thedrifter
09-29-07, 11:25 AM
SOI adds 7 days, weapons skill to training
By Kimberly Johnson - Staff writer
Posted : Saturday Sep 29, 2007 8:29:29 EDT
Brand-new Marines fresh out of boot camp have a little bit more to look forward to as they head down the road to becoming a rifleman. Grunt school is about to get longer.
The Corps is making big changes across the board in training for all its ranks, from reworking curriculum at its two recruit depots to stepping up warrior ethics training at all levels. Now, the Corps is adding seven full days to both the Marine Combat Training and Infantry Training Battalion at the two Schools of Infantry.
Once it’s done, SOI grads will walk out the door with beefed-up weapons and tactics training to better prepare them for Iraq — or whatever comes next.
According to SOI briefing slides, MCT currently lasts 22 days, and graduates about 14,000 students annually who head out to the fleet to be non-infantry Marines. ITB currently stretches 52 days and graduates about 4,300 infantry Marines per year. Starting in October at School of Infantry-East, MCT will expand to 29 days, while ITB will end at 59 days. SOI-West will follow suit in January.
Adding a week to both pipelines is meant to put training in its proper place, said one top training official.
“What that does is it goes back to the Marine ethos, ‘Every Marine a rifleman,’” said Lt. Col. Kristi VanGorder, section head for training programs at Marine Corps Training and Education Command in Quantico, Va.
Infantry and non-infantry Marines alike at SOI will soon have more instruction time on machine guns, munitions, combat conditioning, values-based training and combat stress management, military operations on urban terrain, and combat medicine.
In addition, MCT students will have more combat marksmanship and communications training, while ITB students will get more time learning about their service rifles, optics and night-vision devices.
Previously, for example, squad automatic weapon training was conducted in boot camp. Under the new SOI structure, ITB students will have 20 hours of instruction and MCT students 12 hours, VanGorder said.
Both ITB and MCT will see increases to their skills retention exercises — the former increasing by 24 hours and the latter by 48 hours.
Maximize and standardize
Prompting the course overhaul was a need to maximize and standardize instruction. Some rifleman skills had migrated down to the recruit depot, VanGorder explained.
“They really didn’t belong, but that was the only place that we had where we could put them because of the time allotted in both of the schedules,” she said.
The changes will emphasize the distinctions between recruit training and SOI, VanGorder said.
“Part of the changes to the Schools of Infantry were to re-emphasize that difference because traditionally what had happened over time was that more and more skills were lumped onto the School of Infantry with no additional time to train them,” she said. “We realized that we were really training to time instead of training to standard.”
The new curriculum amounts to seven more days.
“We took a good hard look at what we were adding. Seven days is a long time when you’re putting in 12-14 hour days,” she said.
However, the new course structure does not come cheap. The changes will cost about $2 million, largely in one-time, upfront costs, VanGorder said. The money will pay for items such as additional rifles and night-vision goggles, as well as classroom equipment.
“Now that you have a bunch more folks going through, or you’re changing the way you do business, you need different gear,” she said.
The SOI extension won’t have an impact on deployments, VanGorder said. “What it means is the receiving unit will receive their Marines seven days later than they would have originally.” In return, those operational units will gain a Marine with more skills related to Iraq and Afghanistan. “So, when the battalion commander receives that individual, he doesn’t have to train them as much as perhaps he had to before.”
Boot camp restructuring
The overhaul follows a recently announced restructuring of boot camp, VanGorder said, in which the Crucible was moved back to the end of training to make it more of a capstone event. Officials have also added more values-based training.
But the SOI changes won’t be felt simultaneously throughout the Corps, since SOI won’t be lengthened until the recruits have gone through the new boot camp schedule.
For example, changes at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, S.C., began in May. Those graduates will be the first to go through enhanced SOI-East in October, VanGorder said.
Officials at MCRD San Diego, however, won’t restructure training until October, which will push back SOI-West enhancements to January 2008, she said.
Simultaneous with the SOI course changes, TECom is adding instructors to SOI and the recruit depots. Corps officials hope that as the number of teachers grows, so will the level of personalized instruction.
“Our hope is that our student-to-instructor ratio will get even better than it is right now; that it will drop,” VanGorder said.
Ratio goals will vary according to the class, she said. An academic class could have 200 students with one teacher, while live-fire exercises could be 15-to-1 or 12-to-1, she added.
Growing the Corps’ end strength to 202,000 Marines by 2011 will require 200 additional instructors, she said. “We’ve got to have more instructors at all of those places in order to handle that throughput.”
The forthcoming crush of new Marines has sparked the creation of four new training companies for the SOI battalions — one for each MCT and ITB battalion on both coasts, VanGorder said. While training facilities have enough space for billeting, they will be turning to modular classrooms to accommodate classes.
Ellie
By Kimberly Johnson - Staff writer
Posted : Saturday Sep 29, 2007 8:29:29 EDT
Brand-new Marines fresh out of boot camp have a little bit more to look forward to as they head down the road to becoming a rifleman. Grunt school is about to get longer.
The Corps is making big changes across the board in training for all its ranks, from reworking curriculum at its two recruit depots to stepping up warrior ethics training at all levels. Now, the Corps is adding seven full days to both the Marine Combat Training and Infantry Training Battalion at the two Schools of Infantry.
Once it’s done, SOI grads will walk out the door with beefed-up weapons and tactics training to better prepare them for Iraq — or whatever comes next.
According to SOI briefing slides, MCT currently lasts 22 days, and graduates about 14,000 students annually who head out to the fleet to be non-infantry Marines. ITB currently stretches 52 days and graduates about 4,300 infantry Marines per year. Starting in October at School of Infantry-East, MCT will expand to 29 days, while ITB will end at 59 days. SOI-West will follow suit in January.
Adding a week to both pipelines is meant to put training in its proper place, said one top training official.
“What that does is it goes back to the Marine ethos, ‘Every Marine a rifleman,’” said Lt. Col. Kristi VanGorder, section head for training programs at Marine Corps Training and Education Command in Quantico, Va.
Infantry and non-infantry Marines alike at SOI will soon have more instruction time on machine guns, munitions, combat conditioning, values-based training and combat stress management, military operations on urban terrain, and combat medicine.
In addition, MCT students will have more combat marksmanship and communications training, while ITB students will get more time learning about their service rifles, optics and night-vision devices.
Previously, for example, squad automatic weapon training was conducted in boot camp. Under the new SOI structure, ITB students will have 20 hours of instruction and MCT students 12 hours, VanGorder said.
Both ITB and MCT will see increases to their skills retention exercises — the former increasing by 24 hours and the latter by 48 hours.
Maximize and standardize
Prompting the course overhaul was a need to maximize and standardize instruction. Some rifleman skills had migrated down to the recruit depot, VanGorder explained.
“They really didn’t belong, but that was the only place that we had where we could put them because of the time allotted in both of the schedules,” she said.
The changes will emphasize the distinctions between recruit training and SOI, VanGorder said.
“Part of the changes to the Schools of Infantry were to re-emphasize that difference because traditionally what had happened over time was that more and more skills were lumped onto the School of Infantry with no additional time to train them,” she said. “We realized that we were really training to time instead of training to standard.”
The new curriculum amounts to seven more days.
“We took a good hard look at what we were adding. Seven days is a long time when you’re putting in 12-14 hour days,” she said.
However, the new course structure does not come cheap. The changes will cost about $2 million, largely in one-time, upfront costs, VanGorder said. The money will pay for items such as additional rifles and night-vision goggles, as well as classroom equipment.
“Now that you have a bunch more folks going through, or you’re changing the way you do business, you need different gear,” she said.
The SOI extension won’t have an impact on deployments, VanGorder said. “What it means is the receiving unit will receive their Marines seven days later than they would have originally.” In return, those operational units will gain a Marine with more skills related to Iraq and Afghanistan. “So, when the battalion commander receives that individual, he doesn’t have to train them as much as perhaps he had to before.”
Boot camp restructuring
The overhaul follows a recently announced restructuring of boot camp, VanGorder said, in which the Crucible was moved back to the end of training to make it more of a capstone event. Officials have also added more values-based training.
But the SOI changes won’t be felt simultaneously throughout the Corps, since SOI won’t be lengthened until the recruits have gone through the new boot camp schedule.
For example, changes at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, S.C., began in May. Those graduates will be the first to go through enhanced SOI-East in October, VanGorder said.
Officials at MCRD San Diego, however, won’t restructure training until October, which will push back SOI-West enhancements to January 2008, she said.
Simultaneous with the SOI course changes, TECom is adding instructors to SOI and the recruit depots. Corps officials hope that as the number of teachers grows, so will the level of personalized instruction.
“Our hope is that our student-to-instructor ratio will get even better than it is right now; that it will drop,” VanGorder said.
Ratio goals will vary according to the class, she said. An academic class could have 200 students with one teacher, while live-fire exercises could be 15-to-1 or 12-to-1, she added.
Growing the Corps’ end strength to 202,000 Marines by 2011 will require 200 additional instructors, she said. “We’ve got to have more instructors at all of those places in order to handle that throughput.”
The forthcoming crush of new Marines has sparked the creation of four new training companies for the SOI battalions — one for each MCT and ITB battalion on both coasts, VanGorder said. While training facilities have enough space for billeting, they will be turning to modular classrooms to accommodate classes.
Ellie