MARINE SPECIAL OPERATORS BREAST INSIGNIA
- Thread starter JARadar
- Start date
No.
He accidentally hits on an excellent point though. SARCs are mission critical personnel in Raider units from the team to regimental level but cannot officially become Raiders because they remain Recon Corpsman assigned to MARSOC. They don't get to wear Raider insignia or use the Raider title even though I would argue they deserve both. This is what happens when you create a command over night and apply band aid solutions to your problems.
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While we'd like to blanket and cover every issue in one request/swoop; shoving a list demands to HQMCs face is a sure way to get every one of them shot down.
Everything has been a long enduring battle, and it's just like the old addage of eating an elephant: One bite at a time. Looking back at 11 years we've created 3 Special Operations Battalions, the 0372 MOS, close loopd our SOOs, name change, regional alignment, MSOI device, etc. I don't think anyone denies there's plenty of changes still needed to be made, however at the end of the day, big Marine Corps has the final say. And us packaging one request at a time has a better chance of getting approved, than bombarding them with 20 things we need now.
Im sure sending Corpsman through ITC as an alternative to produce more SARCs, or have SARCs tailored more to our mission has been discussed; I just don't know where it's at. SARCs on the team's are Raiders to me: Device or not.
Everything has been a long enduring battle, and it's just like the old addage of eating an elephant: One bite at a time. Looking back at 11 years we've created 3 Special Operations Battalions, the 0372 MOS, close loopd our SOOs, name change, regional alignment, MSOI device, etc. I don't think anyone denies there's plenty of changes still needed to be made, however at the end of the day, big Marine Corps has the final say. And us packaging one request at a time has a better chance of getting approved, than bombarding them with 20 things we need now.
Im sure sending Corpsman through ITC as an alternative to produce more SARCs, or have SARCs tailored more to our mission has been discussed; I just don't know where it's at. SARCs on the team's are Raiders to me: Device or not.
Scubadew
SOF Support
While the SARC pipeline produces absolute studs it does so at a slow rate and demands that some graduates go to Recon or Force as well as they need SARCs just the same. Have you heard more on MARSOC developing Raider docs from within? I know several guys who did a homegrown version vs the pipeline but the talks I've had sound like ITC + SOCM to produce a Raider corpsman would be very helpful for fielding numbers and that those members would attend insert schools just like CSO's do instead of being a required part of the pipeline (Ex. BRC/SOCM graduate taking a choke on water in dive and getting sent to a hospital and out of the pipeline entirely as it stands now).
I agree with what you are saying but there was a time when the Marine Corps could have covered all these issues in one fell swoop: at the very beginning. The Marine Corps entered into SOCOM reluctantly and largely without consistent guidance and direction. Col Bob Coates put together an excellent test unit that was well received in SOCOM but that experience was eagerly ignored in the creation of MARSOC. The Marine Corps slapped together a headquarters out of 4th MEB, threw two Force Recon Companies, the Foreign Military Training Unit, and some money into a pot and stirred it up. That's not the best way to do business. The right way to do business is to establish a 5-10 year plan phased growth model that would have clearly defined progressive milestones and goals to enable planners to resource the unit appropriately. MARSOC has done a great job building the airplane in flight but that's not the most efficient way to do things. The problem now is that HQMC looks at MARSOC as a finished product at this point. It's fully operational capable and it will be harder to change things now. Why fix it if it isn't broken? You may argue that it's still slightly broken but then again if it works it isn't broken... and then why fix it if it isn't broken?
I have heard lots of talk about sending SARCs through ITC. It always goes back to the Navy. The Navy is slow to change and sees no reason to change the SARC NEC to suit MARSOC. MARSOC, however, could petition the Navy to allow SARCs serving at a Raider battalion to wear the Raider device. That's an easy change, just like how SARCs transitioned with Marines over to the Marine Combatant Dive Badge. POG 40 at PP&O helped coordinate that. I bet you no one at POSOD has brought it up to the Navy though.
Personally I thought that MARSOC should have treated the Raider Regiment like the Ranger Regiment and allowed all screened and selected personnel to become Raiders. Special Operations support personnel are all screened, albeit not the same level as CSOs, but that would have created a more inclusive culture and a more cohesive unit. Like it or not, a special operations support SIGINT, HET or EOD Marine is probably in higher demand to SOCOM than a CSO. Those Marines are in short supply and very high demand. I'm not a Raider and never will be so my opinion isn't relevant but it was something I talked about with some of my peers who went over to MARSOC.
Devildoc
Verified Military
I don't know much about the end-user with SARCs (vis-à-vis Recon/MARSOC) or how they get distributed now, but I do know a thing or two about how Big Navy handles its personnel assigned to the Marines, and you are spot on with your assessment that it always goes back to the Navy and the Navy is reluctant to change. I also agree from my comfy armchair that it seems like a better product and better value to run it like how Ranger Regt does it, but just as hidebound as the Navy is with tradition and loathe to change, the Marines seem equally so.*
*Disclaimer: I have been totally out now for several years, so I don't know if the culture has moved at all from how it was.
Well on a positive note to this, due to the incredibly slow rate of production for SARCs and them getting sent out to Recon & MARSOC alike - they get a lot of deployments in on our side of the house. I knew a handful of SARCs with more deployments under their belt than most of the senior guys I was under, in summary: They get REALLY fucking good at what they do for a living.
We had a junior medic we tried getting into ITC, we called him "Rope" and we were all rooting for him - he hadn't finished his SARC Pipeline but he finished the 18 series medic course and was supposed to go back to complete his pipeline when he either got orders to another unit or went elsewhere.
Devildoc
Verified Military
double tap
Deployments are good but they can also wear guys down and destroy families. The SARC production vs demand ratio is frankly unsustainable.
Devildoc
Verified Military
Witnessed this. And since you had brought up a comparison to Ranger Regt for the Raiders, let me ask you this question: do you see a model like that which NSW went to, sending Team guys (and not corpsmen) through medical training to be medics? Would that add more medical assets and be better for Recon/MARSOC? Or would it take Recon guys and CSOs out of the mix and make the community deficient on that side? I don't know if I have an opinion on this, but throwing it out for discussion.
Can't speak much on the selection of support personnel or a system implemented like the Ranger Regiment. Personally, I don't think it'd be necessary. A lot of the enablers we get aren't 18 year olds straight out of boot. Most are experienced Corporals and Sergeants from the fleet and are a really proficient at their jobs.
Currently as it stands(and maybe @The Hate Ape can clear this up), you get a brief screening by the monitor, report to your BN, then complete your advanced school, SERE, and STC(intro/fam to common skills), and you are deployable as an enabler and will chop 180 days out to the team you're deploying with. If you suck or have a bad hallway reputation, the team probably will have heard and find ways to fire you before they deploy. Likewise, if someone has a good hallway reputation the team will try to grab you. Adding another selection type process is just another course to staff, and step between the team's getting their enablers, just so my S-1 admin clerk or embark specialist can go through an extra layer or screening.
Currently as it stands(and maybe @The Hate Ape can clear this up), you get a brief screening by the monitor, report to your BN, then complete your advanced school, SERE, and STC(intro/fam to common skills), and you are deployable as an enabler and will chop 180 days out to the team you're deploying with. If you suck or have a bad hallway reputation, the team probably will have heard and find ways to fire you before they deploy. Likewise, if someone has a good hallway reputation the team will try to grab you. Adding another selection type process is just another course to staff, and step between the team's getting their enablers, just so my S-1 admin clerk or embark specialist can go through an extra layer or screening.
I don't ever see a CSO going to schools to become the team medic for a number of reasons
Amos did his best to make the elephant indigestible. I remember when he shot down the name change and emblem in '11.
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Scubadew
SOF Support
And that last part is just the thing. Big Navy doesn't see a SOCM qualified HM who is needed, but instead they see an 8404 so they detail them as such.
Papas and Christian both talked about calling everyone in the battalion a Raider, or at a minimum extending it to all SOCS Marines. I think Papas had a Raider Battalion at the time and Christian was inbound. I don't remember. In any event, the Raider Regiment didn't adopt that policy. I think they should have extended the Raider title and insignia to SARCs right off the bat. I'm not sure if they tried to or not.
The Marine Corps came extremely close to doing this though a few years ago. It's been discussed numerous times. I talked to Schuele and Dervin about it when they ran the MARSOC school house. The Navy will never produce enough SARCs to staff MARSOC and Recon. They don't even provide the Marine Corps with all the 8404s they are supposed to. MARSOC has a higher staffing goal than Recon so HQMC stiffs Recon on SARCs but even so MARSOC is still short. Scheule was talking about creating MARSOC medics to fill the gap. MARSOC convinced the Navy to send them partially trained SARCs instead and got BRC-SOCM 8404s.
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Yes and no. As a SOCS I've seen the new wave of guys come from the school house (their actual MOS schools) and show up as PFCs, who in return, have the highest risk of liberty incidents and usually atleast 1 out of 4 won't make it out of the pipeline for those reasons alone. I just saw a few months back and more recently a no-shit, screening process, where people fly over from the west coast (two from Okinawa) just to screen here at the compound. I like this and hope they can figure a way out to boost the numbers because honestly, there's a lot of SOCS who are either getting out or moving onto something else.
The pipeline is always changing and it depends on the leadership at the support battalions because historically, the leadership at the MSOBs never put enough time into laying out a plan for the support units because, shockingly, they were engaged with conflict zones all over the world and their own training.
I came in just shy of 2012 where the training staff was pretty stacked with Force types and former 18 series guys who needed a break from training 0372 hopefuls for 9months at a time, also throw in some former T-Cell guy from various services (even our own) and you had a pretty wild course that changed almost every day because it was either too fast paced or too dumbed down. By the time they got it right (I was already deployed) someone scrapped the idea and STC went away for a while. Then it came back under someone else's direction and from what I understand it has never been the same. I don't know.
The best training I've received aside from real world was doing the workup with my first team. That team was led by some of the most well-versed and experienced individuals I have ever met in my life who were definitive members of the community during a golden-era.
I'm proud to have known them.
Regarding team assignments for SOCS, as someone with both a good and bad reputation in the hallways I can tell you personally that it boils down to how you perform on the team and where you are in the deployment workup. It is what it is but there is a drop-dead point where it hurts the team more to drop a guy late in the game before there's enough time in the workup to speed a SOCS up (especially a new one) with TTPs and getting him adjusted to his new found non-POG life.
They honestly do not need the medical training to the extent of SARCS -
My aforementioned deployment involving the hospital corpsman who went to SOCM (attempting to get to ITC) also involved losing one of our own (our team chief) in the final months of being there. One of the main responders was an incredible CSO with exactly the calm, cool, and collected attitude one could only hope to produce in that situation. He administered the crike, the ketamine, managed the 9-line and mist on the radio and continued to work the area security alongside his fellow teammates. This guy was the biggest force multiplier I've ever met in my life and while he stands out in the crowd, it is a crowd of a similar company.
Most CSOs who get even a little experience are able to handle themselves in a TCCC scenario let alone any reactive medicine. SOCM teaches really advanced stages to the point where it would lose its intent in the mix of veterinarian skills, dentistry, running clinics and shit like that. Though I place a high value on SARCs and absolutely love them - I see it as a train the trainer sort of thing seeing as they're in charge of the team's medical training the entire workup, and medical ttps during the deployment.
I would however, be all about sending team members to the combat medic course offered at the higher tier level.
Correct, this was referenced thoroughly in 2014-2016 (everyone a raider) with a lot of satire. Personally, I don't consider myself a Raider and never will - it has nothing to do with my MOS and all to do with the fact that I am not permanently assigned here and constantly in the grind of this business (workups, training or deployments). This life will break you physically and mentally without warning, I'm proud of what I have accomplished here and grew under the people & places that challenged me. Nonetheless, I will leave this life very soon from now - the people I'm leaving behind are here forever, stuck in the grind; they traded in their economy class engines to do nothing short of a 150 mph at all times because that's the requirement.
Those guys are Raiders.
I don't know anyone who even wants to wear the device. Every SARC I associate with (about 5 or 6) speaks with a high level of pride in being known as a Reconnaissance Corpsman and a SOCM graduate even more. It's pretty easy to identify a SARC anyway - long ass fucking hair, sleeve tattoos and the bubble & wings. Too bad they're usually not in uniform and walking around in flip flops and RVCA shirts.
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