The Marine Reconnaissance community has been through a lot in the last ten years. Some of it has gone for the better. A lot of it has not. At the beginning of the war in Iraq, 1st Recon Bn was pushed into a mechanized role it wasn’t prepared for. The men took the mission and did what they could with it, pushing ahead of 1st Marine Division on the way to Baghdad, securing important sites and looking for Iraqi forces. 1st Force, augmented by platoons from 3rd and 4th Force, was out on the flanks, supporting I MEF on the march up. But when they redeployed, 1st Recon Bn found itself holding battlespace. Recon Marines were put in the role of regular grunts. Even after Recon stopped holding ground in 2005, we regularly found ourselves in similar situations, just not tied to a particular area. Conventional Marine commanders had no idea how to employ a Reconnaissance unit. Some of this was due to a lack of understanding. Some of it was, and is, willful ignorance. Read more: http://sofrep.com/17978/the-state-of-recon-usmc-marine/#ixzz2N3XId3nb
Operational Patience
In 2006, during turnover with 2nd Recon in Al Anbar, SSgt Eric Kocher said something that stuck in my mind. “We’ve got operational ADD,” he said. “We go somewhere, poke around for a couple weeks, then we leave.” While he was talking specifically about the way we were being employed, his sentiments can be applied across the operational spectrum from the small-unit tactical level all the way to the strategic level. We seem to have come to expect war to operate on a schedule. Needless to say, it doesn’t. The enemy gets a vote, as they say, and that can throw your desired schedule into a cocked hat. Not only does enemy action affect the timeline, but in a combat zone, even more than anywhere else, Murphy is king. Equipment breaks. Weather grounds helicopters or slows movement. The imagery turns out to be outdated, and where there was a crossing, there is now just a ten-foot-deep canal. Somebody gives the lieutenant a map. Read the rest at Breach-Bang-Clear: http://www.breachbangclear.com/site/10-blog/350-peter-nealan-on-operational-add-in-warfare.html
A Brief, Recent History of Force Recon and MARSOC
There have been some questions lately as to what exactly the difference is between Force Recon and MARSOC. Aside from the fact that Special Operations Marines now have their own MOS, a lot of it comes down to recent history. In 2003, MCSOCOM Detachment One was stood up, commanded by a former commanding officer of 1st Force Recon Company, Col Robert Coates. Detachment One was a pilot program to see if Marines could make a worthwhile contribution to USSOCOM. As part of the program, the 81 Marines and 5 Navy Corpsmen went through NSW certification, then deployed to Iraq in 2004 with NSW Squadron One. While there was some friction with the Navy side of the house, it was determined by JSOC that the Marines were quite capable of conducting Special Operations missions, specifically Direct Action and Special Reconnaissance. In 2006, Det One was dissolved, and 1st and 2nd Marine Special Operations Battalions were stood up. In order to accomplish this, 1st and 2nd Force Recon Battalions were dissolved, with approximately 3/4 of their personnel going to the MSOBs, and the other 1/4 going to 1st and 2nd Recon Battalions as the Delta or Deep Recon Companies. All of 1st
Questions
Kerry Patton recently posted an article, pointing to the catch-and-release treatment of terrorists in the current conflict, asking the question, “Is the War on Terrorism Even Real?” http://kerry-patton.com/is-the-war-on-terrorism-even-real/ Go read it. I’ll wait. Now, I don’t have the degrees in Intelligence that Kerry does. I was just on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, as a glorified over-trained Grunt most of the time, getting to see the consequences of the lackadaisical, politically correct approach to fighting a “war” firsthand. I’m also, in spite of a Bachelor’s degree in History, largely self-educated. There is an old saying, “Never attribute to malice what can be put down to common stupidity.” I think a lot of people have forgotten that, and it’s led to a lot of conspiracy theories and fear-mongering lately. My opinion, based on my own study and experiences, is that what we have here is largely common stupidity, worse the stupidity of people who are convinced they are oh-so-smart. There is a tendency, including in the higher echelons of the political, defense, and intelligence communities, to over-simplify. We fixated on Al Qaeda, thinking it was just an irregular army similar to the Vietcong. It wasn’t, and it isn’t. It’s a