, maneuver range.

The facility will feature 65 automated pop-out targets, a three-story building and 20 structures for squads and platoons to sharpen assault and urban defense skills, he said.

Camp Pendleton’s range modernization plans include training improvements in urban warfare, live-fire, maneuver and vehicle operations.

Marines will learn how to identify and counter roadside bombs, the deadliest tactic used against U.S. forces in Iraq.

“One of our hallmarks is the ability to be able to react and the ability to adapt how we’re able to address to the changing tactics of the battlefield,” said Carretti, a retired lieutenant colonel and former infantry battalion commander.

“What we’re going to do in the next three years is really going to transform our range complex,” he said. “It really is the most significant thing that we’ve done in the past 30 years with ranges.”

In June, he added, the western installations will begin crafting a regional range plan that will look at integrating training from Bridgeport to Yuma, Ariz., ultimately tying into other military training facilities.

Key range projects include:

•A new MOUT at the “3-mile pit.” The pit off Basilone Road will be transformed into a Third-World town with buildings shaped by 175 containers, three to each building. The facility will include a hilly, windy driver course aimed at training Marines driving armored Humvees and 7-ton trucks.

The nearby 25 Area combat town will be expanded in the first of two phases with structures fashioned from 100 containers, and will link to the 3-mile pit. “The idea is this will eventually be one complementary complex” that could support complex training scenarios, Carretti said. “It just gives you a whole lot more options.”

Marines will have options in maneuvering into the area, helping tactical decision-making, he noted.

•A 16-kilometer convoy assault course on existing roads along San Mateo Canyon, in the base’s northern section.

From a forward operating base, units will test their judgment and combat skills as they negotiate the course, juggling potential roadside bombs, attacks, ambushes and suspicious targets. At the existing Range 800 at one end of the course, units could do live-fire assaults with coordinated air support.

•A regimental urban training facility at San Mateo for 5th Marines. “The idea there is to have sort of a backyard training area for the northern regiment,” Carretti said.

With about 100 containers — roughly 30 buildings — it will be smaller than the base’s main MOUT facility and would be controlled by the base. “It’s a nice backyard MOUT training facility, which they don’t currently have,” he added. A second regimental urban facility for 1st Marines at Camp Horno is also planned.

•A live-fire raid facility. The site will be built at AFA-17, a current firing position along the main impact area.

Infantry battalions and the Special Operations Training Group will be able to integrate support from helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft. Marines can direct aircraft onto targets set in new configurations for urban close-air support using deep and shallow targets, Carretti said.

•MOUT instrumentation. The 25 Area combat town will be the first retrofitted with instrumentation, including cameras, designed to track and provide feedback to units and trainers.

“You’re able to critique a tactical scenario,” Carretti said. All MOUT and urban facilities would be instrumented.

Training officials also want to use more role players, such as native Iraqis, to support tactical scenarios.

More ranges will get enhanced targeting systems, including automated or pop-up targets, funded in part with $2.5 million in 2006 through the Training and Education Command’s Ground Range Sustainment Program. An integrated range management system will improve the situational awareness of the base ranges, “and ultimately we will be able to manage them better,” he said.

In 2009, base officials also plan to widen two key crossings under Interstate 5 at Red and Green beaches, two key landing areas, Carretti said.

And at least one project is homegrown. Navy Seabees with four battalions have been helping construct a 20-building MOUT facility for the School of Infantry-West.

“They made a commitment to do it,” Carretti said. “They do great work.” The B-3 combat town will be done by June.
More realistic training

Camp Pendleton, home to I Marine Expeditionary Force, covers 198 square miles that stretch from the Pacific across coastal hills and scrubby mesas in northern San Diego County.

The integration of aviation and traditional ground operations is among the base’s hallmarks. “Our bread and butter is bringing that all together, so we’ve got to be able to squeeze every single square inch of the 125,000 acres of training,” Carretti said.

The projects underway at Camp Pendleton echo efforts across the Marine Corps to build new ranges, expand and improve existing facilities and inject more realism into training — whether it’s rooting out insurgent fighters, searching homes and buildings, securing and stabilizing a town, fighting urban battles or aiding local residents — to prepare combat units before they deploy. Commandant Gen. James Conway, testifying in January on Capitol Hill, described it as “the most ambitious modernization of our training ranges since World War II.”

Sections of the Mojave Desert at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center at Twentynine Palms, Calif., are being transformed into makeshift Iraqi villages, replete with blue-domed mosques, concrete courtyards and roadside booby traps. The projects help support “Mojave Viper,” the 30-day training exercise in which battalions and air-ground task forces operate together before deploying to a combat zone. Similar range improvements are underway at Camp Lejeune, N.C.

Carretti said his crew is aware of the heavy interest and demand on training ranges by units and commanders.

“We try to get this stuff as fast as possible,” he said. “Literally every time we put up a shock absorbent concrete or new targetry or put the targetry in the impact area, they are right away there, filling the vacuum to get in there for training.”

Ellie