The U.S. Marine Corps, which will be the first U.S. combat force to fight a land campaign in Asia in the event of a war against China, will equip all its infantry squads with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for reconnaissance and surveillance by the end of 2017.

There are also plans to have Marines use "kamikaze drones" that can both detect and attack enemy forces from long-range. These silent drones such as Israel's Hero-30 will first observe then dive onto a target and destroy it with its warhead.

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 Gen. Robert Neller, Commandant of the United States Marine Corps, said Marines now have to contend with a battlefield dominated by high-end threats, new technologies and an increasingly complex combat environment.

He said that combat environment is one where aerial drones and unmanned systems such as land drones shoulder more of the load.

The new Marine Corps Operating Concept revealed by Gen. Neller said that as machines advance from performing repetitive tasks to dynamic workloads, "it will free people to focus on the things they do uniquely or best," such as fighting.

"The challenge, as machines become more capable and autonomous, is how to put people and things together in the most effective pairings for the mission at hand."

"At the end of next year, my goal is that every deployed Marine infantry squad had got their own quadcopter," he said. "They're like 1,000 bucks."

Gen. Neller suggested this quadcopter might be purchased outside the normal supply chain to keep the price within $1,000. Keeping the price within $1,000 will be a challenge since most supply chain UAVs far exceed this limit. The pocket-sized PD-100 drone system made by Proxdynamics, for example, cost some $60,000.

"It would be kind of silly, I think to field the whole Marine Corps at one time, because in six months there's going to be something better to buy hopefully cheaper," noted Gen. Neller.

To operate a UAV such as a quadcopter, Gen. Neller wants to add an assistant squad leader position with a primary focus on operating the unit's UAVs. A Marine squad currently consists of 13 men: one squad leader and three fire teams, each with four Marines.

The assistant squad leader concept and the idea of equipping small units with drones were both tested in the recent Marine Air Ground Task Force Integrated Experiment 2016, held at Twentynine Palms, California last August.

One solution proposed by Gen. Neller to keep down the price is 3D printing.

"Maybe we can just buy the design (for a quadcopter) and print our own," said Gen. Neller. "I'm not joking."

One of the quadcopters being evaluated by the Marines is InstantEye from Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI).

This tactical small unmanned aerial system is a high-performance, low-cost system that can be hand-launched, flown and hand-recovered by a single person in any weather. InstantEye weighs less than one pound; has a range of more than one kilometer and can carry payloads such as cameras.

TagsU.S. Marine Corps, unmanned aerial vehicles, UAV, aerial drone, Gen. Robert Neller, InstantEye, Hero-30