Many observers had grown numb to yet another Chinese military exercise encircling Taiwan. But after two weeks, the maneuvers did not end. Instead, China quietly transformed its “exercise” into a suffocating naval blockade, sealing off all maritime routes around the island. Beijing’s timing was impeccable. Anticipated shortfalls in carrier strike group and marine expeditionary unit coverage — driven by personnel shortages, deferred ship maintenance, and overcrowded shipyards — left U.S. Indo-Pacific Command with few options to counter China’s tightening grip. Yet, just when the situation seemed irretrievable, the U.S. Marine Corps’ agile stand-in forces stationed inside the first island chain — armed with cutting-edge intelligent robotics and autonomous systems — gave the joint force commander an opening to reclaim momentum. Had some folks in Washington had their way just a couple years earlier, these marines might not have been there at all.
To address the challenges of the modern battlefield and fulfill its expeditionary force in readiness mandate, the Marine Corps should avoid the false choice of balancing readiness with modernization. Resourcing changes that attempt to balance near-term readiness with future capability modernization introduces an unhelpful dichotomy by limiting how the Marine Corps views such tradeoffs. Technology is accelerating at a blistering pace where yesterday’s modernization equates to today’s readiness. The Marine Corps should therefore seize the opportunity to posture itself to lead the secretary of defense’s initiative for prioritizing robotics and autonomous systems such as combat collaborative aircraft and one-way attack drones.
The Marine Corps stands at a critical crossroads, where its ability to adapt quickly to advanced threats will define its future relevance as America’s premier crisis-response force. Facing an increasingly aggressive China and Russia, the Marine Corps should see modernization as readiness by prioritizing autonomous and unmanned systems that can reduce risk and enhance marines’ ability to fight to meet these threats head-on. However, bureaucratic inertia and outdated acquisition processes threaten to undermine rapid progress, putting the service at a strategic disadvantage in a fast-evolving battlefield. Marine Corps readiness and modernization efforts are a high-stakes race to outpace adversaries, necessitating bold congressional support and a willingness to take on calculated risks. If the Marine Corps fails to overcome these barriers by placing itself on the horns of its own self-made dilemma, it risks being relegated to obsolescence and unable to fulfill its mission to protect and deter on a global scale.
Autonomy in Software and Hardware Makes Readiness Possible
It is clear that intelligent systems are changing how militaries fight across the spectrum of conflict. Advances in artificial intelligence, sensors, and autonomy are making platforms smarter and more capable. Today, autonomous systems patrol areas of key maritime terrain in peace, watch and record adversarial activities in competition, and are deployed throughout the war between Russia and Ukraine, the Red Sea, and the Gaza conflict. Robots are already killing robots as unmanned systems counter other unmanned systems over the numerous engagements around the Red Sea and an all-robot assault force in Ukraine, signaling the “no blood for first contact” concept is here. Moreover, the Red Sea and Ukraine are now veritable weapons test ranges, allowing militaries to quickly improve and adjust their tactics and systems on a near daily basis.
Currently, many of the uses of intelligent systems are employed in traditional roles or as substitutes for existing capabilities in many cases. However, as these platforms advance in capability, they create new possibilities for reimagining some aspects of warfare. For instance, a fixed-wing fighter could employ a loyal wingman or collaborative combat aircraft as an intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance asset, a retransmission node, a missile delivery system, or an electronic warfare asset. It is increasingly possible that operators will pass mission-type orders to collaborative combat aircraft as natural language processing becomes more even more capable.
The use of intelligent autonomous systems moving soldiers into combat is readily becoming reality. These intelligent systems provide novel ways to fight that have yet to be explored and developed. In December 2024 alone, the Ukrainians were reported to have struck over 54,000 Russian targets with drones. These changes in how modern warfare is conducted offer compelling reasons for the Marine Corps to move out more quickly on experimentation at scale for employing such systems. Intelligent robotics and autonomous systems can greatly multiply a military’s capabilities across the competition continuum by reducing risk to human operators and accelerating task execution, while providing decisive effects. Therefore, the central idea is to have formations across the total force that can capitalize on technological advancements to grow from a platform-centric to a capability-centric approach.
Contrary to some opponents of Marine Corps force design, unmanned systems are already increasing the kinds of maneuver marines can perform. These systems reconceptualize maneuver and combined-arms warfare and truly define what readiness demands, not tomorrow, but today. For example, the Marine Corps is pursuing capabilities that will allow it to operate in multiple domains, while unmanned systems will enable maneuver by fire across these different domains. Equally important is the cost of these systems. The Neros Archer, a low-cost first-person view drone, for instance, was recently added to the Defense Innovation Unit’s Blue unmanned aerial systems list. Its cost is estimated at around $2,000 per drone with a range of approximately 20 kilometers. On the other hand, the cost of a single Hellfire is approximately $58,000 per missile with a maximum range of only half of the Neros Archer. Systems such as this increase the average Marine Corps rifle squad’s maximum effective range by more than an order of magnitude at an affordable cost. It is easy to see from the math and range alone why Ukraine is now receiving 6,000 Nero Archer systems. A Marine Corps equipped with these capabilities is a requirement for today, not for a modernized infantry squad of 2030.
The proliferation of commercial off-the-shelf technologies has not only lowered the barriers to entry in this environment, but has also democratized the equipping of modern militaries. For instance, civilians are crowd-sourcing the building of drones while average citizens become sensors within the kill chain through the use of apps on their smart phones. These changes not only complicate legal and ethical considerations of jus in bello, but they also add additional dimensions to an already confusing and chaotic battlefield. Systems such as small unmanned aircraft systems and counter-unmanned aircraft systems are no longer optional capabilities on the modern battlefield — they are critical enablers and define readiness today, not modernization tomorrow. It is more likely today that militaries will first make contact with machines on the battlefield. On the flipside, it is an open question as to whether or not autonomous systems can help incidents remain below the threshold of further conflict or add lower rungs to an escalation ladder. For instance, Iran’s attacks on Israel using hundreds of drones, missiles, and rockets were mostly intercepted. This attack, while communicating resolve and solidarity to Hamas’ efforts, may provide new ways to potential deescalate conflict without committing a significant number of boots on the ground or provide additional rungs to the ladder of conflict escalation. U.S. investments in autonomous systems technologies are now the table stakes for today’s definition of readiness.
Balancing Readiness with Modernization?
It is no mystery that flat budgets are part of the current operating environment. However, as mentioned in numerous congressional testimonies, passing a budget on time allows the Marine Corps to begin new programs that are critical to ensuring marines will have the right equipment when they need it. As those in the acquisitions community know, executing a year’s worth of new contract work in less than six months is a Herculean task without taking significant risk in the acquisitions process. Moreover, the current acquisition system already prioritizes acquisition risk over operational risk. Current incentives prioritize cost, schedule, and performance. This results in making progress extremely slow by reducing risk within the acquisitions process but delays getting the right equipment to the warfighter in the time it is needed. Rather, with the stand up of the new Marine Corps Fusion Cell, the service will look to flip this risk calculus to facilitate experimentation with platforms more quickly to allow a continuous cycle of feedback from marines on the forward edge to engineers developing the systems to help buy down risk. Envisioned warfighting approaches such as an unmanned “hellscape” will demand large numbers of attritable autonomous systems in quantities requiring changes to the defense industrial base that may take time. Therefore, the Marine Corps needs to get comfortable fighting with prototypes and the continuous process of refinement for fielding ever more capable equipment. Technology is changing too fast to purchase enormous amounts of equipment in bulk. The technology fielded today could rapidly become obsolete in a few short months. As a result, readiness is rather a continuous cycle of modernization with tight feedback loops.
The epicenters of technological development have also shifted away from the military sector, and today competitive advantage on the battlefield is generated in the commercial sector. This means that new technologies are emerging at an increasing rate and are fundamentally changing the way the Marine Corps fights, but only if the service can deliver the capability to the fleet within a relevant timeframe. How then does the service proceed when to be ready the Marine Corps should also be modernized?
It is common to speak about moving faster and accepting risk. However, accepting risk in the short term to fund modernization translates into deploying marines without the equipment they need today. Short of changing Federal Acquisition Regulations, or modifying congressional responsibility for oversight of the national budget, what are the mechanisms that would actually allow the Marine Corps to test and field advanced weapon systems to keep pace with adversaries?
The valley of death is a pejorative term for transition process that lies between research and development on one end, and acquisitions and sustainment on the other. The rapid pace of technological advancement collides with the slow, risk-averse acquisition process, creating a tectonic shift that forms a valley of death where innovative technologies struggle to transition into operational use. But this valley only exists because it is surrounded by mountains of uncertainty and peaks of risk aversion. The Marine Corps should work to flatten the entire landscape and move from concept to capability to acquisition faster than an adversary can make that capability obsolete. To do this, concepts and capabilities requirements should be informed not only by the threat and fleet needs but also by the defense innovation ecosystem, so planners can prepare for transition before capabilities are matured and ready. The Marine Corps should be agile enough to rapidly adjust from insights gained from lessons learned and fleet experimentation. Congressional assistance can mitigate the risk of losing programs to lack of budgetary consistency and programmatic defensibility by allowing the Marine Corps to remain adaptable through re-prioritizing budgets and requests for new funding. These efforts, along with the Marine Corps’ campaign of learning, should be followed by a crusade of action, otherwise the service will have lost its momentum to the bureaucratic force development process.
The Changes That Should Happen
Marine Corps modernization efforts are a centerpiece around Force Design and are arguably redefining readiness. The Marine Corps should, however, continue to modernize its thinking as well. Arguing several years ago in these same pages for redefining readiness, the chairman and the commandant observed the services are reinstating shuttered units based on a demand from the operating forces to maintain what is familiar. This is antithetical to Force Design’s purpose and avoids the difficult, but necessary, endeavor towards a more ready force. Modernization as readiness should be an unemotional endeavor of bold initiatives that accelerate the service above the point of parity with any adversary.
Recommendations from the recent reform of the Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution process offers opportunities to make the needed adjustments for prioritizing and sequencing investments accordingly. Recent congressional legislation introduced by Sen. Roger Wicker, Restoring Freedom’s Forge, provides the flexible and innovative approaches to acquisition the services need to modernize readiness. Such proposals advocate for increasing below threshold reprogramming and increase availability of operating funds that allows carryovers between fiscal years alone would go a long way for providing the kind of flexibility needed to respond to new threats and to pursue better capabilities. Additionally, the recently released Defense Innovation Board report “A Pathway to Scaling Unmanned Weapons Systems” provides recommendations that complement Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution reforms that speak mostly to the service side of the equation: get systems into the hands of warfighters quickly; pick winners and award them; streamline the doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership and education, personnel and facilities; and develop flexible funding mechanisms. Their most important recommendation is to act now. These efforts, along with prodigious technological opportunities, are cultivating the right conditions for the Marine Corps to move out, time now.
Events in the Red Sea, Ukraine, and Israel demonstrate that the Department of Defense cannot continue to use multimillion-dollar missiles to shoot down drones that are a fraction of that cost. The Marine Corps needs to change the cost ratio — and it needs to do so urgently. By reconceptualizing modernization as readiness, the Marine Corps can appropriately address modern crisis response capabilities through rapid iteration of technology cycles Therefore, investments in affordable robotics and autonomous systems will find equal use in addressing multiple enemy courses of action while helping address the current disparities in cost ratios.
Lastly, the Marine Corps should be ruthless in cutting programs that no longer provide the needed capability once thought or require significant technological maturity. The Marine Corps can learn from the U.S. Army in its own efforts to eliminate outdated requirements. The commandant of the Marine Corps stated: “There are no “untouchable” programs — each program will be assessed based on its effectiveness and applicability to the future fight.” However, this should apply to training and readiness standards that have become outmoded or reconceived differently with the application of robotic and autonomous systems. For instance, it is clear that first-person view drones are playing an outsized role on the modern battlefield. If infantry formations adopt these systems en masse, commanders will face clear tradeoffs in gaining proficiency with these advanced systems and traditional infantry tasks. Rather than making wholesale decisions for the entire infantry, commanders should be given these options as the best arbiters of these technological decisions. The recently announced Marine Corps Attack Drone Team will further provide the needed experimentation and lessons learned to advance this capability within the ranks. Therefore, the Marine Corps should position itself to quickly capitalize on these experiences before this opportunity is squandered.
Conclusion
To embark on a thousand-mile journey requires the Marines to take the first step. Force Design was that first step and is an ongoing process that has no end point. Winning the nation’s battles is not a birthright, but a legacy that marines can only preserve by out-adapting and out-innovating the adversary. Modernization as readiness is a journey that requires the Marine Corps to move out now. The service can no longer afford to move at the pace of the future years’ defense plan. The horizon for pursuing advanced technologies is moving ever closer and the Marine Corps can longer afford to innovate at the pace of money. The commandant has been clear-eyed on how the Marine Corps will be postured for near-peer conflict, crisis response, and future warfare. Service efforts to pursue high-end intelligent systems and supporting capabilities will not only make the Marine Corps more lethal but help avoid the false dilemma of modernization versus readiness.
Keenan “Smallbaux” Chirhart is the senior unmanned aerial systems capabilities integration officer and founding member of the Intelligent Robotics and Autonomous Systems Office within the Capabilities Development Directorate. He is an MQ-9A pilot and former UH-1Y weapons and tactics instructor, and holds a Bachelor of Science in Aeronautical Engineering and a Masters of Business Administration in Strategic Leadership.
Scott Humr, Ph.D. is a Marine officer. He currently serves as the deputy for the Intelligent Robotics and Autonomous Systems Office within the Capabilities Development Directorate. He is a member of the Marine Corps’ technical analyst cohort that forms the Force Design Research Group at Headquarters Marine Corps Combat Development and Integration.
The views in this article are those of the authors and not those of the U.S. Marine Corps, the Department of Defense, or any part of the U.S. government.
The authors would like to thank Col. Scott Cuomo and Noel Williams for their helpful feedback on this article.
Image: Cpl. Amelia Kang
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