For the first time in decades, Marines and soldiers are back in Panama to train

American Marines and soldiers are once again rucking through the Panamanian jungle, for the first time in more than two decades.

The U.S. military, along with Panamanian security forces, revived jungle warfare courses for conventional forces this fall. Soldiers and Marines are learning survival techniques including foraging, navigating dense tropical forest terrain and combat in the jungle as part of the new Combined Jungle Operations Training Course. U.S. Southern Command recently put the first group through the full new course.

Special operations forces have regularly trained in Panama in the intervening years, but this fall the Pentagon began sending conventional troops south again in order to train in survival and combat tactics in dense, tropical environments.

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