Illustration by Jacqueline Belker/Staff
Todd Smith in The Marine Corps Times writes:
Somewhere off the coast of a tiny island in the South China Sea small robotic submarines snoop around, looking for underwater obstacles as remotely-controlled ships prowl the surf.
Overhead multiple long-range drones scan the beachhead and Chinese military fortifications deeper into the hills.
A small team of Marines, specially trained and equipped, linger farther out after having launched from their amphibious warship, as did their robot battle buddies to scout this spit of sand.
Their Marine grandfathers and great-grandfathers might have rolled toward this island slowly, dodging sea mines and artillery fire only to belly crawl in the surf as they were raked with machine gun fire, dying by the thousands.
But in the near-term battle, suicidal charges to gain ground in a fast-moving battlefield is a robot’s job.
This imagined scenario involves a host of platforms, teamed with in-the-flesh Marines, moving rapidly across wide swaths of the Pacific. Those small teams of maybe a platoon or even a squad could work alongside robots in the air, on land, sea and undersea, to gain a short-term foothold that then could control a vital sea lane Chinese ships would have to bypass or risk sinking simply to transit.
