Photo By Petty Officer 2nd Class Matthew Cavenaile | PHILIPPINE SEA (Feb. 7, 2022) Ships of the America and Essex Amphibious Ready Groups,...... read more read more
PHILIPPINE SEA (Feb. 10, 2022) – Amphibious Squadron (PHIBRON) 11, along with embarked elements of the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU), completed Exercise Noble Fusion alongside U.S. Pacific Fleet and Japan Self-Defense Force units, Feb. 4-7.
The America Amphibious Ready Group was one of two ARGs training and rehearsing together for the first time since 2018, aggregating with the San Diego-based Essex Amphibious Ready Group (ARG), as well as USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) and ships of the Lincoln Carrier Strike Group (CSG).
“This is a great opportunity to figure out how we operate our amphibious ready group and MEU with theirs, and what that would mean,” said Capt. Greg Baker, PHIBRON 11 commodore. “But I think the bigger piece of this was what the world sees. That’s a phenomenal amount of firepower to bring together, plus we had Japanese forces involved, air forces involved, special operations forces involved, the immense capability that the U.S., our partners and allies can bring to bear is truly awesome.”
Noble Fusion also happened in conjunction with the 31st MEU’s crisis-response certification exercise. Dominating all domains – in the air, on land and from the sea – MEU elements conducted a simulated expeditionary strike with F-35B Lightning II aircraft embarked on America, a series of coordinated helicopter, amphibious and motorized raids, and a maritime security operations boarding exercise.
It was a busy time for the MEU, but Noble Fusion ultimately painted a picture of what future competition and deterrence would look like for the blue-green team.
“Although the breadth of the exercise is formidable, Noble Fusion is unique beyond the number of Marines and Sailors participating in the exercise,” said Col. Michael Nakonieczny, commanding officer of the 31st MEU. “What makes Noble Fusion special is it provides a description of what the Navy and Marine Corps, as a naval force in readiness, will build upon in the future. Through exercises like Noble Fusion, we are campaigning, wherein activities across the competition continuum are continually adapted to achieve long term-strategic goals.”
Among these strategic goals: expeditionary staging on land and sea. To this end, the boarding exercise brought a new player to the table for the ARG-MEU: USS Miguel Keith (ESB 5), a Lewis B. Puller-class expeditionary sea base that served as the training target vessel for the Marines’ maritime raid force.
“Miguel Keith is literally a gigantic blank canvas,” said Baker. “It’s just a huge capability. The mission deck is enormous. The flight deck is enormous. They have a civilian professional mariner crew as well as a military crew, so I’m excited she falls under the tactical control of the amphibious squadron.”
Miguel Keith’s flight deck can land anything in the MEU’s rotary-wing inventory, it has the capacity and capability to support humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, and it can serve as a flexible command-and-control node for the amphibious task force commander.
“Any chance you have extra command-and-control capacity, it’s good,” added Baker, “but, you couple that with all of the operational capability that it brings to the fight – Miguel Keith is, I think, a game-changer. I’m excited to see what the future holds and how we can best position Miguel Keith, how we can best use that asset.”
Noble Fusion wrapped-up with an unprecedented display of multi-domain power. Two Japan Ground Self-Defense Force CH-47 Chinook helicopters deposited Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade platoons on USS America’s (LHA 6) flight deck for drills. A day later, the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force destroyer JS Kongō (DDG 173) steamed in formation amid eight U.S. ships comprising the America and Essex ARG-MEUs, and the Abraham Lincoln CSG, fulfilling the exercise’s intent to rapidly assemble a large group of ships, aircraft and personnel.
“Every patrol is a rehearsal in which we sustain our readiness and validate our interoperability with the joint force and like-minded partners. Noble Fusion allowed us to showcase our interoperability and to validate Force Design 2030 initiatives in our Corps’ main-effort theatre at a scale not seen since 2018. More importantly, Noble Fusion set conditions for the next large-scale exercise that will allow us to rehearse our response to any crisis or conflict, at an ever increasing scale.”
Noble Fusion highlights that Navy and Marine Corps forward-deployed stand-in naval expeditionary forces can rapidly aggregate Marine Expeditionary Unit/Amphibious Ready Group teams at sea, along with a carrier strike group, as well as other joint force elements and allies, in order to conduct lethal sea-denial training, seize key maritime terrain, guarantee freedom of movement, and create advantage for U.S., partner and allied forces. Naval Expeditionary forces conduct training throughout the year, in the Indo-Pacific, to maintain readiness.
| Date Taken: | 02.10.2022 |
| Date Posted: | 02.12.2022 23:07 |
| Story ID: | 414561 |
| Location: | PHILIPPINE SEA |
| Web Views: | 388 |
| Downloads: | 2 |
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