ABOARD THE AMPHIBIOUS ASSAULT SHIP USS ESSEX – The daytime launch of the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System on Sunday might have seemed like another training mission if the Marines hadn’t fired it from an amphibious ship operating at sea.
A detachment of Marines with Camp Pendleton, Calif.-based 5th Battalion, 11th Marines, set up the vehicle-borne launch system on the flight deck of amphibious transport dock USS Anchorage (LPD-23). Programmed with information about the objective – suspected enemy air defenses – on a nearby island, the HIMARS launcher fired off a rocket at a target 70 kilometers away.
Target destroyed, officials said.
The missile strike, coming during the biannual amphibious task force exercise Dawn Blitz off southern California, marked a big first for the Navy and the Marine Corps.
“The ability to project power from and at sea is critical,” Lt. Col. Tom Savage, operations officer with 1st Marine Expeditionary Brigade, told a small group of journalists at a briefing aboard USS Essex, the flagship for the exercise.
“It’s a significant capability.”
I'm pretty sure from the first time a Marine artillery officer loaded a HIMARS on an amphibious warfare ship, they've been itching to do this. It's an obvious solution to some of the fire support issues the Marines face during an amphibious assault.
The article is getting a bit over its skis later on talking about shooting from to seaward later. The GMLRS currently has no capability to engage moving targets. Having said that, there are a couple of different efforts underway to change that. And every new arrow in the quiver helps.
XBradTC 
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