Col. Peter Eltringham, right, commander of the 12 Marine Littoral Regiment, congratulates Lt. Col. Jacob Godby on assuming command of the 12 Littoral Combat Team at a ceremony at Camp Hansen, Okinawa, Japan, March 3, 2025. (Brian McElhiney/Stars and Stripes)
CAMP HANSEN, Okinawa — The Marine Corps activated its second-ever littoral combat team this week on Okinawa, providing the backbone for reconnaissance and anti-ship fire missions carried out by a seaborne quick-reaction force.
The 12th Littoral Combat Team, the last of three subordinate elements to be designated within the 12th Marine Littoral Regiment, was stood up Monday at the regiment’s Gun Park on Camp Hansen.
Lt. Col. Jacob Godby took command of the team and Sgt. Maj. Andrew R. Kissick was designated the battalion sergeant major during a ceremony in which about 200 Marines participated. Members of the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force, III Marine Expeditionary Force commander Lt. Gen. Roger Turner, family and friends also attended.
With the combat team, the 12th Littoral Regiment is just under 2,000 Marines and growing, regimental commander Col. Peter Eltringham said during remarks at the ceremony.
The 12th Littoral Logistics Battalion was redesignated from Combat Logistics Battalion 12 in early October, and the 12th Littoral Anti-Air Battalion was activated in early December.
“[The regiment] is growing fast, but we got a whole lot stronger today because of this formation,” Eltringham said. “… We bring this combat power to Okinawa to be able to deliver it in the eyes of our adversaries, and to build that combat power such that we can make sure that we bring it to the decisive point on the battlefield.”
The combat team is centered around a “reinforced infantry battalion with an anti-ship missile battery,” according to a Feb. 21 news release from 3rd Marine Division.
It is designed to “degrade potential adversaries’ decision-making calculus by exploiting critical vulnerabilities, [disrupt] enemy targeting processes, and [be] difficult to observe in littoral warfare,” regiment spokeswoman 1st Lt. Sarah Bobrowski wrote in an email Tuesday.
At its core an infantry formation, the team “conducts reconnaissance and counter-reconnaissance, employs and enables multi-domain fires, and establishes expeditionary sites to support the maritime campaign” in line with the Marine Corps’ Force Design plan, Godby said in his remarks at the ceremony.
The 12th Littoral Regiment was created in November 2023 as part of Force Design. The regiment’s stand-in force operations are a key tenet of the plan’s island-fighting doctrine.
The Marine Corps’ concept for stand-in forces cites China as the joint force’s “pacing challenge.” Littoral regiments are designed as smaller, mobile units inserted within enemy missile range to seize and hold key islands and deny enemy vessels access to surrounding areas.
The Marines created the 3rd Littoral Regiment, its first, at Marine Corps Base Hawaii in March 2022, and plans a third for Guam.
The 12th Littoral Combat Team traces its lineage through the 1st Battalion, 4th Marines, which was deactivated in January at Camp Pendleton, Calif. Its 25 battle streamers carried over to the combat team’s flag during the ceremony.
It was first activated in 1922 as 1st Battalion, 4th Regiment, 2nd Brigade, in Santiago, Dominican Republic, and re-designated 1st Battalion, 4th Marines, in 1930, according to the Marine Corps. It saw action in World War II, the Vietnam War and both Gulf wars, and was redeployed to Camp Schwab on Okinawa from December 1966 to January 1967.
