A Blessed Lord's Day to you and yours.
This is an oldy but something a lot of folks aren’t familiar with.
The MEU (Marine Expeditionary Unit).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7jiGPqDgDQ
Some folks, when they hear about a MEU, they assume it’s a special unit. It’s not.
A MEU is made up of an infantry battalion supported by both fixed and rotor wing air assets, some artillery, armor, transport, engineer and field service support elements. Some MEU are also spec ops attached.
These units are pulled from within the Corps and assigned to the MEU. Trained up in what’s called a “spin up” then put aboard ships and go on “float” for approx 6 months. Then they’re released back to their normal commands and other units take their places.
MEUs are not just emergency 911 forces or Show of Force elements. They also do training ashore visits in other countries and while there meet and greet the local movers and shakers, stress test the local transport infrastructure by actually using it, instead of just eyeball evaluating it like State or CIA/DIA would do, do beach assessments for landing suitability where appropriate, assess local forces capabilities, etc so on and so forth.
the “Big Book of MEU” which is where all this info from all the MEU commanders, senior NCOs and command staff is collected over the decades is a great intel asset.