Long Range Reconnaissance Patrols, or LRRPs (pronounced "lurp"), are special small four to eight-man teams employed on highly dangerous special reconnaissance missions deep into enemy territory.
Early in the Vietnam War long range reconnaissance patrols. Click here for the three types of reconnaissance patrols. Recon patrols were performed by a limited number of infantry battalion Recon Platoons. Later LRRP units were provisional platoon-sized units. By 1967, formal LRRP companies were organized, some having two platoons, each with eight six-man patrols. Training was notoriously rigorous. Similar missions, although more likely to be clandestine, deeper penetrating, and more like Special reconnaissance, were run in Vietnam by the Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV) Studies and Observation Group (SOG). Within the U.S. Marine Corps, these missions were typically assigned to Marine 1st Recon Battalion, especially Force Recon, units assigned to corps-level (i.e., Marine Expeditionary Force (MEF)) level, as opposed to the Battalion Recon units answering to battalion commanders. The LRRP operated on reconnaissance and combat patrols, either obtaining highly vital intelligence, or performing highly dangerous raids and ambushes. The tactical employment of LRRPs was later evaluated to be generally used far too dangerously by strategic commanders, who were pleased by the extraordinary kill ratios for LRRPs teams (sometimes reported as high as 300-400 enemy troops for every LRRP killed). Their use was reconsidered and restructured into modern day Long Range Surveillance (LRS) units.
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