Marines deploy drone-killing MADIS system for Balikatan drills

U.S. Marines will take a look at one of many service’s latest counter-drone protection techniques throughout this 12 months’s Balikatan navy train in collaboration with the Philippine navy, in line with the Marine Corps.

Marines with the third Littoral Anti-Air Battalion’s Floor-Based mostly Air Protection Battery will conduct live-fire coaching with the ground-based Marine Air Protection Built-in System, or MADIS, a short-range, surface-to-air system that focuses on the detection and destruction of unmanned plane techniques, on the annual joint drills at present underway within the Philippines.

The train will mark MADIS’ second live-fire coaching, following coaching in January on the Pohakuloa Coaching Space on the Large Island of Hawaii, and the primary time the system has been deployed exterior america with a U.S. Marine Corps unit.

“The MADIS is a novel weapon system that enhances each the survivability and lethality of [the 3rd Marine Littoral Regiment] by extending the attain of the airspace over which the formation has management, and by giving tactical flexibility to the pleasant components working inside our space of operations,” mentioned Col. John G. Lehane, commanding officer of the third Marine Littoral Regiment, in a launch.

Throughout an built-in air and missile protection occasion, U.S. Marines will carry out an illustration of the MADIS alongside Philippine Marines and troopers, who will even make the most of their very own counter-drone techniques.

With MADIS, Marines don’t should exit their car to manually goal and take out an unmanned aerial car.

The system, mounted to a tactical car, comes outfitted with radar and weapons able to figuring out aerial threats and neutralizing them out of the sky with jammers, Stinger missiles and a 30mm cannon.

MADIS will substitute a earlier aerial protection system known as the Man-Moveable Air Protection System, or MANPADs, which features a fireplace unit car, part chief car and a Stinger shoulder-fired missile as its major weapon system, in line with the Marine Corps.

The Marine Corps — which requested $130 million for 13 MADIS Increment 1 techniques in its fiscal 2024 finances request — will search to subject 190 MADIS techniques by way of 2035 to the first, 2nd and third Low-Altitude Air Protection Battalions and the third, 4th and twelfth Marine Littoral Regiments.

This 12 months’s Balikatan, working by way of Might 9 on the Philippine islands of Luzon and Palawan, marks 40 years of joint drills aimed toward fortifying the Indo-Pacific. U.S. and Philippine troops will conduct coordinated navy operations throughout land, sea, air, house and cyber domains for the train.

The I Marine Expeditionary Drive Command Ingredient, 1st Marine Division, third Marine Plane Wing, 1st Marine Logistics Group, third Marine Littoral Regiment and 1st Marine Plane Wing will take part within the occasion.

“The MADIS continues to exceed expectations, and the extra repetitions we get to combine it with the [Philippine Marine Corps] in coaching, the extra it should improve our collective lethality,” mentioned Lt. Col. Matthew E. Sladek, commanding officer of the third Littoral Anti-Air Battalion.