Marines Considering Autonomous Systems for Almost Everything, General Says
By: John Grady
September 6, 2023 8:45 PM
Marines are looking to push as many tasks as possible to autonomous systems as the service aims to operate across wide swaths of the Pacific.
The Marines are working on several avenues to add autonomy to the service, Lt. Gen. Karsten Heckl, Marine Corps deputy commandant for combat development and integration, told the audience at the Defense News conference Wednesday.
“If you take the [person] out of it, things get simpler and they typically get more efficient, and they get less expensive,” he said.
“You should try to go after everything.”
An example is the under-development low-profile autonomous ships the Marines are considering for contested resupply. The idea came from America’s ongoing counter-narcotics operations in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific, Heckl said.
“We just copied the drug lords out of South America,” he said.
https://news.usni.org/2023/09/06/marines-considering-autonomous-systems-for-almost-everything-general-says