Marines Retooling Infantry Training for Complex Warfare in Pacific
By: Gidget Fuentes
May 6, 2021 2:51 PM
CAMP PENDLETON, CALIF. — After 20 years of counterinsurgency and low-end conflict in the Middle East, the Marines are rapidly retooling for a different kind of fight.
As the service has shed legacy equipment like tanks and heavy artillery to reshape itself into a mobile, Pacific island-hopping force, it’s retooling how it trains the Marines of the future to fit into a more complex way of war while reinforcing its creed of “every Marine a rifleman.”
This week, the School of Infantry-West at Camp Pendleton, Calif., graduates the first three platoons to complete a redesigned Infantry Marine Course. The proposed longer entry-level training program will prepare infantry squads to operate against peer adversaries and high-tech threats in dispersed, littoral environments – in line with Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger’s focus on preparing the service in 2030. The future battlefield could be across a large area of small atolls and isles that require forces to operate in small, dispersed units, but be capable of executing command-driven orders and react independently as needed, as was the case during World War II’s Pacific islands campaign.
https://news.usni.org/2021/05/06/marines-retooling-infantry-training-for-complex-warfare-in-pacific
