Ashley M. Calingo, a spokeswoman with MARCORSYSCOM, told Marine Corps Times in an emailed statement that BAE — the manufacturer of the ACV — had selected a version of the Kongsberg medium caliber turret, or MCT-30, for a variant of the new amphib vehicle.

“BAE has also informed the Marine Corps that the MCT-30 version for the Marine Corps will be a lighter weight version of the Stryker system and use the Mk44 gun which is common with US Navy applications instead of the XM813 gun used on Stryker,” Calingo said.

The MCT-30 — manufactured by Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace — said in a news release that it would deliver up to 150 of the MCT-30 remote turret weapon systems as part of a “phased program.”

“The system provides highly accurate firepower for wheeled or tracked combat vehicles. It is remotely controlled and operated from a protected position inside the vehicle compartment for optimized crew safety,” Kongsberg said in a release.

The MCT-30 remote turret boasting the heavier XM813 30mm cannon is currently fielded on a Stryker variant known as the Infantry Carrier Vehicle – Dragoon.

Defense News reported in May 2019 that the Army had decided to equip its Double V-Hull A1 Stryker Infantry Carrier Vehicles with a 30mm cannon following a review of lessons learned from 2nd Cavalry Regiment in Europe.

The double V-hull variant of the Stryker was manufactured due to the armored vehicle’s poor performance against roadside bombs.

In early 2019, the Corps announced it was looking at three variants of the ACV — a command and control configuration, a recovery and maintenance setup and ACVs with 30mm medium-caliber cannons.

Kongsberg said test article delivery of the MCT-30 turret for the ACV will kick off in early 2021.

BAE told Marine Corps Times that it evaluated five vendors for the ACV turret which included a live fire assessment with more than a dozen systems.

“Kongsberg Defense and Aerospace (KDA) offered the best balance between performance, meeting the unique integration requirements of a fully amphibious system, and schedule,” BAE said in an emailed statement to Marine Corps Times.

BAE said the MCT-30 turret selected for the ACV is a version of the 30mm gun on the Stryker.

“Significant modifications to the base design were necessary for integrating into a fully amphibious combat vehicle,” BAE said.

BAE said it would complete an initial integration phase next year and that initial production units are planned for 2023.

Army Gen. Richard D. Clarke, the commander of SOCOM, said Tuesday during a virtual running of the Special Operations Forces Industry Conference, that countering violent extremist groups was a generational issue and would remain the number one priority for U.S. special operators.

Clarke’s comments comes as national security experts and members of Congress have questioned SOCOM’s role in addressing near-peer adversaries like Russia and China.

For decades SOCOM has provided troops trained and primed to operate against terrorist and extremists organizations often operating out of more permissive environments. But the DoD is amid a massive shift to counter rising adversaries like Russia and China.

While Clarke said SOF would continue to hunt down extremists groups moving into the future, he told audience members streaming SOFIC that the fight to counter terror groups is not mutually exclusive from the Defense Department’s pivot to great power competition.

Highlighting a recent trip to the Indo-Pacifc region, Clarke explained that allies, partnerships and maintaining alliances will be an integral part to addressing near-peers in the future.

Special operations forces are uniquely placed to fill that role, serving in a number of host nation countries helping train partner forces to counter violent extremist groups.

In the Philippines, an important potential buffer to China’s ambitions in the region, American commandos “provided casualty triage and evacuation assistance” on three occasions supporting Phillipine forces during the stretch from Jan 1 to March 31, according to a recent inspector general report.

The IG report detailed that U.S. special operators assisted five Philippine soldiers wounded in the three separate occurrences in southern and central Mindanao when Philippine assets were unavailable.

American commandos are also partnering with Philippine troops “to conduct a week-long combat casualty care training with the goal of building the independent casualty evacuation capabilities of the Philippine forces,” the IG report reads.

Philippine forces are battling a number of terror and militant groups in the country to include ISIS. The IG report noted there was an estimated 300 to 500 ISIS-linked fighters in the Philippines.

“Great power competition is about influence” and American special operators have a “unique role” to play in this through presence, partnerships and training, Clarke explained. Clarke also said the information space was important.

Jordan’s King Abdullah II also made an appearance during the virtual SOFIC session and told viewers that ISIS was trying to exploit COVID-19 by increasing attacks in Iraq and “threatening to undo years of effort.”

It’s called the Advanced Reconnaissance Vehicle, and Marine Corps Systems Command noted in a news release that prototypes from two vendors should be ready for evaluations by the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2020.

The Corps says it expects a final request for prototype proposal by spring 2021.

In 2019, the Corps announced it had selected two vendors, General Dynamics and SAIC, to design and build full-scale prototypes of the new ARV vehicle.

Marine Corps Systems Command detailed in the news release that an assessment had “identified shortfalls and gaps in capability” when the legacy LAV was pitted against a peer threat.

Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. David Berger has said that current light armored reconnaissance battalions across the Corps are outmoded for the high-end fight against adversaries like Russia and China.

“Light Armored Reconnaissance today is built great for another Desert Shield, Desert Storm,” Berger said previously said. “I don’t see that likelihood as being very great.”

But the top Marine noted that reconnaissance and counter reconnaissance was vital to a fight against near-peer rivals.

“No question in my mind” when going up against a capable adversary “that it pays to be spread out and dispersed,” Berger told reporters in April.

“What we have to do now is transition to a lighter footprint, more expeditionary, more in support of a littoral environment,” Berger said. The top Marine said a future LAR unit should be able to collect information even potentially offshore.

Marine Corps Systems Command said in the news release that it wants a “battle management system, enhanced vision technologies for increased situational awareness, and target tracking and engagement capabilities,” for its new ARV.

An industry day for the ARV was slated to run in May 2020 but has been pushed back to fourth quarter of fiscal year 2020, the release said.

Air Force Gen. Tod D. Wolters, the EUCOM commander, told reporters Thursday that the BALTOPS exercise — which usually kicks off around June — was still on the table, but EUCOM and NATO are still assessing “each and every one” of its activities.

Wolters is also serves as NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe.

“With each passing second of the day we are taking a look at each and every one of our activities to make sure that we can potentially preserve as many as possible,” Wolters said Thursday.

Canceling or scaling back the BATLOPS exercise would be another setback for the U.S. and NATO in their preparation to prepare the alliance to confront a bellicose Russia.

EUCOM was already forced to drastically scale back the large-scale Defender Europe exercise.

A number of linked exercises associated with Defender Europe such as Dynamic Front, the Army Joint Warfighting Assessment, Saber Strike and Swift Response, were canceled over COVID-19 concerns, according to Defense News.

“When we think it’s feasible based off the size of the exercise, the complexity of the exercise, the location of the exercise, obviously the time of the exercise, we are willing to make adjustments,” Wolters said Thursday.

The EUCOM commander said they’ve been “constantly adjusting the scop and scale of our exercises” over the last 70 to 80 days.

The BALTOPS exercise that kicked off in 2019 from June 9 to June 21 involved 18 countries, 50 surface ships, 36 aircraft, two submarines and 8,600 personnel, according to a news release.

The training during BALTOPS includes air, maritime and ground coordination interoperability among allies and partners and air defense, maritime interdiction, anti-subsurface warfare, mine countermeasures, and amphibious operations.

Wolters told reporters that EUCOM and NATO would review lessons that would have been learned during canceled exercises.

NORAD said the Russian aircraft entered the Alaskan Air Defense Identification Zone and were intercepted in the Bering Sea north of the Aleutian Islands. The Russian maritime aircraft never entered U.S. or Canadian airspace.

“COVID-19 or not, NORAD continues actively watching for threats and defending the homelands 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year,”General Terrence J. O’Shaughnessy, the commander of NORAD said.

The Russian IL-38 maritime aircraft are also used to hunt submarines.

There have been a string of Russian patrol aircraft intercepts near Alaska over the last month.

In March, U.S. and Canadian jets intercepted Russian reconnaissance aircraft near Alaska spying on a U.S. submarine exercise known as ICEX.

“We continue to see repeated Russian military aviation activity in the Arctic and we will defend the U.S. and Canada against these threats emanating from our northern approaches,” O’Shaughnessy said about the March intercepts near the submarine exercise.

ICEX is a three-week biennial exercise that allows the U.S. to assess the readiness of its submarines to operate in the Arctic.

O’Shaughnessy told lawmakers in March the intercept of the Russian aircraft highlighted a need to maintain the “ability to react appropriately” by having “persistent defense” and domain awareness to potentially defeat the threat.

That means knowing what’s coming in or near U.S. and allied sovereign airspace and having the ability to react to that threat — not just deploying forces to the region when they need to get up there, O’Shaughnessy said.

Through a small eyepiece feeding imagery from a reconnaissance drone overhead, the corporal spots six light-skinned armored vehicles carrying a platoon size element and heavy weapons 20 kilometers ahead.

Outgunned and dismounted, the systems operator pulls out a handheld tablet and plots friendly positions and communicates with a Marine armored reconnaissance vehicle parked at an outpost nearby.

The corporal requests the recon vehicle to fire off a swarm of loitering munition suicide drones to her position. As the drone munitions appear overhead, the corporal takes command in a hand-off between vehicle and ground operator.

While controlling a swarm of 15 drones, the Marine corporal uses a remote device similar to a video game controller to direct the loitering munitions over the enemy convoy.

The suicide drones slam into the enemy convoy creating mass casualties and destroying the vehicles. The Marine squad never spotted by enemy troops carries on with its patrol.

In this hypothetical future scenario, the Marine systems operator has destroyed several enemy vehicles using skills she learned as a professional gamer before deciding to enter the Corps.

Armed with “high acuity, a technical affinity, concentration, poise, focus,” gamers and “digital natives grow up with multiple screens,” said Marine Capt. Michael Maggitti, a marketing and communications officer with the 8th Marine Corps District. That gives them transferable skills to work in a number of job fields across the Corps from electronic warfare and tech related billets, he said.

The stereotype that gamers are basement dwelling loners not fit for military service is beginning to wear off as the Esports world continues to blow up around the U.S.

“There’s this stigma about that you’re just home alone in your basement playing games all the time — a sedentary lifestyle running on hot Cheetos and Mountain Dew, but that’s not reality,” Maggitti said.

The Corps’ future force of electronic warfare operators, cyber and data communications are “all online right now, they’re at these gaming events,” he explained.

The Esports world is a massive emerging market expected to bring in millions of viewers over the next several years.

But the Corps has been slow to tap into this potential recruiting bonanza — which might leave the Marines in the dust as the Navy and Army start stacking recruiting teams with gamers to attract tech adept people for a future force.

The Corps for now says it has no plans to follow suit with other service branches to create a recruiting Esports team.

The Marines, say “brand and issues associated with combat are too serious to be “gamified” in a responsible manner,” according to a recent Marine Corps response to questions by the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services.

But the 8th Marine Corps Recruiting District — which overseas 13 Midwestern states — is headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas — the backyard of North America’s largest gaming stadium known as Esports Stadium Arlington.

Maggitti says the recruiting district has been making inroads with the local gaming community by partnering with the Arlington gaming stadium to create an onsite activation during a recent Smash Ultimate Tournament in December 2019.

The tournament allowed recruiters to make “face to face contact” and have “peer to peer” conversations with gamers.

“It’s a serious decision that person is making to join the Marine Corps,” and in-person conversations vice video games and online settings are the preferable way to have that discussion, Maggitti explained.

“We are actively seeking additional ways to engage our market in this space, evolving our tactics but being careful to avoid overly gamifying the experience of interacting with a Marine recruiter,” Gunnery Sgt. Justin Kronenberg, a spokesman for Marine Corps Recruiting Command, told Marine Corps Times.

“Embarking on the path to becoming a Marine is a serious decision for young men and women and we want to make sure those important initial conversations are happening in a professional setting,” Kronenberg said.

Maggitti says while the Corps is not currently creating an Esports team, the Texas-based recruiting district has found other alternative ways to reach gamers to include kick-starting an initiative dubbed the Marine Corps Academic Excellence Program.

For every student that gets an A on their report card or transcript, the student gets a free hour of gameplay at the Arlington Esports stadium.

The program helps “prioritize” studies over gaming and rewards success in the classroom, Maggitti explained.

The 8th recruiting district is making some early strides in the gaming community, but it’s still a hodgepodge effort where responsibility for potential gaming initiatives are placed predominately in the hands of local recruiters and recruiting commands.

“We know that our brand appeals to certain segments of the gaming population, which is why we have made consistent, targeted investments in the gaming space for years,” Kronenberg said.

But the Corps has pushed some other endeavors across the gaming world to include Marine Corps branded destination experiences on XBox Live

“Marine Corps Recruiting Command is conscious of how its efforts position our brand for marketing purposes, and together with its contracted advertising agency has put considerable effort into understanding the gaming space,” Kronenberg said.

The Marine Raider Training Center aboard Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, is home to the seven-month Marine commando special operator school known as the Individual Training Course, which creates Critical Skill Operators who earn the 0372 military occupational specialty.

While COVID-19 continues to rampage across the U.S., North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper issued a stay-at-home order to stem the spread of the virus. According to the New York Times, there are 1,582 reported cases of COVID-19 across North Carolina.

To comply with the governor’s order, Marine Forces Special Operations Command says it has made adjustments to training to include restructuring the ITC course and adding online training where possible.

“The ITC schedule has been restructured to ensure the safety and health of the two classes currently undergoing training. Some of the in-class material has been shifted to online learning, to include parts of the Basic Language Course,” Gunnery Sgt. Lynn Kinney, told Marine Corps Times in an emailed statement.

The ITC course is a seven-month training evolution broken down into several phases that includes land navigation, patrolling, small unit tactics, irregular warfare and close quarters battle.

MARSOC did not provide any other details regarding the restructuring of the ITC course.

“Other parts of the training have been shifted to ensure COVID-19 response requirements,” Kinney said.

Raiders also attend a 125-training-day language course which kicks off following completion of the ITC. The language training familiarizes Raiders with basic foreign language skills in speaking, listening and reading.

Marine Forces Special Operations Command says it will continue to man, equip and train the force but the elite commando unit is also making adjustments to protect the force and comply with health guidelines.

“As such, we will continue to execute mission-essential tasks and pre-deployment training certification exercises while taking additional precautions to prevent or limit the spread of the virus, including reduced staffing, telework, and the utilization of virtual means to conduct meetings and training,” Kinney said.

“Force generating and MOS producing courses, such as the Individual Training Course, will continue with modified schedules,” she explained.

In a posting to Facebook, MARSOC said it expected staff to “telework to the maximum extent possible.”

“MARSOC personnel are directed to cease all non-essential movement and shelter-in-place in accordance with the NC Governor’s Executive Order, when not performing official duties,” MARSOC said in a Facebook post on March 29.

The Raider training center aboard Lejeune is also tasked with assessment and selection of potential 0372 Raider candidates for follow-on training at ITC.

“MARSOC is making adjustments to training and other daily operations to effectively preserve and balance the health and safety of our personnel with our responsibility to maintain operational readiness,” Kinney said.

“The health and welfare of our personnel is a top priority,” she said.

The comments from the Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. David Berger come as the Corps announced it was axing all of its tank battalions as part of an effort to modernized and redesign the force to contend with more sophisticated enemy forces.

“Light Armored Reconnaissance today is built great for another Desert Shield, Desert Storm,” Berger said Wednesday. “I don’t see that likelihood as being very great.”

The Corps’ light armored vehicle, or LAV, is decades old and the Corps has spent years slapping new upgrades and weapons to help boost survivability of the vehicle. The Corps is looking at potential prototypes to replace its LAV fleet, but that could be a decade away.

The future of LAR rests within manned and unmanned teaming, the ability to do collections at sea and operate autonomously or semi-autonomously with a lighter footprint, Berger explained. The top Marine noted that reconnaissance and counter reconnaissance was vital to a fight against near-peer rivals.

“No question in my mind” when going up against a capable adversary “that it pays to be spread out and dispersed,” Berger told reporters Wednesday.

“What we have to do now is transition to a lighter footprint, more expeditionary, more in support of a littoral environment,” Berger said. Can that unit “collect forward of itself even if offshore into the water.”

As part of the Corps’ effort to redesign the force over the next 10 years, the Marines are cutting tanks, reducing F-35 squadrons from 16 to 10 aircraft, cutting some rotary wing assets and cannon artillery, among others. The Corps says it plans to cut 12,000 personnel over the 10-year period.

A series of wargames conducted between 2018 and 2019 helped inform the Corps’ decision to divest of tanks and outmoded units and equipment that will have trouble surviving in fight with peer adversaries like China, according to a Marine Corps force redesign report.

From those wargames the Corps learned that the unit that shoots first has a “decisive advantage” on the battlefield and forces that can operate inside the range of enemy long-range precision fires “are more operationally relevant than forces which must rapidly maneuver to positions outside the ”weapons engagement zone, the report reads.

The Corps’ decision to divest of tanks, cut ground cannon artillery and light attack air platforms has stoked some criticism. Tanks historically have had success in high-end and urban warfare for decades boasting devastating firepower highly lethal to ground forces.

But tanks and armored vehicles have had trouble surviving against the threat of precision strike and the plethora of drone and reconnaissance systems flooding conflict zones across the Middle East.

“Mobility inside the WEZ [ weapons engagement zone] is a competitive advantage and an operational imperative,” the Marine Corps report reads.

The Corps instead is looking for mobile systems and units that can survive within the reach of precision fires to “attrit adversary forces,” create dilemmas for the enemy and “consume adversary ISR resources,” according to the report.

All units with the 1st Marine Division will continue to train aboard their home stations “until further notice” as the Corps continues to implement policies to help stem the spread of COVID-19, I Marine Expeditionary Force told Marine Corps Times in an emailed statement.

Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. David Berger told reporters March 26 that an integrated training exercise involving 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines slated for April aboard the Twentynine Palms training facility had been axed.

At least two sources within the unit told Marine Corps Times that 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines was still planning to kick off training despite news of the canceled exercise. Officials with I MEF said 3/1 is not headed to Twentynine Palms.

Any travel to the Twentynine Palms base would have occurred amidst a Defense Department domestic travel ban implemented to slow the spread of COVID-19.

“As we navigate the COVID-19 health crisis, we must strike a balance between maintaining our operational readiness and implementing the necessary health precautions to preserve our combat power and protect our communities,” I MEF said in an emailed statement.

I MEF explained that units with the 1st Marine Division are still preparing for deployments.

The Marine Corps had “scaled back or canceled” a number of service level exercises as COVID-19 continues to disrupt U.S. military training and operations around the globe, acting Navy Secretary Thomas B. Modly told reporters at the Pentagon Thursday morning.

Exercises aboard the Twentynine Palms and the Marine Corps Mountain Warfare Training Center, both located in California, have either been scaled back or canceled, Modly said.

The Corps “has to be ready to respond to a problem around the world,” Berger said March 26 at the Pentagon.

“We’ve never been given advanced notice when that will happen” so Marines “need to conduct training that is necessary” to be ready when the nation needs it to act, Berger said.

The Corps has “curtailed” or “tailored” training where it can to include spreading Marines out more, Berger said. Pistol ranges are now spread out more, with more space between shooters to allow for social distancing, which means more relays need to be run.

But Berger said that Marines “can only do so much” to “moderate social distancing” during live-fire events, especially when Marines are “moving down range.”

“To that end, we are examining ways to adapt the scope and scale of training and exercises in an effort to complete mission essential tasks while still adhering to CDC guidance as much as possible,” I MEF said.

From those wargames the Corps learned that the unit that shoots first has a “decisive advantage” on the battlefield and forces that can operate inside the range of enemy long-range precision fires “are more operationally relevant than forces which must rapidly maneuver to positions outside the ”weapons engagement zone, the report reads.

The Corps’ decision to divest of tanks, cut ground cannon artillery and light attack air platforms has stoked some criticism. Tanks historically have had success in high-end and urban warfare for decades boasting devastating firepower highly lethal to ground forces.

But tanks and armored vehicles have had trouble surviving against the threat of precision strike and the plethora of drone and reconnaissance systems flooding conflict zones across the Middle East.

For recent evidence, a Turkish launched operation targeting Syrian regime army troops in late February decimated more than a hundred tanks and armored vehicles, dozens of artillery pieces and hundreds of Syrian forces, according to the Turkish National Ministry of Defense.

Turkey posted videos highlighting a mixed role of drones, Paladin artillery systems and aircraft pounding Syrian armor from the skies over the course of several days. The Syrian army appeared helpless to defend from the onslaught of long range systems. Even tanks camouflaged by buildings and bushes were no match for sensors and thermal imaging watching from the skies.

The problem is exacerbated by the number of sophisticated anti-tank systems flooding counterinsurgency conflicts across the globe and access to long range drones once only in control by state actors are now being operated by militia groups.

In Libya, the Libyan National Army has the upper hand in its drone war with the UN-backed Tripoli government. It’s equipped with an alleged UAE-supplied Chinese drone known as the Wing Long II that boasts a 2,000 km range through a satellite link and is reportedly armed with Chinese manufactured Blue Arrow 7 precision strike air-to-surface missiles.

“Mobility inside the WEZ [ weapons engagement zone] is a competitive advantage and an operational imperative,” the Marine Corps report reads.

The Corps instead is looking for mobile systems and units that can survive within the reach of precision fires to “attrit adversary forces,” create dilemmas for the enemy and “consume adversary ISR resources,” according to the report.

“The hider-versus finder competition is real. Losing this competition has enormous and potentially catastrophic consequences,” the report reads.

Reconnaissance and counter-reconnaissance capabilities will be key on the modern battlefield.

“We have sufficient evidence to conclude that this capability [tanks], despite its long and honorable history in the wars of the past, is operationally unsuitable for our highest-priority challenges in the future,” the report said about the divestment of Marine tanks.

But tanks aren’t disappearing from the fight. The Corps says heavy ground armor will still be provided by the Army.

The Corps says it plans to develop heavily into unmanned ground and air systems and rocket artillery and long range fires. According to the report, the Corps is increasing its rocket artillery batteries by 14 to 21 over a 10-year period.

Wargaming that inferred the Corps’ force redesign efforts were carried out by the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, among others.