The Marine Corps’ existing capabilities—largely land-based, with limited open-water mobility—do not allow the service to project persistent reconnaissance, surveillance, and target acquisition (RSTA) capabilities far enough into the littoral operating environment. Land-based sensors and uncrewed systems lack sufficient range for the Indo-Pacific region, and while naval aviation and amphibious warships and connectors remain critical, evolving long-range precision threats will limit their utility in contested littoral areas.
All this leaves the current stand-in force faced with the unenviable prospect of being fixed on a limited number of islands with no persistent means of influencing the vast majority of the battlespace offshore. This poses substantial risks to stand-in force operations, but creating an organic, maritime-surface maneuver capability can reduce them.
Following years of study, analysis, and experimentation, Marine Corps Combat Development and Integration is now testing a maritime reconnaissance company (MRC), which will operate a new kind of purpose-built tactical boat—the Multi-Mission Reconnaissance Craft (MMRC)—and companion unmanned surface vessels (USVs) to support the stand-in force and others operating in the littoral. Being able to maneuver sensors and personnel on the water would enable Marines to accomplish their most critical tasks, including gaining and maintaining identification and target tracking of high-value surface assets; disrupting and denying the adversary’s freedom of movement; countering malign, coercive actions against allies and partners; and collecting information to enhance maritime domain awareness.1
Framing the Problem
In 2023, the Marine Corps Capabilities Development Directorate assessed the tasks, environmental factors, and adversary capabilities that could be faced in a contested littoral operating environment and identified critical gaps not met by current or programmed capabilities.2 While the study’s outlook was global, it concentrated on the most demanding operational challenges—in the Indo-Pacific.3
The analysis determined that available shore-based sensors lack sufficient range, and uncrewed assets would routinely be denied or degraded by weather, adversary interference with command-and-control (C2) networks, and direct interdiction. In addition, the limited range and mobility of the service’s enhanced combat rubber raiding craft (E-CRRC) means the boats would not be able to establish sufficient sensor coverage offshore. Prevailing sea conditions also routinely exceeded operational limits. Finally, in crisis and conflict scenarios, adversary antiaccess/area-denial capabilities would introduce significant risk for aviation units such that commanders might elect to position supporting ships and land bases outside the weapons engagement zone, increasing travel time and limiting aircraft availability over the target.
The study team concluded that changes to doctrine, organization, training, matériel, leadership, education, personnel, and facilities would be insufficient to mitigate the identified gaps, instead recommending an approach that evolves a fielded capability. Analysts identified boats already in the joint inventory suitable for modification/adaptation as future MMRCs. Paired with the service’s long-range unmanned surface vessels in an RSTA role, these craft would equip a general-purpose force to augment Marine littoral regiments, mobile reconnaissance battalions, Marine air-ground task forces (MAGTFs), etc. The Marine Requirements Oversight Council approved an initial capabilities document in April 2024 formalizing a validated requirement following comprehensive review by stakeholders throughout the Fleet Marine Force and Headquarters Marine Corps.
The Maritime Reconnaissance Company
Within a Marine division, the MRC will fall under a parent O-5 command such as the future mobile reconnaissance battalions (which are replacing the light armored reconnaissance units). Each MRC will consist of a headquarters element and three maneuver platoons operating MMRCs and USVs. Each platoon will comprise a headquarters element and three maneuver sections, with each section consisting of two MMRCs and two USVs.
The company headquarters will typically serve as a force-provider: maintaining readiness, supervising predeployment training, and attaching specialist personnel to deploying platoons to support forward maintenance and sustainment. The company headquarters will include a robust logistics section that provides maintenance management and the specialists needed to conduct all organizational- and intermediate-level services for hull, sensor, and communication equipment for the MMRCs and USVs. The platoon’s focus will be on command and control, training management, and sortie generation for its maneuver sections, receiving support from the company headquarters for specialist maintenance and external liaison.
While the proposed MRC initiative necessarily involves significant matériel and organizational innovations, the Marines operating the craft do the most to mitigate the vulnerabilities and gaps identified in the capabilities-based assessment. No amount of jamming, GPS denial, or precipitation should prevent a Marine from seeking out and closing with the adversary. Analysis of established tactical watercraft units makes clear that MRCs will demand a specialized set of skills, abilities, and safety considerations not found in existing Marine occupational fields. Rotational B-billet-type assignments have caustic effects on professionalism and the attention paid to craft maintenance, with a corresponding adverse effect on morale and operational readiness. Through trial and error, these units have identified the need to hold on to the talent developed in their operators and maintainers. This suggests a requirement for a new primary military operational specialty (PMOS) for operators and maintainers.4
Generating a new career field is no small undertaking; however, an initiative taking shape in the Navy provides an opportunity to draw on a deep well of experience, standardize fundamental training across the naval services, and find efficiencies in precious manpower and training resources. In 2023, the Navy’s Center for Security Forces became the curriculum-control authority tasked with producing a consolidated program to centralize and professionalize the training of small craft operators. The ongoing planning efforts have identified a common core of fundamental mariner skills any operator of small craft will need. Some classes have included representatives from the Marine Corps units that have been performing ad hoc experiments with tactical watercraft. If these efforts become a program of record, a detachment of Marine instructors could help teach the basic and intermediate coxswain courses as part of the MRC’s PMOS pipeline. The Marine Corps would then add its own advanced course to teach the specifics of type/model/series MMRCs.
Concept of Employment
As a component of a Marine division, the MRC would be available for task-organization as part of a MAGTF operating in a littoral area—i.e., acting as a stand-in force. It would provide maritime-surface capabilities as part of an integrated network of land, sea, and airborne sensors. An MRC and its MMRCs, USVs, personnel, C2 suite, and deployable critical spare parts would move in sync with the MAGTF—although, given space constraints in an amphibious ready group, separate heavy-lift shipping might have to do the moving.
Coordination prior to deployment would establish access, basing, and support/sustainment agreements that could allow MRCs to base at partner navy or coast guard facilities. Acquisition and cross-servicing agreements would augment ordinary Department of Defense supply methods and support the MRC’s long-term fuel, maintenance, and other sustainment requirements. MRC placement with similar partner units during the competition and campaigning phases would allow for combined patrols to detect, document, and deter adversary violations of maritime borders. Such a combined force would integrate extensive local knowledge with the MRC’s advanced sensors and reliable long-range communications to enhance maritime domain awareness. Patrolling side-by-side also would reinforce bilateral security agreements and emphasize a partner’s internationally recognized sovereignty—and right to police its own territory—all while helping the MAGTF make sense of the hum of physical and electromagnetic signatures in frequently congested littoral environments.5
Patrols will balance reconnaissance and intelligence collection with signature management. MMRCs and USVs will use a commercial maritime surface-search radar that operates in a ubiquitous radio-frequency band that nevertheless enables the vessels to disseminate target-quality tracks to other units. Integrated electromagnetic support sensors will extend the range at which targets can be detected, permitting the MRC to recognize actively emitting contacts and tip or cue further collection. Electro-optical/infrared imaging sensors on the MMRCs and USVs will refine positive contact identification. The enhanced operating picture that results will, if necessary, allow for the rapid employment of land-, air-, and sea-based fires.
In addition, the MMRCs and USVs will be configured with a modular payload bay, enabling them to employ specialist walk-aboard capabilities such as signals intelligence, sonar equipment, and unmanned underwater vehicles, providing maritime mobility for units in high demand but few in number. Finally, each MMRC will be able to carry eight passengers and one E-CRRC, affording an organic means to maneuver teams among islands and along otherwise challenging coastlines.
The Way Ahead
Combat Development and Integration is conducting an analysis of alternatives to evaluate the operational performance, effectiveness, and suitability and estimated costs of two classes of MMRC—light and medium. The primary effort should confirm or deny findings from preliminary research that suggest significant trade-offs between sea keeping, endurance, and transportability for each class. Craft size equates directly to sea keeping and the ability to endure open-ocean conditions. Those craft small and light enough for trailering or hoisting with a knuckleboom crane may struggle with higher sea states and blue-water operations for the anticipated mission; other MMRCs may be too large for routine air transport, however. Instead, they might have to rely on heavy-lift shipping—including amphibious warships, Military Sealift Command vessels, and/or contracted cargo ships—for transport not only to, but also within the theater.6
Additional lines of effort will support a comprehensive cost estimate, leaning on procurement/sustainment figures from similar Navy programs, a formal manpower/training assessment to forecast personnel requirements, and detailed facilities surveys to determine the scope of any required construction.
Getting Underway
MRCs would give the Marine Corps a tool that addresses documented gaps in capability with a purpose-built solution useful across the world’s littorals, not only in the western Pacific. The Marine Corps has been working to develop the capability through several years of rigorous, responsible research and aggressive capability demonstration. The investment necessary to enhance and update capabilities will not be trivial, but addressing the challenges requires a change of magnitude, not miracles.
Validated studies have demonstrated that the Marine Corps’ littoral stand-in force mission will face significant risk absent a means to maneuver beyond the shoreline. In the fleet, commanders have concluded such a capability is necessary and have accepted considerable risk to demonstrate these kinds of tactical watercraft operations on an ad hoc basis. On their own initiative, Marines from the 1st Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, 2nd Assault Amphibian Battalion, 2nd Marine Logistics Group, Marine Forces Reserve, and others have secured accredited training and scrounged the Navy’s boneyards for anything that still floats. They have shown what Marines are capable of while confirming that even a shoestring capability is enough to validate the feasibility of this initiative.
The Marine Corps is closing on the point at which it needs to decide whether it should proceed with tactical watercraft operations or continue to accept risk in this capability area. Though the challenges of developing such MRCs are daunting, success will see the Marine Corps’ brand of maneuver warfare expand to truly cover every clime and place.
1. Gen David H. Berger, USMC, A Concept for Stand-in Forces (Washington, DC: Headquarters U.S. Marine Corps, 2021), 4, 10; and A Functional Concept for Maritime Reconnaissance and Counter-Reconnaissance (Washington, DC: Headquarters U.S. Marine Corps, 2022), 17.
2. This unclassified article will not go into specific details of capabilities and gaps (e.g., sensor ranges, sustainment factors, endurance figures, etc.). The approved Capabilities Based Assessment, Initial Capabilities Document, and Concept of Employment that describe the proposed MRC are marked as controlled, unclassified information (CUI) and are available to Department of Defense personnel and contractors by contacting the authors.
3. FY26–30 Defense Planning Guidance (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, 2024). (SIPR)
4. Anu Bhatia et al., Comparative Analysis of Small Boat Operator Training, Center for Naval Analyses, September 2023; and summation of the author’s interviews with UK Royal Marines (September 2022), Naval Special Warfare Group IV (May 2023), the Navy’s Center for Security Forces (May 2023), and the Navy/Coast Guard boat forces at Strategic Weapons Facility Pacific (November 2023).
5. CAPT Wayne Hughes and RADM Robert Girrier, USN (Ret.), Fleet Tactics and Naval Operations, 3d ed. (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2018), 161.
6. Frank Zerofsky and Hayden Woodward, “USMC Futures Tradespace Analysis,” Naval Surface Warfare Center Carderock, 14 February 2024.