THE FRIDAY FOTO (April 26, 2024)

TWO JEEPS, NO WAITING.

(U.S. Marine Corps photo by Corporal Gideon M. Schippers) Click of photo to enlarge the image.

This has got be the aerial equivalent of chewing gum while walking and juggling knives.

Here is a U.S. Marine Corps CH-53E Super Stallion helicopter, engaged in an air-to-air refueling training exercise — while lugging a couple of ground vehicles. You can see that this mid-air ballet involves another aircraft, note wing at top of the photo and fuel line back to the aerial refueling tanker.

The exercise is part of Weapons and Tactics Instructor (WTI) course 2-24, near Yuma, Arizona on March 29, 2024. WTI is an advanced graduate-level course that provides advanced tactical training to enhance and employ advanced air weapons and tactics.

The crew in this photo is assigned to Marine Aviation Weapons and Tactics Squadron One, which provides standardized advanced tactical training and certification of unit instructor qualifications in order to support Marine Aviation training and readiness. A three-minute video (click here to view) shows what they do and how they do it.

THE FRIDAY FOTO (February 23, 2024)

NOBODY FLINCHED.

(U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Corporal Chloe N. McAfee) Click on the photo to enlarge the image.

Corporal Gerald Wells III a member of the U.S. Marine Corps Silent Drill Platoon, conducts a rifle inspection while “Fat Albert,” the support aircraft of the Navy’s Blue Angels flight  demonstration team appears to fly very close overhead at Marine Corps Air Station, Yuma, Arizona on February 13, 2024.

The 24-member platoon executes a series a calculated drill movements and precise handling of their hand-polished, 10-and-a-half pound, M1 Garand rifles with fixed bayonets. The routine concludes with a unique rifle inspection sequence demonstrating elaborate rifle spins and tosses.

Nicknamed after the 1970s TV cartoon character, “Fat Albert” is a C-130J Super Hercules cargo plane that carries the team’s maintenance and support equipment from place to place as the daredevil jet  team makes travels during each air show season. The performance in Yuma was the start of the Blue Angels’ Battle Color Detachment Tour.

SHAKO: BLACK HISTORY MONTH Part I UPDATE

GROUND BREAKER.

HOLLYWOOD’S CONSTANT BLACK SOLDIER.

Indiana-born James Edwards served as a first lieutenant in the U.S. Army during World War II, but it was his performance in several war movies in the 1950s and ’60s that brought him to national attention.

Edwards helped pave the way for African-American actors in Hollywood. According to the IMDB website, Edwards was among the first black actors — years ahead of Sidney Poitier — to crush the Stepin Fetchit stereotype of black males as shiftless illiterates. While he sometimes portrayed subservient characters — such as General George Patton’s valet in “Patton” (1970) — Edwards delivered dignity in his performances. He is especially remembered for his leading role in “Home of the Brave” (1949), portraying a Black soldier traumatized by racial prejudice while serving in the South Pacific during World War II.

James Edwards (left) with Lloyd Bridges and Frank Lovejoy in the 1949 film about racism in the military during World War II, Home of the Brave.

It’s a low budget film with a small cast, based on a stage play about racism, but it had a big impact at the time. In the stage version, the outsider character was Jewish, not black, but the film’s producer and screenwriter decided to change the central character’s race for the film. It was one of the first Hollywood films to deal honestly with racism in the U.S. military. It was well received by many black newspapers like the Pittsburgh Courier, where columnist Billy Rowe called it “without a doubt one of the most important milestones of the generation. One that no good American , and surely no Negro, can afford to miss.”  Bill Chase, writing in New York Age, said the film “reveals intimately the reactions of one who feels himself universally defamed and unwanted.”

Born in Muncie, Indiana in 1918, Edwards fought Golden Gloves and became a professional boxer before going to college. He majored in psychology at Knoxville College in Tennessee and received a master’s degree in drama from Northwestern University. He appeared in regional productions and on the New York stage before going to Hollywood.

Edwards had more than 20 films and numerous television credits over his 22-year career. He played bit parts in films like “The Caine Mutiny” (1954) and “The Killing” (1956)** Bigger, supporting roles came later. The characters ranged from a parking lot attendant, boxer and policeman to a witch doctor in a Tarzan movie. However, his most memorable roles were in war movies, often as the only person of color in the cast.

He played a combat weary Army medic in maverick director Samuel Fuller’s “The Steel Helmet” (1950), famous for being the first Korean War movie made while the war was ongoing. In “Bright Victory” (1951), Edwards played a blinded World War II veteran who befriends another blind vet, who doesn’t know Edwards is black and makes a racist remark. Edwards played a P-51 Mustang pilot in the early days of the Korean War in “Battle Hymn” (1957). According  to IMDB, Edwards was the first and only black actor to play a fighter pilot until Louis Gossett Jr. in “Iron Eagle“ nearly 30 years later (1986).

Soldiers portrayed by James Edwards (left) and Woody Strode, argue over their obligation to risk their lives fighting for Korea when blacks are treated badly back home in the 1959 film “Pork Chop Hill.”

Edwards appeared in two other Korean War movies “Men in War” (1957) and the classic “Pork Chop Hill,” (1959), where he played a corporal detailed to bird dog another black soldier, played by Woody Strode, who was insubordinate and reluctant to risk his life fighting for Korea. There were other black actors in the film, all portraying fighting men and countering criticism that blacks in the recently desegregated military had performed poorly in the early days of the Korean War.

Edwards was originally set to appear in the 1962 movie “Red Ball Express” about the famous U.S. truck convoy system that kept front line American units supplied in France during the summer and fall of 1944. The majority of the drivers and many of the mechanics were African American soldiers who had to deal with long drives over treacherous roads through enemy-held areas. However, Edwards was fired after he refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee which was investigating claims that Communist sympathizers and Soviet agents had infiltrated the U.S. film industry. The role went to a young Sidney Poitier, according to IMDb.

Edwards had another memorable role in “The Manchurian Candidate,” — the original 1962 version, not the 2004 one with Denzel Washington — as a black veteran haunted by bizarre nightmares stemming from his patrol’s capture in North Korea where they were brain washed by Chinese and Soviet intelligence officers. Edwards died of a heart attack at the age of 51 in 1970. He was posthumously inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame in 1980.

** CORRECTION: Edwards appeared in “The Killing” (1956) NOT “The Killers” (1946).

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REMEMBERING FORGOTTEN UNITS.

The U.S. Flotilla Service in the War of 1812 (Updating to include more information about black and integrated military units)

Unlike the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, there were few black army units in the War of 1812, although black individuals served in some Army and state militia units and many blacks served aboard Navy ships. At the battle of Lake Erie, about 25 percent of sailors were black, according to the African American Veterans Monument website.

However, there was one unit that welcomed blacks: the Chesapeake Bay Flotilla.

Led by Commodore Joshua Barney, a naval hero of the American Revolution, the flotilla was a tiny fleet of shallow draft barges and gunboats, rowed like Roman galleys and crewed mostly by free blacks, local watermen and veteran seafarers. Technically, neither Barney nor the flotillamen were part of the U.S. Navy and therein hangs a tale.

Frustrated by the lack of advancement in the American Navy after the Revolutionary War, Barney resigned and accepted a commission in the French Navy. This posed a problem when America and France fought an undeclared naval war (1798-1800). Barney left French service and returned to America but some in the Navy no longer trusted his loyalty. When war with Britain broke out in 1812, Barney came up with the idea of protecting the Chesapeake Bay from British raids with a fleet of shallow draft gunboats.  Barney didn’t quite fit into the Navy’s promotion schedule due to his years of absence and slipping him in would have ruffled a lot of feathers, so President James Madison and Navy Secretary William Jones made him a commodore in command of the U.S. Flotilla Service.

Barney’s mosquito fleet, as it was nicknamed,  harried the British, who had been raiding towns and plantations up and down the Chesapeake, during June and July 1814. However, the much bigger and faster British ships began to pursue Barney’s flotilla up the bay. The galleys withdrew into the Patuxent River where the biggest British ships couldn’t follow. Eventually Barney was trapped in the upper reaches of the river where the water was too shallow for even his gunboats. The commodore scuttled the boats and with his crews and cannon marched off to defend Washington in the Battle of Bladensburg.

The Bladensburg Battle monument featuring (left to right) A U.S. Marine, Commodore Joshua Barney and Charles Ball, a former slave and one of Barney’s flotilla men.

They joined the U.S. forces — miltiamen from Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia plus some Army regulars — gathered at Bladensburg, Maryland on the Anacostia River about eight miles northeast of Washington to stop the British force of more than 4,000 troops.

Barney, with a mix of cannon — two big naval guns and three wheeled artillery pieces — plus 400 flotilla men and 100 U.S. Marines, deployed on both sides of the road to Washington. They rained fire on the advancing British, holding their position, even after the other American battle lines collapsed. The Army commander ordered the remaining troops to withdraw, but the Marines and the flotilla men stuck to their guns, then counterattacked, crying “Board ‘em, Board ‘em” and driving the British back, according to the U.S. Naval Institute.

But the teamsters driving the supply wagons fled with Barney’s ammunition. The commodore was shot through the thigh and ordered his men to retreat and join the forces needed to defend Washington. One of the last to leave Barney was a flotilla man, Charles Ball, an escaped slave.  Barney was captured but well treated by the British, who congratulated him for the stand his men made. The British force continued on to Washington where they burned the White House and other government buildings on August 24, 1814.

The flotilla men then marched to Baltimore and manned several gun emplacements guarding the city and the approaches to Fort McHenry, which didn’t fall despite a massive bombardment. The British departed after their attacks by land and water failed.

An additional note on the service of African-Americans in the War of 1812:

The U.S. Army and most states did not accept black soldiers, although some northern states recruited them, the African American Veterans Monument website noted. Some states such as North Carolina and Virginia permitted blacks to muster alongside whites, according to historian Gene Allen Smith of Texas Christian University. Others such as Connecticut (1784), Massachusetts (1785), and South Carolina (1800) exempted blacks from the militia altogether; South Carolina even forbade “negroes” to be “armed with any offensive weapons unless in cases of alarm,” Smith wrote on the National Park Service website.

We should also note here that a battalion of Free Men of Color played a key role in the Battle of New Orleans, which we’ll be featuring in another posting later this month

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SOMETHING EXTRA

Three years ago we posted a two-part series on the portrayal of African-Americans in the U.S. military by Hollywood in the 1940s, 50s and early 60s.

The series discusses several of the films mentioned in this posting, plus other films featuring great, under-rated black performers in the decades Hollywood took to slowly shrug off the racist stereotypes of the Jim Crow era.

If you missed it last time or want to see it again …

You can revisit Part One here.

And Part Two here.

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SHAKO is an occasional 4GWAR posting on military history, traditions and culture. For the uninitiated, a shako is the tall, billed headgear worn by many armies from the Napoleonic era to about the time of the American Civil War. It remains a part of the dress or parade uniform of several military organizations like the corps of cadets at the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, New York.

 

 

THE FRIDAY FOTO (January 26, 2023)

THE MARINES (MACHINES) HAVE LANDED.

(U.S. Navy photo by Michael Walls) Click on the photo to enlarge the image

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) — drones to the rest of us — fly over a beach at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, California on January 19, 2024.

Equipped with specialized software and sensors, these drones showed off their capabilities during the Technical Concept Experiment (TCE) 23.2,

Sponsored by the Office of Naval Research (ONR), in partnership with I Marine Expeditionary Force (MEF), the event demonstrated ONR-funded technologies designed to enhance the Marine Corps’ capability in carrying out amphibious operations — including foiling explosive hazards, mine countermeasures and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.

“Since their inception, the Marines have been known for their ability to come ashore and establish a beachhead and move inland,” said Dr. Tom Drake, head of ONR’s Ocean Battlespace Sensing Department. “Present and future Marines still need to carry out such missions. Our goal is to give them the best possible tools to do that quickly, safely and effectively.”

TCE 23.2 aligned with the emerging naval concept known as Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations (EABO), which involves deploying small but highly mobile units to isolated locations where they can monitor enemy operations within the conflict zone and, when necessary, shoot and scoot before being detected. EABO has the potential of quickly getting forces into a strategically vital area in response to an evolving threat when no other U.S. military assets are available.

A key element of EABO is detecting and disarming explosive hazards, from the deep water through the beach zone to the inland objective.

THE FRIDAY FOTO (December 29. 2023)

A HOLIDAY ALBUM:

Since this will be the last last FRIDAY FOTO of 2023, your 4GWAR editor thought we’d end the year with a series of photos capturing the holiday spirit across the services and around the globe.  To enlarge the image, just click on the photos.

We hope the remaining 12 Days of Christmas are merry and the New Year brings all of you joy, peace and prosperity.

There will be some new features and some neglected old ones coming to 4GWAR Blog in 2024. so keep in touch.

(U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sergeant Alan Ricker) Click on photo to enlarge image

Service members and their families celebrate the start of the holiday season during the 54th annual Freedom Tower Lighting Celebration at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam Hawaii on December 15, 2023.

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          (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Staff Sergeant Olivia Ortiz)

U.S. Marines with 4th Law Enforcement Battalion maneuver snow machines and sleds filled with toys in Galena, Alaska on December 17, 2023. The 1st Marine Aircraft Wing’s Aerial Refueler Transport Squadron 153 — part of , Marine Aircraft Group 24 —  transported snow machines, personnel and sleds filled with toys to assist in delivering a message of joy and hope to children in small Alaskan villages throughout the holiday season. The Toys for Tots mission serves a dual purpose: Bolstering community relations on America’s last frontier while enhancing the Marines’ ability to operate in the Arctic.

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               (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sergeant Kendra A. Ransum)

Soldiers in the U.S. Army’s Silver Wings Parachute Demonstration Team freefall over the landing zone near Fort Moore, Georgia as part of Operation Toy Drop on December 13, 2023. There were four lifts in all, the first three consisting of static line drops by Army paratroopers while the final lift was a high altitude – low opening jump — that included the Grinch.

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               (U.S. Navy Photo by Musician 1st Class Seth S. Johnson)

Members of the U.S. Navy Band Sea Chanters perform a selection for a Holiday Concert in Washington, D.C. Several of the ensembles within the Navy Band perform a show together at the end of the year to celebrate the holidays.

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(U.S. Army photo by SSG Torrance Saunders)

A soldier gets help strapping on his helmet during another toy drop  at Fort Liberty, North Carolina on December 7, 2023. The U.S Army Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command (Airborne), in conjunction with local Fort Liberty and partner nations’ airborne organizations, conduct the Randy Oler Memorial Operation Toy Drop 2.0, a combined airborne training event at Fort Liberty between December 4 and December 15, 2023 to increase joint airborne proficiency and community relations.

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               (U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Katie Mullikin)

U.S. Air Force Senior Airman Storm Dillard helps a student communicate over land mobile radios during “Radio Santa” at Beck Row, Suffolk, England on December 8, 2023. Airmen volunteer annually at local schools surrounding Royal Air Force Mildenhall to give young students an opportunity to speak with Santa Claus.

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   (U.S. Air National Guard photo by Technical Sergeant Mackenzie Bacalzo)

U.S. Airmen and their families welcome Santa after he arrived on an F-16 Fighting Falcon fighter jet at McEntire Joint National Guard Base, South Carolina, on December 2, 2023. The kids talked to Santa, played games and decorated cookies with Mrs. Claus.

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                    (U.S. Army photo by Sergeant Gabriel S. Villalobos)

U.S. Army Command Sergeant Major Keyon Cummings, of the 36th Engineer Brigade, places a wreath at the headstone of a veteran at the Central Texas State Veterans Cemetery in Killeen, Texas on November 25, 2023. Active duty military at nearby Fort Cavazos were encouraged to attend the event and participate in honoring those laid to rest at the cemetery.

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                 (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Spencer Tobler)

Members of the U.S. Air Force, Japan Air Self-Defense Force, Royal Canadian Air Force, Republic of Korea Air Force and Royal Australian Air Force as well as civilian volunteers decorate bundle boxes during the annual bundle building event in support of Operation Christmas Drop 2023 at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, on December 2, 2023. The tradition began during the Christmas season in 1952 when a B-29 Superfortress aircrew saw islanders waving at them from the island of Kapingamarangi,  3,500 miles southwest of Hawaii. In the spirit of Christmas, the aircrew dropped a bundle of supplies attached to a parachute to the islanders, giving the operation its name. Airdrop operations now include more than 50 islands throughout the Pacific.

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                          (U.S. Air Force photo by Yasuo Osakabe)

U.S. Air Force Captain Miranda Bapty, deputy mission commander of the Operation Christmas Drop 2023 (OCD 23), flies over the Republic of Palau on December 3, 2023 on one of OCD 23’s package drops. Bapty’s aircraft, CallSign Santa 36,  delivered two bundles to the people of Koror. Each year, the U.S. Air Force and partner nations deliver to remote islands in the South-Eastern Pacific.

SHAKO: U.S. Navy 82 Years after Pearl Harbor Attack

ALL IN THE NAME.

Pearl Harbor Survivors attend 75th commemoration in 2016 of the December 7, 1941 attack that propelled the United States into World War II. (U.S. Navy photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Laurie Dexter)

The last remaining survivors of the December 7, 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor are mostly centenarians and only a few are able to attend U.S. Navy and National Park Service events marking the 82nd anniversary of the surprise attack on the Pacific naval base and other military installations across Hawaii.

Remembrance ceremonies were scheduled through the weekend at the Pearl Harbor National Memorial and on Ford Island, where the USS Utah Memorial and the USS Oklahoma Memorial are located. The Utah and Oklahoma were among the three battleships sunk during the attack that were never salvaged.

However, three new Virginia-class nuclear-power submarines will be named USS Utah, USS Oklahoma and USS Arizona — the third stricken battleship that blew up when a Japanese bomb penetrated the ship’s deck and exploded in the ammunition magazine. Now it is the resting place of 1,102 of the 1,177 sailors and Marines killed on the ship. The memorial, built in 1962, is visited by more than two million people annually.

But some Pearl Harbor veterans did not want to see replacement ships named for the lost battleships, Stars and Stripes noted in a November 5 article. However, some like Donald Stratton, who survived the Arizona’s sinking, relented in later years when the Navy announced a bigger, more powerful version of the Virginia class submarines would be named for the battleships Oklahoma, Utah and Arizona. His granddaughter was named the official sponsor of the submarine named Arizona (a traditional Navy honor).

Admiral Chester Nimitz awards the Navy Cross medal to Mess Attendant 2nd Class Doris Miller on May 27, 1942 for his actions aboard the battleship USS West Virginia during the attack on Pearl Harbor.  (U.S. Navy photo)

A future aircraft carrier also will have a name connected with Pearl Harbor. The USS Doris Miller (CVN 81) will be named after Pearl Harbor hero Doris “Dorie” Miller, the first African American awarded the Navy Cross, the Navy’s second highest decoration for bravery. It is the first time a U.S. aircraft carrier is named for an African American and also the first time one was named for an enlisted sailor.

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SHAKO is an occasional 4GWAR posting on military history, traditions and culture. For the uninitiated, a shako is the tall, billed headgear worn by many armies from the Napoleonic era to about the time of the American Civil War. It remains a part of the dress or parade uniform of several military organizations like the corps of cadets at the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, New York.

SHAKO: U.S. Marine Corps’ 248th Birthday

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LEATHERNECKS, JARHEADS AND DEVIL DOGS.

Riflemen with Marine Barracks Washington, execute “pass and review” during the Ceremonial Drill School evaluation at Marine Barracks Washington, D.C., Oct 17, 2023.  (U.S. Marine Corps photo by LCpl. Pranav Ramakrishna)

Friday, November 10, 2023 marks the 248thth Birthday of the United States Marine Corps.

The Marine Corps was created by the Second Continental Congress on November 10, 1775 and since 1921, Marines around the world have celebrated the Corps’ founding under Marine Corps Order No. 47, Series 1921, issued by then-Commandant Major General John LeJeune. His order summarized the history, tradition and mission of the Marine Corps and directed that the order be read to every command on every subsequent November 10, the Marine Corps Birthday.

Since the 1950s, the Marines have marked the occasion with a birthday celebration and a cake cutting ceremony, where the senior Marine Corps officer on board slices the cake — usually with the traditional Mameluke officer’s sword, commemorating the Marines’ first overseas action near the shores of Tripoli in 1805. The first slice of cake is handed to the oldest Marine present. That senior Leatherneck then hands the slice to the youngest Marine on site.

U.S. Marines have been called Leathernecks since the age of sail when war at sea meant boarding an enemy ship (or repelling boarders) with small arms including swords, pikes and bayonets. In combat, a wide, stiff leather neck-piece, called a Stock, protected a Marine’s neck and jugular vein from the slash of a cutlass. On parade, it kept his head erect and looking smart. Far from an insult, the Marine Corps Association’s monthly magazine is called LEATHERNECK.

The nickname “Devil Dogs” came out of World War I. The nearly month-long Battle of Belleau Wood in June 1918 was the first major engagement of American troops on the Western Front in the Great War. It also is one of the most significant battles fought by the U.S. Marines, earning them France’s highest military award and the nickname Devil Dogs from the Germans. The bloody action at Belleau Wood saved Paris, and the French government renamed Belleau Wood, the “Bois de la Brigade de Marine” and awarded the 5th and 6th Marine regiments the Croix de Guerre. The Germans, too were impressed with the Marines. An official German report described the Marines as “vigorous, self-confident and remarkable marksmen.” Captured German soldiers and their letters described the Marines as Teufelhunde, or Devil Dogs.”

Jarhead started out as an insult aimed at Marines by Sailors in the Second World War. The term “referred to Marines’ appearance wearing their dress blue uniforms,” according to the National Museum of the Marine Corps. “The high collar on the uniform and the Marines’ head popping out of the top resembled a Mason Jar.” But the Marines chose to own the moniker as their own, according to the museum. “Some Marines refer to the ‘high and tight’ haircut as a ‘Jarhead cut.’”

Corporal Arianna Lindheimer, with combat graphics specialists, U.S. Marine Corps Forces, Pacific, engages in live fire with the French Fusil D’Assaut de la Manufacture d’Armes de Saint-Etienne (FAMAS) during bilateral training with French forces in Tahiti on August 30, 2023.  (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Corporal Haley Fourmet Gustavsen)

ROBOTS, DROIDS and DRONES: Air Force Tests Stealthy Unmanned Wing Man for the Marines

FIRST TEST FOR MARINES’ UNMANNED WINGMAN.

A highly autonomous drone, designed to be an unmanned wingman for Marine Corps pilots successfully completed its first test flight at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, Marine Corps Headquarters announced  Thursday (October 5, 2023).

The Marine Corps XQ-58A Valkyrie, a highly autonomous unmanned air vehicle successfully completed its first test flight October 3, 2023, at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida. (Photo Courtesy of 96th Test Wing, 40th Flight Test Squadron photo by Air Force Master Sergeant Tristan McIntire.)

The Marine Corps partnered with the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (OUSD(R&E)), the Naval Air Systems Command and Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division (NAWCAD) to facilitate the ongoing research, development, test and evaluation of the XQ-58A Valkyrie.

The aircraft performed as expected during the October 3 test flight in collaboration with the Air Force 40th Flight Test Squadron and 96th Test Wing, according to the Marines.

This flight marks a key milestone in the Marine Corps’ Penetrating Affordable Autonomous Collaborative Killer – Portfolio (PAACK-P) program. Future test flights inform Marine Corps XQ-58A Valkyrie requirements for the Marine Air-Ground Task Force Unmanned Aerial System Expeditionary (MUX) Tactical Aircraft.

The XQ-58A has a total of six planned test flights with objectives that include evaluating the platform’s ability to support a variety of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) missions. The Marines will also be looking at the effectiveness of autonomous electronic support to manned aircraft and the potential for AI-enabled platforms to augment combat air patrols.

Valkyrie flies with an Air Force jet. (Photo Courtesy of 96th Test Wing, 40th Flight Test Squadron photo by Master Sgt. Tristan McIntire)

The Marines received the first of two XQ-58A unmanned aerial systems (UAS) from San Diego-based Kratos Defense & Security Solutions in March to support platform prototyping and integration efforts for the PAACK-P program. The drones should have “sensor and weapon system payloads to accomplish the penetrating affordable autonomous collaborative killer” mission, the Defense Department said at the time of the $15.5 million purchase for the Marines. 

“The Marine Corps constantly seeks to modernize and enhance its capabilities in a rapidly evolving security environment,” said Lieutenant Colonel Donald Kelly, Headquarters Marine Corps Aviation Cunningham Group and Advanced Development Team. “Testing the XQ-58 Valkyrie determines requirements for a highly autonomous, low-cost tactical [unmanned aircraft system] that compliments the need for agile, expeditionary and lethal capabilities in support of both the Marine Corps’ stand-in force operations in austere environments and the Joint Force.” 

THE FRIDAY FOTO (July 21, 2023)

‘NEATH THE SOUTHERN CROSS.

. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Brayden Daniel)

A Marine with the U.S. Marine Rotational Force – Darwin 23 (MRF-D), patrols during Exercise Southern Jackaroo 23 in Queensland, Australia on July 1, 2023.

Southern Jackaroo is a trilateral exercise with Marines of the MRF-D, Japanese and Australian troops. Hosted by the Australian Defence Force at the Townsville Field Training Area in Queensland, the exercise focused on improving warfighting tactics at the small-unit level, leading to increases in efficiencies and interoperability among the Marines, the Australians and the Japanese Ground Self Defense Force.

With more than 2,800 participants, the large-scale combat operations training featured a variety of settings — from an archipelago of islands to the near shore littorals and urban terrain — that tested the forces’ offensive and defensive capabilities in a communications-degraded environment, stressing small-unit leadership

The Republic of Korea (South Korea) sent observers.

The Marine pictured above is with Lima Company, 3rd Battalion of the 1st Marine Regiment (Reinforced). The First Marines are part of the storied 1st Marine Division, which includes the stars of the Southern Cross constellation on its diamond shaped shoulder patch with a large numeral one, representing its first divisional battle at Guadalcanal in World War II.

THE FRIDAY FOTO (June 30, 2023)

AIM SMALL, MISS SMALL

(U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Nathan Baker)

U.S. Marine Corps Sergeant Mercedes Klein monitors Ghanaian Army Sergeant Joseph Akataaba on marksmanship fundamentals during Exercise African Lion near Daboya, Ghana on June 7, 2023.

African Lion is an annual training exercise between the U.S. forces and participating African nations designed to increase interoperability and build partnerships.

U.S. Africa Command‘s largest annual combined, joint exercise African Lion featuring 18 nations and over 8,000 personnel,took place in Ghana, Morocco, Senegal and Tunisia from May 31 to June 18, 2023.