Times are changing in the Marine Corps.
Every Marine a rifleman tactician:
Under Berger’s vision, grunts will be expected to fight in small units that will be highly mobile and independent, and often dispersed far from headquarters. The new course is aimed at giving rookie Marines the tactical and cognitive skills to act on their own, and takes a “fundamentally different approach” than its eight-week predecessor, the Corps said.
“To be more dispersed and more precise, we need privates now that can operate by themselves and don’t have to be told and shown where to go all the time,” said Lt. Col. Walker Koury, the training battalion’s commander.
This sounds a lot like my advocacy in the USNI Blog for Marine training to focus on tactical skills:
The U.S. Marine Corps proudly says every Marine is a rifleman. But what happens if even enemy insurgents and militia fighters are just as accurate? New technologies are hastening that day of reckoning. Marines must cope by developing new training priorities, technology, and tactics to maintain their competitive advantage.
My proposal assumes that rifle marksmanship is less important as precision rifles enter the inventory. So in part my assumption is not fact. Although this improved rifle sight is a concurrent beginning of that development:
The Marine Corps has started fielding a new rifle optic designed to adjust for close and long-range targets for more precise shooting.
Marine Corps Systems Command's Program Manager for Infantry Weapons began fielding the Squad Common Optic, or SCO, in January for the M4 and M4A1 carbines and the M27 Infantry Automatic Rifle, according to a Feb. 18 announcement.
It is just a better sight. But it is setting the trend for the technology shift to technological marksmanship.
Americans will field this first. But enemies will follow. Then we will really need those tacticians.
UPDATE: This is good:
Marine Corps marksmanship officials this week rolled out the final version of a new, more realistic rifle qualification course that will force Marines to put lethal hits on stationary and moving targets the same as they would in combat.
And it seems like it flows into training to gain tactical positions to take the shot even when the technology provides the accuracy.
