thedrifter
07-23-07, 05:37 AM
Now Mandatory For Marines To Master Martial Arts
Strategy Page
July 23, 2007: The U.S. Marine Corps now requires all its troops qualify for the lowest level belt (tan) of its six year old martial arts program. That goal was to have been achieved three years ago, but proved more difficult than anticipated.
The marine martial arts effort is a program of well, street fighting. The Martial Arts Training Program is taught like most other martial arts, allowing for degrees of proficiency, and colored belts to indicate how far a marine has gone from tan (the lowest level) to grey, green, brown and black (the highest.) The marine program is notable for elements that accurately represent actual combat conditions. For example, before doing the actual combat fighting, trainers wear the marines out with vigorous physical exercise. In combat you are likely to encounter the enemy face to face only after a lot of running around. Another realism element is the random introduction into the training area of items that could be used as weapons (a knife, pipe, piece of lumber). These realism touches make the Marine Corps Martial Arts Training Program popular and effective.
The fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan has reinforced the importance of this program. So all marine infantry must achieve the green belt by the end of 2008. All combat support marines must get the grey belt by early 2009. The first (tan) belt only requires about 28 hours of training, but the others need more (from 47 to 72 hours for each level). And, you have to be in very good shape to even get started on the tan belt. But the skills obtained have proved to be lifesavers, especially in raids and search operations, where a nearby civilian often turns into an armed hostile on very short notice.
Ellie
thedrifter
07-23-07, 06:46 AM
Martial arts mandate
Tan belts for every Marine required by end of this year
By John Hoellwarth - jhoellwarth@militarytimes.com
Posted : July 30, 2007
With the Marine Corps Martial Arts Program nearly seven years old, it’s not often you see a Marine who still holds up his cammie bottoms with a web belt.
But they’re out there, according to Corps officials, and the commandant signed a Corps-wide message July 16 to change that by the end of the year.
Tan belt qualification — the first in a training sequence that progresses through gray, green, brown and black belt certification — will be required for every active-duty and Reserve Marine by year’s end, according to AlMar 34/07.
Commandant Gen. James Conway’s message also requires all infantrymen to earn green belts, and everyone in “combat arms” fields such as artillery, tanks and assault amphibian vehicles to reach gray belt certification by the end of 2008.
Joe Shusko, a retired lieutenant colonel and director of the Corps’ Martial Arts Center for Excellence, said he considers aviators “combat arms” under the commandant’s guidance. When asked whether this applies to members of the Individual Ready Reserve, Shusto said he read the guidance to mean “all Marines, both active and Reserve.”
A spokesman for Marine Corps Mobilization Command in Kansas City, Mo., which oversees the IRR, was unable by press time to say whether the command intended to train inactive reservists to the appropriate MCMAP level or how the command might do so.
Shusko said everyone who has earned an eagle, globe and anchor should get MCMAP training under the commandant’s intent. IRR Marines can get activated for the sole purpose of learning martial arts.
“We have the capability to send training teams all around the country and the world for our smaller bases and stations,” he said. “All they have to do is contact the MACE here, and we’ll build it into our schedule.”
With approximately 10,000 instructors and 1,200 instructor-trainers certifying Marines in martial arts throughout the Corps, Shusko estimates that 150,000 leathernecks are wearing at least a tan belt with their combat utility uniform.
“A lot of the infantry are trained past tan belt,” Shusko said. “There are organizations that have a lot of gray and green and brown belts.”
That leaves about 30,000 active-duty Marines and an unknown number of reservists who don’t yet have a tan belt.
Of these, chances are that most if not all are staff noncommissioned officers and senior officers. That’s because the Corps has required tan belt certification of all recruits in boot camp and new lieutenants at The Basic School only since late 2001, Shusko said.
Changing goals
MCMAP’s introduction into entry-level training was announced in an October 2001 MarAdmin outlining then-Commandant Gen. James Jones’ intent for the program.
That message set an “immediate goal” of training all Marines to tan belt certification by the end of fiscal 2003, and a “long-term goal” of training infantrymen to brown belt, and combat arms Marines to green belt, by the end of fiscal 2004. Neither goal was met.
It is unclear what, if anything, former Commandant Gen. Mike Hagee did to meet Jones’ goal during his tenure from January 2003 to November 2006. There were no AlMars or MarAdmins released about the program under Hagee, according to the message database on the Corps’ Web site, www.usmc.mil. Attempts to contact Hagee for comment were unsuccessful.
Conway’s revised MCMAP plan sets a deadline at the end of this year for tan belt certification, instead of another “goal” like the one Jones set forth. The plan also sets a more realistic expectation for infantry and combat arms Marines, requiring each to attain a qualification one step lower than Jones envisioned in 2001.
Conway’s re-emphasis of MCMAP coincides with a larger Corps-wide push to ensure Marines make ethical decisions on and off the battlefield in the wake of three widely reported incidents since 2004 in which Marines were accused of killing unarmed civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In a May 17 letter to his generals, commanding officers and officers in charge, Conway instructed Training and Education Command in Quantico, Va., to “re-invigorate the ethical component of MCMAP” to ensure the program “remains the synergy of mental, character and physical disciplines it was intended to be.”
Conway, in his July 16 message, said the training is “integral to the development and sustainment of our warrior ethos.”
“It continues to be updated based on lessons learned to better prepare Marines for the challenges of current and future battlefields,” Conway wrote. “It is a key asset in developing both warfighting skills and character that all commanders should be utilizing to its fullest potential.”
Shusko called the character element of MCMAP training the program’s “bedrock.”
He said teaching someone how to fight without also teaching them how to wield that power responsibly “is like taking one leg out of a three-legged stool.”
“If we go out to do a couple techniques, as soon as they’re done, their bodies are worn out but their minds are still fresh,” he said. “So then let’s talk about what we just did. You can go sneak up and choke the life out of someone. Now, let’s tie it into being a quality citizen. If you do the character thing right, everything else will follow and [MCMAP] will continue to be the success that it has been over the last few years.”
Ellie