Reestablishing Division-Level Reconnaissance in Large-Scale Combat Operations

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In 1954, Lt. Gen. “Jumping Jim” Gavin, fresh off his experience in the Korean War, wrote about the need for modern cavalry formations in Armor magazine. He emphasized the importance of mobility, shock effect, and the cavalry’s missions of screening, buying time, enabling friendly surprise, and preventing the enemy from surprising us. He argues that Lt. Gen. Walton Walker’s lack of cavalry resulted in him often attacking blindly with tragic losses and an inability to exploit breakouts. Gavin emphasized the need for cavalry formations to move faster than their adversaries in the battlespace to be successful.¹

Gavin’s observation still rings true today. We still need reconnaissance in Korea and in US Army divisions overall.

The Uniqueness of the Warrior Division and Its Missions

Forward-deployed and facing an armed, newly experienced adversary, the 2nd Infantry Division/ROK-US Combined Division (2ID/RUCD) must be ready to “fight tonight.” It is both a motto and a requirement. The Warrior Division’s unique mission is to simultaneously enable noncombatant evacuation, protect the Republic of Korea’s (ROK) sovereign territory, reduce threats from adversary long-range fire capabilities, and transition to large-scale combat operations. Expanded maneuver and shaping the deep fight are central to our operating concept. These are real-world requirements that the division is postured to execute.

Our location is also unique and provides a positional advantage. Stationed on the ground in Korea, on the Asian continent, is a strategic advantage. We are already beyond the first island chain and on the continent of Asia. Regional competitors—The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), China, and Russia—must account for our current and future posture on their flanks. The US Pacific Command commander, Adm. Samuel Paparo, described the US-ROK alliance as the “linchpin of peace and security on the Korean peninsula.”² Forces assigned to help defend the Republic of Korea also provide the nation with options during regional crises.

2ID has a unique structure because it is a combined division with a significant amount of the ROK Army serving on the combined division staff. Further, 2ID has a ROK mechanized brigade, ROK long-range surveillance (LRS), a ROK artillery cannon battalion, and an organic US rocket artillery brigade. The ROK units, combined with the combat aviation brigade (CAB), division artillery brigade, and sustainment brigade, and a rotational Stryker brigade combat team, form a uniquely lethal and flexible formation.

The division’s maneuver is challenged by reduced reconnaissance formations and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) post Army structure changes, limiting our ability to enable fires and conduct reconnaissance and security missions.³ This creates the potential risk of finding ourselves in static, trench warfare, as seen in Ukraine, due to lost mobility. Maneuver warfare is central to multidomain operations.

To address this reconnaissance gap and maintain tempo, the division organized a cross-domain reconnaissance squadron (CDRS) that integrates current and emerging technology—manned, unmanned, and autonomous. It combines ground, air, fires, LRS, electronic warfare, and signal intelligence (SIGINT) into a single fighting task force. This task force increased the division’s ability to gather battlefield intelligence, rapidly target, and provided security. The CDRS is the division’s largest innovation.

Forging a Cross-Domain Reconnaissance Squadron in 2ID

The CDRS operates on a clear mission: to conduct continuous reconnaissance and security operations that provide the division with timely, accurate information on enemy disposition, terrain, and potential threats throughout the operating area. Its tasks, specified in division orders and the commander’s guidance, include providing early warning and security during the transition to conflict, clearing the division’s tactical assembly area, securing artillery positions, and conducting focused reconnaissance of key terrain features and critical named areas of interest. By integrating and controlling aerial, technical, and ground reconnaissance assets—both manned and autonomous—under a single commander, the CDRS ensures effective information gathering and dissemination to division leadership.

The core ground element of the task force is the combat engineer company-armored (CEC-A). Built around a senior commander, the squadron uses a ground company from the 55th Combat Engineer Company with Bradley Fighting Vehicles for protected, mobile scouting. CEC-A provides mounted and dismounted capabilities, while Republic of Korea Army soldiers provide long-range surveillance in difficult terrain.

The CDRS unmanned aircraft system (UAS) components deliver reach and agility mixing manned and autonomous systems. Dedicated MQ-1C Gray Eagles provide deep surveillance, and a company of small UAS (F Company, 2nd CAB) with C-100s—which replaced the RQ-7 Shadow UAS—and autonomous systems work closer in. This layered aerial suite provides persistent reconnaissance and operational depth. The technical collection team from the 528th General Support Military Intelligence Company enhances this with tactical SIGINT, allowing discrete electronic attack, electronic surveillance in identification of enemy command-and-control nodes and electronic signatures. Integration of expendable acoustic sensors with manned and unmanned platforms delivers additional early warning and force protection.

The CDRS is not just a sensing organization but is built to enable effects. Launched effects in Warfighter Exercise 26-1 (WFX 26-1) provided both collection and strike options. It has a company of AH-64E Apache aircraft, which enables manned-unmanned teaming to rapidly transition from finding the enemy to finishing them. Furthermore, through a memorandum of agreement with the ROK Army, the squadron is supported by a ROK artillery battery of K9A1 self-propelled howitzers, directly linking terrestrial and aerial reconnaissance to lethal fires. The CDRS also has a ROK LRS detachment, which provides another important sensor for collection and targeting.

The CDRS’s decisive strength is integration. All sensor data—whether from a ROK LRS team in restrictive terrain, a SIGINT detection of enemy activity, or a Gray Eagle identifying movement at key terrain—converges at the squadron headquarters. This framework enables rapid situation development, targeting, cross-cueing, and fulfillment of the division commander’s priority intelligence requirements. By rapidly identifying high-payoff targets, the CDRS provides the commander with decision space and supports effective transitions throughout multifaceted battlefield geometry.

A key lesson from 2ID’s experimentation is the mutual relationship between scouting and fires and the need to sense in inclement weather. Division headquarters must use preparatory fires to set conditions for the close fight but are often underresourced. Reliance on airborne surveillance that weather can limit or electronic detection assets that can be denied creates significant vulnerability. The CDRS’s terrestrial sensing capabilities proved invaluable in filling this gap. The ground-based observation platforms provided persistent, all-weather, multi-intelligence sensing, ensuring coverage when aircraft were grounded or when communications to higher echelons were jammed. The CDRS routinely had a positional advantage against advancing threats. Their terrestrial layering, combining visual observation with SIGINT and other intelligence disciplines, enabled “recon pull”—where reconnaissance assets find and develop targets that then pull maneuver and fires assets forward.

This capability is essential for enabling the division to conduct shaping operations in its deep area. The CDRS demonstrated its value in acquiring targets for the division’s organic fires elements, creating opportunities for maneuver and setting the conditions for success in the brigades’ close fights. It ensures that the division is not blind in the absence of airpower or national intelligence, providing a robust, resilient, and persistent “eyes on” capability that is crucial for winning on the modern battlefield.

CDRS and Fires, Importance of Ground Sensing

As the Army implements recent Army Transformation Initiative changes, the division headquarters is still responsible for sensing and employing shaping fires.⁴ Observed in training exercises across the Army, US divisions are reliant on sensing capabilities that can be marginalized in contested and denied environments or weathered out. Divisions rely on systems that exist at the echelon above division and on their organic airborne ISR. While these sensing means are extremely useful, US divisions lack the persistent ISR coverage over large areas of operation to win on the modern battlefield. Filling this capability gap not only allows fires to enable maneuver, but it also sets conditions for maneuver to create space for tactical and operational-level fires employment.

As demonstrated during training events, the Army must increase investment in ground-sensing systems to ensure the division has information dominance. This includes the ability to detect beyond line of sight and communications to transmit data across all tactical networks between reconnaissance units and division headquarters. Second, the Army must update training and doctrine to incorporate sensing systems to support targeting and reconnaissance. This will give US divisions a standard ability to meet operational needs and support required documents and modified table of organization and equipment updates. Finally, the Army must consider advances in multiple intelligence collection systems to ensure effective sensing in challenging environments.

Rugged Terrain and the Forgotten Armistice

The terrain and weather are just as challenging as they were in 1950. The Korean peninsula is largely mountainous, with canalizing terrain and numerous rivers. The winters are freezing cold and snowy. The biggest change since 1950 is the rapid growth of Seoul, now a megacity with a population of twenty-six million.⁵ This densely populated, urban terrain aggravates any military crisis—natural disasters, noncombatant evacuation operations, or combat on the Korean peninsula. It is simultaneously the center of gravity and a potential strategic problem. It was and would still be hard to fight in Korea.

Recent history has included frequent, unpredictable, and rapid escalations. Many of these events increased regional tensions and risked becoming flashpoints. In 2010, the ROKS Cheonan, a Pohang-class corvette, was sunk by a North Korean torpedo, killing forty-six sailors.⁶ The years 2017 through 2019 were marked by increased tensions, increased DPRK missile testing, and diplomatic efforts that ranged from hopeful to combative and deadlocked.⁷ In December 2022, five North Korean drones crossed the demilitarized zone into South Korean airspace, with one entering the no-fly zone near Seoul’s presidential office.⁸ Since 2024, DPRK has released thousands of trash-filled balloons that have landed their payloads in various population centers spanning from Seoul to the southern end of the peninsula.⁹

In this current chapter of the Korean War Armistice Agreement, we see North Korea making rapid advancements that challenge our own.¹⁰ They are gaining hard-won combat experience and new modern equipment while fighting on the Russian side against Ukraine. This is a significant leap in the threat capability in the hands of the often-unpredictable DPRK regime.

Need for Reconnaissance and Fires at Echelon to Maintain Tempo

Tempo is the name of the game. Getting there first with the most combat power is essential to our ability to fight outnumbered and win. The CAB must continue to transform due to the rapid proliferation of unmanned and autonomous systems in the air, land, and maritime domains. The CAB’s integration of new UAS and autonomous systems greatly increased its lethality and survivability. The restricted terrain in Korea makes air-ground integration even more valuable. The CAB repeatedly helped the division achieve an advantageous correlation of forces and means during WFX 26-1 and other exercises. Manned and autonomous platforms—teamed and separately—screened and attacked across the deep, close, and friendly flanks. Air assaults allowed ground forces to seize key terrain ahead of enemy movement, inserted observers to enable lethal fires, and gained positional advantage. The transformed CAB led with its new and old unmanned systems that enabled attack aviation freedom of maneuver and preserved combat power. Organized into two units, the CDRS and the attack helicopter battalion allowed greater flexibility and high tempo. It allowed the division to execute reconnaissance and security missions while maintaining an attack aviation finishing force to defeat enemy maneuver battalions. The CDRS, CAB, fires, and UAS were the most lethal combination on the battlefield during WFX 26-01 (see the figure). The continued pressure, shaping, and spoiling enabled the ground maneuver brigades to successfully seize their objectives, and the division-maintained tempo.

Figure. 2ID WFX 26-1 Rollup

(Figure by authors)

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Russia, Ukraine, and North Korea

The ongoing war in Ukraine is the most violent in recent history, with one report estimating 1.2 million Russian casualties, with 325,000 fatalities since 2022.¹¹ This has caused the military and academics alike to study it, with many proclaiming that we are seeing a change in the character of war.¹² They argue that Russia versus Ukraine is the future of war with its ubiquitous drones, artillery fire, and lack of maneuver warfare. However, America needs to be cautious about how it applies the lessons learned from watching one former Soviet Army (Ukraine) fight the Russians. Two fire-based armies have limited lessons to teach a US joint force—a force with exquisite special operations forces and unrivaled airpower. Our theory of victory differs from Russia’s.

Combined arms maneuver—not fires—is central to multidomain operations and how the Army fights. Army Doctrine Publication 3-0, Operations, defines multidomain operations as “the combined arms employment of joint and Army capabilities to create and exploit relative advantages to achieve objectives, defeat enemy forces, and consolidate gains on behalf of joint force commanders.”¹³ Combined arms maneuver still lies at the core of how we fight. We are just incorporating new technology and more domains into it. In the Russia-Ukraine war, drones make up for a lack of effective air power; the Army can and must incorporate manned and autonomous capabilities into our own form of combined arms maneuver. Drones are complementary to combined arms maneuver and essential to current and future success in large-scale combat operations.

While the United States is observing the war in Ukraine, North Korea is participating in it, gaining experience on the battlefield and benefiting from technological or intellectual transfers that occur when fighting in a combined formation.¹⁴ This makes it even more important that we don’t become complacent on the Korean peninsula. We must evolve our training, materiel, and leadership training to keep pace with our adversary to the north. More capability on the peninsula gives leaders more options in a local or regional crisis.

Resourcing Expanded Maneuver on the Korean Peninsula and Region

Improving capabilities and capacity in 2ID buys down risk locally and regionally. It simultaneously deters North Korea while increasing dilemmas for China and Russia. There are many unique opportunities in Korea for continuous experimentation with our ally; Korea is one of the most technologically advanced countries with a strong industrial base. Fielding emerging counter-unmanned aircraft systems (CUAS) technology in Korea allows us to simultaneously experiment in contact and reduce risk to force. CUAS innovation is also an opportunity to collaborate with the ROK. Additionally, the division is currently incorporating over five hundred additional small UASs into the formation as part of broader transformation-in-contact efforts, and it is participating in ROK-led combined UAS small drone operator and pilot courses. Resourcing the division with a fourth AH-64E Apache company and a launched effects platoon provides the flexibility to task-organize into two battalion-level task forces. This combination of manned and unmanned assets greatly increases the division’s flexibility and lethality. These additional assets simultaneously allow for increased tactical experimentation in Korea while increasing available combat power.

The dedicated reconnaissance unit also needs a battalion commander to lead it. In order to maintain positional advantage, the division needs a commander to lead and synchronize its reconnaissance and security efforts.

Korea is a great basing option for the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) and Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft, and the division is well positioned to integrate those capabilities into the region. 2ID could combine the HIMARS with the ROK Army K9 Thunder Battalion to form a combined hybrid division artillery. Additionally, HIMARS have increased speed on the roads in Korea and give the joint force long-range shooters that can flex regionally using air.

The Cross-Domain Reconnaissance Squadron Experiment

The 2ID’s experience with the CDRS is more than a local success story; it is a proof of concept with implications for the entire US Army. Many divisions and brigades are experimenting with multifunctional reconnaissance formations to reestablish reconnaissance and security at echelon. The CDRS demonstrates that a properly resourced and integrated reconnaissance and security force is not a luxury, but a necessity for division-level warfare. The ad hoc nature of 2ID’s solution, while innovative, is a contemporary example of how units throughout history have tailored their formations through task organization to win whatever fight they find themselves in.

In the fast-paced, lethal environment of large-scale combat operations, the ability to find, understand, and act on the enemy faster than they can on us is the fundamental driver of tempo. A division that cannot see for itself, that cannot conduct its own reconnaissance and provide for its own security, cedes the initiative to its adversary. It is forced into a reactive posture, unable to shape the fight and vulnerable to surprise. The spirit of Gavin’s cavalry must be reborn, not as a nostalgic throwback, but as a modern, data-centric force that serves as the ever-vigilant eyes and ears of the division.

Notes

1. James M. Gavin, “Cavalry, and I Don’t Mean Horses,” Armor 63, no. 3 (May-June 1954): 18–22.
2. “Advance Policy Questions for Admiral Samuel J. Paparo, USN, Nominee for Commander, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command,” US Senate, accessed 14 July 2026, https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/download/paparo-apq-responses-020123.
3. Secretary of Defense, memorandum, “Army Transformation and Acquisition Reform,” 30 April 2025, https://media.defense.gov/2025/May/01/2003702281/-1/-1/1/ARMY-TRANSFORMATION-AND-ACQUISITION-REFORM.PDF.
4. Andrew Feickert and Ebrima M’Bai, 2025 Army Transformation Initiative (ATI) Force Structure and Organizational Proposals: Background and Issues for Congress (Congressional Research Service, 21 May 2026), https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R48606.
5. Lee Jung-Joo, “Over Half of Population Resides in Seoul Metropolitan Area,” Korea Herald, 14 February 2024, https://www.koreaherald.com/article/3326707.
6. Abraham Essenmacher, “Service Members Remember ROKS Cheonan,” USFK News Stories, 24 March 2015, https://www.usfk.mil/Media/Newsroom/News/Article/609891/service-members-remember-roks-cheonan/.
7. “North Korea Missiles: US Warships Deployed to Korean Peninsula,” BBC, 9 April 2017, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-39542990.
8. Hyonhee Shin, “South Korea’s Yoon Slams Response to North Drones, Vows to Create Drone Unit,” Reuters, 27 December 2022, https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/south-koreas-yoon-vows-advance-creation-military-drone-unit-2022-12-27/.
9. Kim Tong-Hyung, “North Korea Has Resumed Flying Trash Balloons Toward South Korea, Seoul Says,” PBS Newshour, 10 August 2024, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/north-korea-has-resumed-flying-trash-balloons-toward-south-korea-seoul-says.
10. “Armistice Negotiations,” United Nations Command, accessed 14 July 2026, https://www.unc.mil/History/1951-1953-Armistice-Negotiations/.
11. Seth G. Jones and Riley McCabe, “Russia’s Grinding War in Ukraine,” Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS), 27 January 2026, https://www.csis.org/analysis/russias-grinding-war-ukraine.
12. Matthew Slusher, “Lessons from the Ukraine Conflict: Modern Warfare in the Age of Autonomy, Information, and Resilience,” CSIS, 2 May 2025, https://www.csis.org/analysis/lessons-ukraine-conflict-modern-warfare-age-autonomy-information-and-resilience.
13. Army Doctrine Publication 3-0, Operations (US Government Publishing Office, March 2025), 25, https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/ARN43323-ADP_3-0-000-WEB-1.pdf.
14. Joel Guinto and Jean Mackenzie, “North Korea Confirms It Sent Troops to Fight for Russia in Ukraine War,” BBC, 27 April 2025, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckg25wxvpy2o.

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