What has happened to Marine Infantry Officers? Now they're begging for a drone & think information warfare will win the day!

via War on the Rocks.

Let’s take the Clausewitzian imagery of two wrestlers further. Imagine that one has been fighting blind. Fighting without sight is possible, when thorough training negates the expectation to rely on sight. The other senses compensate: Kinesthetic awareness is heightened, a premium is placed on sound, smell matters, and the taste of fear pervades. Now imagine the blind fighter is provided sight in the midst of the skirmish. The sensory overload would be disorienting. But once the senses recalibrate, the fighter could find untapped potential. The Marine Corps is currently the scrappy, blind fighter eager to open its eyes. The forthcoming integration of organic medium altitude long endurance (MALE) unmanned aircraft systems, or, what, for the purposes of this article, we shall call “GuardianAngel” drones, will soon enable the service to transform into a substantively more capable 21st century Marine Air-Ground Task Force (MAGTF). What will this future look like?

The Vision

In addition to its emphasis on embracing “Guardian Angel” drones, the Marine Corps Operating Concept underscores that the service needs to continuously strive to be at once naval, expeditionary, agile, and lethal. All four characteristics are essential, particularly in the context of the 21st century. With unprecedented advances in drone capabilities, the Corps is at a defining moment for MAGTF and naval force integration. This transformation is essential to achieving the Marine Corps Operating Concept’s envisioned 21st century MAGTF:

The 21st century MAGTF conducts maneuver warfare in the physical and cognitive dimensions of conflict to generate and exploit psychological, technological, temporal, and spatial advantages over the adversary. The 21st century MAGTF executes maneuver warfare through a combined arms approach that embraces information warfare as indispensable for achieving complementary effects across five domains – air, land, sea, space, and cyberspace…The 21st century MAGTF operates and fights at sea, from the sea, and ashore as an integrated part of the Naval force and the larger Combined/Joint force.

To achieve the vision though, the current MAGTF design must be reoriented with eyes open to a better and different future. A recent congressional hearing on “Amphibious Warfare in a Contested Environment” highlighted the military potential of unmanned systems for the Marine Corps: Rep. Colleen Hanabusa succinctly noted, “policy is set by acquisition.” And the opportunity to create the desired 21st century MAGTF comes with this policy change. Simply put, the 21st century MAGTF will be realized when “Guardian Angel” drones are structurally integrated into it and the naval force is able to leverage the remote sensing, communications, and fires that payload capacity with persistent presence brings.

Story here. 

Read the whole thing for yourself.  Personally I felt ill less than 1/4 thru the thing.

Since when did Marine Corps Officers speak "Pentagon-ese"?  Since when did they bath in "Think Tank Wording" to explain concepts they were pushing?

It's quite obvious that the stink of Amos and Davis still lingers.  That's the danger of letting the wrong people into important positions.  They develop acolytes that will continue to infect the organization.

This "Guardian Angel" is just the tilt rotor drone they're pushing for.

Let me hit you with something.  What happens if this concept is followed and the bad guys simply shoot them down, target them for precision jamming or does something else that renders them moot?

How will the new, technologically advanced, networked Marine Corps perform on the battlefield if this node is removed?

We're building a force where intense enemy focus on disrupting this information network will in essence put all of our units on their own personal Guadalcanal on the battlefield.  Cut off, no help coming and facing an enemy that is able to mass/destroy them in place at the time of their choosing.

Single points of failure are being designed into our force at every level.  The F-35/F-22/B-21/B-2 all focus on stealth to win the fight.  What happens if that stealth is suddenly not valid?  The same single point is being brought to the Marine Corps by people that should know better.

I am not impressed but I'd bet my last dollar those Infantry Officers are on the promotions list because of this idiocy.