Camp Pendleton Marines do more training with drones as the technology advances ...Middle East

Cpl. Christopher Magana Pinawin remembers being in fourth grade when his father gave him a battery-powered drone to fly.

The 21-year-old Marine from Fullerton was intrigued by the challenge of keeping it airborne, but limited battery power cut any flight after 10 minutes.

Now, a decade later, Magana Pinawin, an intelligence specialist with the 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines, isn’t struggling to keep a toy in the air, but is learning how to expertly fly attack and reconnaissance drones, while also understanding how to counter them with radar and jamming equipment. And battery power? Not an issue.

“I didn’t think (drones) would be so widely used,” said Magana Pinawin, who enlisted two years ago. “Being able to use drones now, it’s a pretty good experience, pretty enjoyable. It’s definitely a great capability.”

Read also: Fullerton College to launch first bachelor’s degree program in school history — in flying drones

And as an infantry Marine, he recognizes they would be critical to future battles.

“War is always evolving, and they will only become more and more prominent,” Magana Pinawin said.  “The lethality of drones, it’s pretty crazy to me, something straight out of a video game. It’s a little scary. You definitely need to know how to defend against them.”

Countering the threat of attacking drones was one of many strategies Magana Pinawin and other infantry Marines recently practiced on a range at Camp Pendleton during the initial days of a 1st Marine Division two-week drone integration training course.

The scenario simulated what could be a base they were defending.

As make-believe attack drones swarmed, the Marines had to figure out how to bring them down while also jamming the drones with electronic systems and radar to buy time for defense strategies. And, they had to think about where the drone would land when it was hit — a protective structure encased the drones so they would survive to train another day.

Amid a worldwide drone race, the Marine Corps has emphasized the machine’s role as an important tool against emerging threats — just look at the use of drones in the fighting between Ukraine and Russia and by Israel this week, said Lt. Col. Nick Freeman, director of the division’s schools.

Earlier this year, the Marines started an attack drone team, which trains at Quantico and is tied into the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab.

“We have long been interested in achieving this level of scale with small, aerial drones,” Freeman added.  “The examples we’ve seen around the world have really helped drive the conversation at higher levels and the overall Department of Defense is moving rapidly to adjust policies that are enabling this training.”

The two-part course at Camp Pendleton featured a round-robin setting, where Marines were first introduced to the technologies at various stations and then practiced hands-on with the machines — in one instance using goggles to see what the drone was watching in real-time. A fictional battle scenario followed the morning session.

The key was figuring out how drones and their technologies fit with traditional warfighting tools and how to use them simultaneously.

“They are not depending overly on one piece of technology, but learning how to fight against an adaptive enemy by adapting them,” Freeman said. “That’s why we call it the integration, we teach all these capabilities and they learn how to bring it all together.”

Some of the things the Marines practiced included using radar and learning how it helps create a window of time for a reaction, while also considering what ground munitions need to be brought in to complete the arsenal.

“We’re teaching basic tactical principles, we are teaching specific techniques and procedures, and we are really trying to imbue a mindset of constant, constant adaptation,” said 1st Lt. Gannon Peifer, who is the course instructor. He noted that any piece of equipment Marines use today will likely need to be updated in a month given the rapid development of drone capabilities.

Peifer said that after each course, which is run monthly and trains 400 Marines in a year, the manual is updated.

“That’s just the pace that the service is moving,” he said. “We’re going fast and that’s a good problem to have.”

As the afternoon wore on, Marines set up the area they needed to defend. Their job was to take offensive action to find and target enemy drone teams.

In this scenario, they used tennis balls and water balloons to strike their target from the dropper drones.

They set up radar in the direction from which the most likely threat would come and used a radio frequency detector that alerted them to any enemy drone frequency. The type of radio frequency also gave them an idea of what sort of enemy drone was heading their way.

As the days in the course progress, Freeman said some of the exercises will be done with live-fire ammunition.

And when a drone is downed, Freeman said the same care Marines used with IEDs in Iraq and Afghanistan needs to be employed here. It needs to be viewed as an unexploded device that has to be safely disarmed and exploited, he said.

“What frequency is it operating on? What explosives are being used?” Freeman said. “Every time you capture one of these, you’re learning what the enemy is doing.”

When the day’s course was done, Marines reviewed what they learned, what worked, what didn’t — did the enemy get through?

For Cpl. Jacob Bennett, 22, and Cpl. Nathan Baptiste, 22, both part of the 3rd Battalion/4th Marines based at Twentynine Palms, the exercise was a success.

Bennett, of Fort Myers, Fla., launched his larger drone that hovered at high altitude. His job was to search for enemy operators.

“I went out to the observation area and I spotted an enemy hiding in a small hut,” he said. “I could see the hand control on the windowsill.”

He passed that intel to Baptiste, of Houston, Texas, who was flying a lower altitude attack drone.

“I used my camera to process a grid of the location and passed it on to the platoon commander, ” he said. “He sent up a fire mission from a ground mortar and destroyed it.”

Both were happy with their mission, recognizing that as infantrymen, drones could be a very integral part of their warfare world.

“When you see what happens in other countries, it’s more like this is where the future of warfare is going,” Baptiste said. “It makes your job feel more important.”

For Magana Pinawin, his day spent with the counter-drone equipment also went well.

Already trained in two other drone courses,  fixed-wing and rotor, he planned to take what he learned back to his unit to share with his peers.

“Drones are becoming more and more prominent and knowing how to deal with them is important, especially at a tactical level,” he said, adding that he will advise his leaders on new tactics they can use in their infantry training.

And, he’ll encourage his leaders to send more Marines from his unit for training with the aerial machines, he said. “So that they will know this as well.”

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