POHAKULOA TRAINING AREA, Hawaii — Marines in Hawaii are testing out a new anti-drone fighting system as they prepare for a deployment to the Western Pacific later this year as part of Marine Rotational Force Southeast Asia.
On Jan. 25 at the Pohakuloa Training Area on Hawaii island, the members of the 3rd Marine Littoral Regiment’s 3rd Littoral Anti-Air Battalion shot down drones as they put their new Marine Air Defense Integrated System through its paces for the first time in a live-fire environment.
The system relies on pairs of armored vehicles equipped with a host of advanced cameras and sensors to detect small drone threats and using a mixture of weapons and jamming devices to take them out. The battalion is fielding 13 MADIS, or 26 vehicles.
First Lt. Ian Menk, executive officer of the anti-air battery that was testing them, said “the landscape of using (drones) is so prevalent, we have a dire need to counter this capability.” He added that MADIS is “probably the most advanced counter-(drone) system we have in the whole military.”
The system had been previously field-tested at the Army’s Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona, but Jan. 25 was the first training exercise led by Marines themselves and not contractors.
“This is really the culmination of 10-plus years, almost, of development,” said Lt. Col. Matthew Sladek, who commands of the anti-air battalion but has been involved with the MADIS system ever since it was first established.
The program has its origins in the war against the Islamic State group. U.S. forces were assisting local fighters in Iraq and Syria in their fight against IS militants who had seized wide swaths of territory in both countries and formed a caliphate that was enforcing a brutal form of Islamist law and engaged in genocidal killings of Shia Muslims, Christians, Yazidis and others.
As the anti-IS coalition advanced against the caliphate’s forces, the militants fought back with a variety of surprising tactics, including using relatively cheap “off the shelf” commercial drones that they modified to use against their enemies. It fundamentally changed how the war was fought.
Since then drones have become prevalent in battlefields around the globe, from the front lines in Ukraine to the cartel conflicts of Mexico.
Col. John Lehane, commander of the 3rd MLR, said, “Some of the character of warfare is changing right now. If you’ve got YouTube, you can get a front-row seat to see what is different right now on a daily basis in Ukraine and in other places in the world. And if we don’t change, we’re going to find ourselves in a bad spot.”
Lehane noted that it’s now common knowledge that a modified commercial drone armed with explosives can “take out an $80 million tank for an investment of about $1,000.”
Relatively low-cost drones also have been used by Yemeni-based Houthi militants in attacks against shipping in the Red Sea. Menk observed that often the U.S. military has used expensive missiles that cost far more than the drones themselves to actually shoot them down.
The MADIS, by contrast, relies on a 30-millimeter cannon, a machine gun and the occasional relatively small stinger missile to take out targets. Though not exactly cheap, Menk said it’s significantly more cost-effective to use these smaller munitions with the help of advanced targeting systems than firing a “$2 million missile to shoot down these drones.”
“I think systems that could have done things that are comparable to this would have been much larger years ago,” Lehane said. “The amount of technology squeezed into that vehicle is pretty eye-watering for a guy who’s been at this game for 29 years. It’s pretty cool watching all of that come together.”
It’s no coincidence that the Kaneohe-based 3rd MLR is the first unit to receive the new system. It officially activated in 2022 and is the first unit of its kind. It is meant to serve as a blueprint for an ambitious Marine Corps plan to restructure its entire force amid boiling geopolitical tensions between the U.S. and China.
Under an initiative called Force Design 2030, service leaders envision the Corps returning to its roots as a naval fighting force focused on the sorts of coastal and “island hopping” operations it conducted in the Pacific during World War II — but with a 21st-century twist.
Marine Corps brass want to see a leaner force that is more agile and adaptable, moving quickly across island chains. The service has gotten rid of all of its tanks and has phased out traditional cannon-based artillery on Oahu to replace them with new ballistic missiles systems that commanders hope to use to sink enemy ships from batteries that Marines would set up on islands and coastlines as they support Navy operations and allied forces.
Part of making the strategy work means figuring out ways to survive attacks from opposing military forces.
Sladek noted that in the early days of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld began asking when the last time was that U.S. forces needed to use anti-aircraft weapons to defend themselves. He explained that “the implied task (was) to start divesting from short-range air defense as we were kind of mobilizing to fight the insurgency.”
Lehane said the U.S. military had over time become used to the notion that it has air superiority and wouldn’t need to worry about facing an enemy that would strike them from the sky. He said, “We’d be foolish to think that that is still a condition right now, judging from what everybody’s throwing out there. And you don’t have to be an exquisite superpower to build this stuff.”
As evolving weapons technology has made its way onto real battlefields around the globe, it has prompted the Marines to take what Sladek said is an unusual approach to developing its new anti-drone system.
“There’s the road map that the program office has to incrementally over time increase a lot of capabilities through software, and then as better hardware becomes available, integrate that,” Sladek said. “There’ll be an iterative process throughout which is kind of unique for Marine Corps acquisition programs. So instead of buying the ‘30-year weapon system’ (that) changes little over the course of its life, this thing that we have today will look totally different.”
But the rapid changes the Marine Corps is going through in terms of both new tactics and tools has come with challenges in Hawaii.
“Some of these weapons systems are being fielded faster than ranges and training areas can be built to accommodate them,” Lehane said. “There’s a little bit of norming you’ve got to do with facilities and organizations and all that sort of stuff. So that’s an important aspect of this, also, is as these new weapon systems emerge, we’ve got to make sure that the places where we train are ready to accommodate them.”
MADIS and other systems the MLR has been fielding have an emphasis on being smaller — easier to move and, in theory, harder to detect and hit. China also has been revamping its forces with a major emphasis on missiles of their own to strike American forces. Menk said “the name of the game right now is who can hide the best, especially in the Indo-Pacific.”
But the concept of the MLR and Force Design 2030 as a whole have been controversial — and deeply divisive — among retired Marine Corps officers. Many have charged that the move toward having troops operate in smaller groups spread out across the Pacific and putting resources toward protecting expensive missile batteries will ultimately make Marines vulnerable in the event of a conflict — and get countless young Marines killed if a real conflict were to break out.
Force Design 2030 is in many ways tailor-made with the Western Pacific in mind, with a particular focus on the South China Sea — a busy waterway that nearly one-third of all global trade travels through. Beijing claims nearly the entire sea as its exclusive territory over the objections of neighboring countries, and tensions have been mounting over territorial and navigation rights.
In 2016 an international court ruled in favor of the Philippines and found that China’s claims have “no legal” basis. Beijing rejected the ruling and has doubled down by building bases on disputed islands and reefs. The Chinese military has harassed and sometimes attacked fishermen and other marine workers from neighboring countries.
When the 3rd MLR deploys this year, it will spend much of its time in the Philippines, and MADIS is coming with them as they train alongside Philippine military forces. Lehane said, “We’re going to bring it and see how it behaves in high humidity. We’re going to get right after it.”
The system initially was envisioned for use in deserts to fend off drones launched by militants in the Middle East and was largely tested in desert environments as well — a far cry from the more lush tropical settings the 3rd MLR will actually encounter around the South China Sea.
When it comes to how the advanced cameras and sensors will fair in that environment, Sladek said bluntly that “we’ll find out.”
