{"id":14025,"date":"2020-12-18T12:46:29","date_gmt":"2020-12-18T12:46:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/uncategorized\/2020\/12\/18\/this-new-marine-corps-live-fire-range-has-it-all-robot-enemies-rockets-mortars-breaching\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T20:10:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T20:10:14","slug":"this-new-marine-corps-live-fire-range-has-it-all-robot-enemies-rockets-mortars-breaching","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/training-sim\/2020\/12\/18\/this-new-marine-corps-live-fire-range-has-it-all-robot-enemies-rockets-mortars-breaching\/","title":{"rendered":"This new Marine Corps live-fire range has it all: robot enemies, rockets, mortars, breaching"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Marines at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, now have a range that can withstand all infantry weapons, including mortars, heavy machine guns and rockets, where they can fly drones and conduct breaches that they can assault from sea, air or land, and fight robot adversaries to make a company assault as real as possible<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And it\u2019s likely to become the standard by which deploying infantry units are measured<\/a> before they depart the East Coast on future missions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In July 2019, Maj. Gen. Julian \u201cDale\u201d Alford, base commanding general, told his base operations commander, Col. Gary McCullar, that he wanted to transform the dated, limited range that held pop-up targets and didn\u2019t allow for supporting fire weapons into something that would give Marines the feel of fighting a peer competitor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alford had trained on that range at various levels of command dating back to his time as a lieutenant. He knew the limits of the range and wanted to see a change, McCullar said.<\/p>\n\n\n\t