U.S. Marine Corps Stands Up First-Ever Drone Attack Team: The team hopes to apply lessons learned from the war in Ukraine to hone their drone abilities by entering into inter-service and international drone competitions.
The U.S. Marines Have a Drone Attack Team: Why It Matters
The U.S. Marine Corps announced the service stood up a Marine Corps Attack Drone Team. The development acknowledges the rapid proliferation of drone technology and the outsized effect drones have had in the war in Ukraine.
“MCADT is committed to rapidly integrating armed first-person view drones into the FMF, enhancing small-unit lethality and providing organic capabilities that warfighters currently lack,” said Maj. Alejandro Tavizon, headquarters company commander at Weapons Training Battalion and officer in charge of MCADT, as cited in the announcement.
“By leveraging emerging technologies and refining drone employment tactics, we are ensuring that Marines remain agile, adaptive, and lethal in the modern battlespace.”
The drone teams will apply lessons learned from first-person view (FPV) drone combat in Ukraine and use that knowledge in competitions among services and on the international level. The Corps explained that the team’s goals are to:
-Develop and refine armed FPV drone training for Marines across the Total Force.
-Inform service-level requirements to ensure the rapid fielding of cutting-edge FPV technologies.
-Enhance individual and unit lethality through hands-on instruction during competitive training events.
A detailed breakdown of what the program hopes to achieve is available here from Marines TV.
Lessons from Ukraine
A recent report from the Royal United Service Institute sheds light on the increasing role that drones play for Ukrainian forces at the front.
That being said, tactical unmanned aerial vehicles have significant limitations.
“Between 60 and 80% of Ukrainian FPVs fail to reach their target, depending on the part of the front and the skill of the operators. Of those that do strike their targets, a majority fail to destroy the target system when striking armoured vehicles,” the report’s authors explain. However, “the success rate in wounding infantry is high.”
“Furthermore, there are long periods where either EW or the weather significantly degrades UAV operations. With FPVs that are remotely piloted by radio frequency, it is also difficult to concentrate multiple drones in time and space because they can interfere with one another’s guidance systems. Despite these limitations, tactical UAVs currently account for 60–70% of damaged and destroyed Russian systems.”
The cat-and-mouse game of innovation and countermeasures moves at incredible speed. Not only have payloads and range increased considerably since the early days of the war, but so have the electronic countermeasures that each side brings to bear against the flying quadcopters.
Some of the latest developments have seen outdoor net tunnels erected near the front to protect traffic from drones. Both sides have experimented with drones controlled not by radio signals, but by long lines of fiberoptic cable spooled out as the drone flies and becomes vulnerable to electronic countermeasures.
Indo-Pacific Limitations
While Ukraine is certainly at the forefront of drone technology, with lessons to teach about other conflicts in the future, the environment in Ukraine is fundamentally different from what the U.S. Marine Corps could expect to face during a potential fight in the Indo-Pacific.
While the front line in Ukraine stretches along clearly defined and heavily entrenched points on both sides, it is focused on a line of contact approximately 1,200 kilometers long. That environment is radically different from what a war in the Indo-Pacific would present.
Primarily an ocean environment interspersed with islands and archipelagos, the Indo-Pacific is the largest of the Pentagon’s combat commands. Thousands of kilometers of open ocean separate some of the region’s islands from each other—enormous gaps that FPV drones would be unable to bridge.
Still, in tactical situations, the value of small FPV drones is significant.
“FPV drones offer squad-level lethality up to 20 kilometers for under $5,000, compared to more expensive weapons systems with less capability,” the Marine Corps acknowledged. “This provides a cost-effective and scalable solution for modern combat.”
Hurdles and Challenges
The incredible speed with which Ukrainian forces are able to test and refine drone technology, using off-the-shelf components and with the close assistance of Ukrainian programmers and coders, is a distinct advantage and stands in stark contrast to procurement processes within the Department of Defense. By comparison, the Pentagon moves at glacial speeds.
CH-7 Drone from China. Image Credit: X Screenshot.
The protracted, years-long procurement processes that have characterized the development of the equipment now in service would not succeed in the incredibly fast prototyping environment seen in Ukraine, where prototypes can be put through their paces in real-world environments in a matter of weeks, if not days.
What Happens Next?
U.S. Marines are still likely to sail into battle on the backs of the U.S. Navy. But once ashore, the Marine Corps hopes that some of the lessons their newly created drone teams glean from practice and competitions will be applicable on the ground in the Indo-Pacific. For a USMC drone force to be successful, however, the Corps would need to break with the Department of Defense’s historically slow procurement processes and leverage mature and off-the-shelf technology.
It seems the Marine Corps knows this: In their recent drone teaming announcement, the Corps explained it would leverage both “program of record and non-program of record small UAS and FPV controlled drones,” Pentagon jargon for official sanctioned and funded equipment, as well as equipment not supplied by the Pentagon. It’s an encouraging development that will increase the Marine Corps’ lethality at range.
About the Author: Caleb Larson
Caleb Larson is an American multiformat journalist based in Berlin, Germany. His work covers the intersection of conflict and society, focusing on American foreign policy and European security. He has reported from Germany, Russia, and the United States. Most recently, he covered the war in Ukraine, reporting extensively on the war’s shifting battle lines from Donbas and writing on the war’s civilian and humanitarian toll. Previously, he worked as a Defense Reporter for POLITICO Europe. You can follow his latest work on X.
