As a Marine, Ironman Triathlon participant, Wharton Business School graduate, and co-founder and co-CEO of tech startup Slidejoy, Robert Seo knows something about success. And he learned the most important lessons about how to succeed from his time in the Corps.

"If there's anything that I got from the military," Seo told Business Insider, "it's that I don't have any limits. The limits are what I set for myself."

Seo's proven it. Having "run away" from undergraduate work to join the Marine Corps, Seo served in the invasion force's vanguard during the initial push into Baghdad in 2003. 

After completing his service, Seo received a BA in economics and a minor in mathematics from the University of Maryland. He went on to take part in an Ironman Triathlon to raise funds for the Jericho's Veterans Initiative in South America, before working a quick stint at Goldman Sachs and receiving a double major from the Wharton School in Entrepreneurial Management and Finance.

After graduating, Seo decided to embrace the inherent risk of launching a new company and co-founded Slidejoy. 

"To make that step into entrepreneurship is scary," Seo said, "but it was something I had to do." 

Slidejoy is a mobile application that presents targeted ads on cell phones' lockscreens. Users can swipe left or right on the ad, choosing to engage it or ignore it. Whatever the choice, the user earns money, and the advertiser gains exposure. 

"You look at your phone 50 to 100 times a day," Seo said. "That view is so so valuable. And you do it all the time. Having access as an advertiser to that screen is huge." 

Seo told Business Insider that his run of success hinged upon five lessons he learned in the military:

1. Happiness is a choice

During the invasion of Iraq, Seo realized that happiness depended on his attitude at a given time. Although he was homesick and in a difficult environment, Seo could still choose how he felt in any given situation.

"You make that choice to be happy," Seo said. "I chose not to think about the things at home that I missed. Instead I would focus on the things that I have here."

2. A successful team values itself more than the individual

"The importance of brotherhood is something I've been able to bring onto Slidejoy. I'm not just looking for world-class talent, which we have. I know how to recognize people who are great at what they do, but also have the selflessness, that dedication to something bigger than themselves." 

3. You have to learn how to be truly courageous 

"For anybody out there, for anyone who wants to take a big step, they're not that special. We're all the same. Courage isn't not being scared, but instead recognizing that it is the ability and fortitude to move forward in the face of fear."

4. Anti-fragility is key

"Fragile people break and crack under pressure. Resilient people will bounce back from failure to the same level they were at before. Anti-fragile people will take those setbacks and bounce back harder to a new level. I think that anti-fragility is something you need as an entrepreneur, and that is something I learned in the military."

5. Live with a sense of purpose

"No matter what I do, I will live my life to its full potential ... That sense of purpose is what drives me today. Being able to find the right people you're happy with and being able to find that purpose that makes you want to give your all is what drives me. It should be something that everyone looks for." 

Slidejoy has gone on to win first place in the Wharton Business Plan competition. 

SEE ALSO: Only A Marine Could Have Made This Incredible Documentary

SEE ALSO: Running A Food Delivery Startup Is Easy After What This Guy Did In The Air Force

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Six years ago, two Marines from two different walks of life who had literally just met were told to stand guard in front of their outpost's entry control point.

Minutes later, they were staring down a large blue truck packed with explosives. With this particular shred of hell bearing down on them, they stood their ground.

Heck, they even leaned in.

I had heard the story many times, personally — but until recently, I hadn't heard Marine Lt. Gen. John Kelly's telling of it to a packed house in 2010. Just four days after the death of his own son in combat, Kelly unforgettably eulogized two other sons who had been killed in the service of their country. 

From Kelly's speech:

Two years ago when I was the Commander of all U.S. and Iraqi forces, in fact, the 22nd of April 2008, two Marine infantry battalions, 1/9 “The Walking Dead,” and 2/8 were switching out in Ramadi. One battalion in the closing days of their deployment going home very soon, the other just starting its seven-month combat tour.

Two Marines, Corporal Jonathan Yale and Lance Corporal Jordan Haerter, 22 and 20 years old respectively, one from each battalion, were assuming the watch together at the entrance gate of an outpost that contained a makeshift barracks housing 50 Marines.

The same broken down ramshackle building was also home to 100 Iraqi police, also my men and our allies in the fight against the terrorists in Ramadi, a city until recently the most dangerous city on earth and owned by Al Qaeda. Yale was a dirt poor mixed-race kid from Virginia with a wife and daughter, and a mother and sister who lived with him and he supported as well. He did this on a yearly salary of less than $23,000. Haerter, on the other hand, was a middle class white kid from Long Island.

They were from two completely different worlds. Had they not joined the Marines they would never have met each other, or understood that multiple Americas exist simultaneously depending on one’s race, education level, economic status, and where you might have been born. But they were Marines, combat Marines, forged in the same crucible of Marine training, and because of this bond they were brothers as close, or closer, than if they were born of the same woman.

The mission orders they received from the sergeant squad leader I am sure went something like: “Okay you two clowns, stand this post and let no unauthorized personnel or vehicles pass.” “You clear?” I am also sure Yale and Haerter then rolled their eyes and said in unison something like: “Yes Sergeant,” with just enough attitude that made the point without saying the words, “No kidding sweetheart, we know what we’re doing.” They then relieved two other Marines on watch and took up their post at the entry control point of Joint Security Station Nasser, in the Sophia section of Ramadi, al Anbar, Iraq.

A few minutes later a large blue truck turned down the alley way—perhaps 60-70 yards in length—and sped its way through the serpentine of concrete jersey walls. The truck stopped just short of where the two were posted and detonated, killing them both catastrophically. Twenty-four brick masonry houses were damaged or destroyed. A mosque 100 yards away collapsed. The truck’s engine came to rest two hundred yards away knocking most of a house down before it stopped.

Our experts reckoned the blast was made of 2,000 pounds of explosives. Two died, and because these two young infantrymen didn’t have it in their DNA to run from danger, they saved 150 of their Iraqi and American brothers-in-arms.

When I read the situation report about the incident a few hours after it happened I called the regimental commander for details as something about this struck me as different. Marines dying or being seriously wounded is commonplace in combat. We expect Marines regardless of rank or MOS to stand their ground and do their duty, and even die in the process, if that is what the mission takes. But this just seemed different.

The regimental commander had just returned from the site and he agreed, but reported that there were no American witnesses to the event—just Iraqi police. I figured if there was any chance of finding out what actually happened and then to decorate the two Marines to acknowledge their bravery, I’d have to do it as a combat award that requires two eye-witnesses and we figured the bureaucrats back in Washington would never buy Iraqi statements. If it had any chance at all, it had to come under the signature of a general officer.

I traveled to Ramadi the next day and spoke individually to a half-dozen Iraqi police all of whom told the same story. The blue truck turned down into the alley and immediately sped up as it made its way through the serpentine. They all said, “We knew immediately what was going on as soon as the two Marines began firing.” The Iraqi police then related that some of them also fired, and then to a man, ran for safety just prior to the explosion.

All survived. Many were injured … some seriously. One of the Iraqis elaborated and with tears welling up said, “They’d run like any normal man would to save his life.”

What he didn’t know until then, he said, and what he learned that very instant, was that Marines are not normal. Choking past the emotion he said, “Sir, in the name of God no sane man would have stood there and done what they did.”

“No sane man.”

“They saved us all.”

What we didn’t know at the time, and only learned a couple of days later after I wrote a summary and submitted both Yale and Haerter for posthumous Navy Crosses, was that one of our security cameras, damaged initially in the blast, recorded some of the suicide attack. It happened exactly as the Iraqis had described it. It took exactly six seconds from when the truck entered the alley until it detonated.

You can watch the last six seconds of their young lives. Putting myself in their heads I supposed it took about a second for the two Marines to separately come to the same conclusion about what was going on once the truck came into their view at the far end of the alley. Exactly no time to talk it over, or call the sergeant to ask what they should do. Only enough time to take half an instant and think about what the sergeant told them to do only a few minutes before: “ … let no unauthorized personnel or vehicles pass.”

The two Marines had about five seconds left to live. It took maybe another two seconds for them to present their weapons, take aim, and open up. By this time the truck was half-way through the barriers and gaining speed the whole time. Here, the recording shows a number of Iraqi police, some of whom had fired their AKs, now scattering like the normal and rational men they were—some running right past the Marines. They had three seconds left to live.

For about two seconds more, the recording shows the Marines’ weapons firing non-stop…the truck’s windshield exploding into shards of glass as their rounds take it apart and tore in to the body of the son-of-a-bitch who is trying to get past them to kill their brothers—American and Iraqi—bedded down in the barracks totally unaware of the fact that their lives at that moment depended entirely on two Marines standing their ground. If they had been aware, they would have know they were safe … because two Marines stood between them and a crazed suicide bomber.

The recording shows the truck careening to a stop immediately in front of the two Marines. In all of the instantaneous violence Yale and Haerter never hesitated. By all reports and by the recording, they never stepped back. They never even started to step aside. They never even shifted their weight. With their feet spread shoulder width apart, they leaned into the danger, firing as fast as they could work their weapons. They had only one second left to live.

The truck explodes. The camera goes blank. Two young men go to their God. 

Six seconds.

Not enough time to think about their families, their country, their flag, or about their lives or their deaths, but more than enough time for two very brave young men to do their duty … into eternity. That is the kind of people who are on watch all over the world tonight — for you.

SEE ALSO: The most important war memorial is one you'll probably never see

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The U.S. Marine being held in a Mexican prison opened up to Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren Friday, telling the story of a failed escape attempt that nearly cost him his life.

In late March, Marine Corps Sgt. Andrew Tahmooressi made a wrong turn and wound up in Mexico — and under arrest for the guns in his car.

He’s facing 21 years in Mexican prison for having his legally registered AR-15 rifle, .45-caliber pistol and 12-gauge pump shotgun in his car.

Though a prior lawyer of his advised him to “stick to the script” and not say too much, Tahmooressi has been vocal throughout his ordeal, and on Friday he revealed the near-success of his escape attempt to Fox News.

He was making a phone call, he told Greta Van Susteren, when he saw a nine-foot cage — and an opening.

“I ran and I grabbed a hold of the top of the cage and I got myself on top of the cage,” Tahmooressi said.

He ran across multiple rooftops, scrambling over fences and under barbed wire.

“I managed to get to one of the front gates of the prison and I couldn’t find any way out,” Tahmooressi said. Then he saw a pipe he could you to shimmy out, but by then it was too late: a guard had spotted him.

“(The guard) shot at me,” said Tahmooressi, “and I saw the impact a little bit above my head and to the right, maybe four feet away.”

“That’s when I got on the ground with my belly to the ground and my hands behind my head and I gave up,” he said.

Hear the full interview here.

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The Chosin Reservoir Campaign of the Korean War is the stuff of legend in the Marine Corps. During the pivotal 1950 battle, 15,000 U.S. soldiers and Marines, alongside another 15,000 UN soldiers, fought through a force of 120,000 Chinese soldiers to reach the sea some 78 miles away.

During the campaign, U.S. forces successfully evacuated 98,000 refugees while inflicting heavy losses on the Chinese army.

The Marine Corps led the push against a numerically superior Chinese force. The Marines broke through an enemy encirclement, and even rebuilt a bridge that the Chinese destroyed.

In the process, they also saved the UN's army in Korea from total defeat.

The campaign is one of the defining events of the Marine Corp's modern history, but it remains largely unknown outside of military and historical circles. Marine Corps veterans Brian Iglesias and Anton Sattler have released an award-winning documentary, CHOSIN, that details the operation with interviews from veterans who fought there. 

Here is a history of the campaign from the few archival photos that document one of the pivotal campaigns of the Korean War. 

By the middle of 1950, the Korean War seemed all but won. The communist Korean People's Army was routed and UN forces were quickly advancing up through the northern half of the Korean Peninsula

Then, on October 19, 1950, Chinese leader Mao Tze Tung secretly sent large formations of troops into North Korea in an attempt to rescue the communists' war effort.

On November 2, Chinese forces encountered U.S. Marines. The Chinese suffered heavy casualties and withdrew to the Chosin Reservoir in an attempt to lure allied forces into a trap.

In about two weeks, former Marine Cpl. Kyle Carpenter will join a small class of elite warriors of Iraq and Afghanistan who have received the nation’s highest award for valor, the Medal of Honor.

During a battle in southwestern Afghanistan in 2010, Carpenter used his body to shield a grenade blast in an effort to save a fellow Marine. It was a decision he thought would end his life.

But he survived, recovered, and is set to become just the second living Marine to receive the Medal of Honor.

As he said in a recent video produced by the Marine Corps, he’s just getting started.

A Marine Corps buddy of mine, Sgt. Bryan Nygaard, was in Carpenter’s platoon in boot camp and was invited to the ceremony. He shared a photo of the invitation, and I thought I’d share it here:

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Retired Marine Cpl. Kyle Carpenter is set to receive the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest award for bravery, on June 19. Carpenter will be the third Marine to be awarded the medal since the start of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

Carpenter, now 24-years-old, will be recognized for covering a grenade with his body to save the life of a fellow Marine in 2010, when he was a 21-year-old lance corporal. Both Carpenter and the soldier, his friend Lance Cpl. Nicholas Eufrazio, were badly wounded in the blast. They both survived. 

Since 2010, Carpenter has embarked on a remarkable recovery. Carpenter was labeled as patient expired on arrival when he first arrived at a hospital after the blast. Three and a half years later, Carpenter insists that he is just getting started with his recovery. Already, he has gone on to run marathons and skydive. 

As Carpenter told the Marine Corps Times in March, "I'm still here and kicking and, you know, I have all my limbs so you'll never hear me complain."

Kyle Carpenter was born in Jackson, Mississippi, where he lived until he enlisted with the Marine Corps in 2009.

After completing his training, Carpenter was deployed to Marjah, in Afghanistan's Helmand Province.

While serving, Carpenter (left) became close friends with Nicholas Eufrazio (right). On November 10, 2011, Carpenter threw himself on-top of a grenade in order to save Eufrazio's life.

On Thursday, President Obama will award the Medal of Honor to Cpl. Kyle Carpenter, making him the 15th recipient of the nation's highest military award for bravery after more than a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The medal is a remarkable honor, and while it is a symbol of courage and sacrifice for those who receive it, it's not something many aspire to.

That's because the criteria for receiving the award is incredibly stringent, requiring significant risk to life and limb in direct combat and a display of "personal bravery or self-sacrifice so extraordinary as to set the individual apart from his or her comrades."

For some service members put into extreme circumstances, the daily grind can give way to moments of incredible bravery that warrants them the nation's highest award.

Often it is the family of the fallen hero who receives the posthumous award. In the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, there have been relatively few who have received the honor after more than a decade of combat.

Sergeant First Class Paul Smith held off hundreds of Iraqi soldiers from an exposed position.

On April 4, 2003, after his unit briefly battled and captured several Iraqi fighters near the Baghdad International Airport, Smith instructed his men to build an impromptu holding area for the prisoners in a nearby walled compound.

A short time later, his troops were violently attacked by a larger force. Smith rallied his men to organize a hasty defense, then braved hostile fire to engage the enemy with grenades and antitank weapons.

He then ran through blistering gunfire to man the .50 caliber machine gun on top of an armored personnel carrier to keep the enemy from overrunning the position, completely disregarding his own safety to protect his soldiers.

Smith was mortally wounded during the attack, but he helped defeat the attacking force which had more than 50 enemy soldiers killed, according to his award citation.

Award Presented (posthumously): April 4, 2005

Corporal Jason Dunham dove on an enemy grenade and saved the lives of two Marines.

While his unit was engaged in a major firefight in Iraq along the Syrian border on April 14, 2004, Dunham and his team stopped several vehicles to search them for weapons.

As he approached one of the vehicles, the driver lunged at Dunham's throat and they fought in a hand-to-hand battle. Wrestling on the ground, Dunham then yelled to his Marines, "No, no watch his hand."

The insurgent then dropped a grenade with the pin pulled. Dunham jumped on top of it, placing his helmet between his body and the grenade in an effort to brunt the explosion.

"He knew what he was doing," Lance Cpl. Jason A. Sanders, who was in Dunham's company, told Marine Corps News. "He wanted to save Marines' lives from that grenade."

He saved the lives of at least two Marines and was mortally wounded in the blast.

Award Presented (posthumously): Jan. 11, 2007

Lieutenant Michael Murphy went into the open during a fierce battle to call for support.

While leading his Navy SEAL team on June 28, 2005, to infiltrate and provide reconnaissance on a Taliban leader, Murphy and the three other members of his team came under withering gunfire from 30 to 40 enemy fighters.

The fierce gunfight pitted the SEALs against insurgents on the high ground, and they desperately called for support as all four operators were hit by gunshots.

When his radioman fell mortally wounded, and with the radio not able to get a clear signal, Murphy disregarded the enemy fire and went out into the open to transmit back to his base and call for support.

From his Summary of Action:

He calmly provided his unit’s location and the size of the enemy force while requesting immediate support for his team. At one point he was shot in the back causing him to drop the transmitter. Murphy picked it back up, completed the call and continued firing at the enemy who was closing in. 

"I was cursing at him from where I was," Hospital Corpsman Marcus Luttrell, the only survivor of the battle, later told The New York Times. "I was saying, 'What are you doing?' Then I realized that he was making a call. But then he started getting hit. He finished the call, picked up his rifle and started fighting again. But he was overrun."

Award Presented (posthumously): Oct. 23, 2007

Here’s something you don’t see every day.

On June 7, 2014, U.S. Marine Corps Capt. William Mahoney, Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron (VMM) 263 (Reinforced), 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU), had to perform a vertical landing on the USS Bataan, after his AV-8B Harrier aircraft experienced a front landing gear malfunction.

The USS Bataan was operating in the U.S. 6th Fleet area of operations to augment U.S. Crisis Response forces in the region when Mahoney took off from the amphibious assault ship.

As he was climbing away from the deck, he suddenly realized that he had a gear malfunction. He immediately slowed in order not to overshoot the landing gear, returned above the ship at 2,000 feet, and started talking to “Paddles” (the LSO – Landing Signal Officer), a pilot in the control tower who could provide assistance by radio.

The Harrier flew the approach at 300 feet, allowing the LSO to see the landing gear and give instructions to the pilot to guide the nose on a tool the ship has for this kind of issues — a make-shift stool.

Since there’s no way to train to land in this kind of situation, the pilot had to fly a perfect vertical landing, using the ship lighting system and the help of the LSO on his first attempt.

Luckily, he stabilized at 20 feet and managed to land in the proper spot as shown in the video, which was oddly removed by the Commander, U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa/U.S. 6th Fleet feed that had published it. Luckily, we found it again and uploaded it since it is unclassified and released, as you can see in the first frames of the footage.

SEE ALSO: US Air Force Suspends All F-35A Flights After Fighter Jet Catches On Fire

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The worst of the insurgency in Iraq is "over", a former general who commanded US Marines and British forces in the 2003 US-led invasion said Friday, in a rare note of optimism over the crisis.

Speaking on the sidelines of the annual conference of Iran's exiled opposition -- in which he was a guest speaker -- General James Conway said the insurgents who have overrun major parts of Iraq were unlikely to make any further significant gains.

The lightning offensive this month by jihadists from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and other militant groups has killed more than 1,000 people and displaced tens of thousands.

Until now, ISIL has primarily made inroads in Sunni Arab areas in the north of Iraq, supported by Sunni militants that loathe current Shiite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

"The worst is over," Conway said.

"The ISIS (as ISIL is often also called) are probably surprised themselves with their degree of success."

But "they will not mess with the Kurds, they will not be able to take Baghdad and they can't go into the south where the oil fields are because it's all Shiite territory".

The Kurds already have their own autonomous region in the north and have defended key towns outside this area against the militants after federal forces withdrew.

Conway said that the Kurds may take advantage of the current situation and "establish once and for all a separate Kurdistan".

Already, Kurdish fighters have been defending the ethnically divided northern oil city of Kirkuk from militants, and the president of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region declared Friday that there would be no going back on Kurdish self-rule in this locality.

Conway said he also feared that Sunni militants who have been supporting ISIL so far would start pulling away.

"It's only been a marriage of convenience... There's going to be some fighting between them and the Sunnis."

Meanwhile, Maryam Rajavi, the leader of the National Council of Resistance of Iran -- a coalition of Iranian opposition groups -- called for Maliki, who is close to the Iranian regime, to go.

Washington itself has stopped short of calling for him to step down, but has left little doubt it feels he has squandered the opportunity to rebuild Iraq since American troops withdrew in 2011.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. Marine listed as a deserter for almost a decade since going missing after his return to the United States following his brief disappearance in Iraq is back in military custody, the Marine Corps said on Sunday.

Corporal Wassef Ali Hassoun, 34, is scheduled to return on Monday to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, 9-1/2 years after he failed to report for duty there on Jan. 5, 2005, following a visit to his family, the Marines said. He had since been listed as a deserter, the service added.

"The Naval Criminal Investigative Service worked with Cpl. Hassoun to turn himself in and return to the United States to face charges under the Uniformed Code of Military Justice," the Marine Corps said in a statement. Media reports said he gave himself up in Bahrain.

Hassoun was first charged with desertion 10 years ago after disappearing from his base near Falluja, Iraq, in June 2004 and then turning up in Lebanon a month later saying he had been kidnapped by militants.

After a five-month investigation, the Marines alleged that Hassoun had "taken unauthorized leave of the unit where he served as an Arabic interpreter," the service said in a 2004 release.

During his disappearance, Hassoun was seen in a videotape, apparently being held by militants, blindfolded and with a sword poised over his head.

An Islamic militant website said later he had been beheaded. But he showed up unharmed at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in July 2004. Hassoun denied deserting and told reporters he had been captured and held against his will.

Shortly before the start of military proceedings against him, Hassoun failed to report back to Camp Lejeune after visiting his family in Utah.

According to media reports, Hassoun fled the United States through Canada and went to Lebanon, where he was born.

Media reports quoted a Marine official as saying Hassoun's case had no connection with that of U.S. Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, who spent five years as a Taliban prisoner of war before being released last month in an exchange for five Taliban leaders held at the Guantanamo prison in Cuba. The exchange sparked a political uproar in Washington. 

(Editing by Matthew Lewis)

SEE ALSO: Here's Why Bowe Bergdahl Probably Won't Be Court Martialed For Desertion

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The Marine Corps Warfighting Lab, in conjunction with the Office of Naval Research, is currently testing a beast of an amphibious lander. 

The Ultra Heavy-Lift Amphibious Connector (UHAC) has been developed as a replacement to the current Landing Craft Air Cushioned (LCAC). The UHAC would be used to bring ashore troops, equipment, and vehicles. It can even land multiple tanks at once. 

The UHAC began testing on July 9 at the Marine Corps Training Area Bellows on Oahu, Hawaii, and it is taking part in the Rim of the Pacific Exercise 2014 which is currently underway until Aug. 1. We have highlighted some of the amazing capabilities of the UHAC below. 

The current iteration of the UHAC is only half the size of the expected final version, although it is still massive: 42 feet long, 26 feet wide, and 17 feet high.

At full capacity, the UHAC should be able to carry three main battle tanks ashore from a range of 200 nautical miles. 

Altogether, the UHAC can carry payloads up to 190 tons, almost three times as much as the LCAC. 

Unlike the LCAC, the UHAC can continue moving while onshore across mud flats, tidal marsh areas, and even over sea walls of up to 10 feet in height. 

This movement is due to the UHAC's treads, which are composed of low pressure captive air cells held within foam casings. 

But the vehicle is limited to speeds up to 20 knots, half that of the LCAC, due to drag from its foam treads. 

SEE ALSO: This bizarre flying truck could revolutionize military rescue missions

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Last week in Hawaii, a squad of U.S. Marines brought a robot deep into the jungle. The Legged Support System (LS3) robot walks on four legs, carries 400 pounds, and shambles its way over rough terrain, like a mechanical mule in a future war. It’s all part of the Advanced Warfighting Experiment, and if the Marine Corps thinks the tests went well, future invasions may come with robotic horses doing some heavy lifting.

The whole experiment is a subset of a larger multinational military exercise. Dubbed RIMPAC (for Rim of the Pacific, not to be confused with the Guillermo del Toro robots-versus-monsters movie), the exercise is held by the U.S. Navy and includes participants from 22 nations, with 55 ships, 200 aircraft, and 25,000 people. It also includes three LS3 robots.

Marines typically carry between 100 and 135 pounds of gear, which includes not just weapons and ammunition but also water and food. While it's important for troops to carry food with them when operating far from base, they don't need to have their lunch physically on their person at all times. That's where the Legged Support System comes in. Major Christopher Orlowski, program manager of the LS3 program for DARPA, told Popular Science that the program's greatest success is "meeting the requirements, demonstrating an unmanned legged system than can carry upwards of 350, 400 pounds of gear, and demonstrating it effectively. In this case, DARPA set out a goal and it was able to meet that goal."

DARPA just creates the technology, and leaves it up for the rest of the military to determine how best it's used.

Lieutenant Colonel Don Gordon of the U.S. Marine Corps spoke to Popular Science about the how the Marines are using LS3 in their Warfighting Experiment. The LS3 carries food, water, and ammunition supplies for a squad of seven to nine marines. According to Gordon:

"What’s unique about the LS3 is normally you take additional supplies and put it on a vehicle and distribute it around to companies. The LS3 can maneuver with companies down to the squad level over terrain that you couldn’t necessarily get a wheeled or tracked vehicle through just due to the density of trees and the kind of terrain. ... [S]o it can go out around on patrol and carry supplies to those marines as they maneuver about the battlespace."

That's the theory, at least. Having the Legged Support System at these exercises is, according to Gordon, "really the first opportunity for the Marine Corps to put it into an exercise and provide it to a force that’s actually exercising the same way they would in actual operations.” There was one immediate challenge. While the Marines landed in an MV-22 Osprey, there wasn't enough room for both the Marines and their robotic mule. Instead, after arriving, the Marines met up with another group that handed off the robot.

Here's what it looks like in action:

To get gear like the LS3 from ships onto the beaches, marines are testing other new technologies. When I spoke to Gordon, he was watching a swimming cargo mover land on the Hawaiian beach. Marines, as a rule, think about beaches differently than most folk, and the cargo mover Gordon described was no idle beach comber. Named the Ultra Heavy-lift Amphibious Connector, or UHAC, the vehicle looks like the treads of a giant future tank stuck on the body of a small modern tractor. Gordon explained the vehicle:

One of the Marine Corps concepts as we face a future environment, embedded in a document called Expeditionary Force 21, is looking at ways to move supplies from ship to shore. UHAC is one of the technologies we're looking at to embark in the well deck aboard a ship, load it up with equipment, and carry that equipment from the ship to the beach. What's really neat about the UHAC is I’m watching it crawl across terrain right now that would normally be impossible for some of our current ship-to-shore connectors to cross.

Here's what the UHAC looks like in water:

And here it is triumphantly on land.

SEE ALSO: 5 ridiculous things in the defense spending bill that still cost less than the F-35

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The job of a U.S. Marine means much more than knowing how to patrol and shoot a rifle. The Corps wants troops who can think clearly under fire and make calm and intelligent decisions.

So it comes as no surprise that the Corps' top officer — a four-star general known as the Commandant — publishes a list of books that Marines of all ranks need to learn from.

The books run the gamut of development, from warfighting techniques discussed in "Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication 1: Warfighting" to leadership in "Battlefield Leadership," and surprisingly, even an anti-war book in "All Quiet on the Western Front."

The Corps has led a recent push for Marines to pick up a book from the always expanding list, of which you can see in full here, but we picked out 12 of our favorites.

"The Red Badge Of Courage" by Stephen Crane

"The Red Badge Of Courage" by Stephen Crane is considered a classic of American literature.

This book is recommended for new recruits and is a great selection as the book follows a man who enlists full of bravado and then flees in cowardice during the Civil War.

War is easy to romanticize until you're in the middle of it, as Crane's work makes clear. While the battle scenes in the book received high praise for realism, the author never experienced war firsthand.

Buy it here >

"Making The Corps" by Tom Ricks

In "Making The Corps," journalist Tom Ricks follows a platoon of recruits through the rigorous training of Marine Corps boot camp. Many Marine recruits are fresh out of high school, and this book chronicles the process that transforms young men and women from civilians into Marines.

This book is recommended for midshipmen and officer candidates whose initial training is different from the enlisted Marines they hope to one day lead. If you've ever wondered what life is like in Marine Corps boot camp, this book gives one of the best accounts.

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"Blink: The Power Of Thinking Without Thinking" by Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell's book "Blink" is one of two books by the author on the Commandant's reading list, the other being "Outliers." Military leaders are often required to make quick decisions with limited information, and "Blink" addresses the ability of the mind to make snap decisions and the influences that corrupt the decision-making process.

"Blink" also has a fascinating chapter on the Millennium Challenge 2002 exercise where the military brought Lt. Gen. Paul Van Riper out of retirement to lead enemy forces in a wargame against the United States. As the book notes, Van Riper thought outside the box in countering his U.S. military foe, and obliterated their forces in the exercise.

Van Riper later charged leaders with "rigging" the game and taking away his decision-making power.

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The U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, Libya, was evacuated on Saturday in response to intense insurgent fighting, according to the State Department. 

A Marine quick reaction force led the evacuation with assistance from two USMC MV-22 Ospreys, three Air Force F-16 fighter jets, and an undisclosed number of surveillance drones, according to the Military Times.  

In situations like these, the Marine Corps is trusted to quickly respond to hostile situations, and countless hours of training have made it more than capable. In response to crises, Marines are expected to be able to execute these types of missions within six hours.

Seventy-eight evacuees were transported to the nearby country of Tunisia by a group of 80 Marines, according to the Military Times. All in all, the evacuation took five hours.

The Pentagon released some photos of the Marine crisis reaction force out of Sigonella, Italy, which was tasked with evacuating the embassy in Tripoli. We paired these with other photos from a training video to show you how these operations are supposed to go down.

This MV-22 Osprey prepares to take off in support of the Tripoli embassy evacuation. Ospreys function as both a transport plane and a tilt-rotor aircraft. This provides the Marine Corps with the capability to tactically insert Marines into multiple environments while covering more distance than traditional helicopters. 

Marines board the aircraft with their gear and weapons in anticipation of the operation. The wide cargo area allows the Osprey to transport a large amount of gear as well as Marines. 

The green lights allow others to see the rotors of the Osprey during takeoff and landing and are an essential part of operating during nighttime conditions.

Once inside, Marines cram in and sit prepared in anticipation of the embassy evacuation.

The Marines fly in using the long transport capabilities of the Osprey.

At the embassy, Marines fast-rope out of the Osprey onto the roof to quickly provide defensive support and to locate and evacuate embassy personnel. Meanwhile, the Marine security guards stationed in the embassy protect the ambassador and secure or destroy classified materials.

Marines use smoke to conceal their movement and make sure to remove and secure the American flag immediately. 

Once the Marines have located the embassy personnel, they quickly leave. A well-executed mission means providing security and getting in and out as quickly as possible.

Here you can watch the Marines explain how they conduct an embassy evacuation and their role as America's emergency response force:

SEE ALSO: The 12 Best Books The Marine Corps Wants Its Leaders To Read

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When it comes to pop-culture allure and romanticized brutality, Stanley Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket” is arguably the most influential of all Vietnam War movies.

R. Lee Ermey’s iconic portrayal of the sadistic Gunnery Sgt. Hartman has served as a de facto recruiting mechanism for the Marines since the film’s release in 1987.

I remember watching the same VHS copy of “Full Metal Jacket” about a hundred times before I enlisted as a Marine combat correspondent, choosing the same military specialty as Private Joker. During the 10 years I served in the Corps, it was a rare occasion to find a Marine who didn’t love the film.

Despite FMJ’s widespread popularity, there is a crap-ton of behind-the-scenes drama and literary awesomeness from the original novel that gets missed if you’ve never looked into the film’s backstory.

Consider this list the enthralling special-features bonus DVD you never saw.

1. The book is better. Okay, yes, this is an opinion, but hear me out.

FMJ is based on the novel “The Short Timers” by the late Gustav Hasford, aka, the real Joker. Hasford drew from his experience in Vietnam as a Marine correspondent with the 1st Marine Division to develop the novel.

After the book’s release in 1978, Newsweek’s Walter Clemons called it “the best work of fiction about the Vietnam War.” The film is brilliant, yes, but Kubrick — beholden to studio execs at Warner Bros. — had to cater to mainstream sensibilities, which is why the brutally macabre third and final section of the novel never made it to the screen.

2. Civilian correspondent Michael Herr shared a screenwriter credit with Hasford and Kubrick. “Dispatches” is Herr’s memoir about his time as a civilian correspondent for Esquire from 1967 to 1969. Herr’s book is a masterpiece of literary nonfiction.

While the vast majority of the dialogue in FMJ is taken straight from Hasford’s book, the psycho door gunner’s darkly comic dialogue is pulled from “Dispatches,” which you may or may not find disturbing in light of the fact that Herr’s book is nonfiction.

3. There is a psycho-door-gunner scene in both “Dispatches”and “The Short Timers.” Noticing this, I briefly wondered if Hasford might have “borrowed” from Herr’s book or if there were just a lot of psycho door gunners on Marine helicopters in Vietnam. 

I lean toward the latter possibility since the scenes’ similarities are negligible and the differences distinct. Hasford’s gunner, for example, wears a Hawaiian sport shirt and smokes weed while eagerly wasting Vietnamese farmers in the hamlet below.

4. Hasford wrote a sequel to “The Short Timers” called “The Phantom Blooper.” In “The Phantom Blooper,” Joker spends a year as a POW in a Vietcong village and eventually comes to sympathize with his Vietnamese captors. After he is rescued, he turns against the war and his government.

"Blooper" was supposed to be book two of a trilogy, but Hasford died a few years after publishing it.

5. The peace symbol/born to kill scene is derived from a short story Hasford wrote in community college after the war. The short is called “Is that you, John Wayne? Is this me?”

6. Gustav Hasford called R. Lee Ermey “a f------ pogue lifer.” Kubrick hired Ermey as a military technical advisor on FMJ. Ermey’s background as a Marine drill instructor caught Kubrick’s attention, and the director recast Ermey in the iconic role of Gunnery Sgt. Hartman.

Hasford, who had campaigned to have his friend Dale Dye be the film’s technical advisor, decried Ermey as a shill for the Marine Corps’ pro-war propaganda machine. (Hasford had a well-known mean streak that often manifested itself in letters he wrote to Kubrick or others he felt had wronged him).

7. Kubrick kind of tried to screw Hasford out of a screenwriting credit (and a lot of money). This (abridged) letter Hasford wrote to his friend Grover Lewis in 1985 explains:

(July 14—return address c/o Michael Herr) … Here in London the Great Movie Wars … are going hot and heavy. The situation is very complex, but the basic issue is one of screen credit. I’ve pretty much written Stanley’s movie and Stanley has added a few minor things, but essentially the screenplay is by me. But Stanley wants to give me an “additional dialogue” credit … He threatens to pull the plug on the whole thing. Meanwhile, I am refusing to sign my screenwriter’s contract.

8. Hasford won his battle with Kubrick. Hasford’s friends kept telling him he was over his head tangling with one of America’s most beloved filmmakers and his Hollywood backers, but Hasford never flinched during his year-long battle. He announced his victory in a letter to Grover Lewis in 1986:

(May 20—from Perth) … In the cynical world of L.A., where show *biz* deals are conducted in the back alleys of cocktail parties like self-parodying out-takes from a comedic film noir, you might want to interject this lively note … I won my credit battle with Stanley, I beat Stanley, City Hall, The Powers That Be, and all of the lawyers at Warner Brothers, up to and including the Supreme Boss Lawyer. As a little Canuck … friend of mine would say: I kicked dey butt …

9. FMJ was filmed in England. No, really. Stanley Kubrick somehow managed to make England pass for Vietnam.

I feel like that should be the ultimate test in some master-filmmaker gauntlet that directors have to pass before they can be called “masters.” Like, “Congratulations, Mr. Aaronofsky, Mr. Fincher, Mr. Nolan. You’ve made it to the Vietnam-in-England Test, aka, the Kubrick Rubric.”

10. The upward POV shot is one of Kubrick’s visual calling cards. He uses it in the second half of the film when the Lusthog Squad survivors are standing over their dead bros, saying a few words. Also look for it in “The Shining,” “A Clockwork Orange” and others.

And if you’re a Quentin Tarantino fan (who isn’t, right?), definitely watch this mashup showing Tarantino’s affinity for the same type of “from below” shot. (Bonus: one-point perspective is another Kubrick signature captured brilliantly in this mashup from “Kogonada” on Vimeo.) 

Bonus fact: Writing for L.A. Weekly after his friend’s death from diabetes-related causes in 1994, Grover Lewis found this gem of a “Gus story” from Steve “Bernie” Berntson:

I’d set up a base camp in Hue City, and Walter Cronkite rolls up with a camera crew. He was doing a stand-upper with some pogue colonel, asking about rumors that our guys had been looting. Just then Gus busts in with two black onyx panthers and a stone Buddha on his back. “Hey, there’s a whole temple full of this shit,” he hollers. “We can get beaucoup bucks for this stuff in Saigon!” I hustled him outside quick, and Cronkite, of course, came back home and declared the war unwinnable on national TV.

Long live the Marine combat correspondent. We’ll make you famous.

You can read all of Gustav Hasford’s books online here.

Ethan E. Rocke is a former Marine combat correspondent and wannabe Joker.

SEE ALSO: Military personnel reveal the most unusual punishments they've ever seen

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Norway sits at the pinnacle of the UN's Human Development Index, and the world's most advanced country (by that metric, at least) has a national defense policy to match. Norway was one of the world's top twenty weapons importers between 2008 and 2012, and collaborates with the U.S. on major defense projects like the F-35 joint strike fighter jet. Its leaders have an laudably strategic approach to securing the country's vital interests, and it's one of NATO's more well-equipped and well-prepared European member states.

Norway also shares a 120-mile land border with Russia. And at the same time a heavily-armed Russian convey draws ever closer to eastern Ukraine — raising the possibility of another escalation in the Ukraine's already-restive east — the U.S. Marine Corps is re-supplying a vital pre-positioning site in central Norway.

The resupply mission, ostensibly aimed at replacing equipment used during a February 2014 cold weather training exercise, began before the Russian convoy departed and isn't in any way connected to events in Ukraine. Still, the resupply of a 30-year-old system of subterranean pre-positioning sites shows how Norway is still relevant to NATO and the U.S.'s defense posture. The end-result of the re-supply is that the U.S. — and by extension the NATO alliance — has 400 vehicles and 300 containers' worth of equipment close to Russia's border with Scandinavian Europe, at a time when Moscow seems resistant to most forms of Western diplomatic and economic pressure.

And as The Washington Post reported last week, this latest re-supply will leave the site with an unprecedented stash of American weaponry, including "M1A1 Abrams battle tanks, armored amphibious assault vehicles that can swim from Navy ships to shore, armored Humvee gun trucks," marking "the first time that the tanks and several other kinds of vehicles will be allowed in the caves. That includes the Marine Corps’ Assault Breacher Vehicle, a 72-ton vehicle that has a tank chassis, but has been outfitted to clear improvised explosive devices with a plow and line that can be shot 150 yards ahead of the vehicle with explosives on it."

The Norwegian pre-positioning program began in 1981, after Norway's leaders decided that the deterrent effect of a U.S. weapons stash was worth the potential complications of becoming such a close adjunct of the U.S.'s Cold War defense policies. This was a particularly tense period of the Cold War, just after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Today, the Marines still store weapons and materiel in six climate-controlled caves in Trondheim, in central Norway. The Trondheim complex is designed to support a "notional" battle-ready contingent of 16,000 Marines and sailors with 30-days worth of supplies.

The Trondheim stash was a Cold War development, and a relic of a time when Norway was one of NATO's front-line states with the Soviet Union. A 1991 Rand corporation report reviewed a number of Soviet invasion scenarios of Norway and determined that along the country's rocky and easily-garrisoned coastline, a single NATO brigade could hold off an entire Soviet division.

The notion of conventional ground warfare in Scandinavia seemed less absurd 23 years ago than it might today. NATO was built for a confrontation with the Soviet bloc. And in a nightmare scenario — vague but plausible, during the Soviet Union's final chaotic years — the Soviets could pressure western Europe through establishing a foothold in Norway's sparsely populated arctic north.

The Marine Corp's strategic pre-positioning in central Norway would not just deter this kind of aggression: according to the Rand report, it would also allow the NATO states to compensate for a projected seven-day head-start that the Soviets would have on their adversaries if they ever did decide to move on western or central Europe.

Two decades after the fall of the Soviet Union, these calculations are jarringly anachronistic. If the idea of Norway as a potential battlefield is a bit outdated, the pre-positioning caves are not. They were used as way-stations for equipment during the U.S.'s Iraq and Afghanistan missions. The Department of Defense has a highly-regimented identification and maintenance regimen in place for Trondheim, as explained through this somewhat bewildering infographic:

As Putin increases pressure Ukraine — and projects the impression that he might move his military into the country — the U.S. has built an ever-growing stash of military assets under a mountain in one of Russia's neighbors. These two developments aren't directly linked. But they show how at least some aspects of Cold War defense policy have endured.

And Trondheim gives NATO and the U.S. some additional flexibility, and perhaps some deterrence capacity, if the ongoing crisis between Russia and the West ever spirals out of control. 

SEE ALSO: Putin waged a "special war" long before Crimea

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Actor Adam Driver is best known for playing Adam on HBO's "Girls," but with a new villainous role in "Star Wars: Episode VII" and five other projects in the works, this 30-year-old is about to be the next big thing.

Driver's success didn't happen overnight. In fact, the actor first had a completely different career path as a Marine. He discusses what prompted him to join the Marine Corps in the upcoming September issue of GQ:

"On September 11, 2001, Driver was almost 18 years old, living in an apartment in the back of his parents' home and 'not doing f------ anything,' he says. In the swell of patriotism that followed the terrorist attacks, he decided to enlist in the armed forces. 'It just seemed like a badass thing to do,' he says, "to go and shoot machine guns and serve your country. Coupled with: 'There's nothing for me here, there's nothing that's keeping me here, there's nothing that's stopping me from going.' He was shipped off to Camp Pendleton in California."

Driver loved everything about the experience, even basic training, telling the mag: "You see what your body can do and how discipline is effective ... It's hard to describe. You're put in these very heightened circumstances, and you learn a lot about who people are at the core, I think. You end up having this very intimate relationship where you would, like, die for these people."

But after two years in the program, Driver broke his sternum mountain biking and never saw real war.

The early dismissal, he says, still "f-----' kills me," he says. "To not get to go with that group of people I had been training with was ... painful."

After being forced to move home to Indiana, Driver decided to apply his military-like mindset to a new craft — acting.

He applied to Juilliard and was working as a security guard at a warehouse when he heard he'd been accepted.

"The Marine Corps is supposed to be the toughest and most rigorous of its class," Driver says, comparing it to Juilliard. "Obviously the stakes are different. You have the risk of getting shot or killed in one and just embarrassed in the other. I thought, 'This will be easy.'"

To make his Juilliard experience even more difficult, Driver created a workout and study plan to accompany his schooling.

"I wanted to make it extreme," he says, telling GQ of his regimen:

To stay fit, he'd run from his apartment in Queens to the school's Manhattan campus. He'd often start his day with six eggs and later prepare and consume an entire chicken. Nights he spent binge-watching classic movies or at the library reading plays. Since he'd been a lousy student and grew up sheltered from a lot of secular art and music, "I felt like I was behind," he says.

Driver says his old military pals started to jokingly give him a hard time.

"I was trying to explain to them what I was doing at Juilliard. And I'm like, 'Yeah, we wear pajamas, and we talk about our inner colors, and there was this exercise where we all gave birth to ourselves...' And they're like, 'What the f--- are you doing?'"

To help Driver mesh his two worlds, he founded Arts in the Armed Forces, an organization that deploys actors to perform at military bases.

"I felt like the military could handle something a little more thought-provoking" than the usual cheerleaders they send in as entertainment, Driver explains.

"When I think of my military experience, I don't think of the drills and discipline and pain," adds Driver. "I think of these, like, really intimate, human moments of people wanting to go AWOL because they missed their wives, or someone's dead and they can't deal with it. And that's what I wanted to show."

Read Adam Driver's full GQ interview here >

SEE ALSO: The Incredible Story Of How Chris Pratt Got His Big Break While Living In A Scooby Doo Van In Maui

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The Marine Corps is returning to amphibious warfare — or at least it's trying to.

While land wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been the primary focus in recent years, the US military is dialing up its naval and amphibious presence in Asia and the Pacific. 

The US is not alone in its increasing emphasis on amphibious warfare in the region. Several nations are increasing their purchases of major amphibious warfare systems and ships — a sign that defense planners are betting that if war breaks out, amphibious assaults will play a major role.

Amphibious warfare, like its airborne cousin, is typically a difficult and risky operation. It involves shifting combat power from one domain to another, a transformation that is ruthlessly governed by physics and engineering.

Navies often make for atrocious armies, and armies are typically terrible navies. Each force is optimized to fight in their chosen domain, and isn't well suited for projecting power into other domains.

Cheap missiles and precision weapons have altered the equation somewhat, giving navies new tools for preparing the landing zone. However, that also means armies can target ships at sea more effectively than ever before. 

The net effect has been to push amphibious assault groups farther out to sea, meaning that the actual vehicles hitting the beach have a lot farther to travel.

Amphibious vehicles themselves are at the mercy of difficult design trade-offs. The Marine's main vehicle for getting forces ashore at the beginning of an amphibious assault, the aptly named Amphibious Assault Vehicle or (AAV), is like a spork.

The spork — part spoon, part fork — is handy but less functional than each utensil individually. Amphibious assault vehicles are similar, except they combine an armored personnel carrier with a boat.

Not only are they bad armored personnel carriers, they're lousy boats as well. The Marines never deployed them to Afghanistan, and in Iraq they were ultimately limited to on-base use.

Current doctrine dictates that they launch from the amphibious assault ships just a few miles from shore, which is just as well because they top out at 8 mph in water.

These problems are only part of the larger challenge facing US defense planners. Although the US is building new amphibious assault ships, the total number of amphibious ships is hitting all-time lows.

This limits the strategic mobility of amphibious forces, which is one key reason to have a credible amphibious force in the first place.

Another consequence of having fewer amphibious ships is that any major operation will require putting a much bigger portion of the total number of available vessels at risk. If doing anything major requires putting all the eggs in one basket, it opens up an array of other issues for planners and strategists.

For instance, it could mean that planners would be reluctant to commit to a major assault for fear of putting the entire amphibious force at risk. Alternately, if a major assault would require all the available assault ships, then as long as all the ships aren't being gathered together, an opponent would know that no operation was in the offing.

There are ways to mitigate these particular problems, but workarounds can be complex and risky, especially when the issue involves working around a lack of large, very specialized ships.

Addressing these different challenges, particularly in an era of limited resources, will be difficult. Just about every major system the Marines use has just been replaced, is being replaced, or will be replaced shortly, inevitably causing chaos and upheaval. But the main byproduct will be uncertainty.

Although creating uncertainty in an opponent's mind can be beneficial, uncertainty also tends to wreak havoc wherever it is found.

Uncertainty becomes critical at the strategic level. It can breed timidity and rashness, dramatically increasing the potential for miscalculation. And that's really what's at stake in all this reinvention of amphibious warfare: it has always been something of a wildcard, but it was a wildcard that was reasonably well understood.

As the threat environment and amphibious capabilities continue to change, we know less and less about that wildcard.

As the world's focus continues to shift to the Asia-Pacific region, amphibious warfare will become an increasingly important part of the strategic calculus. But it has been ages since the last major amphibious assault, and there's no real telling how all of these new developments and counteractions will play out.

All that we can really know for now is that someone, somewhere, somehow could be in for a rude awakening when all these decades of military theory are put in practice.

SEE ALSO: Here's The US Spy Plane And The Drone That Will Likely Be Used To Spy On ISIS

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Three female Marine officers attending Infantry Officer Course passed the grueling Combat Endurance Test on Thursday, and they now have a real shot at making history if they go on to pass the course as its first female graduates.

The CET, which involves physical and mental stressors, is one of the first tests officers must pass before they can continue the 13-week course that qualifies them to lead infantry platoons. Marine officials told the Washington Post that two female captains made it through, along with a female lieutenant who volunteered to retake the course after failing in July.

In total, 100 officers — male and female — attempted the course, and 30 of them failed, a source told Business Insider.

Out of a handful of women who have attempted the course, only one has been able to pass the initial CET, although she had to be dropped from the course for a stress fracture in her foot one week later.

The three women (out of six who started the course), who officials will not name, still have plenty of challenges ahead. A source who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak told Business Insider he believes potential trouble spots could be on the long hikes or in hand-to-hand combat training.

If one or all of them pass the course, that would make them the first graduates of IOC. However, as The Washington Post's Dan Lamothe points out, since allowing females to try the course is currently on an "experimental basis," they would not be allowed to join the infantry.

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Saturday will mark the formal commissioning of the Navy's newest amphibious assault ship, the USS America-- a big-deck amphib designed to more fully leverage the F-35B Joint Strike Fighter and the ability to air-drop Marines behind enemy lines.

Unlike previous Wasp-class amphibious assault ships, the America will not have a well-deck to launch connector vehicles that transport Marines and equipment from ship to shore over water. Instead, the America is specifically engineered for aviation. Compared with prior amphibs, the America has a larger deck space and hangar area for aircraft.

"We are changing the way we look at amphibious warfare. During D-Day you had amphibious assault vehicles go ashore with an assault on the beach. Now, we are looking more at Marine Corps aviation and how can we use those Corps assets we have on-board the ship to bring the fight inland. I think that this ship in particular gives us a tremendous capability to do that," said Lt. Dawn Stankus, a USS America spokeswoman.

In total, the America is configured to house up to 31 aircraft including as many as 12 MV-22 Ospreys and the CH-53 Super Stallion, AH-1Z Super Cobra, UH-1Y Huey, F-35 B Short-take-off-and-landing Joint Strike Fighter and MH-60 Sea Hawk helicopter, Stankus explained. 

The America -- the first of as many of 11 planned America-class amphibs -- was built at a Huntington Ingalls Industries facility in Pascagoula, Miss. 

The ship can transport up to 3,000 sailors and Marines, including elements of a Marine Expeditionary Unit, or MEU, designed for amphibious warfare.  Amphibious technology on board the ship can include up to 60 HMMWs, Light Armored Vehicles, mortars, artillery and smaller Internally Transportable Vehicles, or ITVs, configured to drive into the back of an Osprey, Navy and Marine Corps officials described. 

The concept behind the aviation-focus of the USS America is described, at least in part, in terms of what Navy and Marine Corps officials refer to as "vertical maneuver" --  an ability to move amphibious assets, gear, Marines, weapons and equipment inland using aircraft such as the Osprey. The idea is to air-drop forces behind potential adversaries' fortifications or front-line defenses.

"Maneuver warfare involves moving around the enemy instead of confronting them directly where they may have bunkers and all kinds of fortifications. Instead of just strong-arming through we can fly around them where they don't expect us," Cpl. Victor Shugart , 1st Battalion, 11th Marines, told Military.com 

This kind of tactic could be coupled with a traditional frontal beach landing or amphibious assault so as to isolate an enemy force in between two approaching offensive combat forces, Shugart added. 

"We can fly in behind enemy lines and survive for three days with supplies. We can do any kind of raid or assault that infantry might need using the aircraft on this boat," he said. 

Vertical maneuver strategy hinges, to a large extent, on the MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft.  The Osprey is engineered to hover like a helicopter and also reach speeds up to 280 knots when transporting Marines, vehicles and gear into forward locations, said Capt. William Hannan, an Osprey aircraft commander. 

"The Osprey can travel 450 nautical miles there and back on one tank of gas. It brings speed and range with the capability of landing anywhere like a helicopter -- 240 knots is normal cruising speed," Hannan explained. 

The Osprey can carry 24 combat-loaded troops in the back and also sling-load a HMMWV vehicle or 777 howitzer artillery underneath while flying, Hannan added. 

The America's first deployment is now slated for Spring 2016 once the ship finishes a series of modifications, tests and trials as part of what's called the ship's post-shakedown availability, Stankus said. 

Some of the modifications involve fortifying the ship's deck such that it can withstand the heat generated by the vertical take-off and landing of the F-35B, Stankus explained. 

"The ship is going to go through modification to our flight deck so that we can support the Joint Strike Fighter. We're predicting deployment in early 2016 but it depends upon the testing of the Joint Strike Fighter," she added. 

Eventually all of the America-class ships will replace all of the Wasp-class ships and all of the Tarawa-class ships. Initial plans for the third America-class amphib, LHA 8, call for bringing back a well-deck into the design, Navy officials said. 

Kris Osborn can be reached at Kris.Osborn@military.com

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