2009 Modern Day Marine Exposition to Spotlight Marine Aviation

WASHINGTON, Dec. 15 /PRNewswire/ — An Expeditionary Force Aviation
Pavilion at the 2009 Modern Day Marine Military Exposition, next September 29
through October 1, will spotlight Marine Corps Aviation, with emphasis on
modernization of the service’s air combat element for its role in the Global
War on Terror. The pavilion will showcase aviation equipment, services and
systems designed and produced specifically for the air combat element of
Marine air ground task forces.

Held at Marine Corps Base, Quantico, VA, the annual exposition provides
Marines, members of other U.S. and allied forces, and civilian defense
officials with an up-close look at the future of Marine Corps equipment and
systems. Representatives from more than 400 companies will exhibit products
that support all of the ground, air and sea operations of expeditionary
forces. The new Expeditionary Force Aviation Pavilion will be a special
display area emphasizing modernization of the Corps’s air arm.

Marine Corps aviation dates to 1912. Since its earliest days, Marines
serving as pilots, in other flying roles, and in aviation maintenance and
logistics support have become renown as innovators. They pioneered many
procedures that have become doctrine for close air support by fixed-wing
aircraft, defense of airspace, aerial reconnaissance, and employment of
helicopters in combat and peacetime support missions.

In the recent past, the Marine Corps introduced vertical takeoff and
landing fixed-wing aircraft into the U.S. Armed Forces and the tilt-rotor
aircraft now in service in Iraq and Afghanistan. Today, as Marine Corps
planners develop methods for transitioning their current 13 “legacy” aircraft
types to seven new platforms, U.S. and allied industries are working to assure
the result will be an expeditionary fighting force of Marine air-ground task
forces better equipped and even more formidable than those now serving around
the world.

The Modern Day Marine Military Exposition is sponsored by the Marine Corps
League, a Marine Corps veterans’ organization, and co-sponsored by Marine
Corps Systems Command and Marine Corps Base, Quantico. The event is endorsed
by the Marine Corps Aviation Association.

Much of the equipment now being employed by Marines in the air and on the
ground in Iraq and Afghanistan was first seen by military leaders, operations
planners, acquisition managers, and the end users — air and ground combat
Marines — at previous editions of the exposition.

The Expeditionary Force Aviation Pavilion will feature visual displays of
people and events from Marine Corps aviation history — a virtual time-tunnel
covering the past — and a look into the future through the displays of
hardware and systems, videos and computer simulations by the world’s leading
producers of aviation and aviation support equipment and systems.

Companies interested in exhibiting at the 2009 Modern Day Marine Military
Exposition (September 29 – October 1), or Marine West 09 (February 4-5), or

SOURCE Modern Day Marine Military Exposition