Recon Revamp: Marine Corps Scouting New Reconnaissance Capabilities.

• Author: Luckenbaugh, Josh

When the Marines deployed to Afghanistan's Helmand province in 2009, they were fighting in a desert environment against a low-tech, but deeply entrenched Taliban insurgency. The force's reconnaissance assets and tactics were narrowly tailored for that fight.

With the U.S. strategic pivot to the Indo-Pacific, the Marine Corps is retooling its reconnaissance and counter-reconnaissance operations for potential combat in a contested maritime environment where Marines will need to provide key operational insights across multiple domains for the entire Joint Force.

The Marine Corps' reconnaissance capabilities are currently "ground vehicle-centric," according to the 2022 annual update on the service-wide Force Design 2030 modernization campaign. As the service shifts its focus to the Indo-Pacific, "sole reliance on armored ground vehicles for reconnaissance is too limiting, especially in complex littoral environments," the update said.

During keynote remarks at the Modern Day Marine conference in June, then-Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger, who retired in July, said: "The traditional ground reconnaissance, which I grew up in--and airborne reconnaissance and reconnaissance over the water or under the water--can't be three separate units, not to do what we have to do."

The 2023 annual update to Force Design 2030 said going forward, the Marine Corps requires "littoral, multi-domain reconnaissance capabilities that our light armored reconnaissance battalions do not currently provide." The final result will be the transition to what the service is calling "mobile reconnaissance battalions," which will consist of maritime reconnaissance companies, light mobile companies and light armored companies, "all with greater reach and lethality."

Jonathan Wong, a former Marine and the associate director of RAND Arroyo Center's Strategy, Doctrine and Resources program, noted that a major component of Force Design 2030 has been building an understanding of the battlefield, and mobile reconnaissance battalions will play a key role in that effort.

"We kind of took it for granted in the last like 20 years that we could build an operational picture very easily, and so that emphasis on understanding what the battlefield... looks like, understand the operational environment, has always been in Force Design 2030," Wong said in an interview. "And so, when I see what the Marine Corps is doing as they're sketching out these [mobile reconnaissance battalions], that...