Commandant wants to treat Marines ‘Like Human Beings Instead of Inventory’
The Commandant of the Marine Corps wants to retain more Marines after their first enlistment. He also wants to recruit older, more experienced troops.
The Marine Corps is poised to radically change how and who it recruits after the commandant released his new Talent Management Plan on Wednesday.
According to the plan, the service must become an older, more agile and talent-driven force with more emphasis on retaining people instead of recruiting replacements.
Gen. David Berger, the Corps’ top leader, said that the manpower system the branch has used for the last 35 years isn’t working anymore.
“It was built on a set of conditions that were existing in the ’80s and ’70s. They don’t exist today,” he told reporters Tuesday.
The report announcing the new plan noted that the service currently holds onto a meager 25% of Marines after their first tour. A staggering 75%, or about 36,000 Marines per year, do not reenlist, and the service must recruit replacements.
“We can’t replace talent like that going forward,” Berger said.
He wants to pivot to recruiting more mature and experienced people who bring a greater ability to handle a variety of skills and tasks.
“I think the machine gunner who’s also a … medic also has to be able to talk to MQ-9 UAVs and bring in orders, and understand the satellite connection is required to do that,” Berger said.
I’m sure the trained medic and air traffic controller with portable satellite comms experience will jump at the opportunity to be an E-1 0331.
The planned changes to recruiting, and the commandant’s examples of multitasking Marines, come directly from the other major strategy shift for the branch — Force Design 2030.
It calls for a redesigned infantry battalion that would be more flexible and capable of conducting operations such as island-hopping or running advanced base operations with little or no support.
“Our assumption is they’re going to have to be more mature than the four-year sergeant that we have today,” Berger said.
Bringing that maturity and talent into the Corps, however, will mean putting more focus on retention and targeting recruitment at different groups — and allowing people to enter the service in new ways.
“We should have an open door for exceptionally talented Americans who wish to join the Marine Corps, allowing them to laterally enter at a rank appropriate to their education, experience, and ability,” according to the plan.
That ought to go over real well in the very rank and time in service oriented Marine Corps. More at the source.
Category: Big Pentagon, Marines
The new talent program will be implemented once all the administrative discharges for not receiving the vaccine are complete.
YAY!! Openings and OPPORTINITIES!!!
Get rid of those stuffy, manning slot blocking bitches. /s
(◔_◔)
Well, I’m certainly more mature, experienced and decidedly talented or something, and I could use the extra cash. Where do I sign up?
They can’t afford you, Ex.
And I had such hopes….. ;(
(Sniffle….)
I see a parallel here.
Before the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church was bursting with priests. Then the Catholic Church “got woke” and vocations have been tanking ever since.
Men don’t (or at least did not) join the priesthood, or the Marine Corps, for wussified wokeness, and if they find it there, they leave as soon as they can. That is what I did. I studied to be a Catholic priest, but was completely disgusted at what I saw at the two seminaries I attended. I left.
I suspect a lot of young Marines are leaving the Corps for similar reasons.
P.S. Let’s go Brandon!
Concur. My father left seminary for such reasons (for which I’m thankful, of course).
Gratias ago tibi, quia opera tua.
See what I did there?
Too bad the seminaries did not stick with what Vatican II **really** said. This “Spirit of V2” [“wokeness”] really micturates me.
=====
P: Sancti Ioannis Browing vobiscum
S: et cum spiritu eius
P: Ite missa est.
S: Sancti Ioannis Browning gracias.
And everyone said amen! Let us all now turn to the book or Revelation, chapter 19, verse 11…
Where was he when Hack Stone was standing on the MCCES grinder at 05:30 one cold January morning in 1991 for a Battalion formation that started at 08:00?
Did he forget that the Navy provides the Medics (Corpsmen) for the FMF?
Every Marine is a rifleman, so it seems like there are a bunch of multi-taskers already.
“We should have an open door for exceptionally talented Americans who wish to join the Marine Corps, allowing them to laterally enter at a rank appropriate to their education, experience, and ability,” according to the plan.”
That sounds dumb. They need to enter through TBS or through MCRD, to get the basic Marine.
For Air Force six-year enlistees, they enlist and go through basic as an E-1 (or E-2 if they were qualified, such as college credits) and are then promoted to E-3 20 weeks following basic training graduation, or when they graduate technical school (job training), whichever occurs first.
Why not do something similar for Marines.
Any one else remember the walking clusterf##k of a Marine who was Commandant and completed TBS by correspondence if at all five years after interservice transferring from the Navy
I can’t say I’m impressed by this initiative, but I’ll reserve judgment.
From what I understand, the Corps has a long history of successfully reinventing itself. Even if the Marines’ senior leadership is… well, like most of the senior leadership in today’s DOD… the rank and file have earned the benefit of the doubt and I am confident they’ll polish this turd until it shines.
“Marine Corps!” “No, Soft Corps.”
I guess I need to wake up and smell whatever it is that the woke smell.
I’m not sure you can believe anything the Mail says.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10159949/Royal-Marines-commandos-force-troops-humiliating-surrender-training-exercise.html
Trounced on home turf: British Royal Marine commandos force US Marines into humiliating surrender halfway through five-day war training exercise in Mojave desert
British forces took part in a five-day mock battle at the US Marine Corps’ Twentynine Palms base in California
Combatants used training ammunition along with hi-tech simulators for heavier firepower like artillery
Seeing no opportunity for victory, American combatants asked for the exercise to be ‘reset’ halfway through
Left/libtards are out to make it the Vaseline Corps.
This is great, just like when the Army got rid of “be all you can be” and enlistments plunged.
As well as the “kinder and gentler” horse shit of the G. H. W. Bush years followed by political correctness being made policy during the Clinton Curse.
This wasn’t “sensitive” enough for the Consideration of Others (COO) era.
I still love this commercial!
Much better than that “Army of One” crap.
Stephen Decatur weeps.
Chesty Puller and Dan Daly weep
With all do respect to the other services which I have nothing but respect for the Marine Corps has always been markedly different than the others. Maybe it’s the reverence to our history and traditions, possibly our esprit de corps and brotherhood run a little deeper I don’t know for sure, but what I do know is that I don’t know many Marines that joined to learn a trade or for college money. Most of us dumbasses joined specifically to be Marines, we knew we were generally going to be treated way shittier than the other services we knew our equipment would be a generation or more behind the Army. The Marines always resisted the political policies of the day and tried to keep it old school. That’s what made Marines special and and why we wanted to be Marines. There was always a special pride now it looks like the Marine Corps may no longer exist and if so it might as well disband and at least keep it’s place in history. A woke Marine Corps is no longer the Marine Corps.
Hell, now, the little kid who grew up with his family’s stories about World War II and wanted to be a Marine because of them weeps.
No just not a keyboard pussy
You guys are a cult and we’re damn glad of it.
Obviously all the FOGs on here are going to be harrumphing and saying “that’s not how they did it in my day!” (And I don’t exempt myself from that as I am definitely a FOG 😉 )
However, I think all of the services are going to have to start re-looking at a lot of their assumptions and the way they have been doing things that started in WWII and continued throughout the Cold War.
It’s worth pointing out that the WWII style model of:
– Recruit off the street
– Send recruit to a centralized boot camp/Basic training facility
– Send to a centralized technical school and then
– Send to fleet or initial assignment
Really only started around WWII or perhaps a little bit before that. Prior to that, it wasn’t uncommon for both the Army and Navy to simply sign people on, who were then immediately assigned to a unit and expected to learn their job from their comrades through what we would now call OJT – On the Job Training.
I’m pretty sure the “assembly line” model that most of us grew up with in the post-WWII years was really designed for the conditions of WWII where we had both (a) a HUGE population of new recruits who needed to be trained, indoctrinated and equipped en masse and (b) the luxury of a big ocean on either side of us to protect us from the bad guys while we trained up our force.
Given that, it’s not outrageous to start asking whether the conditions that necessitated the centralized, assembly-line method are still present today, and whether they offer more benefit than detriment.
Instead of being focused on the PROCESS, i.e. this is the way they did it “back in my day” and therefore it’s the only way, we should start by asking: What does this force need to do, and how do we best put together a force that can do what we need it to do?
During the Hundred Years War, the British crown ordered every military-aged male to participate in community-based archery drills every Sunday after church. Adherence was imperfect, but it met the need for proficient longbowmen during the campaigns in France.
While I would love to see something like this with firearms in the US, I’m not so naive as to think it could happen – but I’ll agree that a creative approach will have a better impact than just digging in our heels.
Stuff like that happened a lot more recently than the 14th century, right here in the US.
There was a big push for what they called UMT, or Universal Military Training in the early 20th century and again during the inter-war years after WW1 (I think at least part of this was driven by the less-than-stellar performance of some of the raw recruits in WW1.)
About 11 years ago my wife and I were in an antique store in Albuquerque. We saw a large framed photograph of a military company – you know the kind where everybody is standing together on bleachers and the commander and 1SG are there, all in their dress uniforms with the company guidon, etc.
But this looked odd, as the uniforms didn’t look like US Army uniforms of the period (I want to say it was 1920’s but it might have been pre-WW1.)
Anyway, we looked into it further and it was one of these “civilian-military camps” that the local Army installation (Fort Logan in Denver, CO) put on every summer. It was not mandatory but young men were “highly encouraged” to attend. They would learn typical military subjects like close-order-drill, physical fitness training and some very basic weapons training with rifles.
I believe the program was funded by the War Department (predecessor to the Defense Dept) but it was never very well funded and eventually it just got scrapped, probably some time in the late 1920s.
At that time, my wife actually worked at Fort Logan (which is now a state Beahavioral Health center) so we bought the picture and donated it to the Fort Logan Historical Society and Museum.
Anyway, my point being that this sort of thing has been proposed at various times throughout our own history, too. I think the modern day equivalent would be Junior ROTC (Though IIRC these were all military aged males, over 18 years old.)
Fair point. A more poignant example in regards to modern America would be the presidential fitness program (I cannot recall the official title) spearheaded by Kennedy.
It didn’t involve weapons, so a modern iteration would bypass that albatross.
The Gulf War proved that training model was a catastrophe. Some units couldn’t tie their boots much less table VIII.
I was in the interesting position of serving in the National Guard both before and after the GW. I served in the CO Guard from 1983 – 86 and again from 1999 – 2003. I was on active duty during the GW (though not deployed there, I was at Fort Lewis, WA.)
The difference between the pre-GW NG and post GW NG was like night and day.
Sad to say, but a lot of the Active Duty (AD) complaints about the NG before the GW were spot on. I lost track of the number of times I saw ‘pencil whipped’ PT scores or weapons qualifications, “field excercises” that were more like keggers, overweight/non PT passing NCOs and Officers retained because of the “good ol’ boy” system, grooming standards and customs and courtesies ignored, etc.
After the GW it was a completely different ballgame. Schools were all now pretty much up to Army standards. PT and weapons quals were overseen by observers or graders from different units so that units could not fudge their own qualifications. Soldiers who couldn’t pass PT or show up for drill were bounced out with no mercy. They weren’t completely up to AD standards, but they were a far cry from the pre GW days.
I remember reading and seeing all that in the news. Including reservists who just could not report (and were excused) because they could not find child care. And a television piece from Saudi Arabia where a reporter was interviewing a group of “soldiers” who were complaining about losing their separate rations allowance. I seem to remember reading later that the government, in its infinite wisdom, gave in and paid the separate rations allowance for troops in Saudi. I do hope my memory is faulty.
All in all, the preparedness of our military, reserve and active, did not seem to measure up.
Yeah.
250lb fat NCO E-8 type (just re-classed IN after a few weeks – plus about seven other MOS as well) gets the 300 PT. Showed up with a nice early beard in uniform as well.
As he suits up once a month.
The ADR and ADNG are a bit better, but not by much.
Seen it.
NG IN and AD IN are two different ballgames.
Get the ouliers, and they are there.
But overall, Yeah. No.
ARG
It wasn’t the training model, it was the unit training. Basic training and AIT are only meant to provide the minimum basic individual skills needed. The unit to which the individuals are assigned is responsible for providing more advanced individual training and integrating them into their squad/platoon/company as a functional and competent soldier.
Fortunately for us there was still some of that “Cold War mentality” left.
I think you are onto something accurate, some of us old guys who work in tech understand that some of our best minds are not people who will ever be motivated to run 10 miles and get fit…but they are amazing at programming and security with respect to a multitude of software and hardware applications…
In the 70s we’d have called these guys “potato boys” for their bodies resemblance to one of my favorite starches…
The real question is do we need a hacker/security programmer to be able to run a five mile course with a combat load? Or do we need him or her to be able to sit at a keyboard for 30 hours without distraction while drinking monster energy drinks and eating fritos as they are solving an intrusion?
Sure it would be great if those guys were motivated to fit into a standard military box and get fit, strong, and healthy, but as you suggest is that what is required for that job in reality or just in some command FOGs reverence for tradition?
Somebody has to say it.
Not to mention: