Photo By Sgt. Charles Santamaria | Corpsmen with 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, transport supplies to a casualty...... read more read more
Subscribe
YUMA, Ariz. - Foreign refugee role-players rattle the gate surrounding Kiwanis Park as they plead for food, water and medical attention. Moments later, a CH-53E Super Stallion helicopter arrives to deliver supplies in the foreign humanitarian assistance exercise portion of Weapons and Tactics Instructor Course 2-15, at Yuma, Ariz., April 17.
The FHA served as a part of the seven-week WTI course ran by Marine Aviation Weapons and Tactics Squadron 1, which provides advanced tactical training to certify Marine pilots as weapons and tactics instructors.
“The course gives pilots the experience,” said Capt. Johnathan Bryant, CH-53E Super Stallion helicopter instructor, MAWTS 1. “The Marine Corps is called upon often to provide humanitarian assistance and in many cases it’s after natural disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, or hurricanes.”
For more than 10 years, the city of Yuma, Ariz., has afforded parts of their city for the humanitarian assistance exercise with MAWTS 1. This iteration of the FHA used five UH-1Y Venoms and two CH-53E Super Stallion helicopters.
The mission was planned and executed by the students who participated in the assault support department of the course while instructors evaluated their performance. The exercise also challenged pilots by using other locations in the city to act as refugee camps, which lead to more transports they had to conduct and consider during the exercise.
“Trinity Christian Center and Crane Middle School served as notional refugee camps awaiting support or supplies for the training evolution and Kiwanis Park served as the hub of humanitarian assistance,” Bryant said. “In order to initially set up an [FHA], you have to set up security to prevent the possibility of hostile refugees stealing medical supplies, food or water. In scenarios like this, everybody wants the care and many people need the care, so desperation is high.”
1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, served as the ground element for the FHA and provided approximately 100 Marines to serve as security for the center of humanitarian assistance, located at Kiwanis Park. In the scenario, role players acted as hostile foreign refugees seeking food, water and medical attention.
“Having the role players create friction and add [simulated] casualties into the training helps add urgency to the Marines and sailors thinking and planning,” said Chief Petty Officer Oscar Baldevia, foreign humanitarian assistance exercise triage officer, 1/5. “Because of that urgency, we move quicker and it feels real. If we could do something on this scale every day, we would.”
Role players added pressure to the environment by acting as aggressors to the Marines providing security or by painting lacerations and burns on several parts of their body to give the image of severe injuries. Each casualty was brought to the casualty control point, where 1/5 corpsmen organized role players into several groups based on the severity of their injuries. The red group consisted of the most critically injured casualties who needed to be evacuated, the yellow group consisted of role players with injuries that did not require an evacuation, and the colorless group was designated for role players with minor injuries that could be treated on site.
“It’s good training for the corpsmen,” Baldevia said. “It’s a steady flow of casualties with different injuries that vary in urgency. This is important for corpsmen to learn how to treat casualties in a timely manner and [distinguish] which people should be treated first while communicating which need to be evacuated.”
Although WTI is an advanced course for aviation officers, infantry battalions that participate also gain experience working in humanitarian scenarios by communicating air support for evacuations, transport and resupply.
“We’re dealing with real battalions, real companies and real rifleman that are part of the mission.” Bryant said, “If students can’t integrate with the ground element they fail the mission because, as assault support pilots, if we can’t effectively support the infantry we lose our relevance. The realism we get from the WTI course by integrating the infantry battalions and allowing them to develop their plan while pilots still maintain their flexibility is important.”
The goal of MAWTS 1’s WTI course is to refine Marine Corps aviation with each class by creating weapons and tactics instructors who will serve in key officer training billets. This allows the school to create aviation officers with advanced skills, tools and tactics they can apply to the implementation of the aircraft they operate in the operating forces.
| Date Taken: | 04.17.2015 |
| Date Posted: | 04.29.2015 17:27 |
| Story ID: | 161698 |
| Location: | YUMA, AZ, US |
| Web Views: | 75 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
This work, Marines, sailors prepare for humanitarian response with FHA exercise during WTI 2-15, by Sgt Charles Santamaria, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
No keywords found.
LEAVE A COMMENT