Marines open units on East and West Coast to focus on drone warfare

The Marine Corps is standing up two new organizations focused on drone warfare at its major training bases on the East and West coasts. Based at Marine training hubs at Twentynine Palms, California, and Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, the two units will develop and test drone tactics, technology, and training for Marines headed to real-world deployments.

Both new units are part of the Marine Corps’ full court press to adapt to new battlefield realities as small, inexpensive drones become prolific in war zones.

The two units will have different missions. The Virginia group will be an experimental counter-drone team within the Weapons Training Battalion, testing new technologies and tactics. The California-based unit will develop doctrine and training courses for instructors to train and certify fleet units with upcoming real-world deployments.

Dubbed the Marine Corps Robotics Integration Group, the West Coast unit will be based at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center at Twentynine Palms. The group will develop training and certification requirements for deploying units on using and defending against unmanned systems, said Maj. Hector Infante, a spokesman for Training and Education Command.

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The training curricula the group develops will then be used at regional training hubs, Infante told Task & Purpose, to directly train Marines prior to deployments.

“The Marine Corps Robotics Integration Group provides the institutional framework necessary to rapidly integrate validated capabilities into standardized training,” Maj. Gen. Mark H. Clingan, the commanding general at Twentynine Palms, said in a statement. “The battlefield continues to demonstrate that small unmanned aircraft systems are no longer niche capabilities; they are indispensable tools for reconnaissance, precision strike, force protection and survivability.”

In Virginia, the new counter drone team will experiment with the constant stream of new technologies and techniques around unmanned vehicles in use around the world, according to a Wednesday news release on the team,

The team was conceived as a counterpart to the Marine Corps’ attack drone team, which was established last year at Quantico, the news release says.

Both the attack team and counter drone team, the release said, will feed their results to the robotics group at Twentynine Palms to inform their training plans.

The two new units are part of an overall effort in the Marines to bring drones to line units. Other programs have included equipping Marines headed to the Middle East with an advanced system to help them shoot down drones and training Marines how to dig trenches that can protect them from small quadcopters.

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