NAVAL STATION NORFOLK (WAVY) – 25,000 sailors and Marines will take part in an operation known as the latest Large Scale Exercise for 10 days in August.
Naval and USMC commanders of U.S. Fleet Forces and Fleet Marine Force Atlantic briefed the media Monday morning on the exercise that will comprise 22 time zones, in a real-time test of technology and force readiness.
The Naval Warfare Development Center will serve as the overall command center.
“There’s an old boxing analogy that goes: precision beats power, and timing beats speed every time,” said ADM Daryl Caudle, Commander of U.S. Fleet Forces. “So to conduct high-end modern warfare in a distributed maritime operational construct, you have to work on precision and timing.”
It will involve six carrier strike groups in either virtual or live roles, including USS Eisenhower. Harry S. Truman and George H.W. Bush. A total of 25 live ships and subs will take part.
The exercise will enable Marines to work in a more maritime environment, after conflicts in recent decades that required more land and desert-based operations.
“We’re naval by nature, soldiers of the sea, and this training is imperative. It’s by law why we exist,” said Lt. General Brian Cavanaugh.
And short of actual war, the Large Scale Exercise will give the Navy and Marines the best idea of the limits of new technologies that will include “autonomous and unmanned capabilities, communications systems, and our ability to conduct contested logistics,” Caudle said.
“When you talk about from Desert Storm until now, we just have to get better. We should continue to iterate each time. The technologies have improved, our capabilities have improved over the last three and four decades,” Cavanaugh said.
This is the second Large Scale Exercise. It will run from August 9-18. The first was two years ago, but this one has heightened importance with the war raging in Ukraine, and evolving and increasing threats around the world.