U.S. Marines Test CH-53K Helicopter Heavy Lift for Contested Refueling Operations in California.

A U.S. Marine Corps CH-53K King Stallion from HMH-461 conducted heavy lift operations at Twentynine Palms during Service Level Training Exercise 1-26, while MWSS-272 established a forward arming and refueling point under simulated contested conditions. The exercise highlights how the Marine Corps is refining expeditionary aviation logistics to sustain operations inside surveillance-heavy, high-threat battlespaces.

At Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms, a CH-53K King Stallion from Marine Heavy Helicopter Squadron 461 lifted clear of a desert drop zone during Service Level Training Exercise 1-26, while Marines on the ground worked an improvised forward refueling site designed for operations under threat. The sequence is a compact illustration of what the Marine Corps is trying to institutionalize in 2026: assault support aviation that can keep moving, keep fueling, and keep delivering heavy lift even when the battlespace is saturated with surveillance, long-range fires, and electronic attack. In that construct, the helicopter is only the visible edge of the capability; the decisive factor is the expeditionary aviation ground support that builds, defends, and rapidly displaces the refueling and servicing nodes that make sustained sortie generation possible.
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A U.S. Marine Corps CH-53K King Stallion from HMJ-461 lifts off at Twentynine Palms during SLTE 1-26 as MWSS-272 establishes a forward arming and refueling point, rehearsing rapid, low-signature sustainment and heavy-lift support in a simulated contested environment (Picture source: U.S. DoW).

The exercise is built to pressure-test Marine Air Ground Task Forces on the mechanics that decide large-scale outcomes: command and control discipline, maneuver timing, sustainment endurance, and the safe integration of live-fire in a realistic battlespace. At Twentynine Palms, the Tactical Training and Exercise Control Group operates behind the curtain as designer, referee, and stressor, using a professional opposition force and emerging threat injects to simulate the kinds of detection, fires, and disruption a peer fight would impose. The desert is not chosen for aesthetics. It is chosen because it is unforgiving: dust and heat punish engines and filtration, distances punish fuel math, and open terrain punishes sloppy signature management.

The main actor in this exercise is the Marine Wing Support Squadron 272, whose mission is to provide aviation ground support enabling a composite Marine Aircraft Group and supporting Marine Air Control Group elements to conduct expeditionary operations. MWSS-272’s portfolio is the unglamorous backbone of sortie generation: expeditionary fuel and ground refueling, engineer services, motor transport, internal airfield communications, expeditionary firefighting and rescue, expeditionary airfield services, and explosive ordnance disposal. In a distributed campaign, those functions stop being “support” and start being the decisive maneuver that determines whether a forward arming and refueling point exists at all, and whether it survives long enough to matter.

The exercise imagery shows MWSS-272 Marines pulling fuel and building out a forward arming and refueling point under simulated contested conditions. In practical terms, a FARP is a time-and-risk trade. It compresses the turnaround cycle for aircraft so they do not have to retreat to a fixed base, but it also creates a temporary logistics beacon that an adversary would love to find with drones, signals collection, or pattern analysis. That tension is the point of the training. The goal is not merely to refuel faster. It is to refuel while managing signatures, moving sites before they become predictable, integrating local security, and recovering from interruptions that would be routine in a modern weapons engagement zone: small unmanned aircraft system harassment, indirect fire, electronic warfare-induced communications friction, or a sudden requirement to displace with minimal notice.

That is why SLTE wraps aviation logistics into a broader set of base defense and recovery problems. Marines involved in SLTE 1-26 also rehearsed base recovery after attack tasks, a reminder that an expeditionary air point is only as useful as its ability to keep operating after being hit. For MWSS units, that translates into a mindset shift: the fuel site is also a fighting position, and the ability to repair, reroute, and continue is the measure of success.

The squadron’s mission is to provide timely and effective CH-53K combat assault transport of heavy equipment, personnel, and supplies in support of the Marine Air Ground Task Force and other directed units. In a contested scenario, time becomes a planning discipline: fuel windows, landing zone control, escort coordination, and deconfliction with fires all have to align, because a heavy-lift helicopter is both a logistics solution and a high-value target. What the Marine Corps is practicing at Twentynine Palms is the choreography required to keep heavy lift viable when the traditional sanctuary of rear areas is no longer guaranteed.

The CH-53K is the right platform for this problem set precisely because it was designed for heavy lift at reach. The aircraft is engineered to carry approximately 27,000 pounds at a 110 nautical mile mission radius in high and hot conditions, with a maximum external lift of up to 36,000 pounds depending on configuration. That performance is not an abstract statistic. It underpins a concept of operations where distributed ground forces, sensors, and air defense elements can be repositioned or sustained without building a large fixed footprint. The aircraft’s survivability architecture includes advanced infrared countermeasures, radar warning receivers, countermeasure dispensing systems, and enhanced armor and fuel system protections tailored for operations in threat environments.

So what conflict configurations are they preparing for? The clearest answer is high-intensity, multi-domain combat against a peer adversary, where long-range fires, ubiquitous intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, and unmanned systems blur the line between close and rear areas. Under current Marine Corps force design concepts, dispersed units are expected to operate inside heavily contested weapons engagement zones, where drones, precision rockets, and electronic warfare compress the battlespace. In that environment, forward arming and refueling points become transient nodes in a moving network, not mini-bases, and the aviation ground support unit becomes a signature management and displacement specialist as much as a fuel provider.

Twentynine Palms is a fitting rehearsal space because it forces the Marine Corps to confront a hard truth: logistics under surveillance is combat. A CH-53K can move the weight, but it cannot invent fuel, security, communications, or runway services in the dirt. That is MWSS-272’s prerogative, and SLTE 1-26 is where that skill set is measured at speed, under pressure, and in front of evaluators whose mission is to break assumptions before an adversary does.