US Marines have 2 Iraqi towns in the California Desert for irregular warfare training

US Marines have 2 Iraqi towns in the California Desert for irregular warfare training

news.bbc.co.uk

US officials say the military is transforming to meet the changing face of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. BBC Arabic's Roula Ayoubi reports on a new "cultural training" programme to improve US soldiers' skills in dealing with local people.

"Assalamu alaykum, Ahlan wa sahlan, welcome." With these words, Iraqi sheikhs greet a group of marines in a narrow room at the beginning of a training session.

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Wadi Sahara and Khalidiya are not in my GPS database yet both are part of a 23 million dollar effort to help "improve marines' cultural skills and foreign language abilities". My question is why is this comming online now? This woul dhave been far more helpfull in the opening stages of the war as opposed to now when its become a total debacle.

news.bbc.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

There are a couple of facilities for both the Marines and the Army in helping deal with the language barrier as well as dealing with an insurgency. I guess the BBC finally see how "new" this is to them.

Fred since you are in CA can you confirm the facility exists or is this rubbish? I will look at google earth but doubt It will come up.

I'd try looking at Twentynine Palms.

Why would it be rubbish? It makes perfect sense. There is a similar training facility here in the UK:

"The lads really don't like having outsiders seeing exactly how they work in the field. They feel it leaves them vulnerable." To make the training as realistic as possible, the MoD has built a typical Afghan village on the 30,000-acre Norfolk site.

The buildings - adapted to look like houses in Afghanistan's volatile Helmand province - were previously used to train troops fighting the IRA and Loyalist paramilitaries in Northern Ireland and to prepare for the Bosnian conflict.

Source.

Originally posted by Implosion
Why would it be rubbish? It makes perfect sense. There is a similar training facility here in the UK:

Lets call it a hunch. I have heard/read that the BBC has not been all that truthful lately threfore I thought just perhaps it might be rubbish.

My son trained in something like this in '04. Nothing new.

The US military has a lot of US desert acres.

Roper

I was with my husband station in 29 palms for three years I even worked at the training facility in camp Wilson and I can tell you that the facility is the biggest desert training camp in the world.

It was a minor training camp for Canadian And Marines back in the 90s and I can only imagine what has become now since the invasion of the middle east.

The land scape is breath taking.