Every squad will get anti-drone gear, Marine Corps says

The Marines plan to equip every squad—from logistics units to reconnaissance teams deep in enemy territory—with a suite of tools to protect them from drones, a Marine officer told Defense One last week ahead of a September competition to pick gear.  

Marines deployed to the field are already set to receive some form of protection from powerful anti-air vehicles, such as the Corps’ L-MADIS and MADIS systems. 

However, those systems’ protective bubble only goes so far, said Capt. Taylor Barefoot, the Counter Unmanned Aerial Systems Capabilities Integration officer at the Marine Corps’ Capabilities Development Directorate. And Ukrainian troops have found that large, vehicle-based air-defense systems can draw enemy fire—and attract more drones than they have weapons to shoot down.

The Corps therefore wants to provide every unit with a “rudimentary, essential, self-defense capability,” Barefoot said. 

The goal of the September competition is to find squad-portable tools that identify drones within a half-mile and weapons to take down ones that weigh up to 55 pounds, Barefoot said. The price tag should be around that of the gear the Corps used to jam improvised explosive devices in Afghanistan and Iraq, he said.

One solution may be to field firearms with smart optics designed to shoot down drones, said Barefoot. The Corps and Army already field some of these systems; troops also practice shooting down drones with normal sights.  

However, Barefoot said he wants to find other solutions. As seen in many videos in Ukraine, a human’s natural reaction to a drone flying at them at 100 miles per hour is to hide, not to stand up and shoot, he said. 

“I don't want shotguns and M4 [rifles] to be the future” even if they may be a “baseline” for basic anti-drone capabilities, he said. 

Another option is low-end anti-air missiles like the Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System, Barefoot said. At under $30,000 a shot, APKWS is far less expensive than AMRAAMs or Patriots—though still far costlier than most adversary drones. The system has been used in Ukraine and, at least in tests, boasts a 100 percent success rate. 

Barefoot said that Marine squads could field a stripped-down version of APKWS by mounting a small pod to a tripod, but that would still add about an 81mm mortar’s worth of gear to a squad’s load. 

Barefoot said the Corps is also interested in establishing a multi-layered sensor network designed to identify drones before they get too close. Sensors that listen for radio communications might help, but you can’t ID the frequency-hopping drones used in Ukraine against a library of signatures. Visible-light sensors might be more useful, at least in some cases—“if you have an optic that can look at the thing and identify it, it gives you just an added layer of certainty”—but acoustic sensors may work better at night or even on cloudy days, he said.

Barefoot said the September competition is expected to attract several companies with AI-enabled cameras to test.

Ideally, data from all types of sensors—acoustic, visual, and electronic—would be merged and displayed via the Tactical Android Kit, he said. The TAK is open-source software used in the military to visualize a battlefield and share information. 

The Corps is also hoping to solve the problem of identifying friendly and enemy drones, said Barefoot. The problem has similarly plagued Ukrainian forces, who routinely shoot down their own drones. 

Emitters can be placed on drones to help with IFF, but the devices tend to make drones large to be easily portable by a reconnaissance unit, Barefoot said. 

Units could coordinate with air control stations to identify their drones, but a unit under attack by speedy loitering munitions may not have time. 

“That is zero decision space,” he said. 

Barefoot said artificial intelligence may have a place in counter-drone work. For example, an AI-enabled sensors could help units more quickly identify if they’ve spotted an enemy UAV or just a bird. 

AI could also direct 30mm cannons at drone swarms, he added. 

“I want to be able to take a block of [electronic emission] tracks off of a sensor screen, and—just like you would select multiple icons on your desktop—just drag and drop across [the drones], and then tell the computer to kill everything in this box,” he said. “The interface is there, all of the components to make that happen are there, I just need the AI to come in and drive the bus.” 

Following the trials, the Corps hopes to field some systems to a Marine Air-Ground Task Force, likely in the Pacific, sometime in the next 12 months, he said.