The Army will replace its Cold War marksmanship strategy this summer with one that has basic trainees shooting more rounds, fixing jams and changing magazines — key skills all soldiers need in today’s combat.

“What we’ve learned through eight years of war is that’s now how our soldiers are having to shoot in combat,” Brig. Gen. Richard C. Longo, director of training for the Army’s deputy chief of staff, G-3/5/7, told Army Times. He described the current program, which is geared toward passing a single, live-fire test, as a “very sterile environment and a very predictable marksmanship qualification process.”

Initial Military Training Marksmanship, a program that draws lessons from the war zone, will become the Army standard for teaching new soldiers how to shoot in all five initial entry training centers beginning July 1.

Basic Rifle Marksmanship will still culminate with soldiers taking a timed test in which they fire 40 rounds of ammunition at 40 pop-up targets. Shooting from the prone and kneeling positions, trainees must hit 23 targets to earn a passing score.

However, trainees will then go through a standardized Advanced Rifle Marksmanship course that forces soldiers to shoot from behind barricades, reload, move in a tactical setting and shoot until the targets are “dead.”

The weeklong ARM course wraps up with a Combat Familiarization Fire, an event that “gives the soldier a feeling of, ‘now that you have qualified with your weapon, here are scenarios that you might experience in the operational environment in your first unit of assignment,’ ” said Col. Terry Sellers, operations officer for the Maneuver Center of Excellence at Fort Benning, Ga.

Under the new strategy, infantry trainees at Benning will shoot 730 rounds and non-infantry trainees will shoot 500 rounds. Traditionally, they have shot about 300 rounds.

“As a former division commander, I don’t think you can shoot enough,” said Lt. Gen. James Thurman, the Army’s G-3/5/7. “You’ve got to challenge soldiers in this environment today with different techniques of how you do marksmanship from basic marksmanship to all marksmanship levels.”

The sweeping overhaul is part of the Army’s Outcome-Based Training, a mindset designed to replace what has come to be viewed as a strict, by-the-book training doctrine that required “little or no thinking” with a new methodology designed to prepare soldiers for combat by teaching them why things work rather than just how to follow orders.

It began in late 2007, when Benning officials set out to revamp Army marksmanship training with a goal of shifting out of the Cold War mindset that focused on preparing soldiers for a large-scale, defensive fight against invading Warsaw Pact armies.

Sgt. 1st Class Erick Ochs, a combat-experienced drill sergeant at Benning, said the new strategy is geared toward the realities of the battlefield.

“It’s definitely more combat-oriented,” said Ochs, who has had two tours in Iraq and one tour in Afghanistan. It teaches new soldiers that their individual weapon “isn’t just a tool for punching holes in paper; this is a tool that will help me survive on the battlefield,” Ochs said.

In addition to drawing on their own combat experiences, trainers sought help from the Army Marksmanship Unit and the Asymmetric Warfare Group, a special unit established five years ago to help senior Army leaders find new tactics and technologies to make soldiers more lethal in combat.

Many of the techniques used in the pilot come from the training methodology these units have been teaching to combat units for the past several years.

One proven approach is to have trainees begin marksmanship training “shooting slick,” meaning without combat equipment, to become comfortable with their weapons.

The relaxed environment may sound like a radically new idea, but the Marine Corps uses a similar approach when it comes to recruit marksmanship training.

Soldiers in Basic Combat Training will go through the entire 13 days of Basic Rifle Marksmanship and qualify slick. They begin wearing combat equipment on day one of Advanced Rifle Marksmanship.

Soldiers in infantry start slick and add body armor, helmet and load-bearing gear on day 10 of BRM and wear it through qualification.

The new marksmanship strategy grew out of the pilot that infantry trainees have been exposed to since 2008, but there are differences.

Non-infantry trainees shoot with iron sights throughout BRM and begin training with optics and lasers in Advanced Rifle Marksmanship. Infantry trainees learn to zero, with both iron sights and the M68 Close Combat Optic, early in BRM. Zeroing is the process of adjusting the rifle’s sights to ensure that the bullets strike where the soldier aims on the target.

“We want to get the guy using the piece of equipment that he is going to be using in combat as soon as possible,” said Maj. Kevin Butler, operations officer for the 198th Infantry Brigade at Benning.

Butler fought in Afghanistan in 2002 and was severely wounded in a bomb attack in Iraq in 2007.

Infantry trainees also shoot more, 370 rounds in BRM and 360 in ARM. Non-infantry trainees shoot 310 rounds in BRM and 190 rounds in ARM.

“Just like a tank crewman is going to learn to use his weapon in his advanced individual training, the infantryman’s weapon system is his rifle, and he is expected to operate it at a higher degree of efficiency than any other soldier,” Butler said.

All trainees will go through the Combat Familiarization Fire at the end of Advanced Rifle Marksmanship. The tactical lane is designed to look like a setting they might encounter in Iraq or Afghanistan. As trainees move down the course, they must use the partially destroyed cars, rubble and makeshift walls as cover while engaging random targets.

In some cases, soldiers will have to score “multiple hits on a bobbing target to get that target to stay down,” Sellers said. The reality on the battlefield is that the enemy may not go down with just one shot, he said.

“You engaged the enemy, it took you multiple rounds to kill it, and it’s killed,” Sellers said.

To earn a perfect score, soldiers will use all 26 rounds to drop the 15 targets on the course.

Infantry trainees must score 16 hits out of 26 as a requirement for graduation, Butler said.

Non-infantry trainees will not receive an official score.

“The standard Army qualification is a measure of how well an individual can engage single or multiple targets at a variety of distances,” Butler said. “The Combat Familiarization Fire does a much better job of integrating all the skills someone is going to be required to do in a combat situation.”

Source: Army Times