Marine Corps Light Armored Reconnaissance Is At A Crossroad
Marines with Battalion Landing Team 3/5, 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU)The Marine Corps light armored reconnaissance community is at a crossroads as the vehicle-driven force faces new challenges in a more austere, logistics-strapped terrain.
The State of the Marine Reconnaissance
Part of U.S. Military Forces in FY 2022. The Marine Corps continues a major restructuring to develop capabilities for great power conflict in the Pacific after two decades of conducting counterinsurgency operations ashore. The budget cuts units and personnel to pay for these new capabilities. The restructuring remains controversial and a work in progress.
(Photo By : Cpl. Gabrielle Quire)
While Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger has stressed the importance of reconnaissance and counter-reconnaissance capabilities for nearly all of the force, one of the key pieces of that puzzle remains in limbo.
Light armored reconnaissance Marines are still waiting for a new vehicle dubbed the advanced reconnaissance vehicle, or ARV, which has been talked about for more than a decade but remains a drawing board concept in limited budget days.
Those Marines are shouldering their mission with a platform that dates back to before many of them were born. The light armored vehicle, which first rolled off the line in 1983.
The (ARV ) Advanced Reconnaissance Vehicle
Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger’s force design vision puts the Marines hip-to-hip with the Navy envisions a reconnaissance force that’s “winning the hider/finder competition” in a potential sensor-driven fight with China.
The service seeks a medium caliber cannon with anti-armor fires capabilities, precision-guided munitions, electronic warfare, extended recon and surveillance command and control suite, active and passive vehicle protection and shore-to-shore water mobility.
The capability will provide, sensors, communication systems and lethality options to overmatch threats that have historically been addressed with more heavily armored systems. According to the Marine Corps, the (ARV) Advanced Reconnaissance Vehicle aims to be a new armored vehicle family to replace the (LAV) the Light Armored Vehicle.