Technology helps diminish Marine combat threats

The Marine Corps Systems Command (MCSC) will have another tool at its disposal allowing the Marine Air-Ground Task Force to identify enemy activity.

The effort employs a vehicle-borne device enabling Marines to discern what happens inside the electromagnetic spectrum, connecting several independent electronic capabilities into a single unit and allowing Marines to manage threats and reactions from a central location.

Marines currently use systems to counter improvised explosive devices (IEDs) that block signals used by adversaries to remotely detonate explosive devices. The new technology is a man-packable and vehicle-mounted system, which will be able to be deployed on any Marine vehicle.

“Marines are going to be able to make decisions on what they are seeing,” Lt. Col. Thomas Dono, a team lead in MCSC’s Command Elements Systems, said. “We will be able to do all of the functions of similar systems, as well as sense and then display what is going on in the electronic spectrum. Then we can communicate that to Marines for their decision-making process.”

MCSC officials said plans are to field the vehicle-mounted system around the first quarter of 2020, and once implemented, the equipment will continue to grow in capability to better prepare Marines to take on the digital battlefield.

“This system is important because it is going to allow Marines to operate inside the electromagnetic spectrum, make decisions and act upon that information,” Dono said. “That’s something they’ve never had to consider or think about in the past.”