Glad I'm retired. Something like experience tells me training is going to be a bitch for the foreseeable future It doesn't matter one bit to the Marine Corps that regular Marines faced off with special forces.

The point to the CAX is to learn. not talk shit. There are 12 each year at MCAGCC 29 Palms and all combat arms units go to them. They're by the book monotonous exercises. I wonder if maybe one side didn't take it more seriously than the other?

Either way, I won't miss being there. Right before the holidays too. Gonna suck



Britain’s Royal Marines crushed U.S. Marines during a recent exercise, according to British media.
“U.S. forces asked for a ‘reset’ half way into the five-day war fighting exercise, having suffered significant simulated casualties,” claims Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper. “At one point in the battle, the commandos’ ‘kill board,’ an intelligence assessment of the level of damage inflicted upon enemy equipment and units, had a tick against almost every American asset, indicating it had been deemed destroyed or rendered inoperable.”

But was this really a contest of martial prowess, or a battle between two very different types of marines?
The simulated battle took place during Exercise Green Dagger, at the U.S. Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center at Twentynine Palms, California. The exercise involved 500 Royal Marines from 40 Commando and other British units, as well as 120 Dutch marines from the Netherlands Marine Corps, British defense media reported last week. The exercise was designed to prepare U.S. Marine units for deployment overseas, as well as allow Britain to test a new Royal Marine reorganization.
“The Royal Marines' success was achieved by targeting the U.S. headquarters and valuable equipment, paralyzing counterattacks from the Americans,” the Telegraph said. “The exercise concluded with a last minute US assault which was repelled, leaving the Royal Marines in control of over 65 per cent of the entire area, having started with less than 20 per cent.”


The U.S. Marine Corps did not respond to queries from Forbes at press time. But the British press lost no time in boasting of the battle, with headlines that used words like “surrender,” “humiliate” and “dominate.” The tone sounded as if Britain had revenged its defeats at Saratoga and Yorktown during the American Revolution, or got back at the Yanks for becoming the dominant partner in the Anglo-American “special relationship” after World War II.
However, the truth is probably a bit less dramatic. For starters, we don’t know how the exercise was conducted. What was the scenario, the balance of forces, and the objectives of the exercise? The British and Dutch marines were supported by artillery and aircraft. Did the U.S. Marines have equivalent support, such as naval gunfire?

But the real problem with assessing relative martial prowess is that in warfare, a mismatch between the combatants is more the rule than the exception. In this case, the fact that the British and U.S. forces are both called “marines” misses a crucial difference. The U.S. Marine Corps is a unique organization: a nearly 200,000-strong force that’s essentially a smaller, more mobile version of the U.S. Army (and is considered one of the six branches of the U.S. military, alongside the Army, Navy and Air Force).

But in many nations around the world, marines are small forces used for amphibious operations or securing naval bases (such as Russia’s Naval Infantry). For Britain, the Royal Marines are actually commandos, which makes them special operations forces. If British marines embarrassed American marines, that would not be an unexpected outcome for when elite units fight regular forces. If U.S. Delta Force commandos – or U.S. Marine Force Recon units – fought a regular British infantry battalion, the same result might occur.

Regardless of whether the comparison is fair, the U.S. Marines will have to grin and bear it. For Britain, whose military has been shrinking for years under merciless budget cuts, it’s a bit of rare good news. Faced with global commitments and diminishing resources, Britain is creating two Littoral Response Groups (LRG), which are amphibious task forces centered that include Royal Marines. If nothing else, Exercise Green Dagger suggests Britain’s marines are still a force not to be trifled with.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michael...h=3591bc4465f0