Marines on the battlefield will one day possess computers connected to wireless local area networks. But this is years away, due to technological immaturities and high costs. So when does high-technology become affordable-technology? When it becomes commercially available across a variety of applications. Examples include Gore-Tex gear, chemical lightsticks, and freeze-dried rations. Each is a Marine application of a commercial product. But none made more than a marginal improvement in tactical capability.

Tactics, however, can be improved by communications and information applications today being sold to boaters and outdoorsmen. Many commercial products are smaller, lighter, and cheaper than the military counterparts. This means more can be purchased for a fixed price. When it comes to Marine riflemen, numbers have a meaning all their own. Equipment in limited quantifies, such as the military Global Positioning System (GPS) (plugger) and SINCGARS radio (Single-Channel Ground and Airborne Radio System), are rarely distributed below platoon level. Regardless of theories about maneuver, dispersed battlefields, and decentralized command, squads rarely disperse beyond shouting distance from the platoon commander. Infantry tactics hardly differ today from those used in Vietnam or Korea.

However, the commercial market has yielded economics of scale that today permit the issue of a GPS receiver and palm-size radio to every squad and fire team leader. With them, unit leaders would then have a reliable tool for unit location and the means to coordinate and plot friendly and enemy locations in realtime through tactical radio nets below the company level. The result would be a significant alteration in tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) within Marine infantry. These devices are two sides of the same coin. To possess one without the other would greatly diminish the net capability.

If you go to a garbage dump and stand still, in the course of an hour you will see a few rats. But only for a few seconds, as they scurry from one hiding place to another. Historically, the vast majority of combat reports do not report casualties or heavy firefights. Instead, they are sightings, fleeting glimpses, of three, four, or five enemy troops. That's it. Come and gone. Nothing more. Concealment, usually with cover, is the prevailing condition and prerequisite for survival on the infantry battlefield. This is in marked contrast to, say, missile defense or air combat, where in clear air mass it is the speed and precision of strike that enhances survivability.

 

Strip concealment away in close terrain, and battles would last hours, not days or months. High cost overhead sensors and satellites add little to tactical situational awareness under such conditions. The human eye is the best sensor on the close battlefield. The problem has been that the eye has not been connected to an accurate geographic reference system. To mistake a position by a few hundred meters is to be on the other side of the moon, and 1:50,000 maps are often inaccurate. With these inexpensive commercial tools, however, what a squad sees can be located within a dozen meters by GPS and immediately reported through the hand-held radio, enabling each higher command to put together a rapid and accurate picture of the battlefield. On infantry battlefields, higher commands are the second, not the first to know what is going on. Most information starts at the squad level and travels up; it is not beamed down from photos or satellites. If higher headquarters can be apprised quickly of precise locations from the squads on up, where the enemy is and is not, then the higher commanders can maneuver faster than can the enemy. To do this, higher command has to put together the composite of many terse sitreps. It is by connecting those individual dots that the commander strips away the enemy's concealment and sees the hidden face in the picture, sees where the enemy is and is not. The benefit is not trivial in equipping every squad and perhaps fire team with GPS and communications.

Accordingly, the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory has been assessing both longer-term high-tech and near-term affordable-tech applications. At the high end, the Lab is experimenting with wireless wide area networks (with up to 10 megabits of capacity) connecting the Marine air-ground task force (MAGTF) afloat with elements ashore equipped with palmtop computers, now called end user terminals (EUTs) because eventually they will transmit both voice and data. The intent is to constantly update positions and other information–the "common tactical picture"–at all levels of a MAGTF. However, the technologies are not mature, and the cost is high. This is tomorrow's solution, not today's.

The immediate, affordable-tech approach has been the employment of the UHF FM (ultra high-frequency, frequency modulation) multi-channel, short-range "Family Radio Service" radios sold by companies such as Kenwood and Motorola at a price under $100. These permit extensive communications nets within platoons and squads. In initial tests, these miniature radios have provided line-of-sight communications of about 2 miles with a limited ability to maintain connectivity inside buildings. Used in numbers that make distribution possible to the fire team level, such radios are key to the employment of coordinated small unit tactics in close terrain that is routinely beyond line-of-sight characteristic of the urban environment. The firefighters in New York City have worked with the Lab to show how one onscene commander-i.e., a platoon or company commander-can control dozens of radio users on a single tactical net. They are not secure, so shackle codes are used when reporting locations.

Another complementary item, distributed to 1st Battalion, 5th Marines during radio training was the commercial GPS, costing under $140. These two technologies were applied together in the new decisionmaking techniques taught in the Combat Decisionmaking Range and Combat Squad Leaders' Course (see MCG Feb99, pp. 37-38). The GPS and radios made it possible for the squad leaders to coordinate the actions of fire teams outside visual range and to coordinate laterally with other squads in a manner not normally practiced in current Marine operating forces.

The GPS can maintain up to 500 individual waypoints and display these individually named symbols on a scalable white board map. Because the user can zoom into a range of 300 meters on the white board and can pan around the map, individual landmarks only a dozen meters apart can be entered-houses, minefields, last view of enemy, locations of adjacent squads, etc. The squad leaders were able to work tactical problems, such as engaging a sniper, entering that enemy position, sending it to another squad, determining the route for the other squad to close on the sniper, and then engaging the enemy from two directions. Without the white board in the hands of each squad, each seeing the same exact symbols the same place, such tactics beyond line of sight could not be done without significant risk of fratricide.

In essence, each squad leader developed a personal tactical picture, recording all relevant locations as individual waypoints. Each location permits an explanatory line of text, such as the number of enemy, or target elevation and time of observation, etc. Information must be communicated by voice, not digital text, in this affordable-tech technique. Each transmission takes about 30 seconds. With laptop computers and high-tech wireless communications, position reports can be exchanged automatically.

What does this affordable-tech common tactical picture provide? It gives the Marine leader down to the squad level the ability to graphically display key geographical locations on his own GPS. This display is in addition to his map. It provides a flexible tactical tool for developing and maintaining situational awareness. Affordable-tech pushes down independent movement, location, and reporting from the platoon level to the squad level, greatly extending the terrain covered and the number of accurate positions reported quickly, enabling the higher commanders to react faster and to increase the tactical tempo and pressure upon the enemy.

With commercial software, the GPS receivers can be up or downloaded with location lists (checkpoints, targets, etc.) from any computer. Thus, a platoon or company commander can develop a scheme of maneuver and fire support plan on a tactical laptop computer or EUT. Each GPS of each fire team or squad leader can then be downloaded with the same list of checkpoints, control features, and targets. The various points are then displayed on each individual white board and used by all unit leaders during execution of the plan.

A commercially available GPS has other features as well. For example, it has a fairly robust track-back function that permits it to automatically compute the direction and distance from the current position back over the route traveled. In addition, given a direction and approximate distance from any known location it can rapidly compute grid locations. Accordingly, a unit leader can polar plot fires from his own position by entering direction and estimated distance and result in a grid location. Such is the stuff of which fast fire missions are made.

The GPS and the hand-held radios are the first step for the Marine infantryman at the fighting level onto the digital battlefield. They address the staples of land battle: Where am 1, where is the enemy, and where are my Marines. They are available at remarkably low cost, and they have been well received to date by the operating forces during experimentation. The affordable-tech approach is available today at about one percent of the high-tech's cost and provides perhaps 60 percent of the solution at the user's level.

One last note, the commercial GPS is a computer and takes frequent operator use over a period of 3 to 6 months to gain full familiarity. The procedures for employing universal GPS and radio communications down to the fire team leader have not been developed, and it will take considerable trial and error before the full impact is realized in improved TTPs. Exploring the impact of these technologies with inexpensive commercial technologies today will enable us to design and build the high-tech systems of tomorrow.

 

Marine Corps Gazette • April 1999