30 Commando Information Exploitation Group

It achieved major unit status in 2000, and is now a multifunctional "information regiment" of some 465 personnel, though during operations this figure increases significantly as additional units are taken under command.

The unit is designed to achieve information superiority within assigned battlespace by all available means, and contribute to component and joint information activity in order to enable 3 Commando Brigade operations.

Much of its capability lies in its four organic squadrons:

• Surveillance and Reconnaissance Squadron (SR Sqn) personnel comprise the bulk of the Brigade Reconnaissance Force. This highly trained unit is made up of reconnaissance specialists tasked with operating ahead of the main brigade force.
• Y Squadron comprises electronic warfare specialists, able to gain intelligence on the enemy and increase situational awareness by intercepting enemy communications systems.
• Communications Squadron operates and maintains the wide variety of communications systems and media available to the Commander, and provides personnel to set up and run the Brigade Headquarters when deployed.
• Logistics Squadron role is to MOVE, SUSTAIN and PROTECT the Brigade and 30 Commando Headquarters. 

Organic sub units provide specialist functions, such as air defence for the Brigade Headquarters, and the unit also tasks and coordinates non-organic assets, such as aerial reconnaissance platforms, to achieve its effect.

30 Commando fuses and links Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance (ISTAR) to provide broad understanding of an operational environment and the enemy.  This is combined with Information Operations, including Electronic Warfare and Psychological Operations to achieve effect on the minds of target audiences.  In addition, the Unit maintains it’s traditional enabling role; providing communications, IT and Life Support to the Brigade HQ.

Winning the information battle and achieving information superiority requires the prosecution of three key effects with greater tempo and accuracy than the adversary:

• Obtain information (FIND).
• Derive intelligence from it (UNDERSTAND).
• Life support, protection of communications and information systems and IT (ENABLE).

30 Commando ensures that the Brigade Commander has superior situational awareness, allowing him to make quicker, more accurate decisions and to target his adversary's key capabilities. In order to carry out its role in sustaining and protecting Brigade Headquarters, it has forces transferred to it from other parts of the Brigade. This process of tasking, fusing and coordinating a number of diverse capabilities to achieve a single aim is central to the way it does its business and is carried out in the Commando Headquarters, which is composed of a number of functional cells dealing with specialist capabilities, conjoined to Brigade Headquarters.

The Unit has developed through successive operational trial and validation. Operations in Iraq and repeatedly in Afghanistan have driven this evolution. It has become a model which Joint and Army Headquarters have successfully emulated. The evolution, of course, continues.