8 mars 2018 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité

Marine Leaders Don't Want New Tech to Weigh Grunts Down

Military.com 7 Mar 2018 By Oriana Pawlyk

Keep it small, keep it simple, make it work. It's what Marine Corps leaders want industry leaders and research and development agencies to keep in mind when making the latest and greatest tech for grunts on the battlefield, a top general said Tuesday.

Gen. Glenn Walters, assistant commandant of the Marine Corps, said the service was interested in high-end electronics and robotics, but said he didn't want to increase the load of ground combat Marines by adding on advanced gear.

"Technology is great, until you have to carry it, and you have to carry the power that drives it," said Gen. Glenn Walters, assistant commandant of the Marine Corps.

Walters said members of 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, the service's experimental infantry battalion, has been the first to test and field small tech and weapons. The service is interested in the new technology, but continues to keep the size and weight of new systems in mind, he said.

"Reorganizing for the future is what's happening right now and robotics is clearly someplace where we're investing," Walters told audiences during the annual "Defense Programs" conference hosted by defense consulting firm McAleese & Associates.

In a few months, 3/5 will debut its latest report on findings and lessons learned from using the newer tech, such as handheld drones and quadcopters, he said.

"But we're not waiting," Walters said at the event in Washington, D.C.

New, powerful equipment needs to be leveraged even more so than it is now, Walters said, adding, "they need to be more consumable."

"We have 69 3D printers out and about throughout a mix of battalions," Walters said. This added gear, he said, has made Marines more agile when they need to replace a broken part or create an entirely new solution for an old design.

"We have to have the speed of trust in our young people to seize and hold the technological high ground," Walters said.

Amid the push for new tech, officials have been working to lessen the load for Marines who have been inundated with more equipment in recent years even as the service grows more advanced with streamlined resources.

For example, program managers have said they're looking for a lighter, more practical alternative to the Corps' iconic ammunition can.

Scott Rideout, program manager for ammunition at Marine Corps Systems Command, told industry leaders in 2016 that the rectangular can may be due for an upgrade.

Rideout at the time made the case during the Equipping the Infantry Challenge at Quantico that emerging technologies -- such as the logistics drones that Walters mentioned Tuesday -- may also put limits on how much a future delivery of ammunition can weigh.

The calculus is simple, Rideout said: "Ounces equal pounds, and pounds equal pain."

-- Oriana Pawlyk can be reached at oriana.pawlyk@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @oriana0214.

https://www.military.com/defensetech/2018/03/06/marine-leaders-dont-want-new-tech-weigh-grunts-down.html

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    20 septembre 2018 | International, Aérospatial, C4ISR

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    By: Ryan Hazlett With unmanned systems becoming ever more ubiquitous on the battlefield, the question of where unmanned systems and accompanying technologies, such as autonomy, are headed is in the limelight. First, to better understand the future direction of the unmanned field, it is instructive to note some important trends. The number of uses for unmanned systems on the battlefield has increased significantly in the post-9/11 conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, with the U.S. Army's Shadow® Tactical Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) program having logged nearly 1 million flight hours in those areas of operation. The proliferation and commoditization of UAS capabilities is a global phenomenon, as demonstrated by both the widespread possession of UAS hardware as well as the ability to indigenously produce at least rudimentary unmanned systems. Growth of the nascent commercial unmanned systems market has added to this trend, as has the government's emphasis on a greater use of commercial off-the-shelf solutions. But while commoditization has occurred at the platform level — particularly among smaller airborne vehicles — overcoming the challenges of adversaries employing anti-access area-denial (A2AD) military strategies requires far more capable solutions than simply having hordes of cheap drones. In this environment, how will U.S. and allied forces retain their advantage? Critical capabilities and technologies are necessary. These include the ability to dynamically swarm, conduct automatic target recognition, possess on-board autonomy and artificial intelligence, as well as have interoperable communications capabilities. First, future platforms — manned or unmanned — will increasingly need better collaboration between the sensors and payloads they carry and with allied forces. This growing level of collaboration and autonomy is already happening. Driven by advances in onboard computing power, as well as smaller and less power-intensive sensors and advanced algorithms, tomorrow's unmanned systems will be able to better communicate among themselves and make their own decisions on basic functions, such as navigation, to enable dynamic swarming or to identify areas of interest during intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions. Next, systems that can seamlessly operate and communicate with other military platforms across domains will be the most successful. Gone are the days when largely mission-specific platforms dominated the force composition. With platforms needing to be highly capable to meet A2AD threats, a mission-specific approach will simply be unaffordable. 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Done smartly, the application of technologies such as autonomy can be better integrated into unmanned systems to enable improved navigation, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, as well as other tasks, while leaving a man in the loop for the use of weapons. Moreover, defense users can rightly leverage the commercial sector's work on areas such as self-driving cars and unmanned taxis that are at the forefront of artificial intelligence for navigation. But while the military can leverage such commercial developments, there are, and will remain, cyber hardening, survivability and other specific requirements that are unique to the defense marketplace and require experienced industrial partners with deep knowledge of national security needs. The ongoing move away from only long-term programs of record to the embrace of the “buy, try, and decide” model, as well as greater uses of funded prototyping, is helping to fast-track many of these promising new technologies. Companies can now match their internal research and development funding to move that innovation along and ensure the United States and its allies remain at the forefront of unmanned technologies. Ryan Hazlett is senior vice president at Textron Systems. https://www.c4isrnet.com/thought-leadership/2018/09/19/the-new-critical-capabilities-for-unmanned-systems

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