Elite Marines on the Forefront: ANGLICO

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Marine Air Naval Gunfire Liaison Company

By SUE A. LACKEY
Associate Editor

Page 2

Training for that deployment, ANGLICO teams expect to be operating from urban terrain in the insurgent environment in Iraq. Given this compressed battlespace, with the additional complication of a resident civilian population, ANGLICO’s JTAC expertise is even more vital to U.S. and coalition forces. Their call sign, “Lightning,” assures pilots and gunners that the soldier calling in the fire is qualified, mitigating the chance of friendly fire.

“When you’re talking about a digital battlefield, the preponderance of our fire right now is being delivered by airplanes. Under the rules we’ve set up, you can’t deliver ordnance unless you’re a JTAC,” said Lt. Col. Scott Campbell, commanding officer of 2nd ANGLICO, based at Camp LeJeune, N.C. “A rifle company likely has no ability to deliver air. That company commander and those lieutenants know how to do it, but if an F-16 — an Air Force airplane — shows up, the pilot will not drop the ordnance unless it’s in extremis, and then he’s going to ask for your initials and he’s going to try and protect himself because of what’s happened with fratricide.”

Campbell, a Force Reconnaissance veteran, is acutely aware of the intense training his Marines will have to undergo in advance of the challenge of urban warfare, where JTACs may have to talk pilots onto structural targets in crowded cities. Laser target indicators are not visible in the glaring sunlight of Iraq, and obscure targets may be not be visible to pilots coming in at 10,000 feet.

“These young ANGLICO Marines are dropping 500-pound bombs within 300 meters of friendlies in Iraq,” he said. “We bring the capability that, day or night, we’re going to get a bomb onto the target, and we’re going to do it safely.

“The pilot needs to know where you’re at, they need to know where the enemy is at, they need to know what direction to come in on. It’s not an exact science, and the JTAC has to have the experience to make damn sure that pilot’s nose is pointed in the right direction, or he won’t let him drop that ordnance. At night, when the planes don’t have their lights on and you’re using a set of [night vision goggles] and trying to talk the guy onto a target with an infrared pointer, we’re counting on that JTAC’s ability to look into the sky at an airplane moving pretty fast, in the dark, and ascertain the geometry of the battlefield.

“It’s our job to paint that pilot a picture,” Campbell added, “to give him a feel for how intense the combat is, how close the enemy is in relation to the friendlies; make that pilot comfortable with the decision. When a pilot hears the call sign Lightning, he should smile, and say, ‘OK, this guy knows what he’s doing; this guy’s a pro.’”

Much of the small unit tactics and JTAC qualifications are in line with the Marine Corps’ vision of Distributed Operations, and the concept of leveraged firepower. While the Corps plans to greatly increase the number of JTACs available within conventional battalions, ANGLICO’s intensive training and specific mission will remain. Campbell sees the organization inevitably pushed toward the Special Operations arena in support of current tactics in Iraq, but wants to guard against diluting the mission.

“We need to be able to shoot as well or better than the grunts, and we need to be good at patrolling,” Campbell said. “But you have to be careful how much you put on these guys so you don’t marginalize your skill levels. As a base, I want us great at fire-support coordination and terminal control of fire — let’s have a jump capability to get to work, let’s be in phenomenal shape and know how to swim so we can go in on a rubber boat. Then we can train to special mission sets if we know they’re coming.”

The company now is spending one to two hours every night going over technical details, ordnance specifications and targeting tactics. The goal is to have every detail committed to memory for instant recall by JTACs on the battlefield.

“How does that differ from what a Force Recon JTAC is going to do?” Campbell said. “They don’t have the luxury of spending that kind of time and energy and resources getting to that level of proficiency. When we sit around and have a beer at night, we talk about fire-support coordination, we talk about dropping bombs. We want to be able to move these guys to the sound of the guns.

“If 8th Marines needs six of these guys, by God, the 8th Marines commanding officer is going to get six of these guys. We’re going to go find where they’re at, and move our teams to the sound of the guns so they can kill people. That’s exactly what we’re going to do, and we’re going to do it well.”

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