Top Marine General: We Need to Get Comfortable with 'Throwaway' Equipment
The Pentagon needs to think differently about investments, Marine Commandant Gen. David Berger said.
How does a unmanned craft tend to the wounded?
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They dont. Never heard of any of anything like that.![]()
Top Marine General: We Need to Get Comfortable with 'Throwaway' Equipment
The Pentagon needs to think differently about investments, Marine Commandant Gen. David Berger said.news.yahoo.com
How does a unmanned craft tend to the wounded?
A) Not all troops are wounded to the point they cannot walk or be mobile.![]()
Top Marine General: We Need to Get Comfortable with 'Throwaway' Equipment
The Pentagon needs to think differently about investments, Marine Commandant Gen. David Berger said.news.yahoo.com
How does a unmanned craft tend to the wounded?
The whole point of wounding an American solder instead of killing him is that it takes 2-3 other men out of the fight to tend to him. This was well-established throughout the 20th century, no?
Well, what if you had technology to care for the wounded that doesn't require other soldiers to stop fighting? I don't see where this requires particularly large leaps of the imagination. A small fleet of autonomous ATVs could assist with evacing the wounded back to the point where autonomous helicopters can transport them to a field hospital, and then maybe we get fewer situations where someone lobs a hail-Mary RPG into a Blackhawk or Chinook and racks up several additional kills (in addition to $10 mil in lost equipment) just because one poor SOB took a non-fatal hit.
To me, the more interesting part of this article was the mention of "throwaway" equipment. That's a whole 'nother thread, but it will be fascinating to watch the Raytheons, Lockheads, and BAEs of the defense world thrash in agony - like the T1000 at the end of Terminator 2 - in response to this proposal.
Certainly, if we intend to fight China in the upcoming decades, it won't be won using Cold War or GWOT doctrine. Put a single $550 mil B-21 with a design life of 50 years up against a few thousand "swarm" drones and see which approach proves to be the better investment.
Ever heard of Blue Force Tracker??? It's there....just need to scale down. Pretty sure it's already done.For soldiers that can self treat to stabilize and than summons their own evac via a "Help me Ive fallen and cant get up" device it would be game changing.
Looks like the USMC instead of having the mindset "No problem too big" is starting to doubt itself....
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Call to Action: Are Joint Forcible Entry Operations Still Viable? - MCA
Joint Forcible Entry Operations “JFEO” are defined as: “Seizing and holding of a military lodgment in the face of armed opposition or forcing access into a denied area to allow movement and maneuver to accomplish the mission.” Given the proliferation of Anti-Access and Area Denial (A2AD) weapons...mca-marines.org
I think the Commandant may be surrendering the USMC.
The threats posed in the question are valid but they are obstacles to overcome, not surrender to.
I think this is a signal Division sized USMC operations are a thing of the past. We are now a rubber boat, 75 man raid party to sow confusion behind enemy lines.
There is no longer USMC armor or artillery capability. They are now replaced by HIMARS or will be subcontracted from the Army. Our air capability remains our unique asset and would be critical to support this "Raider" concept Marine Corps.
The Eagle Globe and Anchor may become a mere combat patch on the right or left shoulder of the Joint services Uniform.
@308pirate @buffalowinter Im sure there are others with more exalted military careers than myself - a mere corporal (only promoted to E5 after EAS), may have.......corporals are notorious for strategizing above their pay grade.
So much for "The bended knee is not a tradition of our Corps"
I think the Commandant needs to re-read his history....
In the WWII Pacific Island hopping campaigns our Navy subjected the Japanese to days on days of Naval gunfire/Air operations area denial weapons guaranteeing the Marines going ashore "not a living Jap" would face them on landing. Typically it was 30 days later and thousands of casualties before the landing Marines returned to ask "WTF?"
The Commandant should be unequivocally stating the USMC will take the beach the only thing in doubt, and its a question for others to answer......What are you going to do to get us to the tide line?
EDIT/ADD......I posted my comment, which was pretty much this post, to MCAF......Ill be interested to see if they respond. As all service rags are they tend to be pretty woke and dumb. I lost all hope when the retired Colonel Editor argued the M14 only had an effective range of 600 yards and she publicly dressed down a Master Sgt in the letters to the editor page for his questioning the importance of "wokeism" over "combat readiness" by calling the Commandant basically a pussy.
EDIT/ADD.......After having read the papers of the military people that posted I note one assumption that seems to drive their thinking........casualties and the mistaken US notion of what the reality of war is.
The general US population currently exists under the notion that battle casualties are counted in single digits not by the hundreds or thousands.
The last conflict since Vietnam, other than the Barracks Bombing, where fights resulted in reporting of numbers even greater than a couple dozen escapes me.
We as a society are not prepared for war with reports indicating hundreds or thousands dead on the beach.
Our enemies are not only willing to accept that of their own but they intend to have us pay it. It has been proven our own media is their best weapon to destroy the US public will.
The issue is tech.
The idea of a lodgement is that it allows you to build and have the structures needed to logistically support expansion of operations as well as recover troop morale and readiness in the face of the enemy.
The issue with a lodgement in today’s total war scenario is the enemies ability to apply firepower in the form of missiles, drones, cyber warfare, psyops etc etc.
If you can continue delivering high intensity conflict level effects upon a lodgement without expending the logistical resources needed to support a traditional HIC you can defeat the usefulness of the lodgement.
For example, robotic missile carriers circling out of CRAMS range can continue to harass the lodgement and fix the forces in it so it becomes just a series of overextended resources instead of a net asset.
Missiles fired from subs half a world away at the encampment. Drone swarms. Ground hunter killer robots. Laser fire from space assets. De-localization of the threat vectors.
Ever heard of Blue Force Tracker??? It's there....just need to scale down. Pretty sure it's already done.
Not to mention there was a company that worked with SFAS. During SFAS they fitting those in selection with a shirt that had sensors built in. Here's the kicker. They could follow the soldiers by GPS as well as physical indications. During the training the instructors would be there with the contractors watching what was happening with the soldiers. Amazing they would see a drop in heart rates during the night time iterations. They would GPS locate the troop, creep in with NVGs, .....OH....there you are sleeping. Pack your stuff....
So there are already means to monitor the health of troops from remote locations. There's already means to track troops individual movements. So now lets shrink down the equipment, get better sensors, and start remote "unmanned" recovery.
$10.00 says there's some Joe in the wood line right now testing the equipment. Getting loaded on some sort of tracked/wheeled vehicle. Next up.....aviation recovery.