Marines search for solutions as their packs take on poundage

By MATT HILBURN, Associate Editor

The Marine Corps is involved in a delicate balancing act. It wants to field the most capable Marines, equipped with the latest gear and protected by the best body armor. However, Marines are saddled with 70-100 pounds of gear — the combat load — and simply adding more equipment and armor can make them tired and less agile, which potentially could cancel out any benefits the new gear may offer.

Anecdotal evidence is streaming back from the battlefield about Marines breaking their ankles while jumping off of trucks because of the weight they are carrying. Some Marines, concerned about remaining quick and mobile in an urban combat environment, are reportedly opting not to wear body armor in certain situations simply because it weighs too much or interferes with movement.

“If you increase the combat load to a certain point, you’re going to be decreasing physical performance,” said Lt. Col. Donald Hawkins of the Marine Corps Center for Lessons Learned, which takes feedback from the operating forces on what works and what does not work and then disseminates that data throughout the Corps.

The cry for lightening the load is reaching a fever pitch at the highest levels of the Marine Corps.

“Our guys are wearing the best body armor this country can produce,” said Maj. Gen. William D. Catto, commanding officer, Marine Corps Systems Command, during the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space Exhibition April 6. “But it’s too heavy.”

Catto went on to call for industry “pinheads” to help develop lighter armor because the “lightest guy in the platoon going across the line of departure is wearing 80 pounds of gear.”

Gen. Michael W. Hagee, commandant of the Marine Corps, who has been beating the drum for a lighter combat load, also is not pleased with the progress being made in reducing the burden on Marines.

“We’ve been talking about this for some time,” he said during a recent interview with Seapower. “We look at the load Marines are carrying today, and it’s gotten heavier. … We can put a man on the moon … why we cannot develop lightweight personal protection equipment, I don’t know.”

Hagee did describe a few hopeful concepts that would reduce weight, including a lightweight helmet with integrated night-vision capability and communications equipment, but added that it was two years away from being deployed.

Until major breakthroughs are made in body armor technology and equipment such as batteries, gunsights and communication gear, the Marine Corps will likely measure success in lightening the combat load by the ounce rather than by the pound.

For now, the Corps is looking to take the current weight and make it less burdensome. One big success has been to distribute the weight on a Marine more efficiently and comfortably, allowing him to carry it with less interference and fatigue.

“The problem with continuously interjecting new capabilities is that you never look at what you’ve got and see how you can do it in a more integrated fashion,” said Maj. Pat Cashman, infantry requirements officer at the Marine Corps Combat Development Command. “The Corps needs to find ways to improve Marines’ combat prowess while making the combat load lighter and smaller.”

Some success stories include the Individual Load Bearing Equipment (ILBE), basically a backpack that places more of the load on a Marine’s hips. The ILBE is replacing the Modular, Lightweight Load-bearing Equipment, or MOLLE, system. The ILBE, which is well padded, also comes with a zip-off daypack, which allows greater flexibility for shorter missions. There are currently about 110,000 ILBEs distributed throughout the Corps.

The Corps also is working on improving the current Outer Tactical Vest with the so-called Modular Tactical Vest. Currently, gear such as magazines and hand grenades is hung on the Outer Tactical Vest wherever it might fit, often creating an awkward, cumbersome load. The Modular Tactical Vest would be, according to the Marine Corps, much more of an integrated system than the current Outer Tactical Vest, which many Marines find uncomfortable.

The Modular Tactical Vest, which is still being developed, would offer a more adjustable fit and include pockets for Small Arms Protective Inserts, known as SAPI plates. The Modular Tactical Vest would also feature a quick-release strap for easier removal, increased fire resistance, the ability to integrate wiring for headsets and radios, integration of the Camelback hydration system and compressible storage pouches.

According to the Marine Corps, the Modular Tactical Vest could begin to reach the troops in the fall.

Another piece of equipment that is helping ease the burden is the three-point sling, which distributes the weight of a rifle more evenly across the body and allows the user to quickly “let go” of the weapon, freeing the hands for other tasks such as reaching for a secondary weapon or tool.

While modularity and ergonomic construction will mitigate the load to some degree, commanders want to pare down what a Marine has to carry for specific missions.

Commanders have wide latitude in telling their troops what equipment they must take into battle and what they can leave behind. According to the Marine Corps Center for Lessons Learned, all the new gear that has been fielded since the onset of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has opened up vast new opportunities for commanders to tailor individuals’ combat load for a particular mission.

Prior to the influx of new equipment, “we all just kept our vests on,” said Hawkins.

Marines’ chemical suits are a case in point.

“The chemical suit was horrible,” he said. “At a certain time, leadership made a decision that we didn’t have to wear those suits anymore. So that was weight off of us.”

This concept has developed into something the Marine Corps calls the “Armor Protection Level,” which was implemented late last year and sets a standard for the amount of protection a Marine will have to wear depending on the mission. It ranges from zero, which is no protection, to level four, which utilizes the full complement of protective gear available.

There are cases when adding a little bit of weight could possibly allow for weight reduction in other areas.

The Marine Corps is currently fielding the Advanced Combat Optical Gunsight for every rifle in the Corps. The sight enables a shooter to be much more accurate.

“You’re able to be much more effective with your ammunition,” said Hawkins. “So it has an impact on ammo expenditure rates.”

He did add, however, there is no evidence, yet, that Marines are taking less ammo with them because of the Advanced Combat Optical Gunsight.

No matter how much easier things are to carry or how many ounces lighter they become, a substantial portion of the load is body armor, and it’s here that technology seems to be stuck in neutral.

Dan Fitzgerald, program manager for Marine Corps Systems Command’s infantry combat equipment division, said the Corps is constantly challenging industry to come up with lighter body armor that is just as effective as what is currently fielded, adding that the company that solves the problem will be handsomely rewarded.

While Marines fighting today in Iraq and Afghanistan will likely not see any major relief to the weight of the combat load, there are some promising technologies in the pipeline that may solve the riddle of providing greater capability while at the same time reducing the weight on a Marine’s back.

At the Marine Corp’s Warfighting Lab, work is being done with a Modular Wearable Computer, a rugged, lightweight system designed to provide monitoring, command and control and system status for three separate small unit remote scouting system technologies. The system will provide a common control system for the Dragon Eye unmanned aerial vehicle, Dragon Runner unmanned ground vehicle and Small Unit Sensor System unattended ground sensor.

At the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) basic research is being conducted in three promising areas.

Farthest along is the exoskeleton, which is aimed at creating a self-powered, controllable, wearable machine that will increase the speed, strength and endurance of gear-laden Marines. Two prototypes are being tested and evaluated, and DARPA officials said a Marine equipped with an exoskeleton could comfortably carry up to 200 pounds of gear. DARPA hopes to be able to take a test model into a realistic environment for further testing in 2008.

DARPA is also working on something called an Optically Designated Attack Munition, which is a 60mm mortar round that is guided to its target by a laser, much in the same way other, larger precision weapons are. Inert versions were scheduled to be tested in October or November with live-fire testing scheduled for the start of next year.

Doug Kirkpatrick, a program manager at DARPA, said the mortars, if proven successful, could “turn a battalion into a brigade-strength force.”

“This is normally about a $500 round,” said Kirkpatrick of standard 60mm rounds. “This’ll be about an $800 round, full up. The difference? In order to kill a target they need 10-11 of [the standard rounds]. [With this] they need one.”

Kirkpatrick said a Marine could pick out a window from 2 kilometers away and have a 92-97 percent chance of putting the round through the window that was being designated.

Another benefit of the munition is that it has proportional navigation, which means it tracks moving targets. So if a Marine designated a vehicle moving through the field of view, the round would track the vehicle and could maneuver up to 150 meters in all directions to hit it.

A lot of the new gear being fielded with the Marines requires power, and bringing power to the front line, whether in the form of generators or batteries, has always presented a logistical and weight challenge.

DARPA is working on several projects aimed at supplying better, lighter batteries and fuel cells to the troops. Dr. Valerie Browning, a program manager at DARPA, said a special operations unit can carry up to 125 pounds of batteries with them for a 10-day mission. Some of the projects at DARPA, if proven successful, could cut that by a factor of seven, which would mean huge weight savings, she said.

One promising project is called Palm Power, which is not much bigger than a phone and can convert high-energy content hydrocarbon fuels such as JP8 into electricity. While something like Palm Power could certainly reduce weight, Browning said it is still “a ways out.”

While the Corps waits for technological breakthroughs, they’ll have to remain vigilant about hanging more and more equipment on a Marine’s back, constantly figuring the difficult calculus between increased capability and increased weight.

“We’re hanging all this gear on a 19-20 year-old kid who’s 5’10” and 171 pounds,” Cashman said. “That’s a limited amount of real estate.”