The classic World War II images of Marines assaulting heavily-fortified beachheads is set to become a thing of the past, alongside wooden battleships and horse-drawn cannon. The Advanced Naval Technology Exercise at Camp Pendleton in southern California will put on display new technologies aimed at seizing land-based enemy strongholds by attacking from the sea.
Next month's series of military-assault drills will feature some 50 realtime technological demonstrations, as well as about the same number of static displays describing other forms of military future-tech.
According to Marine Corps think-tank director Doug King, the new form of ship-to-shore invasion he envisions is not "a bunch of [boats full of soldiers] lined up, putting ashore at six knots."
"I want to go to a gap in the mangroves that I can penetrate," King said, cited by Defensetech.org, "to where nobody's going to find me, that I can get in and I can, when necessary, concentrate my forces of maneuver against them."
The new forms of tech to be employed in making King's dream a reality feature a heavy dose of unmanned or autonomous military machines, including quadcopter drones to surveil enemy installations in high-definition 3D, unmanned amphibious assault vehicles and new methods of employing stealth or concealment.
The experimental military assault drills will run from April 24-28 and be followed up with additional testing at Camp Lejeune, in North Carolina, in September.
