Sea Control - Sea Control 570: Brent Jurmu on Equipping the Marine Reconnaissance Battalion Now

Episode Date: April 10, 2025

Links1. "Equip the Mobile Reconnaissance Battalion Now More than a new platform," by Maj Brent Jurmu, Capt Brandon Klewicki, and Maj Matthew Tweedy, Marine Corps Gazette, May 2024.

You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International Maritime Security. Oi, shipmates, and welcome back aboard Sea Control. I'm your co-host, Brian Kerg, and our guest today is Major Brent Jermu, United States Marine Corps. We'll be discussing his recent article, Equip the Mobile Reconnaissance Battalion Now, which appeared in the June 2024 edition of the Marine Corps Gazette. He co-authored this article with Captain Brandon Klawicki and Major Matthew Tweedy, also the United States Marine Corps. As a reminder, all views expressed are personal and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of Defense or any other organization with which we are affiliated. So, hey, Brent, welcome aboard Sea Control. Can you

tell us a little bit about yourself and your professional background? Hey, Brian, thanks for having me on, man. This is truly a privilege. Yeah, apologies for Matt Tweedy and Brandon Klawicki not being able to make it either. They definitely got this thing across the finish line, kept me focused, and I think it was a good team effort. But I'm Brent, Major Brent Jermou. I'm out here in Okinawa, currently the future operations officer for 12th Marine Littoral Regiment. Prior to that, I did some time at Second LAR where I met Brandon. And then Matt Tweedy and I go back to our enlisted days. Enlisted back in 2001, came into the Marine Corps as an Arabic linguist. And then I went MSG duty, transitioned after eight years enlisted to

become an officer. And I've been an LAR guy. So light armored reconnaissance, all three active duty battalions. And then some, you know, some some rest periods, I guess you could say with B billets in between. So I'm happy to be here and excited to talk about this article that we wrote. Awesome, Brent. I'm glad you're here. And the bio is described between you and reading a little bit about your co authors. It sounds like you guys were uniquely qualifies right on the subject of your article. So let's go ahead and pivot to that. Can you walk the listeners through the big blue arrows uh on the article's core thesis like what's your elevator pitch right seeing the reconnaissance battalion concept so multi-domain reconnaissance battalion start to emerge uh through

force design efforts um and having been an lar guy preceding um force design uh we we kind of saw you know these these big uh multi-decade multi-billion dollar programs as as problematic You know, we call some of this stuff the man-bear-pig, you know, circa Pentagon Wars back in the 90s, a little bit of satire with the Bradley fighting vehicle. And we saw this kind of happening as we were soliciting from top-down feedback onto the program. But, yeah, the advanced reconnaissance vehicle became kind of that man-bear-pig to us, and understanding where force design was taking us to be, you know, more of a lighter infantry role and more multi-domain, we saw that this is maybe more of a liability than a capability. So we wanted to kind of weave in some of the things that the LAR battalions have been experimenting with and really, you know, operationally deploying with for the last few years. And that's where Brandon came in as the company commander for the Light Mobile Reconnaissance Company. And then Matt Tweedy, given his perspective from Headquarters Marine Corps, he was able to tie us in.

He actually replaced me as the XO at 2nd LAR. So we saw this as an opportunity to educate, you know, folks who are just getting into the debate about the Domain Reconnaissance Battalion, our Mobile Reconnaissance Battalion. And we wanted to make sure that they understood, hey, you know, you need to be multi-domain. You need to be in the littoral. You need to be able to cross domains, work in the seams of domains to conduct reconnaissance and surveillance. So we wanted to start the conversation. We wanted to give some recommendations about how we saw this going, and then we wanted to fill in new readers and new listeners on this debate on kind of how the advanced reconnaissance vehicle came to be and what it isn't. And maybe a basis for the MRB, maybe not in the future.

We'll see. And funding is a big deal. But I'll pivot off of that and kind of give you the big blue arrows was we wanted to educate listeners, open the debate up to a more broader audience, talk a little bit about where MRB came from and the ARV, and then have some recommendations about moving into the future with a mobile reconnaissance type capability, whether armored or not. thanks for that Brent um so that uh tees us off uh let's take a step back though we need to talk about light armored reconnaissance um I'll leave it to the listeners to build their own context

on man bear pig but uh your article it talks about the modernization and transformation of the light armored reconnaissance community so can you first describe for the listeners what is light armored reconnaissance or LAR and what was its traditional role in the ring for in the past yeah so 60s 70s um you know soviet soviet era uh we needed something to counter the uh the soviets armored reconnaissance capability so big guns uh communications ease you know can use it to call for fire um obviously they're a fires centric organization um and we we wanted to counter that capability and we did it via the the lav the army as a striker we have lav uh bradley kind of came out as a troop carrier as well. But these platforms were used to be able to

reconnoiter routes, areas, zones, and to be able to counter enemy reconnaissance assets when need be. So limited offensive capability, but quite capable. And then they became, you know, they became more than that, right? They supported infantry a little bit more, started to be used, you know, for direct action, offensive operations against the less capable enemy into the desert years when we were in OIF, OEF, and they were quite capable and performed very well during that time. So 40-year-old platform now, you know, don't want to look at it as like when it was invented and just kind of build on that and modernize the vehicle itself, but look at it holistically within the multi-domain and to decide whether we need, you know, a lot of that

capability, you know, onto one platform and what that looks like. Is that a liability? Is that a capability? You know, in the world of, you know, signals management and emissions control, it's important that we take a look at that. So that's kind of where LAR was. Colonel Philip Lang, Shout out to another veteran of 3rd LAR. I think he served in all the LARs as well. He wrote an article about the mindset of the LAR Marine, and that was part of his command and staff thesis, I believe. I never shook his hand personally. I spoke to him a couple of times.

But he was kind of an inspiration here, along with Jay Clayton, now General Nakanezi, who wrote articles and talked about what LAR should be and what the core of that, the conclusion is that it's a mindset, right? It's not a capability, a platform necessarily. It's the mindset of a Marine on the ground, eyes and ears for a larger formation to be able to collect that information and feed the beast. So that's kind of how LAR was conceived and then sort of how it's evolved over the last four decades. That's really good context. And as a bit of a readback, it sounds like you're saying if we're going to look forward as far as what LAR should be doing, it's not just do LAR harder, but you want to do LAR or apply light armored reconnaissance within the context in which it's going to operate or like the new threat environment. So let's build out on that context a bit. Your article, it builds on the guidance from the prior Commandant, General Berger, in an annual update to Force Design 2030 that he provided. And that directed the light armored reconnaissance community to, quote, continue its own modernization, including transformation to maritime reconnaissance waterborne companies, light mobile companies, and light armored companies, end quote. Can you describe those for the listeners and contrast them with the traditional LAR capabilities you just described?

yes absolutely so um ground-based um completely they could go on lcats lcus uh broad ashore via connectors uh they used to be able to be helo uh lifted uh unfortunately uh they got too heavy with with armor being slapped on and different things like different systems a different turret completely um and how that's controlled but you know the way that force design i'll critique um you know the the former commandant's uh author team a little bit here and that like we didn't when we started to modify i mean the the people who are building lavs and modernizing lavs they saw a future and they were driving after that uh you know kneller and prior to kneller uh general kneller um and they were looking to modernize before force design dropped and then with force

design it's like let's sprinkle some force design onto these platforms but they remained you know generally light armored you know six wheel eight wheel vehicle with a big gun on the top um and they started to bolt on a lot of different capability on top of that via you know uas launching capable sense you know sensors i think there's some programs of record now that they're bolting into it to be able to receive communications and build out a common operating picture great um but you just created a a high value target for the enemy uh and you place that out there in the you know in the in the ether uh and so it's it's important that we look at it from a multi-domain perspective but going back to your question um they they did not look at domains they

look at capabilities when they said hey light light mobile they said armored or light armored and then they said water um you know in my you know my perspective is is the domains are cyberspace space subsurface surface and air uh and so those are the areas that i wished we would have explored from the beginning and that maybe would have painted a different picture or wrote different capabilities for where we need to be and and you could argue hey well you know reconnaissance guys recondo is already doing that stuff uh you know mobile reconnaissance the lar our community is different it's unique yes but it's also ground-based um and it's it's not it's not looking subsurface where we need to be uh surface it's not looking into the into the cyber

uh the space domains and and you could argue there's a little bit of air being uh bolted on as well with the the ability to launch loitering munitions uh first person view drones uh as as well as, uh, as well as other reconnaissance and surveillance assets that you can launch from the ground into the air. So I was a little bit, uh, I was a little bit worrisome of me. I felt like we didn't create a good solid foundation, a good firm footing. And now, you know, now it's, it's, uh, it's kind of up in the air what's going to happen. Um, and, uh, yeah, I'm not, I'm not too nostalgic about the past of mounting the steed and riding

into battle with LAVs like some folks are in the community. It's a very strong, very vocal community. But I wish we would have at least looked at the problem, done the initial problem framing. If you want to go back to MCPP or MDMP, just understood what the problem was a little bit better rather than taking something that existed before force design and sprinkling force design into it. And I'll stop there. Your reference to the idea of turning the LAV into a high value target by just building more and more stuff on top of it brings to mind that scene from uh the film pentagon wars with carrie ewells where he's uh digging into the the origin of the the bradley fighting vehicle and the the drama that that uh system went through so uh i implore listeners to

to go ahead and check that out if they haven't uh and and they'll get it i'm sure many of the listeners have seen it and do get that reference so um okay so your article it also drives the conversation forward on the lar to the mobile reconnaissance battalion or mrb transformation now briefly you already talked about the lar mindset but can you speak to that a little bit more and tie that to this notion of of building out this mobile reconnaissance battalion yeah back to your original movie reference there we'll call it quantico wars uh or pentagon wars too i'm excited for that one to come out but uh but yeah this is the meat of it right now we get to talk about Marines and the people that make LAR, LAR, and it's not a vehicle, right? It's the

Marines who, you know, are multi-domain and really multifunctional in and of themselves. And that's what makes the community great is I had a platoon, you know, as a young platoon commander, I had mechanics, I had operators, crewmen, I had scouts, you know, 0311s and all the different MOSs that come with that, you know, missile men, rockets, combat engineers, I had attachments, you know, as a platoon commander with 35 guys, you know, it swelled up to about 50 guys. And, you know, there was all different kinds of MOSs and functions within that formation, you know, maintenance, maintenance minded logistics, and we all cross trained and we were able to accomplish, you know, whatever the mission was as a team, came out here on a UDP to Okinawa, where I'm at now.

and we were at Fuji and we were here on the island and it was just it was just awesome to watch that team operate and how we how we assumed our attachments when we had them because LAR is really by itself it's it's not all that capable but when you when you start to bolt on things and other capabilities that's when it becomes a real problem for the enemy and that's that's pretty cool uh to think about like your JTACs and being able to call for fires one of the rules of the road we had was you know you you always fire other people's stuff before your own so you have your box you have your battle space and and uh higher headquarters is is throwing you assets and support and uh and LAR knows how to employ that uh and it's kind of similar to the you know

I think the the commandant called it the JTAC of the joint force you know I like to say a quarterback I thought that was always a good analogy. And that's what LAR has been, you know, for larger formations behind it. We lost that a little bit with Iraq and Afghanistan where we own battle space and we're kind of alone and unafraid rather than setting conditions for a larger formation, but still very effective against that enemy, against the peer threat. uh it's it's it's looking a little different right and we need to be we need to think about it differently and think about it more um multi-domain uh cross-domain uh you know the the seams of different domains i think is also important uh where where one meets the other so subsurface being you know being an incredibly important one too so like how is lar solving

that problem for the larger formations um out and out in different uh different areas and i would argue like in iraq and maybe even some limited uh some limited use in in ukraine uh and that and that uh that geographic location um in northern africa yeah i would agree but but where i'm at now and and you know you kind of where you sit is where you stand or where you stand is where you sit like i see like there's not much use uh for an lar like capability out here um and that's just Even phase zero, phase one, doing different things with folks out here with limited mobility at present, it would become a problem rather than a solution. So I'm passionate about that, and I'm excited to see where the Corps takes us. That was a great segue.

And I think it really is truly fitting that we're having this conversation while you, as one of the authors, are forward deployed in the weapons engagement zone in Okinawa, where all the thinking in terms of how we would apply so many of our capabilities in what would primarily be an air and maritime theater, how that would change when you are sitting in the seat of working a formation that is comprised or has traditionally been comprised of ground vehicles. So let's talk about that. Your article, it notes the need for the LAR community to transition from a ground vehicle centric approach to reconnaissance to one that is an all domain mobile reconnaissance approach. And again, that puts us in the context of platform. So specifically, your article, it calls for a platform agnostic approach to reconnaissance. What do you mean by that? Can you expand on that? Yeah, we got beat up pretty bad from some folks in our community about that.

They wanted us to completely do away with the term agnostic, but it's hard to kind of build a program of record around agnosticism, as you could imagine. So, yeah, we thought, you know, things that can be disaggregated and then aggregated again is really where we need to be depending on where we're operating. So you might go heavy ground in a certain scenario, like second LAR, third LAR, they might be, you know, very ground. Maybe they have two companies or or more of of a ground based structure. And then maybe out in Pendleton or maybe folks going UDP out here would be more maritime based where we've got more brown or, you know, or green water capability.

Some over the horizon, perhaps maybe some, you know, some stuff capable of getting into harbors and rivers. um and then from the air perspective that that's an interesting domain right we we don't we don't have any air capability outside of uh close air support and being able to call in fires and to be able to employ reconnaissance and surveillance assets you know from a little bit higher elevation um but there's there's a space like i'm on the verge of like crossing into what you know what I think should be that mobility platform, which, you know, um, shameless plug here for article that, uh, that Ben, uh, Van Horek, uh, deputy G4 at the MEP at the third Marine Expeditionary Brigade and myself wrote, um, on, on what we feel is important and what

we feel is, is, uh, is probably a pivotable, um, uh, platform or at least a multimodal capability for the MLR. In Rural Clear Defense, interesting article in there. But we think that disaggregating LAR into different things in different domains and then being able to aggregate it again at a time and place of our choosing to be able to conduct some of those harder actions, I think that's still very much in the realm of the possible. And I don't disagree that we need to be you know ground-based primarily i definitely don't disagree with that i just i want to be able to have the things that are coming online now i want to have um the stuff that replicator is is pulling for i want to have sling blade i want to have these

things that will actually deter the enemy now and and that's all based around lethality so that's kind of where where i'd be taking it i don't know if i answered that question sufficiently enough But, um, yeah, with platforms, it's, it's, uh, the world should be our oyster, right? We should have dirt bikes. We should have, uh, you know, EVs. We should have, um, some subsurface capability, some surface capability as well. Um, but, uh, but the ground vehicle, um, you know, should, should definitely, um, be thought of, uh, very, um, very speculatively in terms of, uh, where LAR should be going in the future. Uh, and I think our value proposition is, is really in the surface domain in a lot of ways, stuff that we've given back to the Navy. And now we're trying to carve it back out from them as they're, as they're divesting

of, of some of their boats that we wish we had. But again, you take on a whole litany of issues with that, specifically maintenance, right? And then porting and being able to procure the right platform and to be able to have literally a dot mil PF doctrine training personnel facilities to be able to pour into that is quite a beastly undertaking. And Matt Tweedy could talk to you on that one from a .mil.pf perspective and designing the MLRs and how those are going to be out there in the world doing the things we ask them to do. So, yeah, it's a long-winded answer to a very important question about platforms and mobility and those capabilities. But it's one that's worth debating and talking about, in my opinion. No, I appreciate it. And that's why we're having you on here, man, so we can have that conversation. So that's all goodness. And I can't help but note that a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, a young second Lieutenant Kerg's radio platoon did, in fact, have motorcycles.

And I was so excited. And I was told, oh, by the way, yeah, here's the disposal plan for those who get rid of them. So I love your idea of the dirt bikes and, again, integrating other platforms. I'd offer that your discussion of aggregating and disaggregating, you know, hey, that sounds an awful lot like the principles in distributed maritime operations. as well as, hey, the stand in force concept itself. So I think you're hitting right on the money. It's just perhaps other folks aren't necessarily seeing it that way because of the program of record discussion you alluded to before. So let me turn it back to you. So a lot of that leads into the discussion of the Armored Reconnaissance Vehicle or ARV initiative, which you use to help build out your argument. So for the listeners, what is the ARV and what would you

say was learned from that initiative? Yeah, a little. Well, it's an ongoing initiative. I think they're they're trying to tailor it down to one vendor now uh and start building out a prototype so they're they're spending millions uh tens of millions on this program and it kind of got started I want to say Neller was the one who was like boom uh like develop a modernization I think it was one of his earlier documents it explicitly laid out like hey upgrade the LAV like modernize the LAV because it's coming on. It's like second slept cycle. It's service life extension program, which they decided not to do, which is why this is kind of that, why we're having this conversation.

They decided not to slept it a third time, which becomes very ineffective from a cost perspective that becomes like more expensive than the program, you know, even cost to get off, get off the ground. And you probably understand this in your community with some of our aviation assets it's uh it's it's incredibly expensive to keep schlepping things so i understand why they didn't um but without that but there's a gap now you know like we're not you know lav is supposed to end by 2029 2028 uh and then arv it's not funded yeah it's not fully funded they're still researching and developing that capability so arv got its start as uh as the armored

reconnaissance vehicle so armored was like the main the main theme here reconnaissance sort of takes the back burner to that and that's and that's like kind of the problem that i have is reconnaissance and surveillance is our bread and butter like as the calvary the armor thing is kind of a sideshow and and anything that has armor in the name like i said that just moved up a couple couple levels into the uh into the high value target list for for our adversaries so i like to be yeah i like to be dismounted a little bit yeah i'm not uh i'm not kind of that tanker centric you know uh lav guy that that wants to be on his steed you know riding into the as i talked about riding riding into the horizon um i i like to be off the vehicle i like to have comm nodes

established you know with the scouts away from the vehicles because at the end of the day these vehicles are they serve one purpose right and it's to extend the sensor range so whenever we're talking about you know what 61-2 is doing in Estonia and Finland what what third recon is doing out here you know they have radar they have sensors and they're they're placed in strategic locations with with their sensor fans you know uh designed to be able to create a net right to to be able to contact make contact with the with the enemy understand you know verify validate what that you know what that thing is that they're seeing out there and then force a decision you know whether it's to you know mildly interesting we'll just keep monitoring that or to to slew them

off or move them to another location um that's that's more um you know that's more interesting to the to the joint force or to the joint uh the joint task force and uh and with ard you can do that from a ground perspective they're calling it now a maritime sensing platform but it's on the ground and and it can potentially move from ship to shore i'm not sure what the boarding capacity is or if it's going to be able to swim you know the 10 nautical miles or eight nautical miles from ship to shore. But my concern is that it's not, again, playing into that holistic approach to understanding the domains well, well enough to be able to inform what this capability needs to be in the future. And then, like I said before, how does it tie into, you know, some of the other

things into the joint force, as opposed to just your command and control and tying into different communications pathways and nodes you know what does it do what does it do for ships right what does it do for the desron or the subsurface uh assets in the in the ao can it talk to all those things and where does it need to be on the beach uh or or on the land if it can even get there to be able to tie into those assets so that's kind of we find difficulty getting things into the The strategic areas where we operate, and they're much smaller than the ARV is going to be. So there's just a couple of, you know, survivability issues, especially from the top down, and then just its ability to be employed, right, in all phases, right, not just wartime. In wartime, yeah, man, throw anything you can at the problem like we've done in the past. But in peacetime and left of bang, right, we're working with a system that might not even be there, right, to be able to do the things we want it to do.

And that's a problem for me. I want it to be very marketable, right? I want it to be out and about. And if it's too exquisite, if it's too sexy to get out there working with foreign forces and working with our partners like Japan out here and the Philippines for third MLR, working with the Finnish and the Estonians for second LAR, if it's too exquisite and it's too high speed, then it's not going to be employable. And that's the fear that I have. And that's what's been so great about LAVs, to be honest. That's great. Hey, I really appreciate you asking the question and framing it in terms of, hey, what is LAR doing for the DESRON or any naval task force or any naval formation? And in your article, you have a powerful real world example you draw on based off of experimentation conducted by second LAR as part of Task Force 61-2. So the stand-in forces concept or SIF is basically it's having survival forces that can persistently operate inside of an enemy's weapons engagement zone.

So what exactly did 2nd LAR do in support of 61-2 or Task Force 61-2, excuse me, and how would you describe the takeaways? Yeah, what are they doing, right? This is now their third year of multi-month deployment into that AO, working directly for the Sixth Fleet via Task Force 61-2. So they're like a task element within the task group underneath CTS. And they're working directly with the Sixth Fleet to build maritime domain awareness in the Gulf of Finland. very narrow strip of uh of waterways uh from you know from the atlantic ocean essentially in the north sea uh the arctic ocean all the way into you know st petersburg and some other strategic uh locations in russia uh and they they've been without getting uh into the higher levels here

i mean they've been able to track some very interesting targets um coming through there building uh building sa building situational awareness for the sixth fleet and uh and the broader uh european command um so it's uh it's about three years running now it was it was conceived um you know a couple of commanding generals ago uh within the second marine division and it's still alive and well um and really uh really we couldn't do that just like we couldn't do the mission we're doing out here without our partners so guess who's given them lift you know from island to island, from sensing EAB or Expeditionary Advanced Base to sensing EAB is the Finns. It's the Estonians. They're riding. I mean, you can go online and see

divots, pictures, and articles of Marines boarding, you know, with their signals equipment, with their electromagnetic equipment sets and capabilities, with their radars, boarding Estonian ferries and Estonian Coast Guard vessels, military vessels, jumping on some more higher speed 30 knot, 25 knot Finnish vessels and moving them from one pile of rocks to the next or one part of the coast to the other. they're sliding in and out of uh of foreign you know foreign military bases right the stab sending up shop putting up their their systems their their nodes that they need uh to be able to aggregate that data and and make sense of it and move it to another domain or or higher headquarters so this is this is exactly what we're doing out here nothing's new under the sun um and how they get around is like is typical marine fashion right ingenuity tenacity getting the job done right

Going that extra mile. Do the Marines, do the Marines doing this work need to have their own specific platform? I would argue no. Right. Rental car is the platform of choice, you know, with with some trailers maybe and then getting on anything that they can. Right. To be able to move around the battle space. And and that's driven by the people who live there. Right. The people who work and operate there every day. And that's the Finns. That's the Estonians out here. we're limited by our access with the Japanese right if they want us to go to that island or that pile of rocks they will make it happen right they will move heaven and earth to negotiate with the local government to be able to get us into that into those areas so it's really partners and allies it's really access based and that's where we need to flow right and like I said before

with the ARV you throw some sexy exquisite platform into the mix it could go one of two ways they could be very interested in working with you because of that that capability that you advertise or they can say that's a little too scary for the locals we're not exactly in a shooting war with an adversary right now so please keep that thing at home because we don't we don't really know what it does and it's and you and your requirements for bringing it ashore or bringing it into this area are a little too extreme and we can't really meet them anyways so that's where your limiting factors kind of play in. And I realize I've spiraled with my response, but I'm excited for where Task Force 61-2 and we're second LAR and second recon and some other

enablers where they've taken this is where we're going. So we're going to follow and trace, follow in support of that. We're going to take those lessons learned and we're going to apply them out here and elsewhere, provide them the third MLR who's already, I'm sure, tied in. and uh and this is this is what we're going to be doing in this ao and many others like it uh the littorals are where people live it's where the things are happening um i i hate to be you know if i'm a student of history i would say we're going to do another land war in asia but i hope that's not the case i hope this is where deterrence is the the money uh spent on deterrence really the effort and energy spent on that is is made is the wars that are avoided right not not necessarily

the worst thought. That's an incredible response. There's layers and layers of valuable things that we could chew on that offer really good takeaways. And I'm sure the listeners can use their imagination a lot in terms of what's happening over in one region versus another. To your point about deterrence, right? Hey, over there in Europe, the U.S., we're not shooting at anything, but I imagine that there is certainly real practical effects and value to the reconnaissance being gained as there are there is and would be uh in the theater in which you're operating so all that stuff is a lot of goodness and i think something that's particularly notable is is when you stated that the the rental car is a vehicle of choice right as separate distinct from a certain uh

program of record or a platform really the marine and the capability that they bring is maybe something that's man packable or towable but they can move that around and whatever they can or whatever they need to in order to achieve the effects that the commander needs so i think that's a that's a good way to move into uh another thing your article discusses which is an advocating for the light mobile reconnaissance company as part of the lar battalion and it also talks about lessons learned in application of task force 61-2 we hit the 61-2 note pretty pretty good but how how was the light mobile recon company how was it employed there or or what were takeaways or other things you'd expand upon in your theater?

Yeah, thank you. As I said before, I think where goes the LMRC? And maybe I didn't state this as explicitly, but where goes MRC or LMRC goes the mobile reconnaissance community as a whole, at least in the Marine Corps and potentially the Army too. um but but my takeaways from these guys is is really back to that lar mindset right they they had no lavs in their formation right they had they had some m razors and stuff which they didn't really take out because if you can if you think about um the employment of a sensor team right

that's able to to fan out to to a specific range uh with their with their capabilities you know what does an M-Razor do for you, you know, on a pile of rocks somewhere? So those things sat in the parking lot for the most part. And then also, if you're kind of in this nebulous area of this gray zone, you know, operations, you know, you're kind of, you're doing things looking like you're doing some interoperability things with your partners. You know, there's some Pelican cases involved. um there's some moving around uh the battle space you know from from shore to shore you know via some of the uh some of the local um local assets available local surface assets primarily um and

you and you think to yourself like hmm like how do i how do i move an arv in that way in that space right in the gray zone which is where which is where deterrence lives um you know i don't know putting it on the well deck of a ship you know like that that one could argue that if that's even possible um which which again is is another reason why you know we look at budgets and we look at uh some of these programs of record and and some of the folks that are that are driving these i mean the the tree suiters like us are coming in and out of those offices and those guys are patriots right the folks who are in charge of these programs but you know they're they're deterring from from the beltway you know they're they're thinking about the problem from the beltway

getting feedback from operators who are operating you know they're out there in the world um doing doing the job right there their their job is not necessarily focused on informing you know the next thing they're trying to scrap together resources and capabilities to do the job uh and then you know, feeding McWill and CD&I and MarCore Syscom, you know, with feedback is, or the teams coming out to get the feedback, you know, that's an added rock in the pack, although important. So with LMRC, I see us shaping the narrative with what mobile reconnaissance is and what it can be more than just in the Gulf of Finland.

And we're taking those lessons learned. I feel like I'm, you know, it's kind of a, I wouldn't call it a calling, but an opportunity to take some of that stuff and aggregate my career and my experience to apply it to this new problem set as we build an MLR out of a fire-centric headquarters, regimental headquarters. And, you know, we're having things coming online now. We're having capabilities and personnel, the LLB, the LCT, the lab. And it's really amazing watching all this stuff come together. And I just think of what's required in the reconnaissance and the sensing space for that. And I'm struggling to find an ability to employ some of these things that we want to build programs of record around. And it's just concerning because there's so many different things that I wish we had. And they're much less expensive. And they're much more capable. And we feel they're much more of a deterrent capability than, you know, in terms of lethality, than a direct fire weapon system or a really exquisite sensor on wheels. uh we're we're kind of dubbing it the the joint strike fighter f-35 on wheels um you know on with with a little bit of armor slapped on it uh and that's that's kind of a kind of a you know a fun

a little satire thing we we do here but it's going to become more expensive than we than we can imagine and uh and with the exquisite things just like the joint strike fighter you start to put a lot of these things on a platform and then you got to change the platforms that service them right You have to change the facilities. You have to change the MOSs and the training pipelines and the schoolhouses to be able to, you know, service these things. Not to say we shouldn't do it and pursue it, but we have to think about that stuff and look about maybe some things that are dumb, right? some weapon systems uh some capabilities that are dumb capabilities not necessarily smart and maybe go back you know to the uh you know to history as a teacher to understand like what what the enemy might be able to you know block some of these uh systems might be able to jam uh some of the communications that they use uh to get the job done and then you know what is what

is it like going back to um maybe some things that are less exquisite and uh but things that are sure to hit the target, so to speak. Well, good stuff there, Brent. Definitely appreciate that response. And just as we're coming up on time here, I just got to say, your article, it's really powerful in its framework, right? You start with senior level guidance in history. You break down the lessons from the first big experimentation that put the guidance into action. And then you lay out some key recommendations. And to be fair, as we've been discussing, the Corps has been moving out on some of the transformations that was called for in guidance. So for my last question, I'm not just going to ask, you know, as your big reveal, what

the recommendations from the article are, but also what are your predictions for the future of the light art and reconnaissance? So kind of tying into your last question first there, I think LAR keeps being LAR for a while, right? We keep these things running. They do an amazing job. Our mechanics, our 2147s, shout out to them. They're doing the impossible right now because they're not resourced. The supply chain has stopped building spare parts for these weapon systems, but we keep them limping along. We stay creative. 3D printers are being fielded out where we're using polymer and other types of metals and alloys that we haven't used before to replace parts of the LAV, maybe even making it stronger. But some of the critical pieces of that vehicle

are uh you know they're really really hard to find um so we're making it work you know using our our supply battalions um forget what we're calling them now using our maintenance battalions within the mess um you know putting putting a lot of putting mothballs on a lot of them and only fielding and only utilizing like what we have the mechanics for we have the people to operate because the vehicles run great work great when we've got when we got people driving them around when they're sitting on the ramp you know under a tarp that's when things start to break down and uh and get degenerate so i think lar is going to be lar um and i know we've had some email traffic back and forth as we prepared for this uh with the other authors so i would agree uh with

them and say like we're still going to have that capability it's still going to be in the belly of a ship right ready to punch you in the face when it's needed and there's still a very uh a very um real need, uh, for that combat power and any general will tell you the same, right. Um, but where, what our recommendations are is how do we start to incorporate, um, and fuse in, you know, the fabric of force design into that, uh, into an old vehicle, 40 years old. Um, how do we start to field the javelin teams, right? How do we, how do we get the, uh, the Carl Gustavs in there? Like, how do we get those things, you know, further and further out into the battle space? You know, you require a lot of heavy logistics, heavy maintenance, you know, to get the vehicles

even, you know, onto the shore. But their legs are long. You know, that Detroit diesel is very efficient on sipping diesel gasoline. And new communication systems continue to enhance their capability to see two fights and to call in the joint force from an air perspective and other assets. So I'm very confident it's going to continue to deter around the world. And the ARV will do the same when it comes online. So passing the olive branch over to those guys who are working hard for 10 years plus to get us a replacement for the LAV. But I would like to see some of that money, some of that research and development money, and that's why line items and budget are so critical. You know, you take a good chunk of the Marine Corps and the Navy budget to

build out ARV. I want a good chunk of that to be able to invest in replicator, right? I want a good chunk of that to look seriously at how we connect to subsurface, right? I want some of that budget carved out for loitering munitions and radars, right? And they don't necessarily need to be bolted on an ARV, I want to be able to disaggregate that C2 variant, right? The one with all the sensors and widgets and stuff like that. I want to take chunks of that off and send it with a six-man team out to some pile of rocks, right? And that's what I want to be able to do with LAR in the future is to, as we talked about, disaggregate and aggregate where needed and to be able to move it around via surface, subsurface, and air.

And that, I think, is going to be where we make our money, is by looking at that problem set and not slapping things onto necessarily a vehicle, but being able to break that vehicle apart and send it out to different locations, tether it, remote it, whatever the case might be. And maybe that's the future, right, is the ability to maybe do some concealed reveal with the LAV and use it more of a deception as well, which is always important. But these things get expensive. I hope we can carve out the budget, but I hope that budget is well used and efficiently used to look at things that are available now with the ARV not coming online

for a good amount of time without getting into specifics there. I want to be able to deter the adversaries we've got within two years, not necessarily, you know, 10 to 15 would be my argument. Well said, Brent. Thanks for that. So finally, where can listeners find you online and what else are you working on? Yeah, thanks for that. So I'm on LinkedIn, Brent Jermu. I'm fairly active on there. Over here in Okinawa, you realize like the social medias and things that you weren't really a believer in become commonplace to talk. So I'm on signal as well. I'll be able to share my numbers. But if you reach me at brent.e.jermu at usmc.mil, that's going to be a sure one. And then my personal email address, I'll share that with the listeners as well. B-E-E-J 84 at gmail.com.

So bravo, echo, echo, juliet84 at gmail.com. But yeah, you can find me on Facebook. You can find me on LinkedIn. And I'm excited to keep this conversation going. I'm very, very grateful, Brian. Hey, thanks again so very much for joining us. Good luck at your current assignment over there in Okinawa. Fair winds and following seas.

And to listeners, bravo, Zulu, for tuning in. And we'll see you next time. There I met with Greciani So help me, Boban, put in the alley Help me, Boban, put in the alley A porter of and a porter, kiddo Put in the alley A porter of wine, of white and red, oh

We'll be right back.