Marine Forces Unitas (MarFor Unitas)

Photo: The author (left) and Lt. Mark Reid stand near Pisco, Peru, after a pre-dawn amphibious training exercise in 1999 involving U.S. and Peruvian Marines.

This post is not about currents events or the news at all. Instead, it's bait in attempt to get in touch with Marines or sailors who were on a certain deployment with me in 1999.

It was called Unitas 40-99, and was the 40th annual deployment of a regularly-scheduled U.S. Navy and Marine training mission to South America (and Africa - but not all Unitas missions go there).

Basically it is a training mission, wherein U.S. troops train with partner-state troops. And displays are put on for local civilians. The training helps troops from both countries, but I think the real reason for the deployment is political: socialization and alliance-bolstering. ("Alliance" here is used informally.)

So why write about it on my blog?

Visitor-tracking program Sitemeter tells me that many people get to this blog because they search for "GRE scores" and "political science" on the web, as I'm apparently one of the few people to write somewhat extensively about both subjects together. I'm glad.

And I was searching for information on this deployment, as I mentioned, and didn't find a lot. So perhaps other former shipmates will do the same, and find this post.

Email me! Maybe we can swap pictures or lies or whatever.

Also: Does Unitas still exist? The most recent evidence of its existence that I've found is from 2004, Unitas 45-04. And apparently it was reservists on the cruise - not active-duty Marines, like when I was on it.

I would not be surprised if the War on Terror required the Unitas resources, and our South American and African allies were downgraded.

Anyway, it was a great experience. I was really lucky to have been on it.

2009 UPDATE: Unitas apparently still does exist, although it seems to be substantially smaller since the beginning of the Iraq war. Here's an article about Unitas 2008 (Unitas 49-08). See also here. However, this appears to be only one exercise, near Brazil. Weak.

This description here offers a more comprehensive explanation of recent Unitas activity. Like the above, it seems to be more fragmented, and generally smaller than the Unitas I was on (1999).