Compass Points - Marine Innovation
Marines are smart & innovative.
Compass Points - Marine Innovation
Marines are smart & innovative.
August 29, 2024
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Marines are smart and innovative. They are very practical and always willing to improve the Marine Corps. Sometimes the innovation and ideas of Marines are encouraged and sometimes they are not. But with or without encouragement, Marines go right on working to improve the Marine Corps.
The Marine Times is reporting on an unofficial Marine website that focuses on Marine infantry tactics. The Marine Times article is, "Marine Corps infantry’s secret weapon: A $9.95 unofficial website."
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Last year, an idea began percolating among some Marine infantry officers: How could they draft principles and procedures for if the Marines found themselves in a conflict similar to the one now raging in Ukraine?
Using open-source analysis and commentary, a team of volunteers led by a retired lieutenant colonel got to work answering this question.
Two documents emerged out of this informal Marine effort.
One was a detailed 126-page handbook that described a series of scenarios and explained how existing Marine doctrine would apply to such a fight.
The handbook covered everything from how a company leader should write an order — one page, handwritten, no imagery — to drone use, and how each drone would support one unit, with leaders tasking drones in the company order.
It also candidly acknowledged gaps in official Marine Corps guidance on how to hide from enemy drones, how to use anti-tank missiles alongside drones to hunt and destroy the enemy and how to move under artillery fire.
The second document was a brief summary of 10 “lessons for leaders” about fighting on a battlefield like Ukraine.
That five-pager specified what Marine ground forces would need to win in these conditions: drones in every unit and echelon, anti-drone electronic warfare jammers, and, counter to the Corps’ recent decisions on the future shape of the force, a reliance on tanks.
“The tank is not dead, as many have predicted,” the authors wrote, citing Ukraine’s employment of armored vehicles and its desire for more to stand off Russia’s mechanized units.
-- Marine Times
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The website is run by a retired Marine, Brendan B. McBreen, also the author of "Ukraine: Lessons for Leaders" which lists 10 crucial lessons from the ongoing fighting, including:
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1. The battlefield is totally transparent. UAS are everywhere, all the time.
We need to disperse, camouflage, and move to survive.
2. Every signal is a target. The AO is electromagnetically transparent.
We need to reduce emissions and mask our signals.
3. The modern all-source, real-time surveillance network is not ours.
We need to use commercial sources of information.
4. Artillery kills everybody. Rockets kill. Missiles kill less often.
We need artillery. We need artillery rounds.
5. Modern fires networks can see, strike, and destroy in 60 seconds.
We need counter-UAS jammers to attack the kill chain.
-- Brendan B. McBreen
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The full article by Brendan B. McBreen was also published by Marine and author, Bruce Ivar Gudmundsson, on his substack site, The Tactical Notebook, which is also focused on infantry tactics.
What is generating and publishing all this great thinking, discussing, and comparing notes about infantry tactics? It is not being generated by the Marine Corps Combat Development Command at Quantico -- though it should be. And it is not being generated by the Marine Corps University -- though it should be. Instead, Marines on active duty and those once on active duty are sharing their own insights, on their own time, to help the Marine Corps.
Even the recently released Commandant's Planning Guidance mentions the importance of the smarts and innovation of junior Marines.
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I am consistently awestruck by the ingenuity and dedication to continual improvement of our concepts and equipment that I see from Marines of all ranks – Marines like Corporal Gage Barbieri, who identified a flaw in the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle’s maintenance program and shared the fix with the entire Corps; or Sergeant Kristopher Hassmer, a Tactical Data Link Maintainer who on his own initiative created a Small Form Factor Air Command and Control system which outpaced industry and was immediately ready for forward employment; or Sergeant Samantha Delgado, who built and tested a “remote kit” for securely operating air search radars thousands of miles away, resulting in an expeditionary command and control (C2) node capable of passing data required for air defense operations. These examples of our Marines’ initiative are what a culture of innovation looks like. We must continue to capitalize on the inherent brilliance of our Marines and implement their innovation at speed.
-- Commandant's Planning Guidance, August 2024
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Compass Points will have much more to say about the just released Commandant's Planning Guidance 2024 but appreciates that the CPG takes a paragraph to highlight the innovation of Marines. Marines are smart and innovative. Both active-duty Marines and Marines once on active duty use their smarts and creativity to help move the Marine Corps forward. It has been said, "the strength of the wolf is the pack." That is true. No matter the obstacle, no matter the fight, Marines attack as a team. But it is also true, "the strength of the pack is the wolf." The Marine Corps remains strong by adopting and incorporating the insight and efforts of individual Marines. Compass Points salutes the smarts and innovation of Marines who, despite all obstacles and setbacks, keep the Marine Corps strong today and stronger tomorrow.
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Marine Times - 08/27/2024
Marine Corps infantry’s secret weapon: A $9.95 unofficial website
By Hope Hodge Seck
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Marine Infantry Website
By Brendan B. McBreen
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The Tactical Notebook
The Tactical Notebook explores the armies that are, the armies that were, and the armies that might have been.
By Bruce Ivar Gudmundsson
https://substack.com/@extramuros
I am encouraged by the flexible thinking and analysis of Marines and how to fight. Marines are often ahead of the institution which can be slow to adjust. Gen Gray took on this exact type of institutional inertia when he challenged Quantico to get out in front vise lagging behind and during a Renaissance period assigned highly talented individuals.
When I attended TBS in 1974 much of the formal instruction was highly “ Vietnam Oriented”. But, the winds were already shifting and the CO TBS was pushing the shift towards battlefields unknown. Then Col Schulze was a brilliant leader and our Instructors ( Maj Wylie) and Company Commander ( Maj Ebbert) and my SPC ( Capt Neubauer) all were very clear that the shift would entail a fight with a near peer. By the time I arrived at 1/8 the leadership was squarely focused on anti tank needs, artillery, close air and the endless ways to leverage them. We focused on transmission brevity, codes, how we could be jammed, operating in radio silence, air parity environments, NBC environments, counter battery fire etc. Majors Radcliff, Sutton and LtCol Cerreta were superb in pushing the skills we’d need in Central or Northern Europe. The Scout Sniper platoon rebuilt and gave itself missions appropriate to different a battlefield.
Our training was also driven by our own readings on combat in Europe in WWII and detailed study of Warsaw Pact equipment, weapons and doctrine as well as the dusty lessons learned complied by the Army in the aftermath of the German-Soviet front 1941-45. Gen Gray’s 4th MAB knew of and strongly encouraged our approach which culminated with the Brigade deployment to Europe.
None of our initiatives or self imposed standards were force fed to us from Quantico. We were well aware of our equipment, weapons and mobility shortfalls and how to work around them. We did not hesitate to modify, or discard published doctrine because we knew doctrine. Being young and highly energetic we constantly pumped ideas, suggestions and recommendations into a big black hole and never knew when the ideas just slid into garbage cans.
When we arrived in England we quickly adopted the Wooly Pully without hesitation and Marines happily spent to money to upgrade their own kit. The house to house techniques were learned from 41 and 42 Commando, Royal Marines were quickly adopted fully aware that N Ireland would be a different environment than Gdańsk.
My point is simple. When you have the right Marines, as we have, the adjustments and change happen. It is ideal if the entire institution can react in a similar fashion.
The last 20 years have highlighted the right examples in adjustment from the fireteam to Quantico. It has also revealed some sad failures when the clear needs on the battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan were not acknowledged thousands of miles away. The MRAP would be a worthy lessons learned subject.
Looking at the modern battle space, the Marines that would/will be tasked with fighting in a conflict similar to the current conflict in Ukraine examined what they would need and how they would employ that which was needed. Ad hoc, on the run. They understood what General William DePuy preached circa 1973-1977 based on his own combat experiences and some deep thinking. "If you can be seen, you will be hit, if you are hit you will be killed." While to some degree his postulation was generated by a large Soviet Warsaw Pact armor and Mechanized infantry scenario, it applied to all elements of a combat force. It was discussed and disseminated at TBS and at IOC circa 1978. Clearly while the weapons have changed in speed and lethality and the new innovations keep coming, nothing much has changed. But heartening to see the that the young minds are aggressively at work doing work arounds of a self inflected wound. Bravo to the young deep thinkers on active and otherwise duty.