Marine Corps Pilot Program Expands Infantry Skills.

• Author: Gourley, Scott R.

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif.--The Marine Corps is conducting a series of pilot training programs designed to enhance the capabilities of infantry elements.

The new course reflects Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger's planning guidance contained in recent publications, including "Force Design 2030," in which he concurred with findings that "current entry level and advanced infantry training programs and policies will not meet future demands of our infantry elements."

The first of the new pilot programs concluded in late April at the School of Infantry-West, at Camp Pendleton, California.

"The impetus behind the Infantry Marine Course came from guidance from... Gen. Berger looking at systemic changes within the Marine Corps based on future age operating concepts, and looking at both the future threat forces we face and the environments in which we are going to face them," Col. Coby Moran, commanding officer, School of Infantry-West, told National Defense during one of the final days of the training.

Those changes are directed toward producing a Marine Corps that is better optimized to fight, win and survive in those future operating environments against those peer or near peer threats. And that relates down to the infantry, where Gen. Berger's specific guidance was to enhance our training in infantry; enhance their capability; and enhance their capacity to win in those fights.

Based on that guidance, the Marine Corps set out to restructure the Infantry Marine Course, expanding the program of instruction from eight-and-a-half to 14 weeks.

New or enhanced training areas include: operation, maintenance and employment of all company weapons; management of visual, electromagnetic and administrative signatures; conducting fire and maneuver with company weapons both day and night; communicating using HF, VHF and UHF radios; performing combat casualty care in a dynamic environment; aquatic confidence; and the ability to operate based on a task, mission and commander's intent from an operations order.

Moran and others were quick to emphasize that the new course reflects far more than the simple addition of classes.

"Our current model is an industrial model," said Gunner Chief Warrant Officer 3 A.J. Pasciuti, infantry weapons officer for the Infantry Training Battalion at the School of Infantry-West. "We have had one instructor and 300 students. But a lot of the skill sets required to be an infantry Marine are tactile skills. And we discovered that...