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.”

Marines with the 12th Marine Littoral Regiment used a Japanese Self-Defense Force C-2 cargo plane to transport the TPS-80 Ground/Air Task Oriented Radar, or G/ATOR to the island of Yonaguni on July 29.

Yonaguni is the last in a string of islands that are part of Okinawa, which is home to 18,000 and another 7,000 U.S. Air Force personnel, according to the Marine Corps.

Troops deployed the radar as part of training with enhanced sensing and targeting data between 12th MLR and the Japanese military during Exercise Resolute Dragon, the Marines said. The exercise served as a test of readiness between partner nation units and their technology.

This year’s iteration was the fourth in the exercise’s history and has seen 3,000 Marines and sailors from III Marine Expeditionary Force train alongside their Japanese counterparts.

Lt. Col. Joseph Mozzi, the regiment’s fire support coordinator, said the radar and transport capability “will significantly boost multi-domain operations and overall battlespace awareness,” that allows for full-scope detection and tracking of air, land and sea targets.

G/ATOR combines the capabilities of five legacy systems to provide air and ground surveillance, as well as weapons control, in a single piece of equipment, Defense News previously reported.

The multi-mission radar system initial contract was awarded to Northrop Grumman in 2019 for $958 million. The aim was to provide Marines with real-time, “360-degree situational awareness to identify and track missiles, manned and unmanned aircraft vehicles, rockets, mortars, and artillery fire,” Defense News reported.

The contract allowed for the Corps to procure up to 30 radar systems, which the service completed in fiscal year 2023.

In 2023, Northrop announced an enhancement upgrade to the radar system to extend its detection and tracking ranges.

In their most recent budget request for fiscal year 2025, the Corps asked for $4.2 billion in procurement for ground systems and another $3 billion for research and development, according to budget documents.

The G/ATOR upgrade effort is expected to cost $51.3 million total, according to budget documents.

The 12th MLR was re-designated out of the 12th Marine Regiment, an artillery unit, in November, Marine Corps Times previously reported.

It is the second of three planned MLRs that the Corps has slated for the Pacific region. The 3rd MLR was borne from the 3rd Marine Infantry Regiment in March 2022 and calls Marine Corps Base Hawaii home.

The next littoral regiment is scheduled to launch in 2025 and be based out of Guam, filled by rotational units from the U.S. mainland, according to a 2023 Congressional Research Service report.

Once fully kitted out, the regiments will have their own naval ship interdiction system, a Joint Light Tactical Vehicle-mounted Naval Strike Missile; an MQ-9 Reaper drone; the G/ATOR radar system and a yet-to-be-determined shore-to-shore watercraft likely based on concepts being developed in the landing ship medium program, formerly called the light amphibious warships.

Regiments are expected to have between 1,800-2,000 Marines and Navy medical and support personnel and be able to operate as distinct, task-organized units as small as a handful of Marines or up to a battalion or larger.

Marine Corps Systems Command posted a request for information from industry on July 15 seeking white papers on how developers would provide sensing, detection, defensive and offensive ways to counter drone threats at the Marine squad and platoon-level.

A Marine squad is one of the service’s smallest units of action and contains between 13 and 15 Marines depending on manning. A traditional Marine Corps platoon holds up to three squads.

In February, the Corps began the search for counter drone tech to defend installations, according to a service solicitation. That equipment would also allow operators to jam drones and capture them without destroying them.

Industry submissions are expected by August 2 and those selected for consideration may get an invite to Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, Twentynine Palms, California for a September live fire demonstration, according to the solicitation.

The service has been using the Light Marine Air-Defense Integrated System, or L-MADIS, which uses two all-terrain vehicles that combine jamming technology and traditional firepower, such as Stinger missiles, to take out drones.

But both of those solutions are for larger threats and must be either vehicle-mounted or stationary.

The squad and platoon-level Marines need to carry their own devices to detect, defeat and destroy group 1 and 2 drones. Group 1 drones weigh up to 20 pounds and fly under 1,200 feet.

Group 2 drones weigh between 21 and 55 pounds and can fly as high as 3,500 feet.

The new capability that the Corps wants would include detecting and tracking gear that uses acoustic or radio frequency detection, according to the solicitation. Those sensors would be worn by individual Marines and could have a handheld tablet, bracelet, earpiece or glasses “that receives alerts, warnings, notifications from an external sensor.”

The same capability at the platoon level could be vehicle, mast or tripod mounted, according to the solicitation.

On the offensive side of the counter-drone tech, the Marines want this individual piece of equipment to have either directional radio frequency or global positioning system jammers that can mount to a rifle.

But to destroy the threat at both the squad and platoon level, they’re looking for a rifle and rifle optic combination that can track the drone and use “enhanced ammunition” for weapons already in their inventory, to include “buckshot-like” 5.56mm, 7.62mm, .50 caliber and 40mm grenade launchers.

Weapons that use those ammunition configurations include the M72 Infantry Automatic Rifle, the M240 machine gun, the M2 machine gun and the M320 and M32 grenade launcher and Mk 19 automatic grenade launcher.

Cpl. Bradford Flores, who is a Navajo Anti-Tank Missile Gunner in the 4th Marine Division, says successful instances where Marine Corps members get to practice their faith and cultural traditions will signal to others that similar opportunities exist for them.

“It makes it easier for Indigenous men in the Marine Corps to be able to do this and that’s what I want,” said Flores, the first Marine authorized to wear his hair long in honor of Navajo tradition. Military.com first reported this news in June.

The approval grants Native Americans an opportunity to express their identity freely, allowing it to be recognized more, he said.

“It’s bigger than us,” said Flores. “It’s just a way for us to be able to share our culture with other Indigenous people, but also share our culture with people that don’t really understand it and give us a teaching opportunity, saying this is why it’s significant.”

Flores split his time between Oklahoma City and Norman, Oklahoma growing up, enlisting in the Marine Corps in 2021.

He credits his father for instilling in him both a reverence for his roots and a dedication to serving his country.

Emblems of Navajo tradition such as art, pottery, and baskets lined the walls of his childhood home and Flores says he was given his first pair of moccasins as a baby.

“If you think I’m Native now, just wait till you get to our house,” Flores said he’d tell friends growing up.

His father was equally invested in work and service, he said, so much so that cutting his long hair, a symbol of strength in the Navajo tradition, never seemed to bother him as it was what his job in the Air Force required.

Flores prioritized the work like his father when he first joined the Marine Corps and wasn’t bothered by the requirement to cut his hair. Typically, Flores said, the act of cutting his hair involves a ceremony where he burns the hair with sweetgrass or sage, which he couldn’t do during Marine Corps recruit training.

It wasn’t until a car ride with a Comanche staff sergeant in his first year of service that Flores considered applying for a religious waiver. In a conversation about shared traditions and similar backgrounds, Flores admitted how cool it would be to grow his hair out in uniform. The staff sergeant agreed and said if Flores ever decided to pursue it, he’d offer his support.

“Obviously, you’d be the first,” Flores said the sergeant told him. “That’s what kind of started the gears.”

From there, the idea percolated furhter until eventually, Flores reached out to Airman 1st Class Connor Crawn, who’d received a religious waiver to grow his hair out in 2022. Flores had seen Crawn’s videos on TikTok and he reached out to him on the social media platform. They began a correspondence, Flores asked for advice on how to begin the process, and Crawn obliged.

Flores applied for his religious waiver between in early 2023. He filled out paperwork detailing the reasons behind it, had an interview with officials, and submitted a letter from hist church pastor explaining the significance of his long hair, which he said represents his identity as a Navajo and a warrior.

During the process, he says he used other Marine’s successful efforts to get religious waivers as a way to make his case. He pointed to a Sikh Marine who in 2023 graduated from boot camp with a turban and beard after being granted a religious accommodation.

He was at Fort Chaffee Joint Maneuver Training Center in Arkansas when he got word of his waiver’s approval. The first thing he did, he said, was send a photo of the acceptance letter to his family, who were ecstatic.

He’s already started to receive messages from other Native American service members seeking guidance on the religious waiver process.

“I just want to be able to help others get their process started,” said Flores.

The Marine Corps has at times fought religious waivers, initially denying a Sikh Marine’s 2021 request for accommodations to wear a beard and turban in honor of his faith. A federal appeals court eventually ruled in 2022 that the Corps’ refusal to accept the accommodation went against the Marine’s right to religious liberty.

“The Marine Corps places a high value on the rights of members of the military services to observe the tenets of their respective religions, including their right to hold no beliefs as well as other sincerely held beliefs based on conscience and moral principles,” said a Marine Corps spokesperson in an emailed statement to Marine Corps Times.

The all requests for religious accommodations are assessed on a case-by-case basis, according to the statement.

Flores said as of now, his hair is growing out, but it’s in the awkward stage.

He said his fiancé is just as excited for him to grow it out.

“Now she’ll get to braid my hair,” said Flores.

As the San Diego-based group neared Julian, California on Route 76, Goad’s keen eye caught a glimpse of a rider up ahead making an uphill right turn.

The rider collided with a sport utility vehicle as the club rolled by.

The entire group immediately circled back and Goad saw the SUV driver reversing the vehicle from on top of the downed rider.

What Goad would do next saved the rider’s life and resulted in his award of the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal on July 1.

“Gunnery Sgt. Goad embodied a bias for action and acted when others chose the role of bystander,” said Lt. Col. Jeffrey Davis, commanding officer of VMFA-314. “He saved someone’s life, and his actions are a testament to his character and leadership.”

Goad was no newbie rider himself.

He serves as president of his unit’s VMFA-314 motorcycle club, with the Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 314, Marine Aircraft Group 11, 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing, according to a Marine Corps press release. That’s in addition to his personal riding time with the Iwo Jima club.

Much like having time off from a jet cockpit, Goad said that when rider’s haven’t saddled up in awhile they need to ease back into it.

“Riding motorcycles is a perishable skill, just like getting back into airplanes,” Goad said.

Through the Corps’ Motorcycle Mentorship Program and his unit’s club, Goad runs quarterly rides and safety checks with fellow Marines.

California has 800,000 registered motorcycles and more riders than any other state, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Motorcycles made up 3.5% of all registered vehicles in the U.S. in 2021; they tallied 14% of motor vehicle-related fatalities that year.

Since October 2023 there have been 19 fatal private motor vehicle fatalities and 10, or more than half, involved a motorcycle, according to the most recent Marine Corps on and off-duty mishap data.

Another Marine motorcycle fatality occurred on duty during a command group ride in March.

Six Marines died in motorcycle incidents in 2023.

While in uniform, Goad serves as a powerline division chief with his unit.

The gunny has spent more than 14 years hustling on busy airfields and flight decks as jets and helicopters roar around him and his crew.

“Situational awareness on the flight deck is paramount,” Goad said. “We tell these Marines to constantly look left, look right. Every two seconds. Because one second could mean your life.”

Back on that state highway, one of Goad’s fellow riders started assessing the downed rider as Goad began triage.

He used a belt to apply a tourniquet above the rider’s knee and then noticed another rupture, applying a second tourniquet from a first aid kit from his motorcycle.

Emergency workers would later tell Goad that without those tourniquets the rider’s blood loss would have been fatal.

“I think it comes down to instinct. I’m very aware of my surroundings, Goad said. “I’ve also learned hesitating at the wrong moment could mean life or death.”

The Marine Corps officially has reactivated one of two light attack helicopter squadrons it shut down in 2022 as part of its overall force redesign.

Marine Light Attack Helicopter Squadron (HMLA) 269, under 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing, stood back up at Marine Corps Air Station New River, North Carolina, on Monday, according to a Marine Corps press release.

“It was a decidedly somber day when HMLA-269 deactivated,” Col. Davis Fitzsimmons, commander of Marine Aircraft Group 29, said in the news release. “That was certainly reversed today.”

The “Gunrunners” squadron flies the AH-1Z Viper attack helicopter and the UH-1Y Venom utility helicopter.

The helicopter squadron was deactivated in December 2022 as the Marine Corps recalibrated its aviation needs and locations in a global shuffle that touched jets, fixed wing, helicopters and reached both coasts, Hawaii and Okinawa, Japan.

In his 2020 document laying out Force Design 2030, then-Commandant Gen. David Berger explained the squadron drawdown as related to the Corps cutting of three infantry battalions during the same force structure moves.

“While this capability has a certain amount of relevance to crisis and contingency missions which we must still be prepared to execute, it is operationally unsuitable for our highest-priority maritime challenges and excess to our needs with the divestment of three infantry battalions,” Berger wrote.

Personnel with the squadron rotated to other Marine units following its deactivation. But its equipment was preserved to “maintain a flexible ready bench for the service and preserve the ability to make future adjustments,” Marine officials said at the time.

Retired Master Gunnery Sgt. Lawrence Reeve Jr. told Marine Corps Times earlier in 2024 when the reactivation was first announced in March that he suspected, even in 2022, the squadron wouldn’t be gone for long.

Lawrence first served with the squadron in 1994 and later deployed with the unit to Iraq five times.

He doubted its disappearance mainly because the move left the entire East Coast with a single light attack squadron as the Marine Corps had shifted most of its assets to California, Hawaii and Japan.

In the recent release announcing the squadron’s reactivation, officials said the service “conducted analysis on force management in order to ensure that no operational commitments were left unfulfilled.”

Officials told Marine Corps Times that there were no unmet operational needs or commitments while the squadron was deactivated.

“The analysis,” said Capt. Emma Thompson, a IIMEF spokesperson, “looked at future exercises and deployments to ensure sustained support to priority II MEF warfighting tasks.”

While current variants of the Viper and Venom have been in active service since 2010 and 2008 respectively, which are relatively young for military aircraft, their basic designs date back to the 1960s and 1970s.

The Corps underwent a major upgrade program planning to update the aircraft’s Super Cobra and Twin predecessors through the 1990s that resulted in today’s helicopters.

In March, Bell Textron announced structural and power upgrades to the aircraft that it expects will keep them flying into the 2040s, which is the Corps’ current plan.

For what comes next, the service was closely monitoring the Army’s Future Vertical Lift program. A portion of that program called for a new future attack reconnaissance aircraft, which sought to replace both the Army’s OH-58 Kiowa Scout helicopter and its AH-64 Apache, a similar capability to the Viper.

However, the Army canceled the future attack reconnaissance aircraft portion of the program earlier in 2024, leaving a gap in how both services plan to move beyond existing, aging attack helicopters.

Along with HMLA 269, the Marines also deactivated HMLA-469 out of Camp Pendleton, California, in December 2022. That squadron remains deactivated.

The move aligned with the service’s most recently published aviation plan in 2022, which called for the active-duty light attack squadrons to draw down from seven to five and integration of the two reserve squadrons for necessary tasks.

At that time there were seven active light attack squadrons, one fleet replacement squadron and one reserve squadron each containing 15 Vipers and 12 Venoms. Another reserve squadron held 10 Vipers and eight Venoms, according to the aviation plan.

The service’s new configuration briefly had five active squadrons with the fleet replacement and reserve squadrons in the same setup.

The reactivation will push the numbers back up to six active squadrons.

In total, the Corps requires a mix of 284 Venoms and Vipers to fulfill those mission obligations. Over a five-year period from 2017 to 2021 the Vipers averaged a 72% readiness score while the Venoms managed 68%, according to the aviation plan.

More than 84% of the parts needed for the aircraft are interchangeable and the two platforms fly nearly a quarter of all Marine aviation flight hours.

On the fixed wing side, the Marine Corps deactivated its F/A-18 Hornet pilot training squadron in late 2023, and graduated its final AV-8B Harrier II mechanics earlier in 2024 after disbanding its Harrier training unit in late 2021.

Moves with the Hornet and Harrier are due to the jets being replaced by the F-35.

Squadron commander Lt. Col. Jens Gilbertson pointed out that HMLA-269 had been named the light attack squadron of the year by the Marine Corps Aviation Association eight times, more than any other such squadron in the Corps’ history.

“Ultimately, it was up to these Marines to get it done,” Gilbertson said. “They have discipline, and they have precision, and that’s the same discipline and precision they’re going to bring when they maintain and fly our aircraft.”

The Viper aircraft made news recently when a crew with the Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron (VMM) 262 Reinforced, 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit successfully struck a moving target at sea for the first time in the region with the new “fire and forget” AGM-179 joint air-to-ground missile.

III Marine Expeditionary Force received the shipment of amphibious combat vehicles at Naha Military Port on Saturday, according to a Marine press release.

“Upgrading our fleet with amphibious combat vehicles capable of supporting sea denial and maritime operations will further bolster our ability to support deterrence efforts and respond to contingencies in the Indo-Pacific,” Lt. Gen. Roger Turner, III MEF commanding general, said in the press release.

Those vehicles will head to Camp Schwab on the north end of the island.

The first overseas employment of the amphibious combat vehicle took place in early May, when the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit conducted a live-fire, waterborne gunnery range exercise in Oyster Bay, Philippines, during the annual Balikatan exercise with that partner nation.

Section leaders within the amphibious combat vehicle platoon, Alpha Company, Battalion Landing Team 1/5, used the coordinated simultaneous fires of all their section’s weapons while afloat against targets ashore.

Teams fired 40 mm training rounds that marked targets with orange chalk on impact instead of high explosive rounds due to the location.

The amphibious combat vehicle is a next-generation, eight-wheeled vehicle designed to move Marines from ship to shore, according to the Marine Corps. It will be the primary tactical mobility for the Marine infantry battalion at sea and ashore, replacing the assault amphibious vehicle.

The assault amphibious vehicle uses tracks instead of wheels is smaller and has a flatter hull.

The new vehicle can carry three crew members with 13 Marines and two days of combat load, according to a report issued in May by the Congressional Research Service.

Col. Tim Hough first announced in early May that a dozen amphibious combat vehicles would arrive at 4th Marine Regiment in Okinawa, Japan, this summer. Hough serves as the Corps’ program manager for advanced amphibious assault.

“That’s important because now we’ll be in distinct geographical locations,” Hough said.

The move comes as the service prepared in recent years to handle challenges of having the amphibious combat vehicles spread out globally for the first time.

BAE Systems, the vehicle manufacturer, has fielded 184 vehicles to the Corps since fielding began in late 2020.

But those have been housed at the Assault Amphibian School and 3rd Assault Amphibian Battalion at Camp Pendleton, California.

Following multiple rollovers in 2022 the Corps temporarily pulled the vehicles from operations in the surf zone. The rollovers did not result in any reported injuries and the service later determined they were a result of insufficient training on differences between the new vehicle and its predecessor.

Initial requirements for the amphibious combat vehicle were conceived in 2014. The service selected BAE Systems to produce the vehicle in mid-2018. Fielding began in late 2020.

The Marine Corps reduced its initial request of funding to procure 108 vehicles for fiscal year 2025 due to spending caps down to 80 vehicles, according to the Congressional Research Service report.

The command-and-control-focused variant reached initial operating capability this summer. The Corps expects the variant with a 30-mm cannon will reach initial operational capability in 2026, officials said.

The full implementation of QSR Max simplifies the process for Marines to submit maintenance requests directly to the USMC Max system, according to a Tuesday press release.

The system uses QR codes posted in their barracks that can be scanned with mobile devices on the spot.

Users also can track the status of their maintenance support requests as the request moves through the system, according to the release. The requests go directly to barracks and building managers and are then relayed to the installation.

Marines also can use the QSR Max website by creating a password-protected account online.

Military.com first reported on the announcement.

Marine leadership came under fire earlier in 2024 after online postings showed filth, vermin, mold and a variety of maintenance problems at various Marine barracks across the force.

Senior Marine officials acknowledged in testimony to Congress that the service had reached a yearslong backlog on maintenance and repairs due to shortfalls in barracks funding that instead used the money to procure and develop weapons and combat capabilities.

Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Eric Smith went as far as to say he would not apologize for the past barracks neglect, saying prioritizing “weapons systems, training and technology” as the service fought wars in Iraq and Afghanistan saved lives.

“And that focus kept a lot of Marines alive in Helmand province, kept a lot of Marines alive in Iraq, in the Sunni Triangle,” Smith said at the Modern Day Marine conference in May.

The Corps concluded a “wall-to-wall” inspection of all its barracks earlier in 2024 and rolled out its Barracks 2030 initiative to consolidate barracks, build new facilities where needed and catch up on the deep backlog of maintenance, new furniture and add civilian personnel to manage the buildings instead of relying on Marine noncommissioned officers.

How QSR Max works:

• Marine identifies a problem.
• Marine scans QR code on QSR Max and creates an account if one is not already established.
• Marine creates a facilities maintenance request within QSR Max, followed by the creation of a USMCmax service request if approved.
• Request is received and addressed within the QSR Max portal by the designated barracks manager.
• Barracks manager determines level of support needed to address the requirement and updates the request in the system.
• If needed, the request goes to base via work order request.
• Once the maintenance request is completed, the assigned agency reports it complete in the QSR Max system.

Source: Marine Corps

During congressional budget hearings in the spring, the Marines requested $274 million for fiscal year 2025 to begin tackling barracks restoration.

Analysis by the service showed that it will need to spend as much as $1.5 billion each year to restore and modernize its barracks to bring them into the “good/fair” condition category according to an internal memo obtained by Marine Corps Times in January.

The maintenance backlog, according to the Department of the Navy budget, is $15.8 billion.

An estimated 87,000 Marines live in barracks. As of 2023, about 17,000 Marines lived in barracks that fell short of military standards regarding privacy and room configuration, according to a September 2023 Government Accountability Office report.

Those figures do not include an account of Marines living with maintenance problems such as mold or inadequate hot water.

Of the Corps’ 658 barracks buildings, about 17% are in “poor or failing” condition, according to research published in the Marine Corps Gazette in February.

The two Marine crew of an AH-1Z Viper attached to the Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron (VMM) 262 Reinforced with the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit fired the missile Wednesday in training mission in the Philippine Sea in which another vessel towed the target.

Marines used the newly acquired AGM-179 joint air-to-ground missile for the first time in such a strike mission, according to a press release.

“The missile can be used to defend key maritime terrain against a wide range of targets from armored vehicles to maritime patrol craft during conflict,” wrote Capt. Pawel Puczko in the release.

As part of the training, a UH-1Y Huey helicopter accompanied the Viper on a forward arming and refueling, or FARP, which is how the Marines plan to resupply aircraft across the Pacific in any future conflict.

The missile replaces both the radar-guided Longbow missile and the laser-guided AGM-114, according to manufacturer Lockheed Martin. The missile can be fired from fighter jets, ground vehicles or helicopters.

It combines features of both the Longbow and AGM-114, according to Lockheed Martin.

The missile weighs about 114 pounds, is nearly six feet long and 7 inches in diameter, according to the company’s website. It uses a solid rocket motor and can carry a multipurpose warhead with a shaped-charge package inside a fragmenting case, according to the U.S. Navy Air Systems Command.

The weapon can be used on combat vehicles, air defense equipment, launchers, buildings, bunkers, patrol craft and command and control nodes, according to the command.

In 2022 the company announced that it had doubled the range of the AGM-179, showcasing a 10 mile strike in testing at the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, California, Marine Corps Times sister publication Defense News reported.

The Marine Corps did not provide distances or target speed of the recent target strike near Okinawa, Japan.

The company also added a tri-mode seeker that pairs a low-cost imaging sensor with the seeker’s semi-active laser and millimeter wave sensors.

Those capabilities allow the shooter to fire the weapon and fly away, increasing survivability and accuracy.

The sensors and range give users greater stand-off distances from enemy air defenses, Lockheed Martin program director for air-to-ground missile systems told Defense News at the time.

The Army also purchased the new missile to arm its Viper equivalent, the AH-64E Apache helicopter, Defense News reported.

A Viper crew with Marine Light Attack Helicopter Squadron 367 used the missile during Exercise Steel Knight off the California coast on Dec. 5, 2023, according to a I Marine Expeditionary Force release.

In that exercise, targets were marked with a laser designator from a U.S. Navy MH-60R Seahawk helicopter, used to guide the missile to the objective, according to the release.

Cpl. Ricardo Perez Castillo waived his right to a preliminary hearing Wednesday, which moves his case involving felony charges of assault with intent to murder, first-degree home invasion, assault with intent to commit criminal sexual conduct and carrying a weapon with unlawful intent to the Kent County, Michigan, 17th Circuit Court for a potential trial.

Prosecutors allege based on witness testimony and a police investigation that Castillo entered a home in the River Bluffs community of Rockford, Michigan, at around 3 a.m. on June 15, stripped down to his underwear and a shirt, took a knife from the kitchen and stabbed an 11-year-old girl who was a friend of a girl who lived at the residence, FOX 17 West Michigan reported.

Castillo stopped stabbing the girl when she and her friend began screaming. He was held at gunpoint by the homeowner until police arrived. She suffered wounds to her left arm and shoulder and was treated at a local hospital.

Kent County Sheriff’s deputies found Castillo in the girl’s bedroom with a bloody knife next to him, according to court records reported by both ABC local affiliate Channel 13 and local NBC affiliate Channel 8 Wood TV.

“Video shows Ricardo (Castillo) entering the (River Bluffs) residence and taking his shoes, socks, and pants off,” according to the arrest report, local ABC affiliate Channel 13 reported. “Ricardo (Castillo), with only his underwear and T-shirt, grabbed a knife from the kitchen drawer and walked upstairs.

Castillo’s intent was to break into the house and kill the entire family, according to the report.

“Ricardo (Castillo) stated that he tried the first couple bedroom doors, but they were locked,” the report stated. “Ricardo then opened the master bedroom door and located (the homeowner) and his wife asleep.”

He decided to look for an “easier target,” according to the report.

“Ricardo (Castillo) then went into the room where (the girl) was sleeping,” wrote the deputy. “Ricardo stated to detectives that he planned to kill (her) and have sex with her … body.”

But that house wasn’t his first stop that night.

About an hour before Castillo allegedly entered the River Bluffs, Michigan, home, a nearby homeowner was cleaning up his house after a dinner party and went to the rear of the home to bring some items inside from his deck when he saw a stranger by his kitchen sink.

He asked the man, who police later identified as Castillo, who he was, why he was in his house and to leave.

The man said Castillo walked toward the door but stopped and said, “‘I don’t even (expletive) know what the (expletive) is going on, but just in case, just be careful. Make sure you’re armed.’ At that point I slammed the door shut and called police,” Channel 8 Wood TV reported.

Castillo was arrested on felony charges and is being held in the Kent County, Michigan, jail on a $2 million bond.

“This case, it’s as scary as it gets, it’s as horrific as it gets and it puts all of us in a fear zone like no other,” said District Judge Sara J. Smolenski during his hearing.

Castillo, a native of Waterford, Michigan, more than two hours away, has served as a canvassing recruiter out of the Marine’s Lansing recruiting station since October 2023.

He holds an infantry primary military occupational specialty and previously served with 2nd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, Marine Chief Warrant Officer 3 Bobby Yarbrough, a Marine spokesman, told Marine Corps Times in an email response Thursday.

Police told local media that Castillo had been drinking alcohol earlier in the evening and was seen in downtown Rockford, Michigan, more than a mile from the house.

Marine officials were not aware of any disciplinary actions against the corporal and Michigan police found no prior criminal convictions against Castillo in the state, according to local media.

The Marine Corps deferred comment on the case and offered a statement to media.

“We are deeply saddened by the tragic incident that occurred. The case is currently being adjudicated in the Michigan court system, and it would be inappropriate to comment on the details of the case at this time. Our hearts go out to the victim’s family and loved ones during this incredibly difficult time.”

Police told local media outlets that currently the act appears “totally random,”and they have not found any connection between Castillo and individuals at the residence.