Drone Swarms to Storm Beaches: Marine General

The Marine Corps wants to deploy swarms of drones ahead of troops during amphibious operations in coming years.

The concept, incorporating Low-Cost UAV Swarming Technology, or LOCUST, developed by the Office of Naval Research, would bring a flotilla of weapons, including underwater drones, unmanned surface vessels and underwater mine countermeasures.

Lt. Gen. Robert Walsh, the service's commanding general for combat development, on Tuesday detailed the plan, with hopes it would not only slow down the enemy but save Marines' lives.

"Today, we see this manned-unmanned airlift, what we see what the other services are doing, along with our partners in the United States Navy. Whether it's on the surface, under the surface or in the air, we're looking for the opportunity for, 'How will Marines move ashore differently in the future?' " Walsh told a crowd at the Unmanned Systems Defense Conference outside Washington, D.C., hosted by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International.

"Instead of Marines being the first wave in, it'll be unmanned robotics … sensing, locating and maybe killing out front of those Marines," he said. "We see that 'swarm-type' technology as exactly the type of thing -- it will lower cost, dominate the battlespace, leverage capabilities … and be able to complicate the problems for the enemy."

Walsh said incorporating unmanned systems within the multi-domain battlespace -- in the air, on land, at sea, in space and cyberspace -- would be "completely different, certainly than what we've done in the last 15 years in Iraq and Afghanistan."

The Pentagon has recently been touting more technologies for multi-domain battle.

Walsh, like many officials across the Defense Department, emphasized that multi-domain battle is how future wars will evolve -- through electronic warfare, cyberattacks and drones. And he said adapting to these concepts is a must in order to match near-peer adversaries.  

Marines, for example, are likely to first see the use of drones within the infantry corps.

Commandant Gen. Robert Neller last month said he wants every Marine grunt squad downrange to carry an unmanned aerial vehicle for reconnaissance and surveillance by the end of 2017.

"At the end of next year, my goal is that every deployed Marine infantry squad had got their own quadcopter," Neller said. "They're like 1,000 bucks," he said last month during the Modern Day Marine Expo in Quantico, Virginia.

Walsh on Tuesday accelerated that premise. During a talk with reporters, he said he had been ordered to equip four battalions with small UAS as an experimental measure before the end of the year, but did not specify the system.  

From previous experimentation, Walsh said, "Having a small UAS -- quadcopter-like UAS -- that was an easy one. We're going to do that. We probably want those across the entire force, but what we want to do, as we see this technology change so rapidly, we're going to first buy four battalions' worth, and see how that operates."