Maritime Patrol and Reconnaissance Forces in Counterinsurgency Operations

The Maritime Patrol and Reconnaissance (MPR) Force has a long history of defending the fleet against enemy combatant ships and submarines. Over the past 95 years, Patrol Aviation has used its attributes of speed, area coverage, versatility, and payload to defeat its adversaries at sea. With its focus firmly fixed on its conventional maritime mission, the MPR Force of tomorrow will continue to remain vigilant and poised to defeat all who threaten access to the seas. As the Patrol and Reconnaissance community prepares to transition from the venerable P-3C Orion to the P-8A Poseidon and the Broad Area Maritime Surveillance Unmanned Aerial System, our nation and coalition partners face an equally deadly foe that resorts to irregular warfare (IW) methodologies of terror and subversion to meet its strategic ends. Just as the MPR force answered the call to defend the Fleet from the maritime threat; Patrol Aviation has risen to the challenges of the IW arena and has developed a formidable Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance capability.