The 29 Palms Marine Base (officially The Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center) is the largest Marine Corps facility in the country. Within the area’s 932 square miles, military training and weapons testing is performed in association with other branches of the Armed Forces. 50,000 marines train at the Marine Corps Air-Ground Combat Center every year. The base has nearly 2,000 structures, most located in the community of Mainside, and employs around 28,000 full-time personnel, military and civilian.

History of the Base:

In 1950, with the Cold War and US involvement in the Korean War, the need for large-scale live-fire training grew. Camp Pendleton Base in San Diego looked to the interior high desert for expanded facilities and selected the abandoned Condor Field, a World War II era Army and Navy glider base located in the area now called Mainside. By 1952, the first large-scale, live-fire field exercises were being conducted. The exercises gave Marines an awareness of the facility’s significant potential and foreshadowed the large-scale combined arms exercises (CAXs) for which the base is now known.

In 1976, an expeditionary airfield was added to the base’s rapidly growing infrastructure. The base’s name was changed to Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center (MCAGCC) in 1979. The airfield and surrounding Spartan accommodations for visiting units was nicknamed “Camp Wilson”. It was during this time that plans for the Combined Arms Exercises were conceived. Supplanting an earlier exercise known as Desert Palm Tree, the new CAXs were remarkable in two respects: the practice of combined arms, and live-fire and movement during the exercises were unprecedented in scale. Just as noteworthy was the creation of a Tactical Exercise Control Center with the primary purpose of controlling, instructing and critiquing the exercises.

As of 2000, there were 8,413 people, 912 households, and 904 families residing on the base. The racial makeup of the base is 70.3% White, 19.6% Hispanic or Latino, 10.4% African American, 3.1% Asian, 1.4% Native American, 9.5% from other races, with 5.1% from two or more races. Out of the 912 households, 73.1% have children under the age of 18 living with them, 94.5% are married couples living together, 3.5% have a female householder with no husband present, and 0.8% are non-families. The average family size is 3.4. The median household income is $29,594. Males have a median income of $14,111 versus $17,014 for females. The per capita income for the base is $12,615. 12.1% of the population and 11.9% of families are below the poverty line.

“Mojave Viper” and “Enhanced Mojave Viper”:

Major live fire training for the invasions of and subsequent conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq are conducted at the 29 Palms Marine Base through a program known as “Mojave Viper”. Initiated in 2005, this training program became the model of pre-“Operation Iraqi Freedom” deployment training. The majority of units in the Marine Corps undergo a month at Mojave Viper before deploying to Iraq or a mixed training venue using the Mountain Warfare Training Center for Afghanistan. In 2009 Mojave Viper added security and stability training programs, known as “Enhanced Mojave Vapor”. The “enhanced” version boosted counterinsurgency operations, such as interactions with civilians and tribal leaders.

Bringing together as many as 5,000 troops at one time in live fire combat exercises, with artillery, tank, and close air support in use for training, the base was unique in creating a sprawling “Combat Town,” the first of several simulated Middle Eastern villages, complete with a mosque, an “IED” Alley,” and other immersive elements and close-quarters combat scenarios in which communication, coordination and maneuvering can be major challenges. As of 2011, these ersatz cities (known as MOUTS — Military Operations in Urban Terrain Training) had grown to roughly the size of central downtown San Diego and cost the government $170 million to construct. It comprises 1,560 structures made of both concrete and modified shipping containers (no two interiors are alike, which adds to the training challenges) and there are seven separate mock urban districts spread out across 274 acres of desert. In addition simulating the stress and chaos of close house-to-house urban combat and street fighting training, Marines are instructed by their trainers (known by 29 Palms troops as “coyotes”) in how to search for escape tunnels, hiding places, weapons caches and other dangerous factors of urban warfare. The facility has networks of underground tunnels, a manmade riverbed, dozens of courtyards and compounds, a fake marketplace, cafes, homes, and shops. In addition to playing the role of enemy combatants, the enactors help create scenarios for training in humanitarian relief efforts, peacekeeping, and police work.

The MOUTs include:

• 7 districts, each providing different challenges

• 38 basements

• 81 spider holes concealed by floor hatches

• 88 multi-story concrete buildings in the city

• 216 faux power poles

• 274 acres of cityscape

• 997 acres total

• 1,250 multi-story cargo-container buildings

• 1,560 buildings in Range 220 (CAMOUT) and Range 630 (Afghani village)

• 1,866 feet of tunnels

• 5,325 feet of chain-link fencing and 9,150 feet of courtyard walls

• 10,705 feet of faux conduit to simulate aboveground power lines

In the past some 1000 role players (many of them Iraqi or Afghan expats or émigrés to the United States fleeing the wars, violence and social upheaval of their home countries, as well as other foreign nationals or naturalized citizens) role-played as Iraqi or Afghan civilians, while current and former US military personnel played the role of insurgents and “enemy combatants”. Beginning in 2013, a process has begun under the leadership of the incoming commander, Brig. Gen. George Smith Jr., to transition to the Marines themselves to take on the roles of indigenous locals during “urban operations”.

In August 2008, The Marine Corps submitted a land withdrawal application to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) for appropriating approximately 422,000 contiguous acres (1,710 km^2^). It hopes to expand the base by two-thirds in coming years to allow for larger live-fire exercises with an expeditionary brigade of perhaps 15,000 Marines. Off-road enthusiasts have criticized the proposed move into Johnson Valley, on land controlled by the BLM. Much unexploded ordnance, shrapnel and other hazardous materiel dot the terrain, making unauthorized travel in the training areas dangerous.