Amazon can have had the vision, however the Marine Corps is making it reality.
After years of experimenting with airborne delivery drones, the service believes it has a winner.
In its fiscal 2024 budget request, the Marine Corps is asking to purchase 41 tactical resupply unmanned aircraft systems, or TRUAS, for a complete investment of greater than $13 million.
With the service set to take delivery of previous orders of the drones this spring and expecting to declare initial operational capability on the system later this fall, it can be an enormous 12 months, not just for tactical resupply unmanned aircraft systems, but additionally for the concept of unmanned aerial resupply.
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Built like large quadcopters, the systems are designed to hold payloads of as much as 150 kilos over distances of as much as nine miles in containers secured underneath. The unit cost of about $325,000 per drone is actually steep, but Marine officials say it’s substantially more sophisticated than the remote-controlled industrial drones it resembles.
Moderately than being manually flown, tactical resupply unmanned aircraft systems are programmed with waypoints that determine itinerary and flight pattern, meaning it requires less hands-on attention from Marine operators than a lot of the Corps’ quadcopters.
It takes just two Marines to watch and maintain one in the sphere, and people Marines can learn all the things they should learn about taking good care of it in only five training days, in keeping with Master Sgt. Chris Genualdi, an airborne and air delivery specialist with Combat Development and Integration, who discussed the system in an April news release.
The tactical resupply unmanned aircraft systems concept is closely aligned with the Marine Corps’ all-consuming vision for future warfare, which involves small, independent units operating from great distances from austere outposts ― perhaps on islands within the vast Indo-Pacific.
While the system isn’t designed to cross the ocean with supplies, it is perhaps dispatched from a ship to a landing zone in hostile conditions ashore that may preclude a helicopter or V-22 Osprey delivery.
“As system technology advances in future years, [Unmanned Expeditionary Systems] will … include emerging technologies to incorporate autonomous distribution capabilities for elements across the MAGTF and [Marine Littoral Regiments], enabling more diversified distribution and the sustainment of Marine Corps forces across future operating environments,” officials wrote in fiscal 2024 budget justification documents.
Tactical resupply unmanned aircraft systems provide “an organic battlefield logistics capability to distribute critical supplies via an unmanned platform while conducting” expeditionary advanced base operations safely inside a weapons engagement zone, “where the chance to manned aircraft would deny manned aviation resupply operations.”
Marine leaders plan to scale the technology because it proves itself, in keeping with the April news release, eventually constructing larger and higher-capacity platforms in keeping with the identical model that may further advance the objectives of the Corps’ expeditionary advanced base operations.
To this end, the service can also be planning to launch a brand new military occupational specialty, or military job, focused on operating resupply drones. That job might be called small unmanned logistics system — air specialist. The timing of its rollout has not been announced.
In April, defense contractor Leidos announced a contract with the Marine Corps to construct a bigger autonomous drone prototype ― just like a helicopter with a double stack of rotors ― that might have the opportunity to travel as much as 100 nautical miles and carry as much as 600 kilos.
“The utility of the TRUAS reaches beyond combat,” the recent Marine Corps release states, with its capabilities being highly effective in humanitarian assistance and disaster relief efforts.
“In disaster areas that will not be accessible by conventional means, the TRUAS might be used to move much needed supplies.”
The Corps contracted for 35 tactical resupply unmanned aircraft systems drones in August 2022 and 30 more in March 2023, in keeping with Marine Corps budget documents, but all are set for delivery in the primary half of this 12 months from SURVICE Engineering, out of Aberdeen, Maryland.
The trouble to develop the tactical resupply unmanned aircraft systems began in earnest with a Department of the Navy “fly-off” prize challenge launched in 2020 at Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona, to construct a rugged and reliable small cargo-carrying drone. SURVICE took the $100,000 first-place prize in that effort.
While tactical resupply unmanned aircraft systems only have been employed in field user evaluations and training and never proven in combat, the Marine Corps has moved relatively quickly to make its delivery-drone requirement a reality.
It’s removed from the one entity looking for to capitalize on reliable unmanned aerial logistics. In 2013, online retail giant Amazon made headlines when then-CEO Jeff Bezos announced that it might be delivering packages via aerial drone by 2018.
A decade later, Amazon has launched a really limited regional version of the service, and the corporate says it’s still working on developing its vision for “Amazon Prime Air.”
Hope Hodge Seck is an award-winning investigative and enterprise reporter covering the U.S. military and national defense. The previous managing editor of Military.com, her work has also appeared within the Washington Post, Politico Magazine, USA Today and Popular Mechanics.