U.S. Marines will be trained to use first-person view attack drones to destroy enemy targets up to 20 kilometers away. U.S. MARINE CORPS
THE WATCH STAFF
The U.S. Marine Corps is outfitting an attack drone team to roll out first-person view (FPV) small unmanned aerial systems (sUAS) in battlefield scenarios. The development comes as the U.S. adapts its tactics and technology to meet the challenges of 21st-century warfare. The Marines announced that the team would participate in training ground-level units in how to operate FPVs to destroy enemy targets up to 20 kilometers away, according to Task & Purpose, a military-affairs news site.
The Ukraine war and an earlier conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan illustrate how sUAS have altered the battle space, rendering previously sound strategy of infantry and tank movements obsolete. FPVs can be controlled by Soldiers to monitor or attack targets. Col. Scott Cuomo, head of Weapons Training Battalion, Quantico, told the news site that the team will perform a role similar to that of the Marine Corps Shooting Team during the introduction of the M27 infantry assault rifle. “The attack drone team now has a mission to become the experts at this,” Cuomo said. “Someone has got to be the best in any organization and then have the best knowledge to teach it.”
The M27 gradually replaced the M4 carbine for most infantryman in rifle squads during the 2010s. Just as the shooting team helped train Marines to use the new rifle, the drone attack team will impart lessons learned from Ukraine and other wars, although details, procedures and protocols are still being developed, Cuomo told the site. “How do you train a Marine that way?” Cuomo asked. “What are the tasks? What are the conditions, the environments that you’re training that Marine in? What are the standards that they have to meet? So that’s all that what we’re working through right now every single day. As we’re speaking, Marines are working through that.”
Officials told Task & Purpose that the new drone team will participate in marksmanship competitions beginning in fiscal year 2026 to hone their expertise and share best practices. Many of the Marines on the initial team are from the Weapons Training Battalion, but more Marines will join the team at the start of the new fiscal year, they said.
Troops on the ground need to know how to use drones in offensive operations, said retired Marine Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., who led U.S. Central Command from 2019 to 2022. “Drones. cheap drones, you can fly 10 of them in a day if you have to — what they do is, they provide SA [situational awareness] around you — you can see where you’re going — and then you need drones that will provide lethal effects,” McKenzie told Task & Purpose.
The continued fighting in Ukraine provides a grisly classroom, he said. “We’ve got to look day-to-day at what is happening in Ukraine in order to bring those lessons back to the United States,” McKenzie said.
Marines are also about to be equipped with counter sUAS technologies. Starting this summer, the Marine Expeditionary Units and Marine Littoral Regiments will be outfitted with the yet undisclosed technologies. “The technologies being fielded will allow Marines to detect, track, identify, and defeat adversary sUAS with both kinetic and non-kinetic means,” a Marine Corps news release stated. “These systems will be lightweight, easy-to-use, easy-to-train” and not tied to a specific military occupational specialty, meaning every Marine, regardless of training level, should be able to operate the systems with minimal instruction.