Marine Corps focuses on urban scenarios.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew
• Position: R & D SPECIAL REPORT

* That the Marine Corps would like to return to its expeditionary, sea-based roots after serving the past decade in Iraq and Afghanistan is well known.

Once that is accomplished, it sees itself conducting operations mostly in urban environments, said a senior leader at the service's Warfighting Laboratory.

"We conduct war games and experiments that inform us on what technologies we need to pursue," said Col. John Armellino, general staff officer for operations at the lab. These exercises are telling the service that it will be called upon to operate in large cities with diverse populations and high "urban canyons" that make sensing, communicating and resupply difficult.

That supposition is driving much of the Marine Corps' research and development budget, said Armellino.

The Marine Corps has its own list of top four research-and-development priorities: 21st Century Combined Arms (its term for command and control); unmanned aerial systems; technologies for complex urban environments and high-water speed vessels. Many of these, Armellino agreed, overlap and can be expanded into five categories: command and control; unmanned systems/autonomy; logistics; battlefield medicine and the high-water speed vessels.

Many of these R&D priorities flow from the Expeditionary Force-21 document published in March 2014 that outlines the service's vision of the future. It wants to be "fast, austere and lethal." More than 80 percent of the world's population resides within 100 miles of a coastline, the report pointed out.

One of the Marine Corps' technology Holy Grails has been a landing craft that can quickly and safely transport troops from ship to shore over the horizon in access-denied scenarios and then continue to fight once ashore. Speed on the water equals survivability. The service has made several high-profile attempts to field such a hybrid boat/fighting vehicle, and failed. But it isn't giving up. Its amphibious assault vehicle program is taking an incremental approach to fielding this capability.

Amphibious high-water speed remains near the top, if not the top of the service's R&D list, its leaders have said. The Office of Naval Research recently held a one-day forum looking at the problem.

"I don't think there's a more important capability challenge for the Marine Corps' ... than being able to get Marines from ship to shore to [an] objective seamlessly and expeditiously," Lt. Gen. Robert S. Walsh, commanding general of Marine Corps Combat...