Robots, Marines and the Ultimate Battle with Bureaucracy
The decade-long quest to deliver a modern-day target practice highlights the broken world of military acquisition.
By HOPE HODGE SECK
06/23/2022 09:00 AM EDT
Updated: 06/23/2022 10:12 PM EDT
Hope Hodge Seck is a freelance defense reporter and the former managing editor of Military.com.
In July 2008, a year before President Barack Obama surged 33,000 ground troops into Afghanistan, a Marine Corps officer at Camp Pendleton, California, sent an urgent memo up his chain of command acknowledging an embarrassing truth: Marines, famous for their marksmanship flair, weren’t very good at hitting their targets in a war zone.
In combat, troops needed to neutralize a moving enemy, Maj. Eric Dougherty noted. But the Corps, using static target practice that hadn’t changed much since the Revolutionary War, had “no systems or ranges” that could prepare them for the task. He pleaded for resources and, in particular, a way to teach Marines to hit a target that moved unpredictably and as fast as a man could run.
“Failure to respond to this need will mean the continued degrading of critical marksmanship skills required to succeed in an asymmetric environment,” he wrote.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/06/23/marines-robots-target-practice-00041091
