Marine Corps Training Shifts To Great Power Competition.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew
• Position: TRAINING & SIMULATION

* TWENTYNINE PALMS, Calif. --It was high noon in a mock city the size of downtown San Diego located in the California desert. Automatic rifle fire could be heard in the distance and the sound of a drone--heard but not seen--buzzed in the blue skies above.

A Marine Corps lieutenant stuck his rifle out a window and used its scope to reconnoiter a block of nearby buildings. Six of his men had just been declared dead by an officer who was adjudicating the exercise. There was a sniper nearby. It was only a mock battle, but emotions were running high.

"Hey Animal. On that uniform 10 alpha and charlie. The round went through the roof and exploded on the second floor. That's all I know..."

"No KIA?"

"Don't know. We can't observe from inside the building."

Several minutes later, a report came back negative. The sniper had escaped.

Range 220 at Twentynine Palms, California, consists of some 1,200 buildings and resembles the urban battle zones of the Middle East. But the seven-day Marine Air-Ground Task Force Warfighting Exercise, also known as MWX, in mid-November was not intended to replicate the counterinsurgency battles of the past 20 years, explained Col. Matt Reid, deputy exercise director. That will always be an element of the Marine Corps mission, but this service-level training exercise has been retooled to teach Marines to fight peer or near-pear competitors such as the ones named in the National Defense Strategy: Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.

"We want to get good at that again," Reid said. "It's not just about training the tactics. It's about systems. It's about thought processes. It's about--when you're facing somebody that has equal or better equipment than you, that is as dedicated to the fight as you--can you make rapid decisions by taking in information and then implement those decisions across kind of a domain challenged environment to take action?"

MWX was organized by the Marine Corps' plans, policies and operations office. It pitted the 2nd and 7th Marine divisions against each other. Troops were drawn from Twentynine Palms, Camp Lejeune, North Carolina and nearby Camp Pendleton, California, along with some units from the United Kingdom and other allies.

Both sides had armored vehicles, the use of unmanned aerial vehicles, the ability to call in close-air support and electronic and cyber warfare tools at their disposal, just as a near-peer military would.

"What's exciting about this force on force is that these Marines want...