U.S. Marines with Combat Logistics Battalion 11, 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU), perform routine maintenance and inspections on MEU equipment to ensure combat readiness while underway. The Boxer Amphibious Ready Group and the 11th MEU are deployed to the U.S. 5th Fleet area of operations in support of naval operations to ensure maritime stability and security in the Central Region, connecting the Mediterranean and the Pacific through the Western Indian Ocean and three strategic choke points. (U.S. Marine Corps video by Cpl. Adam Dublinske)
Transcript
My name is Sgt Joe Hertz. I’m an automotive maintenance technician. Basically, what we do on a daily basis is a bumper to bumper detail inspection on all of our Marine Corps vehicles. Every single one of those pieces of gear we make sure that they’re all ready to go and like mission capable. That’s the number one thing is keeping everything able to leave this ship and go and perform in any country anywhere at any given time.
[Brandon] I work for a maintenance section that’s to support the radio operators. It’s my job take those radios apart and find piece by piece what’s broken on the inside and outside.
[Joe] We stay at 100% readiness at all times if possible. Every now and then there’ll be some corrective maintenance stuff, which is meat and potatoes of the whole thing. So far we haven’t had too much ’cause we took pretty good care of the trucks before deployment. Anything corrective maintenance-wise that something does go wrong, and we need to fix it, we can fix it. The hours that we work and the time that we put into all these vehicles in pre-deployment made a huge, huge difference now, because we’re on month three or four of the deployment, and we really haven’t had too many issues with these trucks.
[James] So putting in readiness is always important, but especially when we’re out here deployed with the 11th Marine Boxer ARG, we need our equipment to be ready at all times no matter what mission comes about, whether it’s humanitarian aid, disaster relief, or combat, we need our equipment ready to go at a moment’s notice, so knowing that those guys are down there doing their maintenance and ensuring the vehicles are ready to go gives me tremendous confidence that we’ll be ready to execute when we’re called upon.