{"id":26039,"date":"2022-06-16T05:15:03","date_gmt":"2022-06-16T05:15:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/uncategorized\/2022\/06\/16\/marine-reserve-takeover-of-southern-command-opens-force-experimentation-readiness\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T20:59:58","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T20:59:58","slug":"marine-reserve-takeover-of-southern-command-opens-force-experimentation-readiness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/global\/the-americas\/2022\/06\/16\/marine-reserve-takeover-of-southern-command-opens-force-experimentation-readiness\/","title":{"rendered":"Marine Reserve takeover of Southern Command opens force experimentation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">With the Marine Corps Reserve becoming the primary force provider for its service in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.militarytimes.com\/news\/your-military\/2022\/05\/20\/why-latin-american-partners-need-a-better-way-to-share-intel-than-whatsapp\/\" target=\"_blank\">U.S. Southern Command<\/a>, reservists, from brand new privates to senior officers, have a ready-made backyard for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.marines.mil\/Portals\/1\/Docs\/Force_Design_2030_Annual_Update_May_2022.pdf?ver=7ul-eyF6RcSq_gHU2aKYNQ%3d%3d\" target=\"_blank\">honing amphibious skills<\/a> while contributing to real-world missions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.marinecorpstimes.com\/news\/your-marine-corps\/2019\/01\/14\/small-group-of-marines-sailors-complete-first-step-in-building-long-term-latin-america-task-force\/\" target=\"_blank\">Southern Command <\/a>hasn\u2019t gotten its due in decades. The region, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.marinecorpstimes.com\/news\/pentagon-congress\/2018\/11\/26\/at-us-southern-command-mattis-says-military-alliances-help-stability-in-western-hemisphere\/?contentFeatureId=f0fMKJaWTNAG78a&#038;contentQuery=%7B%22section%22%3A%22%2Fhome%22%2C%22from%22%3A5%2C%22size%22%3A10%2C%22exclude%22%3A%22%2Fnews%2Fpentagon-congress%22%7D\" target=\"_blank\">half of the Western Hemisphere<\/a> and all in touching distance of the United States, saw decades of bloody wars, coups and the United States\u2019 fair share of questionable interventions in the past century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Current conflict may not involve U.S. troops under fire as they face in other theaters, but the threats are real and have consequences in the homeland, which include drug and human trafficking, border instability and the ongoing migration crises.<\/p>\n\n\n\t<aside class=\"smg-interstitial-link wp-block-smg-interstitial-link\">\n\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/marinecorpstimes\/news\/your-marine-corps\/2020\/08\/05\/heres-what-narcos-could-teach-marines-sailors-about-cocaine-logistics\/\" class=\"smg-interstitial-link__inner\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"smg-interstitial-link__media\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\" src=\"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/cutter-stratton-seizes-cocaine-from-narco-sub.jpg.jpg?w=300\" class=\"smg-interstitial-link__image wp-post-image\" alt=\"\" \/>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"smg-interstitial-link__content\">\n\t\t\t\t<span class=\"smg-interstitial-link__kicker\">Related<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t<h3 class=\"smg-interstitial-link__title\">Here\u2019s what narcos could teach Marines, sailors about \u2018cocaine logistics&#8217;<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<p class=\"smg-interstitial-link__excerpt\">Some unorthodox thinking from junior sea service officers looks at the drug trade for ideas about how to fight future wars.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/a>\n\t<\/aside>\n\t\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Lt. Gen. David Bellon, commander of Marine Forces Reserve and Marine Forces South, told Marine Corps Times in a May interview that the area offers the reserve force unique opportunities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWe have access to a Geographic Combatant Command that is maritime largely and has a lot of the same problem sets we\u2019re trying to solve in other parts of the world,\u201d Bellon said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Col. Brian Ecarius, assistant chief of staff G-5 for Marine Forces South, noted that despite its distance from Europe or Asia, the theater presents ongoing \u201cgray zone\u201d competition for Marines deployed to the area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That\u2019s because, as Marine Corps Times recently reported, active military equipment sales and pressure from both Chinese and Russian governments on Latin American partners present their own security challenges for U.S. forces working with those partners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ecarius started his career on the enlisted side in 1988. After commissioning he spent much of his more than 30-year career as a commander and planner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">About 15 years ago, working as a Marine Forces planner in the G3-5-7 office, he first was exposed to the Southern command area and threat countering work the Corps did in the region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"6720\" height=\"4480\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/commander-talk.jpg.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-57998\" srcset=\"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/commander-talk.jpg.jpg 6720w, https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/commander-talk.jpg.jpg?resize=300,200 300w, https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/commander-talk.jpg.jpg?resize=768,512 768w, https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/commander-talk.jpg.jpg?resize=1024,683 1024w, https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/commander-talk.jpg.jpg?resize=1536,1024 1536w, https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/commander-talk.jpg.jpg?resize=2048,1365 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 6720px) 100vw, 6720px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Marine Col. Christopher P. O\u2019Connor, chief of staff of Marine Forces Reserve and Marine Forces South, talks to U.S Marines with India Company, 3rd Battalion, 25th Marine Regiment, 4th Marine Division after their culminating event during exercise Tradewinds 2022 (TW22) at Guacamallo Bridge, Belize, on May 18, 2022. (Cpl. Ryan Schmid\/Marine Corps)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He\u2019s worked for more than three years now as assistant chief of staff and planner for the command.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Maj. Travis Bowden, operations adviser for Advisor Company A, Marine Forces Reserve, Force Headquarters Group, recently served on the Corps UNITAS deployment in 2021, primarily focused in Peru. The exercise dates back decades and is the oldest military maritime exercise in which the United States participates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In just a two-week stretch during the monthlong exercise in 2021, Bowden said reservists conducted combined arms exercises, parachute operations, field training with Peruvian marines, ship embarkation and live fires.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWhat UNITAS provided me was firsthand experience of how a MAGTF operates in the sea, on the deck the impact Marines can have,\u201d Bowden said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Marine reservists have been called up for combat rotations and inserted on activation orders to multiple theaters across the globe. But the command side opportunities for reservist work in the command elements has been rare until now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bowden said he sees opportunities for senior enlisted and officers to integrate with the command in active operations growing over the past two years and moving forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There\u2019s some backstory to Marine reservists now being the primary supplier of Marines to the theater.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In 2014, the Corps stood up the Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force-Southern Command to provide troops for the SOUTHCOM commander. Those forces worked both training partners and also responding to both natural and humanitarian crises in the region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But a subsequent push to both trim the budget and redistribute forces to the Pacific to counter China moved the Corps to put reservists in place for the crisis response in the region starting in 2016. A mix of both active and reserve continued to deliver troops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At the time, Corps leaders, such as the then-task force commander, Col. Thomas Prentice, said that the reservists brought additional skills to bear on such deployments that often had heavy humanitarian elements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWe have Marines that are software engineers, law enforcement officers and we even have a fashion designer,\u201d Prentice told Marine Corps Times in 2016. \u201cThe reservists &#8230; bring an additional capability towards being able to accomplish any assigned mission.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Then, in 2021, the Corps ended the SPMAGTF mission shortly after announcing that Marine Forces Reserve would now send its Marines for that mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Having a three-star advocate such as Bellon not only for the reservists under his command but for deploying those reservists in a combatant command lends some heft, Ecarius said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The colonel said by commanding both elements, someone in Bellon\u2019s position has an \u201cactive interest\u201d in the readiness of reservists serving in that mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cHe has an interest in (reservists) having an operational mindset,\u201d Ecarius said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">While Latin American partners get the benefit of training from Marine sources, the benefit works both ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For example, decades ago Marines helped train partners in riverine combat tactics using small boats for patrolling and interdicting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That skill faded in common use among most non-reconnaissance Marine units as decades of deployment to the deserts of the Middle East took priority.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now Marines are learning from partners in such places as Colombia, Belize and Brazil, on skills such as riverine combat and others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And reservists get solid ways to test preparedness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cA big piece in there is \u2018readiness return,\u2019\u201d Ecarius told Marine Corps Times. \u201cWe\u2019re very conscious of the employment of military forces either in contact or getting ready for contact. And when we\u2019re training, we\u2019re looking for readiness.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That\u2019s one way to say that doing combined arms exercises in Venezuela\u2019s backyard might prime the readiness pump in a different way than calling for air support in the desert of southern California.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Southern command being so close, often in the same time zone as many drilling reservists, gives them a chance to pack up quickly, deploy, unpack, train, and return home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That\u2019s a skill of its own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And, Ecarius said, there\u2019s another aspect to what makes SOUTHCOM a good place to deploy and train for Marines specifically \u2014 all but two nations in the region where Marines work touch the ocean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It\u2019s a maritime theater, a kind of mini-Pacific. That makes for ways that Marines can work with partners but also with government groups such as intelligence agencies, the Department of State and the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Gunnery Sgt. Julio Castellanos started his Marine career in 2004 when he enlisted and then became a machine gunner. That job led to work on security teams with deployments in Beirut then in Iraq and Afghanistan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It wasn\u2019t until 2017 that he was assigned to Southern Command, working as a liaison at a Colombian training base for three years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Castellanos now serves as the theater security cooperation operations chief for MARFORSOUTH.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The gunny said he sees some of the training history when he works with Latin American counterparts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">They\u2019re doing the same types of martial arts skills training and water survival training that was what the Corps was teaching in the mid-2000s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In other areas, such as small unit tactics, the partner forces have had to adapt. They might not have drones at their fingertips or complex, precision supporting fires.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Castellanos was impressed with how \u201cthey can get stuff done with very little,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Those approaches as well as the riverine work many partner nations have advanced, are reasons enough to deploy to the region, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI would tell (Marines) if an opportunity every comes up to do any kind of training, exchange of information, subject matter exchange, there\u2019s a lot to learn from our partner forces down South,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And that goes beyond boat work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cA lot of these countries have had internal conflict and they\u2019re good at what they do,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With a dual-hatted commander, reservists now have more deployment opportunities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":57991,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":48,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[160,11,36,48,26,164],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3481],"class_list":["post-26039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-news-roundup","category-global","category-newsletters","category-the-americas","category-training-sim","category-training-simulation-report"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"54XBZM36XVCHPA2IR3TN563FPM","arc_canonical_url":"\/news\/your-marine-corps\/2022\/06\/16\/marine-reserve-takeover-of-southern-command-opens-force-experimentation-readiness\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.0 (Yoast SEO v28.1) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Marine Reserve takeover of Southern Command opens force experimentation - Defense News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"With a dual-hatted commander, reservists now have more deployment opportunities.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Marine Reserve takeover of Southern Command opens force experimentation\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"With a dual-hatted commander, reservists now have more deployment opportunities.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" 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