En un evento nuevo en su tipo, el Cuerpo de Marines de EE.UU. puso a prueba las habilidades de sus especialistas en comunicaciones en una nueva competencia denominada Thunderstruck, que según los comandantes refleja habilidades de comando y control más exigentes que los Marines necesitarán en la vanguardia de la guerra, con menos ayuda desde casa.
WASHINGTON — In a first-of-its-kind event, US Marine Corps put its communications specialists’ skills to the test in a new competition dubbed Thunderstruck, one that officials said reflects more demanding command and control skills Marines will need at the warfighting edge, with less help from back home.
“We are adapting to an enemy threat. Our teams are getting smaller and more capable and must be more technically proficient, more tactically skilled and tough as nails,” Lt. Col. Brian Kerg, commanding officer for Marine Wing Communications Squadron 38, told participants during the Sept. 10 event. “The threat dictates how we must operate and this event is compelling us to set an entirely new standard so we are ready to fight and to win.”
In a future operating environment, such as the island chains in the Pacific, smaller, more dispersed units will be tasked with defending their areas while establishing communications nodes to enable operations.
As part of the Marine Corps’ Force Design and its commandant’s planning guidance efforts, the Corps’ units are shifting from mostly static bases to launch operations or aircraft, as they did in Iraq and Afghanistan. For air wings like the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing — under which Squadron 38 resides — they are moving to a hub-spoke-node model moving forward, meaning forces will be spread out and dispersed across the battlespace, likely on several islands, and as a result.
Units such as Control Group 38, which is responsible for establishing communications and command and control capabilities for aviation elements in the field, must alter their operating concept to support these dispersed air units as well.
“If you’re detected and you can’t move, you will die. If you move and you can’t reestablish comms, you will fail,” Kerg told Breaking Defense in an interview last week before the competition. “This event tests Marines in making sure that they can, in fact, move and they can reestablish comms in a dynamic environment in which they will be operating against a pacing threat.”
Others stressed the shift from years past to a much more dynamic and high-tempo operating environment.
“The days where we have 60-plus days to establish communications with a team of 200, 300 Marines are probably gone, especially when taking into consideration the pacing threat,” Capt. Ruben Pantoja, assistant operations officer for Communications Squadron 38, said in an interview.
The pacing threat, in Pentagon parlance, typically refers to China.
“This is not a unique problem set to Comms Squadron 38, I can venture to say that almost every unit participating in this competition faces similar circumstances or situations or problem sets that they’re trying to get after and trying to get their Marines ready. That’s where we really want to emphasize the importance of the small team having huge tactical and operational impacts across combat and commands or in support of command commands,” Panoja added.
“The pacing threat demands that we operate in small teams and that we maintain tempo … these Marines are expected to not only be technically proficient as it pertains to communications, but also be tactically proficient. And we test both. We test both the technical and the tactical and that’s what we’re trying to get after,” he said.
Specifically, according to a fact sheet, Thunderstruck was designed for:
- validating the Corps’ ability to operate dispersed communications in forward environments supporting aviation command and control
- testing Marines’ ability to provide critical C2 infrastructure for distributed aviation operations and decision-making
- showcasing skill sets necessary for integration with joint and coalition partners in contested environments
- providing a new training model that combines physical endurance with technical problem-solving that reflect future battlefield requirements
- reinforcing the role of communications Marines as critical enablers of decision dominance.
Invitations went out to the commanders of each communications formation within the Corps and participation included personnel from 15 organizations across each Marine Expeditionary Force.
“Stressing how expeditionary we need to be going into the future is one of the biggest things that I was able to take away from this,” one of the participants stated the day of the event. “We’re in an age where we moved around in huge units, huge boxes, but now that we’re coming into four fire teams and operating on a smaller level with smaller gear that we have to pack around, it changes the game a little bit.”
A Realistic Battlefield Scenario
Planners for the Thunderstruck event, which took place at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, wanted to make the event as real as possible, stressing competitors in war-like conditions to perform physical and technical tasks.
“They’re training to standard as a team while carrying an assault load and their weapon and all the comms equipment they need to do that mission, while racing against other teams across miles of rugged terrain, which will simulate that physical duress that they will experience in war, as well as that competitive enemy induced pressure that they will also face in war,” Kerg said.
Overall, the competition included a six-mile course participants had to ruck through to simulate the austere conditions Marines will likely face on the battlefield. Across that course, were a variety of stations in which the competitors tested their networking skills by establishing comms and performing a Marine task, such as disassembly and assembly of a weapon system. Three primary comms tasks included High Frequency voice transmission, Mobile User Objective System (MUOS) satellite communications and data networking for information exchange.
“Imagine the world wherein just a handful of Marines are inserted via some service connector or maybe via a CH-53 or an Osprey and they have to move that last tactical mile to the point where they’re actually going to establish C2. They do that and they’re supporting operations and then they’re detected. And then munitions are falling around them or about to,” Kerg said. “They get the word in and they got to break that stuff down and they have to move however many miles it is, to some other survival location where they can do it again and again and again. That’s what the competition is simulating.”
And it’s not just one method of communications. Officials talk of PACE plans, or primary, alternate, contingency and emergency. Prior to any operation, there must be a redundant communications plan in case systems are jammed or simply don’t work.
“What most units probably don’t practice in good execution with exercises, deployments, whatnot, is taking a PACE plan and flipping it on its head, knee capping it. We might have our primary and alternate setup. But rarely do we ever stress test our contingency and our emergency,” Chief Warrant Officer 2 Kelson Epperson, space and propagation engineering officer for Communications Squadron 38, said in an interview. “Being able to demonstrate the entire range of capability that a small team could provide, I think, is huge and demonstrates that while, yes, we do have the fancy toys, the old ways work best sometimes.”
Hopes Of A Service-Wide Event
Creators of the competition from Comm Squadron 38 said they hope the event continues to grow in successive years, beyond just its organization.
While they said Marine Corps Air Station Miramar is an ideal location, given the terrain and proximity to other units, the hope is it could rotate to different regions with different geographic topographies such as the Jungle Warfare Training Center in Okinawa, Japan, or elsewhere in California at the Marine Corps Mountain Warfare Training Center in Bridgeport or Twentynine Palms.
They also plan to increase the challenges and complexity going forward, perhaps adding electronic warfare or jamming components or even offensive cyber operations to the mix for Marines’ to face.
“What’s going to happen next is after the event, we’ll get feedback from all the competitors, we’ll make recommendations and then we’re going to pitch it to headquarters Marine Corps in terms of making this thing an annual service-endorsed, service-wide event that will be conducted year after year in any time, in place over the rest of the team,” Kerg said.
His closing message to the participants following the event: thank you for taking the risk of doing something for the first time “that will raise the bar, that will raise the expectations of what a Marine communicator should be. What a Marine communicator is. What we should all aspire to be.”
Fuente: https://breakingdefense.com
