Nearly 10,000 Marines are taking part in a massive training exercise this week. | Charles Hoskinson/POLITICO Commanders reset Marines' training

FORT A.P. HILL, Va. — A Marine Sea Stallion helicopter quickly circles into a clearing in the pine forest, maneuvering to avoid being targeted by ground fire. Two Cobra attack helicopters circle overhead for protection as observers on the ground radio intelligence to a 14-member Marine special operations team.

Right on time, the huge Sea Stallion touches down and the team — many members having slept through the three-hour flight — rushes off in two lines, spreading out in tactical formation in the tall grass, their M-4 assault rifles at the ready.


Somewhere in the woods, there’s a compound containing a wanted terrorist. The mission: Capture or kill him.

It’s not for real, just as close as you can get at a Virginia Army base on the fringes of the Washington metropolitan area. The team is among nearly 10,000 Marines taking part this week in a massive training exercise along the East Coast.

The exercise, known as Mailed Fist, is designed to reacquaint a force used to ground combat in Afghanistan and Iraq with its basic amphibious mission. It’s also designed to show what the Marines can do at a time when budget constraints are forcing military leaders to squeeze the most out of every dollar.

“Austere times are coming. We know it,” said Maj. Gen. Jon Davis, commander of the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing at Cherry Point Marine Corps Air Station in Havelock, N.C. “It’s all training we have to do.”

He said planners were able to avoid expensive travel to the West Coast and keep costs down by aligning existing training events.

“We haven’t done a wing exercise in 10 years, a big one like this,” he said, noting that deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan have consumed much of the effort for the wing’s 17,300 Marines and 400 aircraft.

One of the main goals of the exercise is to reacquaint Marines with their basic mission as America’s expeditionary force in readiness. That means getting Marine units out of the barracks and into the field, where they live in tents and have to purify their own water, Davis noted.

The exercise, stretching from Northern Virginia south to Florida, also includes flying Marine Harriers and other aircraft under austere conditions like those they might find on a foreign shore and training air controllers to handle large-scale operations.

It’s all part of what military leaders call “reset.” As fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan winds down, there’s a need to practice skills that weren’t used as much over the past 10 years of ground combat, while at the same time incorporating the valuable lessons learned from the wars.

The demands of the long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Davis noted, have forced Marines to rely on bigger trucks and armored vehicles and other, heavier equipment that isn’t particularly suited for the basic amphibious mission. The Mailed Fist exercise, he explained, helps Marines learn to travel lighter — and fight lighter.

“We’re trying to skinny that down,” he said. “You can’t fit all that junk in a ship.”

Both goals are in line with guidance from Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Amos, who’s been trying to refocus the Marines ahead of expected Pentagon budget cuts in the wake of the nation’s continuing sluggish economy and mounting debt.

During an appearance last month at the Center for a New American Security, Amos praised the Marines’ performance in Iraq and Afghanistan but noted “that’s not why the nation buys a United States Marine Corps predominantly. It buys the United States Marine Corps to be our nation’s crisis-response force. It buys us the equipment and allows us and causes us to be at a high state of readiness, so that when things happen around the world, the nation has a hedge force; it has a force that is hopefully forward-deployed on naval vessels, ideally, that can react to that.”

The Marine Corps is set to shrink from a force of 202,000 to 186,800 over the next few years under a review ordered by Amos that also involves combining headquarters and reducing the number of ground vehicles by 25 percent.

“We’ve taken all these high-demand, low-density requirements that have been plaguing all of us for the last 10 years, and we said, ‘Let’s make them … right-density, high-demand. Let’s get the right amount of Marines in there,’” Amos said.

Amos has also directed a more cost-conscious approach to operations, as reflected in the planning for Mailed Fist.

“We are returning back to our frugal roots,” he said at the Center for a New American Security.