You’re a proud Russian air assault power (VDV) paratrooper. You might be match, motivated, and proficient in capturing, transferring, and speaking together with your private and crew-served weapons. Your unit just lately practiced combined-arms warfare in Belarus and now’s deployed to a “particular navy operation” in Ukraine.
Your platoon is accompanying tanks to clear a city of resistance. You see a drone trailing your platoon and suspect it’s hostile. You report this case to your organization command publish and request antiaircraft missiles to destroy the drone. The request is authorized, however for the reason that antiaircraft battery reviews on to the battalion tactical group, it can take just a few hours for them to reach. Annoyed, you try and shoot down the drone with natural weapons. You aren’t profitable since you acquired no coaching on aerial gunnery. A couple of minutes later, a barrage of mortar shells and Javelin missiles decimate your platoon, and also you at the moment are dying on the outskirts of Kiev.1
Opposing this Russian platoon is a Ukrainian Territorial Protection Forces (TDF) squad. They’re lecturers and manufacturing facility staff who often drilled whereas balancing careers and household obligations. They’re older, bodily weaker, and never as proficient with their weapons, nor can they conduct massive combined-arms operations. Nevertheless, they aren’t constrained by conventional doctrine just like the VDV, which practiced legacy combined-arms techniques. As a substitute, the TDF use business drones mixed with mortars and missiles to create a good kill chain that out-decided and destroyed a heavier, extra “highly effective” foe.2
Whereas Ukrainian success on the battlefield is worthy of celebration, it isn’t troublesome to watch that the U.S. Marine Corps extra intently resembles the Russian VDV than the Ukrainian TDF in its present group, tools, and techniques. The Marine Corps infantry’s reliance on computerized hearth, oblique weapons, and radios to conduct combined-arms warfare constitutes a refined model of a legacy era of warfare. Whereas Pressure Design 2030 (FD 2030) introduces a lot wanted modernization to the infantry, it doesn’t do sufficient to take the infantry into the following era.3 To dominate the Twenty first-century battlefield, Marine Corps infantry should combine drones at each degree, discipline reasonably priced loitering munitions, and equip each unit to counter small aerial targets, corresponding to drones and loitering munitions.
What are Generations in Warfare?
Fight will all the time be brutal and consequential, however technological advances permit forces to endure revolutionary enchancment in fight effectiveness. Whereas tools and coaching are consistently refined, the Marine Corps has undergone three broad, generational revolutions in fight effectiveness in its historical past. The determine beneath illustrates these three generations and what the rising fourth era could appear to be.
The primary era encompasses the intense uniforms, linear techniques, martial music, and muzzle-loaded firearms sometimes related to the 18th and early nineteenth centuries. The restricted vary of firearms made fight particularly shut and brutal, and required unwavering self-discipline demonstrated by a unit’s capacity to take care of linear formation even beneath hearth.4
As industrialization enabled mass manufacturing of breach-loaded rifles and smokeless ammunition, the Marine Corps transitioned into the second era of warfare. Units wore subdued uniforms and adopted skirmishing techniques, cowl, and concealment.5 These models dominated the battlefield from the mid-to-late nineteenth century to World Warfare I, when industrial warfare necessitated one other fight revolution.
Twentieth-century developments in recoil-operated weapons, oblique fires, and wi-fi communication launched third-generation warfare. On this era, models organically deploy direct and oblique firepower beforehand obtainable solely to greater echelons. Along with their elevated natural lethality, third-generation forces use wi-fi communication to orchestrate combined-arms operations that embody artillery, armor, engineers, logistics, plane, and even naval forces. The epitome of this era is the Marine air floor job power (MAGTF).6
At present, the Marine Corps conducts a refined model of third-generation warfare. Nevertheless, the proliferation of drones and precision weapons, together with the Ukrainian forces’ success towards the highly effective third-generation Russian fight power are reminders that the Marine Corps can not cease progress towards a brand new era. The jury remains to be out on the main points of what a fourth-generation power will appear to be, however proof from experimentation with FD 2030 and classes from the Ukrainian battlefield, point out that such a power will concentrate on aerial surveillance drones, reasonably priced precision munitions, and improved air defenses towards small aerial threats. The service should dash to this generational leap in fight capabilities or share the Russian battalion tactical group’s destiny trying to cross the Siversky Donets River.7
Present State of Modernization—and Gaps
Luckily, FD 2030 has acknowledged all three important elements of a fourth-generation power. The Commandant of the Marine Corps, Basic David H. Berger, requires drones to be deployed on the squad degree and a specialised squad programs operator and assistant squad chief to be assigned to each infantry squad. Natural loitering munitions are being deployed on the infantry battalion degree, giving tactical leaders natural capability to conduct precision strikes. Littoral antiair battalions (LAABs) are being stood as much as help the newly shaped Marine littoral regiments (MLRs).8 Whereas these initiatives are essential, the Marine Corps should execute much more aggressive power modernizations and drive these three capabilities all the way down to the squad degree.
Drones: Nearly There
One of many speedy modifications dropped at the infantry squad was the addition of the squad programs operator (SSO).9 The SSO operates communications in addition to programs, together with quadcopter drones, and provides the squad chief expanded situational consciousness to make higher choices in fight. The Marine Corps wants to make sure all squads, even these outdoors the infantry, obtain SSOs—together with these in fight help roles, corresponding to fight engineers, who work alongside the infantry.
Natural surveillance capabilities should reside in each platoon and firm. Platoon commanders who transfer with their squads, for instance, could also be allotted gentle quadcopters. As firm command posts sometimes are extra established, they need to be allotted bigger quadcopters, and even vehicle-launched fixed-wing drones, to present a extra elevated, persistent vantage level.
Loitering Munitions: Succesful However Not But Inexpensive
The following functionality the Marine Corps should concentrate on is reasonably priced loitering munitions. Precision weapons such because the FGM-148 Javelin and the Switchblade 300 loitering munition are extraordinarily efficient, however their prices are constraining, starting from the Switchblade’s $6,000 to the Javelin’s $78,000 worth tags.10 The excessive value prevents coaching instructions such because the Faculty of Infantry Marine Fight Coaching from instructing Marines to make use of these munitions in frequent live-fire workout routines. The excessive prices even stop Fleet Marine Forces models from regularly experimenting and expending these munitions on coaching and discipline workout routines. To completely transition right into a fourth-generation fight power, the Marine Corps should scale back the price of these and different precision munitions, enabling live-fire workout routines to be as frequent as workout routines with crew-served weapons are as we speak.
Luckily, there may be historic precedent and success in introducing computerized weapons to each Marine. The primary recoil-operated machine gun (Maxim gun) entered service in 1886. Like precision munitions of as we speak, computerized weapons initially have been too costly to discipline in massive numbers, and their value prohibited full implementation for tactical models. For instance, in 1939, it will have value $209 ($4,500 in 2022 {dollars}) to buy an M1928 Thompson submachine gun. A centered effort by the Ordnance Bureau to incentivize value financial savings and mass manufacturing lowered the price of a Thompson submachine gun to $45 (round $740 in 2022 {dollars}), corresponding to the legacy M1903 Springfield’s value of $41. By the top of World Warfare II, computerized weapons, such because the M3 “Grease gun” submachine gun, have been developed with a main concentrate on affordability, enabling the U.S. authorities to place computerized firepower within the palms of a person soldier for under $22.11
As with computerized weapons, the Marine Corps should attempt to interrupt via value limitations with precision munitions. First, the service can set an aggressive worth goal (for instance, $500 per spherical) that might permit models to expend precision munitions extra readily throughout coaching and in fight, however be excessive sufficient to be viable from the protection industrial perspective. The Marine Corps additionally ought to take inspiration from the event of the M3 submachine gun to research tips on how to simplify the present loitering munition design and make it extra accessible to even non-infantry models. Third, the service ought to develop “observe” loitering munitions that may permit models to make use of munitions a number of occasions earlier than they attain the end-of-service life to cut back the “per use” value.
Small-Unit Air Protection: The Weak Hyperlink
Whereas Pressure Design 2030 prioritizes drones and precision munitions, it’s worryingly silent on small-unit air protection. The Might 2022 replace of FD 2030 solely factors to a “future publication of a Practical Idea for MAGTF Air and Missile Protection” and the check of a “Medium Vary Intercept Functionality (MRIC).”12 Press releases from Program Supervisor, Floor Primarily based Air Protection (PM-GBAD), spotlight vehicular platforms outfitted with Stinger missiles and digital warfare suites, demonstrating a concentrate on countering massive aerial targets.13
The repeated destruction of Russian forces by Ukrainian drones ought to remind the Marine Corps that air protection centered on countering massive plane is uncovered on the up to date battlefield to drones and loitering munitions. Deploying antiair models at no decrease a degree than battalion tactical teams, Russian models on the squad degree had no efficient energetic safety towards air threats. With out such safety, most Russian models have needed to depend on passive strategies, corresponding to cowl and concealment, to counter detection. This weak spot has been exploited by Ukrainian forces utilizing cheap business drones to surveil, strike, and destroy Russian models.
Whereas medium-range air-defense models are indispensable in countering low-flying tactical plane, they’re mismatched for many aerial threats Marines will face on the long run battlefield. Even the lightest platforms such because the Stinger weigh greater than 30 kilos and value orders of magnitude greater than the small drones or loitering munitions that will probably be deployed by U.S. adversaries. With out an efficient natural antiair functionality, Marines in small preventing models not consistently supported by greater echelon air defenses will probably be relegated to passive strategies corresponding to cowl, concealment, and decoys. Juxtaposed with fixed enhancements in pc imaginative and prescient that may discern targets from their environment, Marines will discover it more and more troublesome to evade detection and concentrating on. The Marine Corps has but to pick out programs or set up doctrine that may permit squads or platoons to destroy drones and loitering munitions.
Luckily, the answer doesn’t need to be heavy, complicated, and car mounted. Easy options, corresponding to giving Marines further coaching in capturing aerial targets with their particular person weapons, might present speedy stopgap antidrone functionality. Computerized rifle sights specialised for counterdrone hearth might improve the effectiveness of gunnery coaching. Within the medium time period, drone jammers might assist Marines disable (gentle kill) enemy drones with out revealing their precise place and even intercept enemy intelligence by taking management of their drones.14 Nevertheless, this small-unit focus doesn’t imply bigger protection belongings will not be efficient. The Marine Corps lacks ample air protection at each degree and may elevate general funding, not divest from any air protection.
Proposed ‘Fourth-Era’ Squad
A Marine fight unit using drone surveillance, precision munitions, and natural antiair capabilities will look and be organized in another way than the modernized infantry envisioned in FD 2030. Most essential, foundational models such because the squad needs to be able to drone surveillance, precision, and antiair fires. To attain this, every squad should consist of fireside groups focusing on totally different mission.
On this notional squad, the top energy wouldn’t change from FD 2030’s proposed 15 Marines. The roles of squad chief and assistant squad chief would stay comparable, however the SSO would concentrate on aerial surveillance and battlefield consciousness, whereas different hearth groups function loitering munitions and antiair weapons.15
The most important change from FD 2030’s design and this notional fourth-generational squad can be hearth group specialization. The primary hearth group will act because the squad’s “lengthy arms” and use loitering munitions and marksmanship to destroy the enemy at a distance. The second hearth group will act because the “protect” and use computerized optics and drone jammers to offer the squad with each “arduous” and “gentle” antiair capabilities. The third hearth group will probably be armed with typical weapons to offer hearth and maneuver consistent with as we speak’s doctrine. Regardless of the added know-how, all will probably be lethal with their rifles and educated to the usual of “each Marine a rifleman.”
This notional squad can be a constructing block for platoons, firms, and battalions—including sturdy capabilities and commanding and controlling different important fight help and logistics models. If carried out proper, a fourth-generation Marine Corps power will probably be a menacing presence on the battlefield, consistently conscious of its environment and in a position to exactly strike the enemy’s weaknesses whereas defending itself towards hostile loitering munitions and drones.
There’s a lot work to be carried out because the Marine Corps modernizes Pressure Design 2030. Despite the fact that FD 2030 is in depth and transformative, the Marine Corps must do extra to evolve the infantry squad right into a fourth-generation power. The service should look forward by analyzing the weaknesses of its models, and determine further capabilities that must be developed, applied, and made extra reasonably priced. Because the saying goes, “Change is the one fixed in life.”
