Another major part of Obsidian Iceberg 23.1 was building interoperability with the Navy for Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW). Planners brought in an MH-60R from Helicopter Maritime Strike Weapons School Pacific (HSMWSP) and conducted joint service torpedo loading and unloading using a recoverable exercise torpedo known as a REXTORP. This coincides with VMX-1’s parallel efforts with the anti-submarine warfare development that they are doing with their MV-22Bs known as ‘Blue Crayons.’
Recently a low-cost acoustic processor (LCAP) capability has been successfully demonstrated at VMX-1 to generate and then transmit over Link-16 undersea track files, while also deploying sonobuoys from the MV-22. Guyette explained, “Finding, fixing and tracking undersea targets from an MV-22 brings a lot of capability in INDOPACOM in terms of speed and agility, and the ability to put an active or passive sonar field into critical choke points. It enables the joint force to do their anti-submarine mission in a resource-constrained environment.”
In the large areas of ocean that make up the Pacific, Marines were quick to realize that the MV-22B could be a major player with its long range and refueling capability which the Navy MH-60Rs do not have. Teaming up Marine MV-22s with Navy MH-60Rs and P-8s could certainly be a game changer.Guyette added “I'm really excited. One of the things I didn't anticipate coming to this job was how excited I would be to learn how to kill submarines. Marines just like killing everything, you know, I mean, it's what we do. And so the opportunity to kill something new is exciting. And so submarines are on the menu now for the Marine Corps. Developing a capability to hold air-breathing, surface, land and subsurface targets at risk, from a forward position that is survivable, broad spectrum low signature, you present a very challenging thorny problem for the adversary, when it's very difficult to see you. And very quickly, you can drop into somewhere and re-energize your capability to basically hit them where it hurts everywhere, which is exciting.”
