As the Marine Corps experiments with different ways of assessing lethality on the rifle range, leaders already are looking ahead to a future in which earning the coveted expert shooting badge is going to take even more skill and precision.
That's a major takeaway from the fiscal 2024 combat marksmanship symposium, held late 2023 with the service's top weapons and range experts in attendance.
Col. Gregory Jones, commanding officer of Weapons Training Battalion out of Quantico, Virginia, told Marine Corps Times in an interview that a future shooting evaluation could assess multiple inputs including accuracy and speed to generate a "lethality score," giving a Marine credit for more skills variables and keeping the focus on combat.
Such a prospective change, he suggested, could be good news for Marines who are exceptional shooters and easily max out as "expert" on the annual rifle qualification, which focuses on accuracy alone, requiring Marines to destroy 43 targets to 50 targets and successfully complete one of each of the three drill varieties: including failure to stop, failure to stop while moving and a box drill involving two targets.
No additional credit is given for additional targets destroyed or drills aced.
Jones likened this standard to the Marine Corps physical fitness test, which maxes out at 23 pullups for men.
"When I could do 25 pullups, I didn't get credit for it," he said. "It's just like, what's the top end of human performance, right?"
He envisions a system in which the score required to earn the "expert" badge is reevaluated periodically ― much like competitive shooting today ― to keep pace with increases in human performance.
In addition to emphasizing the prospect of exceptional performers getting more credit for their excellence, Jones reiterated a core theme of the service's ongoing shooting experimentation effort: that lethality has more components than accuracy.
New advanced small arms lethality trainers, or ASALTs, are being installed at bases around the Corps. They're also installing a "digital score sheet" tool called the joint marksmanship assessment package, or JMAP ― which can record shot cadence as well as placement ― that is set to make shooting speed a much more significant element of rifle proficiency.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/here-s-why-shooting-expert-may-get-harder-for-marines/ar-BB1l5RlI?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=LCTS&cvid=cc57a61f5e9049e8a552f289525ed516&ei=16
When I read the bolded line, I thought they were going to institute DEI standards and quotas for women and minorities. Maybe next year.
That's a major takeaway from the fiscal 2024 combat marksmanship symposium, held late 2023 with the service's top weapons and range experts in attendance.
Col. Gregory Jones, commanding officer of Weapons Training Battalion out of Quantico, Virginia, told Marine Corps Times in an interview that a future shooting evaluation could assess multiple inputs including accuracy and speed to generate a "lethality score," giving a Marine credit for more skills variables and keeping the focus on combat.
Such a prospective change, he suggested, could be good news for Marines who are exceptional shooters and easily max out as "expert" on the annual rifle qualification, which focuses on accuracy alone, requiring Marines to destroy 43 targets to 50 targets and successfully complete one of each of the three drill varieties: including failure to stop, failure to stop while moving and a box drill involving two targets.
No additional credit is given for additional targets destroyed or drills aced.
Jones likened this standard to the Marine Corps physical fitness test, which maxes out at 23 pullups for men.
"When I could do 25 pullups, I didn't get credit for it," he said. "It's just like, what's the top end of human performance, right?"
He envisions a system in which the score required to earn the "expert" badge is reevaluated periodically ― much like competitive shooting today ― to keep pace with increases in human performance.
In addition to emphasizing the prospect of exceptional performers getting more credit for their excellence, Jones reiterated a core theme of the service's ongoing shooting experimentation effort: that lethality has more components than accuracy.
New advanced small arms lethality trainers, or ASALTs, are being installed at bases around the Corps. They're also installing a "digital score sheet" tool called the joint marksmanship assessment package, or JMAP ― which can record shot cadence as well as placement ― that is set to make shooting speed a much more significant element of rifle proficiency.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/here-s-why-shooting-expert-may-get-harder-for-marines/ar-BB1l5RlI?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=LCTS&cvid=cc57a61f5e9049e8a552f289525ed516&ei=16
When I read the bolded line, I thought they were going to institute DEI standards and quotas for women and minorities. Maybe next year.
statistics: Posted by Hockeygoon — 2:36 PM - 1 day ago — Replies 2 — Views 79