Marines execute Island Marauder initiative

Marine Corps personnel recently joined subject matter experts in executing Island Marauder, an annual technology demonstration involving the integration of current and future technology in a realistic combat environment.

Marine Corps Base Hawaii served as the site of the endeavor, which officials said included the participation of a variety of elements.

“This exercise is very different because people are able to learn, explore and ask questions,” Maj. Austin Bonner, team lead for the Networking-On-the-Move program at MCSC, said. “We had [Ground Combat Element] advocates from [Plans, Policies and Operations], the requirements people from CD&I, engineers and developers from [Naval Information Warfare Center], the acquisition people from [MCSC] and the customer: the warfighter.”

Marine Corps Systems Command jointly executed the effort, along with Marine Corps Combat Development Command, Combat Development and Integration, Naval Information Warfare Center-Atlantic, and III Marine Expeditionary Force.

“We brought MCSC systems at different levels of maturity—whether they’re fully fielded as a program of record, are currently in development, or as part of an engineering change proposal—out here and put them in the hands of Marines,” Maj. Austin Bonner, team lead for the Networking-On-the-Move program at MCSC, said. “Being able to conduct this exercise with the Marine stakeholder and the customer enables us to perfect some of the concepts that haven’t been fully flushed out yet to drive how we develop some of these systems in the future.”