Speaking at an event hosted by the Association of the United States Army on Tuesday, Gen. Randy George touted the M1E3, which last week made its debut as a pre-prototype at the Detroit Auto Show.

“Obviously, not as fast as the Chevy ZR1,” George said, referring to the flashy Corvette also on display at the show. “But this is a tank that can also hit a target. So it won’t meet that quarter-mile speed, but I know it can hit a target in a tenth of a second at a quarter mile.

The M1E3 is reaching prototype stage six years early, George said, adding that new features are also coming to light.

The “Formula One cockpit” contains a driver interface that “looks like an X-Box controller,” George said, referring to the control device made by Fanatec – a company that designs F1 simulator controls and many popular video game cockpits.

“It’s modular, so it can be updated,” George added.

He also touted the engine made by Caterpillar, transmission made by Michigan-based company SAPA and software through “a bunch of tech companies” enlisted to increase the tank’s awareness and effectiveness.

In a release published from the show, Army officials revealed that the M1E3 would feature GenAI among “a suite of AI-powered digital engineering tools” to help integrate other technologies more quickly and keep it up to date in a perpetually changing modern battlefield.

Unlike the current Abrams, which has a four-person crew including a loader, the M1E3 will have a crew of three and an autoloader, which will help the notoriously heavy Abrams get 25% lighter.

“We’re very excited to get that out — and again, that’s the way of the future here. Nothing should take us five to seven years to produce,” George said. “And when we get an upgrade just like we have with the [infantry fighting vehicles], it should come naturally. We’ve had upgraded engines and upgraded transmissions, and we should expect that. And I know our soldiers expect that with the equipment that’s coming to them.”

While many details are still unknown, officials have also cited advanced protection that accounts for contemporary threats including enemy drones and long-range weapons.

Michigan-based news site MLive reported that the turret on display in Detroit was remote, and featured a 120mm smoothbore main cannon — like the current M1A2 — as well as a Mk. 19 40mm grenade launcher and Javelin missile launcher.

“The crew compartment … it’s going to look a lot like a race car,” Brig. Gen. Troy Denomy, program executive officer for PEO Soldier, told the outlet.

Another new feature for the next-gen tank is a hybrid-electric drivetrain that will reportedly make the vehicle 50% more fuel efficient.

“The M1E3 Abrams represents a bold step forward in modern vehicle design, combining advanced protection, reduced weight and a smaller logistical footprint to meet the challenges of tomorrow’s battlefield,” Michelle Link, the deputy capability program executive, Ground-Combat Platforms, said in a statement.

While the M1E3 was originally slated to reach initial operational capability in 2030, officials said late last year that the first prototypes would be inside active Army formations sometime in 2026.

For George, the new tank program represents a new way of doing business in acquisition that evaluates tradeoffs and doesn’t get bogged down in developing a perfect solution. He described efforts to put more acquisition and contracting functions under a single individual, citing Maj. Gen. Frank Lozano, program executive officer for Missiles and Space, as an example.

“I think trades are critically important,” George said. “We may say, hey, it needs to go 100 miles an hour. It needs to do a certain number of things. … Frank can come back to us and basically say, ‘Hey, for 30% less cost, it can go 90 miles an hour, and you can have it in six months, or you can wait to do those things.’ And I think these are important things that were trades that we have not considered and that we need to, moving forward.”

That’s the vision behind the Expeditionary Precision Approach Landing Capability (EPALC) it’s looking to acquire. In a new request for information published Monday, Naval Air Systems Command is asking industry for details about available flight line navigation systems that would allow the Corps to land any of its aircraft, manned or unmanned, in all weather conditions.

According to the solicitation, the navigation system must fit inside an MV-22, CH-53, or C-130 transport and take a four-person team no more than 90 minutes to set up. It has to be able to provide precision approach guidance to aircraft during bad weather that limits visibility to half a mile, and have an operating range of 20 nautical miles. The gear has to be rugged, according to specifications, with “environmentally hardened” features capable of operating in temperatures ranging from -20 to 145 degrees Fahrenheit and at humidity levels of 85%.

The requirements all align with Marine Corps “Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations,” a forward-looking operating concept the Corps has developed over the last decade that emphasizes dispersed operations with self-sufficient small units in the littorals, or coastal regions.

EABO “involves the employment of mobile, low-signature, operationally relevant, and relatively easy to maintain and sustain naval expeditionary forces from a series of austere, temporary locations ashore or inshore within a contested or potentially contested maritime area in order to conduct sea denial, support sea control, or enable fleet sustainment,” according to a description published by the service in 2021.

The idea of operating in contested areas also informs security requirements, which include a friend-or-foe identification system, resistance to jamming or spoofing, and the ability to operate silently and with minimal detectable signature.

The new capability described in the RFI parallels the ship-based Joint Precision Approach and Landing (JPALS) system that has revolutionized aircraft carrier landings by providing GPS-based guidance in to the flight deck, taking much of the guesswork (and terror) out of catching the wire, particularly at night or in low-visibility weather conditions.

That’s no coincidence. JPALS is made by RTX-owned Collins Aerospace, which also has developed the land-based expeditionary Joint Precision Approach Landing System (eJPALS), built for rapid deployment and “full functionality within just 90 minutes,” according to the company.

Collins’ “land-based eJPALS and ship-based JPALS systems complement each other seamlessly, working in conjunction with the JPALS airborne software and providing pilots with familiar instrumentation,” an eJPALS fact sheet states. It adds that the system can come with an optional surveillance feature to support air traffic control.

The Marine Corps has already had an opportunity to test out a version of eJPALS. In 2021, the system was quietly shipped to Marine Corps Air Station Yuma, Arizona, for a three-week demo involving 50 landings, including the vertical approaches performed by the service’s F-35B Joint Strike Fighters, according to a report from Breaking Defense.

An executive told the outlet at the time that the Marine Corps was “looking at ways of incorporating [eJPALS] into the next budget request.”

The company has also pitched eJPALS to the U.S Air Force.

The new RFI, which will “allow NAVAIR to conduct and identify possible sources in the commercial marketplace capable of providing Expeditionary Precision Approach Landing Capability,” according to the solicitation, represents an early step toward actually investing and fielding the technology. Interested companies have until Jan. 16 to respond with descriptions of tech that matches NAVAIR’s requirements.

Aviation officials say, however, that they hope to reach that target without forcing many troops out of the service.

Maj. Gen. Clair Gill, commander of the Army Aviation Center of Excellence and Fort Rucker, Alabama, told reporters at the Association of the United States Army’s annual meeting that talent panels recently launched are intended to keep decision-making power with the soldiers and would not immediately lead to involuntary transfers or reductions.

“We went out to the formations and asked commanders to counsel every single soldier that was in the targeted population [where] we are over strength, and talk to them about where they are, what their goals are, what they want to do in the Army, if this is what they want to do, and if they’re looking for other things,” Gill said. “And then they created an order-of-merit list for their formations and sent that to us.”

That list would be evaluated by a panel that would assess all the soldiers’ records and organize them into top, middle, and bottom thirds, he said.

“We’re going to give that back to those commanders and say, ‘Here’s where your folks fell out. We want you to counsel them and talk to them about options,’” Gill said.

“Right now, they’ll use that as a tool to say, ‘Hey, if you’re in the bottom third, you’re in the at risk population. You might want to think about options available to you, and here’s what they look like.’”

Those affected by the talent panels include junior officers in year groups 2020 to 2023 and untracked warrant officers in year groups 2022 to 2024. The cuts reflect the rise of unmanned aviation and Army force restructuring that will see the elimination of cavalry squadrons within the continental U.S.

Between voluntary transfers within the Army, to other services, or out of the service, Gill said he hopes the Army can avoid mandatory eliminations. If the service does need to use involuntary cuts, he said, he doesn’t expect them to happen for at least a year – one to two manning cycles. Officials have previously said that the aviation reduction they hope to achieve will be complete by fiscal 2027.

Targeted force reduction goals by year group are “in the dozens,” Gill said, and the Army is taking other steps to realign soldiers. For the cavalry squadrons undergoing divestment, Army leaders are planning to overstaff attack battalions to the maximum allowable level – with that cap still to be determined by leadership, he said.

“We may have had units that were manned at 70-80% – now we’ll have units that are manned over 100%, so there’s some goodness there,” Gill said. The overstaffing, he said, would allow for additional maintenance and readiness for AH-64 Apache squadrons.

“Bottom line, the Army has a structure for all these people. So if we can align them with something that they’re interested in, now they’re going to have to compete, right? So they’re going to compete with everybody else that wants to go do that job,” he said. “But if they compete favorably in another organization, then I think we’re going to get down to where we’re really having hard conversations with very few people.”

While soldiers facing talent panels are being asked about future career preferences, Gill said they will be pushed to consider careers in the unmanned space, where the Army is continuing to build capability. For example, he said, Apache mechanics with military occupational specialty 15X would be a good fit for the 15W enlisted tactical unmanned aircraft systems operator.

“So yes, initially, we want to solve our own challenges, and then we want to proliferate talent around the Army, where there’s a need and they want to serve,” Gill said.

Officials, including Sergeant Major of the Army Michael Weimer, addressed questions about the pilot program, announced at the end of September, at the Association of the United States Army’s annual meeting Monday.

They didn’t rule out possible alcohol sales at some locations and would not address whether soldiers could be asked to add a tip to a government-provided meal.

Weimer stressed that the dining pilot, designed to give soldiers more options and better meet their dining habits and needs while emphasizing nutritious choices, furthers the Army’s goals of lethality and readiness.

“We’ve got to feed the machine … we’ve got to feed them in the field; we’ve got to feed them at home station,” Weimer said.

“And just like everything else we do in holistic health and fitness, nutrition is a huge part of that. Everything we put in our body is either going to help us seek peak performance or hurt us from accomplishing that goal.”

Language in a 134-page January request for proposals raised concerns about limited accountability, undefined terms such as “fresh” and “high-quality” related to food, and opportunities contractors might find to upcharge soldiers at mealtime and split the profits with the Army. The service published a statement in June pushing back on a Military.com report questioning the language, emphasizing that the pilot dining sites were supplementary to existing Army dining facilities, that alcohol sales would be evaluated as to whether they aligned with the goals of the pilot, and that soldiers would only be charged for items beyond the “essential station messing” provided meal.

In response to questions about alcohol sales, Col. Craig Thompson, deputy chief of staff for logistics, facilities and environment at Army Materiel Command, acknowledged the issue was still on the table. Moreover, he stressed the Army’s definition of these new dining sites as morale, welfare and recreation – MWR – restaurants, rather than service dining facilities.

“Just like any other MWR restaurant in any installation, it is the senior commander’s decision on how that’s utilized, whether it’s allowed or whether it’s limited,” Thompson said.

The panel twice would not acknowledge questions about whether a point-of-sale tip might be solicited, as contracting documents refer to tipped workers. But Cindy Smith, director of Supply Policy and Programs, said while the question was under the purview of AMC, it wasn’t part of the Army’s intent.

“If there were pressure for soldiers to tip … we would address that,” she said because the Army would not want soldiers, “especially your meal card soldier, who’s not paying money at that point to eat” to feel obliged to tip.

While the first of the five campus-style dining facilities, the one at Fort Bragg, N.C., is not set to open until January, the Army is already evaluating opening 10 more facilities over the next 12 to 18 months, including one or two locations overseas.

Feedback from a separate two-week pilot at Fort Hood, Texas, in August, in which soldiers were able to use their meal card allowance for preset meals at base restaurants showed “lots of success,” Thompson said with 70% of the 217 soldiers in the pilot choosing meals deemed “green,” or healthy. Soldier feedback will also be emphasized in the campus pilot, according to Maj. Gen. Gavin Lawrence, deputy chief of staff for logistics and operations at AMC, with soldiers able to access an evaluation form via QR code as they enter the facility.

Weimer said the Army continued to learn lessons about privatization from its quarter-century private housing venture, which in recent years has come under scrutiny as reporting has revealed systemic problems with black mold and vermin.

“We’re looking for honest feedback from the soldiers at those five locations, and then the contract oversight we’re going to be responsible for holding them accountable,” Weimer said. “In our history … when, let’s say, we have catastrophic success, and then we scale the contract, and then we’re not paying attention as much as we were in the past. That’s where we as an Army have to get better with holding folks accountable.”

Using open-source analysis and commentary, a team of volunteers led by a retired lieutenant colonel got to work answering this question.

Two documents emerged out of this informal Marine effort.

One was a detailed 126-page handbook that described a series of scenarios and explained how existing Marine doctrine would apply to such a fight.

The handbook covered everything from how a company leader should write an order — one page, handwritten, no imagery — to drone use, and how each drone would support one unit, with leaders tasking drones in the company order.

It also candidly acknowledged gaps in official Marine Corps guidance on how to hide from enemy drones, how to use anti-tank missiles alongside drones to hunt and destroy the enemy and how to move under artillery fire.

The second document was a brief summary of 10 “lessons for leaders” about fighting on a battlefield like Ukraine.

That five-pager specified what Marine ground forces would need to win in these conditions: drones in every unit and echelon, anti-drone electronic warfare jammers, and, counter to the Corps’ recent decisions on the future shape of the force, a reliance on tanks.

“The tank is not dead, as many have predicted,” the authors wrote, citing Ukraine’s employment of armored vehicles and its desire for more to stand off Russia’s mechanized units.

These documents were combined and published in June on 2ndBn5thMar.com, a website that takes its name from a Camp Pendleton, California, infantry unit, but is unaffiliated with the Corps.

It’s run by Brendan McBreen, who retired as a lieutenant colonel in 2011 and is now a faculty member at Marine Corps Intelligence Schools in Dam Neck, Va.

The site dates to 1998, when McBreen, then attached to 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines, was tasked with distributing standard operating procedures being developed to fight and train. When a sergeant suggested posting the document to the “World Wide Web,” McBreen took it upon himself to create a place to host it.

“I didn’t do anything for a couple of years,” McBreen said. “And my wife said, ‘Hey, we’re still paying $9.95 a month to this web hosting company. And so I got on – you know, once every six months, I would look and see how it’s doing. And there were thousands of downloads.”

For those concerned about operational security, McBreen said all material discussed on his site is based on open-source information and doesn’t cover anything classified.

As McBreen’s career progressed, the site traveled with him. From time to time, fellow infantry Marine officers would reach out to share their own best practices for specific tasks, such as 81mm mortar employment.

While official Marine Corps doctrine provided general guidance, McBreen said he noticed a lack of unit-level practices and procedures, creating space for this crowd-sourced infantry network to fill in the gaps.

“Some of it was good,” McBreen said of the informal input he received. “Some of it was average, but all of it was shareable.”

The emergence of drones as a battlefield factor in recent years has created new demand for guidance on how to integrate the technology into the fight and defend against it. In 2020, Marine Capt. Walker Mills co-authored a paper on how units could camouflage themselves to evade aerial surveillance and published it on McBreen’s website.

Now a drone officer, Mills contributed to portions of the new Ukraine documents dealing with drone warfare that were published on 2ndBn5thMar.com.

“The doctrine always lags somewhat,” Mills told Marine Corps Times. “Our standard infantry company and platoon publications are several years old, maybe even a decade old. So, they don’t talk a ton about small tactical [drones].”

McBreen said he’s occasionally noticed spikes in the site’s popularity over the years, notably around 2005 when he published “Night Warrior,” a training guide for nighttime combat. Most of the time, he said, he can’t tell what’s driving a new surge in traffic.

“The tracking stuff would show jiggle, jiggle, jiggle, jiggle, and then a big spike,” he said, “And you could also tell, although I never knew the origin, that some instructor said at some school, ‘Hey, students, you ought to look at this document.’”

Maj. Zachary Schwartz, who recently served as the operations officer for 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines out of Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms, California, and is now enrolled in Marine Corps Command and Staff college, said he’s used the site for guidance as an infantry leader at various levels.

While a 1st lieutenant serving as a team leader, Schwartz recalled benefitting from an article about condensing traditional Marine Corps five-paragraph orders into concise verbal instructions.

He’s also employed the practical guidance within the camouflage manual to teach signature management and deception: simple things like habitually using leaves and brush to hide the shape of a helmet. Schwartz was also a contributor to the recently published Ukraine document.

It’s hard to know the exact reach of McBreen’s website, which has typically been shared via word of mouth.

“I would say the infantry community embraces what Brendan McBreen has done,” Schwartz said. “The real pros in our community all know this website. They all know the resources on it, and they all pass it around.”

Though the documents contain candid analysis that sometimes challenges conventional Marine Corps perspectives — such as calling for tanks even as the Corps has divested itself of them to fight lighter — the site’s supporters feel that such informal discussions are what leaders want of their Marines.

“I feel like you hear a lot of leaders say, hey, professional discussion is part of being in the Marine Corps,” Mills said. “You know, leave things better than you found them.”

When McBreen published the Ukraine handbook in June, he got an immediate indicator that the document was popular when a notice from the website hosting service warned that downloads had exceeded the site’s capacity and 2ndBn5thMar.com was in danger of crashing.

“OK,” McBreen recalled saying. “I’ll give you four more dollars a month, or whatever you need.”

The Marine Corps has brought in more than 101% of its recruiting target for the year to date, up from 100% this time in 2023, and officials anticipate meeting annual recruiting goals once again.

The Navy, on the other hand, already is expecting to fall short of its target for a second consecutive year.

That’s according to military officials who testified before the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services during the committee’s quarterly meeting on June 25 in Arlington, Virginia.

The Air Force and the Army, which have struggled in the past two years to meet recruiting goals, have indicated they’re on track to make mission.

While well-documented challenges remain, including lower propensity to serve, fewer qualified young people and a recently implemented health records system that has ramped up denials and delays, the services reported improvements in recruiting performance from 2023′s numbers as they work to adapt to new realities.

The Marine Corps already has brought in 12,924 contracts, above its year-to-date goal of 12,751, according to documents presented by Sgt. Maj. Allen Goodyear, the senior enlisted adviser for Marine Corps Recruiting Command.

This time in 2023, it was roughly even with its goal, having brought in 14,632 contracts in line with a goal of 14,632. The service finished fiscal 2023 with 33,223 enlisted accessions ― 21 contracts above its mission.

The Corps’ projected ability to meet or outpace its goal once again “is a result of planning factors allowing for a preponderance of accessions to occur during the summer shipping period which historically has higher quality recruits and mission success,” according to slides Goodyear shared with the committee.

The Navy, which has a higher enlisted accessions goal in 2024 than in 2023, also is making healthy progress.

The service has brought in 30,067 contracts of the 40,600 enlisted contracts it needs in 2024, or 74% of the total, according to data shared by the service’s chief recruiter, Master Chief Gerald Allchin.

This time in 2023 it had just secured 25,039 contracts of the 37,700 contracts it needed, or 66%, according to data shared at the meeting. The service ultimately missed its goal by 7,450 contracts.

The 5,000-person year-over-year increase puts the Navy in a more bullish position than it was in even earlier this spring, when Defense Department numbers showed it lagging behind the other services for the first half of the year.

Nonetheless, the Navy still projects it won’t be enough to meet this year’s goal.

“We are seeing significant increases year over year as you saw,” Allchin said. “Right now, we’re projecting a miss of around 4,200 for our active enlisted mission of about 40,600.”

The Air Force appears on pace to make its goal, with 19,321 enlisted accessions putting it just above the year-to-date goal of 19,262.

The Air Force Reserve also is on track to hit its target, said Chief Master Sgt. W. Frank Rawls, the Recruiting Service’s operations superintendent.

The service missed its accessions goal by 10% in 2023 in the first such shortfall since 1999.

Rawls credits the service’s 2024 success in part to a $100 million congressional plus-up in recruitment budgeting.

“And we seek to continue the momentum,” Rawls said, citing plans to increase enlistment bonuses and add nearly 200 more recruiters.

The Air Force, he said, also has requested $52 million in marketing funds for lead generation and outreach.

The Army, which in response to two years of missed accessions goals has overhauled its recruiting enterprise and slimmed down its targets, is nonetheless up year-over-year in raw numbers.

As of the end of April the Army had brought in 24,038 total new contracts, or 43.7%, of its goal of 55,000, according to Sgt. Maj. Danny Basham, the service’s sergeant major for analytics and production. In the same time in 2023 it had secured just 21,917 contracts, or 33.7%, of that year’s goal of 65,000.

“So production is increasing, and we’re figuring out the process,” Basham said.

While the most recent numbers show substantial ground that still needs to be made up, Basham maintained the service could meet this year’s lowered target.

“Our projections are showing that we will make our enlistment mission with a level of depth for the next fiscal year,” he said.

Even services with consistent recruiting performance like the Marine Corps, however, cited the difficulty of overcoming new challenges posed by MHS Genesis, the military’s new electronic health record.

The system’s seven-year rollout was completed in March. Because the system meticulously documents military applicants’ medical histories, it has necessitated a massive increase in waiver requests for conditions that otherwise might have gone unmentioned or ignored by recruiters.

Before the health system rollout, Goodyear said, getting 100 new Marine Corps contracts took 154 applicants; now it takes 181 applicants.

The number of medical waivers being submitted for applicants has more than doubled, creating processing delays.

The average time in military entry processing for recruits has increased from 10 days to 35 days, he said. And that means less time in the delayed entry program, where recruits get physical training and preparation ahead of shipping to boot camp.

With an average of 120 days in the delayed entry program compared with 162 days before MHS Genesis, the boot camp dropout rate has increased, he said, from 11% to 12%.

Other military representatives at the meeting, who were asked to present data about the impact of MHS Genesis, offered similar perspectives, even as they said they’re learning to work with the system and implementing staffing changes and policy updates designed to cut down on unnecessary delays and improve throughput.

Rawls emphasized that delays in initial processing can cause prospective recruits to second-guess their desire to serve. Amid ramped-up efforts to make recruiting mission in the Air Force, he said, service officials estimate between 3,000 would-be recruits and 4,000 would-be recruits in 2023 simply walked away from service amid long medical processing wait times.

Goodyear cited a similar effect.

“When delays and initial disqualifications occur, young Americans who want to serve are faced with uncertainty about their future,” Goodyear said. “Often, extended delays require these individuals to pursue a different career path based on the financial realities of life.”

Now, the Corps is investing millions in a developmental “flying ferry” that purports to solve the same problem.

The Marine Corps Warfighting Lab has signed a nearly $5 million contract to test out hydrofoiling seagliders, which may provide an innovative solution for medical evacuation and resupply in littoral regions.

The contract is with Rhode Island-based Regent, a three-year-old company developing all-electric gliders for defense and commercial use. The company announced in November 2022 it had assembled a defense advisory board of retired general and flag officers, notably including Gen. Robert Neller, the 37th commandant of the Marine Corps.

These seagliders, still in development, represent a boat-aircraft hybrid that has no direct parallel in the commercial or military world. A hydrofoiling base, or small platform that touches the water, allows the body of the glider to stay “airborne” while in motion a short distance above the water’s surface, though not actually in flight. Regent says it has sold 467 of the craft so far to commercial aviation and ferry customers around the world, and has an order backlog totaling nearly $8 billion.

Regent’s current seaglider model ― and the one the Warfighting Lab would be assessing ― is the 12-passenger Viceroy.

The glider can travel up to 180 miles on a single charge, but the company is working to stretch that range outward as battery technology improves, Bill Thalheimer, co-founder and CEO of Regent, told Marine Corps Times in an interview. He theorizes the range could reach 500 miles by the end of the decade.

In light of that expected trajectory, Thalheimer said, the military use case for the gliders in maritime regions like the Indo-Pacific became clear. The novelty of the platform also lends itself to experimentation by entities like the Warfighting Lab.

The Viceroy seaglider initially will be comparable in cost to a small aircraft such as a Cessna Grand Caravan or DHC-6 Twin Otter, he said, although the company expects the cost to come down as more enter production. Those planes cost between $2 and $4 million new.

The yet-to-be-completed fully operational prototype will weigh 15,000 pounds, handle a payload of 3,500 pounds and have a 65-foot wingspan.

Thalheimer said the glider could fill a known gap in the Marines’ high-speed logistics mission in the Pacific while freeing up helicopters and other longer-range assets for different tasks.

The range of Marine Corps experimentation efforts with light and low-cost platforms that can cover coastal distances fast ― perhaps spanning the distance between an expeditionary advanced base in the littorals and a better-equipped medical center in time to provide care to a wounded Marine within the critical Golden Hour ― speaks to the difficulty of the problem. Former Commandant Gen. David Berger said earlier this year that logistics represents the Corps’ greatest current challenge.

The seagliders “address a recognized gap within the U.S. Department of Defense for high-speed, low-cost, low-signature, runway-independent mobility in the littorals and fulfill a range of mission sets including troop and cargo transport, expeditionary advanced base operations, and communications,” Regent said in a released statement.

The news of the new glider development contract coincides with the publication of an article by Marine Corps Capt. Trevor Shimulunas arguing for a similar concept: unmanned, single-use aerial gliders for small unit logistics.

“Glider systems decrease the risk of detection by enemy forces,” Shimulunas writes for U.S. Naval Institute Magazine Proceedings. “Released at a significant standoff distance from the supported unit, gliders could eliminate the risk of audible detection, and their small size and color scheme would decrease risk of visual detection.”

Notably, the kinds of unmanned gliders Shimulunas describes are smaller and less expensive than Regent’s model, and would only carry cargo, not passengers.

The Warfighting Lab, Thalheimer said, will be conducting three separate demonstrations as part of the agreement with Regent: a float demo, a hydrofoil demo and a flight demo.

These initial “barebones” demonstrations, he said, will prove out the aircraft’s abilities to operate through its full operating envelope.

According to Regent’s announcement about the Marine Corps contract, the demonstration period will culminate “in a live technical demonstration of the full-scale prototype during a large-scale exercise hosted by the U.S. Government.” Thalheimer did not provide additional details about this planned exercise, saying those conversations are just beginning. The Marine Corps is not purchasing any seagliders in the contract, he said. The Corps’ investment, he added, will allow for maturation of the technology and validation of the concept. Thalheimer added the company was also pursuing conversations with the Coast Guard, which may have a use for seagliders for maritime patrol.

Marine Corps officials did not immediately respond to an inquiry about Regent and its plans to demonstrate the glider.

In addition to logistics and medevac between and around expeditionary forward bases in the littorals, Thalheimer said the Viceroy could serve as an intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance platform or an ad hoc communications network when equipped with the right payload.

“They’re essentially aircraft with unlimited loiter time, because they can land and take off in the water,” he said.

In a statement, Neller highlighted this intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance use case, saying speed and signature management in the littorals was critical.

“REGENT seagliders provide the ability to distribute multiple capabilities in the littorals, including logistics, command and control, and ISR,” he said. “The REGENT seaglider capabilities will create success.”

While the prospect of a manned seaglider without armament or built-in defenses operating in a potentially contested future littoral environment might give many pause, Thalheimer said the company is addressing that concern.

Regent expects to develop a future unmanned and autonomous version of the glider soon, he said, adding that its current control system already is highly automated and adaptation will be made easier due to the simplicity of conducting testing over water rather than in trafficked areas.

The currently planned manned version, though, offers certain advantages over traditional aircraft, Thalheimer said. The complexity of training pilots to fly the glider is much less than with a conventional military aircraft, meaning requirements can be lessened and training length shortened, he said.

“These can be enlisted service men and women who are at the helm of this, driving it like a boat with essentially all the capabilities of an aircraft,” he said.

Now, though, Marine leaders want to bring all of the service’s unmanned systems efforts under one roof in hopes of developing sustainable career pipelines and catching up to the sprint pace of technology development.

The service’s new catch-all term for the technology, “intelligent robotics and autonomous systems,” or IRAS, made its debut in June’s update to Force Design 2030. That document called on deputy commandants to build intelligent robotics and autonomous systems into the forcewide experimentation plan; streamline acquisition of the most rugged and highly demanded unmanned systems; and develop a strategy to “integrate robotics specialties throughout the total force,” among other taskers.

“Marines must fight at machine speed or face defeat at machine speed,” the design document stated, citing the pivotal role of drones in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war in Azerbaijan, and more recently in Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine.

The man at the helm of this effort to integrate drone ops fully into Marine warfare is Maj. Keenan Chirhart, head of the service’s new four-person intelligent robotics and autonomous systems office. The former executive officer of the Marines’ first Reaper squadron, Chirhart must bring organization to the tangle of unmanned and autonomous development efforts in progress around the service.

As Marine Corps elements raced to integrate unmanned technology to its operations, from aviation to logistics, he said, stovepipes developed, thwarting effective communication and planning.

One possible initiative under consideration, Chirhart said, is a common mission controller capable of -operating all unmanned systems, from small aerial drones to ground vehicles and even surface vessels.t told Marine Corps Times. “You’ve got this multifunctional, multidomain capability. And there certainly needs to be oversight, so that it’s not just being developed within one war-fighting domain.”

One possible initiative under consideration, Chirhart said, is a common mission controller capable of operating all unmanned systems, from small aerial drones to ground vehicles and even surface vessels.

“A modular controller would enable not only your decision-makers, at a strategic level, to see across all domains, but also allow, at the tactical level, multidomain control of different systems,” he said. “Those technologies exist right now; our [Marine Corps] Warfighting Lab has been experimenting with them.”

In the nearer future, Chirhart’s office will develop an experimentation road map that makes unmanned systems integral to overall Marine Corps technology experimentation efforts. The Force Design guidance lays the groundwork for the development of a dedicated unmanned experimental unit that can simulate multidomain operations featuring a range of intelligent robotics and autonomous systems.

Chirhart said his office is researching several privately owned range spaces where these experiments could take place and networking with commercial startups, think tanks and academic institutions as it determines that’s possible.

Marine leaders also are aware they need a stable career pipeline for unmanned systems. As the office collaborates with the Navy, which is developing a to strengthen its unmanned workforce, Chirhart said a similar Marine Corps military occupational specialty may be developed.

While the service already has a small unmanned aerial systems operator job and a dedicated job specialty for MQ-9 Reaper pilots, it lacks a cross-domain specialty to deliver expertise on autonomy and robotic warfare at large.

Discussions of a new military occupational specialty are “nascent,” Chirhart said, but added that the Corps is closely watching the Navy’s efforts to tackle the same career path problem.

“We’re not trying to replace the warfighter,” Chirhart said. “But we know that in the future, the warfighter is going to be augmented by teams of robotics and autonomous systems that operate in all domains. We want to understand what is the expertise needed to make sure that person is trained and equipped to be able to provide those functions for the Marine Corps in the future.”

Perhaps the most significant obstacle for the Marine Corps as it seeks to master smart drones and autonomy is the infamously sluggish acquisition process, built to take years, not months. Chirhart noted that any acquisition projects started today likely wouldn’t get funded until fiscal 2026.

“That is not going to allow the Marine Corps to keep pace with our adversary,” he said.

How to achieve rapid acquisition at scale is a problem that goes far beyond intelligent robotics and autonomous systems or the Marine Corps, but Chirhart said he’s optimistic that effective communication between Corps directorates, plus the unifying and specific directions within the Force Design update, will help the service move with speed and purpose.

“I think it’s very easy for everyone to look at what industry is producing and say, ‘I want that thing, I want that bright, shiny object,’” he said. “But what is more important in my mind is that we have a road map that is capabilities-centric, not platform-centric. It’s not that I care necessarily about a specific, intelligent robotic autonomous system. I want to look at what is the long-term overarching capability that the Marine Corps needs to execute its missions.”

The growing problem of inexpensive unmanned systems employing autonomy and artificial intelligence has been a longtime subject of military study and discussion.

But the ongoing conflict in Ukraine has underscored just how effective smart tech accessible to anyone may be in neutralizing the elaborate tools of conventional warfare. In one example from the war, Ukraine reportedly used a Chinese-made DJI drone worth $2,000 to destroy a Russian T-90 tank worth millions of dollars.

Drawing on a newfound urgency, the U.S. undersecretary of defense for research and engineering published a need statement in May, calling on industry to help develop new weapons that can effectively meet the new threat from unmanned, autonomous and AI defense-driven systems.

“Multi- and cross-domain Uncrewed Systems (UxS) continue to be a threat to U.S. forces around the world. This threat is expanding in all domestic and international regions,” the need statement begins, citing the directive in the 2022 National Defense Strategy to stay ahead of the problem. “This threat is no longer just in the aerial domain, but also from ground, subterranean, sea, and undersea domains. Near-peer adversary nations are rapidly incorporating robust UxS capabilities into their military formations, and non-state actors are using UxS to increase their asymmetric advantage.”

While aerial drones have had the most opportunities to make a mark on the battlefield, both in Ukraine and the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in the South Caucasus, undersea systems may not be far behind.

Ukrainian unmanned underwater vessels, such as the Toloka TLK-150, likely already have been responsible for limiting Russian aggression at sea.

And in the subterranean realm, expected to become an increasingly critical domain as more conflicts play out in and around big cities, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is working to develop unmanned systems that can navigate the tight and dark spaces.

The newly published need statement calls for weapons that can destroy or stymie uncrewed threats in the following ways:

• Disable the detecting abilities of drone swarms.
• Create barriers or obstacles that thwart navigation.
• Use kinetic, directed-energy and control-link defenses to answer or avert physical and electronic attacks by uncrewed systems “without exhausting defensive capabilities.”
• Provide assessment capabilities to measure the effectiveness of these defensive approaches.

Notably, the Defense Department has provided a Ukraine aid package, announced in April, that included 30 mm gun trucks and laser-guided rocket systems designed to destroy drones. But the new need statement underscores how daunting it is to defeat a cheap, smart threat that keeps coming, no matter how many individual platforms are shot down.

“I would say that you should look at this need statement as basically saying: ‘OK, we recognize that these sorts of cheap and extremely numerous drones are likely to be an enduring part of future battlefields,’ ” said Gregory Allen, director of the Wadhwani Center for AI and Advanced Technologies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank.

While the individual services have experimented with counter-drone swarm weapons ― the Air Force Research Laboratory recently tested out a microwave system called the Tactical High-power Operational Responder, or THOR ― Allen said programs of record for effective counter-unmanned and counter-AI weapons have yet to materialize.

“Where is the mass procurement of this capability that reflects that it has an enduring place in the arsenal?” he wondered.

Allen added that effective jamming of remotely piloted drones is accelerating the move to systems that are truly autonomous — another development that challenges the status quo for the U.S. Meanwhile, Ukraine is reportedly losing 10,000 drones a month to Russian jammers

In a paper published in May, Allen highlighted the Defense Department’s slow progress in developing AI and autonomy capabilities, calling on program managers to interrogate their efforts and ensure their objectives are specific and achievable.

According to the published need statement, the three categories of technology most interesting to the Pentagon include:

• Novel sensors that track and identify drones faster and across domains, possibly through the application of AI and machine learning.
• Autonomous defensive technologies that attack enemy drones’ navigation systems and onboard artificial intelligence capabilities.
• Passive defeat capabilities that may target and exploit vulnerabilities in unmanned systems’ artificial intelligence algorithms, or that could cloak sites that drones might target.

James Ryseff, a senior technical policy analyst at the think tank Rand, said the Pentagon could learn from private sector development and adopt an approach focused more on innovation and creative solutions than on building to meet a specific requirement.

“Software is more like a research project than it is like a construction or just a manufacturing project,” he said.

Ryseff acknowledged that such a change in approach would require major shifts, such as bringing more software development capabilities in-house or bypassing parts of the traditional acquisition process.

He pointed to then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ urgent personal intervention in the early 2000s to field mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles to troops encountering improvised explosive devices downrange as an example of how the Pentagon had been able to move quickly to acquire needed technology in the past.

However, Ryseff added, military leaders don’t appear concerned enough to consider such a radical response.

“There’s got to be some kind of a big ‘Oh, my gosh’ moment to get to that level of impact,” he said. “And right now, we don’t have it.”

Pentagon stakeholders plan to hold a meeting with industry representatives in July to discuss proposed counter-unmanned solutions and ways forward on development, according to the need statement.

After years of experimenting with airborne delivery drones, the service believes it has a winner.

In its fiscal 2024 budget request, the Marine Corps is asking to buy 41 tactical resupply unmanned aircraft systems, or TRUAS, for a total investment of more than $13 million.

With the service set to take delivery of previous orders of the drones this spring and expecting to declare initial operational capability on the system later this fall, it will be a big year, not only for tactical resupply unmanned aircraft systems, but also for the concept of unmanned aerial resupply.

Built like large quadcopters, the systems are designed to carry payloads of up to 150 pounds over distances of up to nine miles in containers secured underneath. The unit cost of about $325,000 per drone is certainly steep, but Marine officials say it’s substantially more sophisticated than the remote-controlled commercial drones it resembles.

Rather than being manually flown, tactical resupply unmanned aircraft systems are programmed with waypoints that determine itinerary and flight pattern, meaning it requires less hands-on attention from Marine operators than most of the Corps’ quadcopters.

It takes just two Marines to monitor and maintain one in the field, and those Marines can learn everything they need to know about taking care of it in just five training days, according to Master Sgt. Chris Genualdi, an airborne and air delivery specialist with Combat Development and Integration, who discussed the system in an April news release.

The tactical resupply unmanned aircraft systems concept is closely aligned with the Marine Corps’ all-consuming vision for future warfare, which involves small, independent units operating from great distances from austere outposts ― perhaps on islands in the vast Indo-Pacific.

While the system isn’t designed to cross the ocean with supplies, it might be dispatched from a ship to a landing zone in hostile conditions ashore that might preclude a helicopter or V-22 Osprey delivery.

“As system technology advances in future years, [Unmanned Expeditionary Systems] will … include emerging technologies to include autonomous distribution capabilities for elements across the MAGTF and [Marine Littoral Regiments], enabling more diversified distribution and the sustainment of Marine Corps forces across future operating environments,” officials wrote in fiscal 2024 budget justification documents.

Tactical resupply unmanned aircraft systems provide “an organic battlefield logistics capability to distribute critical supplies via an unmanned platform while conducting” expeditionary advanced base operations safely within a weapons engagement zone, “where the risk to manned aircraft would deny manned aviation resupply operations.”

Marine leaders plan to scale the technology as it proves itself, according to the April news release, eventually building larger and higher-capacity platforms according to the same model that might further advance the objectives of the Corps’ expeditionary advanced base operations.

To this end, the service is also planning to launch a new military occupational specialty, or military job, focused on operating resupply drones. That job will be called small unmanned logistics system — air specialist. The timing of its rollout has not been announced.

In April, defense contractor Leidos announced a contract with the Marine Corps to build a larger autonomous drone prototype ― similar to a helicopter with a double stack of rotors ― that would be able to travel up to 100 nautical miles and carry up to 600 pounds.

“The utility of the TRUAS reaches beyond combat,” the recent Marine Corps release states, with its capabilities being highly effective in humanitarian assistance and disaster relief efforts.

“In disaster areas that may not be accessible by conventional means, the TRUAS could be used to transport much needed supplies.”

The Corps contracted for 35 tactical resupply unmanned aircraft systems drones in August 2022 and 30 more in March 2023, according to Marine Corps budget documents, but all are set for delivery in the first half of this year from SURVICE Engineering, out of Aberdeen, Maryland.

The effort to develop the tactical resupply unmanned aircraft systems began in earnest with a Department of the Navy “fly-off” prize challenge launched in 2020 at Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona, to build a rugged and reliable small cargo-carrying drone. SURVICE took the $100,000 first-place prize in that effort.

While tactical resupply unmanned aircraft systems only have been employed in field user evaluations and training and not proven in combat, the Marine Corps has moved relatively quickly to make its delivery-drone requirement a reality.

It’s far from the only entity seeking to capitalize on reliable unmanned aerial logistics. In 2013, online retail giant Amazon made headlines when then-CEO Jeff Bezos announced that it would be delivering packages via aerial drone by 2018.

A decade later, Amazon has launched a very limited regional version of the service, and the company says it’s still working on developing its vision for “Amazon Prime Air.”