Marines 3D Print 7-Meter Raiding Craft in Okinawa

Marines in Okinawa can now manufacture a working raiding craft in theater instead of waiting for one to ship across the Pacific.

That capability moved from concept to the water on June 29 when Intermediate Repair Company, 3rd Maintenance Battalion, 3rd Marine Logistics Group (MLG) put a 7-meter foam hull into the water at White Beach Naval Facility and ran both manned and unmanned operations.

The craft was the most visible result of Resilient Advanced Manufacturing For Contested Environments (RAMFORCE), an initiative hosted by the Office of the Under Secretary for Research and Engineering.

According to a 3rd MLG news release, the event ran from June 1 through July 1 during Exercise Valiant Shield 26 and brought Marines together with engineers, scientists, and industry partners to test ways expeditionary forces can repair, replace, and produce equipment without waiting on traditional supply chains.

Manufacturing the Craft Where It Is Needed

Under the Manufacturing Attritable Systems at Scale effort, known as MASS, Marines worked with engineers from Naval Surface Warfare Center Carderock to build the modular foam hull. They used only three primary pieces of equipment: a computer numerical control router, a large-format polymer 3D printer, and a spray foam and coating system. Materials were selected for worldwide availability so units could source them locally if needed.

“The shape of the hull is not the goal,” Marissa Stecko, a mechanical engineer supporting logistics and manufacturing operations with Naval Surface Warfare Center Carderock, said in the Marine Corps release.

It’s the manufacturing that we’re trying to showcase.

Design work is done on the back end. Digital files are then pushed to the end user so Marines can manufacture the platform where it is required.

A previous 5-meter prototype took roughly 16 working hours and about $11,000 in materials. Once scaled with a 12-person team, the group believes a 5-meter platform could be produced every four hours and a 7-meter platform every six hours.

After fabrication, the craft received a protective polyurea coating and was fitted with a 300-horsepower Mercury outboard engine plus an autonomous control system from Fort Robotics. On June 29 at White Beach, the completed vessel entered the water and completed both manned and unmanned operations, including autonomous waypoint navigation.

Remote-control distances were limited to comply with Japanese regulations, but the team noted future versions could use satellite communications for greater range.

Print on the Move

The White Beach demonstration also capped another RAMFORCE experiment called “Print on the Move.” Marines tested whether commercially available polymer 3D printers could keep producing parts while being transported on tactical vehicles and watercraft.

One printer continued fabricating a component during the move to White Beach and even while aboard the foam raiding craft as it operated on the water.

“We are engineers training them on how to operate these printers,” Dr. Cindy Waters, senior science and technology manager with Naval Surface Warfare Center Carderock, said in the release. The tests assessed which combinations of printers, materials, and software could handle the vibration and environmental conditions of expeditionary operations.

RAMFORCE went well beyond the boat. Marines trained on nScrypt’s nRugged system, a ruggedized platform that diagnoses faults on circuit cards, restores damaged electrical pathways, and replaces components in austere environments instead of swapping entire expensive assemblies.

“This piece of machinery takes up-close photos of circuit cards,” Staff Sergeant Ryan Grillo, an Intermediate Repair Company Marine and experiment team lead, said in the release. “It pieces them together into a high-definition photo of the circuit card. Once the circuit card is mounted and cataloged, the nRugged has multiple tool heads capable of replacing components, repairing electrical runs and creating entirely new electrical runs.”

Another team practiced cold spray repair, accelerating powdered aluminum and nickel at subsonic speeds onto worn metal surfaces without melting the base material. The new layer is then machined back to specification, extending the service life of parts already in theater.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Manufacturing Demonstration Facility showed hybrid manufacturing that digitally scans a damaged part, recreates it with wire-fed additive manufacturing, then finishes it with subtractive machining in a single machine.

The Digital Manufacturing Exchange, demonstrated by RGBSI Aerospace and Defense, focused on securely sharing technical data packages so authorized units can manufacture approved components even in disconnected environments.

Major Daniel Krake, company commander of Intermediate Repair Company, emphasized the integration across all of these efforts. “As a force we are only largely, and generally, aware of additive and subtractive manufacturing techniques and products, but RAMFORCE is not just about advanced manufacturing; it is about integration,” he said in the release.

On their own, each event is fascinating; combined across commodities they are game changing.

What It Means for Marines

For Marines operating across the vast distances of the Pacific, the difference between mission success and failure can come down to whether a broken part or missing platform can be fixed or built before the traditional supply chain delivers it.

RAMFORCE gave Intermediate Repair Company Marines hands-on experience with tools that shrink that wait from weeks to hours or days.

These efforts build on a broader Marine Corps push to put additive manufacturing tools in the hands of the force. Units across the Fleet Marine Force have already used 3D printing to produce custom tools, brackets, drone components, and replacement parts that would otherwise sit in supply channels for weeks or months. Similar work at the II MEF Innovation Campus has shown how junior Marines can design and print solutions on demand.

The equipment and partnerships from RAMFORCE remained with Intermediate Repair Company after the exercise so the unit can continue refining the capabilities. Senior leaders from III Marine Expeditionary Force and 3rd MLG observed the White Beach demonstration.

“We will be trained, manned and equipped to deploy these field-ready technologies inside the First Island Chain,” Maj. Krake said in the release.