The Marine Infantry Needs Command-and-Control Helmets

The Marine Corps stated in doctrine more than two decades ago that the complexity and uncertainty of war necessitated a more decentralized approach to mission control, along with greater trust in subordinates at the tactical level to achieve the desired result.¹ Toward this end, fielding the helmet used by Marine Special Operations Command (MarSOC) to the entire Marine Corps infantry would enable decentralized command and control (C2) at the squad level without incurring the cost and time it would take to develop a new helmet.

In a promising development in February 2018, the Marine Corps specified to industry the requirements for designing a helmet based around the MarSOC C2 suite. As the typical three- to five-year vendor competition and contract selection process plays out, the helmet undoubtedly will experience requirement growth and modification. Some of the changes, such as increasing the area of the head covered by the helmet and the ballistic protection it offers, will seem like commonsense improvements. However, the Marine Corps must ensure that any alterations to the 2018 design requirements do not detract from the imperative of giving its tactical leaders the benefits MarSOC Marines have enjoyed for some time.

A better helmet may seem less consequential to the future Marine infantryman than other capabilities soon to be fielded, such as the more robust M-27 infantry assault rifles or the Carl Gustaf 84mm antitank recoilless rifle. However, adopting the MarSOC C2-capable helmet has immense potential to transform the way today’s infantry trains and fights. A comparison of the current infantry helmet with the MarSOC version shows clearly that the latter is superior across any set of performance metrics.

A Cost-Benefit Comparative Analysis

The Army developed the Enhanced Combat Helmet (ECH) now worn by the Marine infantry. In response to a 2009 mandate, the Army constructed headgear that provides ballistic protection from energetic fragments and some small arms and at the same time maintains all other characteristics of the Marine Corps’ earlier lightweight helmet and the Army’s Advanced Combat Helmet (ACH). But after several years of testing, the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E), who reports to the Secretary of Defense on operational and live-fire testing and evaluation, concluded that the ECH did not represent a meaningful improvement in protection over a significant portion of the analyzed threat weapons’ effective ranges.²

By contrast with the ECH (or ACH in the case of ballistic protection), the MarSOC C2-capable helmet offers the following advantages:

• An approximate 33 percent reduction in weight
• A fourfold increase in situational awareness, largely due to the high angle cut in the helmet over the eye and ear, thus increasing fields of view
• The same fragmentation, structural, and environmental performance standards as the Army’s ACH, offering ballistic protection from 9-mm threat weapons that deform the helmet and endanger the wearer, as measured against the military standards for acceptable helmet deformation
• When night-vision goggles are attached, dependable stability when transitioning from the standing position to lying in the prone position, and a realistic expectation of consistent proper-eye relief (distance between the human eye and the optic that needs to be maintained to avoid continually refocusing the lenses manually)
• Improvements in comfort and stability during extended wear due to the Occ-Dial adjustable fitband, in comparison with the ACH and ECH velcro pads—the latter causing further discomfort when communication headsets are worn underneath rather than attached to the helmet’s exterior
• Two separate radio networks that can be configured for simultaneous use, one net per ear
• Hearing protection for noises above a danger decibel threshold that replaces the often unworn and easily lost foam and rubber Marine Corps–issued ear protection
• Noise amplification below the same danger decibel threshold, which allows for enhanced hearing
• The first true C2 capability for squad and team leaders since the introduction of inter-squad communication radios

Thanks to SOCom, analytical, quantitative, and qualitative data show a large amount evidence of the need for such a helmet and headset. Information is available from U.S. Army Natick Soldier Systems Center and the DOT&E studies; combat evaluations across special forces communities, including MarSOC unclassified storyboards where individuals walked away unscathed after being shot in the helmet with a 7.62x39 AK-47 round; direct special operations user input under the Special Operations Forces Personal Equipment Advanced Requirements program; and numerous SOCom studies on ballistic-protection profiles as well as adversary threat analysis reports.

Thanks to this mountain of data, MarSOC and other special operations service component commands were able as early as 2011 to deviate from their service-provided helmets. In 2016, even the New York City Police Department took note and invested $7 million into new tactical protective equipment for its patrol officers, including the special operations helmets. SOCom and MarSOC also have begun researching materiel solutions that incorporate augmented reality on heads-up displays that show the user tracking data on navigation, health, ammunition, and friendly forces. The cost to transition the Marine infantry to the MarSOC C2-capable helmet is negligible compared with that of retrofitting the ECH with the attachments that would produce similar capabilities. It is beyond time for this transition to take place.

Make MarSOC an Innovation Laboratory

A recent Marine Corps Gazette article titled “Creating Comparative Advantage” warns of the dangers of developing technological solutions disconnected from the nature of war and of maintaining the status quo regarding how forces are equipped.³ The author argues that if the Marine Corps uses MarSOC as its rapid capability development, testing, and evaluation arm, years of iterative fielding improvements can be maximized. This includes eight years of special operations helmet and headset development. Because of the proliferation and rapid militarization of commercial-off-the-shelf technology that is ubiquitous on battlefields today, increased specialization rather than standardization across the force is a very real possibility that should be fully exploited. As the Marine infantry becomes more niche with respect to other specialties, it makes sense for the service to adopt well-tested special operations equipment more rapidly.

Infantry specialization that allows for MarSOC equipment to transition first to the infantry and then to the larger Marine Corps would give rise to a fielding plan in which procurement, sustainment, and capital equipment replacement costs would be spread across the five-year future years’ defense budgets. The service’s leaders understand this and are supportive. A January 2018 Military.com article quoted the Commandant on refitting the infantry and other key combat support specialties: “I could kit out every grunt in the Marine Corps with the coolest s--t head-to-toe for $100 million”—referring to the cost of just one F-35B Joint Strike Fighter—“and intend to do so.”⁴

The Commandant and the commander of SOCom also have expressed a shared interest in cooperating further to find innovative, capability-oriented solutions to warfighting challenges. A central idea is developing adaptive C2 structures, which could yield greater unity of effort and maximize effects on the enemy.⁵ The special operations helmet with headset offers the potential to drive the refinement of C2 down to the lowest tactical unit, as demonstrated by the recent experiment with a squad in 1st Battalion, 6th Marines—the “Über Squad”—on its 2017–18 deployment.

The infantry will always “fight tonight” with the gear they have, as they have done since the time of Caesar. But that axiom should not prevent Marines today and into the immediate future from going to war with the best capabilities available. On today’s technologically sophisticated battlefields, even the most junior leaders require these capabilities to execute their tactical missions. Rapid adoption of commercial-off-the-shelf gear that has been proven effective in the special operations community must become the norm to ensure this happens.