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Business Insider
10-05-2025
- Business Insider
I spent 3 days at the Marines' big modern warfare expo. Here's what the service was buzzing about.
I spent three days at the Marines' big annual modern warfare expo in Washington, DC. Drone tech stole the show. Marines, Pentagon officials, and defense industry executives spoke extensively on panels and in private discussions about the uphill battle of preparing for future warfare, and drones were a hot topic. Marine leaders discussed the difficulties of getting many more drones into the hands of troops and the challenges of adapting to war with these systems. The Modern Day Marine expo is focused on the innovations Marines need to fight future wars, so it's no surprise that everyone was buzzing about drones this year. These highly versatile machines which can surveil enemies, carry out precision strikes, and more have been redefining contemporary warfare. Their uses were on display at the "Drone Zone," a section of the expo featuring demos from the Marines' Attack Drone Team. There was also a section devoted to wargaming, another focused on warfighting, and countless booths where companies pitched ideas on what tech Marines might need for future fights. Game-changing warfare technology In what was basically a UAS mini-symposium, held in a cluster of quiet rooms in the convention center, about two dozen Marines — from generals to senior enlisted —hashed out what's working and what's not when it comes to drones. Some expressed concerns about fielding and implementing uncrewed aerial systems within the Corps. Leaders cited the difficulty of getting drones into the hands of troops due to the slow and complex military acquisition process, as well as tricky procedural and regulatory issues, like deconflicting flight space with the FAA, negotiating on-base training flights for logistics drones, and mitigating risks for civilians on the ground. I was a little surprised by just how open to reporters like me these intimate panels were and was struck by just how frank Marines were in speaking with me and helping me better understand their challenges. "We've got to field drones at scale in order to be able to pressurize our training really, to work through some of the real hard problems," said Lt. Gen. Benjamin Watson, who oversees the service's Training and Education Command, during a media event. He added that he expects the service to receive more drones and loitering munitions, or one-way attack drones,over the next year. The newly established Attack Drone Team is an important part of the Corps' drive to learn from the war in Ukraine and bring small uncrewed systems into missions. The team demonstrated drone capabilities every few hours at MDM; it will serve as a foundation for competitive teams across bases. Monday, I observed our Marine Corps Attack Drone Team experimenting with FPV drones. These Marines continue working with industry to deliver an affordable, attritable solution that provides the Fleet the precise mass they need. My goal: get it into the hands of Marines fast. — Commandant of the @USMC (@CMC_MarineCorps) May 7, 2025 Other technology attendees buzzed about at the expo were electronic warfare, virtual training simulators, and the need for quantum communications. Getting Marines into the fight Drones are invaluable tools, but they won't be much help if the service can't physically get to conflict zones. That's why an initiative called "3.0 MEU," another timely topic at MDM, is a consistent strategic concern for the Marines' top general. A MEU, or Marine Expeditionary Unit, is a response force of around 2,200 Marines and sailors who carry out combat missions like amphibious assaults or respond to crises like embassy evacuations. The Marine Corps term "3.0 MEU" refers to having three groups deployed simultaneously, one from the East Coast, one from the West Coast, and one from a US base in Japan, plus enough ships to have some preparing for deployments, with plans for others to be undergoing intense maintenance cycles. Long-standing concerns about Navy ship readiness mean that having three groups of three ships deployed with embarked MEUs, with others in training pipelines and maintenance, is really still just a goal for now. "This is about more than ships, it's about deterrence and denial," Marine Corps Commandant Eric Smith said. "That is why the 3.0 ARG MEU matters; it gives our leaders options." (ARG refers to the naval warship groups known as Amphibious Ready Groups). The Navy operates and maintains the ships that Marines deploy on. But its fleet has been forced to contend with overwhelming maintenance and repair backlogs. The bedrock of American naval power, the US shipbuilding industry, has been plagued with troubles, too. With the state of the fleet, there are concerns that it isn't sufficiently prepared for emergencies. "There's a saying that wars are a come-as-you-are game," said Lt. Gen. Karsten Heckl, the commanding general of Marine Corps Combat Development Command, told last year on the impact of dismal ship readiness for Marines. "Well, this is where we are. And there is simply no immediate fix." Taking care of Marines by fixing their housing Maintaining a mission-ready force requires upkeep of the facilities that troops live in to ensure a certain quality of life. Renovating barracks, the military equivalent of dormitories, was another important topic at the MDM expo. Barracks across the DoD have deteriorated due to insufficient maintenance, sometimes resulting in mold, water issues, and poor ventilation. The issue has been exacerbated by decades of war in the Middle East and is one that the lowest, unmarried enlisted ranks deal with regularly. Now, Marine leaders are trying to boost barracks renovations, which they also hope can help increase force retention. "Barracks 2030" is the Corps' refurbishment answer. But it comes with a steep price tag, nearly $11 billion through 2037. "The idea is not to fix it and forget it," Lt. Gen. James Adams, Deputy Commandant for Programs and Resources, said of the initiative during a panel on the topic. He added that the service "got ourselves into the position we're in now" by neglecting maintenance. But funding for Barracks 2030 hinges on Congress, and if lawmakers don't elect to fund the overhaul, it's likely to face painful delays. So it is getting more attention.
Business Insider
06-05-2025
- Business Insider
The US Marine Corps is trying to figure out how to sort out friendly and enemy drones in battle
The Marine Corps is learning to fight with uncrewed aerial systems, and there's a lot to figure out. One Marine Corps leader said the potential for confusion on cluttered future battlefields "haunts" his dreams. "Knowing what's good guys versus bad guys, knowing what to kill and not to kill," that sort of thing "haunts my dreams," Col. Sean Hoewing, the director of the Marine Corps' Capabilities Development Directorate's Aviation Combat Element, said last week at the big annual Modern Day Marine expo in Washington, DC. The push to develop counter-UAS capabilities coincides with the service's efforts to develop its offensive capabilities. The service has established a new Attack Drone Team and aims to replicate it across the Corps, using competition to mimic the stressors of combat. It's also set up UAS advisory councils to accelerate feedback from troops on the ground to senior leaders in the Pentagon who can field requests to industry partners. Drones are quickly becoming a top priority, especially as the world watches what how drone warfare unfolds in Ukraine. In future fights, Marines will need to be able to identify not only friendly or enemy UAS systems with lethal payloads but also systems like logistics resupply drones and maybe even casualty evacuation drones, which could create new concerns around the identification of medical UAS systems for wounded enemy combatants, which are protected by the Geneva Conventions. Friendly and enemy identification of drones has become increasingly important in Ukraine, where one Ukrainian drone operator previously told Business Insider that it is not uncommon for troops to end up jamming everything nearby in a "cluttered battlespace." Combat footage from the front lines in Ukraine has highlighted the confusion that can quickly arise from drones. In the chaos of battle, it can be difficult to figure out which quadcopter is friendly and which may soon be dropping grenades overhead. Col. Scott Cuomo, the commander of the service's Weapons Training Battalion and the new Attack Drone Team, envisions a not-so-distant future for Marines in which UAS identification demands will force troops to drill down on strict airspace deconfliction procedures. "Someone's going to do the fires coordination, just like we've always done," Cuomo said, referring to the practices of ensuring strikes from aircraft, artillery, or other weapons can occur without harming friendly forces. "So there's a lot of just building on what we've done in the past," he said. What might that approach include in practice? When a Marine sends out a UAS with a payload on it, "you're going to tell someone that you're going to do that," Cuomo said, referring to detailed fires coordination between infantry units and their command centers. Friend-or-foe identification is far from the only challenge of battlefield drone operations. Both Ukraine and Russia have been forced to grapple with tremendous drone losses, not only to one-way attacks but also to electronic warfare. A reluctance to squander too many UAS systems may add more complexity to UAS identification concerns. "We can't necessarily take the approach that it's okay if we lose 40% of our stuff," Hoewing added. "That's not going to work for the Marine Corps." Loss of equipment is anathema to Marines, who treat equipment accountability as an immovable tenet. That may contradict the lessons from Ukraine though, where cheap drones are considered expendable and used as individual rounds of ammunition. There is a lot to sort out, but the only way Marines will be able to iron out the pains of such complicated UAS oversight will be more sets and reps, Cuomo said. "Just give it to the Marines, and then figure out the training."
Yahoo
01-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Marines can't replicate Ukraine's drone war, but leaders have another idea for figuring out attack drones
Marine bases to form competitive drone teams to boost much-needed skills Competition aims to replicate the pressure of combat Drone adoption and training are critical as technology evolves and procurement lags Starting next year, the Marine Corps wants to see each Marine base building its own competitive attack drone teams. Leaders say competition will be key to building skills in the absence of combat. "We can't replicate the existential threat that they feel in places like Ukraine, which forces the cycle of iteration and learning," Lt. Gen. Benjamin Watson, head of the Corps' Training and Education Command, told reporters Wednesday at the Modern Day Marine expo in Washington DC. "The closest thing we can do is put ourselves out there in competition." "We think that puts us under a level of pressure that will help us to iterate faster, particularly in the first-person-view drone space, which is one of the places we've got the most room to grow," Watson continued. More funding, held up in continuing resolution turmoil, could also help move things along. Small, inexpensive FPV drones have come to dominate Ukrainian battlefields, functioning as readily available reconnaissance platforms and cheap precision-strike ammunition, contributing heavily to battlefield casualties. Such warfare is unlike anything US troops have previously experienced. It's not something that can be easily replicated, but it is what leaders say they want the military training for, spurring the Marine Corps' plan for competition-driven training. Under such a plan, Marine bases would create their own teams mimicking the services' newly established Attack Drone Team, based out of the Marine headquarters base in Quantico, Va. Watson described the Corps' Attack Drone Team as the "leading edge" of what the service hopes to replicate across the force, including more focus on counter-UAS training and the authority for developing policies for the rest of the force. The general compared the new goal to the Corps' marksmanship team in which Marines from across the Corps compete for top spots on the namesake team from their bases. "The premise has been every Marine a rifleman, and we will still hold true to that ethos, with the idea being that every Marine can be lethal at out to 500 yards," Watson said of the Corps' intense devotion to ensuring each Marine, regardless of speciality, is competent shooting a target from half a kilometer. The idea behind building these new competitive drone teams is that small arms fire is still necessary but now insufficient for contemporary conflict, he added. "Now that same individual Marine, using a different weapon system, can also be lethal out to 15 or 20 kilometers with a first-person-view drone." Marine leaders consistently highlighted drone adoption and training as a critical need at the Modern Day Marine symposium, with small group discussions and panels comprised of combat arms, logistics, and aviation Marines trying to work through the headaches of getting drones to junior Marines quickly, in whatever way possible. Until the service can formalize these plans, units will likely be expected to get troops trained using any scrappy, unconventional method possible. As the DoD tries to adopt a more rapid procurement process, whatever tech various base drone team Marines use will inevitably be behind the power curve, Watson said, given the lightning pace at which this tech is evolving. But the service has got to make something coherent happen to get Marines using drones, he said. Soon, service-wide competitions will be an answer. "We've got to field a system and get it in the hands of Marines so that we can start learning and confronting some of these problems that we're going to face head-on," he said. Read the original article on Business Insider
Business Insider
01-05-2025
- Politics
- Business Insider
Marines can't replicate Ukraine's drone war, but leaders have another idea for figuring out attack drones
Starting next year, the Marine Corps wants to see each Marine base building its own competitive attack drone teams. Leaders say competition will be key to building skills in the absence of combat. "We can't replicate the existential threat that they feel in places like Ukraine, which forces the cycle of iteration and learning," Lt. Gen. Benjamin Watson, head of the Corps' Training and Education Command, told reporters Wednesday at the Modern Day Marine expo in Washington DC. "The closest thing we can do is put ourselves out there in competition." "We think that puts us under a level of pressure that will help us to iterate faster, particularly in the first-person-view drone space, which is one of the places we've got the most room to grow," Watson continued. More funding, held up in continuing resolution turmoil, could also help move things along. Small, inexpensive FPV drones have come to dominate Ukrainian battlefields, functioning as readily available reconnaissance platforms and cheap precision-strike ammunition, contributing heavily to battlefield casualties. Such warfare is unlike anything US troops have previously experienced. It's not something that can be easily replicated, but it is what leaders say they want the military training for, spurring the Marine Corps' plan for competition-driven training. Under such a plan, Marine bases would create their own teams mimicking the services' newly established Attack Drone Team, based out of the Marine headquarters base in Quantico, Va. Watson described the Corps' Attack Drone Team as the "leading edge" of what the service hopes to replicate across the force, including more focus on counter-UAS training and the authority for developing policies for the rest of the force. The general compared the new goal to the Corps' marksmanship team in which Marines from across the Corps compete for top spots on the namesake team from their bases. "The premise has been every Marine a rifleman, and we will still hold true to that ethos, with the idea being that every Marine can be lethal at out to 500 yards," Watson said of the Corps' intense devotion to ensuring each Marine, regardless of speciality, is competent shooting a target from half a kilometer. The idea behind building these new competitive drone teams is that small arms fire is still necessary but now insufficient for contemporary conflict, he added. "Now that same individual Marine, using a different weapon system, can also be lethal out to 15 or 20 kilometers with a first-person-view drone." Marine leaders consistently highlighted drone adoption and training as a critical need at the Modern Day Marine symposium, with small group discussions and panels comprised of combat arms, logistics, and aviation Marines trying to work through the headaches of getting drones to junior Marines quickly, in whatever way possible. Until the service can formalize these plans, units will likely be expected to get troops trained using any scrappy, unconventional method possible. As the DoD tries to adopt a more rapid procurement process, whatever tech various base drone team Marines use will inevitably be behind the power curve, Watson said, given the lightning pace at which this tech is evolving. But the service has got to make something coherent happen to get Marines using drones, he said. Soon, service-wide competitions will be an answer. "We've got to field a system and get it in the hands of Marines so that we can start learning and confronting some of these problems that we're going to face head-on," he said.
Yahoo
30-04-2025
- Yahoo
Marine training chief wants to ‘let NCOs loose' with more drone access
The Marines' new Attack Drone Team is tackling the challenge of turning drones into weapons. And they want to get more rank-and-file Marines in on the action. The Corps' Attack Drone Team — announced with videos and fanfare March 31 — represents what leaders hope is a turning point in ground-level drone warfare. While infantry units have integrated small unmanned aerial vehicles in formations for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, armed drone warfare has largely been left to much larger platforms. The move is necessary now, leaders said in the team's rollout, 'in response to the rapid proliferation of armed first-person view drone technology and tactics,' most notably in Russia and Ukraine. But one challenge leaders see in integrating payload-carrying drones into infantry formations is overcoming the barriers for Marines to gain experience operating the unmanned systems, which can be subject to an array of military and civil rules and restrictions. Col. Scott Cuomo, the commanding officer of Weapons Training Battalion at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, and a planner behind the Attack Drone Team, said he was having conversations with Maj. Gen. Jason Woodworth, commanding general of Marine Corps Installations Command, about changing range control regulations to allow for simpler integration of drones into training — and notably, give Marines more options to train with drones in their downtime and near their living quarters. 'We're working through changing the ... regulations so that if you're in 1/1 or 1/2, whatever it is, you can fly this capability in proximity to your barracks, without any kinetic live ordnance on them, that you could just train,' Cuomo said, referring to Marine infantry battalions located in California and North Carolina. 'You've probably seen Marines go into the armory, draw their weapons, draw their comm gear and then just train in an open field and work on drills or whatnot,' he said. 'Right now, it's challenging to do that with small drones.' Within the next few months, Cuomo said, he expects to get authorization or changes made that allow for permission for broader drone activity around bases at 150 to 200 feet above ground level, with prior authorization from range control that takes 15 to 20 minutes. Today, he said, authorization can take a month or more. Likewise, Cuomo said, he wants to change the lengthy permissions process for formal range training operations with what the Marine Corps is now calling first-person view, or FPV, drones. Currently, he said, drone operators must make range requests specific to the frequency spectrum on which the FPV is operating, inputting data into a system that again may take one or two months to issue an approval. 'We have the full support of senior leaders of the Corps,' Cuomo said. Evidence of that support is abundant. In addition to the team's splashy public rollout, it was featured prominently this month in Marine Corps Marksmanship Championships events at Quantico. The team also planned multiple demonstrations this week at the Modern Day Marine expo in Washington. But how the team will ultimately change the game for the Marine Corps writ large is still to be determined. The current outfit, Cuomo said, is composed of nine Marines, including a mix of officer and enlisted personnel. Some are volunteers from Weapons Training Battalion, he said; others have intelligence backgrounds. In an early effort, Cuomo said, leaders behind the team were able to turn one lance corporal into a 'basically trained FPV pilot who could destroy a target out at 20 [kilometers]' with just 26 hours of simulator training. That turnaround emphasizes the ease with which the Marine Corps may be able to train a large number of infantry troops to operate weaponized drones on the battlefield. But many questions remain unanswered, including how these FPVs will be integrated into units, how they'll be employed and what payloads they'll be carrying. While all FPV flights have been with simulated payloads so far, Cuomo said, the team is eyeing a live-fire event with an anti-personnel payload, with other live payloads to follow. Cuomo said watching operations in Ukraine with explosive payloads on drones raises questions about how to build the systems. But, he suggested, the team could help the Corps work with noncommissioned officers who already train with explosives and find ways to integrate FPVs into what they're already doing. There may be ways, he said, to 'tweak a program of instruction' rather than creating a months-long training program from scratch. 'Let NCOs loose,' he said. 'That is our asymmetric strength.'
