Compass Points – E.L.D.S.
Explosive Launched Drone System.
Compass Points – E.L.D.S.
Explosive Launched Drone System.
June 11, 2024
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The best way for the Marine Corps to adopt new weapons systems is to use the Combat Development Command at Quantico. Only the Combat Development Command has the experts, the processes, and the experience to evaluate new systems. Without using the Command Development Command, a new system can turn out to be nothing but a terrible miscalculation.
As critical as the Combat Development Command is, could there ever be a weapon system that does not need further review? Is it possible that for one special weapon system the Marine Corps should place an order for more right now?
What might be called the “Explosive Launched Drone System” could be a weapon system the Marine Corps needs more of right now.
The Wall Street Journal is reporting, "How American Drones Failed to Turn the Tide in Ukraine."
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Ukrainian officials have found U.S.-made drones fragile and unable to overcome Russian jamming and GPS blackout technology. At times, they couldn’t take off, complete missions or return home. American drones often fail to fly at the distances advertised or carry substantial payloads.
Small American drones for the battlefield “have been underdeveloped,” said Mykola Bielieskov, a senior analyst at Ukraine’s Come Back Alive, a charity that has supplied more than 30,000 drones to the military.
American drone company executives say they didn’t anticipate the electronic warfare in Ukraine. In Skydio’s case, its drone was designed in 2019 to meet communications standards set by the U.S. military. Several startup executives said U.S. restrictions on drone parts and testing limit what they can build and how fast they can build it.
Those restrictions have proven a problem in the drone battles that sometimes require daily updates and upgrades, said Georgii Dubynskyi, Ukraine’s deputy minister of digital transformation, the agency that oversees the country’s drone program.
-- Wall Street Journal
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In his article reprinted in Responsible Statecraft and Real Clear Defense, author Andrew Cockburn warns more broadly that, "Ukraine War rips veil off of US weapons superiority."
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Strikingly, many of the failures of U.S. weapons, including the HIMARS, in Ukraine have been due to their reliance on a highly vulnerable guidance system: GPS. The Russians, who have long devoted intense care and attention to electronic warfare, have proven increasingly adept at jamming GPS. This has been most witheringly expressed by Maria Berlinskaya, a pioneer in Ukraine’s use of drones and head of the country’s aerial reconnaissance support center, who recently stated that “most Western systems have proven to be [worthless]” thanks to Russian jamming.
Her gloomy assessment was confirmed in April by none other than William LaPlante, Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment, who told a CSIS conference how a company (Boeing, though he did not name it) had proposed adapting their small diameter GPS guided bomb as a warhead for the HIMARS. It had been accordingly rushed through development and into production, with little or no testing, and shipped off to Ukraine.
-- Andrew Cockburn
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Cockburn warns that too many senior military leaders have spent too much time drinking the Kool Aid of high technology - technology that too often cannot meet all that is claimed for it.
That is why what could be called the Explosive Launched Drone System might be just the weapon system the Marine Corps needs.
While many drones can be defeated by jamming and spoofing, the Explosive Launched Drone System is not susceptible to jamming and spoofing. Where drones can often lift only a small explosive load, each explosive launched drone weighs about 100 lbs. and explodes into 2,000 fragments.
Of course, the Explosive Launched Drone System is just a new name for a very old weapon system, a weapon system that has been critical in combat around the world for well over 100 years: the 155 cannon artillery.
How critical is 155 cannon artillery in the ongoing fighting in Ukraine? Reports indicate that Ukraine has been firing up to 10,000 artillery rounds per day, with the average monthly rate of 90,000–110,000 of 155 mm shells. Russia has been firing even more. In March 2023, the Ukrainian defense minister asked allies for 250,000 of such shells per month. Up until recently, the US only manufactured 250,000 155 rounds per year. Now the US and the EU are each increasing the production of 155 rounds to 1 million shells annually.
Drones have their uses, but among several missions, drones cannot provide the sustained barrage fire or suppression fire that artillery can.
What will it take to get the attention of Marine Corps senior leadership that the Marine Corps needs more cannon artillery? Do we need to call artillery by a different name? Shakespeare said, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” For Marines in combat, artillery is sweet. No other substantial military force in the world, except the Marine Corps, has divested itself of all or even part of its cannon artillery. Marines from virtually any conflict can tell tales of how they were saved by artillery that was on time and on target. Call it the Explosive Launched Drone System or call it cannon artillery, but there is one special weapon system Marine Corps should place an order for more right now. Compass Points salutes all those working to restore the units, weapons, and capabilities of the Marine King of Battle.
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Wall Street Journal - 04/10/2024
How American Drones Failed to Turn the Tide in Ukraine
By Heather Somerville
https://www.wsj.com/world/how-american-drones-failed-to-turn-the-tide-in-ukraine-b0ebbac3
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Responsible Statecraft - 05/29/2024
Ukraine War rips veil off of US weapons superiority
Many of the failures, including the HIMARS, have been due to their reliance on GPS
By Andrew Cockburn
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/ukraine-us-weapons/
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AP News - 04/23/2023
Why the 155 mm round is so critical to the war in Ukraine
By Tara Copp
https://apnews.com/article/155mm-howitzer-ukraine-ammunition-russia-7d966c85046b73db2b013f93c51af2a5
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Military.com
M777 Howitzer
https://www.military.com/equipment/m777-howitzer
Pardon me if I don’t have the confidence of others in the current Combat Development Process (CDP). Today’s CDP is not the former that gave the Marine Corps the Operational Maneuver from the Sea concept, the tiltrotor aircraft, the doctrine of maneuver warfare, the “crucible” at recruit training, long range fires, and other initiatives that made the Marine Corps more relevant and stronger. But it is the CDP that gave the Marine Corps Force Design 2030, Stand-in Forces, short range missiles that are inferior to other services’ capabilities, the reduced requirement for amphibious ships, the Landing Ship Medium (formerly LAW), corrupted wargames and other ill-advised initiatives that crippled the combined arms and global response capabilities of the Marine Corps. I have no doubt that most of the Marines and Sailors working inside the CDP could get the Marine Corps back on track if left unfettered to develop needed concepts, capabilities, and requirements vice being given concepts, capabilities, and requirements developed by zealots and sycophants behind closed doors and then directed to justify them.
Then Lt. Gen. Eric Smith destroyed the Marine Corps Combat Development Command created by General Al Gray when he divested training, education, and doctrine to a new Quantico organization, the Training and Education Command. The logic of this move escapes anyone who truly understands the combat development process, which depends on coordinating doctrine, organizational structure, training, material, leader development (PME), personnel, and facilities (DOTMLPF) when creating requirements documents. Sending three of those elements to a separate command was unwise and unnecessary. I must assume his decision was based on an ignorance of the process or simply hubris to create something different. Bottom line, the Corps cannot recover from the disaster of Force Design 2030 until it rebuilds the original MCCDC.