Marine Corps Uses New Drone-Radar Technology For High-Speed Maritime Attack

By Kris Osborn, President, Center for Military Modernization

The Marine Corps is conducting island-hopping amphibious warfare operations in the Pacific using new high-speed, multi-domain reconnaissance and assault tactics leveraging dismounted infantry, hand-launched drones and integrated air-sea-land attack maneuvers. The employment of small form-factor deployable and mobile technologies enabled Marine to find targets and, in some cases, successfully conduct close-air-support by getting threat specifics to overhead aircraft through seamless connectivity.

The war preparations included sea-to-land surveillance and movement exercises across waterways, islands and coastal areas using a cutting edge radar called SIMRAD lifted 30-feet into the sky. The SIMRAD radar was connected with a small, hand-launched PUMA drone able to use elevation to see beyond terrain obstacles and locate possible targets in waterways, straits, littoral and coastal areas without generating a large, detectable “footprint.”

“Employing the SIMRAD enables us to detect ship movement within straits and littorals,” said Capt. Philip Badrov, ADET Team Lead, said in a Marine Corps essay. . “Using the data collected, we report suspected targets to higher echelons, contributing to the overall maritime awareness picture.”

In official terms, the Corps referred to this as a Maritime Sensing Team tasked with better enabling Maritime Domain Awareness

“The SIMRAD radar is the primary sensor employed by the MST. Its small scale and portable size allow the team to maintain a minimal signature and footprint while still providing surveillance of the maritime domain,” the Corps essays said.

It makes sense that from an elevated position combining the commercial-off-the-shelf SIMRAD radar with the RQ-20B Puma drone provides Marines with a high-speed, integrated battlefield awareness picture sufficient to send real-time changing threat data to aircraft on attack. The PUMA can operate organically in close coordination with a ground unit, using a gimballed camera and EO/IR video data link to quickly transmit time-sensitive threat details from an elevated position.