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The Army is launching a training course to fix a

deficit in one of the most fundamental skills of

soldiering: shooting straight.

The Marksmanship Master Trainer Course was

first stood up by the U.S. Army Marksmanship

Unit, the service’s elite competitive shooters. This

Army tackles marksmanshipshortfalls with new training courseBy: Michelle Tan, March 15, 2016 (Photo Credit: Brenda Rolin/Army)

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spring, it will launch Army-wide and fall under the

316th Cavalry Brigade. The course is already

available on the Army Training Requirements and

Resources System, or ATRRS.

Soldiers must be well-versed in the basics of

soldiering, said Maj. Gen. Scott Miller,

commanding general of the Maneuver Center of

Excellence and Fort Benning, Georgia.

“If you don’t have the foundational skills, you

don’t get better when we put more stress on

you,” he said.

Leaders believe so strongly in the course that

graduates will receive an Additional Skill Identifier

(which is still in the works and does not yet have

a number or letter designation).

Army Times

Inside the Army's new

Marksmanship Master Trainer

Course

“We think it’s important that people who come

through this are identified, so as a company or

battalion-level command team, you can start

identifying these individuals as they come in, and

we can help manage them better, too,” Miller

said.

The hope is for the MMTC to help the Army fill a

gap in its marksmanship abilities, said Capt.

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James Pickett, the operations officer for the Army

Marksmanship Unit.

“It’s a fix for a problem, but I think it’s important

we not focus on the problem,” he said. “This

knowledge did atrophy, but it atrophied naturally.

Think about all the deployments [soldiers did].

How much time do you think they really had to

focus on stuff?”

Army leaders are sharpening soldiers' marksmanship skills tobring more of them to the expert level. Here, Sgt. Arthur Ruepong,assigned to the 55th Signal Company (Combat Camera), fires hisM4 during a field training exercise at Fort A.P. Hill, Va., inSeptember.Photo Credit: Sgt. 1st Class Christophe Paul/Army

The MMTC was born out of a recent Maneuver

Warfighter Conference and backed by Miller.

After almost 15 years of war in Iraq and

Afghanistan, “maybe we’d lost the essence of

being able to focus on the basics,” he said.

As the Maneuver Center of Excellence looked at

the areas it should focus on, “from the

standpoint of lethality,” leaders began to examine

soldiers’ proficiency with their individual

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weapons, Miller said.

“When you start talking about basic rifle

marksmanship, it’s actually very measurable,” he

said. “When we looked across the force, what we

wanted to do was move more of our shooters to

the expert level. It’s a trainable skill.”

Soldiers who score a 36 or higher out of 40

targets during weapons qualification qualify as

expert marksmen. Those who hit 30 to 35 of the

40 targets are sharpshooters, while those who

score a 23 through 29 are marksmen. Soldiers

who shoot 22 or lower do not qualify.

Staff Sgt. Joel Strauch, 1st Battalion, 19th Infantry, 198th InfantryBrigade, loads magazines Jan. 26 at McAndrews Range. The SandHill drill sergeant is attending the Marksmanship Master TrainerCourse that trains soldiers to teach marksmanship to othersoldiers. The course has been added to the Army TrainingRequirements and Resources System this year.Photo Credit: Brenda Rolin/Army

Leaders “didn’t like where our numbers were” in

terms of how many soldiers were qualifying as

experts, Miller said.

But the issue wasn’t just in the scores, Miller said.

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It was in resources as well.

“The biggest shortfall is trained personnel to train

soldiers,” he said, adding that basic rifle

marksmanship is “a skill you generally don’t lose

if you learn it right the first time.”

“If you don’t teach them right the first time, you

have this self-perpetuating problem,” Miller said.

The ability to plan and resource training is

another skill set that likely has atrophied over the

course of almost 15 years of war, Miller said.

“What the Army has gotten used to is you have

trainers come to you,” he said. “But if you just

show up to training as opposed to planning

training, that’s a skill that can atrophy.”

The problem isn’t poor noncommissioned

officers, said Lt. Col. Bret Tecklenburg,

commander of the Army Marksmanship Unit.

“We’ve culturally lost the ability to teach soldiers

how to train and shoot marksmanship,” he said.

“To fix it, we have to equip NCOs to do their

duties. Without the information they need, they

can’t do it.”

Army Times

Myth vs. reality: Army pros

dispel common marksmanship

misconceptions

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One big challenge facing the Army is time — or

the lack thereof.

“When you have quite a few requirements levied

on you, you start mixing and matching what’s

important,” Miller said.

Some shooters have the aptitude and

foundational knowledge to only need three or

four days to get up to speed, he said. Others

need more time.

“You need to anticipate more time because we

have to get basic marksmanship right,” he said.

In his assessment, Miller said he believes the

Army can do better when it comes to

marksmanship.

“I didn’t see it as a catastrophic failure,” he said. “I

thought we could do much better and drive up

our expectations.”

The marksmanship initiatives are already

producing results.

Experts at the Maneuver Center measured a One

Station Unit Training infantry unit within the

198th Infantry Brigade.

Two years ago, 52 percent of the soldiers were

qualifying as marksmen, the minimum standard,

said Col. Geoffrey Norman, the operations officer

for the Maneuver Center. Of the others, 38

percent qualified as sharpshooters and 10

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percent as experts.

Since then, the unit has made changes to its

marksmanship training strategy and integrated

MMTC-certified trainers, Norman said. A

snapshot of the unit’s marksmanship scores

taken in December showed a 40 percent

reduction in soldiers qualifying as marksmen, he

said.

In December, just 12 percent of the soldiers were

qualifying as marksmen. As many as 34 percent

qualified as experts and 54 percent as

sharpshooters.

“Their numbers are representative of the returns

on investment for this program,” Norman said.

“[The Maneuver Center] envisions an increase in

sharpshooters and experts, people who are real

masters of their weapons. We’ve seen a huge

reduction in folks just getting by.”

Pickett said the shortfalls in marksmanship

abilities and knowledge across the force were

“obvious” to him.

“I can definitely tell you what I struggled most in

was trying to get people to understand how to

shoot and how to teach shooting,” he said.

Sgt. 1st Class Kenneth Rose, chief of the AMU

instructor training group, agreed, adding that

there is a lot of misinformation in the force about

shooting and marksmanship.

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They include a lack of understanding when it

comes to basic ballistics and what happens to a

bullet after it leaves the barrel.

“Some people thought a bullet accelerated once

it was fired,” Pickett said. “But it’s really a struggle

against gravity the minute it leaves, and it’s

[traveling] a downward arc.”

Plenty of soldiers, regardless of rank, had that

misconception, Pickett said.

Some soldiers also didn’t understand how to

adjust the sights on their rifles, Rose said. Others

didn’t understand minute of angle, which is a way

to measure a rifle’s accuracy, and how it affects

shot groups. Still others don’t know how to zero

the iron sights on their rifles because they’ve only

learned to do so with optics.

Pickett credited Miller for pushing for the MMTC.

“He recognized that there was a huge knowledge

gap in marksmanship and that knowledge gap

particularly affected the NCOs’ ability to teach

marksmanship effectively at their unit,” he said.

This includes the ability to plan training events

and knowing how to get the required resources,

such as ammunition and ranges, for training,

Pickett said.

The first MMTC kicked off in late 2014, Rose said.

To date, more than 230 NCOs have graduated as

marksmanship master trainers, he said.

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The first soldiers to attend the course included

drill sergeants and soldiers at the marksmanship

academy at Fort Drum, New York, Rose said.

“Now we’re continuing to target E-5 to E-7

[soldiers] but we’re opening that up to whoever

needs the training,” he said.

Now that MMTC has been approved as a Training

and Doctrine Command course, it’s time for AMU

to hand off the day-to-day responsibilities of the

course to the Maneuver Center of Excellence,

Tecklenburg said.

“We’re responsible for helping the Army with

marksmanship, but we don’t have a large cadre

of instructors,” he said.

The unit only has about 140 personnel, about

100 of them soldiers.

The biggest challenge facing the MMTC is

capacity, Tecklenburg said.

“With only a few courses run and the capacity of

putting in 30 at a time, we have thousands of

NCOs that we need to reach,” he said.

For Tecklenburg, “ultimately, success is when

units are running their own marksmanship

training within their units,” he said.

The Maneuver Center of Excellence’s 316th

Cavalry Brigade, which is responsible for the

master gunner and sniper schools, will partner

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with AMU to run the Marksmanship Master

Trainer Course, said Lt. Col. Bob Underwood,

deputy commander of the 316th Cavalry Brigade.

“We were a natural fit for putting the course into

the long-term institutional process,” he said.

“We’re the long-term manning solution, but the

execution of the course is still going to be a

partnership with AMU.”

Day-to-day, soldiers from 1st Battalion, 29th

Infantry, which is part of the 316th Cavalry

Brigade, will run the course.

The plan is to run three pilot courses on ATRRS;

in April, June and August, Underwood said.

The pilots will validate the course as it goes

Army-wide, said Richard Eggers, who oversees

training management for the 316th Cavalry

Brigade.

“The curriculum is never static within the

educational realm, so you’re always improving it,”

he said.

The MMTC is similar to the master gunner

courses that already exist for Bradley and tank

gunners, except instead of focusing on a specific

platform, MMTC focuses on the individual,

Underwood said.

“It’s really about excellence,” he said. “It’s about

getting beyond basic marksmanship and driving

towards being excellent in the fundamentals of

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marksmanship.”

Once the MMTC is up and running, the 316th

Cavalry Brigade can run as many as 15 courses a

year. Each class can hold 30 students at a time.

Students are supplied with weapons, optics and

ammunition.

The primary cost of running the course is

ammunition; each course costs about $50,000 to

run, Underwood said.

Soldiers who attend MMTC must successfully

complete a “shoot-in process,” Rose said.

On their first day, students must zero a rifle and

shoot, using iron sights, at least 23 out of 40

targets — the bare minimum to qualify on a rifle

— to remain in the course, he said.

“We ask you to clear a hurdle right out of the

gate,” Pickett said. “[The course] is five weeks, we

have a lot of material to cover, so we look for a

baseline of capability so we know that unit isn’t

wasting their time and money by sending that

guy, and our instructors aren’t having their time

wasted, either.”

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Staff Sgt. Logan Gaughan, left, Marksmanship Master TrainerCourse instructor, gives a brief to MMTC students Jan. 26. Thefive-week course trains soldiers to teach marksmanship and wasdeveloped by the U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit.Photo Credit: Brenda Rolin/Army

MMTC is unique because it doesn’t just teach

NCOs how to shoot, Rose said.

“We’re actually teaching those noncommissioned

officers how to teach others,” he said. “A lot of

the curriculum is based around not only their

knowledge and ability to shoot, but also how they

articulate that knowledge and teach it.”

During the course, students will use standard

equipment that is easily available across the

Army, Rose said.

This means they’ll train with standard, rack-grade

M4 carbine and the M855 green-tipped

ammunition that’s standard issue, he said.

The instructors at AMU also “took great care” to

make sure the course was conducted on ranges

that can be found anywhere in the Army, Rose

said. None of the training takes place on “ranges

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specific to AMU,” he said.

“We want them to take this training back to the

force and use the ranges they already have,” he

said.

The MMTC is the most comprehensive train-the-

trainer program put together by AMU, Pickett

said. It also will be the first course designed by

the unit to become a full-fledged Army-wide

course via ATRRS, he said.

“What you get out of a graduate is really a force

multiplier for any echelon that he’s assigned to,”

Pickett said.

AMU also is working to get the word out to

commanders about the abilities of a course

graduate. This includes briefing soon-to-be

command teams attending the Pre-Command

Course on post.

“It’s great because we give them a shooting

demonstration, how we do blocks of instruction,

and let them shoot a little,” Rose said. “When

they get an MMTC graduate in their formations,

they know what they’re capable of and how they

can be used.”

So far, graduates of the MMTC have been

surprised by how much they learn, Rose said.

“Usually the first week they spend here, we

debunk a lot of myths, and we’re not just telling

them, we’re getting out and showing them,” he

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said. “It’s going to change the way that soldiers

think about shooting.”

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