Photo By Sgt. Justin Updegraff | Marines with Alpha Company, 2nd Assault Amphibian Battalion, 2nd Marine Division,...... read more read more
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FORT A.P. HILL, Va. - Marines with 2nd Assault Amphibian Battalion, 2nd Marine Division picked up and moved their entire amphibious battalion to Fort A.P. Hill, Virginia, to conduct Gator Field Exercise Aug. 25 to Sept. 12.
The battalion left its base of operations at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, where it regularly trains for amphibious warfare, in favor of the land-based ranges at Fort A.P. Hill. While there, it conducted mechanized operations with its assault amphibious vehicles.
One by one, the battalion’s three companies set out on a series of range exercises that lasted nearly a week each.
Alpha Company, 2nd AABn, took to the ranges first and completed a series of fire and maneuver exercises at the end of August. During the exercise, the Marines were evaluated on platoon level gunnery, strategic mobility procedures, and basic combat skills as they engaged targets with their vehicles’ automatic grenade launchers and .50-caliber machine guns.
Prior to entering the live-fire portion of their training, the service members bore sighted their weapons, aligning the sites on their turrets to the barrel of each vehicle’s gun. With a kill radius of five meters and a casualty radius of 15 meters, the Marines’ high explosive, dual purpose ammunition has the capability to devastate enemy targets hundreds of meters away.
The crews loaded their vehicles with the lethal ammunition and began engaging targets under the watchful eyes of their platoon commanders, who helped assess the gunners’ abilities to effectively engage targets at various distances.
Their HEDP rounds laid waste to decommissioned vehicles placed out on the range for their first part of the training. The gunners adjusted their fires, honing in on an alignment that would allow them to better carry out their subsequent training exercises.
“Like [our platoon commander] always says, you gotta walk before you can run,” said Cpl. Earl Burcham, a crew chief who took part in the training with the company.
As an assessment of the Marines’ ability to incorporate speed, accuracy, and communication into the training, the unit kicked off the second portion of its training by maneuvering down the range while calling out target locations on the move.
The vehicle crews navigated between covered positions to limit their profiles and reported targets as quickly and accurately as possible. Once completed, the crews were critiqued on their effectiveness.
“It’ll make us better as a unit,” said Burcham, “so we’re better at communicating and moving as a unit.”
Additional phases of training tested the Marines’ speed and mobility by timing gunners as they engaged pop-up targets while the drivers maneuvered between covered positions. Drivers shouted out target locations for the gunners, who repositioned their weapon systems to engage targets before they disappeared from view. The report of machine guns and exploding grenades echoed over the range as rounds impacted the simulated enemy positions.
The nearly 20 days of training not only taught the Marines of 2nd AABn how to properly utilize their amphibious vehicles during land warfare, but also enhanced the crews’ abilities to communicate within their own vehicles and with other assault craft during live-fire situations.
| Date Taken: | 09.19.2014 |
| Date Posted: | 09.19.2014 16:09 |
| Story ID: | 142761 |
| Location: | FORT A.P. HILL, VIRGINIA, US |
| Web Views: | 1,175 |
| Downloads: | 2 |
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