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U.S. Marines Train For Dense City Night Operations In Major Realistic Urban Drill.
The 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit wrapped up a major Realistic Urban Training evolution across Arizona and Southern California after conducting complex amphibious and urban missions. The event signals a continued Marine Corps emphasis on rapid crisis response in dense city environments that could challenge future U.S. naval operations.
On 20 November 2025, the U.S. Department of War and U.S. Marine Corps announced that the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) had completed its latest Realistic Urban Training (RUT) evolution across multiple sites in Arizona and Southern California, a large-scale rehearsal for complex amphibious and urban operations conducted from 3 to 13 November 2025. The event brought together around 1,200 Marines as a fully composited Marine Air-Ground Task Force (MAGTF) to test rapid-response missions such as raids, tactical recovery of aircraft and personnel, casualty evacuation and expeditionary advanced base drills. Nighttime scenarios at Marine Corps Air Station Yuma, including a maritime raid force boarding MV-22B Osprey tiltrotor aircraft and casualty evacuations from urban terrain, gave the exercise a clear focus on operating in cities after dark. By simulating intense urban combat and crisis response in realistic conditions, this land-based training strongly suggests that the 11th MEU is preparing for potential real-world missions in dense, built-up environments, to be conducted from amphibious platforms alongside the U.S. Navy.
The 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit completed intensive urban training with nighttime raids and rapid response drills to sharpen readiness for future amphibious missions (Picture Source: U.S. Marines)
Realistic Urban Training (RUT) is conducted ashore and is deliberately organized to unify all elements of the Marine Expeditionary Unit into a single Marine Air‑Ground Task Force, refining expeditionary capabilities that will subsequently be employed during fleet amphibious operations. In this iteration, the ground combat, aviation, and logistics components, Battalion Landing Team 3/5, Combat Logistics Battalion 11, and Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 163 (Reinforced), were integrated with support from Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 122, constituting the first major full‑scale exercise of the composited MEU. The scenario compelled the unit to plan and execute expeditionary strikes, limited raids, tactical recovery of aircraft and personnel, casualty care, and establishment of expeditionary advanced bases across a complex urbanized battlespace, thereby replicating the tempo and pressures of actual contingency operations. Overseen by the Expeditionary Operations Training Group, the demanding environment functioned both as a certification of readiness and as a venue to refine tactics, techniques, and procedures prior to embarkation.
One of the most notable aspects of this Realistic Urban Training (RUT) cycle is the emphasis on night operations. Official imagery depicts Marines and sailors from the Maritime Raid Force conducting boardings of MV-22B Osprey tiltrotor aircraft under the cover of darkness at Marine Corps Air Station Yuma. Concurrently, Navy helicopter crews carry out simulated casualty evacuations on concrete surfaces illuminated solely by aircraft lighting and personal equipment. AH-1Z Viper attack helicopters, observed staging for takeoff and loading ordnance throughout the exercise, provide overwatch, close air support, and precision strikes. These helicopters employ an electro-optical sensor suite integrated with the Target Sight System, allowing for long-range target detection and engagement in all conditions, day, night, or adverse weather. The MV-22B Osprey combines the vertical takeoff and landing capabilities of a helicopter with the speed and range of a turboprop aircraft, enabling the MEU to insert and extract assault forces deep inland from sea-based platforms in a single lift. This provides a critical strategic advantage, especially when urban objectives are situated far from the shoreline. Imagery from night serials further reveals Marines equipped with helmet-mounted night-vision goggles and associated mounts, highlighting the focus of RUT on sharpening the unit’s proficiency in maneuvering, coordinating fires, and maintaining situational awareness in low-light urban environments as effectively as during daylight operations.
For the Marines, conducting such a complex, live-force exercise on land before going to sea offers tangible operational advantages. It allows the MEU to identify and correct friction points in planning, communications, medical support and logistics while there is still time to adjust internal procedures, rather than discovering those gaps for the first time during deployment. By compressing multiple mission types into a short training window, urban raids, tactical recovery of aircraft and personnel, casualty evacuation, expeditionary advanced base drills, the unit rehearses rapid transitions from one task to another in a dense, non-linear urban battlespace, a pattern that is likely in real crisis-response scenarios. Bringing together infantry squads, aviation assets such as Vipers and Ospreys, and logistics support at night also builds trust across the air-ground team and gives junior leaders realistic experience in requesting and integrating fires, deconflicting airspace in tight urban corridors and moving under rotor wash and limited visibility, skills that cannot be replicated by simulation or daylight field exercises alone.
At the strategic level, RUT is integral to the Marine Corps’ Force Design initiative to evolve into a forward, distributed littoral force closely integrated with the Navy. The focus on urban terrain, expeditionary advanced bases, and night raids aligns with operational concepts such as Littoral Operations in a Contested Environment and Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations, which envisage small, resilient task forces deploying from the sea to seize or hold critical coastal nodes, support sea control, and respond rapidly to crises while operating under the threat of long‑range precision fires. Viewed in this context, the 11th MEU’s RUT transcends a routine work‑up and indicates that future amphibious ready groups will be configured not only for traditional beach assaults but also for rapid helicopter‑ and tiltrotor‑borne strikes into congested littoral urban areas, often conducted at night, to support both high‑end deterrence and crisis response. For allied and partner nations, this demonstrates U.S. readiness; for potential adversaries, it signals that U.S. sea‑based forces are preparing to contest urban littoral spaces that are increasingly central to contemporary conflict.
By completing this Realistic Urban Training cycle, the 11th MEU has demonstrated an ability to fuse night raids, aviation-delivered assault forces and sophisticated urban scenarios into a single, coherent combat rehearsal. The prominent use of AH-1Z Vipers, MV-22B Ospreys and night-vision-equipped Marines indicates a clear focus on the realities of contemporary urban operations launched from the sea, where speed, vertical manoeuvre and precise fire support are decisive. RUT’s land-based, Navy-linked design shows that when this MEU and its associated amphibious ready group deploy, they will be configured to project power rapidly into complex cityscapes as well as onto open shores, a message of readiness that will be closely watched across every theatre where U.S. maritime forces may be called upon to operate in the coming months.
Written by Teoman S. Nicanci – Defense Analyst, Army Recognition Group
Teoman S. Nicanci holds degrees in Political Science, Comparative and International Politics, and International Relations and Diplomacy from leading Belgian universities, with research focused on Russian strategic behavior, defense technology, and modern warfare. He is a defense analyst at Army Recognition, specializing in the global defense industry, military armament, and emerging defense technologies.