Imagine a $30 million drone, capable of seeing for many miles and staying airborne for nearly a day, circling overhead while marines on the ground remain unaware of its presence or potential. This isn’t a hypothetical scenario, it’s a reality plaguing the Marine Corps’ MQ-9A program.
After years of development, Marine Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Squadron Three began sustained flight operations from Kadena Air Base in Okinawa in 2023, marking the first deployment of a Marine-operated MQ-9 in the Indo-Pacific. In 2024, Marine Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Squadron One expanded that presence with a deployment to the Philippines. Together, these units now fly missions in maritime awareness, extended-range targeting, and multi-domain sensing across the region.
This is real progress.
Seven years ago, the Marine Corps had no organic “group 5” (operating above 18,000 feet) unmanned aircraft. Today, MQ-9As are flying from forward bases, tasked and maintained by marines. But capability is not the same as integration. And the deeper question remains: Is the MQ-9A being used to seize the tactical opportunity it was built to create?
The platform continues to evolve. Equipped with payloads like the SkyTower II pod and other classified modifications, it can extend communications, absorb radar signals, and persist over target areas for more than 20 hours. With full-motion video, signals collection, and multi-domain relay capabilities, the MQ-9 is not just a reconnaissance asset — it is built to anchor maritime kill chains in contested environments.
But owning the platform is not the same as being ready to employ it to its full potential. Despite its capabilities, I’ve seen Marine units struggle to integrate it into tactical operations. Command relationships are unclear. Tasking authorities are often removed from planning teams. And sensing is still treated as a background function — assumed to be available rather than deliberately aligned to the maneuvers of marines below.
I’ve seen it in both training and operational environments, where the MQ-9A was present, but planning failed to incorporate it. In one case, despite the aircraft flying from Okinawa in support of a theater-wide objective, tactical requirements went unconsidered — not out of negligence, but because the mechanisms to solicit and integrate those requirements weren’t in place.
The 2023 annual update to Force Design identifies sensing and data integration as core warfighting functions — and calls platforms like the MQ-9A “critical to enabling maritime kill chains at scale.” But that promise remains unfulfilled unless sensing is built into the plan from the outset — not assumed, but deliberately timed, tasked, and tied to maneuver. This is not a problem of hardware. It is a problem of planning. Until the Marine Corps reforms how it thinks about sensing — through structure, mindset, and education — it risks turning its most capable sensor into a ghost above the battlefield: present, but disconnected.
The MQ-9 is airborne, but the integration those early advocates envisioned remains incomplete. The platform has reached the field. It has not yet reached the fight. There is hard work ahead — not to justify the MQ-9, but to employ it with the tactical purpose it was always meant to serve.
The Gap Between Ownership and Employment
When Marine MQ-9As took off from Kadena Air Base in 2024, it marked a major milestone: For the first time, a Marine-operated long endurance drone supported operations in the East China Sea. I was blessed to have the chance to help shape the initial collection requirements. The missions were successful and contributed to theater objectives.
But it was a missed opportunity.
At no point during planning were we asked to match the new and exceptional capability with what maneuvering Marine units needed. The MQ-9 was integrated into the battlespace, but not into subordinate concepts of operations.
This wasn’t a failure of the marines executing the mission. The team standing up MQ-9 operations, especially at the squadron level, performed with professionalism and focus. The issue lay elsewhere: a lack of institutional understanding and experience in collections planning. As a service new to drones of this size, we were still learning how to plan, manage, and link collection to tactical decisions.
One intelligence unit was tasked with the downstream phases of the intelligence cycle — analysis, exploitation, and reporting. They responded quickly and with commitment but hadn’t been manned, trained, or structured for that role. Reporting lagged behind collection, and analysis was often too generic to influence operations.
Misalignment showed in the details. Mission managers sometimes requested camera shots that made little sense to aircrews — requests that were technically accurate, but detached from the operational picture. The aircrew would do their best to adjust, but without a shared understanding of what was driving the requirement, both ends of the system were left improvising. The information flowed, but it lacked clear purpose.
Across the force, many marines at the tactical level were unclear on what the MQ-9 was doing, or that it was even Marine-operated. That wasn’t a failure of the platform or the crews. It was a failure of integration. The aircraft flew, but without a clear link to the units and decisions it was meant to support.
That experience points to a deeper issue: without deliberate linkage to infantry battalion, littoral combat team, and squadron level planning, even our most capable sensors remain overhead — but out of the fight. The MQ-9 is a service-retained asset. But we are not yet employing it as such.
The Intelligence Planning Deficit
What I experienced in Okinawa was a symptom of a larger problem. Even in the Marine Corps’ most elite aviation training pipeline, sensing and collections planning are present, but peripheral. The problem isn’t just how we employ the MQ-9. It’s how we think about it, and that thinking is shaped long before it reaches the fleet.
At the Marine Corps’ aviation weapons and tactics course, every planning evolution emphasized deliberate coordination between maneuver, fires, and airspace. Intelligence collection was present, but rarely central. Priority intelligence requirements were mostly procedural — checked off, not fought for. Everyone knew the scenario and flow. That familiarity shaped priorities. Fires drove planning. Sensing followed.
There were six intelligence students in my class. Each was solely responsible for the collection plan on their assigned mission. On mine, I built it mostly alone — coordinating with the sensing lead, usually an MQ-9 student. There were no breakout groups for intelligence, no structured sessions for integrating sensing into the plan.
Sensor constraints came up, but only on the margins, solved by hallway syncs, sidebars, and quiet check-ins. Most of the team saw collection as a technical add-on, not a tactical input. In other words, intelligence did not drive operations. Operations, which the students mostly knew the details of beforehand, drove operations.
At the time, I didn’t fully grasp what was missing. It wasn’t until I completed the Naval Collection Managers Course that the gap came into focus. There, we treated collections as foundational. Sensor availability, platform constraints, prioritization logic, and dissemination timelines weren’t side notes — they were the plan. Sensing wasn’t a green “yes” box. It was a constraint. It dictated when and how fires and maneuver would occur.
Most intelligence officers, especially at the battalion or squadron level, will never attend that course. Without institutional investment in collection literacy, this underuse isn’t a fluke. It’s a feature.
This isn’t a critique of the course itself. The aviation weapons and tactics course is the service’s aviation center of excellence, and I’m proud to have been there. But even at that level, the planning culture reflects a deeper habit: intelligence collection is acknowledged, but not integrated. It’s assumed.
The Joint Model: What the Marine Corps Can Learn
That pattern wasn’t limited to the schoolhouse. I saw the same assumptions carry into operations until I joined a planning team outside the Marine Corps.
In my current role, I supported an Air Force-led planning cycle at an air operations center. There, collection didn’t support fires. Rather, fires were built around what sensors could see. Sensing wasn’t an afterthought. It was foundational. Strike planning waited for confirmed collection windows. Fires and airspace were shaped by what the platform could see, when it could be on station, and how long processing would take. Intelligence wasn’t something to accommodate. It was something to plan around.
I’ve seen glimpses of that mindset within marine aviation, but almost always in joint missions. In one maritime strike I supported with Marine and Navy assets, collection wasn’t a supporting effort — it was the constraint. Everything hinged on a single question: When would our sensor detect the target? Radar coverage, line-of-sight, and dwell time dictated when to fire, how to maneuver, and whether the strike was viable at all. Intelligence wasn’t feeding the plan. It was shaping its limits.
That kind of thinking is more fully realized in the special operations community. U.S. Special Operations Command has spent nearly two decades embedding the MQ-9 into its force structure. Their versions are modified, funded, and trained with one purpose: to support small unit, time sensitive operations. That clarity enables something the Marine Corps struggles to achieve: collection planned alongside the mission, not appended to it.
In 2016, MQ-9s provided danger close strike support during urban fighting in Libya, with special operations forces calling in fires from MQ-9As positioned to see through urban gaps. More recently, special operations aviators have demonstrated the ability to control multiple MQ-9s at once, using them as airborne hubs for communications, intelligence gathering, and even psychological operations. These aren’t just technical achievements. They reflect a mindset: Plan the mission around what the platform can do, not what’s left over once airspace and fires are built.
The Marine Corps doesn’t need to mirror special operations, but it would benefit from their clarity. Their MQ-9s are employed by people who understand what sensing delivers, and plan like it matters.
What Change Looks Like
The MQ-9 is flying. But presence is not integration. A sensor overhead is not the same as a sensor employed. Unless collection is planned for, prioritized, and tied to decision-making, it risks becoming just noise. To fully realize the integration opportunity before the service, the Marine Corps should take six concrete steps.
Prioritize Intelligence Planning Across the Education Continuum
Collection planning shouldn’t remain confined to niche schoolhouses. Expanding collection education across the continuum is an opportunity to build lasting integration habits from day one. The fundamentals of intelligence tasking, prioritization, and platform employment should be taught from the ground up: at The Basic School, in occupational pipelines, at Expeditionary Warfare School, and at the Marine Corps’ aviation weapons and tactics course.
Having completed both that course and the Naval Collections Managers Course, I saw the contrast. Fires and logistics are treated as core planning skills, rehearsed and stress-tested. Sensing is often abstracted or siloed. That must change. Every planner, aviation or ground, should be able to build a collection plan, model platform constraints, and draft a request for information. If fires are foundational, sensing should be too.
Treat Sensing as a Constraint, Not a Convenience
Sensing isn’t a background function — it’s a pacing factor. If a platform can’t reach station on time, the concept should adapt — not the other way around. In collections training, we treated timelines and processing limits as planning drivers. That mindset must spread. Every planning session is an opportunity to frame sensing as a driver — not a dependency.
Align Tasking Authority with Planning Echelons
There’s a disconnect between who owns the MQ-9 and who plans with it. Tasking authority sits at higher levels, while detailed planning happens below at division, wing, or their subordinates. Either that authority must move closer to planners, or mechanisms must ensure they can influence upstream decisions. Assumptions aren’t enough. Sensing must be explicitly linked to maneuver.
Train for Denial, Not Assumptions
Exercises should reflect the friction of real-world sensing — contested airspace, weather, and processing delays. Too often, intelligence appears as a green “yes” box. That builds bad habits. Marines must train under constrained or denied conditions to internalize the need for timing, redundancy, and prioritization.
Build Permanent, Cross-Functional Intelligence Teams
Sensing shouldn’t hinge on a single collections officer. At the aviation weapons and tactics course, integrated fires teams drove tempo and accountability. Intelligence needs the same structure. Each wing and division should build a permanent cross-functional sensing team — collections, targeting, and imagery — durable enough to retain memory and lead integration at scale.
These aren’t dramatic reforms. They’re grounded in doctrine, already practiced across the joint force, and fully within the Marine Corps’ grasp. Some will argue the MQ-9 is performing well enough to validate the current approach — and yes, these aircraft are flying missions and logging hours. But again: presence is not integration. A sensor becomes decisive only when it is tasked, timed, and fought for.
Others may argue the Marine Corps can’t replicate the structure of the Air Force or special operations — and they’re right. The goal isn’t to mimic structure, but to adopt the mindset that sensing is a critical capability, not a luxury. It must be planned for, defended, and briefed with the same seriousness as fires and maneuver.
Here’s what that mindset looks like in action:
A team builds its course of action around sensor availability, dissemination delays, and the likelihood of weather or jamming. The collection plan is briefed at the rehearsal of concept drill — next to fires — and validated by a designated sensing lead. The MQ-9 they request arrives not as a bonus, but as a timed enabler — delivering exactly what’s needed at the decisive moment. No scrambling. Just deliberate sensing, incorporated from the outset.
That’s not fantasy. It’s doctrine waiting to be practiced and an opportunity to lead by example in the next fight. And in that fight, the side that sees first will shoot first. The Marine Corps must be ready to compete for that advantage.
Sensing Is a Fight, Not a Feature
Acquiring the MQ-9 was a smart, future-oriented decision. In the Indo-Pacific, defined by distance, denial, and delay, few capabilities offer more value. It was a deliberate investment in the Marine Corps’ ability to stay relevant and decisive in the next fight.
That investment is already paying off. Aircrews are flying from forward locations. Squadrons are growing. The platform is supporting real missions. The structure is forming.
But the final step — the one that turns presence into advantage — remains unfinished.
Presence isn’t integration. Effectiveness doesn’t come from orbit. It comes from timing, prioritization, and tactical purpose — baked into planning from the start.
Real integration means planners who understand sensor constraints, tasking timelines, and contested environments. It means shifting the mindset — from assuming sensors to fighting for them, from availability to access, from presence to precision.
This doesn’t require sweeping reform. It requires structure, repetition, and command attention — and recognizing that full integration is a leadership opportunity, not just a technical fix.
In a theater shaped by terrain, weather, jamming, and delay the side that sees first still shoots first. And the sensor won’t see unless the plan tells it what to look for.
Lorenz Vargas is a Marine Corps officer and the lead intelligence officer for integrating collections, targeting, and geospatial analysis operations at 1st Marine Aircraft Wing G-2 in Camp Foster, Okinawa. He is a graduate of the Marine Corps Intelligence Weapons and Tactics Instructor Course, the Naval Collections Managers Course, and Space 200. When not studying kill chains, he writes about sensing, decision-making, and what it means to lead in a fog-bound era at his blog, A Pattern of Life.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the United States Marine Corps, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.
Image: U.S. Marine Corps photo by Chief Warrant Officer 2 Akeel Austin
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