Air Force special reconnaissance Marine reconnaissance two of the most highly trained entities in the world of reconnaissance. What sets them apart? What do they have in common? What can they do? Let’s take a dive into what you need to know about Special Recon and Marine reconf. The video with a brief introduction on both of these units. First up is special recon. We’ll give it to you. Quoted straight from the Air Force. Special reconnaissance airmen are special tactics operators with unique training to conduct multi domain reconnaissance and surveillance across the spectrum of conflict, with focus on lethal and non lethal air to ground integration of air power. They deploy rapidly and undetected by any means, anytime and anywhere, to systematically and with impunity obtain, transmit, exploit, and action time sensitive information. USAF special reconnaissance employs elements of special tactics teams to prepare the environment, ensure global battlespace awareness, provide global access, and affect air space, cyberspace, and information superiority for the successful execution of joint force objectives. Yeah, special recon is no joke. Let’s move on to Marine Recon now. Recon Marines are infantry marines who are highly skilled in amphibious reconnaissance and ground reconnaissance. They possess proficiency in scout, swimming, small boat operations, patrolling, and long range communication skills.
They can operate independently deep behind enemy lines, performing unconventional special operations in support of conventional warfare. They are able to insert and extract by means of sea, air, and land, and conduct battlespace shaping and limited scale raids. Their motto says it all, swift, silent, deadly. All right, you just got a taste of what both of these elite entities are. Let’s dig a little deeper and go over their capabilities, missions, and opportunities. All right, so both of these entities conduct reconnaissance. You’re probably asking yourself, why have multiple units for that? Well, while they both have recon in their name, their capabilities, mission sets, and opportunities are quite different. They each bring a unique contribution to the battlefield. Let’s explain. First and foremost, marine Recon has been around much longer than special Recon. Since the 1940s, recon Marines have been doing what they do best, reconnaissance. Their methods and tactics are ingrained and well established, and they have a colorful history in warfare. Special Recon, on the other hand, was established in May 2019, so they’re pretty much brand spanking new in the world of special operations. All special Recon airmen were previously referred to as special operations weathermen before they received a new doctrine, purpose, and pipeline.
We’ll go more into the Saoti transition in a bit. The main difference between these two entities is the fact that marine Recon is technically not special operations. While they are special operations capable, they do not fall under SOCOM like their special recon counterparts do. This means that special Recon has access to different funding and missions than Marine Recon, and they both answer to different bosses. Marine Recon conducts reconnaissance for the Marine Expeditionary Force and Marine Airground Task Force, whereas special recon conducts reconnaissance for SOCOM and other soft units. Again, we’ll emphasize this now. Just because special recon falls under SOCOM and Marine Recon does not, doesn’t mean one is better or worse than the other. It’s just how it is. Both Marine recon and special recon go deep behind enemy lines, gather reconnaissance, have capabilities in direct action, small unit raids, counter reconnaissance, and much more. They also both have combat and dive capabilities, military freefall capabilities, JTax, and both can receive sniper training. What we’re trying to say here is that there is a lot of overlap, but there are their differences. Special Recon has more of a focus on lethal and non lethal air to ground integration of air power.
They are in the Air Force, after all. They also have their experience with environmental and atmospheric reporting from their Sauti days. Unlike special recon, recon marines have experience in infantry, as all of them are considered infantrymen. They also have more knowledge and expertise in maritime warfare, as a lot of their deployments can be with the Navy, such as on a mew, which stands for marine expeditionary unit. Both of these types of operators have the opportunity to serve in tier one units, such as delta Force. Special recon also has the opportunity to serve in the Air Force’s tier one unit, the 24th Special Tactics Squadron. Lastly, for this section, we mentioned to you how special recon is considered soft while Marine Recon isn’t. We’re going to paint you a better picture about why this is the case. So saddle up, because you’re going to know more than the average person as to why this is. Okay, so Marine Recon has force recon on paper. Force Recon has a different doctrine and mission set compared to traditional marine recon. We won’t go into detail about that because we have videos that highlight the key differences between these.
So stick around to the end of the video to watch those. The marines wanted their hand in SoCOM, so when they stood up Marsok, they took guys from Force Recon to start it up. Recon remained conventional and supported the magtap and meth, whereas MARSOC went on to support SoCOM. If none of that made sense to you, we’ll put it in layman’s terms. If you fall under SOCOM, you are special operations. If you don’t, you’re not. Makes sense now. Now for Special recon. Sao T, which again is where special recon came from, was already a part of SOCOM. They rebranded offering newer and broader capabilities to AfSOC. So the main difference here is that special Recon was pretty much already in soft, whereas marine recon never was to begin with. At the end of the video, we will give you some resources to go check out the transition from SAo T to Special Recon. So make sure to stay with us to the end if you want to learn all about that. It’s some pretty interesting stuff. Alright, now you know some key similarities and differences between special recon and Marine Recon. Let’s go over the structure of both of these entities and where you can expect to be stationed if you find yourself in these lines of work.
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After that we will go over the training pipelines and requirements for each of them. Let’s start off with special recon. Special recon falls under AFSOC, which is structured like this. Pause the screen if you want to take a longer look. Now we’re going to move on to common duty stations for them. If you find yourself in Special Recon, you can be stationed at Pope Air Force Base in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Joint Base Lewis McCord, Washington, Hurlbert Field, Florida, McDill Air Force Base, Florida Canyon Air Force Base, New Mexico Cadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan and Royal Air Force Station, Mildenhall, United Kingdom. Now for the Recon Marines. Recon Marines have four battalions, 1st, 2nd, third and fourth reconnaissance battalions respectively. These battalions are broken down into companies, which are broken down into platoons, and then lastly teams. We won’t bore you with the intricacies of it all, so we’re going to move on to where you can be stationed. First reconnaissance battalion is based out of Camp Pendleton, California. Second reconnaissance battalion is based out of Camp Lejune, North Carolina. Third Reconnaissance Battalion is based out of Okinawa, Japan and fourth recon battalion, which is a reserve component, is based out of San Antonio, Texas.
As a recon Marine you can be stationed at any of these locations. Alright, now you know the structure of AFSOC and Marine recon. Now you’re probably wondering what kind of training is required for both of these. Let’s get into it. This time we’re going to go over Marine Recon. First, we’re changing it up for you. This is the pipeline for becoming a reconnaissance marine. Marine Boot Camp, 13 weeks RTAP, formerly known as BRPC. Five weeks basic reconnaissance course, or BRC, 13 weeks, US Army Airborne jump school, three weeks. Military free fall school, four weeks. USMC combatant dive course, eight weeks. Just remember, you’ll receive a lot more training once you report to your unit. This is only the beginning. All right, now let’s move on to special recons pipeline. United States Air Force Basic Military training BMT, eight weeks special Warfare Preparatory course, eight weeks special Warfare assessment and selection, four weeks Special Warfare predive course, four weeks Special Warfare Combat Dive course, eight weeks US Army Airborne School, three weeks military free fall school, four weeks United States Air Force Sear School, three weeks underwater egress, two days special reconnaissance apprentice course, six months.
Special tactics advanced skills training, six to twelve months. Comparing the two pipelines, you can see that one is quite longer than the other. Again, this doesn’t mean that one is better than the other. They just receive different training and at different points of their careers. But yes, it’s quite obvious special recon has a much longer pipeline than Marine recon does. Okay, so now you know what schools you’ll be expected to attend if you decide to embark on either of these journeys. But do you even qualify to give it a shot? Let’s see. We’re going to go over the requirements for Marine recon first. Before we begin, just know that getting a guaranteed shot at recon usually just involves volunteering for it with your recruiter. The requirements aren’t too stringent. You’ll need eligibility to join the Marine Corps, a score of 105, and if you’re lat transferring, a first class PFT, possess a first class swimmer qualification and a decent recon screening aptitude test score. If you want to know what this entails, stick with us until the end. Okay, let’s go over the requirements for special recon. For special recon, you’ll need to speak English fluently, a high school diploma or equivalent ability to attain a top secret clearance, pass the special recon requirements on the physical assessment and stamina test, or passed score a 30 on the special recon selection model in the tailored Adaptive Personality Assessment system, which is pretty much a personality test that you take with the ASVAP, meet medical qualification standards for jump and dive duty, meet general Air Force enlistment requirements.
So, yeah, that’s what you need if you want to be special recon or marine recon. Both of these career fields have opportunities for enlisted and officers. Now, let’s wrap up everything with a quick recap and then we will leave you with some valuable resources for both of these that you definitely do not want to miss. All right, so you learned that while Special Recon and marine Recon are quite similar, they do have their differences. Just remember, both of these entities offer unique skills and capabilities to the US military. Special recon falls under SOCOM and Marine recon falls under the MEF or the MAGTAF. Both of these guys conduct reconnaissance, but they collect it for different reasons and for different chains of command. But at the end of the day, both of these are elite, deadly, and highly trained professionals in the world of reconnaissance. Now don’t go just yet. Let’s get to some invaluable resources for you. If you want to learn more about Special Recon or marine Recon for the special recon side of the house, we highly recommend you go check out ones ready and how to be a PJ’s YouTube channels. Both of these guys have several years of experience in AFSOC and have interviewed special recon airmen, including one that helped set up the special recon pipeline.
These videos also cover the transition from SAo T to Special Recon, which we briefly mentioned to you earlier in the video. We’ll leave their channel links in the description below for Marine recon. We have covered them several times on this channel and we have a plethora of videos for you to check out, even on sarks. We also cover the difference between force Recon and conventional recon too. See all of these thumbnails? Yeah, that’s all the stuff we’ve done on recon. We even did one on the rstat that we mentioned to you earlier in the video. You just hit a gold mine. We got a playlist that shows you about all things recon on our channel. The links in the description, well, that is the down and dirty of special recon and marine Recon. If you learned something from this video, make sure to give us a like and subscribe to our channel. As always, thank you for watching. Do you even want to be here? A big shout out to all of our patrons over at our Patreon. Thank you all so much for taking the extra step in supporting our channel. It is much appreciated.
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