Marine Corps News

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Every Marine A Drone Pilot: Individual Lethality To Go From Meters To Kilometers

General highlights how drones and small guided munitions are about to give each Marine exponentially more reach than the traditional rifle.
Joseph Trevithick

The increasing prevalence of weaponized drones, especially first-person-view (FPV) kamikaze types, and other man-portable precision munitions could lead to a change in the U.S. Marine Corps’ famous mantra of “every Marine a rifleman,” according to the general who oversees the training of the service’s new recruits.

Marine Lt. Gen. Benjamin Watson, who is currently head of Marine Corps Training and Education Command (TECOM), talked yesterday about how the evolving nature of modern warfare is also impacting the very core of his service’s warrior ethos. Watson’s remarks came during a panel discussion on Marine Corps modernization at the Navy League’s Sea Air Space 2025 exhibition.

“One of our mantras, kind of bumper stickers, which has real meaning for us culturally as a service, is sort of ‘every Marine [a] rifleman,’” Watson said. Now, “the idea [is] that any Marine, using a precision weapon, can kill somebody who needs killing at ranges up to 500 meters.”

“You think about that, and that’s still important, right, being able to achieve combat overmatch at that echelon,” he added. “But now, if you use technology, that same Marine can be just as lethal at ranges out to 15 to 20 kilometers and beyond.”

“And one of the initiatives we partnered on here is this Marine Corps Attack Drone Team,” the TECOM commander continued. “It started down at Quantico, with the partnership between [the] Marine Corps Warfighting Lab[oratory] and [the] Weapons Training Battalion, and they are using FPV drones, first-person-view drones. And they are paving the way for some of the policy, technology, and fiscal challenges into how we bring these in, at scale, and we turn a rifleman into somebody who cannot just kill an adversary with a precision weapon at 500 meters, but can do it out at 15 to 20 kilometers.”

TWZ

Star of recruiting ad turned Congressman

The Marine in one of the most famous recruiting commercials is now in Congress

Rep. Rich McCormick was a young lieutenant when he was cast in the Marine recruiting ad “Chess.”
Jeff Schogol

In the early 1990s, Rich McCormick was one of several hundred young Marine lieutenants at The Basic School in Quantico, Virginia, when he was interviewed to appear in a new recruiting ad.

The Marine Corps was looking for “the most steel-eyed, square-jawed Marines they could find,” joked McCormick, now a Republican member of Congress from Georgia. The commercial would also require a Marine to perform Sword Manual Procedures.

As it happened, McCormick had been a drill team commander in college, and he was ultimately cast. The commercial that McCormick was selected for was “Chess,” one of the most memorable recruiting commercials in Marine Corps history. (Perhaps only surpassed by the ‘Lava Monster.’)

“It was a great moment of pride,” McCormick told Task & Purpose. “It was something you feel like you want to tell the whole world about because it means that much to you. There’s no more pride that you can feel than representing something you hold near and dear to your very being of how you define itself.”

Task&Purpose

Guess I wasn’t the target audience. Thanks to Andy11M for the link.

Category: Marines