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.
“Using the data from the SIMRAD to detect a target and the PUMA to identify it, Joint Terminal Attack Controllers from 1st ANGLICO could then coordinate close-air support attacks from a Hawker Hunter onto the simulated target,” the Corps paper says.
As part of this tactical equation, the MST radar and drone system was also able to send critical intelligence details to the Navy’s 7th-Fleet Maritime Operations Center. In this respect, the MST operated as a small, critical component of a larger “mesh” network of nodes connecting dismounted Marines with mechanized forces, attack aircraft and even larger surface ships in position to attack.
Marine Corps Force Design 2030
The war preparations with MST does seem to closely align with the Corps’ fast-emerging vision for its strategic, tactical and operational approach to future warfare outlined in its signature Marine Corps Force Design 2030 document. The text of the defining paper calls for a lighter, faster, more expeditionary and multi-domain Marine Corps enabled by transportable anti-armor weapons, high-speed sea-land platforms and a growing number of drones and “unmanned systems.” While future concepts of operation clearly leverage the arrival of longer-range weapons and sensors enabling more “distributed” attack formations, the Force Design paper also envisions a growing need for “stand-in” forces to address the known tactical reality that Marine must close-with and destroy an enemy in close proximity.
MST would greatly contribute to the tactical efficiency of “stand-in” forces yet also support a larger, theater-wide multi-domain combat formation across distances connecting aircraft with surface ships and otherwise separated ground units. It makes sense that the Corp would be working quickly to operationalize these concepts of operation in the Pacific, given the potential need for fast-pace, rapid attack “island-hopping” sea-land warfare operations.
Kris Osborn is President of Warrior Maven – Center for Military Modernization. Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a Highly Qualified Expert with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army—Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University.
