By Emelie Rutherford
To address the daunting problem of lightening the load of gear carried by troops, the Marine Corps is working to treat the rifle squad as a combat system in which efficiencies can be found, according to the head of Marine Corps Systems Command.
While industry and research shops play a large role in ongoing quest to “lighten the load,” MARCORSYSCOM Commander Brig. Gen. Michael Brogan said work is being done within his command to integrate troops’ gear.
“I have a program manager for the Marine Expeditionary Rifle Squad [Mark Richter] whose charter is to conduct the systems engineering so that we can begin to integrate the equipment that’s carried by the infantry,” Brogan told reporters March 20.
“We treat the infantrymen as a Christmas tree on which we hang ornaments,” the general said, after a panel discussion at the Navy League’s Sea Air Space conference. “There’s no integrated look at his combat ensemble, no systems engineering approach, to figuring out how we can integrate the various pieces.”
Brogan thus said there needs to be more work to combine gear troops wear and carry–he mentioned radios, gas masks, body armor, ammunition, batteries, helmets and rifles–to avoid duplication and lower the overall weight.
“Why can’t the ear piece for the radio be part of the helmet,” he said. “Why can’t the mount for the night-vision goggles be part of the helmet, rather than strapped on top of it.”
To tackle the load-lightening challenge “from a process standpoint,” Brogan said, “all these disparate program managers across my command, who provide those piece parts, have to work together to integrate them into a system.”
A Naval Research Advisory Committee panel report on “lightening the load” last September called for MARCORSYSCOM to recognize the rifle squad as a system, and said “the needed resources must be provided to create effective squad-as-a-system systems engineering capability.”
Asked about MARCORSYSCOM’s lightening-the-load efforts, a spokeswoman pointed to the establishment of the Gruntworks Squad Integration Facility in Stafford, Va., in November 2007.
Richter, the Marine Expeditionary Rifle Squad program manager, is using the Gruntworks facility to conduct a weight study to determine when Marines’ performance is degraded when using equipment during physically demanding tasks, according to an e-mail from MARCORSYSCOM spokeswoman 1st Lt. Geraldine Carey.
The study was assisted with data gathered from surveys of Marines in Iraq last August and September, she said.
“The endstate is to determine what equipment and the associated weight is affecting a Marine’s performance,” Carey said. “We will then evaluate ways to mitigate the effects and specifically be able to measure the performance decrement.”
In terms of providing resources for “squad as a system” systems engineering, Carey said “systems engineering and human factors expertise” has been increased within the Marine Expeditionary Rifle Squad program office through new hires–including a combat arms officer with battle experience and systems engineering education.
Brogan told reporters last week MARCORSYSCOM is looking at pointing systems on a rifle.
“Right now we got one that does infrared, we got one that does red dot, we got one that does white light,” he said. “Why can’t we have a site that works day and night instead of carrying two or three different sites?”
Batteries are always a major weight concern, Brogan said.
“We need to get outside of the box to figure out how we can reduce the load,” he said about reducing the weight of the multiple batteries troops carry. He cited ideas including camouflaged photovoltaic cells on body armor and load-carrying robots.
Troops today are carrying more than the unofficial guideline for hauling one-third of their own body weight, Brogan said.
“It limits your ability, it limits your endurance, it limits your agility and flexibility, all those things, and ultimately it results in decreased combat effectiveness,” he said.
During a panel discussion on “acquisition outlook and priorities,” Brogan showed a slide that listed lightening the load of gear as a major priority of MARCORSYSCOM’s.
“We need significant help from industry to help lighten the load,” Brogan told conference attendees, “whether it’s improving the ergonomics and the comfort of developing a helmet that–at either the current or reduced weight–can stop [a] 7.62 [mm rifle round], [or] body armor that–with the same area of coverage, the same fragmentary protection, the same ballistic protection–can be lighter, help us reject heat, all those sorts of things.”