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Certifying Marines for Special Operations
The Special Operations Training Group (SOTG) trains Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) personnel for Special Operations Capable (SOC) certification prior to deployment.
* The Marine Corps utilizes the SOTG at an operational level instead of in a training school environment.
SOTG conducts complex exercises in urban environments requiring up to a year of advance planning and coordination.
* MEU-SOC designations give the Marine Corps across-the-board special operations capability for all forward-deployed units.
It's midnight in the Big Easy. In the French Quarter, music and liquor flow and Christmas lights punctuate the starless night. Down the road from a popular Wal-Mart near an industrial section of the port of New Orleans, the night is split by the sound of Super Cobra helicopters, and sniper fire rings out. Seconds later, a convoy of Marines screeches to a stop, blocking a major intersection as Force Reconnaissance troops assault a deserted building.
The assault in New Orleans was, in fact, an elaborate training exercise staged by the Marine Corps' Special Operations Training Group (SOTG) to replicate an assault on a suspected insurgent headquarters in Iraq. The map of the city has been superimposed with a map of Baghdad, and target sites were chosen to duplicate enemy strongholds the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) will encounter during its upcoming deployment.
SOTG was created in 1985 to support the training and certification of the Marine Expeditionary Unit-Special Operations Capable (MEU-SOC) program. The highly structured Training in an Urban Environment Exercise is designed to train and evaluate the MEU for its SOC certification.
A year in the planning, the SOTG took over portions of the city for nearly two weeks, staging elaborate scenarios designed to mimic current battle conditions in Iraq, and challenge the troops with new and unexpected situations. In New Orleans, the SOTG focused on the Maritime Special Purpose Force, specifically 72 Marines including a platoon from the elite 2nd Force Reconnaissance Company.
An urban environment exercise on this scale can be a logistical nightmare to plan, with constant coordination between local and state governments, state Homeland Security personnel, a Marine Corps-FBI liaison who works with local law-enforcement authorities, the U.S. State Department and other governmental agencies, as well as massive coordination with naval and...