Space Marines: Our Current State Of Progress
Checking in on the military revolution at the soldier-level
Four years ago, I wrote an essay about the constellation of emerging technologies that are transforming the soldier in the 21st Century into something a bit like fantasy science fiction. This change is not restricted to a single branch of arms, e.g. an ‘infantry revolution’ or ‘artillery revolution’, because it affects all military activity.
Future basic training classes will have to integrate technologies such as small drones and anti-drone technologies into the standard skills package of every soldier, with knock-on effects for everyone in uniform. This is a military revolution in our time, and now it is time to check up on progress in all the domains I discussed back then.
1 - Jetpacks
We start by acknowledging what I got slightly wrong. In 2022, I did not think that jetpacks were ever going to have real military applications. However, the Royal Marines have developed a specialized use for boarding parties. In a successful 2021 experiment with a turbine-powered “Jet Suit” made by Gravity Industries, a pilot launched from an inflatable boat, landed on the HMS Tamar, and dropped an assault ladder.
The product is now in service, but will probably not be used for deep penetration missions because it burns a very limited fuel supply very quickly. An average infantry squad will still not find the Jet Suit useful. However, this particular sci-fi trope is now showing up at NATO exercises, so it has become real enough. Whether or not the United Kingdom still has Royal Marines in a decade is a different matter, however.
Elite soldiers of the Special Air Service are reportedly “leaving in substantial numbers” because the Labour government has decided to send human rights lawyers after them. They have good reason to distrust Downing Street. Australia recently arrested SAS veteran Ben Roberts-Smith, the most decorated soldier in the entire country, on war crimes charges from Afghanistan that critics denounce as specious and fabricated.
Insiders are calling this development a “threat to national security” and Jet Suit underlines this reality. As you can see in the video embedded above, flying in a Jet Suit requires both experience and strength. It is inherently dangerous under the best conditions, which rarely obtain during combat. No technology can replace humans, nor is the most advance technology any use at all if no one is willing to fight with it. The more sophisticated the tech becomes, the more vital retention will be.
