In a "dog bites man" moment, the top general in charge of all US Marines on the East Coast said Thursday that a massive amphibious wargame early next year will test out concepts of a tactical framework dusted off recently by think tankers and "strategists" that mates air power with naval warfare.
During a breakfast interview with a group of DC-based defense reporters, Lt. Gen. Dennis Hejlik said that while he wasn't intimately familiar with the recently revamped plan, he's tasked his staff at Marine Forces Command to patch in some of the AirSea Battle Concept's proscriptions in the upcoming Bold Alligator 12 wargame in February.
We just started to look at that at the last Navy-Marine Corps Warfighting [conference] back in the January timeframe. And that's part of what we'll do at Bold Alligator 12. We'll do some of the experimentation there and see if we can take that concept and -- with the Navy and Marine Corps and Air Force; and the Coast Guard's in there also as a naval force -- and look at some of those concepts and see how you can do some experimentation and capitalize on that. What we're really looking at is the assured access part. And that's a big part of AirSea.
Hejlik added that a revamped Kernel Blitz exercise on the West Coast will also take a look at the AirSea concept.
