General Robert Neller, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, announced earlier this month that the Marines were making a major change to the organization of their rifle squads:
The Marine Corps is capping off 18 months of overhauling the way infantry units are trained and equipped by shaking up the structure of the rifle squad.
In an address to an audience of Marines at a Marine Corps Association awards dinner near Washington, D.C., on [May 3rd], Commandant Gen. Robert Neller said future squads will have 12 Marines, down from the current 13.
Also, the M16 rifle and M249 Squad Automatic Weapon (a light machine gun which the DoD refers to as an “automatic rifle” because it only has a single operator) will all be replaced by the M27 Infantry Automatic Rifle (which has, in fact, already replaced most of the M249s in the Marines)
Why?
The current Marine rifle squad consists of 13 soldiers, organized into three fire teams of four soldiers under a squad leader. Each fire team consists of three soldiers under a team leader (the Marines call this the “Rule of Three”):
Compare this to an Army rifle squad:
(Soldiers promote faster than Marines, that’s why an Army squad leader is a Staff Sergeant and a Marine squad leader is only a sergeant. The details of this situation are beyond the scope of this article.)
The Marine squad is larger than the Army squad. Marines expect their infantry squads to do more, so they give them more resources. The M203 and M320 are both 40mm grenade launchers.
The new squad looks something like this:
What this does is turn the Marine squad into something like a miniature platoon, with its own headquarters element. This will make squads more capable of functioning independently. The “Equipment Operator” Lance Corporal in the squad HQ will be tasked with using small unmanned systems. The RQ-11 Raven is probably the default option, but a number of other existing and future devices could be used, depending on the mission. Currently these and similar systems are mostly used and managed at the platoon or company level in conventional units. Each squad now has its own reconnaissance element and redundant leadership.
The M27 is similar to the RPK in being a heavier version of a standard assault rifle. The Marines have employed the M27 in combat since 2010, and have mostly replaced the M249 SAW. The M249 is a belt-fed 5.56mm weapon, essentially a small machine gun (the manufacturer, the Fabrique Nationale, calls it the “Minimi”). It can sustain a far higher volume of fire than AR-15 pattern rifles like the M4 or M16, comes standard with a bipod, and can be readily adapted to tripod and pintle mounts if needed.
While the M249 is a small machine gun, the M27 is a heavier rifle. The weight reduces recoil and muzzle climb, especially for long bursts of automatic fire, and reduces overheating compared to the M16. It is not capable of the same sustained volume of fire as the M249, but is more accurate. The M27 favors precision and versatility over volume of fire. The M249 replaced the much heavier M60, a full-fledged machine gun, in the 1980s, so the adoption of the M27 continues a trend of lighter weapons.
The Marines have used the M27 increasingly widely for several years now, and presumably have plenty data and anecdote to build troop confidence and justify their use of the rifle as general issue. The two major factors enabling the change are probably the high standards of marksmanship in the USMC (e.g., qualification targets out to 500m instead of only 300m for the Army) and the exploitation of attachments, especially optics, which have a proven durability and capability that did not exist when the M249 was introduced. Both of these enable Marines to confidently shoot at targets 500-800m away (the M249’s engagement envelope) with enough accuracy to at least reliably suppress, and without needing the volume of fire provided by the M249. The 5.56mm cartridge imposes hard limits on engagement ranges, but the M249 uses the same cartridge and has those same limitations. The M27 is also much more amenable to suppressors than the M249, and the Marine Corps is interested in issuing suppressors to everyone.
(General issue of suppressors is a great idea. I believe it would have been accomplished long ago but for restrictive laws surrounding civilian ownership. I note that the expiration of the Assault Weapons Ban coincides very suspiciously with some marked improvements to the AR-15, such as magazines)
Overall, the new Marine squad TOE will allow squads to function more independently, and take advantage of new small UAS/UGV technologies. The use of a common weapon by all members of the squad will make individual Marines more versatile, compensating for loss of fire volume with accuracy. Any “failure” will consist of only a marginal decrease in capability, and will be easily reversible.
