MARINE CORPS BASE QUANTICO, Va. —
Marine Corps Systems Command plans to implement a new form of technology that allows the Marine Air-Ground Task Force to identify enemy activity.
The technology employs a vehicle-borne tool that enables Marines to discern what happens inside the electromagnetic spectrum. It connects several independent electronic capabilities into a single unit and allows Marines to manage threats and reactions from a central location.
“Marines are going to be able to make decisions on what they are seeing,” said Lt. Col. Thomas Dono, a team lead in MCSC’s Command Elements Systems.
Marines currently use systems to counter IEDs that block signals used by adversaries to remotely detonate explosive devices. The new technology is a man-packable and vehicle-mounted system, which will be able to be deployed on any Marine vehicle.
“This emergent technology combines a number of current capabilities into one system, thereby reducing the need for additional training and logistic support to manage multiple systems,” said Col. Dave Burton, program manager for Intelligence Systems at MCSC.
Once fielded, the system will enhance situational awareness on the battlefield.
“We will be able to do all of the functions of similar systems as well as sense and then display what is going on in the electronic spectrum,” said Dono. “Then we can communicate that to Marines for their decision-making process.”
MCSC is taking an evolutionary approach that allows the command to field the equipment faster and then gradually improve the capability as time progresses, Dono said. As the technology evolves, the Marine Corps can make incremental improvements as needed.
The Corps will work with Marines to test a variety of displays that track the electromagnetic spectrum, looking into each display’s user interface. The command can then determine if improvements must be made to ensure usability.
“It’s similar to what Apple does with the iPhone,” explained Dono. “They have many different displays and they want to make it natural and intuitive, so it’s not something that’s clunky, confusing and has to be learned.”
MCSC plans to field the vehicle-mounted system around the first quarter of 2020. When implemented, the equipment will continue to grow in capability to better prepare Marines to take on the digital battlefield.
“This system is important because it is going to allow Marines to operate inside the electromagnetic spectrum, make decisions and act upon that information,” said Dono. “That’s something they’ve never had to consider or think about in the past.”
By Matt Gonzales, MCSC Office of Public Affairs and Communication | Marine Corps Systems Command
References were Battlefield and then sometime later, Battle-scape. Now, it’s truly a Battle-sphere… The Bad-guys are still outnumbered and outgunned but now they’re completely out-comm’d – utterly enveloped and completely dominated. Way to go USMC!!!
“overmatch” was already taken by the US Army. 😉
We have decided your brain cancer is not service related.
Discern?
Evolutionary?
Intuitive?
There needs to be an intervention with the Corps PAO staff around the buzz word-laden press releases they put out. The template the E-3 writers are using must have have a section that says “insert inane, hip-sounding nonsense here to reach out to the Generation Z demographic.” Most O-5 and 6’s, even in acquisitions, do not spout this level of nonsense. Every one of these Corps releases is more embarrassing than the last.
Instead of popping open a thesaurus, how about doubling down on candor, such as “even in this time of historic low unemployment, we are creating a frequency analyzer that the bottom quarter of the latest recruit class can use in the dark, under hostile fire and advancing in a different direction.”
I think the larger issue is that PAOs want to discuss systems that PMs really, really don’t.
Consequently, the “releasable’ article is an informationally/editorially worthless exercise in the substitution of jargon for specifics.