Royal Marines from the UK Commando Force guided in attacks by American fast jets and seized a ship at sea during three weeks of maritime special operations training with United States Navy SEALs in Virginia, the Royal Navy stated.
The exercise, codenamed Resolute Strike, was intended to get the two forces operating together as one and to keep the British teams ready for NATO tasking. It ran through close-quarter combat scenarios by day and night, taking in vessel boarding and compound clearance, and finished with a validation exercise mounted from the San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock USS Arlington.
Major George Eatwell, Officer in Command of M Company, 42 Commando, said: “Resolute Strike was not only an exceptional Maritime Special Operations training opportunity, but it also proved vital integration with our US partners, testing interchangeability of tactics, equipment, and processes. Whenever, or wherever we may fight alongside the US in the future, we are now better aligned at the operator level having built those lasting foundational relationships.”
Twenty-seven commandos from M Company travelled to Virginia Beach alongside specialists from 148 Battery, who handle multi-domain fires and targeting, after a month of riverine and jungle raiding in southern Mississippi.
The 148 Battery party worked with SEAL teams at the Navy Dare Bombing Range in North Carolina, a remote facility of 72 square miles, which the Royal Navy compares to the size of Wigan, where American aircrew practise air to surface attack. There the British teams talked in strikes by F-18 Super Hornets against area denial systems including surface-to-air missiles, work that falls under the suppression of enemy air defences. Completing it leaves the battery fully certified to support operations at very high readiness.
M Company forms Special Operations Maritime Task Unit 9 and concentrated on maritime interdiction. According to the Royal Navy, task units of this kind are built to deploy worldwide from hubs ashore or from ships, working alone or folded into a partner force, and each can field one force protection team and two boarding teams, with scout snipers, uncrewed systems, dive teams, explosive ordnance disposal and electronic warfare added as required.
The training began with the two sides exchanging tactics before moving on to close-quarters battle objectives, with teams inserted by helicopter in darkness to take compounds, and more than twenty missions were run across various scenarios.
Attention then turned to the water, where an assault team conducted a vessel takedown at night covering explosive and mechanical methods of entry alongside close quarters marksmanship. In the final week the commandos embarked on USS Arlington for a last mission against an American target vessel, with two Black Hawk helicopters putting a combined British and American team onto the ship to seize it.
Both forces hold Arctic responsibilities for their respective countries, and the Royal Navy says the integration work moves to colder conditions this winter.
42 Commando is based at Bickleigh outside Plymouth and is the Royal Marines unit specialising in maritime operations, including boarding and interdiction work. 148 Battery, part of 29 Commando Regiment Royal Artillery, provides forward observation and joint fires support to the commando force and its members qualify as joint terminal attack controllers, which is what allows them to direct strikes by other nations’ aircraft.
The Commando Force has been the subject of considerable investment, with Wes Streeting restating from the Labour Party conference platform this week that half a billion pounds is going into the force and its drone equipment as it helps defend NATO’s High North.
