• I went to the three-day Modern Day Marine expo in Washington, DC.
• The expo, which draws military leaders and defense companies, focuses on the innovations needed to fight future wars.
• Marines spoke candidly about challenges trying to field and integrate new tech throughout units.

I spent three days at the Marines' big annual modern warfare expo in Washington, DC. Drone tech stole the show.

Marines, Pentagon officials, and defense industry executives spoke extensively on panels and in private discussions about the uphill battle of preparing for future warfare, and drones were a hot topic. Marine leaders discussed the difficulties of getting many more drones into the hands of troops and the challenges of adapting to war with these systems.

The Modern Day Marine expo is focused on the innovations Marines need to fight future wars, so it's no surprise that everyone was buzzing about drones this year. These highly versatile machines which can surveil enemies, carry out precision strikes, and more have been redefining contemporary warfare.

Their uses were on display at the "Drone Zone," a section of the expo featuring demos from the Marines' Attack Drone Team. There was also a section devoted to wargaming, another focused on warfighting, and countless booths where companies pitched ideas on what tech Marines might need for future fights.

Game-changing warfare technology

In what was basically a UAS mini-symposium, held in a cluster of quiet rooms in the convention center, about two dozen Marines — from generals to senior enlisted —hashed out what's working and what's not when it comes to drones.

Some expressed concerns about fielding and implementing uncrewed aerial systems within the Corps.

Leaders cited the difficulty of getting drones into the hands of troops due to the slow and complex military acquisition process, as well as tricky procedural and regulatory issues, like deconflicting flight space with the FAA, negotiating on-base training flights for logistics drones, and mitigating risks for civilians on the ground.

I was a little surprised by just how open to reporters like me these intimate panels were and was struck by just how frank Marines were in speaking with me and helping me better understand their challenges.

"We've got to field drones at scale in order to be able to pressurize our training really, to work through some of the real hard problems," said Lt. Gen. Benjamin Watson, who oversees the service's Training and Education Command, during a media event.

He added that he expects the service to receive more drones and loitering munitions, or one-way attack drones, over the next year.

The newly established Attack Drone Team is an important part of the Corps' drive to learn from the war in Ukraine and bring small uncrewed systems into missions. The team demonstrated drone capabilities every few hours at MDM; it will serve as a foundation for competitive teams across bases.

Other technology attendees buzzed about at the expo were electronic warfare, virtual training simulators, and the need for quantum communications.

Getting Marines into the fight

Drones are invaluable tools, but they won't be much help if the service can't physically get to conflict zones. That's why an initiative called "3.0 MEU," another timely topic at MDM, is a consistent strategic concern for the Marines' top general.

A MEU, or Marine Expeditionary Unit, is a response force of around 2,200 Marines and sailors who carry out combat missions like amphibious assaults or respond to crises like embassy evacuations.

The Marine Corps term "3.0 MEU" refers to having three groups deployed simultaneously, one from the East Coast, one from the West Coast, and one from a US base in Japan, plus enough ships to have some preparing for deployments, with plans for others to be undergoing intense maintenance cycles.

Long-standing concerns about Navy ship readiness mean that having three groups of three ships deployed with embarked MEUs, with others in training pipelines and maintenance, is really still just a goal for now.

"This is about more than ships, it's about deterrence and denial," Marine Corps Commandant Eric Smith said. "That is why the 3.0 ARG MEU matters; it gives our leaders options." (ARG refers to the naval warship groups known as Amphibious Ready Groups).

The Navy operates and maintains the ships that Marines deploy on. But its fleet has been forced to contend with overwhelming maintenance and repair backlogs. The bedrock of American naval power, the US shipbuilding industry, has been plagued with troubles, too.

With the state of the fleet, there are concerns that it isn't sufficiently prepared for emergencies.

"There's a saying that wars are a come-as-you-are game," said Lt. Gen. Karsten Heckl, the commanding general of Marine Corps Combat Development Command, told Military.com last year on the impact of dismal ship readiness for Marines. "Well, this is where we are. And there is simply no immediate fix."

Taking care of Marines by fixing their housing

Maintaining a mission-ready force requires upkeep of the facilities that troops live in to ensure a certain quality of life.

Renovating barracks, the military equivalent of dormitories, was another important topic at the MDM expo. Barracks across the DoD have deteriorated due to insufficient maintenance, sometimes resulting in mold, water issues, and poor ventilation.

The issue has been exacerbated by decades of war in the Middle East and is one that the lowest, unmarried enlisted ranks deal with regularly.

Now, Marine leaders are trying to boost barracks renovations, which they also hope can help increase force retention. "Barracks 2030" is the Corps' refurbishment answer. But it comes with a steep price tag, nearly $11 billion through 2037.

"The idea is not to fix it and forget it," Lt. Gen. James Adams, Deputy Commandant for Programs and Resources, said of the initiative during a panel on the topic. He added that the service "got ourselves into the position we're in now" by neglecting maintenance.

But funding for Barracks 2030 hinges on Congress, and if lawmakers don't elect to fund the overhaul, it's likely to face painful delays. So it is getting more attention.

• A board game depicts how a kill chain is intrinsic to combat with precision weapons.
• Players race to detect and attack their opponent in a simulated US-China war in 2040.
• The game's designer is a Marine veteran who designs war games for a think tank.

America and China may go to war someday and no one knows what that war between superpowers will be like. How can armies survive on a battlefield laced with so many lethal weapons like hypersonic missiles and hunter-killer drones?

Answering those questions is the genesis of "Littoral Commander: Indo-Pacific," a board game that depicts combat between American and Chinese forces around 2040. Based on Fleet Marine Force — a tactical-level training simulation for the US Marine Corps — "Littoral Commander" is now used by the US Naval Academy and various US and foreign military schools.

The game is now available to the general public for about $75. "Littoral Commander" is part of a genre known as "serious games," which are educational tools for teaching complex subjects such as healthcare and foreign policy. The idea is that games offer a more immersive experience than manuals and PowerPoint lectures.

"Littoral Commander" is intended to illustrate what has emerged as the crux of modern warfare: the "kill chain" in which sensors locate and identify the enemy, developing targeting data that operators use to attack the enemy target before it does the same. Think of it as a more realistic version of the game of "Battleship." Already in the Ukraine war, the F2T2EA (find, fix, track, target, engage, and assess) process has become crucial as Russia and Ukraine race to speed up the sensor-to-shooter connection.

"The game at its very deepest core is about the F2T2EA process, whether kinetic capabilities such as missiles and drones, or non-kinetic capabilities such as electronic warfare and cyber," Sebastian Bae, designer of "Littoral Commander," told Business Insider.

"Littoral Commander" resembles the paper wargames that date back to the 19th Century kriegspiel used by the German military to train staff officers. Units are rated for firepower, range and speed. Players alternate taking actions such as movement, initiating combat (resolved with a 20-sided die). and resupply. Depending on the scenario, victory conditions include destroying enemy units, seizing ground or preventing the enemy from taking territory.

An "Influence Meter" reflects how popular support may affect a campaign — for example, destroying at least three enemy units in a single turn, or if the enemy conducts a missile attack on friendly units in a city (presumably injuring civilians), then the Influence Meters shifts in your favor, resulting in benefits such as additional resources.

"Littoral Commander" comes with multiple maps, including the Ryukyu Islands (including Okinawa), the Taiwan Strait, the Philippine island of Luzon and the Luzon Strait, and the Malacca Strait between Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. Also included are several scenarios, such as battling for a key island or attempting to stop enemy ships passing through a strait; players can also devise their own battles.

The American forces include Marine infantry platoons, backed by amphibious combat vehicles, rocket artillery, air defense and logistics units, as well as US Navy destroyers and submarines. They face Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy Marine Corps mechanized infantry and reconnaissance platoons, supported by light tanks, howitzer and rocket artillery, air defense, and logistics units, as well as destroyers, frigates and submarines.

This order of battle reflects the many small-scale fights in a US-China war. Rather than the massed armies or huge fleets that fought at Midway or Okinawa, a new Pacific War would likely be waged by relatively small but heavily armed amphibious units battling to establish missile bases, airfields and listening posts on strategic islands. Indeed, the US Marine Corps has radically revamped itself for this mission by adopting Force Design 2030. The Marines shed their cumbersome tanks and created mobile littoral regiments armed with anti-ship missiles, which can interdict Chinese warships transiting waterways such as the Luzon and Malacca Straits.

Games like "Littoral Commander" are meant to spur thought and imagination, rather than create a surefire plan to defeat China. "It is not a depiction of warfare of the future, because I cannot predict the future nor can any game," said Bae, a former Marine sergeant and Iraq War veteran who now designs wargames for the Center for Naval Analyses think tank. "I created 'Littoral Commander' to be an intellectual sandbox for people to explore, engage, and learn about capabilities. How these capabilities work and what challenges and opportunities they may offer."

"Littoral Commander" illustrates the panoply of current and future capabilities through 200 "Joint Capability Cards", complete with separate US and Chinese decks. Cards include drones, bombers, cyber operations and signals intelligence, minefields, special forces raids, naval gunfire and other extras that players purchase using a limited number of "command points." The mechanism is somewhat gamey — battalions commanders don't get B-52 strikes on demand — but the practical effect is to allow players to experiment with a wide variety of capabilities. "As a tactical leader, you only get a tiny sliver of them at any given moment," Bae explained. "But I wanted players to think, plan, and assess how and what they needed to execute their plan."

Winning at "Littoral Commander" means mastering a few key variables. Perhaps the most important is detecting the enemy: as the Ukraine war has shown, what can be seen can be destroyed. Counters on the "Littoral Commander" map are considered "concealed:" flipped upside down so that the opponent can't see whether they are an infantry platoon, a missile battery — or a dummy piece simulating the fog of war.

The dilemma is that concealed units can't be fired at. Yet they lose concealment when they fire, or when their locations are scouted by enemy reconnaissance platforms or ground troops. Thus "Littoral Commander" becomes a contest of hide-and-seek, where the combatants try to pinpoint enemy troops for missile strikes. All while screening their own forces from enemy reconnaissance or, if spotted, changing position in order to vanish.

As the Ukraine war has shown, long-range fires dominate the modern battlefield. Missile and artillery units in "Littoral Commander" have enormous firepower and range, but the combatants only have a limited number of guided munitions. The same applies to air and missile defense units, which have a limited supply of interceptors. Players have to carefully decide not just when to fire their long-range weapons — and lose concealment — but also whether to expend munitions or save them for future battles. Picking the right Joint Capability Cards is crucial: for example, the Chinese CH-901 drone swarm cards offers additional long-range strikes, while the US Space Satellite reveals concealed Chinese units.

Bae already has published a commercial sequel — "Littoral Commander Baltic States" — with expansions planned for Australia, Japan, Norway and other nations. In addition to teaching military professionals, he hopes these games will educate the general public.

"I want people to learn various capabilities of modern warfare and how they interact," said Bae. "Like how having a long-range missile means nothing if you cannot find the enemy, and how sequencing and timing matters in the types of actions you do at the tactical level."

"I wanted to make the game accessible to my professional community, which is the Department of Defense," Bae said. "But I also wanted normal people to understand our community better in an engaging way."

Michael Peck is a defense writer whose work has appeared in Forbes, Defense News, Foreign Policy magazine, and other publications. He holds an MA in political science from Rutgers Univ. Follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn.

• The Marine Corps is developing drone policies to distinguish between friendly and enemy drones.
• Efforts include creating an Attack Drone Team and UAS advisory councils for feedback.
• UAS identification challenges are highlighted by experiences in Ukraine's cluttered battlespace.

The Marine Corps is learning to fight with uncrewed aerial systems, and there's a lot to figure out. One Marine Corps leader said the potential for confusion on cluttered future battlefields "haunts" his dreams.

"Knowing what's good guys versus bad guys, knowing what to kill and not to kill," that sort of thing "haunts my dreams," Col. Sean Hoewing, the director of the Marine Corps' Capabilities Development Directorate's Aviation Combat Element, said last week at the big annual Modern Day Marine expo in Washington, DC.

The push to develop counter-UAS capabilities coincides with the service's efforts to develop its offensive capabilities.

The service has established a new Attack Drone Team and aims to replicate it across the Corps, using competition to mimic the stressors of combat. It's also set up UAS advisory councils to accelerate feedback from troops on the ground to senior leaders in the Pentagon who can field requests to industry partners.

Drones are quickly becoming a top priority, especially as the world watches what how drone warfare unfolds in Ukraine.

In future fights, Marines will need to be able to identify not only friendly or enemy UAS systems with lethal payloads but also systems like logistics resupply drones and maybe even casualty evacuation drones, which could create new concerns around the identification of medical UAS systems for wounded enemy combatants, which are protected by the Geneva Conventions.

Friendly and enemy identification of drones has become increasingly important in Ukraine, where one Ukrainian drone operator previously told Business Insider that it is not uncommon for troops to end up jamming everything nearby in a "cluttered battlespace."

Combat footage from the front lines in Ukraine has highlighted the confusion that can quickly arise from drones. In the chaos of battle, it can be difficult to figure out which quadcopter is friendly and which may soon be dropping grenades overhead.

Col. Scott Cuomo, the commander of the service's Weapons Training Battalion and the new Attack Drone Team, envisions a not-so-distant future for Marines in which UAS identification demands will force troops to drill down on strict airspace deconfliction procedures.

"Someone's going to do the fires coordination, just like we've always done," Cuomo said, referring to the practices of ensuring strikes from aircraft, artillery, or other weapons can occur without harming friendly forces. "So there's a lot of just building on what we've done in the past," he said.

What might that approach include in practice? When a Marine sends out a UAS with a payload on it, "you're going to tell someone that you're going to do that," Cuomo said, referring to detailed fires coordination between infantry units and their command centers.

Friend-or-foe identification is far from the only challenge of battlefield drone operations. Both Ukraine and Russia have been forced to grapple with tremendous drone losses, not only to one-way attacks but also to electronic warfare.

A reluctance to squander too many UAS systems may add more complexity to UAS identification concerns. "We can't necessarily take the approach that it's okay if we lose 40% of our stuff," Hoewing added. "That's not going to work for the Marine Corps."

Loss of equipment is anathema to Marines, who treat equipment accountability as an immovable tenet. That may contradict the lessons from Ukraine though, where cheap drones are considered expendable and used as individual rounds of ammunition.

There is a lot to sort out, but the only way Marines will be able to iron out the pains of such complicated UAS oversight will be more sets and reps, Cuomo said. "Just give it to the Marines, and then figure out the training."

• A Marine general warns US military communications are vulnerable to new threats.
• Quantum communications could secure sensitive data on unclassified networks.
• Quantum tech is evolving but remains costly and complex for practical use.

US military communications are vulnerable, and Marines know the outcomes can be deadly if the enemy gets its hands on data once thought to be secure.

"We've got to figure out a way to get the promise of quantum communications in place," said Lt. Gen. Stephen D. Sklenka, who serves as the Corps' Deputy Commandant, Installations and Logistics. Sklenka, along with Army and Navy logistics leaders, spoke as part of a panel on combat logistics Thursday during the Modern Day Marine expo.

With the rise of new threats to communications, leaders can't just count on shifting to different networks to guard information, he said, explaining that he wants to see networks become "undecryptable" by adopting a tech that's still in its infancy but seems poised to profoundly change warfare: quantum communications.

Secure quantum communication offers unparalleled protection of sensitive communications by giving them unbreakable encryption, but that capability is still being developed.

"We all operate predominantly on the unclass net," Sklenka said, referring to the defense department's unclassified network.

While the "secret" information is distributed through an entirely different network, many sensitive details, including unit and personnel information and equipment data, can be shared on unclassified networks, making it a very desirable target for enemy penetration.

"That's a vulnerable network. We know that our adversaries are in there," he said.

It's still early days for emerging quantum tech, which also includes quantum computing and quantum sensing.

A 2021 study estimated the level of tech the defense department would find most useful is still years away from development, though US companies like IBM, Amazon, and Google are racing to harness the nascent tech.

The rapidly evolving field remains deeply technical, expensive for researchers to work on, and not yet particularly useful for anyone outside certain circles.

What's on the horizon: a new era of super-computers that can dramatically outpace current systems in yet unknown ways that will likely transform society— including military operations.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, DARPA, is paying attention too. The military research and development agency has ongoing quantum initiatives, including one that is focused on achieving utility-scale quantum operation by 2033 and others focused on research to build parts required for quantum computing.

Part of the quantum transformation will inevitably include encryption methods, which researchers already know are set to become obsolete in their current state.

"Anything that's internet-connected will likely have problems," said Karl Holmqvist, the CEO of Lastwall, a cybersecurity provider of quantum resilient technology used by the DoD, in an interview with Business Insider earlier this year.

The dramatic changes posed by quantum technology will certainly play out in the national security sphere, from financial markets to battlefields for Marines, all as the DoD grapples with remedying other major issues that could impact how it fights a war, including a too few ships and lagging shipbuilding capacity, drone adoption, retention, and more.

"I've got to figure out how to make it so the bad guys can't figure it out, so even if they capture that data, it's garbage to them," said Sklenka. But at the same time, he said, US forces still need to able to use the networks, and share that information with allied militaries that US troops may be fighting alongside.

• Marine bases to form competitive drone teams to boost much-needed skills
• Competition aims to replicate the pressure of combat
• Drone adoption and training are critical as technology evolves and procurement lags

Starting next year, the Marine Corps wants to see each Marine base building its own competitive attack drone teams. Leaders say competition will be key to building skills in the absence of combat.

"We can't replicate the existential threat that they feel in places like Ukraine, which forces the cycle of iteration and learning," Lt. Gen. Benjamin Watson, head of the Corps' Training and Education Command, told reporters Wednesday at the Modern Day Marine expo in Washington DC. "The closest thing we can do is put ourselves out there in competition."

"We think that puts us under a level of pressure that will help us to iterate faster, particularly in the first-person-view drone space, which is one of the places we've got the most room to grow," Watson continued.

More funding, held up in continuing resolution turmoil, could also help move things along.

Small, inexpensive FPV drones have come to dominate Ukrainian battlefields, functioning as readily available reconnaissance platforms and cheap precision-strike ammunition, contributing heavily to battlefield casualties.

Such warfare is unlike anything US troops have previously experienced. It's not something that can be easily replicated, but it is what leaders say they want the military training for, spurring the Marine Corps' plan for competition-driven training.

Under such a plan, Marine bases would create their own teams mimicking the services' newly established Attack Drone Team, based out of the Marine headquarters base in Quantico, Va.

Watson described the Corps' Attack Drone Team as the "leading edge" of what the service hopes to replicate across the force, including more focus on counter-UAS training and the authority for developing policies for the rest of the force.

The general compared the new goal to the Corps' marksmanship team in which Marines from across the Corps compete for top spots on the namesake team from their bases.

"The premise has been every Marine a rifleman, and we will still hold true to that ethos, with the idea being that every Marine can be lethal at out to 500 yards," Watson said of the Corps' intense devotion to ensuring each Marine, regardless of speciality, is competent shooting a target from half a kilometer.

The idea behind building these new competitive drone teams is that small arms fire is still necessary but now insufficient for contemporary conflict, he added. "Now that same individual Marine, using a different weapon system, can also be lethal out to 15 or 20 kilometers with a first-person-view drone."

Marine leaders consistently highlighted drone adoption and training as a critical need at the Modern Day Marine symposium, with small group discussions and panels comprised of combat arms, logistics, and aviation Marines trying to work through the headaches of getting drones to junior Marines quickly, in whatever way possible.

Until the service can formalize these plans, units will likely be expected to get troops trained using any scrappy, unconventional method possible.

As the DoD tries to adopt a more rapid procurement process, whatever tech various base drone team Marines use will inevitably be behind the power curve, Watson said, given the lightning pace at which this tech is evolving. But the service has got to make something coherent happen to get Marines using drones, he said. Soon, service-wide competitions will be an answer.

"We've got to field a system and get it in the hands of Marines so that we can start learning and confronting some of these problems that we're going to face head-on," he said.

• Marine Corps leaders say that things need to change if the service is going to field drones the way it wants.
• The Corps faces cultural and acquisition challenges.
• More often than not, the military is standing in its own way. That's how it is for the Corps.

Some Marine leaders are eager to see a major cultural shift when it comes to drones, saying old mindsets and acquisition processes are what's holding back the Corps from going all in on this technology.

"It's not enough," Col. Sean Hoewing, the director of the Capabilities Development Directorate's Aviation Combat Element, said of the speed at which the Corps is adopting drone technology.

"It's nowhere near where it needs to be," he said on Tuesday at the Modern Day Marine symposium in Washington, DC.

Marine Corps leaders at the symposium are taking drones seriously, with a palpable sense of urgency. But the service, and the rest of the Defense Department, are still struggling to break free of a cumbersome acquisitions process that has proliferated over the last two decades.

"Our acquisition system is designed to reduce acquisition risk to zero," said Lt. Gen. Benjamin Watson, who oversees the Marine Corps' Training and Education Command, acknowledging the challenges in policy and regulation.

A service's tightly controlled budget can contribute to an environment in which sometimes perfect becomes the enemy of good, he said. And in the Corps' quest to spend dollars judiciously (its the only service to have passed a Pentagon audit), it can foster an unwillingness to take risks like rapidly and widely fielding technology like drones.

"We've got to field drones at scale in order to be able to pressurize our training really, to work through some of the real hard problems," Watson said, adding that he expects to see the Marine Corps fielding drones and loitering munitions more broadly over the next year.

The 'Valley of Death'

The war in Ukraine has seriously highlighted the value of employing small uncrewed aerial systems like quadcopter drones at scale, down to the squad level.

The era of large fixed-wing drones like the Reaper dominating uncrewed warfare has ended as a wide range of drones surge onto the scene. Some military drones can even fit in a backpack or pocket.

The US is coming around, but has been slow to adopt the tech widely, burdened by decades Global War on Terror-era bureaucracy.

"We are not coordinating as tightly as we need to," Maj. Gen. Farrell Sullivan, the director of the Marine Corps Capabilities Development Directorate, said.

"We are part of the Valley of Death," said Sullivan, referring to the arduous path companies embark on when doing business with the DoD, often ending up in bureaucratic quicksand.

Drones are the name of the game at this year's Modern Day Marine, where commanders and senior enlisted advisors have consistently expressed concerns about how to get Marines of all ranks skilled up on drones, just as they are with their rifles.

Marine leaders — from mid-grade battalion commanders and senior enlisted advisors up to generals like Sullivan and Watson — were quick to point out that the Corps has to do more to obtain and integrate drones.

"The biggest obstacle is one million percent cultural," said Col. Scott Cuomo, the commander of the service's Weapons Training Battalion, which oversees the Corp's new Attack Drone Team. The team will serve as a repository of knowledge to help boost drone usage throughout the service.

Cuomo spoke of a young enlisted Marine who used a $20 commercial simulator for 20 hours, and found a six-hour course, to develop drone proficiency. Such ad hoc training is a far cry from formal months-long certification-driven courses that the military uses, but that's the type of out-of-the-box thinking the Corps needs.

Attempts to shift things up include newly established advisory boards to streamline communication from junior troops to Beltway-based colonels, but the Corps is poised to run up against problems not easily remedied in its quest to field more drones.

A hard thing to change

The Marine Corps is less agile financially than other services, a senior Marine told Business Insider, adding that the Army and Special Operations Command are better equipped to quickly divert funding to new priorities like drone platforms.

Much of the Corps' money is heavily invested in its Force Design initiative, and those plans don't really include making UAS platforms major priorities.

Plus, the Corps is up against competing funding priorities for things like retention and big initiatives like Barracks 2030, the service's initiative to fix — and then maintain — decades-old shoddy barracks where the bulk of junior enlisted live.

To help the Marine Corps achieve its drone goals, Sullivan and Hoewing have established two advisory boards focused on offensive and defensive drone operations. These boards will provide a faster conduit from ground-level troops experimenting with UAS platforms on local ranges to Pentagon leaders with influence who can advocate for their needs and coordinate with other key players.

The forthcoming advisory boards come on the heels of the establishment of the recently announced Marine Corps Attack Drone Team,

Rapidly adopting and proliferating the tech is bound to bring more headaches for Marines to figure out too, Marines said. Batteries alone are a hassle.

Drone battery operations varies depending on the environment and temperature, Sullivan said. The DoD has extensive safety requirements for storing and transporting batteries, meaning that the technology will inherently bring more and more problems for Marines to solve. There are also doctrinal requirements and training programs to sort, and actual battlefield operations to figure out when it comes to drones.

And if something isn't an official DoD "program of record," getting an investment long-term in any equipment is nearly impossible.

• Dakota Meyer reenlists in the Marine Corps Reserve after 15 years as a civilian.
• Meyer said he felt compelled to return after advising another Marine on reenlistment.
• Meyer was the first Marine in 40 years to receive the Medal of Honor in 2011.

The Marine Corps Medal of Honor recipient Dakota Meyer reenlisted on Thursday, returning to duty 15 years after he received the nation's highest honor for valor.

It immediately raises the question: why?

Meyer, now 36 years old, said in a statement he felt called to return to military service, this time to the Corp's Reserve component. His decision, he explained, came after a question from a Marine during a speaking event about whether that Marine should reenlist for another tour or leave the Corps.

Meyer encouraged the Marine to remain in the service.

Reflecting on his response later on, Meyer asked himself, "How could I ask them to continue to serve and sacrifice without doing it myself?"

"You've got to be who you say you are and live by the standards you expect everybody else to live by," Meyer said in a Marine Corps release on his return. "I had to look in the mirror and lay out who I wanted to be, then turn around and assess all my decisions and habits and decide if they were helping me get closer to who I needed to be."

The Marine Corps published a video on social media Thursday morning before the reenlistment ceremony showing Meyer working out with other Marines, sporting the "high and tight" haircut Marines are well-known for.

"I would say that there has probably not been a day that I've been out that I haven't wanted to come back in," Meyer told reporters during a press briefing before the ceremony.

"I finally just got to a point where I felt like I would be an asset and I felt like I could come back in and contribute," he said.

Meyer has served as an ambassador for the Marine Corps since leaving active duty and has traveled the country to speak with Marine units.

He has two children with his ex-wife, Bristol Palin, daughter of former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, Sarah Palin.

Speaking at the reenlistment ceremony Thursday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that he asked Meyer if he was sure. "He was. Dead sure," the defense chief said.

Meyer became an outspoken critic of the Biden administration, particularly amid the disastrous US withdrawal from Afghanistan. He knows Hegseth personally, along with Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. Hegseth previously served with the Army National Guard, leaving the service as a major. Gabbard is still in the reserve, holding the rank of lieutenant colonel.

"This is a guy who's put it all on the line, done the most difficult things you can imagine, testing human resolve, and yet after all of that, he's standing before us today saying 'I want to do more,'" Hegseth said Thursday. "That's an example."

Meyer was the Corps' first Marine in almost 40 years to receive the Medal of Honor.

He received the award in 2011, just two years after a brutal gunfight in Afghanistan's Kunar Province which saw five US servicemembers killed. Meyer entered an ambush zone multiple times to rescue wounded troops, which the DoD estimated saved almost three dozen US and Afghan personnel.

Medals of Honor often become mired in bureaucratic red tape throughout the often complex and inefficient military awards process, leaving some recipients waiting even longer, sometimes seeing other valor awards upgraded years later.

The official story from the Marine Corps came under question after the 2011 award ceremony. A reporter who was embedded with Meyer's unit during the gunfight said that while Meyer deserved the Medal of Honor, the Corps unnecessarily embellished some of the details to secure the award for a living recipient.

The Marine Corps challenged those claims in an official rebuttal statement, breaking down the investigation process concerning the details of what Meyer called the "worst day of his life."

We got an inside look at the United States Marine Corps' intense 13-week basic training program. Chief video correspondent Graham Flanagan spent five days at the Marine Corps Recruit Training Depot in San Diego, California, where he observed different companies at various stages of training.

Enlisted recruits who live west of the Mississippi River attend basic training in San Diego, where women have only trained since 2021. Men and women train together, but live in separate squad bays. Male and female recruits are not allowed to talk to each other during training. In week seven, recruits travel 40 miles north of San Diego to Camp Pendleton, where they complete their training.

Boot camp culminates with a 54-hour event known as The Crucible, in which recruits endure mental and physical challenges with minimal food and sleep. After completing The Crucible, recruits receive the Eagle, Globe, and Anchor pendant, marking their official transition to Marines.

• Marine leaders emphasize war gaming to foster learning and adaptability in troops.
• War games help Marines understand adversary tactics and adapt to emerging technologies.
• Marine leaders say it's important to embrace losing.

A Marine Corps general said this week that officers and troops couldn't shy away from war gaming, tough exercises in critical thinking.

They also can't be afraid to lose, he said.

"Why isn't everybody war gaming today, right now?" Brig. Gen. Matthew Tracy, the commanding general for the Corps' Education Command, asked Tuesday at the Sea Air Space symposium, a big annual event for military and defense industry insiders.

"We know it's the best way to learn," Tracy said.

"We know they need to get some reps."

Some military leaders might be holding back from making war gaming more common because they fear losing in front of fellow Marines, including junior troops.

He said it would take some bold leadership to help overcome fears of embarrassment: "We have to get down behind the weapon and show that it's OK to fail."

What is war gaming?

Thoughts of military war games might bring to mind images of senior military officers clustered around a table with figurines representing maneuvering units. That's not wrong. Such games are still important.

But nowadays, war games also come in boxes, on computers, and even in the form of plain flash cards. Some are also played in the field with red and blue teams and aggressor squadrons.

They're for all ranks, but not as commonplace as some would like to see. Leaders like Tracy don't just want to see colonels sweating through these mental gymnastics. They also want to see the trigger pullers at the lowest tactical levels involved.

At the symposium, a young Marine officer demonstrated the latest computer-based war game while nearby cadets from the Naval Academy played an almost human-size version of a game that resembled the classic board game Battleship.

Other games included increasingly complex elements for troops to consider, such as friendly and enemy nations' economic and diplomatic concerns, or how another country's civilians might react to the presence of US troops.

"When you have the time to think, it gives you the muscle memory about things to consider," retired Marine Lt. Gen. Lori Reynolds explained. She previously led the service's Cyber Command and also participated in Tuesday's event.

Reynolds says war gaming "improves your ability to understand adversary tactics and capabilities."

The tests force players to constantly check their assumptions about what's happening on the battlefield, she said, making it an ideal environment for learning by failure.

"It's important that we lose when it's OK to lose," she said. Better at the table than in battle.

Amid the Corps' efforts to modernize for a great-power fight in the Pacific after decades of war in the Middle East, checking old assumptions is even more important.

"When you think about Marine Corps Force Design efforts, we're going to be in a more distributed laydown than ever before," Reynolds said, referring to the Corps' initiative to cut mainstays like tanks and sniper units to build a force for combat on the island chains in the Pacific.

The geography of the Pacific — with its remote islands and varying degrees of infrastructure availability — has had war planners spinning their wheels in recent years to discern what the logistics support for such a war might look like.

War gaming has previously forced planners to confront uncomfortable realities about Pacific warfare. For the rank and file, it could help troops to grapple with other emerging issues, like drone warfare and advancements in electronic warfare.

"The ability to teach at the lowest levels, not just what the capability of these emerging technologies can do, but how to properly employ it," makes war gaming more critical, Reynolds said, especially for the most junior ranks.

The notoriously rigid Marine Corps is known for favoring decentralized command structures to foster decision-making in the most junior ranks.

The idea is that when far removed from high-ranking leadership in combat, even the most junior enlisted troops can understand what's going on and make sound decisions to lead their small squads effectively.

Tougher war gaming

"Each year's wargaming efforts should surpass the last in complexity, challenge, and effectiveness," Tracy told Business Insider in an email after the symposium.

Part of the complexity that he envisions for thornier gaming could come in the form of AI-assisted games.

By including AI in war gaming scenarios, "you can look at a whole lot more potential outcomes, and you can look at them a whole lot faster," said Steven Wills, who moderated Tuesday's event and who serves as a research scientist at the Center for Naval Analyses.

"Being able to examine a wider problem set, the thought is that we can think and operate faster than the bad guys and get ahead of their decision-making." Good war gaming, he said, exposes unforeseen consequences of decision-making, setting off more complex chains of events.

But it doesn't give a participant a road map for winning.

"It lets you play through a whole lot of different outcomes so that when you think about an actual fight, you have an idea of what the outcomes might or could be," Wills said.

"It's all about trying to get you to think about the problem."

But thinking about those problems is going to take a level of vulnerability from Marine leaders, Tracy said.

"Creating a culture of war gaming starts at the highest levels, where leaders set the example by participating directly, making themselves vulnerable, and demonstrating a willingness to lose in order to learn," he told BI.

If you're always winning, you aren't being challenged, Reynolds said, adding: "It's OK to fail in a safe place that teaches growth."

"It teaches the importance of being a learning organization," she said. "You don't learn if you constantly win."

• Marines are building new drone warfare skills, integrating new technologies in combat training.
• Marines must adapt to new warfare challenges, including signature management and tech reliance.
• With emerging technology, a general said this week, Marines could be lethal at far greater ranges.

"Every Marine a rifleman" has been a cornerstone for the Corps for decades, but war is changing.

Marines in future wars might find themselves needing to be just as well-versed in drone warfare as they are with their rifles, said a Marine general on Tuesday at the Sea Air and Space symposium, an annual military and industry gathering.

A deeply ingrained institutional belief for all Marines is "every Marine a rifleman," said Lt. Gen. Benjamin Watson, who serves as the commanding general of Training and Education Command, the entity that oversees Marine preparation for future warfare.

This well-known mantra refers to the idea that every Marine should possess a baseline level of combat skill and a warfighter mentality regardless of whether they serve as an infantryman or as an administrative specialist. The idea is that any Marine, no matter their role, can pick up a rifle and be effective in war.

But a growing number of Marines in the future could see their reliance on the rifle as supplementary to tech like drones.

"Now, if you use technology, you know that same Marine can be just as lethal at ranges out to 15, 20, kilometers and beyond," he said.

New tech and changing warfare

The general's comments at the symposium this week come on the heels of a new effort from the Corps to build up its offensive small-UAS capabilities with a nascent "Attack Drone Team," which will focus on absorbing lessons learned from drone warfare in Ukraine and implementing training efforts for the rest of the force.

Being able to shoot a target from 500 meters away will still be important for Marines, Watson added, alluding to the approximate maximum effective range against small targets for the M16 and M4 rifles Marines are issued.

But new types of warfare will challenge concepts from the Corps' past combat experience. Troops will have to envision a future without more recent guarantees, like the "golden hour" for lifesaving medical care and air superiority.

New technologies and new threats are changing the battlespace in big ways. "It's not all that much of a stretch to say we will never again fight without what we have traditionally known as air superiority, at least not persistently," Watson said, referring to the airpower assurance that was nearly ubiquitous for American troops throughout the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Watson also highlighted another idea that other top Marine leaders have been espousing amid concerns of constant surveillance — focusing on individual and unit signature management.

"There's been a lot of grassroots efforts at the Marine Division-level going on into signature management," he said.

These include efforts to train Marines on physical signature management, like new types of camouflage netting and heat control. But Marines will also have to grapple with how they might appear to an enemy on the electromagnetic spectrum and how they can survive while fighting within it.

Last month, for instance, Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Eric Smith appeared in a cautionary video on X warning Marines about the dangers of relying on their cellphones near combat zones.

Readily available, user-friendly tech that can detect the presence of cellphones, thus exposing a unit to enemy fire, has grown increasingly common. And so too are other uncrewed systems and new forms of electronic warfare.

Previous generations of warfighters might have gone into battle with one or two grenades strapped onto their vests, Watson said. "Now we're getting to a point where they're going to be able to carry a guided hand grenade, throw it up in the air with loiter capability, and something behind them is going to be able to guide that," he said.

"Think about how you would have to defend against that as we change our tactics," the general said.

Technological solutions might be helpful, but Watson cautioned that the latest tech won't solve all problems. Classic battlefield fundamentals applied to contemporary warfare — known as "tactics, techniques, procedures" — will.

But even with such an approach, more troops will have to face an unprecedented shift in mindset. "The first thing is getting everybody's head in the right space," Watson said, "which is the idea that you're being watched all the time."

• The Marine Corps launched a new competitive drone team to enhance future warfare prep.
• The team aims to integrate advanced drone tactics inspired largely by the war in Ukraine.
• The initiative reflects a shift in military strategy, focusing on cost-effective drone systems.

The Marine Corps is known for its famous shooting and drill teams. Now, the service is adding a new competitive, precision weapons team to its ranks — a drone team.

"Today's battlefield is changing rapidly, and we must adapt just as quickly," said Maj. Alejandro Tavizon, headquarters company commander at Weapons Training Battalion.

Tavizon will oversee the newly created Marine Corps Attack Drone Team, a leading part of the service's efforts to catch up with advancements in drone warfare overseas, a Marine Corps statement said.

"The Marine Corps Attack Drone Team will ensure that our warfighters remain at the forefront of precision drone employment, providing a critical advantage in future conflicts," he said.

"By leveraging emerging technologies and refining drone employment tactics, we are ensuring that Marines remain agile, adaptive, and lethal in the modern battlespace," Tavizon added.

This effort isn't coming out of the blue, and arrives as modern combat is increasingly defined by unmanned weapon systems.

The Marine Corps said that "the creation of MCADT comes in response to the rapid proliferation of armed first-person view drone technology and tactics observed in modern conflicts, particularly in Eastern Europe," a clear reference to the Ukraine war where uncrewed combat is prolific.

The new drone team will be based with the service's Warfighting Laboratory and Weapons Training Battalion, with design based rooted in the Corps' competitive shooting team, a group that has long guided training development for the rest of the force.

That the service has chosen to house its couple warfare efforts with its prestigious shooting team may highlight just how seriously it's taking drone warfare.

The Corps considers the rifle to be the bedrock weapon for all Marines regardless of their job, part of the service's "every Marine a rifleman" mentality. Housing the drone team with the Weapons Training Battalion, the Corps' ultimate repository of small arms knowledge, could signal how drastically the service is trying to shift to the future.

"Right now, our focus is on rapidly building proficiency by sending Marines to a variety of training courses and increasing hands-on familiarization," Tavizon said. "Our goal is to ensure they can not only operate these systems effectively but also integrate them seamlessly into a team."

The Corps explained that it's using different small drone systems to facilitate "precision strikes up to 20 kilometers for under $5,000 —offering a more cost-effective and capable alternative to traditional weapons systems."

The team is set to represent the Corps in drone competitions around the world, with its first competition slated for this summer at the National Drone Association's Military Drone Crucible Championship, a competition meant to simulate drone usage in modern combat.

"MCADT will execute tactical missions using FPVs and small UAS in realistic scenarios designed to simulate modern combat," the Corps said, referring to the kind of first-person-view drones and uncrewed aerial systems that have been used extensively in Ukraine.

The new attack team will also be responsible for integrating key lessons learned from drone warfare overseas.

The drone team's establishment comes as the US military continues to tackle important problems.

First, the Pentagon is figuring out how to quickly procure rapidly changing technology, like drones, which is a significant change from the notoriously cumbersome military-industrial complex that ballooned throughout the Global War on Terror.

Second, the services are trying to apply lessons learned from relevant conflicts overseas, such as the war in Ukraine, to help shape plans for future warfare.

Ukraine continues to serve as a sort of test bed for drone experimentation that militaries across the globe are watching closely. Ukrainian and Russian forces are grappling with terrifying advancements, including drones with mounted shotguns, others that release molten thermite to pour over enemy positions, and drones piloted with AI assistance to boost strike accuracy.

Pacific nations are also taking note of Ukrainian developments— a Taiwan company recently announced the creation of a new "sea drone" designed to fire small torpedoes or ram into targets inspired by Ukrainian attacks on Russia's Black Sea Fleet.

• The top Marine Corps general issued a warning to troops about battlefield cellphone usage.
• Cellphone data can reveal troop locations, making them vulnerable to enemy attacks.
• The war in Ukraine highlights the dangers of cellphone use in a combat environment.

The Marine Corps' top general sent a video reminder out to the force this week, cautioning troops that battlefield cellphone usage can have deadly consequences. It points to Russian disasters in Ukraine.

The video shared on social media shows a Marine who escaped enemy fire seeking refuge in an abandoned building. Assuming he's safe, the Marine pulls out his phone to send a text asking for assistance, sending his location with it.

What no one realizes in this exchange is that the messages were intercepted. As his fellow Marines come to his aid, an enemy strike hits, resulting in fatalities.

The video then turns the discussion to the conflict in Ukraine, noting news headlines from the war about the weaponization of mobile phones, and how cellphone usage by Russian soldiers led to a deadly Ukrainian strike.

The video references a devastating strike that killed scores of Russian troops in Makiivka at the end of 2022. Moscow blamed cellphone usage, but there appear to have been multiple factors involved. It still serves as a point of caution all the same.

"If you can be sensed, you can be targeted," Gen. Eric Smith, Commandant of the Marine Corps, said in the video. "And if you can be targeted, you can be killed."

While the Marine in the video shares his exact location, map coordinates are not needed for troops to endanger themselves or their comrades. When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian troops posted videos on social media and called loved ones back home, all data that Ukraine used to strike.

Phone calls, texts, and photos shared with friends over unprotected lines can be intercepted and mined for metadata, showing where they were taken. Open-source information gleaned from photos has been fatal in Ukraine.

Russia has implemented several cellphone bans, and in 2024, Russia's lower house of parliament proposed legislation that would punish troops for using their personal phones in battle.

It's not just phone usage that causes problems in combat; it's unintentional signal emissions, too, like the phones pinging off cell towers. "The character of war continues to change," Smith said. "The proliferation of technology has made signature management essential on the battlefield."

The Marine Corps released its most current official policy on cell phones in 2024, Capt. Stephanie Baer, a spokesperson, told Business Insider.

She said "the posted video is an amplification and continual reminder of the importance of the policy on usage in all situations," and added that the video's release was not linked to any specific recent events.

The idea of "signature management" has been a critical tenant of discipline on the battlefield, but it's become increasingly important on modern battlefields where electronic emissions can betray positions and movements.

A unit's "signature" generally refers to its presence and how easily it can be detected. Light, noise levels, and movement can all be elements of signature management. But with the proliferation of cell phones, and social media, the idea of signature discipline is morphing into a more urgent concern.

Smith isn't the first Marine leader to warn about cellphones. Former Commandant Gen. David Berger noted such concerns about cellphone vulnerabilities to defense reporters in 2022.

"We have to be distributed. You have to have enough mobility that you can relocate your unit pretty often," he said of efforts to prepare for expeditionary operations throughout the Pacific. "You have to learn all about — like some of us learned 30 years ago — camouflage, decoys, deception," he said.

"What we didn't worry so much about 30 years ago now is every time you press a button, you're emitting," he said.

• Palmer Luckey's startup Anduril scored a $642 million deal for anti-drone tech in Marine Corps bases.
• The 10-year contract is meant to help fight smaller drones like the exploding ones in Ukraine.
• The Defense Department said Anduril was chosen out of 10 total bids.

Defense startup Anduril clinched a $642 million contract on Friday to help the US Marine Corps fight smaller drones at its bases.

Anduril's new deal is for the Marine Corps Installation-Counter small Unmanned Aircraft Systems program, which is essentially a network of anti-drone defenses for bases and facilities.

The announcement comes after Anduril scored a separate five-year $200 million agreement in November to bring counter-drone tech to the Marine Air Defense Integrated System. This mobile air defense system can be mounted on vehicles like Humvees.

Like with the MADIS, Anduril's offering for this new contract is to fight smaller drones, which the US military classifies as Group 1 and Group 2.

Such drones are typically no heavier than 55 pounds and fly at a maximum altitude of about 3,500 feet, like the exploding commercial drones used in the war in Ukraine.

When the Corps first opened its contract in April 2024, it warned of a "security capability gap" for dealing with these smaller drones at its bases.

"The sUAS threat poses unique challenges to military installations when compared to those of operational forces," the Corps wrote.

The Defense Department said on Friday that 10 companies had submitted proposals for the contract, but did not name them.

With Anduril scoring the deal, the department said that 80% of the work until 2035 would be done in Costa Mesa, California, home to Anduril's headquarters. The rest is expected to be performed in Washington, D.C., and other Marine Corps facilities.

The announcement did not specify what type of product or how many systems Anduril will deliver.

Press teams for Anduril and the Marine Corps did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider outside regular business hours.

One of Anduril's main offerings for fighting smaller drones, Anvil, features a quadcopter that flies out from a portable storage box to track and crash into enemy systems. It can also be fitted with explosives to attack bigger targets.

Additionally, the company sells electronic warfare jammers called Pulsar, which it's already providing to the Pentagon as part of a $250 million deal from October.

Anduril, founded in 2017 by Oculus creator Palmer Luckey, has become a rising star in the defense industry as it emphasizes ready-made designs that can be produced at scale. In that sense, it hopes to reuse the same design to bid for multiple contracts instead of creating each one specifically for a single deal.

The firm is also working with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and runs its products on an AI software called Lattice to survey the battlefield and identify threats.

One of its biggest scores so far is a $22 billion contract with the US Army to provide soldiers with mixed-reality goggles. The contract was originally awarded to Microsoft but later ceded to Anduril.

The firm hopes to expand quickly. In August, Anduril raised $1.5 billion to build a 5 million-square-foot factory in Ohio that it said would "hyperscale" production.

• US Marines brave Arctic temperatures ahead of Joint Viking, the largest military exercise in Norway.
• About 10,000 troops from the US and NATO nations took part in the biennial cold weather training.
• Photos show Marines zooming on snowmobiles, trekking in skis, and plunging into icy waters.

US Marines spent the last few weeks enduring frigid temperatures ahead of the largest military exercise in Norway, readying for a fight in the high Arctic.

Joint Viking's objective is to boost NATO's power projection in the high Arctic, especially as Russia and China continue to demonstrate strategic interest in the region.

The Arctic warfare training aims to prepare troops for cold-weather combat, from learning how to maneuver in deep snow and mountainous terrain to conducting air and naval operations under Arctic conditions.

The military exercise also comes at a critical time as the climate crisis continues to melt ice in the region, forming new sea routes that could be key to both military and commercial strategy.

Arctic warfare

Led by the Norwegian military, Joint Viking takes place in early to mid-March in Troms, a country in northern Norway located about 250 miles west of the Norweigian-Russian border.

The Marine Corps will be among 10,000 troops participating in the biennial winter military exercise, which will also include armed forces from the UK, Canada, Finland, Germany, and the Netherlands.

In Troms since January, the Marines will play a "significant role" in the cold-weather war games, testing how quickly they can mobilize and deploy a large force across the Atlantic in a crisis, the Corps said in a statement.

Expanding NATO's strategic foothold

Joint Viking is one of several routine military exercises held in the Arctic Circle, including Nordic Response, Arctic Forge, Arctic Dolphin, and Joint Warrior.

Beyond preparing troops for Arctic warfare, the military exercises are also intended to send a message to Russia about NATO's military readiness, especially as the war in Ukraine rages on.

During the last Joint Viking exercise in 2023, NATO commanders patrolled the border toward the Kola Peninsula, driving snowmobiles on the frozen Pasvik River.

Russia's underlying Arctic threat

The war in Ukraine has forced Russia to reevaluate its military posturing in the Arctic, especially after enduring heavy losses in its land forces, according to an article published in the peer-reviewed journal, Arctic Review on Law and Politics.

Tormod Heier, a retired lieutenant colonel for the Norwegian Army, wrote that the Ukraine war acts as a sort of "Arctic tranquilizer," reducing tensions and the likelihood of direct confrontations between the US and Russia.

"This is partly due to fear of nuclear escalation but also due to strategic necessity: neither US nor Russian forces can afford an overstretch problématique in the contemporary international environment," Heier, who now works as an associate professor at the National Defence University in Stockholm, wrote. "As both protagonists forge self-imposed restraints, Russia's 2022 invasion has inadvertently led to more Arctic stability."

While Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine shifted some attention away from direct confrontation in the high north, the US and other NATO allies remain concerned about Moscow's ongoing military nuclear threat in the region, Heier wrote.

China-Russia collaboration in the Arctic

In 2018, China also forced its way into the Arctic power competition after it declared itself a "near-Arctic state" to justify its strategic interests in the region.

While Western nations rejected China's claim because it has no geographical territory in the region, Russia welcomed the country's presence in the high north. China has since focused its efforts on scientific research, energy investments, and strategic infrastructure development in the Arctic.

China's growing Arctic presence and close Russian ties have been seen as a potential threat by the US and other Arctic nations, using military exercises like Joint Viking as a "deterrent effect."

China "is one of the newer entrants on the scene. Over time, the strategic interests that they have in the region are … giving us pause," Iris Ferguson, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for Arctic and Global Resilience for the Biden administration, said in a December statement.

A new battlefield in the Arctic

Not only are the geopolitical tensions in the region ever-evolving, but the environment itself is reshaping as the climate crisis dramatically warms the Arctic at an unprecedented pace.

Melting ice is creating new shipping lanes along Russia's northern coast, potentially altering global trade routes. Growing access to resources, like oil, gas, and minerals that were recently impeded by ice, has led to countries, including the US, scrambling to stake their claim.

President Donald Trump's approach to Arctic policy has also heavily impacted the region, reversing climate regulations in favor of oil extraction and even expressing interest in acquiring Greenland from Denmark as part of his national security strategy.

• Marines at the Pentagon will switch from camouflage to formal "service" uniforms soon.
• The change is seen as costly and inconvenient, with no clear explanation from leaders.
• Other military branches at the Pentagon will continue wearing their comfortable camouflage uniforms.

Amid all the other shake-ups at the Defense Department, Marines in the Pentagon are set to ditch their warfighting camouflage utility uniforms, commonly called "cammies," for the more formal "service" dress uniforms.

Leaders haven't explained reasoning for the coming change, which is set to take effect in about a week, according to a copy of the directive obtained by Business Insider.

Two Marines, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation, told BI the change feels out-of-sync with department priorities, offers less comfort, and is much more of a hassle.

Marine Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Joshua Benson confirmed the swap, telling BI in a statement that "new guidance was passed and Marines will adhere to the lawful order." He declined to elaborate on why the change had been made.

Compared to other US service branches, the Marine Corps is unusually very strict in its appearance standards. The Corps does not allow its Marines to wear fleece jackets to stay warm, for example, and has rigorous stipulations on what few options for outer garments can be worn and when.

Male Marines must receive haircuts weekly, which in the DC area can cost over $500 per year. Female Marines, meanwhile, are not permitted to wear their hair in a braid or ponytail. Other services loosened old regulations on short hair and tight hair buns after some reports of alopecia amongst female troops.

Officials from the Army, Air Force, and Navy told BI that no uniform changes are currently planned for their servicemembers stationed at the Pentagon from those branches. Those troops most often wear their cammies, which are famously comfortable (and good for covering coffee stains).

Marine Corps leadership in the Pentagon decided to swap from wearing fancy "service" uniforms to cammies two years ago, before deciding recently to reverse course.

The previous policy change listed a few reasons for the swap — chiefly, that leaders then recognized the financial cost troops incurred from dry cleaning the "service" uniforms — by one estimate, nearly $470 per year, which junior enlisted troops on the low-end of the pay scale are likely to feel more acutely. With inflation, these costs today are likely higher.

"The overall intent of the updated uniform guidance is to reduce the financial burden for our junior officer and enlisted Marines dry cleaning and uniform costs," the previous guidance said, according to Marine Corps Times.

Since then, Pentagon Marines have usually worn the "service" uniforms just once a week, which some Marines say can help identify those who could exceed weight standards.

Back to the old way

As snazzy as they look, military uniforms haven't progressed far into the 21st century, including the Marine "service" uniforms, which can be considered the military equivalent of business casual. The uniforms have to be dry-cleaned and can be unforgivingly rigid. The look requires shirt stays for men and lacks the comfortable technical fabrics commonly seen in civilian business attire.

Some Marines, including recruiters and those who are part of the prestigious Marine Barracks Washington, are expected to wear more formal uniforms daily.

The new reversal seems contradictory, a Marine officer stationed at the Pentagon told BI, and unlikely to align with new political leadership's strict focus on military fiscal responsibility.

"While the services are being asked to cut back to save money, the young Marines are now being asked to fork out a lot more non-reimbursable money every week," she said.

Junior military officers, especially women, already pay more out-of-pocket for uniforms compared to other ranks, according to a 2021 government watchdog report that analyzed uniform cost inequities amongst the services.

That same report said that while enlisted Marines receive a yearly stipend for uniform costs, the stipend is insufficient.

"Focusing on warfighting and lethality while removing the uniform that symbolizes that seems odd," she said, referring to cammies, which most Marines wear both at home and while deployed.

The change also seems a bit at odds with the vibes and style of the new secretary of defense, who has been seen wearing suits in the Pentagon but was also recently photographed wearing more casual "tactical" clothing while visiting Guantanamo Bay.

"I'm trying to save money and invest smartly," an enlisted Marine told BI. "The added expense of dry cleaning on top of weekly haircuts makes my financial goals harder to hit."

Johnathan Taylor served as a scout sniper in the United States Marine Corps for eight years. He is now the president of the USMC Scout Sniper Association, an organization helping veteran snipers access financial, medical, and psychological support.

He tells Business Insider how elite marksmen in the unit are trained for combat and describes the longest shot he took as a sniper in Afghanistan. He discusses his deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, the dangers he faced in the field, and the tactics he used to evade detection.

Taylor also explains the deep mental toll that active military service can have on veterans.

For more, visit the USMC Scout Sniper Association website and Instagram.

If you're a veteran in crisis or concerned about one, contact the Veterans Crisis Line to receive 24/7 confidential support. To reach responders, dial 988 then press 1, chat online at VeteransCrisisLine.net/Chat, or text 838255.

The United States military offers an expedited path to US citizenship for lawful residents who commit to service. In 2024, while filming the US Marine Corps boot camp in Camp Pendleton, California, chief video correspondent Graham Flanagan followed one recruit taking advantage of this opportunity.

Twenty-four-year-old Ralph Dahilig immigrated to the US from the Philippines during the COVID-19 pandemic. Although he holds a bachelor's degree in information systems, Dahilig struggled to find a job in the tech industry, which led him to pursue a career in the Marine Corps.

At 5 feet 4 inches tall, Dahilig is not what many might picture as the prototypical US Marine. He had to learn to think outside the box to make it to The Crucible, the 54-hour culminating event of the 13-week boot camp. All recruits must endure it before they receive the Eagle, Globe, and Anchor pendant, symbolizing their official transformation from recruit to US Marine.

• China unveiled its newest amphibious assault ship in a launching ceremony in Shanghai on Friday.
• The Sichuan's standout feature is a catapult system capable of launching fixed-wing aircraft.
• The first-in-class flattop also has a massive flight deck as large as three football fields.

China unveiled the new amphibious assault ship it has been secretly building this past year at a launching ceremony at a shipyard in Shanghai.

The Sichuan, the first Yulan-class landing helicopter assault (LHA) ship, has a massive flight deck as large as three football fields. Once completed, it will be the largest vessel of its kind.

But the ship's large size isn't the only detail that sets it apart.

While other amphibious assault ships have only been able to carry helicopters and vertical/short takeoff and landing aircraft, the Sichuan is equipped with a carrier-style catapult system and arresting gear that allows it to launch heavier fixed-wing aircraft, the Chinese navy said. Even with the unveiling, mystery still shrouds what is essentially a light aircraft carrier and China's ambitions for it.

World's largest amphibious assault ship

Construction on the next-generation assault ship began in early 2024, according to the Pentagon's annual congressional report on China's military.

With a displacement of 40,000 tons, satellite images show the Sichuan measures more than 850 feet long and about 170 feet wide, making it considerably larger than its Chinese predecessor, the Type 075, but smaller than the Fujian, the People's Liberation Army's newest and largest aircraft carrier.

The Type 076 is also much larger than Japan's Izumo-class helicopter carriers. While the Sichuan is about as long as the US Navy's America-class LHAs with a similar displacement, it is more than 60 feet wider.

The Chinese warship's larger size and deck space allow it to accommodate both fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters, with additional storage capacity for more personnel and equipment.

Electromagnetic catapult system

Unlike traditional light aircraft carriers, the Sichuan is equipped with a catapult system and arresting gear for the launch and recovery of fixed-wing aircraft — an operative capability typically reserved for aircraft carriers.

"This is not something that we've seen before," Matthew Funaiole, a senior fellow with the China Power Project at CSIS, told BI previously. "No other country has an LHA that has a catapult system on it."

The electromagnetic aircraft launch system (EMALS) is likely similar in design to the catapult aboard the US Navy's advanced Ford-class supercarriers.

The only warship in operational service that employs EMALS is the US Navy carrier USS Gerald R. Ford. China's third aircraft carrier, the Fujian, which has been undergoing shake-down trials at sea, also features three EMALS-style catapults, but the Sichuan's catapult trench, which is over 425 feet long, is significantly longer by comparison.

Earlier Chinese carriers had ski-jump-style ramps for launching aircraft without catapults, leaping past steam-power catapult technology to pursue the more advanced electromagnetic launch system.

Operating for a little over a decade, China's relatively young carrier force could still face a"steep learning curve" in employing modern catapult technology, retired Adm. Raymond Spicer, the CEO and publisher at the US Naval Institute, previously told BI. But the installation of the technology aboard the Type 076 could indicate China's confidence in the design.

Potential future 'drone carrier'

The Chinese navy has yet to confirm what kind of air wing will operate aboard the Sichuan, but it could have a future role as a massive drone carrier, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The vessel's catapult, wider flight deck, and unobstructed runway make it highly capable of large-scale drone operations as China expands its arsenal of UAVs, like the Hongdu GJ-11 stealth combat drone, Guizhou WZ-7 reconnaissance drone, and the CASC CH-4B Rainbow strike UCAV.

'A substantial step forward'

While the exact timeline for the Type 076 still remains unclear, the Pentagon estimated the ship could join China's naval fleet by the second half of the decade.

Operating more than nearly 400 naval platforms, China has the world's largest maritime fighting force but has long been considered a green-water navy, meaning it operates mostly near its shores. Amphibious assault ships and carriers change that equation.

"I think it is as important, if not more important, to emphasize how mind-bogglingly impressive China's ability to build ships is," Funaiole said.

While not much is known about the capabilities or primary mission of China's next-gen amphibious flattops, the CSIS said the Sichuan "represents a substantial step forward" toward the PLAN's blue-water ambitions, projecting power in waters thousands of miles away.

• China's marines are preparing for global operations similar to the US Marine Corps.
• China is building amphibious flattops whose scale rivals those of the US.
• US Marines are also shifting strategies, in their case away from storming beaches.

"Send in the Marines" is an old American quip for when things get rough. It may become a Chinese one too.

Instead of merely guarding Chinese naval bases and supporting an invasion of Taiwan, China's Marine Corps appears to be preparing for amphibious operations around the world — just as US Marines do. China is building a force of amphibious flattops that can launch Marine helicopters and possibly the fighting vehicles that motor to shore.

"The investment in large amphibious-assault ships indicates that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) envisions a future in which it can deploy expeditionary strike groups similar to those the United States has employed for the past fifty years," wrote Sam Tangredi in a new book published by the China Maritime Studies Institute at the US Naval War College "A globally deployable amphibious/expeditionary group is a far cry from the humble origins of the PLA [People's Liberation Army] amphibious force and a considerable leap from the PLAN [People's Liberation Army Navy] capabilities that existed in the first years of this century."

Established in 1953, the People's Liberation Army Navy Marine Corps, as it's officially known, was formed to seize Taiwan and other Nationalist-held islands. Like the US Marine Corps, the PLANMC is a branch of the navy. Its missions have been those of traditional naval infantry: guarding naval bases, garrisoning island outposts in the South China Sea, and supporting an amphibious invasion of Taiwan by the Chinese army, which retains its own amphibious assault force.

But the PLANMC has grown to the point where some experts wonder whether it will become an independent service. From two brigades and 12,000 personnel in 2017, the PLANMC has expanded to eight brigades, with a goal of 100,000 personnel; that compares to about 170,000 active-duty US Marines.

Tangredi, who is director of the Naval War College's Institute for Future Warfare Studies, says that there is no direct evidence that China has plans for global amphibious warfare. Yet, "if the Taiwan scenario is the primary purpose in mind, why is the PLA building amphibious warships that are optimized for global operations?" he asks.

Invading Taiwan doesn't require big amphibious assault ships similar to the Wasp-class vessels, 840-foot-long floating airports for Marine helicopters and jump-jets like the AV-8B Harrier II and the F-35B Lightning II and concentrating its assault force into small numbers of large ships comes with risks. Yet China is building 36,000-ton Type 075 amphibious assault ships that can carry up to 30 helicopters as well as 1,200 marines and their heavy equipment, including tanks. The upcoming 50,000-ton Type 076 will be the world's largest amphibious assault vessel.

"For an invasion of Taiwan across a strait of approximately a hundred nautical miles (nm), LHDs are not necessarily the optimal (or the most cost-effective) platforms when numerous smaller warcraft are available (including civilian commercial craft)," Tangredi wrote. "They are, however, optimal for spearheading the transport of marines to conduct operations at distances out to the Horn of Africa, islands in the eastern Pacific, or — with suitable future logistics support — the Mediterranean."

Back to their roots

The US Marine Corps is also adapting. It is switching from an emphasis on storming beaches — the US has not attempted a major beach assault under fire since the Korean war — to supporting the US Navy with missile-equipped units to hunt Chinese ships from island bases. This is transforming the US Marine Corps into "an archipelagic maneuver force designed to conduct littoral, sea-denial operations," Tangredi said.

The Corps devised a new force layout to operate in an age of drones and anti-ship missiles. In this new structure, Marine littoral units "would not be optimized for amphibious assaults or combat against enemy forces ashore but would use previously unoccupied territory to conduct attacks on warships and aircraft — essentially, naval combat from the land," wrote Tangredi. Retired senior Marine commanders were aghast.

Thus the USMC has given all its tanks to the US Army, while it creates mobile units that can quickly turn small Pacific islands into missile bases from which to strike Chinese ships. The 3rd Littoral Regiment was stood up in 2022, and two more regiments are planned.

These littoral units would "assist the Navy in asserting sea control in the East and South China Seas," Tangredi wrote. "Marines would operate as part of a littoral combat group, with the Navy having overall command, supplying the warships (and necessary support vessels), and providing most of the group's firepower. Armed with land versions of the Navy's antiship missiles, Marine units would maneuver constantly while ashore by ground vehicles or from island to island using the proposed LAW [light amphibious warship]."

Ironically, the US Marine Corps is returning to its historical roots. Marines have always had an ambiguous role, neither quite army nor navy (poet Rudyard Kipling called them "soldier an' sailor too"). Back to the days of the Roman Empire, marines have been naval infantry tasked with seizing and guarding naval bases, boarding enemy vessels, and acting as shipboard military police to put down mutinies.

This is what the US Marine Corps did for most of its history since its founding in 1775. But in World War II and afterwards, it became more like a scaled-down version of the US Army, conducting massive multi-division amphibious invasions and fighting conventional ground campaigns in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. Small, light units flitting from Pacific island to island would be more in line with traditional USMC roles.

As for Chinese marines, their historical purpose was to storm Taiwan, not garrison tiny atolls on behalf of the navy. For China and America, their marines are switching roles.

Michael Peck is a defense writer whose work has appeared in Forbes, Defense News, Foreign Policy magazine, and other publications. He holds an MA in political science from Rutgers Univ. Follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn.