SIDEBAR

March 2006

Corps' Trainers Target 'Ungoverned' Areas of World

CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C.— The first element of the Marine Corps’ new special-operations command already is scrambling to tackle its mission—to help prepare the soldiers of under-developed nations to defend themselves against terrorists.

The foreign military unit, as it has been dubbed, was established in October 2005, said its operations officer, Maj. Herman Glover. Ultimately, it will include 430 Marines and Navy medical corpsmen. The unit will be organized into a headquarters element, four companies built around two-dozen 11-man teams and a standards and training cadre. The companies will focus on specific regions where cultures and languages are similar, Glover said.

“We want to operate in ‘Phase Zero’ countries, Third-World locations where things haven’t gone totally wrong yet.” These include countries in Asia, Africa and South America, he said. Thus far, Glover said, 10 nations have indicated an interest.

Training foreign military personnel has been a core assignment for special operators at least since 1952, when the Army’s Special Forces were founded. But the pace of that training has grown significantly in recent years as part of emerging U.S. counter-terrorist operations. In 2004, in addition to fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, special operators participated in more than 50 joint combined-exercise training events with other nations around the world.

Marines have begun relieving them of some of that burden. In 2002, Marine Corps Forces Europe took over the training of military units in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. Since then, Marines have provided schooling for soldiers in wide swaths of Africa, Asia and South America.

The FMTU will centralize and focus those efforts and coordinate them more closely with the U.S. Special Operations Command, Glover explained.

Teams will deploy to host nations for periods ranging from six weeks to three months, he said. They will teach basic infantry and counter-terrorist tactics. Among the subjects will be:

• Individual skills, such as marksmanship with individual and crew-served weapons, hand-to-hand combat, first aid and tactical communications.

• Small-unit tactics, including coastal interdiction, patrolling, offensive and defensive operations, urban shooting skills and civil affairs.

• Anti-terrorism and force protection, such as access control and unit self-defense.

• Support functions, including basic logistics and casualty evacuation.

• Leadership and law of land warfare.

The idea, Glover said, is to enable host-nation forces to target and deny safe haven to terrorists in largely ungoverned parts of the world, such as Africa’s Pan Sahel region, parts of Central Asia and South America’s Andes Mountains.

The FMTU is recruiting mature Marines who can work independently, knowing that their actions can have strategic implications, he said. In fact, the first two teams, which began training in August 2005, are made up entirely of non-commissioned officers with at least one overseas deployment in an infantry unit and foreign language capability.

Once they join the FMTU, Marines will be expected to stay three to five years—a relatively long tour of duty—Glover said. “We will invest a lot of time and money to teach them those skills, and we want to get our money’s worth.”

After their tours in the FMTU is over, Marines can either go back to a regular Marine unit or transfer to another MARSOC element, such as one of the special-operations battalions or the support group.

Teams begin with six months of schooling, a process of “training the trainers,” he said. They learn the use of all standard Marine small arms and crew-served weapons, demolitions, martial arts, first aid, vehicle operations, tactical planning, fire-support techniques and the art of advising foreign military personnel.

The FMTU also plans to teach its members how to use and maintain foreign military weapons and how to pass those skills to their students in other lands. “We want our teams to teach soldiers from other countries how to use the weapons they already have—not ours’,” Glover said.

For use in these classes, the unit is in the process of borrowing foreign weapons from Special Forces at nearby Fort Bragg, he said. Included are the AK-47 assault rifle and RPK light machine gun, both developed by the Soviet Union, plus the Fusil Automatique Leger (light automatic rifle), manufactured by Fabrique National, of Belgium. All fire 7.62 mm rounds, the NATO standard.

In addition, to help its teams function independently in foreign lands, the FMTU is working with the Corps’ new center for advanced operational culture learning to teach language skills and regional awareness. (see related story)

The first team is scheduled to deploy this summer to an undisclosed country in Africa. The FMTU plans to train eight teams a year.

-Harold Kennedy

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