Military

Marines Practice Amphibious Assault Tactics At Pendleton

By Alison St John / Reporter

Published September 26, 2011 at 12:04 PM PDT

This story was published more than 12 years ago.

A landing craft unit from the Naval Amphibious Base Coronado practices loading onto the USS Bonhomme Richard while the ship was at sea during training exercise. 2010

Marines Practice Amphibious Assault Tactics At Pendleton

The Marine Corps launches an exercise off the coast of Camp Pendleton this week designed to brush up on skills they haven’t used for a while.

The Marines’ original specialty was as a maritime force ready to respond quickly from the ships off shore. That particular skill wasn’t used in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Major General Melvin Spiese, commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Brigade, said the "Dawn Blitz" exercise this week is to bring the Marine Corps and the Navy back up to speed on amphibious assaults.

“There’s a little bit of science in this and a little bit of art,” Spiese said. “Frankly, we’ve lost that. So what we’re going to be doing is re-familiarizing ourselves with all the complexities of ship-to-shore movement: how we set conditions ashore, ensuring enemy defenses are sufficiently reduced so we can move.”

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Spiese said smaller groups of Marines have intervened from offshore in places like Libya, but this exercise will practice plans to land up to 15,000 marines in hostile territory.

He says San Diegans traveling up the coast may see more aircraft activity as jets and helicopters fly to and from two navy ships off the coast.

Military

Alison St John

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Alison St John currently serves as a general assignment reporter and occasionally co-hosts KPBS Midday Edition. She fell in love with KPBS Radio when she arrived in San Diego in 1985 and first heard NPR. She has been a voice on KPBS Radio since 1989, and has served as a news reporter for radio, TV and the web, as well as anchoring, hosting, producing and editing. Alison has reported on stories about North County and was based in the KPBS' North County Bureau. Alison covered the metro beat during the critical period of the San Diego City pension crisis, and the education beat while Alan Bersin was the controversial Superintendent of San Diego City School District. She covered health when the industry was converting to managed care and told welfare reform stories in the late 1990s when Clinton was “ending welfare as we know it.” She has covered land use issues extensively, looking at the challenges of meeting a growing population while preserving community character, and developing a better transportation system to meet environmental concerns. She has done many stories on the military in San Diego, and the series she edited on the challenges veterans face returning from active duty to civilian life won “Best of Show” from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She occasionally hosts the KPBS Roundtable and KPBS Midday Edition. Alison has won awards from the San Diego Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press TV and Radio Association, and the California Golden Mike Awards. Alison was born in Tanzania, brought up in Scotland, and earned her degree in psychology and sociology from Durham University in England. Her postgraduate diploma is in student counseling. She worked in England, Nigeria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, and Japan before moving to the United States in 1981. She now lives in Oceanside and enjoys how her community is growing and changing.