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RIVRON 1 Completes Another Phase of Maritime Security Training

Navy NewsStand

Story Number: NNS060913-10
Release Date: 9/13/2006 10:31:00 AM

By Mass Communication Specialist Airman Kenneth Ray Hendrix, Fleet Public Affairs Center Atlantic

CAPE FEAR RIVER, N.C. (NNS) -- Sixty Sailors from Riverine Squadron (RIVRON) 1, a Navy Expeditionary Combat Command (NECC), successfully completed the first of two phases of small unit riverine craft (SURC) training through the Special Missions Training Center (SMTC) at Camp Lejeune along the water banks of Cape Fear River Sept. 10.

The seven-week training lesson with a week of exercises is known as the coxswain course. The program teaches the basics of maneuvering SURC on rivers with the weaponry system element added, to properly plan and execute missions.

“The final exercise for the boat coxswain and captain courses basically teaches the Sailors to go from a basic level of knowledge of Marine Corps infantry skill sets, to developing them into riverine operators, teaching them tactics, techniques, procedures, knowledge of the waterways and things they are likely to encounter,” said Marine Corps Maj. Roberto Martinez, commanding officer, SMTC.

Exercises were conducted during the day and night, with various scenarios inserting and extracting the ground combat interdiction team that have the mission of getting off the boat to do local land sight securities.

“They are given 12 hours from receiving the mission to do their mission planning, conduct their rehearsals, give a good operational order to their patrol, and then stage their gear to depart,” said Marine Staff Sgt. Eric J. Hodge, a boat team instructor at SMTC. “Within that 12-hour time frame, they have to do all of that to include completing the mission and be back in to debrief all the points that happen through out the patrol.”

Sailors receive tactics training on riverine assault craft (RAC) boats, traveling at speeds exceeding 35 knots, and at the same time, learn to operate SURC for operation readiness in Iraq.

A RAC consists of a five-man crew with a captain, coxswain, an aft and bow gunner with .50 machine guns and two midshipmen gunners with a M240G machine gun.

The training from the Marine Corps and many combat veterans has been taken to heart, said RIVRON-1 executive officer, Lt. Cmdr. Michael Eagon.

“We’re lucky to draw from the Marine Corps instructors ‘lessons learned’ and their real-life experiences, in being able to teach my guys how it really is," he said. "It’s priceless.”

Many of the Sailors going through the training realize they are writing a new chapter in Navy history, similar to the Vietnam War riverine patrol force.

“I volunteered for the program because it’s the new wave of the Navy and history in the making,” said Gunner’s Mate 2nd Class Patrick McKenna. “As a kid, I always wanted to grow up to be like the brown-water Sailors of Vietnam.”

The transition from the “blue Navy” to the combat “brown water” Navy for 16-year enlisted Chief Boatswain’s Mate (SW) Stephen Nordan is the challenge he’s been waiting for his entire career.

“It’s a challenge and that’s one of the reasons I wanted to come here," he said. "The training is instrumental, and the Marine Corps instructors have been under fire while doing missions. Therefore, it’s important to us and we couldn’t have gotten that from anywhere else.”

The Marine Corps instructors at the SMTC know the right way to complete each mission, and are more than confident that the Sailors of RIVRON 1 will prevail.

“I think they are set up for a 110 percent success,” said Hodge. “Here at the school house it’s a great forum, because we can wrap all those (riverine combat skill sets) together and provide it to them, and they get the benefit of all that shared knowledge.”