“Obviously, having a revanchist Russia and a surging China concentrates the mind,” said Col. Dan Sullivan, chief of staff for the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory.

This April, the Navy and Marine Corps will hold an exercise at Camp Pendleton, California, that will test more than 100 proposed technologies to help Marines find and exploit gaps in enemy defenses as part of amphibious operations, which will include drones, communications equipment and remote-control amphibious vehicles, officials said at a media roundtable on Thursday.

When Sullivan joined the Marine Corps, he said, the U.S. military had a monopoly on precision-guided munitions and unmanned aircraft and it took both air and sea supremacy for granted. 

But as the U.S. fought lengthy counterinsurgency campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, its adversaries surged ahead technologically.

“Certainly, there was no deliberate negligence on our part,” Sullivan said. “It’s just that we kind of had our hands full there for a while. When the Soviet Union collapsed, China was still poor, that was an anomaly of history in the 1990s. History is back.”

A joint Navy-Marine Corps task force will determine which technologies the Marines will further test during a military exercise this fall at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, officials said.

Modern weapons can destroy ships and landing craft hundreds of miles from shore, and now even non-state actors such as Houthi rebels in Yemen have access to anti-ship missiles, remote control boats and other weaponry that could pose a major threat to any Marine amphibious operation.

The Marine Corps Operating Concept released in September indicates how the Corps plans to challenge such weapons. The concept includes a vignette to show what an amphibious operation would look like in 2025.

In the vignette, the Marine aviation commander says he knew that the Marines could not destroy all of the enemy’s coastal and air defenses, “But we could create ‘bubbles’ for small periods.”

The intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance technology being tested in April is meant to help create such bubbles by finding gaps in enemy defenses where Marines can send manned and unmanned forces, said Maj. Jim Foley, with the Ellis Group, the Marine Corps’ think tank that explores future warfighting scenarios. 

Another tactic would be to use a “swarm” of unmanned aircraft, submarines and vehicles as decoys to tie up the enemy’s resources in a diversion while Marines land elsewhere, Foley said.

With the types of unmanned systems and sensors being tested, the Marines can greatly increase the number of places where they can come ashore, said Doug King, director of the Ellis Group. Swarms of unmanned aircraft can also protect Marines as they land on enemy beaches, he said.

“Think about it this way: I’m maneuvering ashore, potentially in a boat,” he said. “What’s flying overhead is an unmanned swarm, that as soon as somebody radiates, gives off a signature, that swarm is just going right after them.”

The Marine Corps plans to field 144 utility task vehicles to infantry regiments between February and April 2017, said Emanuel “Manny” Pacheco, a spokesman and congressional liaison for PEO Land Systems Marine Corps.

Until now, forward deployed infantry Marines have had to carry all of their gear on their backs while operating in remote locations, but the utility transport vehicle fits onto the MV-22B Osprey so it can go into the field with infantry units, Pacheco told Marine Corps Times.

“The vehicle will provide logistics support to ground combat units that are operating independently across dispersed areas, while conducting distributed helicopter-borne and tiltrotor operations,” Pacheco said.

The Marines are fielding 144 utility task vehicles to infantry units.

Marine expeditionary units and Special Purpose Marine Air Ground Task Forces will use the vehicles when deploying in austere environments, he said. Each infantry regiment will have 18 of the four-seat vehicles, which can be driven by a single Marine.

This is the first such vehicle designed specifically for infantry Marines, Pacheco said. The Marine Corps has another all-terrain vehicle, but it is for specialized tasks, such as towing howitzers.

The fact that one utility task vehicle can fit on an MV-22B Osprey is critical because the Marine Corps can use Ospreys to launch a unit more than 100 miles from shore to avoid enemy cruise missiles and other defenses that can destroy ships and landing craft.

Ospreys can fly at 240 knots and they are able to refuel in midair, allowing them to carry Marines up to 6,000 miles in 24 hours, compared with most helicopters, which typically have a maximum range of 200 miles.

The Marine Corps has used Ospreys to rapidly move humanitarian relief supplies, such as in April following two earthquakes in Japan. It’s also used to respond to crises quickly, such as when a quick reaction force deployed from Sigonella, Italy, in July 2014 for the evacuation of the U.S. embassy in Tripoli.

Soldiers have been enduring missions in the wet, humid Pacific with boots geared toward the hotter, drier environments of Iraq and Afghanistan. The result: soggy, heavy boots.

The Army has been testing new uniform designs over the past year and a half to help soldiers perform in tropical regions, and now officials say they want to take those designs to the field.

Col. Dean Hoffman IV, project manager for Soldier Protection and Individual Equipment at PEO Soldier, said the Army can use the Soldier Enhancement program to find off-the-shelf solutions for equipment problems.

“We focused on the Middle East a long time,” Hoffman said, but now the focus is turning to tropical environments.

Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley recently visited the 25th Infantry Division in Hawaii, where he saw limited user evaluations on jungle uniforms and boots, Hoffman said at the Association of the United States Army conference.

Milley wants to get the new boots out in the field as fast as possible, Hoffman said.

“We saw the characteristics and capabilities that soldiers desire in a boot,” he said.

The boots undergoing testing aim to be puncture resistant, yet also comfortable, supportive and quick drying. 

The Army sent out a directed requirement so “we can get two [brigade combat teams] in Hawaii equipped with jungle combat boots by the end of calendar year [2017],” Hoffman said.

“One of the things we’re trying in an effort to expedite contracting is we’re going to use this request for information to see what industry can do hopefully faster,” he said.

It’s challenging to find a company that can meet the price and schedule requirements, Hoffman said, but the goal is to equip the first BCT with the jungle boots by March.

Charlsy Panzino covers the Army and Air Force. Email her at cpanzino@militarytimes.com.