Improved Sensors, Loitering Munitions on Marine Corps Wishlist.

• Author: Easley, Mikayla

More than two years into Commandant Gen. David Berger's controversial transformation of the Marine Corps into an expeditionary force ready for great power competition, the service is shifting focus to improving its reconnaissance/counter-reconnaissance abilities.

In May, the Marine Corps released its annual update of Force Design 2030--Berger's decade-long blueprint for how the force will modernize and prepare itself for potential conflict in the Indo-Pacific. First unveiled by Berger in 2020, the original strategy sketched out an aggressive plan to divest the Marine Corps' legacy platforms while investing in new systems.

While the first iteration of the strategy placed a strong emphasis on increasing the lethality of small, distributed Marine units, this year's update outlines a bigger interest in intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities.

"Here's what we're learning: small, distributed, lethal teams that can employ organic ISR, loitering munitions and weapons like a Javelin... are much more lethal than larger formations that are using traditional force structures and concepts. And it's not even close," Berger said in May during the Modern Day Marine Exposition in Washington, D.C.

The updated document noted that today's security environment "is characterized by proliferation of sophisticated sensors and precision weapons coupled with growing strategic competition." Furthermore, it added that adversaries regularly use systems and tactics against U.S. forces that keep them just out of reach from the enemy.

The wargaming and experiments the service are conducting as part of Force Design 2030's learning campaign have extended the Marine's operating range, Berger said.

Observations of the war in Ukraine have reinforced those findings, he added. "The ability to manage your own electronic signature, locate a threat, detect and exploit their communications, jam their transmissions, interfere with their command and control--these have always been important in war, but today I would offer they can be decisive," Berger said.

One major investment will be deploying more sensors within infantry battalions, the document said.

Marine littoral regiments will have to navigate contested maritime environments by hopping from island to island on amphibious warships. The regiments "will possess an organic capability to sense the maritime battlespace in order to gain and maintain custody of targets as a reconnaissance/counter-reconnaissance task...