Tag Archives: CRRC

Feet Wet

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These recent shots of Army SF and Marines doing the small boat/frogman thing, complete with Dräger LAR rebreathers and CRRCs. (Components of images have often been blurred for Persec).

U.S. Army Special Forces, from the 7th Special Forces Group, perform an amphibious assault demonstration during the Hyundai Air and Sea Show and U.S. Army SaluteFest, Miami Beach, Fla., May 26, 2024. The events, were held throughout Memorial Day Weekend, (U.S. Army Photos by Master Sgt. Justin P. Morelli).

Coming in hot! Of course, almost any operational landing would be at oh-dark-30, and would be weapons secure until the last possible minute, but you have to show off for the crowds

The 7th SFG’s Area of Responsibility (AOR) includes Latin America, the Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico, and parts of the Atlantic Ocean

Note the Gen 3 Glock in the Safariland holster of the SF M240 man

Yup, Gen 3 Glock. Probably a G19, which were always popular in SF

Meanwhile, he’s rocking a SIG M17– you can tell by the distinctive spare mags. Also, note the blank firing device faux suppressor

Another Glock, third-gen judging by the finger grooves on the grip

Soldiers with the 2nd Battalion, 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne) conduct underwater operations in Key West, FL from Nov. 12-19, 2024. The training was a chance to rehearse realistic missions in a maritime environment using a specialty infiltration technique.

Remember, folks each of the 12 companies within each of the five active Special Forces Groups mans, trains, equips, and deploys a full 12-man Special Forces Underwater Operations (SFUWO) ODA, meaning there are supposed to be something on the order of 60 dive-rated “A teams.”

The 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne) (5th SFG (A)) is responsible for the Middle and Near East.

A swim with an M240 has to be a chore

Marines with 1st Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, train to conduct small boat raids as part of a course hosted by Expeditionary Warfare Training Group, Pacific (EWTGPAC) at Naval Amphibious Base Coronado, California. U.S. Marine Corps photos by Cpl. Kyle Chan

U.S. Marines with 1st Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, pilot combat rubber raiding craft during an infantry company small boat raid course hosted by Expeditionary Warfare Training Group Pacific at Naval Amphibious Base Coronado, California, Nov. 14, 2024. During the course, Marines trained to plan and execute swimmer reconnaissance for a small boat raid company in preparation for deployment. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Kyle Chan)

That view, though.

And in related news, how about this deep dive into a Recon Marine’s VBSS kit. 

Green Side Blue Dives

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Always nice to see the “Marines back in Submarines” so to speak.

Check out these recent images of Force Reconnaissance Marines from the 2nd Recon Battalion conducting dive operations near the submarine USS Georgia (SSGN-729), in the Mediterranean Sea.

240727-N-DE439-1001

Of course, the Recon Marines are wearing more basic open-circuit skin diving rigs than cool guy closed-circuit Draegers, but training is training.

Plus, they got a chance to CRRC it up from Georgia’s deck, a task that the Marines are spending more time doing going forward with the whole switch from Amphibious Assault Vehicles (AAV) to Littoral Craft by units such as the 4th Amtrac Bn.

MEDITERRANEAN SEA (July 31, 2024) U.S. Marines from the 2nd Force Reconnaissance Company, assigned to Task Force 61/2, conduct dive operations with Ohio-class guided-missile submarine USS Georgia (SSGN 729) while underway in the Mediterranean Sea July 31, 2024. (U.S. Navy Courtesy Photo)

The old stubborn mule of the SSGN force, Georgia, formerly SSBN-729, is officially homeported in Kings Bay but tends to roam far and wide. For instance, a 100K mile/790-day forward deployment in 2020-22 that included crossing into the Persian Gulf.

Christened back in 1982, she conducted 65 strategic deterrent patrols as a bomber before she was converted to her current cruise missile & commando bus format which she has sported for the past 20 years.

While in the Med as part of the Sixth Fleet, she just got orders for what could be a very busy trip.

Ah, the sound of CRRCickets in summer

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Check out this great photo essay, shot in the Philippine Sea (Aug. 19, 2022), featuring Maritime Raiding Force Boat Company Marines of 2/5 with the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit conducting a boat launch aboard the 25,000-ton San Antonio-class amphibious assault dock USS New Orleans (LPD 18).

Official caption: “Boat companies launch from the well-deck to provide the landing force a ship-to-shore capability. The 31st MEU is operating aboard ships of the Tripoli Amphibious Ready Group in the U.S. 7th Fleet to enhance interoperability with Allies and Partners and serve as a ready response force to defend a Free and Open Indo-Pacific.

(U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Danny Gonzalez)

(U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Danny Gonzalez)

(U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Danny Gonzalez)

(U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Danny Gonzalez)

(U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Danny Gonzalez)

(U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Danny Gonzalez)

15 CRRCs of a full boat company, carrying at least 90 Marines, trailed by a RHIB serving as a control boat. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Danny Gonzalez)

The craft are Enhanced Combat Rubber Reconnaissance Craft (CRRC, or just “Crick”) of the type made by Wing Inflatables of Arcata, California.

Wing’s five-chamber P4.7 series inflatable runs 15′ 5″-feet long, has a 6′ 5″-foot beam, and offers 38.32ft² of usable deck space on a 12×3-foot deck. Empty weight is 180-pounds not counting the 274-pound rollup hard deck insert and can accommodate a 65hp outboard and 10 passengers/2,768-pounds of payload. The whole thing folds up into a 27″x29″x56″ package or roughly the size of a curbside garbage can.

Each of the 7 Marine Expeditionary Units (a battalion landing team with a bunch of stuff bolted onto it and a harrier/helicopter airwing for support) has a bunch of different ways to get to the beach. These include of course the choppers, navy landing craft (LCU, LCAC, etc), and the Marines own amtrac swimming APCs. However, each one of these MAUs also has 18 (15 active and 3 spares) of these little rubber zodiac-style boats.

A little larger than a sectional couch and powered by an outboard (or two) these can motor out from a task force still some 20 miles out at sea and approach an enemy-held beach, port, or vessel with very little footprint. They are hard to spot by eyeball, radar, or other means, especially in a light chop state. It’s a wet ride for the Marines aboard and anyone who has ever ridden one through the surf doesn’t look forward to doing it a second time– especially on a contested beach.

For landings, a company of the battalion landing team is designated the “Boat Company” and they spend a couple weeks figuring these boats out. This includes sending as many as 36 of its force before deployment through a four-week coxswains school where they learn basic sea-nav, and what not to do with these temperamental crafts.

Meanwhile, a few other members of the Boat Coy head off to scout swimmer school where they learn the finer points of exiting a rubber raft on fins and doing lite frogman shit.

In the end, Cricks allow two-thirds of a 144-man company to be landed on a strip of beach or empty pier in three, five-boat waves. The latter third can be shipped in follow-on elements or landed by helicopter. This type of landing was done under OOTW conditions by Marines in Somalia in 1992.

Air transportable, Cricks can be slid out the rear ramp of MV-22s or parachuted from cargo planes such as the C-130 (and Navy C-2 CODs), can be launched from surface vessels ranging from Amphibious assault ships (shown) or smaller craft like patrol boats, LCS and frigates.

They can also be (and are) carried up from submerged submarines by divers for inflation on the surface.

Making like its 1942 Again

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While today’s modern nuclear-powered submarines have surveillance, strike, ASW, and AShW as their primary missions, they also can still do well in that most age-old of submarine tasks– inserting small teams of commando types in the littoral, something I’ve always been a huge fan of.

For video reference, check out the below two very recent videos.

The first is of Royal Marines of Surveillance and Reconnaissance Squadron, 30 Commando Information Exploitation Group, conducting a small boat raid from an “unnamed Royal Navy Astute class submarine” (spoiler alert, it is HMS Ambush, S120, I mean the Brits only have five attack submarines left) during exercise Cold Response 2022, “somewhere along the Norwegian coast.”

The evolution includes the classic submergence under the rubber boat move.

Some stills released of the above: 

As for the Americans

Next up, how about U.S. Marines with Task Force 61/2 (TF-61/2), and Sailors from Task Group 68.1 conducting joint launch and recovery training with Combat Rubber Raiding Craft (CRRC) aboard the Ohio-class cruise-missile submarine USS Georgia (SSGN 729), near Souda Bay, Greece, March 26, 2022. The Marines are working from Georgia’s Dry Dock Shelter and are allowed to run up and launch from the sub’s “hump” in addition to going for a periscope ride.

Duck Boat

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This picture just screams old-school cool.

Sadly, I ran across this on a Hungarian military forum of all places, a venue I typically haunt to find great pictures of Central European firearms. It had no source or explanation and reverse image sources come up with nothing so I have it here for our enjoyment.

It seems to show U.S. Marines in M1942 Frog Skin pattern (AKA “Beo Gam” or “Duck Hunter”) camo tearing ocean for a simulated beach landing from an assault boat (“Landing Craft, Rubber”) with everyone getting as low to the deck as possible. You can count nine M1 Garands. Also, dig the Johnson commercial outboard. I’d place the image likely in the mid-1950s, when the USMC was very much into putting the Marine back into the Navy’s diesel submarine fleet.

For comparison, check out this image of USS Greenfish (SS-351):

Reconnaissance scouts of the 1st Provisional Marine Air-Ground Task Force load into a rubber boat from Greenfish, a submarine of the Pacific fleet as they leave on a night mission against “enemy” installations on the island of Maui. The training afforded the Marines of the Task Force, which is based at the Marine Corps Air Station, Kaneohe Bay, Oahu, Territory of Hawaii, is the most versatile offered to Marines anywhere October 7, 1954. Note the classic WWII “duck hunter” camo which had by 1954 been out of use for almost a decade except for special operations units. (Sgt D.E. Reyher DEFENSE DEPT PHOTO (MARINE CORPS) A290040.)

Great stuff, and, as ususal, if anyone has any other feedback or details, please let me know.

Marines to get upto 904 new CRRCs, which is way more than they ‘should’ need

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From DOD: 

Wing Inflatables Inc., Arcata, California, is awarded a $31,921,100 firm-fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for the purchase of up to a maximum 904 Enhanced – Combat Rubber Reconnaissance Craft. Work will be performed in Arcata, California, and is expected to be complete by August 2026. Fiscal 2019 and 2022 procurement (Marine Corps) contract funds in the amount of $3,126,894 will be obligated on the first delivery order immediately following contract award and funds will expire the end of the fiscal 2022 and 2023, respectively. This contract was competitively procured via the System for Award Management website, with three proposals received. The Marine Corps Systems Command, Quantico, Virginia, is the contracting activity (M67854-21-D-1801).

Wing’s five-chamber P4.7 series inflatable runs 15′ 5″-feet long, has a 6′ 5″-foot beam, offers 38.32ft² of usable deck space on a 12×3-foot deck. Empty weight is 180-pounds not counting the 274-pound rollup hard deck insert and can accommodate a 65hp outboard and 10 passengers/2,768-pounds of payload. The whole thing folds up into a 27″x29″x56″ package, or roughly the size of a curbside garbage can.

Each of the 7 Marine Expeditionary Units (a battalion landing team with a bunch of stuff bolted onto it and a harrier/helicopter airwing for support) has a bunch of different ways to get to the beach. These include of course the choppers, navy landing craft (LCU, LCAC, etc), and the Marines own amtrac swimming APCs. However, each one of these MAUs also has 18 of these little rubber zodiac-style boats, designated Combat Rubber Raiding Craft (CRRC, or “Crick”).

PACIFIC OCEAN (Aug. 30, 2013) Marines from the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit (13th MEU) depart from the stern gate of the amphibious assault ship USS Boxer (LHD 4) in a combat rubber raiding craft (CRRC). Boxer is underway as part of the Boxer Amphibious Ready Group, comprised of Boxer, the amphibious transport dock ship USS New Orleans (LPD 18), the amphibious dock landing ship USS Harpers Ferry (LSD 49), and the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Brian P. Biller/Released)

A little larger than a sectional couch and powered by an outboard (or two) these can motor out from a task force still some 20 miles out at sea and approach an enemy-held beach, port, or vessel with very little footprint. They are hard to spot by eyeball, radar, or other means, especially in a light chop state. It’s a wet ride for the Marines aboard and anyone who has ever ridden one through the surf doesn’t look forward to doing it a second time– especially on a contested beach.

For landings, a company of the battalion landing team is designated the “Boat Company” and they spend a couple weeks figuring these boats out. This includes sending as many as 36 of its force before deployment through a four-week coxswains school where they learn basic sea-nav, and what not to do with these temperamental crafts. Meanwhile, other members of the Boat Coy head off to scout swimmer school where they learn the finer points of exiting a rubber raft on fins and doing lite frogman shit.

In the end, Cricks allow a 144-man company to be landed on a strip of beach or empty pier in three, six-boat waves. The former was done under OOTW conditions by Marines in Somalia in 1992.

Air transportable, Cricks can be slid out the rear ramp of MV-22s or parachuted from cargo planes such as the C-130 (and Navy C-2 CODs), can be launched from surface vessels such ranging from Amphibious assault ships (shown) or smaller craft like patrol boats, LCS and frigates. They can also be (and are) carried up from submerged submarines by divers for inflation on the surface.

The thing is, if you do the basic math on 7 MEU boat companies x 18 E-CRRCs, you get just 126 boats. Even if you double that amount to cover training and attrition, then add some for SEAL ops from submarines and for the use of Force Recon/Raider units, you still have like ~500 extra small boats.

That’s an interesting thing to ponder. 

I’d like to mention that a few months back, I theorized that the Marines might use Cricks to displace human assets from anti-ship missile batteries after they have fired their missiles from isolated atolls before the Chinese show up in force. Fire off their NSSMs, drop some WP grenades on their trucks, hop in the inflatables, and meet with a passing SSN or EPF just past the 15-fathom curve. May be easier to accomplish and have less of a footprint than an MV-22 pickup. 

Rig for divers

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COMSUBPAC recently released several images of things you don’t usually see: Dry Deck Shelter and submerged diver operations on a Virginia-class hunter-killer submarine.

PACIFIC OCEAN (June 18, 2021) — The Virginia-class fast-attack submarine USS North Carolina (SSN 777) conducts operations off the coast of Oahu, Hawai’i. U.S. military forces are present and active in and around the Pacific in support of allies and partners and a free and open Indo-Pacific for more than 75 years. (U.S. Navy photos by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Alex Perlman/Released)

The Navy only has about a half-dozen of the 38-foot DDSs (2-3 in each of the SDV Teams), which were put into service in the 1980s to replace the capability lost when the Pentagon scrapped the old transport submarines (see USS Perch) of the Vietnam-era. Boats such as Perch could put ashore platoon-sized elements of Marines or UDTs/SEALs via small boats and do so in relatively (for the blue water Navy) shallow water.

While usually older boats operate DDSs– for instance converted Tridents turned into SSGNs– 10 of Virginias are believed equipped to operate DDSs, which can support a SEAL platoon (16 operators) for dive or small boat (CRRC) operations.

Previous to these images, some of the last good quality released images of DDS shelters in use on DVIDS date to earlier this year and, beyond that to 2008, both on converted SSGNs.

Ohio CRRCs

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The Navy has recently released a sizzle reel and some additional images of the exercise earlier this month of Force Recon Marines and their combat rubber raiding craft (CRRCs) on the converted boomer USS Ohio (SSGN 726) off Okinawa. 

(U.S. Marine Corps photos by Sgt. Audrey M. C. Rampton)

Notably, there are some rare detailed shots of Ohio’s lockout chamber, converted Trident SLBM tubes, being used to store the CRRCs and their outboards.

 

Sub-Marine ops, Back In style

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The Marines have been rubber boating around, a skill they are used to as each Battalion Landing Team for years has typically included a designated “Boat Company,” trained to run about on 15-foot Combat Rubber Raiding Craft (CRRC, or “Crick”).

What is interesting about this is that they recently did so in conjunction with a converted boomer in the Philippine Sea, embarking on some expeditionary training. The standard Dry Deck Shelters used by the Navy’s submarines are each able to carry an SDV minisub for use by SEALs– or four CRRCs, enough to carry a platoon-size Marine maritime raid force.

PHILIPPINE SEA (Feb. 2, 2021) The Ohio-class guided-missile submarine USS Ohio (SSGN 726), deployed to the U.S. 7th Fleet area of operations, rendezvous with a combat rubber raiding craft, attached to U.S. Marine Corps Force Reconnaissance Company, III Marine Expedition Force (MEF), for an integration exercise off the coast of Okinawa, Japan. The exercise was part of ongoing III MEF-U.S. 7th Fleet efforts to provide flexible, forward-postured, and quick response-options to regional commanders. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Audrey M. C. Rampton)

“This training demonstrates the ability of Force Reconnaissance Marines in III MEF to operate with strategic U.S. Navy assets,” said III MEF Force Reconnaissance Company Commanding Officer Maj. Daniel Romans. “As the stand-in force in the first island chain, it is critical that Force Reconnaissance Marines are capable of being employed across a myriad of U.S. Navy platforms in order to enhance the lethality of the fleet in the littoral environment. Reconnaissance Marines have a proud history of working with submarines and we look forward to sustaining these relationships in the future.”

It is not a dramatically new concept.

On 17 August 1942, just nine months after Pearl Harbor, 211 Marines of the 2nd Marine Raider Battalion embarked aboard the submarines USS Argonaut and Nautilus crept ashore at Makin Island and did what the Raiders were meant to do– hit hard in the most unexpected area they could find and jack up a small Japanese garrison.

Then of course, throughout the 1950s and 60s, Marines on submarines were a regular sight…

Reconnaissance scouts of the 1st Provisional Marine Air-Ground Task Force load into a rubber boat from Greenfish, a submarine of the Pacific fleet as they leave on a night mission against “enemy” installations on the island of Maui. The training afforded the Marines of the Task Force, which is based at the Marine Corps Air Station, Kaneohe Bay, Oahu, Territory of Hawaii, is the most versatile offered to Marines anywhere October 7, 1954. Note the classic WWII “duck hunter” camo which had by 1954 been out of use for almost a decade except for special operations units. (Sgt D.E. Reyher DEFENSE DEPT PHOTO (MARINE CORPS) A290040.)

Coming correct in the Baltic

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Exercise Baltic Operations (BALTOPS) 2018 recently concluded and was pretty wide in scope, blending both NATO forces and non-aligned Baltic nations (i.e. Sweden and Finland) with 43 maritime units, more than 60 aircraft and a combined amphibious landing force (the latter of which included such nontypical units as the Sig 550-armed Romanian 307th Naval Infantry Regiment operating CRRC inflatables from a U.S. landing dock)

For instance:

180608-N-TJ319-0239 BALTIC SEA (June 8, 2018) Members of the Romanian 307th Naval Infantry Regiment depart the well deck of the Harpers Ferry-class dock landing ship USS Oak Hill (LSD 51) on a combat rubber raiding crafts during a joint personnel recovery exercise in support of exercise Baltic Operations (BALTOPS) 2018. BALTOPS is the premier annual maritime-focused exercise in the Baltic Region and one of the largest exercises in Northern Europe that is designed to enhance the flexibility and interoperability among allied and partner nations. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Jessica L. Dowell/Released)

They practiced some good, very relevant stuff to include mine/countermine ops, defense against fast attack craft, TRAP ops, and air defense exercise from shore-based low-flying fast jets (German Tornados).

One of the most eye-catching of the exercise footnotes was a photoex with 30 vessels to include the U.S. Navy’s Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Bainbridge (DDG 96), the Blue Ridge-class command and control ship USS Mount Whitney (LCC 20), and the Harpers Ferry-class dock landing ship USS Oak Hill (LSD 51). These were joined by the Finnish Hmeenmaa-class minelayer FNS Uusimaa (05), Denmark’s Iver Huitfeldt-class frigate HDMS Niels Juel (F363), the German Type 702 Berlin-class replenishment ship FGS Frankfurt A.M. (A1412), the RN’s Duke-class Type 23 frigate HMS Monmouth (F235) and a cornucopia of smaller patrol boats and mine countermeasure ships from such diverse players as Turkey and Lithuania.

BALTIC SEA (June 9, 2018) Thirty maritime unit ships from 12 nations maneuver in close formation for a photo exercise during Exercise Baltic Operations (BALTOPS) 2018 in the Baltic Sea. BALTOPS is the premier annual maritime-focused exercise in the Baltic Region and one of the largest exercises in Northern Europe that are designed to enhance the flexibility and interoperability among allied and partner nations. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Justin Stumberg/Released) 180609-N-XT273-2967

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