The Marine Corps is testing hand-held tablet computers designed to give ground troops real-time target intelligence while en route to a raid point, and officials say the technological leap will change how the service carries out crisis-response missions in hostile parts of the world.



The effort falls in line with the recent Marine Corps strategy to remake itself following budget cuts and the close of its long-term commitments in two land wars. The particular emphasis — combining mobile technology with older amphibious helicopter doctrine — is in part a reaction to larger scale demands of President Obama’s Pacific pivot, as well as the smaller scale demands of the post-Benghazi diplomatic security climate in Africa.

In late March, a company-size landing team composed of about 100 students attending the Infantry Officer Course in Quantico, Va., traveled via MV-22 Ospreys from this desert training base in Twentynine Palms to San Clemente Island off the California coast. The training scenario called for them to eliminate cruise missile threats and take back an airfield from enemy forces.

One of the three Ospreys was no average aircraft though — it was an airborne communication gateway, equipped with an encrypted internal wifi network that linked to several Samsung tablets carried by Marines riding in the aircraft. Hovering above the target was a notional F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, its sensors pointed at the objective, which then beamed encrypted data to the Marines en route to the raid.

“As opposed to … getting back in the aircraft and falling asleep and waking up when the aircraft touches the deck, now I’m paying attention to what’s going on,” said Capt. Jonathan Cohen, one of the students’ instructors. “I’m understanding what the enemy is [doing] on my objective, how they’re oriented and potentially even looking at a photo of my objective.”

That information is transmitted to the tablets in the form of maps and images. They can also use a messaging application to share information with other ground forces. Those leading the operation can access the information in order to plan and, perhaps more importantly, quickly adapt plans for how the Marines should respond to potential threats once they land.

“Coming off the bird, we already knew we were going to take contact because we had already identified the exact number of enemy that were at the [landing zone],” said 2nd Lt. Travis Bird, an IOC student. “Without the technology, we wouldn’t be able to do that and we potentially could’ve been caught off guard.”