Marine anti-tank missilemen are getting attack drones for a new precision-strike role
US Marine Corps anti-tank missilemen trained to destroy enemy armored vehicles are getting a new weapon: one-way attack drones that can hunt and strike targets far beyond the reach of their traditional missiles, a top general told reporters recently.
The first Marine units are set to receive the loitering munitions in January, part of the service’s broader redesign of its ground force for large-scale combat in the Pacific and for battlefields increasingly filled with drones and disrupted communications.
The changes underway within the Corps represent a marked shift from the post-9/11 wars that saw Marines involved in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Corps has already shed its tanks and some other heavy equipment, created new units focused on coastal warfare, and prepared to disperse Marines across remote islands and coastal areas inside an adversary’s weapons range.
The new loitering munitions provide small Marine units with their own ability to conduct precision strikes at distances that previously would have required calling in strikes from nearby aircraft or artillery.
The Marines set to receive these weapons first are troops whose core mission has long been engaging and destroying tanks and armored vehicles with Javelin and TOW missiles.
Lt. Gen. Jay Bargeron, the Corps’ director of strategy, plans, and policy, told reporters last week that the service is set to field its Organic Precision Fires-Light system in January. These loitering munitions — explosive attack drones — can fly out, locate a target, and strike it.
“What I’m trying to do is bring precision strike capabilities down to the lowest level,” Bargeron said. “That’s a great example of using advanced technology to enhance the lethality of Marines that are already doing that job.”
Though the missleman job title isn’t changing, the Corps is describing troops with the added role as “precision strike Marines” in a move that reflects how drones are dramatically reshaping ground combat.
But the same technology giving Marines new offensive capabilities also creates a growing defensive problem. The US military is still searching for reliable ways to defeat drones at scale, even as the Corps begins fielding systems meant to help small units detect and destroy individual threats.
“This is really about buying back or ensuring we have the right firepower and staying power in those ground combat units to do things like seize and defend a piece of ground when it’s necessary,” Bargeron said.
The service has already fielded the first 80 sets of an organic system for countering small drones, with 300 more planned this year. The equipment includes a drone detection capability, new electronic-warfare systems to help defeat drones, and a new type of ammunition Marines can fire from standard-issue rifles at drone targets.
That new equipment requires more training, making “task saturation” — giving troops more responsibilities and adding to their cognitive loads — a complicating factor, Bargeron said.
A new three-day counter-drone course is in development for rifle squads, groups of roughly a dozen infantry Marines, at the Corps’s major combat training center, Twentynine Palms, California, the general said.
That work builds on the service’s offensive and defensive attack drone teams, which are driving the development of drone tactics within the Marines.
The essential ability for the lowest level, the lowest echelon units — teams of anywhere from a dozen to two hundred Marines — to defend against one-way attack systems, “is really maybe one of the biggest holes in our swing,” Bargeron said. “So we’re working hard on that.”