Royal Marines transformation programme shows early signs of progress

An ambitious plan to modernise the UK’s Royal Marine has seen significant progress made one year into a 10-year programme to transform its capabilities and develop its new concept of employment, according to the team behind the project.

The force has made particular progress with its internally developed communications network, according to Lieutenant Colonel Will Jerrold, SO1 Commando Systems in the Royal Navy’s Commando Force (CF) Programme Team.

Speaking at the Future Soldier Technology conference in London last month, Jerrold said that the force had been focussed on distributed and disaggregated operations coupled with persistent forward deployment.

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Jerrold said the CF would make three fundamental contributions to UK Royal Marine strategic objectives as a deliverer of persistent sub-threshold operations; a key enabler to assure theatre access operations; and a global crisis response first responder.

The CF has reorganised the Royal Marines to provide two scalable, joint Littoral Response Groups (LRG), one focussed on Europe (LRG(N)), and one further south and east (LRG(S)). These could be aggregated if necessary to form a Littoral Strike Group (LSG). The core of the LSG would be strike teams of 12 personnel, supported by a range of organic and external crewed and uncrewed assets and sustainable for independent operations for seven days.

Jerrold said that a key facet of the concept was to increase the lethality of the force. New equipment for the individual strike teams has included the Knight’s Stoner 1 (KS-1) assault rifle (designated L403A1); an upgraded Sharpshooter rifle; the L3Harris fused binocular night vision device; and a new helmet and clothing. About 50% of the force has been equipped so far.

To augment the existing organic fires capability of the force, tactical precision strike (TPS) weapons for the strike teams are the subject of experimentation, most recently at the US-led Project Convergence. A significant capability, however, will be the ability of the force to exploit medium- and long-range joint fires capabilities from air, maritime and ground platforms, with work underway on developing and improving targeting capabilities.

A significant amount of work has been devoted to developing uncrewed systems, not only for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISTAR) but also for strike, deception, insertion and resupply. Jerrold said that Puma, Ghost 4 and Malloy T150 UAS had all been used for experimentation and a number of systems were now deployed with the force which had been integrated into the communications network. Work has also been underway on expanding the acquisition of more UAS.

A demonstrator has been funded for an uncrewed surface/subsurface vessel which will have the potential to carry a payload. Jerrold said development of a scaled version of the vessel was in progress with a demonstration planned for later in 2024. He added that a project to develop a modernised commando insertion craft which would be capable of carrying an ultralight mobility platform would also be initiated this year. The current Offshore Raiding Craft (ORC) has also been upgraded and will become the Commando Raiding Craft (CRC).

The CF has focused on distributed and disaggregated operations, forward deployment, and the Marines’ role in delivering persistent sub-threshold operations. (Photo: UK MOD © Crown copyright 2024)

Fundamental to the entire project has been the development of the Enhanced Virtual Environment (EVE), an end-end non-proprietary network at the official sensitive level, which integrates sensors and effectors and is bearer agnostic.

The architecture has included a UK-based fusion hub located at the Stonehouse Joint Operations Centre (SJOC) in Plymouth with access to long-term databases and data analytical capabilities. It has also included a cloud-based data repository and a forward network that will connect a modular LRG or LSG HQ, either afloat or ashore, and tactical C2 nodes and the forward strike teams.

The EVE network will enable the collection and sharing of tactical data, the control of autonomous and uncrewed platforms and sensors, and the cueing of effectors.

The forward tactical IP network will use mobile ad hoc network (MANET) technology using the Persistent Systems MPU5 individual radio, with integrated tropospheric scatter and HF radio providing longer range links. For the dismounted individual, MPU 5 has been integrated via a hub with an end-user device (EUD) hosting the Android Tactical Awareness Kit (ATAK) which would provide situational awareness (SA) and command and control (C2) applications.

Speaking at the same event, Lt Col Chris Armstrong, Navy Acquisition SO1 Strike Networks, said that EVE provided the essential “sensor to decider to effector” chain, linking strike teams, sensors and uncrewed systems, and providing digital joint fires integration. He said that around 60% of the force was now equipped with the system.

EVE was an in-house innovation and development effort that was now being expanded in scale and needed external support for longer-term sustainment and development. Dave Pheasant from the DE&S Future Capability Group explained that the intention was to acquire a commercial Mission Partner (MP) as the route to “support, scale and enhance EVE”.

Pheasant said that the MP was expected to be “an enabling delivery organisation to partner collaboratively with the MoD and deliver the requirement in a series of spirals, engaging a wider supplier base”. It must utilise the open standards of EVE, stay vendor agnostic and avoid vendor lock in, he added. The system design authority will remain MarWorks, the RN information warfare technology accelerator.

Responses to the requirement closed in mid-March and Pheasant said the down select would probably be made by mid- to late-April, with contract award following negotiation. The target period was five years, with an initial contract for two years, with continuation subject to performance.

Armstrong said that integrating tactical data links such as L16 and NATO joint fires architecture was a priority for further development. He noted that there was considerable interest in UK to expanding the capability for other elements such as 16 Air Assault Brigade Combat Team, which Project CAIN and CAIN-X have been addressing. He added that there was also international interest and that the Royal Netherlands Marine Corps was working on its own version known as ADAM.

Jerrold said that once the force was firmly established in its new guise, the aim would be to embark on the second increment of the project, which would aim to exploit initial successes and develop further capabilities. These could include more work on sustainment, deception payloads and use of USV/USSVs. He told Shephard that the LRG(S) would be validated during an exercise in Australia later in 2024.

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