The Marine Corps recently conducted its first live-fire test of a production model Marine Air Defense Integrated System, or MADIS, successfully defeating several drone targets during the demonstration.
The live fire test took place as the MADIS Inc. 1, which is currently in low-rate initial production, heads toward an initial operational test and evaluation phase and as the program remains on track to begin fielding in the early FY ‘25, Marine Corps Systems Command spokesperson Morgan Blackstock told Defense Daily
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“The importance of countering UAS threats cannot be overstated,” Col. Andrew Konicki, the Marine Corps’ program manager for ground-based air defense, said in a statement. “We see it all over the news. MADIS is the key. We’re excited to get this out to Marines.”
MADIS Inc. 1 aims to field a ground-based air defense capability “that enables Low Altitude Air Defense Battalions to deter and neutralize unmanned aircraft systems and fixed wing/rotary wing aircraft,” the Marine Corps noted.
The program includes a series of systems mounted on a pair of Joint Light Tactical Vehicles, with one featuring “turret-launched and shoulder-fired Stinger missiles for mounted and dismounted ops, multifunctional electronic warfare capability and an electro-optical infrared optic and direct-fire weapon on a remote weapon station” and the second vehicle integrated with a “multi-functional electronic warfare [capability], 360-degree radar, and a command-and-control communications suite, and EO/IR optic,” Blackstock noted.
“In layman’s terms, one detects, and the other attacks,” the Marine Corps said in its announcement of the recent live-fire test.
Norway’s Kongsberg was awarded a deal worth up to $94 million in September 2021 to provide its RS6 Remote Weapon Station for MADIS Inc. 1 (Defense Daily, Oct. 5 2021).
“We’ve taken multiple disparate commercial off-the-shelf and government off-the-shelf technologies and put them together,” Konicki said. “This is a capability the Marine Corps has never had, and it was a challenge for the acquisition community. This test event shows we met that challenge.”
The Marine Corps noted the live-fire demonstration in mid-December at Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona involved utilizing MADIS in “actual battlefield scenarios, where it detected, tracked, identified, and defeated unmanned aerial threats.”
“During the test, MADIS successfully tracked and hit multiple targets using the Stinger missiles and 30mm cannon,” the Marine Corps said. “Information passed through the Common Aviation Command and Control System to the ‘fighting pair’ of vehicles, executing the engagements while continuing to track other UAS targets.”
While the Marine Corps has previously conducted tests with MADIS subcomponents and prototypes, Blackstock noted this was the first such demonstration with a production-model system.
Last June, the Marine Corps released a pre-solicitation notice detailing an interest in an “advanced, highly autonomous effector” for MADIS Inc. 1 capable of taking out Group 1 to 3 UAS threats “at significant ranges from the launch location,” with Blackstock confirming the Request for Proposals is now available to industry to detail potential solutions (Defense Daily, June 6 2023).