Okay:
The Navy deployed a new ship pairing – a destroyer (DDG-51) and an amphibious transport dock (LPD-17) – to test out a new concept that could supplement amphibious squadrons and surface action groups as a formation in future operations.
USS Somerset (LPD-25), USS Wayne E. Meyer (DDG-108) and Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force (SP-MAGTF)-Peru deployed together as Littoral Combat Group 1 in November and December.
While at sea, the operations the group conducted leveraged both ships’ bread and butter missions: supporting Marines and pushing them ashore, embarking a Coast Guard law enforcement detachment, hosting a surgical team for humanitarian assistance work, and more. The two ships sailed to Valparaiso, Chile, for the Eleventh International Maritime and Naval Exhibition and Conference for Latin America (EXPONAVAL) and the 200th anniversary of the Chilean Navy. Also during the deployment, the 1,000 sailors and Marines from LCG-1 worked with the Peruvian Naval Infantry in a humanitarian assistance and disaster relief exercise in the disaster-prone Chorrillos district outside Lima, and conducted a maritime patrol exercise with Ecuadorian navy assets to counter illegal, unregulated and unreported (IUU) fishing, among other activities.
This sounds exactly like the mission I thought The AFRICOM Queen modularized auxiliary cruiser (in Military Review) could accomplish--and for SOUTHCOM, too (that's just my latest post on that issue), given that having Navy assets is bound to be rare with higher priority theaters taking precedent.
And if you are talking about combat missions in the littorals for Marines, I covered that before 9/11, with a mention in a Joint Force Quarterly article of a Marine Expeditionary Battle Force that combines amphibious warfare ships with warships (and in my suggestion, afloat prepositioning ships for the balance of a Marine brigade).
Note too that the "littoral combat group" doesn't include a Littoral Combat Ship. Shocking, I know.
