New type of Royal Marine

[Matt B]

I had an idea last night that I thought I would share as I thought it was quite interesting and may spark debate.

When recruits pass week 15 you are considered trained soldiers, you are not a 'Commando' but a trained soldier none the less.

What if they offered the option to opt out of training at this point and start your career as a 'Royal Marine' battle ready and able to be deployed wearing a blue/black beret (i'm not sure of the colour you get before your green beret). Generally you would be deployed in support of 'commandos'.

At a later stage you could train to become a commando and get your green beret and therefore be deployed as a 'Royal Marine Commando' on more advanced deployments.

Penny for your thoughts?

 

[Aspiring87]

So you want to put an untrained soldier onto the front line!? From my point of view the training is the length it is for a reason, putting a half trained soldier onto the front line alongside serving commandos would just be a liability.
Its like having some driving lessons, but not officially taking and passing your test, then being allowed out on the roads....dangerous or not?

 

[BradfordBulls]

sounds like the option a half assed person would take, why do the training if your not going to do it 100%

 

[Matt B]

So you want to put an untrained soldier onto the front line!? From my point of view the training is the length it is for a reason, putting a half trained soldier onto the front line alongside serving commandos would just be a liability.
Its like having some driving lessons, but not officially taking and passing your test, then being allowed out on the roads....dangerous or not?

I'm not sure how much you know about the training and the military in general, but at week 15 you are considered a TRAINED soldier, you are just not a 'Commando'.

In the army (apart from Infantry) the training is only 14 weeks, then you pass out as a trained battle ready soldier, you then go onto Phase 2 and do your trade training, signaller, engineer, driver etc.

I'm not saying you would be standing side by side with the Green berets, just in support, say for example doing reconnaissance, fire support, driving etc.

 

[Aspiring87]

Well its quite simple then isnt it....You join the army. I just see you would be a liability to work alongside or even in support of Royal Marine Commandos. 15 weeks may be good enough for the army, but the Royal Marines aren't the army.

 

[Matt B]

So you want to put an untrained soldier onto the front line!? From my point of view the training is the length it is for a reason, putting a half trained soldier onto the front line alongside serving commandos would just be a liability.
Its like having some driving lessons, but not officially taking and passing your test, then being allowed out on the roads....dangerous or not?

That would be like saying, why join the marines if you are not going to go all the way and join the SBS.

If it was introduced then it would be a different class of soldier, you would be a Royal Marine, just not a Commando, therefore if you passed the 15 weeks, you would have gone all the way and passed 100% as a Royal Marine.

You could then choose to go further, and get your Green beret as a Commando

 

[TheBaker]

Well its quite simple then isnt it....You join the army. I just see you would be a liability to work alongside or even in support of Royal Marine Commandos. 15 weeks may be good enough for the army, but the Royal Marines aren't the army.

Amen.

 

[MTW]

its not quite as simple as that tho, you will have your personal skills like weapons handling and all that, but wont know any attack drills or anything like that so it really wouldnt work, if it was ever to happend they would have to re design the training regime, wouldnt work with the current one....but even then it still wouldnt work because anyone who works in a support role (rifles,29 commando etc) with the commandos has to be commando fit and trained to commando standard..by passing the all arms commando course.....so it would completely defeat the object to have non commando trained ranks supporting the royal marines.

 

[gedro]

15 weeks is no way enough training, the standard CIC is 26 weeks for line infantry, thats combat infantrymans course for short.

# Combat Infantryman's Courses (Line) - 26 Weeks
# Combat Infantryman's Courses (Guards) - 28 Weeks
# Combat Infantryman's Courses (PARA) - 28 Weeks
# Combat Infantryman's Course (Gurkha) - 39 Weeks

... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infantry_Training_Centre

 

[Chris]

With the 14-15 week basic soldiering done i wouldnt think you to be battle ready, combat trained maybe so that if things got out of hand and the chip were down you could pick up a rifle and help fight off the enemy.With only 15 weeks training you would take over a supportive type role much like many of the Army professions like Electrician or Gunner Sound Ranging, however with budget constraints imposed by the government it is unlikely it would happen since why train people to do a job like that when you can just use the Army to do it.

Can also state the point that you shouldn't really be using commando's as regular infantry same for the para's that role should really fall onto the army regulars who themselves are 26-28 weeks trained. But its not a regular war where you can actually use the para's and commando's to full effect.

 

[brummielad]

Why is the gurkha one so long? 39 weeks. didnt know that.

 

[Matt B]

its not quite as simple as that tho, you will have your personal skills like weapons handling and all that, but wont know any attack drills or anything like that so it really wouldnt work, if it was ever to happend they would have to re design the training regime, wouldnt work with the current one....but even then it still wouldnt work because anyone who works in a support role (rifles,29 commando etc) with the commandos has to be commando fit and trained to commando standard..by passing the all arms commando course.....so it would completely defeat the object to have non commando trained ranks supporting the royal marines.

Thats very true, and altering the training regime/schedule would mess up the final result that is a Royal Marines Commando.

Maybe they could have 2 separate courses then?

Gedro, 15 weeks can be long enough to be battle ready. For example, if you join the army as a Royal Engineer, you do 14 weeks, you are then a trained soldier and ready to be deployed to the front line. They just don't *text deleted* they send you off to do combat engineering, and then your chosen trade training, communications, sparky etc.

Same with signallers, they do 14 weeks, are battle ready, but then go on to do signallers trade training.

15 weeks could be enough but they would have to alter how the course is run.

 

[TheBaker]

Why is the gurkha one so long? 39 weeks. didnt know that.

I think it's 39 weeks only for the Nepalese Ghurkas, as they do 3 months of language training.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brigade_of_Gurkhas

Matt B, why would you want them to do this?

 

[Matt B]

I wouldn't necessarily, just playing devils advocate. It was an idea I had sparked from someone asking me why they are called 'Royal Marines Commando'. They said if all Marines are Commando's then why not just call them Marines.

From that I thought it might be an idea to have Marines, and Marine Commandos.

 

[ste preece]

15 Weeks

It is true that after 15 weeks you are considered a trained soldier. After this stage, you could, if you couldn't hack the course!! tansfer to the army with ease. However, you are not considered a trained Royal Marine minus Commando Training!

I suppose it would be like doing an apprenticeship and half way through saying, well I've been half trained so I can work at the standard of other people who train to a lower standard!!

The Corps doesn't produce half trained soldiers. The finished edition of a fully fledged Boot neck is a "Royal Marine Commando."

An interesting angle to pose for debate though mate.

Cheers

Steve

 

[Aspiring87]

In all honesty Matt B i dont see your point of view....from the way your coming across we may aswell show people how to use a gun and then send them to Afghan....
15 weeks may be enough for the army, but were all aiming to go into the Royal Marines not the army, There isnt any possible way you could cut the training down to 15 weeks call yourself a royal marine do a tour and then comeback and complete the rest of your training, it doesnt make sense for one and also i doubt you'd come back alive with 15 weeks of training to be deployed in some of the situations the royal marines are.

 

[MTW]

Thats very true, and altering the training regime/schedule would mess up the final result that is a Royal Marines Commando.

Maybe they could have 2 separate courses then?

.

oooorrrrrr they could just train everyone to royal marine commando standard *text deleted*.

 

[Matt B]

It's good to see a decent debate, and I personally would never want to do anything less than the 32 weeks, I would also never change to the army after my 15 weeks, because I would spend the rest of my life looking at what I could have been.

I was just thinking that there must be people who like the sound of combat but don't want to join the Army or RAF, the Navy is for them but they don't quite have what it takes to be a Commando.

 

[MTW]

yea i see what your saying, but thats why the Royal Marines are who they are and have the respect that they do.....because not everyone has what it takes. and if like you say someone dosent want to be army or navy..but dosent have what it takes to be a Royal Marine, then thats that.....i doubt the royal marines would want people like that supporting them.

 

[Chris]

Maybe they could have 2 separate courses then?

Government penny pincher's wouldn't allow it mostly. They would argue "the Army does a fine job of providing support to all arms of the service and for shame on you for even bringing it up...and while we are on the topic maybe we could make them take more roles over to cut costs" ( ok maybe not exactly like that but you get the picture)

Royal Marines do also have our Naval brothers and sisters too, they provide support to the Royal Marines.