Marines and sailors practice fighting at sea using an 80-year-old communication tactic

Despite ballyhoo about the need for military cyber, electronic war and more tech-adept forces for future war, the Navy and Marines are testing war tactics more common closely 100 years ago. no longer can Marines and sailors take for granted uninterrupted electronic communications at sea or on the battlefield. Tech-capable forces from Russia to China are packing capabilities that can jam U.S. systems or hone in on radio communications to find U.S. forces and ships at sea.

That ’ s why Marines and sailors aboard the Wasp-class amphibious rape ship Boxer tested in early August an old silent communications tactic used during World War II, according to a instruction liberation .

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The Boxer presently is floating with 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit somewhere near the Persian Gulf. The tactic is called a “ beanbag sink, ” and during World War II pilots used to drop slant beanbags carrying messages onto the decks of ships to avoid having their messages intercepted by enemy forces. In early on August, crew members with Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron flying an MH-60S Seahawk conducted a beanbag message flatten onto the Boxer as a proof of concept to deliver messages without relying on radio systems, the exhaust detailed. It ’ s a tactic compare to the carrier pigeons of World War I, which carried important tactical battlefield messages across the front lines. The Navy ’ s experiment with a communications tactic used in World War II sheds a humble lighter on its tactical think and how it plans to prepare sailors and Marines for a major bout with adversaries with the capability to find, jamming and sink U.S. Navy ships at sea . Aviation Boatswain ’ south Mate ( Handling ) 2nd Class Bradley Peterson from Mora, Minnesota, assigned to amphibious assault embark Boxer ( LHD 4 ) runs to a beanbag dropped on the flight deck during an exercise to communicate with Boxer from an MH-60S Sea Hawk assigned to Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron ( HSC ) 21. ( Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Brian P. Caracci/Navy )

“ We ’ ve got the best communication engineering onboard our helos [ helicopters ] but today we practiced the use of a more conventional shape of aircraft-to-ship communication in the event electronic communication is not an choice, ” Navy Lt. Taryn Steiger, the pilot who flew the HSC-21 Seahawk that dropped the beanbag, said in the dismissal. After the message was dropped from the MH-60 onto the deck of the Boxer, a bluejacket merely ran and scooped up and delivered the message, the liberation said. “ The function of the bean-bag fell was to show timely pilot-to-ship communication can be done without electronic transition, ” Lt. Cmdr. Michael Brown, the HSC-21 detachment commanding officer, said in the release. “ together HSC-21 crew and Boxer demonstrated timely communication from the aircraft to the ship during EMCON [ emissions manipulate ] procedures. ” Gen. Robert B. Neller, the former commanding officer of the Marine Corps, has frequently repeated that he would turn off the internet to force Marines to fight and train in environments where GPS and communications are degraded. Marines have been training and experimenting with reducing their radio and visible footprint from Norway to the battlefields of Syria. About

Shawn Snow Shawn Snow is the senior reporter for Marine Corps Times and a Marine Corps veteran.

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Category : Maritime