by Chief Warrant Officer Bobby Yarbrough

Marksmanship is a point of pride for most Marines, and rifle proficiency is a benchmark used by the Marine Corps to assess and promote combat ability. The foundation for skill in marksmanship begins for most Marines during recruit training.

Over the past two decades, dramatic changes have been made to streamline the Corps’ marksmanship program—modernized ranges, the implementation of a combat marksmanship course of fire, and the use of advanced combat optics for marksmanship qualification. While each of these changes increased the efficiency of the Marine Corps as a whole, collectively they did little to evaluate or improve the habits of individual shooters.

This week, the Weapons and Field Training Battalion at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island will be testing an interactive shooting performance system that could revolutionize the proficiency and lethality of the basic rifleman.

Lethality of the Force

In 2018, former Secretary of Defense James Mattis published his vision for the National Defense Strategy which included increasing the lethality of the armed forces.

“Everything we do must contribute to the lethality of our military,” said Mattis. “We cannot expect success fighting tomorrow’s conflicts with yesterday’s weapons or equipment.” The current test at Parris Island aligns the Marine Corps with Mattis’ vision of using cutting edge technologies to solve battlefield problems.

Col. Randall S. Hoffman, the commanding officer for Weapons and Field Training Battalion, said the process for teaching Marines marksmanship doesn’t look much different than it did for the Marines who fought in World War I, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. Hoffman believes adopting information age technology at the recruit training level for marksmanship would ultimately improve the combat effectiveness of the Marine Corps.

“By injecting this type of technology, we can drastically advance the marksmanship learning curve to build much greater lethality,” said Hoffman, a career reconnaissance officer. “Additionally we start to build a more critically thinking Marine who can take a greater role in their own marksmanship development.”

Marksmanship during recruit training

At Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, more than 20,000 recruits are trained each year and each recruit spends two weeks learning, practicing, and qualifying in marksmanship. During Grass Week, which is the first week of marksmanship training, recruits receive several classes from a Primary Marksmanship Instructor (PMI) on subjects such as weapon positioning, trigger control, and sight alignment. Additionally, recruits complete dry-fire drills by “snapping in” on a firing barrel, a white 55-gallon barrel painted with simulated targets.

Although this process is rudimentary, Hoffman believes “snapping in” is where the shooting performance system would be most significant for the Marine Corps. The new system places a small device connected to the rail of the rifle that evaluates shooting mechanics. The device analyzes the movement of the rifle during the trigger pull and sends the information via Bluetooth to a tablet or smartphone.

Hoffman said he estimates a recruit pulls the trigger 800-1000 times during dry-fire drills. He believes a shooting performance system can help shooters by providing standard, immediate feedback with each repetition so they can evaluate their shooting performance and identify areas of improvement.

“The truth is most recruits are not fully engaged when they practice fundamentals,” said Hoffman. “The real value of the system is that it clearly shows recruits fundamentally what they did wrong or right with each shot and explains to them how to correct the problem.”

Additionally, Hoffman said the system would be invaluable to his staff. He said although his staff is constantly observing and assessing the fundamentals of individual shooters during the drills, it is impossible for the instructors to personally assist every recruit at once. Hoffman said an interactive shooting performance system would allow instructors to recognize troubled shooters early and to tailor training to those recruits. Moreover, it would eliminate the need for shooting coaches to retrain bad habits during live-fire because those habits would have been clearly identified during practice.

While more testing is required to integrate various new technologies with the way Marines currently train, information age technology will continue to find its way into the Marine Corps as we progress further into the future. Marines will continue to carry on their tradition of adapting and overcoming to the challenges of a modern enemy.