Army Reconnaissance's Prospective: Insights Gleaned from a Marine Corps Training Exercise in the Mojave Wasteland
U.S. Army's Multidomain Reconnaissance Troop: The Key to Future Battlefield Awareness
The U.S. Army's Multidomain Reconnaissance Troop is set to play a pivotal role in shaping the future of conventional ground reconnaissance. This innovative unit is designed to provide integrated, cross-domain intelligence gathering and battlefield awareness in a joint force environment.
The Multidomain Reconnaissance Troop's significance lies in its ability to fuse data from various intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) sources, including cyber, aerial, and ground sensors. This integration enhances situational awareness beyond traditional reconnaissance methods, providing a comprehensive operational picture.
Beyond mere data collection, the troop aims to achieve domain awareness superiority. This means understanding and predicting enemy movements and intentions by synthesizing multi-domain information rapidly. This capability is vital for staying ahead of adversaries in future conflicts.
The intelligence gathered by the troop aids in shaping battlefield plans and enables commanders to conduct offensive and defensive operations with better precision. Often, this coordination extends to air and cyber elements, creating a networked reconnaissance capability essential for the Army of 2040's operational concepts.
The troop's capabilities facilitate seamless coordination between Army ground forces, Air Force ISR assets, cyber operations, and space-based sensors. This synergy is crucial for the Army's divisional restructure, with the Multidomain Reconnaissance Troop proposed as the best solution.
By integrating reconnaissance with other combat arms and joint forces, the troop enhances combined arms effectiveness, making ground forces more agile and adaptive against future high-end threats that employ sophisticated electronic and cyber warfare tactics.
In addition, the troop can operate as an independent entity in the enemy's rear area, denying enemy forces interior lines and resupply routes, effectively halting their forward progress and pulling assets away from the main effort.
The troop serves as the hub of a multidomain ISR complex, with suggestions for equipping reconnaissance formations including loitering munitions, electronic warfare, and extended-duration small unmanned aircraft systems. Sensors and ISR assets must be pushed down to the lowest level to facilitate sensing, targeting, and destruction of enemy systems.
The operational environment of the future is more networked and dangerous than ever, demanding a reconnaissance force that can survive, sense, and engage at speeds adversaries cannot hope to match. The Army is considering the role of reconnaissance forces in a division-centric force construct, with Sergeant First Class Anthony Perez, a reconnaissance platoon sergeant in the 25th Infantry Division, leading the way.
In a large-scale force-on-force exercise between the Marine Corps Air-Ground Combat Center and 2nd Brigade, 25th Infantry Division, the Stand-In force concept, built around the Marine Littoral Regiment, was tested. Captain Sean Parrott, a reconnaissance troop commander in the 25th Infantry Division and a graduate of the US Marine Corps's Expeditionary Warfare School, played a key role in this exercise.
The US Marine Corps is also changing the role of the scout sniper, with the operational environment of the future requiring a more adaptable and versatile reconnaissance force. The views expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.
- The Multidomain Reconnaissance Troop is essential for shaping the future of security in conventional ground reconnaissance, leveraging technology to gather integrated, cross-domain intelligence and enhance battlefield awareness.
- The troop's domain awareness superiority is vital in future warfare, as it allows commanders to understand and predict enemy movements and intentions, thereby staying ahead of adversaries during conflicts.
- The troop orchestrates seamless coordination between the military's various combat arms and joint forces, such as ground forces, Air Force intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets, cyber operations, and space-based sensors.
- The troop's reconnaissance capabilities extend beyond traditional methods, integrating with advanced technology such as loitering munitions, electronic warfare, and extended-duration small unmanned aircraft systems, to survive, sense, and engage high-end threats in complex, networked operational environments.
