Marine Corps Evolving Live, Synthetic Training Environments.

• Author: Easley, Mikayla

ORLANDO, Fla.--As the Marine Corps evolves to meet new challenges posed by great power competitors, the service's leaders are pressing for upgrades to its training systems.

The Corps is syncing its live and synthetic training environments to match operational changes outlined by Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger in his "Force Design 2030" strategy. The document tasked the service to move away from tactics used in the previous two decades of warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan and prepare for future battlefields against sophisticated adversaries such as China and Russia.

"We have, 1 think unintentionally, put training third or fourth in sequence of our priorities," Berger said at the National Training and Simulation Association's annual Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference in Orlando, Florida. "We go after a capability, we figure out how we're going to structure the force, we buy platforms, and then we turn to the training guy and say: 'We need a way to train.' That's not going to work going forward."

In order for the Marine Corps to face evolving threats in less familiar operational conditions, service leaders agreed that training systems must keep up with the times.

"We're going to have to be able to train like we fight," said Brig. Gen. Matthew Mowery, assistant deputy commandant for aviation. That means matching training exercises to new strategies like expeditionary advanced base operations, he added.

EABO is a form of expeditionary warfare that "involves the employment of mobile, low-signature, operationally relevant, and relatively easy to maintain and sustain naval expeditionary forces from a series of austere, temporary locations ashore or inshore within a contested or potentially contested maritime area in order to conduct sea denial, support sea control or enable fleet sustainment," according to the service.

Accurately replicating the operational environment a Marine could face in training will be key to achieving Berger's vision as laid out in Force Design 2030, said service leaders during a panel at the conference.

Upon taking the helm of Marine Corps Training Command last year, Maj. Gen. Julian Alford said he first tackled how to revamp the training of the service's infantry. The Corps has fielded three new infantry immersion trainers--two on the East Coast and another on the West Coast--that has troops complete tasks under stress, he said.

"The first time that a Marine goes into combat should...