19 juin 2019 | International, Autre défense
By: Shawn Snow
The weight being humped by grunts into a firefight with a sophisticated adversary like Russia or China could be the difference between mission success or going home in a body bag, according to one Marine officer's award-winning research.
Marine Capt. Courtney Thompson said computer simulations she ran showed that just adding 15 pounds to the “bare essential” fighting load carried by Marines resulted in an additional casualty on the battlefield when Marines were pitted against competent shooters.
The Corps' fighting load varies between 43 to 62 pounds depending on the level of body armor a Marine wears. Military body armor protection ranges from level II to IV. Thompson's simulations were run with level II body armor — protection capable of stopping a 9 mm round. The weight range includes a carried weapon.
She told Marine Corps Times in an interview that the results of the simulations were “eye opening," especially in light of a 2017 government watchdog reported that detailed Marines and soldiers were carrying between 117 pounds to 119 pounds on average.
When she ran the simulations and added more weight “casualties just went up,” Thompson said. And “the better the [enemy] shooter got, the more the difference in weight mattered."
In a near-peer fight, Thompson said, Marines will need to move faster on the battlefield to survive and win.
“The slower they are, the higher the chance they have of getting hit," she said.
But it's not just about reducing a Marine's exposure time to being shot, smaller weight loads aid in more precise shooting and quicker target engagement times.
A 2018 report from Washington D.C.-based think tank Center for a New American Security, explained that heavy combat loads “not only slows movement and increases fatigue” but decrease “situational awareness and shooting response times.”
Moreover, a 2007 report from Naval Research Advisory Committee on Marine combat loads recommended an assault load of just 50 pounds.
As the Corps focuses on the near-peer fight, the weight carried by Marines into battle is a topic that will need to be front and center for Marine commanders, Thompson said.
Thompson's research, which won the Military Operations Research Society Stephen A. Tisdale Thesis Award at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, has the attention of officials at the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory — where the Corps has been exploring ways to boost combat power while also reducing the weight burden on grunts. Marine Corps Times has reached out to the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory for comments on this research.
Marine Corps Systems Command said its “Gruntworks” team spoke with Thompson about her research. The team handles the integration of equipment for Marine rifle squads.
Thompson, a combat engineer, said she came up with the idea after seeing how “gassed” her Marines got during training as a result of operations tempo and weight.
“I thought if I could quantify weight in terms of casualties and probability of mission success, that's what the Marine Corps understands,” she said.
Thompson's computer simulations relied on Australian human subject data and infantry demographics supplied by headquarters Marine Corps.
The Australian data was used because of the Australian Defence Department's rigorous study on its tiered body armor system, Thompson explained.
The Marine infantry data included physical fitness and marksmanship. The individual Marines within the simulated 13-man rifle squads “represented the average for that rank for all 0311s [Marine rifleman] in the Marine Corps,” she said.
Thompson said she ran the simulations nearly a million times.
Thompson's research showed that reducing the weight burden carried by grunts could save lives and win battles.
But she didn't make any prescriptive adjustments to the Corps' combat gear load outs. She told Marine Corps Times that she didn't want to “limit” a battlefield commander's decision-making.
The Corps' various fighting loads are broken down in its infantry training and readiness manual into four different groups, fighting load, assault load, approach march load and sustainment load.
The load type is dependent on the mission at hand. Thompson's research was aimed at the fighting and assault loads.
The fighting and assault loads include combat gear for the “immediate mission” and the “actual conduct of the assault,” respectively, according to the Corps' infantry manual.
The assault load weight varies between 58 pounds and 70 pounds based on level of body armor. The weight range includes a weapon being carried. The training and readiness manual excludes the weight of a weapon in its gear break down.
Thompson isn't calling for particular pieces of gear to be thrown off the packing list, but she said commanders should throw the entire list in a pack, wear it, and “see if it is a reasonable amount of weight.”
The Corps is already making a number of changes to reduce weight. Some of those include a new lightweight helmet, lighter body armor for counterinsurgency conflicts and polymer ammunition.
But Marines also are packing on weight with new tech like tablets and drones, which have been dished out to rifle squads.
At the end of the day, Marine commanders have a delicate balance of weighing risk verse capability, and it wont be easy for commanders to forgo pieces of equipment on a mission to lighten packs, Thompson explained.
A commander “can't prove the lives they saved” from taking a particular action, Thompson said.
29 septembre 2021 | International, Aérospatial
Britain gave a broad view of where the country is heading in the defense space sector as it launched a national space strategy Sept. 27, but details about London's military ambitions were largely absent from the document.
3 février 2020 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité
By: Aaron Mehta WASHINGTON — In 2017, the top two officials at the Pentagon — then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joe Dunford — testified to Congress that the defense budget needs to have 3-5 percent annual growth over inflation each year through 2023 to ensure America's military success. Dunford, speaking to the Senate Armed Services Committee in June 2017, went as far as to say: “We know now that continued growth in the base budget of at least 3 percent above inflation is the floor necessary to preserve just the competitive advantage we have today, and we can't assume our adversaries will remain still." Three years later, as the Trump administration prepares to unveil its fiscal 2021 budget request on Feb. 10, such growth appears impossible. The budget is expected to be largely flat, as a two-year budget deal reached last summer calls for $740 billion in defense spending in the next fiscal year, up just $2 billion from the enacted FY20 amount. “The 3-5 percent goal was reasonable enough and absolutely needed,” said Mackenzie Eaglen, a budget analyst with the American Enterprise Institute. “But it is not happening. The defense top line for 2021 is negative real growth, aka declining.” Susanna Blume, a defense analyst with the Center for a New American Security, said that certain parts of the defense budget, particularly maintenance and personnel costs, grow faster than the rate of inflation. “That's what's behind these comments about requiring a certain amount of real budget growth in order to sustain the joint force as it is today,” she said. But there is a wild card, according to Ellen Lord, the Defense Department's top acquisition official: a series of reform efforts led by now-Defense Secretary Mark Esper, which so far have accounted for $5 billion in savings. “We're getting more and more efficient. That is obviously what Secretary Esper is focused on with his defensewide review, that we are cutting out administrative tasks and a variety of portions of programs to make sure we return those savings to our critical modernization efforts such as [artificial intelligence], hypersonics and so forth,” Lord said during a Jan. 31 news conference at the Pentagon. “We are always having to look very carefully at our budgets and make sure we triage them to focus on the critical few. So we're always concerned, but we're always going to work it.” How much of that expected growth gap can be filled by Esper's efficiency drive is difficult to pin down. Blume said its “certainly possible that efficiencies could make up some of that gap,” but whether the work that has been done now and is planned in the near term will be enough “are questions we don't have answers to today.” Added Eaglen: “Efficiencies alone will not get the Pentagon its 3-5 percent growth in actual dollars to reinvest. The defensewide review only yielded $5 billion, and the way it works with these drills is that the money doesn't necessarily move from pot A to pot B as a result." “But that doesn't mean it is not worth doing. Any money amount is helpful. And the exercise is also about getting the bureaucracy to shift its time, tasks and attention to great power competition as much as it's about shifting funds into higher priorities that support the strategy,” Eaglen said. If one of the Pentagon's big bets work out, that could be a real game-changer, Blume said. Those bets include efforts to replace a Defense Logistics Agency warehouse using a 3D printer as well as attempts by the Air Force to rapidly develop, prototype and produce fleets of planes. If one of them goes well, Blume said, “you can potentially start to bend some of those cost curves.” https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2020/01/31/the-pentagon-is-racing-against-inflation-for-military-might/
2 juin 2020 | International, Naval
Imagine the following scenario. Four medium-sized U.S. Navy vessels depart from a port along the United States' coast. There's no crew aboard any of them. About 15 nautical miles off the coast, the four vessels rendezvous, autonomously arranging themselves in a line. Using custom mechanisms, they attach to each other to form a train, except they're in the water and there's no railroad to guide them. In this configuration the vessels travel 6,500 nautical miles across the open ocean to Southeast Asia. But as they approach their destination, they disconnect, splitting up as each unmanned ship goes its own way to conduct independent operations, such as collecting data with a variety of onboard sensors. Once those operations are complete, the four reunite, form a train and make the return journey home. This is the Sea Train, and it may not be as far-fetched as it sounds. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is investing in several technologies to make it a reality. “The goal of the Sea Train program is to be able to develop and demonstrate long-range deployment capabilities for a distributed fleet of medium-sized tactical unmanned vessels,” said Andrew Nuss, DARPA's program manager for Sea Train. “So we're really focusing on ways to enable extended transoceanic transit and long-range naval operations, and the way that we're looking to do that is by taking advantage of some of the efficiencies that we can gain in a system of connected vessels — that's where the name ‘Sea Train' comes from.” According to DARPA, the current security environment has incentivized the Navy and the Marine Corps to move from a small number of exquisite, large manned platforms to a more distributed fleet structure comprised of smaller vessels, including unmanned platforms that can conduct surveillance and engage in electronic warfare and offensive operations. While these unmanned vessels are smaller and more agile than their large, manned companions, they are limited by the increased wave-making resistance that plagues smaller vessels. And due to their size, they simply can't carry enough fuel to make the long-range journeys envisioned by DARPA without refueling. By connecting the vessels — physically or in a formation — the agency hopes the Sea Train can reduce that wave resistance and enable long-range missions. In February, the agency released a broad agency announcement to find possible vendors. Citing agency practice, Nuss declined to share how many proposals were submitted, although he did say there was significant interest in the announcement. The agency completed its review of any submissions and expects to issue contracts by the end of the fiscal year. Sea Train is expected to consist of two 18-month periods, where contractors will work to develop and test technologies that could enable the Sea Train concept. The program will culminate with model testing in scaled ocean conditions. If successful, DARPA hopes to see the technologies adopted by the Navy for its unmanned platforms. “What we're looking to do is be able to reduce the risk in this unique deployment approach,” Ness said. “And then be able to just deliver that set of solutions to the Navy in the future, to be able to demonstrate to them that there is, potentially, a new way to deploy these vessels, to be able to provide far more operational range without the risk of relying on actual refueling or in-port refueling.” And while DARPA's effort is focused on medium-sized unmanned vessels — anywhere from 12 to 50 meters in length — the lessons learned could be applied to larger or smaller vessels, manned or unmanned. https://www.c4isrnet.com/unmanned/2020/06/01/all-aboard-the-sea-train/