U.S. Marines field counter-drone vehicles in Middle East

The U.S. Marine Corps has released a photo of Marines with the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit driving a Light Marine Air Defense Integrated System, known as LMADIS, a mobile counter-drone system, in the Middle East on Sept. 2-6.

The caption says only that the photo was taken in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility, the command that covers the region.

The unit is deployed to a region at war. The war began Feb. 28 with U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran, and the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit left San Diego with the USS Boxer (LHD 4) Amphibious Ready Group in March. It has about 2,500 Marines. A ceasefire took hold April 8, but fighting flared again in early September.

LMADIS is built to detect, identify, track and defeat small drones that threaten forward forces. It consists of two Polaris MRZR all-terrain vehicles. One serves as the command unit, and the other carries an electronic warfare suite. The system combines radar, electronic warfare and command-and-control equipment. The radar finds the drone, and the electronic warfare gear disrupts the signals that link it to its operator.

In the version used in 2019, both vehicles carried a radar and one also carried a camera turret. The radar picks up a small drone at range. The camera helps operators confirm what it is and whether it is hostile. If it is, they use a jammer to cut the drone’s link to its ground control station, which can make it crash. The aim is to stop a hostile drone before it reaches the base being protected.

LMADIS is the light version of the Marine Air Defense Integrated System, or MADIS, which is built on Joint Light Tactical Vehicles. The light version is aligned to Marine Expeditionary Units, which are smaller than a Marine Littoral Regiment and have a wider range of missions. It served as a testbed and stopgap counter-drone system before MADIS was fielded, and Marine low altitude air defense battalions still use it.

The Marine Corps first saw a gap in countering cheap commercial drones in 2013, at the start of the fight against ISIS. LMADIS made its operational debut in July 2019, when Marines aboard USS Boxer used it, mounted on a Polaris MRZR, to bring down an Iranian drone. Boxer is again the flagship of the amphibious group carrying the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit.

That drone came within about 900 meters (1,000 yards) of the ship as it sailed through the Strait of Hormuz on July 18, 2019. Pentagon officials said Marines jammed it electronically. Iran denied it had lost a drone. The MRZR sat on the ship’s bow, powered by a gasoline generator, and the Marines who trained on it came from the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit’s aviation squadron.

The vehicles are light enough to work from an amphibious ship’s flight deck and to drive ashore, which suits a unit that moves between ship and shore in small groups. Since the war began, Iran has fired missiles and drones at U.S. military installations across the Gulf, Iraq and Jordan. Col. Chris Niedziocha, who commanded the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit in the same war, said this month that staying current on new equipment, much of it counter-drone gear, took up much of his Marines’ time. The 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit trained with rifle-mounted counter-drone optics in April.