Marines with Communications Company, Combat Logistics Battalion 2, participated in a preparatory command post exercise aboard Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, August 4. The unit worked together to establish a functional command operations center and maintained a network by establishing various means of communication while preparing for a CPX.







The CPX will involve going into the field with a unit and setting up a fully operational, temporary headquarters. Communications Company is responsible for setting up and analyzing the network to provide the rest of the unit with secured working phone lines, Internet and radio transmissions.







“We have two days where, with our mainly junior staff, we are given the chance to work together and refine our standard operating procedures,” said 1st Lt. James Blake, the assistant operations officer with the company and the officer-in-charge for the preparatory CPX. “In the absence of guidance, the junior staff needs to be able to understand the commander’s intent and apply their training to meet the needs of the operation.”







The training required the Marines to understand how to analyze computers, the network settings and the phone lines in order to maintain the communication of a large ground element.







Establishing and maintaining communication channels ensures that Marines can radio in for assistance, air support, resupply, or status reports.







“To be successful with this type of operation we need radio, wire, data and technical maintenance Marines,” said Cpl. Travis Mahoney, a field wireman with the company and the wire chief for the CPX. “Teamwork is paramount when training and preparing for a larger scale CPX in our near future.”







This preparatory CPX allowed the junior Marines to display the skills they learned in their military occupational specialty schools and showed the significance of working together using everyone’s different specialties to accomplish a common goal.







“It is so important that we maintain communications because other sections involved in a full-scale CPX need to be able to contact each other,” Mahoney said. “It’s our job to establish that communication, which provides information to every section, which in turn allows the command to accomplish the mission.”