The Marines at Resolute Hunter 2024-2

FALLON, Nev. — The morning sky is partly cloudy, and the local weather shows a high temperature of 57, although the previous nighttime low reached 37. By 10 a.m., U.S. Marines assigned to a signals intelligence and electronic warfare team with 1st Radio Battalion, I Marine Expeditionary Force Information Group, are still one-by-one removing cold weather clothing as they break down satellite communications equipment to move to a new location about 50 miles away from Naval Air Station Fallon, Nevada, Oct. 31, 2024.

The valley floor is sandy, and shrubs litter the ground between the Carson Range and the Clan Alpine mountains of the western and west-central part of the state. Although the basin is wide and most of the valley’s hills are shallow, the joint light tactical vehicle the SIEW team lives and works from during Exercise Resolute Hunter 25-1 is nearly undistinguishable from its surroundings at a distance. This is the proving ground on which 1st Radio Bn. is demonstrating, for the first time in a large-scale exercise, that their new command structure – task-organized, trained and equipped over the past year – really works.

“About a year ago, 1st Radio Battalion did a reorganization of our structure,” explains U.S. Marine Corps Maj. Jonathan Acker, lead planner for 1st Radio Bn’s participation in Resolute Hunter 25-1. “Out of that came three different standard force offerings at three different echelons.”

Acker, a Marine Air-Ground Task Force intelligence planner, says that three four-Marine SIEW teams report to a 10-Marine operations control element or OCE, which then reports to a 25-Marine operations control and analysis center or OCAC.

“We tried to standardize capabilities that we can send out to meet the demand across the world,” Acker adds.

Senior intelligence analyst for the OCE, Sgt. Justin Greyhat, explains that in a real-world operation, the three SIEW teams could be geographically distributed hundreds of miles from the OCE and the OCAC could be hundreds or thousands of miles further.

“It’s kind of a give and take,” Greyhat also says. “The OCAC gives us what they need. We turn that into digestible information for the teams. The teams get what is required of that, and in turn give that back to us, where we pass it up. And it’s just a nice flow back and forth. You know, if we were deployed that’s more or less how it’s going to work as well.”

Distance can present challenges.

“For the teams on the ground, a lot of times, they’re mostly mobile,” says Sgt. Avery Ayala, the senior intelligence analyst for the OCAC. “They might run into issues with communication to the operation control element. [The OCE isn’t] set in stone, stationary like the OCAC. They can move, but for the most part, they will be able to figure out those issues that the teams might have on the ground and coordinate that with the teams.”

Greyhat adds that Resolute Hunter is a crucial opportunity to practice with different lines of communication, such as satellite and high frequency radio communications. If, for some reason, satellite communications are impossible, HF is versatile enough to transmit data, and the mission can still be accomplished and vice versa.

“It’s actually gone excellent so far,” Acker states, enthusiastically. “On day one, the teams were able to collect signals, they were able to process that data, communicate it to the operations and control element, who did further analysis, forwarded that on to the OCAC, who was able to synthesize it with separate collection entities and passed that to the joint intelligence operations center, which is operated by [the Naval Aviation Warfighting Development Center]. The fact that we were able to accomplish that communication train is pretty excellent, considering it’s their first real go at it.”

Throughout Resolute Hunter 25-1, the three SIEW teams have lived, worked, and maneuvered around a training area, more than an hour’s drive away from the OCE and the OCAC, all in separate locations on NAS Fallon to simulate the dispersion they will experience on a deployment.

During the exercise, the teams are working to triangulate simulated adversary frequencies, signals, and cyber networks. They then report their collections to the OCE, who analyze them and provides them to the OCAC for further synthesis before they are sent to the NAWDC for decisions and follow-on actions.

“The other teams are in another location, separate from us,” Cpl. Ian Anderson, a SIEW team leader, says. “So when they get one, we draw those lines on a map and it points at one little point, okay, that’s how we find transmitters…We pass that up to higher, and they plan actions on after that.”

Anderson says the biggest takeaway from the exercise is that the SIEW team has help and support when they need it.

“We’ve always known that the people higher up will take care of us, and we’ve had that,” adds Cpl. Maxwell Fowler, and intelligence surveillance reconnaissance systems engineer with the team. “We’ve had issues that we didn’t know how to solve ourselves, and so they had some people out to help us, and they’ve gotten that resolved every time.”

“Now that we’re here and we’re actually being implemented into a joint force, getting that extra help from outside sources is game changing,” he says. “It really brings everything together, and it’s definitely opened all of our eyes as to what we can expect in the future.”

The team’s tactical cyber collections and survey Marine, Cpl. Job Kinsler, adds that the new battalion structure has given him opportunities he might not have had otherwise.

“I’m more well-rounded because of that. I understand the bigger picture better now because I’m not in my cyber bubble…and knowing a bigger picture has made it easier, across the board,” he explains.

The Marines said they have gone on exercises at the battalion level before while training under the reorganized structure, but never on the scale of Resolute Hunter.

“I think they’re getting a lot of confidence in the fact that they’re able to not only complete their job, but also contribute at a joint and combined level in a significant way, which is essentially what they’re going to be doing when they go and deploy,” Acker says, speaking on the success of the new structure in the scope of the exercise. “It’s also the way that we’re going to fight the future. Everything that we do is going to be joint. Everything that we do, especially at large scale, is going to be with our allies and partners.”

Exercise Resolute Hunter, hosted by the NAWDC, occurs twice annually and is the U.S. Department of Defense’s only dedicated battle management, command and control, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance exercise. Resolute Hunter 25.1 includes four partner nations, which makes it a prime opportunity for 1st Radio Bn. to showcase the capabilities of the OCAC, the OCE and the SIEW teams, while giving them the opportunity to gain experience working with joint and combined partners.

This story was published by I MEF Information Group on November 6, 2024.

Featured image: U.S. Marines assigned to the operations control element with 1st Radio Battalion, I Marine Expeditionary Force Information Group, assemble an inflatable satellite antenna at Naval Air Station Fallon, Nevada, during Exercise Resolute Hunter 25-1, Oct. 31, 2024. Resolute Hunter, the Department of Defense’s only dedicated battle management, command and control, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance exercise, has served as a proving ground for 1st RadBn as it employs a new command structure consisting of three elements – small teams of SIEW Marines, the OCE and an operations control and analysis center – all geographically distributed as they would be in a real-world operation. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Staff Sgt. Nate Carberry)