Marines at a forward training base for the Iraqi security forces in western Anbar province have come under "regular" but spotty indirect fire in recent weeks from ISIS, mostly from mortars, the Pentagon said Monday.

"It's fair to say the al-Asad command has come under regular fire" but "the fire has been completely ineffective.

These are purely nuisance attacks,"Army Col. Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, said of the sprawling outpost of the Iraqi army at the former al-Asad airbase west of Baghdad.

U.S. troops, who have been barred from ground combat by President Obama, have not returned fire and left the Iraqi national security forces to deal with the indirect fire threat from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Warren said no U.S. personnel or equipment have been hit by the ISIS fire.

"The Iraqi security forces there have done a very good job of creating a security zone," Warren said.

About 320 Marines from a Marine Air Ground Task Force (MAGTF) assigned to the U.S. Central Command were at al-Asad on an advise and assist mission to the Iraqi forces that has accelerated in recent weeks. The Marines began training units from Iraq's 7th Division on Dec. 20, Warren said.

The Army's 1st Infantry Division was engaged in a similar mission at an Iraqi base near Taji north of Baghdad. On Dec. 27, about 170 1st Infantry troops began what was essentially a 6-week boot camp for Iraqi recruits with the goal of forming several battalions of new troops, Warren said.

Currently, there are about 2,140 U.S. troops in Iraqi. About 800 of those troops are engaged in providing security and force protection, and the remainder are training, advising and assisting the ISF and Peshmerga. Obama has authorized the deployment of an additional 1,000 U.S. troops.

The U.S. plans to set up at least two more training facilities – one in northern Irbil, capital of the Kurdish region, and at Besmaya about 55 miles southeast of Baghdad.

President Obama has authorized the deployment of about 1,000 more U.S. troops to Iraq, most of them from the 82nd Airborne Division based at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

The U.S. has put a premium on training Iraqi troops to go on the offensive this year against ISIS, which has taken large chunks of territory in northern and western Iraq.

Meanwhile, U.S. and coalition warplanes continued nearly daily airstrikes against ISIS targets in Iraq and Syria. In a Jan. 5 release, CentCom said that a total of 20 airstrikes were carried out in the Jan. 4-5 period – 14 in Syria and six in Iraq.

The U.S. and its coalition partners have now conducted a total of 50 airstrikes in 2015 – 32 in Syria and 18 in Iraq, according to CentCom reports. Last year, CentCom reported a total of 1,565 airstrikes from Aug. 8, when Obama authorized the air campaign, through the end of the year.

SEE ALSO: This all-female brigade is on the front lines of the Syrian war's biggest battle

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There are some units in the US Marine Corps that really know how to make an impression.

Like the rest of the military, Marine units have crests, nicknames, and of course, mottoes. And in quite a few cases, those elements are pretty badass.

These are our picks for the units with the coolest unit mottoes, along with a brief explanation of what they do.

“Whatever It Takes”

1st Battalion, 4th Marines: Stationed at Camp Pendleton, California, 1/4 is an infantry battalion that has been fighting battles since its first combat operation in the Dominican Republic in 1916. That’s also where 1st Lt. Ernest Williams earned the Medal of Honor, the first for the battalion.

“Get Some”

3rd Battalion, 5th Marines: Based at the northern edge of Camp Pendleton, California, the “Dark Horse” is one of the most-decorated battalions in the Marine Corps.

“Balls of the Corps”

3rd Battalion, 1st Marines: “The Thundering Third” is stationed at Camp Pendleton, California, and has a notable former member in Gen. Joseph Dunford, the current commandant of the Marine Corps.

“We Quell the Storm, and Ride the Thunder”

3rd Battalion, 2nd Marines: “The Betio Bastards” of 3/2 are based at Camp Lejeune, and have been heavily involved in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. The battalion is perhaps best known for its fight on Tarawa in 1943.

“Retreat Hell”

2nd Battalion, 5th Marines: It was in the trenches of World War I where 2/5 got its motto. When told by a French officer that his unit should retreat from the defensive line, Capt. Lloyd Williams replied, “Retreat? Hell, we just got here!” With combat service going back to 1914, 2/5 is the most decorated battalion in Marine history.

“Ready for All, Yielding to None”

2nd Battalion, 7th Marines: Stationed at Twentynine Palms, California, the battalion’s current motto is a slight variation on its Vietnam-era one: “Ready for Anything, Counting on Nothing.”

“Semper Malus” — Latin for “Always Ugly”

Marine Heavy Helicopter Squadron 362 (HMH-362): This helicopter unit nicknamed “Ugly Angels” is stationed at Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii and holds the proud distinction of being the first aircraft unit ashore in Vietnam.

“Swift, Silent, Deadly”

1st, 2nd, and 3rd Recon Battalions: Reconnaissance Marines are trained for special missions, raids, and you guessed it: reconnaissance. For these three battalions, stationed at Camps Lejeune, Pendleton, and Schwab, the motto pretty much sums up what they can do.

“Make Peace or Die”

1st Battalion, 5th Marines: Nicknamed “Geronimo,” the Camp Pendleton based 1/5 has been involved in every major US engagement since World War I. Most recently, the battalion has been deployed to Darwin, Australia as the Corps tries to“pivot to the Pacific.”

SEE ALSO: These amazing patches reveal the most secretive units in the US military

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Marine Corps Special Reaction Teams act as a SWAT force within the military police community. Because of their specialized mission, they sport some pretty sweet gear. This recent Marine Corps photos of the SRT from III Marine Expeditionary Force showed off its kit during a training session at Camp Hansen, Okinawa. Lance Cpl. Royce Dorman and Sgt. Matthew Callahan provide a glimpse of what these teams carry.

Here are the weapon systems used by the Okinawa team, including the M4A1 rifle, the M1014 shotgun, M45A1 pistol, and the M9A1 pistol. The M45A1, a modern version of the classic M1911A1 .45 caliber pistol, is now being issued to special operations-capable units within the Marines like the Special Reaction Teams.

 Special Reaction Teams are tasked with performing close-quarters breaches and entries, and a ballistic shield can help protect the pointman as they enter a room. Also seen here are two pieces of gear not common in the Marine Corps: the olive drab combat uniforms and the Diamondback Tactical plate carriers.

The Modular Integrated Communications helmet, Ops-Core night-vision shroud, and Surefire helmet light he’s sporting are all popular pieces of gear for special operations forces. 

A Marine cleans the upper receiver of an M110 Semi-Automatic Sniper System, the Special Reaction Team’s long-range rifle. 

Christian Beekman is a writer and military enthusiast from northern New York. Follow Christian Beekman on Twitter @tacbeekman.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Lockheed Martin Corp's F-35 fighter jet is on track to meet the Marine Corps's July target to declare the jet ready for combat use, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said Thursday.

The F-35 B-model, which can take off from shorter runways and land like a helicopter, was making good progress, Mabus told reporters after a speech to the Surface Navy Association.

He said he expected it to meet the Marine Corps's target date, a statement echoed by a Marine Corps spokesman.

He said the Navy still expected to declare the F-35 C-model, which is designed for use on aircraft carriers, ready for combat use by the end of the decade, as planned. The Navy tested the F-35C on board a ship for the first time in November.

The Navy had more time before it needed to declare the plane ready for combat use, or that it had achieved an initial operational capability, but it remained committed to that part of the F-35 program as well, Mabus said.

"We’re not lukewarm about the F-35 in terms of the need for it in the fleet, and the fact that it’s going to form the backbone of our carrier air for a long time," he said.

Mabus said the Navy was also looking at whether it needed additional EA-18G Growler electronic attack planes built by Boeing Co, since it was now the only military service providing that electronic attack capability.

"How many do you need to do all the electronic attack that you need?" Mabus said.

He declined to discuss the Pentagon's fiscal 2016 budget request, which is due to be delivered to Congress on Feb. 2, but his comment suggested the Navy could include additional Growlers in its budget request, or add them to an "unfunded priority" list usually sent separately to U.S. lawmakers as they debate the administration's budget proposal.

The Navy's fiscal 2015 base budget request did not include any of the Boeing planes, but it added 22 Growlers to its unfunded wish list. Congress ultimately funded 15 planes as part of the fiscal 2015 budget.

Boeing is working with the Navy on how to stretch production of its F/A-18 and EA-18 military aircraft in St. Louis past 2016. The 15 planes added to the budget in 2015 could make production last through 2017 if the Navy agrees to a slower delivery schedule.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by James Dalgleish)

SEE ALSO: Why the Pentagon is spending so unbelievably much on the F-35

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The F-35 has hit the latest obstacle in its years-long, multibillion-dollar slog towards combat-readiness, Bloomberg reports, citing a not-yet-public congressional report. 

Software flaws pose the latest round of problems for Lockheed Martin's fifth-generation joint strike fighter. Michael Gilmore, the Pentagon's director of combat testing, reportedly said in the congressional report that the F-35 "will finish with deficiencies remaining that will affect operational units." 

Gilmore notes that serious software flaws within the plane's computers could hamper the F-35's ability to identify enemy radar, which is "essential to conducting effective combat operations against advanced enemy air defenses."  

The software deficiencies were also “identified in fusion, radar, passive sensors, identification of friend-or-foe,” and the plane's electro-optical targeting, according to Bloomberg. 

These deficiencies will have the real-world effect of limiting the plane's ability to track and target enemy aircraft and radar, while also hampering its ability to carry out airstrikes. 

Despite the latest software flaws discovered in the F-35, Lockheed Martin spokesman Mark Johnson told Bloomberg that "2014 was a year of great momentum for the [joint strike fighter] program on all fronts.”

The Marine Corps plans on announcing that the F-35B, the F-35 variant developed for the Marines, will be ready for combat operations by July. The F-35C model for the Navy is expected to be declared combat-ready by the end of the decade. 

However, the F-35A variant that was developed for the Air Force and US allies has also run into software problems. In December 2014 it was announced that the because of software issues, the plane would not be able to fire its onboard cannon until 2019. 

NOW WATCH: How To Take Control Of Your Mind And Focus Better

SEE ALSO: This chart shows the staggering hourly cost of operating US military aircraft

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As a US Marine and former Scout/Sniper, I have trained, operated, and learned in turn from America’s best warriors.

These include Navy SEAL’s, US Marines Force Reconnaissance, US Army Rangers, Delta, and Green Berets, among others.

The recent portrait of Chris Kyle in Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper, along with the controversy surrounding it, has been fueled by comments on the morality or even intestinal fortitude of military professionals such as me.

Unfortunately, as happens so often in American discourse, those speaking the loudest are giving opinions on a matter of which they have no knowledge or experience.

The direction that the conversation has taken on social media and major news networks has tended to focus on a “bad” versus “good” notion of snipers’ actions and their beliefs.

A movie has caused the ignorant to pass judgment on an entire group of professionals whose actions and experience they know nothing of.

Some claim that snipers are cold-blooded murderers. Others say that being and using snipers in combat is cowardly.

There are those who have never wore the uniform themselves (and some who have) who have opined that shooting an enemy combatant from a concealed position rather than facing him in open combat lacks bravery.

Notably, most of them say this from their couches thousands of miles away and safe at home.

One Shot, No Kill

As a Marine Scout/Sniper, my training went well beyond simply pulling the trigger while hiding in some bushes. Shooting and concealment were only part of the training. Making fast, life-and-death decisions in very difficult scenarios was another.

Nothing was black and white. Our world is colored in grey, where actions could either influence the battlefield in our favor or the enemy’s favor. Eliminating the right target could save lives; eliminating the wrong target could lead to many more deaths.

Imagine the effect on world events if one American sniper had been able to get Adolf Hitler in his sights. We all know the effect of the assassination of Presidents Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy by one — or more — determined shooters. “Second and third order effects” was not the official terminology used, but the concept was ingrained in everything we did.

My proudest shot of all time was sitting on the 5th floor of the Baath Party Headquarters in Saddam City, Baghdad in 2003, a scene actually depicted in another film, the HBO series Generation Kill.

A building was being set fire to outside of our position by people lighting rolls of paper on fire and throwing them at the building. Through my optics I watched a teenage boy walk toward a roll of paper with the clear intent of setting it on fire and throwing it at the building like the others.

I had been cleared by my command to take a shot. These individuals were threatening lives and property. It would be a high angle shot and he was about 100 meters from our position, so I had to quickly calculate the mathematical adjustments that I would have to make in my head.

I could would have shot him in the head, a decision that some snipers actually made. Instead, I decided to teach him a lesson that would be seared into his memory forever. Just as he bent over to pick up the roll of paper, I took the shot.

The distance was too close for me to observe the impact, but my spotter immediately began rolling on the ground laughing at the result.

As the boy had grabbed the paper, the roll violently exploded from his grasp and the loud bang of my round echoed through his brain. He jumped into the air, turned, and ran away. No more fires were set.

Instead of turning his family or his entire tribe into insurgents bent on revenge by killing this young man, those arsonists who witnessed it and those he told the story to would understand that we were not there just to kill people, though we had clearly shown that we could have.

Collateral Damage

The job of a sniper is not about strapping on “cool-guy” armored gear with lots of straps, Velcro, and guns, flying in on helicopters with 20 other bulked-up bad-asses with beards, sunglasses, ball caps, and dip in their mouths with the intent of killing “brown people,” as the movies picture it.

The reality is that my spotter and I found ourselves alone, on foot, and much closer to the action and its results.

We once went on a “Hunter-Killer” mission to find and eliminate insurgents, but instead ended up “going slick” with no protective gear other than pistols stuffed down the front of our pants and sitting in the dirt speaking Arabic with an Iraqi family who had happened upon our position.

Some of them had been left badly mutilated by US collateral bomb damage and we helped them pick sunflower seeds to sell at the market, income they now depended upon to live. Instead of not valuing their lives as highly as ours and not caring about Iraqi “savages” and “killing them all”, we listened, learned, and helped where we could.

Why? A year earlier, on our first deployment, we watched the smiles and waves of the populace that had greeted us as liberators from Saddam turn into scowls and later into IEDs that were killing our guys on the roads. We wore out our welcome as our convoys and checkpoints ground the city to a halt. Our cordon and search operations disrupted homes.

Political decisions such as disbanding the Iraqi Army and de-Baathification fueled an insurgency that became a call to international Jihad. The people no longer wanted us there. It was all “collateral damage” — physical, political, societal, and otherwise — to a military operation that had no clear guidance from Washington.

As a Scout/Sniper, I had been trained and given the job of taking advantage of opportunities to win battles with one or several well-placed shots. This placed my thinking in a different realm. In my mind, my job was “one shot, one kill.” Instead of creating a thousand new insurgents by killing five “savages”, we could kill a thousand insurgents by creating five friends.

Taking the population — the center or gravity in counterinsurgency — away from the enemy would prevent new insurgents as much as kill them. In many ways, our job was the delicate brain surgery that Washington was attempting to perform in Iraq with the hammer that is the US military.

We were cutting out the cancer, one bad guy at a time. If policymakers had considered the “collateral damage” invading Iraq would cause, many things would be different there today.

In my battle, I did not raid or fire explosive munitions into houses. I only unleashed one 7.62 millimeter bullet when I was sure it was going to hit the one enemy combatant it was meant for.

No “precision munition” or laser-guided bomb can claim that. Reducing “collateral damage” to women, children, and non-combatants was a priority and eliminating extremists with one bullet was how I went about it.

Snipers are not cold-blooded murderers. Forget all those bashing American Sniper in the media. 

In our fight, two men went outside the wire alone with nothing but their wits, their skills, and their rifles with the intent to win the war one bullet at a time. If that is not bravery, I don’t know what is.

Matt Victoriano was a Scout/Sniper Team Leader with 1st Battalion 4th Marines from 2000 to 2004. He was recently honored as a White House Champion of Change for his entrepreneurial work helping veterans and the community in Durham, NC.

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Long before Chris Kyle penned “American Sniper,” Carlos Hathcock was already a legend.

He taught himself to shoot as a boy, just like Alvin York and Audie Murphy before him. He had dreamed of being a US Marine his whole life and enlisted in 1959 at just 17 years old.

Hathcock was an excellent sharpshooter by then, winning the Wimbledon Cup shooting championship in 1965, the year before he would deploy to Vietnam and change the face of American warfare forever.

He deployed in 1966 as a military policeman, but immediately volunteered for combat and was soon transferred to the 1st Marine Division Sniper Platoon, stationed at Hill 55, South of Da Nang.

This is where Hathcock would earn the nickname “White Feather” — because he always wore a white feather on his bush hat, daring the North Vietnamese to spot him — and where he would achieve his status as the Vietnam War’s deadliest sniper in missions that sound like they were pulled from the pages of Marvel comics.

White Feather vs. The General

Early morning and early evening were Hathcock’s favorite times to strike.  This was important when he volunteered for a mission he knew nothing about.

“First light and last light are the best times,” he said. “ In the morning, they’re going out after a good night's rest, smoking, laughing. When they come back in the evenings, they’re tired, lollygagging, not paying attention to detail.”

He observed this first hand, at arms reach, when trying to dispatch a North Vietnamese Army (NVA) General officer.  For four days and three nights, he low-crawled inch by inch, a move he called “worming,” without food or sleep, more than 1500 yards to get close to the general. This was the only time he ever removed the feather from his cap.

“Over a time period like that you could forget the strategy, forget the rules and end up dead,” he said. “I didn’t want anyone dead, so I took the mission myself, figuring I was better than the rest of them, because I was training them.”

Hathcock moved to a treeline near the NVA encampment.

“There were two twin .51s next to me,“ he said. “I started worming on my side to keep my slug trail thin. I could have tripped the patrols that came by.” The general stepped out onto a porch and yawned. The general’s aide stepped in front of him and by the time he moved away, the general was down, the bullet went through his heart. Hathcock was 700 yards away.

“I had to get away. When I made the shot, everyone ran to the treeline because that’s where the cover was.” The soldiers searched for the sniper for three days as he made his way back.

They never even saw him.

“Carlos became part of the environment,” said Edward Land, Hathcock’s commanding officer. “He totally integrated himself into the environment. He had the patience, drive, and courage to do the job. He felt very strongly that he was saving Marine lives.”

With 93 confirmed kills – his longest at 2500 yards – and an estimated 300 more, for Hathcock, it really wasn’t about the killing.

“I really didn’t like the killing,” he once told a reporter. “You’d have to be crazy to enjoy running around the woods, killing people. But if I didn’t get the enemy, they were going to kill the kids over there.” Saving American lives is something Hathcock took to heart.

“The Best Shot I Ever Made”

“She was a bad woman,” Carlos Hathcock once said of the woman known as ‘Apache.’ “Normally kill squads would just kill a Marine and take his shoes or whatever, but the Apache was very sadistic. She would do anything to cause pain.”

This was the trademark of the female Viet Cong platoon leader. She captured Americans in the area around Carlos Hathcock’s unit and then tortured them without mercy.

“I was in her backyard, she was in mine. I didn’t like that,” Hathcock said. “It was personal, very personal.  She’d been torturing Marines before I got there.”

In November of 1966, she captured a Marine Private and tortured him within earshot of his own unit.

“She tortured him all afternoon, half the next day,” Hathcock recalls. “I was by the wire … He walked out, died right by the wire. “Apache skinned the private, cut off his eyelids, removed his fingernails, and then castrated him before letting him go. Hathcock attempted to save him, but he was too late.

Carlos Hathcock had enough. He set out to kill Apache before she could kill any more Marines. One day, he and his spotter got a chance.

They observed an NVA sniper platoon on the move. At 700 yards in, one of them stepped off the trail and Hathcock took what he calls the best shot he ever made.

“We were in the midst of switching rifles. We saw them,” he remembered. “I saw a group coming, five of them. I saw her squat to pee, that’s how I knew it was her. They tried to get her to stop, but she didn’t stop. I stopped her. I put one extra in her for good measure.”

A Five-Day Engagement

One day during a forward observation mission, Hathcock and his spotter encountered a newly minted company of NVA troops. They had new uniforms, but no support and no communications.

“They had the bad luck of coming up against us,” he said. “They came right up the middle of the rice paddy. I dumped the officer in front my observer dumped the one in the back.” The last officer started running the opposite direction.

“Running across a rice paddy is not conducive to good health,” Hathcock remarked. “You don’t run across rice paddies very fast.”

According to Hathcock, once a Sniper fires three shots, he leaves. With no leaders left, after three shots, the opposing platoon wasn’t going moving.

“So there was no reason for us to go either,” said the sniper. “No one in charge, a bunch of Ho Chi Minh’s finest young go-getters, nothing but a bunch of hamburgers out there.” Hathcock called artillery at all times through the coming night, with flares going on the whole time.  When morning came, the NVA were still there.

“We didn’t withdraw, we just moved,” Hathcock recalled. “They attacked where we were the day before. That didn’t get far either.”

White Feather and The M2

Though the practice had been in use since the Korean War, Carlos Hathcock made the use of the M2 .50 caliber machine gun as a long-range sniper weapon a normal practice. He designed a rifle mount, built by Navy Seabees, which allowed him to easily convert the weapon.

“I was sent to see if that would work,” He recalled. “We were elevated on a mountain with bad guys all over. I was there three days, observing. On the third day, I zeroed at 1000 yards, longest 2500. Here comes the hamburger, came right across the spot where it was zeroed, he bent over to brush his teeth and I let it fly. If he hadn’t stood up, it would have gone over his head. But it didn’t.”

The distance of that shot was 2,460 yards – almost a mile and a half – and it stood as a record until broken in 2002 by Canadian sniper Arron Perry in Afghanistan.

White Feather vs. The Cobra

“If I hadn’t gotten him just then,” Hathcock remembers, “he would have gotten me.”

Many American snipers had a bounty on their heads. These were usually worth one or two thousand dollars. The reward for the sniper with the white feather in his bush cap, however, was worth $30,000.

Like a sequel to Enemy at The Gates, Hathcock became such a thorn in the side of the NVA that they eventually sent their own best sniper to kill him. He was known as the Cobra and would become Hathcock’s most famous encounter in the course of the war.

“He was doing bad things,” Hathcock said. “He was sent to get me, which I didn’t really appreciate. He killed a gunny outside my hooch. I watched him die. I vowed I would get him some way or another.”

That was the plan. The Cobra would kill many Marines around Hill 55 in an attempt to draw Hathcock out of his base.

“I got my partner, we went out we trailed him. He was very cagey, very smart. He was close to being as good as I was … But no way, ain’t no way ain’t nobody that good.” In an interview filmed in the 1990s, Hathcock discussed how close he and his partner came to being a victim of the Cobra.

“I fell over a rotted tree. I made a mistake and he made a shot. He hit my partner’s canteen.  We thought he’d been hit because we felt the warmness running over his leg. But he’d just shot his canteen dead.”

Eventually the team of Hathcock and his partner, John Burke, and the Cobra had switched places.

“We worked around to where he was,” Hathcock said. “I took his old spot, he took my old spot, which was bad news for him because he was facing the sun and glinted off the lens of his scope, I saw the glint and shot the glint.” White Feather had shot the Cobra just moments before the Cobra would have taken his own shot.

“I was just quicker on the trigger otherwise he would have killed me,” Hathcock said. “I shot right straight through his scope, didn’t touch the sides.”

With a wry smile, he added: “And it didn’t do his eyesight no good either.“

In 1969, a vehicle Hathcock was riding in struck a landmine and knocked the Marine unconscious. He came to and pulled seven of his fellow Marines from the burning wreckage. He left Vietnam with burns over 40 percent of his body. He received the Silver Star for this action in 1996.

After the mine ended his sniping career, he established the Marine Sniper School at Quantico, teaching Marines how to “get into the bubble,” a state of complete concentration. He was in intense pain as he taught at Quantico, and he also suffered from Multiple Sclerosis, the disease that would ultimately kill him — something the NVA could never accomplish.

SEE ALSO: 'American Sniper' inspiration Chris Kyle explains how snipers change a battle

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In its efforts to replace the 30-year-old amphibious assault vehicle, the Marine Corps has traversed a long and bumpy road. After three decades, billions of dollars and multiple programs spent trying to develop a technologically-advanced, high speed amphibious combat vehicle, the service decided in 2014 to procure a non-developmental vehicle and rely on connectors to ferry its troops to shore.

The first phase of the ACV competition will intensify this year, with a final request for proposals to be released in February. After proposals are received, the Marine Corps plans to downselect to two vendors as early as this fall.

Industry officials are hopeful that the Marine Corps’ need for an AAV replacement is dire enough that the program will be able to weather the upcoming storm of sequestration.

“There’s always concern about budgets in a time of uncertainty,” said Tom Watson, Navy and Marine Corps group senior vice president for SAIC, one of the companies vying for the ACV contract. “With sequestration hanging out there, I would be loathe to tell you that I wasn’t fearful for all of our programs, but I believe that this particular program has very strong support from senior Marine Corps leadership.”

Of the competitors, three have teamed with foreign defense companies to pitch modified, off-the-shelf ACVs: Lockheed Martin’s Havoc is a version of Finnish company Patria’s 8x8 armored modular vehicle, SAIC is proposing Singapore Technologies Kinetics’ Terrex infantry carrier vehicle, and BAE Systems has partnered with Italian manufacturer Iveco to offer the Superav. General Dynamics Land Systems is proposing its light armored vehicle 6.0, company officials have said.

The ACV competition emerged from the ashes of two canceled programs. The service originally planned to purchase two different vehicles — the amphibious Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle to rapidly transport Marines to shore, and the Marine Personnel Carrier, which would provide additional land mobility.

However, the high water-speed capability desired in the EFV was not found to be technically feasible without making sacrifices to survivability and lethality, said Lt. Gen. Kenneth Glueck, deputy commandant of combat development and integration and the commanding general of Marine Corps Combat Development Command.

“You can actually get a vehicle about that size to get on top of the plane and do 25 knots, but at a price, and that was not only just in dollars, it was capability of the vehicle,” he said. “To be able to get up on the water, you have to be light, and to be light, it means you’re not going to have the armor requirements [and] force protection that you need.” As a result, the EFV program was canceled in 2011. The Marine Personnel Carrier program was aborted in 2013 before being resurrected as the amphibious combat vehicle competition.

“We’re going to get a vehicle, once this thing is procured, that can operate in the cross range of military operations,” said Lt. Col. James MacArthur, director of the Marine Corps’ fires and maneuver integration division capabilities development directorate. “Whether you’re talking humanitarian assistance, disaster relief operations or you’re talking major combat operations and anything in between, this is going to be one of the few vehicles ... in the ground combat tactical vehicle portfolio for the Marine Corps that can actually deploy across the range of military operations. That is a good thing. We haven’t had that for our infantry in quite some time.”

The Marine Corps wants an ACV with the land mobility of an Abrams tank, according to information released by the service. The vehicles must be survivable enough to withstand improvised explosive devices, armor-piercing direct fire up to a heavy machine gun, indirect high explosive fragmentation and landmines. They will feature an M2 heavy machine gun and remote weapons system with the potential to add a dual-mount stabilized mark 19 grenade launcher.

Each ACV is required to have space to accommodate 13 Marines, plus a gunner, driver and vehicle commander. Two vehicles would be needed to transport a reinforced rifle squad.
Part of what differentiates the ACV from the canceled Marine Personnel Carrier is its potential for further modifications down the road. Service leaders plan to buy additional upgraded vehicles, called ACV 1.2, which could incorporate more advanced weapons, communications and command-and-control equipment. 

The Marine Corps wants to buy about 200 ACV 1.1 vehicles at a unit cost of up to $6 million, according to an August industry day presentation.

The first phase of vehicles could be deployed as early as 2020, with full operational capability projected for 2023. The service was prudent to change its requirements once it saw that it couldn’t achieve a high-speed vehicle, Watson said.

“The Marine Corps, they wanted something and it just simply wasn’t available in the marketplace at a price point that they would have to pay,” he said. “So their acquisition strategy changed to, ‘What’s the best we can do in the existing marketplace? Are there platforms out there that exist today that can meet most of our requirements, and is there another way of doing it, for example ship-to-shore connectors, that can make up for the high water-speed?’”

The main strengths of SAIC’s Terrex are its amphibious capabilities and capacity for additional modifications, Watson said. It can splash from an amphibious ship to the shore and operate in sea state 3 — slight waves of up to about 4 feet — while at a 62,000-pound gross vehicle weight, according to company information.

SAIC is working to further increase the vehicle’s speed in water and on land, as well as to improve mobility and underbelly protection, Watson said.

“The vehicle right now has enough reserve buoyancy to be able to take on additional weight,” he said. “For example, you can mount different lethality solutions on it … [and] increase power capabilities, increase electronics upgrades.”

BAE Systems, which manufactures the amphibious assault vehicle, considered several foreign amphibious vehicle makers before choosing Iveco Defence’s Superav, said John Swift, BAE’s program manager. The company realized that the Italian military also operates the AAV and, like the U.S. Marine Corps, was planning to acquire a wheeled replacement for it.

Italy “had a very detailed, very well thought out acquisition plan with amphibious capability sets baked into it that nearly mirrored what the U.S. Marine Corps was looking for,” he said. Iveco’s “engineering approach was nearly the same thing as ours was for a tracked solution, but they had indeed applied it to a wheeled solution successfully, and that by default led us to want to partner with them.”

If the service continues with its plan to buy command-and-control and turreted variants of the vehicle under the ACV 1.2 moniker, Swift said he believes BAE has a head start.
“Oddly enough, the Italian military has the requirement for those two ... variants,” he said. “In fact, the vehicle that [BAE has] been using for the past year and a half for amphibious characterization has a 30 mm turret on it.”

The 63,000-pound Superav has space for a 13 Marines plus a three-person crew. The vehicle can reach speeds of 65 miles per hour on land and 6 knots in water.

It can also be launched from amphibious ships up to 10 nautical miles from the coast, travel 200 miles on land, and then be recovered, Swift said.

The company made two modifications in order to meet requirements, he said. It revised the interior of the vehicle to fit additional personnel and changed a piece of the underbelly armor to meet more stringent blast requirements. 

Lockheed’s Havoc has a maximum land speed of 65 miles per hour and a range of 560 miles, according to company information. It can swim at speeds of 5 knots up to sea state 2, in which waves range from 4 inches to over one-and-a half-feet high.

Like other vendors, the company is altering the original vehicle to better meet the Marine Corps’ mission, said Frank Bohlmann, Lockheed’s program director.

“We’re keeping [modifications] a little close to the vest,” he said, adding that the company “put a lot of focus on survivability.”  The company in September tested the Havoc on the Butte Mountain Trail course at the Nevada Automotive Test Center.  The trail contains almost 1,000 feet of elevation change in its one-mile length.

“It simulates some pretty bad places on the Earth, and so we took our Havoc prototype up and down the mountain many, many times,” Bohlmann said. “The passengers were very impressed with this capability and its agility and its ride comfort.” He declined to comment on whether Marine Corps personnel were passengers during the testing.

General Dynamics Land Systems is also putting forward a vehicle, although a spokeswoman for the company declined to provide details about its offering. “General Dynamics Land Systems is committed to meeting the Marine Corps ACV needs at an affordable cost by capitalizing on existing resources, mature technologies, its experienced amphibious vehicle design team, and capital tooling resources that reduce program cost and minimize risk,” she said in an emailed statement.

At NDIA’s expeditionary warfare conference in November, Marine Corps officials made clear that the service was not abandoning its high water-speed goal.
A vehicle with that capability is still a requirement, MacArthur said.

Teamed with industry and academia, the service’s acquisition and science and technology personnel plan on attacking the problem from three fronts, he said.

They will explore upgrading an ACV or other vehicle to have a temporary high-speed capability, as well as consider whether advancements in technology would allow vendors to develop a high-water speed vehicle from the ground up. Finally, they will look at new designs for ship-to-shore connectors before briefing the commandant of the Marine Corps of their findings in 2025. 

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Retired Marine Gen. James Mattis had less than rosy words for the state of US foreign policy Tuesday at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

"[We need to] come out from our reactive crouch and take a firm, strategic stance in defense of our values,” Mattis said.

Mattis, testifying alongside retired Gen. Jack Keane and retired Navy Adm. William Fallon, said he didn’t know what “our policy is on Syria,” for instance. He also told Sen. Thom Tillis (R., NC) that the US had been in a “strategy-free” zone regarding Iraq, dating before Obama took office and extending throughout his administration, and bemoaned that in the Middle East, where “our influence is at its lowest point in four decades, we see a region erupting in crises.”

Mattis also hit the administration’s much-derided timelines for troop removals that allow enemies to simply wait out a conflict, saying “Setting withdrawal dates and telling the enemy in advance when we’re leaving probably contributes to the endless wars that we get into.”

Mattis feared that just as a premature removal of troops from Iraq allowed the Islamic State to flourish, American goals in Afghanistan would also be undone if Obama stuck to his timeline there.

“In Afghanistan, we need to consider if we’re asking for the same outcome there as we saw last summer in Iraq, should we pull out all our troops on the administration’s proposed timeline,” he said. “The gains achieved at great cost against our enemy in Afghanistan are reversible.”

In short, Mattis said at one point, a lot of US allies are unhappy with Obama’s aimless foreign policy stances.

“We’ve disappointed a lot of friends out there, from Tel Aviv to Riyadh to Abu Dhabi to Cairo,” he said.

Mattis headed US Central Command from 2010 to 2013 and led the First Marine Division into Iraq in 2003.

Here are some highlights of Mattis's testimony:

SEE ALSO: Iran targets Netanyahu's children for assassination

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The Navy is making progress building a new class of ships configured for sea-basing and expeditionary missions as a way to help account for a shortage of amphibious assault ships and forward-position Marines, sailors, special operations forces, air assets and ship-to-shore connector vehicles, service officials said.

So far, the Navy has built and delivered two of five planned Mobile Landing Platforms, or MLPs — commercial oil ships re-engineered for military sea-basing and transport missions. In total, the service plans to build five MLPs with the last three termed Afloat Forward Staging Bases, or AFSBs – MLPs designed with a flight deck to support aviation operations.

“The delivery of MLPs 1 and 2 are complete.  MLP 3 is under construction and will be the first AFSB variant,” said Lt. Kat Dransfield, Navy spokeswoman.

The MLP is a massive 80,000-ton, 785 foot-long commercial Alaska-class crude oil carrier configured to perform a range of military missions such as amphibious cargo on-load/off-load and logistics support. The MLP can reach speeds of 15 knots, has a draft of 29-feet and can carry a crew of 34.

The ship is engineered to ballast down and lower into the water, allowing three Landing Craft Air Cushion, or LCAC, lanes for amphibious loading and unloading and equipment transport such as vehicles and large land equipment and weapons.  The MLP has as much as 25,000 square feet of vehicle and equipment storage space on deck, Navy officials said explained.

“It’s a big ship. It has a huge amount of acreage on it. It looks like an oil tanker but it can ballast down. We’ve been splashing Navy hovercraft on it and bringing LCACs on it. We’ve also splashed amphibious assault vehicles off of it,” Vice Adm. Phillip Cullom, deputy chief of Naval operations for fleet readiness and logistics, said at the Surface Navy Association annual symposium, Arlington, Va.

The contract for MLP 4 has been awarded, and MLP 5 will be procured in fiscal year 2017, said Dransfield.

MLP 1, called the USNS Montford Point, was put under contract for construction by the Navy in April 2011, resulting in a  deal to National Steel and Shipbuilding Company, or NASSCO, in San Diego, Calif. MLP 1 was slated to cost about $500 million, Navy officials said.

The ship was delivered in May of 2013 and is expected to be operational in the Spring of this year. The Montford Point demonstrated its capabilities during the 2014 Rim of the Pacific exercise and served as the centerpiece of the Pacific Horizon 2015 exercise last fall.

MLP 2, the USNS John Glenn, was delivered in March of last year. MLP 2 was expected to cost $440 million and was put on contract with NASSCO in April, 2011.

“The John Glenn is currently layberthed in the Pacific Northwest.  After completing a Post Shakedown Availability, it will be ready for tasking in late June 2015, James Marconi, spokesman for the Navy’s Military Sealift Command, said in a written statement. MLP 2 is scheduled to join a maritime prepositioning ship squadron in fiscal year 2016, he added.

The MLPs can also connect to large cargo ships while at sea using a drivable ramp, allowing equipment to move from a cargo ship to the MLP for transport to shore. Navy leaders explained that MLPs are designed to augment amphibious assault ships and help move large conventional forces from ship to shore – in the event they are needed.  The MLPs are designed to assist forward-positioned equipment and cargo ships called Maritime Prepositioning Ship Squadrons.

“The MLP is an extremely versatile ship with its large, open, reconfigurable mission deck.   MLPs 1 and 2 as part of the MPF will contribute to four core capabilities of deterrence, power projection, maritime security, and humanitarian assistance and disaster response,” Dransfield said.

MLP 3 is the first Afloat Forward Staging Base, or AFSB, which includes re-configured MLP with command and control technologies and a flight deck added on for maritime air operations.  The need for the AFSB emerged out of a requirement from Central Command for countermine and Special Operations Forces staging in the Persian Gulf area, Navy officials said.

MLP 3 is slated for delivery in the Fall of this year, Dransfield added. A deal for MLP 3, called USNS Lewis B. Puller, was signed in Feb., 2012, Navy officials said. The cost for MLP 3 was estimated by Navy officials to be about $623 million.

“The MLP AFSB will primarily support mine countermeasure (MCM) and special operations force (SOF) missions. Its ability to act as a mother ship in support of MCM operations and loiter for extended periods supporting SOF operations provides a dual purpose capability addressing multiple strategic requirements,” Dransfield explained.

With a decade of land war winding down or ending and the U.S. military rebalancing to the vast waterways of the Pacific, the Navy and Marine Corps have been examining their expeditionary strategy and concepts of operation, Navy leaders explained.

They are hoping to increase forward presence, improve amphibious equipment transport and landing ability and provide new platforms for sea-basing air and maritime assets. The development of MLPs is a cherished aspect of this broader strategy.

Furthermore, with combatant commanders’ requests for amphibious assault ships far exceeding the actual number of ships available, MLPs can meet some of the additional demand for expeditionary and maritime operations. The Navy currently operates 31 amphibious assault ships and plans to bring the amphib fleet up to 33, Dransfield added.

Also, as a derivative of a commercially-available ship, MLPs can be delivered and made available to the Navy and the Marines much more quickly than new-start developmental ships often take well over a decade to construct.

“MLP is indeed a new class of ship that brings the concept of sea-basing to reality. The platform has two primary capabilities: transfer of vehicles, equipment, personnel and sustainment at-sea from large Navy cargo ships, and delivery of these vehicles and equipment ashore with amphibious connectors. MLPs will provide capability to the U.S. military for large-scale logistics movements from sea to shore, reducing dependency on foreign ports,” Marconi said.

SEE ALSO: One of these vehicles will be America's next amphibious combat vehicle

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The movie "American Sniper," based on former Navy SEAL Chris Kyle's book of the same name, omits two incredible episodes from Chris's life. 

I'd like to share these stories with with you now in order to show another side of Chris, and to respond to some of the ongoing commentary about him.

First, some background: Chris is one of the nine heroes profiled in my book Valor: Unsung Heroes from Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Home Front, which tells true stories of heroism by American troops.

I interviewed Chris back when he was still relatively unknown.  Later, when he wrote his own book, Chris told me that he intentionally omitted these episodes from his memoir because he didn't want to leave me hanging.  That alone says a lot about Chris's character. 

As we worked together on his chapter, I spent a bit of time with Chris. Our interviews stretched over eight hours during one of his tours in Baghdad. We exchanged numerous emails to resolve outstanding issues and refine the text.  Over that time, I caught glimpses into Chris's mindset. 

And it rocked my world.

His dedication to his fellow American troops was intense and overpowering. On several well-documented occasions, he deliberately put his life in grave danger to save other Americans. Protecting American lives, he told me, was his driving force.

So, when I heard some negative backlash about Chris – calling him "a hate-filled killer,""coward," or "mass murdering [sic] sniper"– I had to share my experience.

First, Chris wasn't "a racist who took pleasure in dehumanising and killing brown people," as one writer suggested in a British periodical.

That's not fair to Chris. Not at all.

In our interviews, Chris certainly conveyed that he hated the insurgents, the Islamic fundamentalist militants against whom they were fighting, and that he was proud of killing many of them. There was no secret about that. He called them "savages" and spoke of them with unmistakable disdain. "They were complete dumbasses," he said to me. "Just idiots with guns."

When Chris appeared on Bill O'Reilly's show in 2012, he said "I'm killing them (referring to the insurgents) to protect my fellow Americans." When O'Reilly insisted that Kyle liked it, Chris responded, "It's not a problem taking out people that want your people dead ... That's not a problem at all."

Forgive me, but that doesn't seem terribly damning in my view. Heck, I freely admit that I hate terrorists too. 

But Chris never expressed to me any comparable views about Iraqi civilians. It was all about the terrorists who were beheading and torturing civilians (Iraqis and westerners alike).

No, the Chris I knew was motivated by something far more noble — defending innocent civilians and his American brethren. In fact, later in his 2012 interview with O'Reilly, the host asked whether he had any regrets, and Chris said, "Yes — it's the people I couldn't save." O'Reilly pushed him,  saying: "The Americans you couldn't save. The allied forces."

Chris's response was telling: "The Americans, the local Iraqis, anyone who I witnessed violence coming down on them and I could not save them."

That flies directly in the face of the bogus "racist" claim.

Two incidents during the Second Battle of Fallujah in November 2004 illustrate this selflessness, this willingness to put himself in grave danger for his comrades. I feel compelled to tell these stories because they reveal Chris's dedication to saving lives, not just taking them.

The first episode occurred in early November 2004. It was during an overwatch mission, in which Chris was providing rooftop cover for Marines clearing buildings below.

The Marines encountered a group of enemy fighters, and "heavy contact" erupted. The enemy fell back and barricaded themselves into a house. The Marines were left exposed in the street.

Chris and another SEAL sniper realized they were no longer effective from the rooftop, so they flew down the stairs to support the Marines. By this time, the Marines had barricaded themselves in a building across the street from the insurgents' house.

But two of the Marines had been shot and lay in the road, writhing in pain.

Chris couldn't bear to see the Marines struggling helplessly in the street. "When you see an injured man, you do whatever you can to save him," he told me. 

As a Navy SEAL amongst a group of "young, eighteen-year-old kids" barely out of basic training, Chris felt he had a special obligation. "It's beaten into your head throughout your training: 'You're the better, more effective warrior.'" That meant he had to go get those Marines, no matter what.

Chris and the other SEAL darted out into the street to the injured men, sprinting twenty yards into a torrent of gunfire. "You can hear the snaps. You know they're close," he said. "You just block it out."

Chris scurried in front of the enemy's hideout and grabbed one of the injured Marines. The man was screaming in pain from gunshots to one arm and both legs, and worse, a devastating gut shot that had somehow slid below his body armor. With bullets filling the air, Chris began to drag him toward safety.

Chris focused on the man he was trying to save, doing his best to block out the rounds that danced at his feet and zipped by his head. "During the heat of it, you're not thinking about it. You know you could get hit at any moment, and they'll put another belly button in [your] forehead ... but you just put your head down and go do it."

Chris tugged and dragged and pulled the wounded man until they both fell backwards into the alley, finally shielded from the guerillas' fire. He felt the Marine's blood all over his hands.

He heard the man's anguished screams, "Don't tell my mom that I died screaming like this!" The screaming continued for a few more agonizing moments.

And then it stopped.

Chris remembered those moments in excruciating detail. "I never met this kid before," he said bitterly, "and he wanted me to tell his mother how he died."

Four years later, during our interviews, Chris still couldn't shake the fact that he failed to save that kid's life.

The second story occurred just a few days later.

Chris was once again on overwatch in Fallujah, providing support from rooftops while Marines moved from house to house to clear large swaths of the city. 

As the Marines plodded along, Chris heard enemy gunfire. He scrambled down to locate the shooters. 

He stumbled upon a Marine unit clustered at the end of an alley. They told him that a small group of Marines were barricaded in a house about 50 yards away at the end of the passage, and that a number of guerillas were in the house across from them, pinging away at the trapped Americans. 

Chris could see that every time the Marines moved — even just to peek out the window — a barrage of enemy gunfire would erupt. They were hopelessly trapped. 

If they had tried to escape down the alley, they would have been gunned down.

Chris knew he had to act. "Seeing those guys getting shot up, it would chew me up inside to know that I sat back in safety and didn't help them," he told me.

"I would rather die helping those guys out than have a coward's conscience the rest of my life," he said.

So Chris ran down the alley.  It was a broad passageway, ten or fifteen yards wide. The ground was paved and the walls were dense, made of stone or cement with stucco-like coating.

Chris's plan was to go down the alley and provide suppressive fire, allowing the Marines to escape back to the top of the alley. That meant he would have to go directly in front of the enemy compound — effectively running into the middle of a firing range during target practice.

As he proceeded, insurgents started firing at him.  Chris fired back, trying to keep the heat off the trapped Marines.  He ran out of ammunition and had to reload.  Twice. 

He finally arrived at the house.  Facing the insurgent property and maintaining suppressive fire in that direction, he back-kicked the door to the Marines' house and shouted (in less-than-diplomatic terms) that they should vacate the area immediately.

The Marines scurried away, and Chris prepared to follow them.  As he started to move, he saw an injured Marine with multiple shots to his legs. He couldn't move.

Chris thought back to the man who had died in his arms a few days earlier and knew what he had to do. "I had to grab my guy," he told me, "and get the hell outta there."

Chris ran to the injured Marine and grabbed him with his left hand. His right hand held the pistol grip of the sniper rifle, which he'd wedged between his chest and his left arm so that he could continue to shoot at the enemy and give himself a modicum of cover.  In this contorted position, Chris began to pull the injured Marine back up the alley.

They managed to pass the insurgent safe-house without getting hit. Then, halfway down the alley, Chris heard the enemy fighters emerging. If they entered the alley, they would be right behind Chris and the injured Marine.

His rifle was empty, and he had no more magazines.  There was only one thing to do: sling his rifle on his back, grab the wounded man with both hands, and "haul ass." As he dragged the man, the insurgents chased them and "got off a few rounds." Chris felt bullets flying past and was sure he was going to get hit.

"I could see shrapnel coming off the wall," he told me. "Oh, yeah, I thought I was going to die."  He was nearing the breaking point. "I was suckin' wind. My legs were burnin'. I thought I was going to puke. I felt like quitting," he admitted. "I felt like stopping and saying, 'F__ it. You win. You got me.'"

But he did not stop.  "The inner drive just won't let you give up," he told me. Somehow, some way, he just kept running, kept lugging the injured man, kept dodging bullets.

Now, the clustered Marines began firing back at the guerillas. For a few nerve-racking seconds, Chris was literally caught in a cross fire.  Eventually, the Marines' firepower forced the insurgents back to their compound.

Chris pulled the injured man the rest of the way.  He survived.

Chris Kyle literally saved his life.

So, when I hear people (who never met Chris) call him a mass-murderer or a coward or a hate-filled killer, I can't help but think about those incidents in Fallujah, in which he willingly put himself in grave danger trying to save lives.  That's the Chris Kyle I knew.

SEE ALSO: A Navy SEAL sniper instructor describes America's greatest marksman ever

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The Marine Scout Sniper school is the most elite military sniper school on earth. It is also one of the toughest special operations courses in the US Military.

Not only do the Army, Navy, and the Air Force send troops here, but foreign services like the Israelis and the British also trade students for the opportunity to earn the Marine Sniper designation.

One of the profiled students in this Discovery video was attached to the unit Business Insider also covered in Afghanistan in 2012. Not only did he supply the company with absurdly accurate intelligence on the enemy. He also took a couple of them out when the unit needed it most.

Those are the two primary missions of Marine Scout Snipers: Recon and targeted strikes on enemy personnel and equipment. They can be more devastating for enemy forces than a plane full of bombs.

This post was originally by Geoffrey Ingersoll and Robert Johnson

SEE ALSO: This Marine was the "American Sniper" of the Vietnam War

There are fewer than 300 active snipers in the US Marine Corps — and only four Marine sniper schools including this one at Camp Pendleton, in California.

The 32 elite students who enter the course need almost perfect physical fitness (PT) scores, expert rifle qualifications, and superior intelligence test scores

It is here where Professionally Instructed Gunmen (PIG), become Hunters Of Gunmen (HOG)

Navy SEAL Chris Kyle is considered the deadliest sniper in US military history. Kyle had 160 confirmed kills, and his autobiography, "American Sniper," led to a hit movie of the same title.

The real-life story has a tragic ending. In 2013, Eddie Ray Routh, a 27-year-old Marine veteran, allegedly shot and killed Kyle. Jury selection began Thursday for Routh's trial, scheduled to start next week.

Finally back on American soil after four tours in Iraq, Kyle started taking veterans to shooting ranges as a form of therapy. When a woman who lived near Kyle heard about his efforts, she asked him to help her son, Routh, then just 25 and reportedly suffering from severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). 

Kyle and his friend Chad Littlefield took Routh to target practice at the 11,000-acre Rough Creek Lodge Shooting Range on Feb. 2, 2013, near Chalk Mountain, Texas. That day, Routh allegedly shot and killed both men. No witnesses saw the situation unfold.

"Someone taking the lives of two people that were there to help them — that's not PTSD, in my opinion," Kyle's widow, Taya, told ABC News. 

Routh, an expert marksman who served in Iraq and Haiti, admitted to killing Kyle and Littlefield at the range and then driving away in Kyle's truck, according to a police affidavit. 

Later that night, Routh allegedly drove to his sister Laura Belvin's house. She told police Routh seemed "out of his mind saying people were sucking his soul and that he could smell the pigs." His brother-in-law also told police Routh said he killed two men at the range.

In another 911 call in September 2012, Routh's mother told the operator Routh had threatened to kill himself and others. Records obtained by the Dallas Morning Show indicate Routh spent time a psychiatric hospital at least twice.

With the popularity of the film "American Sniper"— which grossed nearly $250 million and was nominated for six Oscars — finding an impartial jury is a tough task. On the questionnaire, an affirmative answer alone to, "Did you see the movie 'American Sniper?'" will disqualify potential jurors. 

The location of the trial, the close-knit, military-friendly town of Stephenville, Texas, could also affect the jury's opinion of the case. Also, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott just declared Feb. 2 "Chris Kyle Day" in honor of the late Navy SEAL sniper. Routh's lawyer already tried and failed to postpone and move the trial.

Prosecutors said they would not seek the death penalty against Routh.

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The US Marine Corps is often at the tip of the spear, and the few chosen to guard American embassies in friendly and not-so-friendly places around the globe are certainly proof.

Stationed at 176 embassies and consulates around the globe, Marine watch-standers and detachment commanders with Marine Corps Embassy Security Group keep a watchful eye on diplomats, classified information, and equipment vital to US national security.

In many hotspots — Yemen, Pakistan, and Iraq for example — their presence, professionalism, and training is an absolute necessity for diplomats to be able to do their jobs.

But before they can go overseas, they need to pass one of the Corps’ toughest schools: MSG School in Quantico, Virginia.

“To go in there knowing that people have been dropped from school for sneezing when they should be keeping their bearing, or having a single Irish pennant on their uniform,” Ben Feibleman, a Marine veteran who served as an MSG in Liberia, Malta, and Iraq, told WATM, “knowing that however true it may be, is nerve-wracking. The entire time you are walking on pins and needles.”

While noting the schoolhouse is filled with rumors and exaggerations of why past Marines failed, Feibleman said, “things that will get you yelled at in the fleet will get you dropped.” 

The school has a number of challenges, from weapons qualification under State Department (rather than Marine Corps) guidelines, classes ranging from alarms and electronics to State Department acronyms, physical training, peer evaluations, and a board that interviews every student before signing off on whether they can become an MSG.

“They give you hypothetical questions: ‘What would you do if someone had a kid out front [of the embassy] with a knife to their throat. What would you do, would you open the door?'” said Feibleman, of a potential question asked in a room typically packed with high-level Marine officers, government contractors, and intelligence officers.

Perhaps the roughest part of MSG training is when students are pepper-sprayed. Not only that, they have to be able to perform a number of movements and fight a potential assailant while they are blinded.

“It may be the greatest pain I’ve ever felt in my life,” Feibleman said. 

Once they graduate, Marines on MSG duty can expect varying tours and experiences at posts worldwide.

“I got to Liberia [in 2003] and the embassy had just been shelled. There’s bullet holes in the windows and in the house. [It was] a not [messing] around post. We would go out running and the detachment commander would bring a pistol in a fanny pack.”

While Feibleman said “each post is different,” there are typical duties for watch-standers that can be expected regardless of embassy.

“Your job is to stand in this very small room that’s kind of the size of a deep walk-in closet. It’s got a lot of communications equipment. It’s got a desk. Bulletproof glass.” 

With a pistol at their side and a shotgun and M4 carbine in a rack, MSG’s quite simply maintain security 24 hours a day.

“Your job is not to protect the compound, though that may come into play in certain situations,” Feibleman said. “Your job is to protect classified material.”

Now check out this video from the Marine Corps that gives an inside look at MSG School:

SEE ALSO: The 9 most intense unit mottoes in the Marines Corps

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The trial of a Marine who vanished in Iraq a decade ago and then wound up in Lebanon began Monday with a flurry of motions before the expected seating of a jury.

Defense attorneys for Cpl. Wassef Hassoun maintain that he was kidnapped in 2004 by insurgents and later became tangled up in Lebanese courts.

But prosecutors allege Hassoun fled his post because he was unhappy with his deployment and how U.S. troops treated Iraqis.

A September report from the military equivalent of a grand jury hearing acknowledges prosecutors could have a hard time tracking down witnesses from a decade ago.

Hassoun, who is now 35, is charged with desertion, larceny and destruction of government property.

Capt. Chris Nassar, a prosecutor in the case, said Hassoun faces a maximum sentence of 27 years in prison if he is convicted of all the charges.

The case began when Hassoun, disappeared from a base in Fallujah in June 2004.

Days later, he appeared blindfolded and with a sword poised above his head in a photo purportedly taken by insurgents. An extremist group claimed to be holding him captive.

Not long after that, Hassoun turned up unharmed at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, saying he'd been kidnapped. But officials were suspicious, and he was brought back to Camp Lejeune while the military considered charging him.

Hassoun's case occupies some of the same murky territory as that of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, a soldier who left his post in Afghanistan and was held by the Taliban for five years. The Army is considering what, if any, charges or punishment Bergdahl should face.

A lawyer for Hassoun, Haytham Faraj, questions why his client's case is heading to trial when many unauthorized absences are handled administratively.

"To me, it doesn't seem very fair," Faraj said in a recent telephone interview.

An expert on military law agreed that most servicemen accused of leaving their post receive administrative punishment. But Philip Cave, a retired Navy lawyer now in private practice, said Hassoun's multiple absences — including one shortly before he faced a court hearing — may explain why his case is being handled with a trial.

Hassoun is a native of Lebanon and a naturalized American citizen. He enlisted in the Marine Corps in January 2002 and served as an Arabic translator.

Prosecutors cited witnesses who said Hassoun didn't like how the U.S. was interrogating Iraqis and that he said he wouldn't shoot back at Iraqis.

Intelligence documents declassified in recent months shed further light on the investigation of Hassoun's kidnapping claim. An NCIS report from August 2004 states that Hassoun's family in Lebanon seemed genuinely distraught after news of his kidnapping surfaced, contacting the U.S. Embassy in tears.

Another report said the family told investigators that a representative of the Hassoun clan, made up of Sunni Muslims, was able to negotiate with insurgents for Hassoun's release. News that he later returned to the U.S. Embassy in Beirut "sparked a wave of violence and retribution against the Hassoun clan" in Tripoli, Lebanon, a military investigator wrote at the time.

Faraj suggested this evidence was either ignored or withheld from prosecutors in 2004.

"Someone at a high-enough level with the proper clearances knew that this man had been abducted, and yet they brought charges forward anyway," Faraj said.

After he was brought back to Camp Lejeune in 2004, Hassoun was allowed to visit family in Utah. With a military court hearing looming, Hassoun disappeared a second time in early 2005. Prosecutors have said his whereabouts were unknown for years.

Hassoun traveled to Lebanon but was arrested by that country's authorities after Interpol issued a bulletin triggered by his deserter status, Faraj said.

Translated Lebanese government documents reference the U.S. charges against Hassoun. Several memos include Lebanese officials discussing whether to allow extradition to the U.S., and eventually a Lebanese justice ministry document from 2006 states there is "no extradition approval."

The documents submitted by the defense to the U.S. military court say Lebanese authorities took his passport and prevented him from traveling. The documents say Lebanese court proceedings against Hassoun lasted until 2013, and travel restrictions were later lifted.

After that, Faraj said Hassoun turned himself in to U.S. authorities. He was brought to Camp Lejeune over the summer.

A general decided to proceed with the trial.

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BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Islamic State insurgents took control on Thursday of most of the western Iraqi town of al-Baghdadi, threatening an air base where U.S. Marines are training Iraqi troops, officials said.

Al-Baghdadi, about 85 km (50 miles) northwest of Ramadi in Anbar province, had been besieged for months by the radical Sunni Islamist militants who captured vast swathes of Iraq's north and west last year.

"Ninety percent of al-Baghdadi district has fallen under the control of the insurgents," district manager Naji Arak told Reuters by phone.

Militants attacked al-Baghdadi from two directions earlier in the day and then advanced on the town, intelligence sources and officials in the Jazeera and Badiya operations commands said.

The officials said another group of insurgents then attacked the heavily-guarded Ain al-Asad air base five km southwest of the town, but were unable to break into it.

About 320 U.S. Marines are training members of the Iraqi 7th Division at the base, which has been struck by mortrar fire on at least one previous occasion since December.

Pentagon spokeswoman Navy Commander Elissa Smith confirmed the fighting in al-Baghdadi. She said there had been no direct attack on the air base, adding: "There were reports of ineffective indirect fire in the vicinity of the base."

An Iraqi defence ministry spokesman declined to comment on the situation in Anbar.

The death toll from the fighting was not immediately clear.

Most of the surrounding towns in Anbar fell under Islamic State control after the group's rapid advance across the Syrian border last summer.

Elsewhere in Iraq, five civilians were killed when bombs went off in two towns south of Baghdad, police and medical sources said. Such attacks are not uncommon in and around the capital.

(Reporting by Saif Hameed in Baghdad and David Alexander in Washington; Writing by Stephen Kalin; Editing by Gareth Jones)

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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Twenty-two U.S. Marines were injured on Thursday in a training exercise at Twentynine Palms military base in Southern California, when a fire extinguisher system accidentally discharged inside an amphibious vehicle, officials said.

The Marines who needed medical treatment were taken to local medical facilities and are listed in stable condition, the U.S. Marine Corps said in a statement.

Local television station KNBC, citing hospital officials at the base, reported the service members came in with inhalation exposure.

The accident happened during a training exercise by the Second Battalion, Third Marine Regiment at Twentynine Palms Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center located in the California desert near the San Bernardino County town of Twentynine Palms, according to the Marine Corps statement.

The statement did not release other details on the accident.

Representatives from the San Bernardino County fire and sheriff's departments did not return calls.

(Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

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The Marine Corps needs 50 amphibious warships to tend to all the missions it must perform around the globe, but there are currently only 31 available.

The service will have to seek alternative platforms to fill that gap, said the commandant of the Marine Corps on Feb. 12.

“There is a requirement for over 50 ships on a day-to-day basis, that’s what … the combatant commanders are asking for,” said Gen. Joseph F. Dunford, Jr.

“We’ve got an objective of 38 — that’s the requirement within the Department of the Navy.

We’ve got a fiscally constrained objective of about 33. We’ve got an inventory right now of 31.”

That equates to “significant readiness challenges,” he noted during a panel discussion at the AFCEA West 2015 Conference.

The Navy will increase its fleet of amphibious vessels to 33 over the next four to six years, he noted.

In the mean time, the Marine Corps must be creative and flexible as it seeks alternatives to the vessels that are used to transport and station Marines around the world, often in contested areas.

“There’s got to be another answer besides just amphibious ships,” he said. “We’re working very closely on alternative platforms not as a substitute for amphibious ships, not as substitute for a warship, but as an opportunity to get Marines to sea to be more responsive to combatant commanders.”

For instance, using mobile landing platform afloat forward staging base vessels are one solution, Dunford said. The ships have flight decks as well as command-and-control stations.

They are compatible with V-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft, which could be used to ferry Marines to shore for forward presence engagements as well as crisis response missions.

“By no means are they replacements. They’re not a warship. They’re not a replacement for an amphibious ship. But they are [a way] to augment our capability to meet our requirements on a day-to-day basis and are very, very capable ships,” he said.

The Marine Corps plans to test out new concepts of operations that take advantage of alternative platforms in U.S. Africa Command's area of responsibility as well as in Australia this year, Dunford said.

The Navy has struggled to fill out the amphib fleet. One of its top procurement efforts is the 12th ship of the San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock ships (LPD 17), which was designated as LPD 28.

In the Defense Department fiscal year 2016 budget request, the Navy allocated $668.7 million to complete funding for the ship after Congress enacted $1 billion toward the program last year. The vessel is to be built by Huntington Ingalls Industries.

Adm. Michelle J. Howard, vice chief of naval operations, said the Navy saw Congress’ action as a “great opportunity” to procure the ship. The sea service remains committed to acquiring more amphibious ships in the future, she noted.

Marine Corps and Navy leaders have said LPD 28 will be a key acquisition as the services look ahead toward the procurement of the future next-generation amphibious ship known as the LXR.

During a forum held on Capitol Hill in February that focused on amphibious vessels, legislators such as Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee’s subcommittee on readiness, said the LXR is critically needed as adversaries adopt new technologies that could one day harm the United States.

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The US-led annual multinational military exercise Cobra Gold kicked off in Thailand on Monday, despite a faltering relationship between the two countries following Thailand's military coup in May 2014. 

Cobra Gold 2015 is scaled down due compared to past years because of the frosty relations between Thailand's ruling military junta and the US. But it's still a massive military exercise even in a reduced form. This year 13,000 personnel from 7 participating nations have joined in the exercises, the AP reports.

The participant countries are Thailand, the United States, Singapore, Japan, Indonesia, Republic of Korea and Malaysia, while India and China are taking part in humanitarian training missions. Even though the exercise is smaller than in the past, the scope of Cobra Gold has grown since the first one was held in 1982 and involved only the US and Thailand.

Exercises in Cobra Gold 2015 include jungle survival training and civic assistance programs in underdeveloped regions of Thailand.

Survival training is a big part of Cobra Gold. Thai Marines demonstrate how to capture a cobra in the wild.

US Marines then help decapitate the cobra and take turns drinking its blood. Cobra blood is surprisingly hydrating and can be used as a temporary replacement for water if a Marine is lost without supplies.

Thai Marines also teach their counterparts how to recognize edible jungle fruits.

Like cobra blood, several of the fruits can serve as an improvised source of hydration.

Marines are also instructed in the proper way to eat scorpions and spiders. Spiders are eaten after their fangs are ripped off, while scorpions are edible once the stinger is removed.

Aside from survival lessons, participant countries also take part in construction projects to build greater regional cooperation in the event of disasters like typhoons or plane crashes. Here, Chinese and US soldiers work together to build a school as part of Cobra Gold 2015.

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Following the end of the Gulf War in 1991, two different operations were conducted to enforce the no fly zone (NFZ) that was set to narrow Iraqi government airspace: the Northern Watch, which started in 1997 and became Operation Provide Comfort, to monitor the airspace above the 36th parallel; and the Southern Watch, that began in 1992, to control the airspace south of the 32nd parallel, extended to the 33rd parallel in 1996.

Saddam Hussein's regime soon decided not to respect the no-fly zone, and Iraqi air defense systems began to attack both Northern and Southern Watch aircraft, even though the Surface to Air Missile (SAM) sites were more active against Southern forces. Many no-fly zone violations occurred after 1992, with Iraqi fighters crossing the zone several times.

Nevertheless the main threat to the allied aircraft was posed by the Iraqi SAM and anti-aircraft artillery batteries. Those soon became the target of several air strikes, like the ones conducted during Operation Desert Fox in 1998 and the powerful raid conducted by Joint Task Forces Southwest Asia, on Feb. 16, 2001.

As explained by the US Marine Corps historian Fred Allison to Giampaolo Agostinelli for his book Where Sea Meets The Sky, about 70 aircraft were involved in this air strike, and a quarter of those released weapons.

Among the strike aircraft which took part in the mission were eight US Air Force F-15E Strike Eagles and an element of Royal Air Force Tornado GR1s from bases in Kuwait, with fourteen F/A-18s belonging to Marine Strike Fighter Squadron 312 (VMFA-312) Checkerboards and Strike Fighter Squadron 105 (VFA-105) Gunslingers launched from the aircraft carrier USS Truman (CVN-75).

The strike was supported by E-2Cs in an AWACS role, S-3Bs and KC-10s for air-to-air refueling and EA-6Bs for electronic warfare. The escort for the strike force was provided by VF-32 Swordsmen F-14B Tomcats and by USAF F-15C Eagles.

Some of the targets — radars, communications centers and command centers — were placed north of Baghdad. To hit them the Hornets were loaded with external tanks, 200 rounds of 20 mm ammunition combined with AIM-120 and AIM-9 air-to-air missiles for self-defense and two types of standoff weapons: three AGM-154 Joint Stand-Off Weapons (JSOWs) for each VMFA-312’s jet and Standoff Land-Attack Missile – Expanded Response (SLAM-ER) missiles for VFA-105’s F/A-18s.

The mission was launched after sunset. The Hornets refueled from an Air Force KC-10 tanker over Kuwait. The F/A-18s were the last aircraft to reach their targets over Baghdad, with the Iraqi gunners already alerted from the previous strikes: their first Gunslinger jets launched their SLAM-ERs which hit their targets with great accuracy.

This accuracy was demonstrated by footage sent back by one aircraft that hit Al-Taji air base. When slowed down, it showed a man outside the building smoking a cigarette.

Then, Checkerboards Hornets delivered their JSOWs from 36,000 feet while the sky was erupting “into a blaze of AAA and SAMs.”

But in the rarefied air at FL360, the F/A-18s were too slow to maneuver away from the SAMs. So they lit the burners for a steep dive, descending into the thicker air where the pilots could maneuver more effectively against the surface-to-air missiles.

In addition to the SAMs launches, the Hornets' pilots were notified that a MiG-23 Flogger had taken off from Al-Taqaddum airfield below them. Luckily for them the MiG escaped immediately towards the north.

With the afterburners still ignited, the Hornets avoided the last Iraqi SAMs and reached the tanker on a racetrack on the border of Kuwait. Suddenly a British voice came over to the radio: a Tornado was being targeted by a SA-6 which was receiving good tracking information from its radar.

Three seconds later another voice radioed: “Magnum!”: a VAQ-130 (Electronic Attack Squadron 130) Zappers EA-6B pilot had just launched an AGM-88 HARM missile which destroyed the Iraqi SAM site.

The mission ended after the safe recovery of the aircraft onboard the Truman’s deck.

As Allison recalls: “The mission had lasted slightly more than four hours and had accomplished its purpose. The Iraqis shut down their radars and there were less attacks on coalition aircraft over the NFZ, at least for a time.”

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