Mid-Performance Update

[Al B. Sure!]

Even in an environment where they're just not taking new officers for active OCS? Everything I've heard is that the reserve to active move in all branches is impossible right now, except for people moving to the active National Guard for their state from drilling status within the same state.

Honestly, I have my fingers crossed for you in that regard, because compared to your previous jobs, O1 active pay is actually pretty good.

Like I said, it's been traditional. Realistically, though, you're talking at most a handful of reserve Lieutenants a FY that get into the top 5%. There's only 62 of us reservists (essentially my entire OCS class) so only 23% of the class is reserves. Everyone else were commissioned 2+ years ago and were awaiting TBS. Assuming the same talent distribution, there'll be maybe 3 of us in the top 5%.

Consider, if a reservist who wants active were #1 in their TBS class, which has happened before, would the active component not be trying to get that Lieutenant on the active side? That'd be a waste of talent.

Then again, my OCCR class was chock full of attorneys who wanted JAG but had to go Ground Reserve. That's an obvious waste of talent, especially since the military won't be paying for their law school, but we'll apparently have a bunch of civilian attorneys doing Logistics, Infantry, etc. So who knows?

As for me doing it, it would depend on a variety of factors, including MOS, duty station, my civilian job situation, etc. I'd rather have a preferred MOS in the reserves than be say a Financial Management or Supply officer on the active side. Of course, if I were in the top 5%, I would de facto be guaranteed one of my top 5 choices, so a terrible MOS would not happen.

Good job. I keep expecting to see a link which we can all go to and take the same tests and compare scores. And everyone would seem to post better results.

The material and stuff we do would be of incredible interest to most guys. The other day, we called for fire on dummy targets with 81mm mortars and 155mm howitzers. Yes, being a forward observer doing a polar (estimating distance and using a compass to give direction in mils to the target) or grid (determining a grid coordinate based on a known position and azimuth and distance) adjust fire mission with live rounds, calling it in over the radio, providing corrections, bracketing fire, and then calling for fire for effect.

Next week we'll be in the field doing patrolling and ambushes with blank fire and this really advanced laser tag system. We'll be inserted via CH46's and conduct our patrols. Since I was not a squad leader in our previous FEX, I will likely be a Patrol Leader in this FEX so I will have to conduct a thorough analysis (Mission, Enemy, Troops/Fire Support, Terrain/Weather, Time), develop a terrain model, develop and issue my order, supervise rehearsals, coordinate with the COC my fire support plan, route, communications, etc. and the Forward Unit Commander, develop the helo insert and extract plan, and then execute.

A lot will be on my plate and I'll spend a ton of time on the radio giving SITREPS, contact reports, and coordinating with the helos and the fire support. And that's not even touching on tactics on contact.

The Army doesn't do this. The Marine Corps makes sure all its officers, including attorneys and pilots, are capable of being provisional rifle platoon commanders. There's so much history in the Marine Corps of artillery, logistics, etc. units being transformed into provisional rifle units as recently as OEF and OIF. All sorts of units, including support units, conduct patrols in Afghanistan.

[regexcellent]

Then again, my OCCR class was chock full of attorneys who wanted JAG but had to go Ground Reserve. That's an obvious waste of talent, especially since the military won't be paying for their law school, but we'll apparently have a bunch of civilian attorneys doing Logistics, Infantry, etc. So who knows?

Same thing's happening in the Army. JAG placement is something like 5% right now. It has to do with the fact that law school graduates can't find jobs anywhere.

The material and stuff we do would be of incredible interest to most guys. The other day, we called for fire on dummy targets with 81mm mortars and 155mm howitzers. Yes, being a forward observer doing a polar (estimating distance and using a compass to give direction in mils to the target) or grid (determining a grid coordinate based on a known position and azimuth and distance) adjust fire mission with live rounds, calling it in over the radio, providing corrections, bracketing fire, and then calling for fire for effect.

Do you have those ****ty protractors where you can't draw on the edge because there's a 1/16" of extra material inside the lines?

Next week we'll be in the field doing patrolling and ambushes with blank fire and this really advanced laser tag system.

I've heard MILES is a huge pile of ****. It's the most advanced technology money can buy--that is, money spent within the United States and in multiple congressional districts could buy in the 1980s.

The Army doesn't do this.

All army officers are qualified on basic infantry stuff except doctors, lawyers, and chaplains. Army officers don't all go through TBS style stuff because it is frankly a huge waste of time.

[snoopy369]

Congrats

[Al B. Sure!]

Do you have those ****ty protractors where you can't draw on the edge because there's a 1/16" of extra material inside the lines?

That's why you buy a good protractor.

I've heard MILES is a huge pile of ****. It's the most advanced technology money can buy--that is, money spent within the United States and in multiple congressional districts could buy in the 1980s.

It's been updated constantly over the decades.

All army officers are qualified on basic infantry stuff except doctors, lawyers, and chaplains. Army officers don't all go through TBS style stuff because it is frankly a huge waste of time.

Whatever. Different cultures between the branches. We've been over this.

[regexcellent]

That's why you buy a good protractor.

Eh. Instead I bought an app for my phone that spits out my 10 digit grid and bearing in degrees/mils from the GPS location and electronic compass.

Spoiler:

Don't worry I can read a map...I resorted to that on the last land nav course after being unable to find the 3rd point for like an hour, because someone had stolen it

Anywho, do you have to do some sort of other course after this, like if you get a combat engineer position, you're going to another school right?

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Good on you Alby.

[Al B. Sure!]

Eh. Instead I bought an app for my phone that spits out my 10 digit grid and bearing in degrees/mils from the GPS location and electronic compass.

Spoiler:

Don't worry I can read a map...I resorted to that on the last land nav course after being unable to find the 3rd point for like an hour, because someone had stolen it

That would be an integrity violation that would get you kicked out of the Marine Corps. 13 officers were booted in 2010 for using matrices:

http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/article/20100525/NEWS/5250320/13-officers-fired-cheating-scandal

All 13 were students at The Basic School aboard Marine Corps Base Quantico, Va., a six-month training course for newly commissioned officers. Eight men — including two former football players from the Naval Academy — and five women were administratively discharged May 20 for allegedly using cheat sheets last fall to help them locate boxes stashed in the woods aboard the base, Marine officials said. Two of the 13 officers were prior enlisted Marines.

Anywho, do you have to do some sort of other course after this, like if you get a combat engineer position, you're going to another school right?

Yes. Then I would be going to Combat Engineer School for a 3 month course.

[Hauldren Collider]

That would be an integrity violation that would get you kicked out of the Marine Corps. 13 officers were booted in 2010 for using matrices:

Yeah, but the army obviously understands that there's more important things to do with your time than pointlessly run around in the woods for six hours.

[Hauldren Collider]

Whatever. Different cultures between the branches. We've been over this.

Yeah, one branch is a hilarious waste of money with bizarrely good PR.

[regexcellent]

Yeah, but the army obviously understands that there's more important things to do with your time than pointlessly run around in the woods for six hours.

It's an integrity violation in Army ROTC too but I have no idea if it would get you kicked out. Regardless it was a practice run around campus on a Saturday and some hooligan had stolen the sign and a bunch of people were milling about in the general vicinity of where it should have been. On a real go they'd take away everyone's phones. That app is not unknown to them.

Alby, do the marines publish field manuals the way the army does? After your comment earlier about 3-team squads I'm kinda curious about how they organize things.

[Al B. Sure!]

Yeah, but the army obviously understands that there's more important things to do with your time than pointlessly run around in the woods for six hours.

The Army also thinks there's more important things to do than have a melee martial arts program, including training in unarmed and bayonet techniques, for all soldiers. The Army also thinks there's more important things to do than develop a combat fitness test or that a perfect pace for run testing is a 6:30 minute/mile for two miles instead of the Marines' 6:00 for 3 miles. There's a lot of things the Army apparently thinks there's more important things to do than.

Col. Daniel F. Bolger, US Army, sums it up here:

“ In the Marines, everyone– sergeant, mechanic, cannoneer, supply man, clerk, aviator, cook–is a rifleman first. The entire Corps, all 170,000 or so on the active rolls, plus the reserves, are all infantry. All speak the language of the rifle and bayonet, of muddy boots and long, hot marches. It’s never us and them, only us. That is the secret of the Corps.”

“If Army infantry amounts to a stern monastic order standing apart, on the edge of the wider secular soldier world, Marine infantry more resembles the central totem worshipped by the entire tribe. Marines have specialized, as have all modern military organizations. And despite the all-too-real rigors of boot camp, annual rifle qualification, and high physical standards, a Marine aircraft crew chief or radio repairman wouldn’t make a good 0311 on a squad assault. But those Marine technical types know that they serve the humble grunt, the man who will look the enemy in the eye within close to belly-ripping range. Moreover, all Marines think of themselves as grunts at heart, just a bit out of practice at the moment. That connections creates a great strength throughout the Corps.”

“It explains why Marine commanders routinely, even casually, combine widely disparate kinds of capabilities into small units…. Marines send junior officers and NCOs out from their line rifle companies and expect results. They get them, too.”

“Even a single Marine has on call the firepower of the air wing, the Navy, and all of the United States. Or at least he thinks he does. A Marine acts accordingly. He is expected to take charge, to improvise, to adapt, to overcome. A Marine gets by with ancient aircraft (the ratty C-46E Frog, for example), hand-me-down weapons (such as the old M-60 tanks used in the Gulf War), and whatever else he can bum off the Army or cajole out of the Navy. Marines get the job done regardless, because they are Marines. They make a virtue out of necessity. The men, not the gear, make the difference. Now and again, the Marines want to send men, not bullets.”

“This leads to a self-assurance that sometimes comes across as disregard for detailed staff-college quality planning and short shrift for high-level supervision. Senior Army officers in particular sometimes find the Marines amateurish, cavalier, and overly trusting in just wading in and letting the junior leaders sort it out. In the extreme, a few soldiers have looked at the Corps as some weird, inferior, ersatz ground war establishment, a bad knockoff of the real thing. ‘A small, *****ed-up army talking Navy lingo,’ opined Army Brigadier General Frank Armstrong in one of the most brutal interservice assessments. That was going too far. But deep down, many Army professionals tend to wonder about the Marines. Grab a defended beach? Definitely. Seize a hill? Sure, if you don’t mind paying a little. But take charge of a really big land operation? Not if we can help it.”

“Anyone who has watched an amphibious landing unfold would be careful with that kind of thinking. The Marines actually have a lot in common with their elite Army infantry brothers, if not with all the various Army headquarters and service echelons. True, Marine orders do tend to be, well…brief. But so do those of the airborne, the air assault, the light-fighters, and the Rangers, for the same good reason: Hard, realistic training teaches soldiers hoe to fight by doing, over and over, so they need not keep writing about it, regurgitating basics every time. More enlightened soldiers consider that goodness. A three-inch thick order, a big CP, and lots of meeting do not victory make. The Marines consciously reject all that.”

“A Corps infused with a rifleman ethos has few barriers to intra-service cooperation. The Army talks a great deal about combined arms and does it down to about battalion level, often with great wailing and gnashing of the teeth. Marines do it all the way down to the individual Marine. Soldiers have defined military occupational specialties and guard their prerogatives like a union shop stewards. Finance clerks don’t do machine guns. Mechanics skip foot marches to fix trucks. Intell analysts work in air-conditioned trailers; they don’t patrol. Marines, though, are just Marines. They all consider themselves trigger pullers. They even like it, as might be expected of an elite body.”

Alby, do the marines publish field manuals the way the army does? After your comment earlier about 3-team squads I'm kinda curious about how they organize things.

Yes. http://www.marines.mil/Portals/59/Pu...le%20Squad.pdf

The Marine Corps is big on decentralized leadership. This is because Marine Corps doctrine is predicated on maneuver warfare: "Maneuver warfare is a warfighting philosophy that seeks to
shatter the enemy’s cohesion through a variety of rapid, focused, and unexpected actions which create a turbulent and rapidly deteriorating situation with which the enemy cannot cope" (MCDP-1 'Warfighting').

The Marine Corps is big on USAF Col. John Boyd's theories on warfare. The Marine Corps seeks to observe, orient, decide, and act faster than our opponents. Higher tempo is only possible through decentralized small-unit leadership based on high levels of initiative at the lowest echelons and constrained by an understanding of commander's intent. No Corporal in any other branch has the power of a Marine Corps Corporal. Marine NCO's operate a level higher than their Army counterparts. Fireteams are led by Corporals and even Lance Corporals while Squads are led by Sergeants and Corporals. Enlisted Marines have significantly more responsibility than their counterparts in any service. Likewise, bias for action and initiative are expected of junior officers.

[Elok]

Congratulations, Al. I mean that sincerely. However, the distinctions you're now expounding on are irrelevant. Nuclear weapons make confrontations with modern, competent forces much less likely these days, and marines, army soldiers, or barely-trained national guard reservists would all be perfectly adequate for chasing ignorant losers with Kalashnikovs around undeveloped territory for unclear reasons. Is it better to bring a machine gun or a laser to a knife fight? Who the hell cares, he's only got a knife.

[Al B. Sure!]

This is a video of WW2 German squad tactics but it is virtually identical to USMC squad tactics. Here, there are 3 Fireteams of 3, including the team of 3 on the MG. This provided the German Sergeants with an additional unit to maneuver with compared to a 2-unit squad. Today, with SAWs and IAR's, each FT has the power of the MG so M240 teams are not organic to rifle squads, in favor of 3 identical FT's consisting of a team leader/grenadier (with an m203), a rifleman, a SAW gunner, and an assistant gunner.

[The Mad Monk]

Have studied Sun Tzu yet?

[Egbert]

meritoriously augmented

Wow. That sounds impressive! Getting "meritoriously augmented" that is.

Seriously. Alby doing well in the marines.