Let’s face it: There’s usually little to get excited about when it comes to practicing formations, that time consuming but traditional necessity of military life. But up in the air, formations can be, well, more thrilling and less tedious than those on the ground. Add some ammo, and there are few who’d pass up the chance to sling some lead from a helicopter. Like the “Purple Foxes” of Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 364, who took to the air over Camp Pendleton, Calif., earlier this month to refresh their skills in aerial formation flights. Along with the requisite “parade” formations, helicopter…
Browsing: Training
By now, you may have seen Marine Corps Times’ coverage of a controversial report filed last year by the service’s Operations Analysis Division assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the Marine Corps Marksmanship Program. As my story points out, Weapons Training Battalion, out of Marine Corps Base Quantico, Va., took exception to some of the findings by OAD, which falls under Marine Corps Combat Development Command, also out of Quantico. Four major recommendations were made: Develop a new organization to oversee all marksmanship training, embark on a substantial range upgrade plan, remove rifle scores from the promotion process and overhaul annual…
In this week’s print edition, on newsstands now, staff writer Gina Cavallaro takes readers inside the Corps’ new special operations warm-up course at Camp Lejeune, N.C. Called the Assessment and Selection Preparation and Orientation Course, or ASPOC for short, it represents Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command’s latest effort to curtail a 46 percent attrition rate among Marines looking to become elite critical skills operators. The commandant has challenged MARSOC leadership to cut that rate to 20 percent — a tall order indeed, and one the command is taking very seriously. This three-week course, conducted at Lejeune’s Stone Bay training…
In the Marine Corps, certain phrases carry major street credit. “Every Marine a rifleman” is one of them. It will likely catch some Marines by surprise, then, that this week’s Marine Corps Times cover story focuses on a variety of problems researchers say they saw in the Marine Corps Marksmanship Program, the outfit charged with making sure that popular phrase holds true. In a controversial report filed late last year, they outline a variety of areas that Marines said need upgrading. The most obvious one antiquated rifle ranges, but they also call for the Corps to conduct rifle qualifications for each…
A generation ago, helicopter pilots learned the intricacies of flight and the complexities of the cyclic and collective pretty much the old-fashioned way: They just flew, for real, taking to the air and clocking hours in the cockpit. For perhaps five or 10 percent of the time, they passed the time grounded in digital flight simulators, with simple graphics on flat two-dimensional images and primitive sets of controls. These days, thanks in part to meteoric advances in video-gaming technologies and high-fidelity computer graphics, Marine Corps pilots will spend 50 percent of their training time flying simulated missions seated in a…
Marines with 1st Battalion, 24th Marines will head back to their Selfridge, Mich., headquarters Saturday after working their seats off for two weeks in Javeline Thrust 2010. More than 4,500 Marines from air, ground and logistics units participated in the exercise, the largest Marine Forces Reserve exercise of the year. It took place between the Marine Corps Mountain Warfare Training Center in Bridgeport, Calif., and the Hawathorn Weapons Army Depot in Hawthorn, Nev. The terrain, with elevations ranging from 4,000 to 10,000 feet over a 180-square-mile area, simulated conditions in Afghanistan, minus actual Taliban fighters.
