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The US Marines, America's elite warriors. Marine training is legendary. They are the first to fight in American conflicts, and Marines must master assault tactics and weaponry from the sea, on the ground, and from the air.
Inside the US Marines' School of Infantry at Camp Pendleton, showcasing intense training, weapon mastery, and transformation into elite warriors.
Key Takeaways
- US Marine Corps School of Infantry provides the essential combat training beyond boot camp.
- Mastery of weapons like the M240 and M2 50 cal machine guns is critical for Marine combat readiness.
- High standards and rigorous testing ensure only the strongest Marines are deployed.
- Training includes a wide range of combat skills from tactics to live fire exercises.
- The program transforms recruits into elite warriors capable of fighting in diverse environments.
Summary
- The video explores the US Marine Corps School of Infantry (SOI) at Camp Pendleton, California, where new Marines undergo rigorous combat training.
- Training includes mastering assault tactics, weaponry from sea, ground, and air, and live fire exercises like Mojave Viper.
- Marines learn to operate key weapons such as the M240 Bravo medium machine gun and the M2 50 caliber heavy machine gun.
- The 59-day SOI course transforms recruits into combat-ready warriors through physical, written, and live-fire tests.
- Instructors like Sergeant Steven Helman ensure only the strongest Marines pass, maintaining high standards and low tolerance for failure.
- Training covers aerial tactics, house-to-house combat, land navigation, and small infantry tactics.
- The M240 machine gun fires 7.62 mm rounds with an effective range of up to 1,800 meters, requiring Marines to achieve an 80% hit rate.
- The M2 50 caliber machine gun, known as the Ma Deuce, has a range over 4 miles and is valued for its stopping power and reliability.
- The training emphasizes teamwork, such as 'talking guns' tactics where machine guns alternate fire to maintain suppression.
- The course is both a professional and personal transformation, preparing Marines to defend America worldwide.
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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But the legendary battlefield tactics begin here at the USMC School of Infantry. It's where new Marines are trained in the arts of war and the tools of combat.
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50 cal machine guns, shoulder-fired missiles, attack helicopters, and it all comes together at the famous assault training called Mojave Viper.
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This is live fire Marines. Camp Pendleton, California, the largest Marine base on the American coastline.
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It's over 300 square miles of pristine California wilderness. Its tranquility broken only by the sound of live fire.
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Out. This is the US Marine Corps's Graduate School of Combat. Oh, we can send them over here.
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Every year, 38,000 new Marines get out of the hell they call boot camp. And then they get their real training in the arts of war.
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Gunner. A gunner. Make two lines right now. Here at Pendleton, these new grunts learn the awesome firepower of the Corps' big guns.
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[Music] Here, Marines learn the aerial tactics of helicopter rocket attacks and the deadly intensity of house-to-house room clearing exercises.
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[Music] It's one of the most intense training courses of any branch of the US military.
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So clear, hurry up. The USMC School of Infantry or SOI is mandatory training for all Marines.
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[Music] The place where young men become warriors. This hardcore intensive session of 59 days is meant to turn young men into combat-ready warriors.
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Ready to defend America anywhere in the world. But the live fire training does more than teach combat skills.
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Marine training becomes a process of complete transformation, professional and personal. Ready to go? Yes.
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Private Tyler Griowski is fresh out of boot camp. Joining the Marines from a small town in rural Wisconsin.
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I didn't know what to expect really. I mean, you've heard rumors, you know, to expect this. And I thought it was just going to be like another phase of boot camp, but it really wasn't.
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Private Gavin Percy quit a successful film school career to pursue his dream of becoming a Marine.
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The School of Infantry is all the best parts about boot camp. The combat stuff, rifle training, weapons training, land navigation, small infantry tactics. It's the stuff that you signed up for. Every day is a challenge. Brings new challenges. But I mean, it's it's not
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easy. That's other It's not easy to make the grade in the Marine School of Infantry.
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Students are graded on written tests, memorization, physical training, and live fire experience. Sergeant Steven Helman is a veteran Marine instructor whose job is to decide which Marines make the cut and which don't.
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We're trying to like not so much weed out, but make sure only the strong ones get through here so we're not sending a weak product out to the Fleet Marine Force.
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If you don't make the cut in your particular platoon, in your company, then you get dropped and you get dropped back to a different company to try it again. And if you only get so many of those shots before you can't do that job
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that you signed up to do, I'll do anything I can to make that cut.
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Competition is brutal. Standards are high. Tolerance for failure is low. These Marines are training to be specialists, machine gunners, mortar men, assault men. If they don't make the cut, they become just another grunt.
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60 yards. Instructors like Sergeant Helman do whatever it takes to deliver the finest battle-ready Marines to the front lines.
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I have 21 Marines and I have to make them understand the 240, the 50k you see right here and the Mark 119. And once they understand that fully, they each do a shoot and they each take tests. Once
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they pass these tests, then I know that I've done my job. Okay, time starts now. Begin.
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It's Friday and this section of would-be gunners are unloading ammo for one of the Marines' iconic weapons, the M240 Bravo machine gun.
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It is the general purpose machine gun for the entire US military. A brute force workhorse that these gunners must master.
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The M240 Bravo is a medium machine gun. It fires a 7.62 mm bullet. It's the same as your .30-06 hunting rifle.
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The max effective range of the weapon is 3,725 m. We can effectively engage targets with this weapon out to 1,800 m. It weighs 27.1 lb. This weapon is only a medium machine gun, so infantry men carry it quite a bit.
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The M240 has seen action with US troops from Grenada to Afghanistan, and it's one of the most powerful and reliable tools in the Marine arsenal.
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Here, new Marines unload their 240s and set them up on the range at Camp Pendleton.
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By the time these Marines get to this point, they have already studied the weapon in detail for a week.
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We constantly go through it day by day. We sit hours on the same weapon just making sure we know everything about it.
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Like we study it in and out. No, we just constantly disassemble and assemble so it comes second nature. When I go to sleep, I have a 240 in my head.
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This may look like a lot of ammunition, but it's not. Each gunner is given 1,200 rounds.
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They'll use them all. They'll have to score an 80% hit rate if they don't want to get cut.
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Tension is high. For a week, these Marines have been focused solely on the classroom study of the M240.
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Now they fire. Fire. There we go. Assistant gunners lie prone, communicating through hand signals and determining accuracy.
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Gunners adjust their elevation and keep firing. The 240 is the most versatile weapon that we have.
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We get to choose where we want to be positioned on the top of hilltop and we get to do the suppressing fire. We're the ones that are keeping the enemy's heads down while they get to move in.
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Let's go. Once the groups of machine gunners begin to master the targeting and firing, they work on tactics like talking guns.
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Talking guns is where you have two sets of guns and one is going to be firing and then as soon as the other is done firing, the other gun's going to open up with its rate of fire.
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[Applause] [Music] And you just continually do this. And then when one runs out of ammunition, then the other gun's going to pick up the rate of fire to make it seem like there's more.
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[Music] After 3 hours of bone-rattling gunfire, the instructors examine the results. Not everyone is going to make the cut.
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You get knocked down the bottom ladder again. You think you're coming in and you're ready to go and find out you're not as big as you thought you were and you got to start all over again.
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Making the cut will take everything these Marines have, especially on the next weapon in the arsenal, the big brother of the M240, the 50 caliber heavy machine gun.
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[Music] Camp Pendleton, California. At the US Marine Corps School of Infantry, it's the end of week two in the IMC, the Infantry Machine Gunners Course.
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New Marines have mastered the M240 7.62 mm machine gun. Y'all, I'm going to take a look down range.
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Now they're about to step up to the big guns. This is the M2 50 caliber machine gun. A recoil-operated, air-cooled, belt-fed automatic weapon, famous for its range, accuracy, and stopping power.
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Also known as the Ma Deuce, this classic design has chewed up enemy forces from the Nazis to the Taliban.
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With a maximum effective range of over 4 miles and a firing rate of more than 500 rounds a minute, the 50 cals are the Marines' heavy weaponry of choice on the battlefield.
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The 50 cal is basically one of the better weapons to have on a convoy. And they're usually on the front chuck just because their freaking firepower is so overpowered.
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[Applause] The student Marines unload cases of ammunition. Lots of ammunition. Well, we're all excited for the 50 cal.
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We can't wait. We're all just like, "All right, this is going to be some more weight, more conditioning. We're going to be able to push our body to a bigger limit." How many rounds are in each can?
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100 rounds per can. The size and power of the 50 cal's half-inch wide bullets is clear. The
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The rounds, they can go through like a Humvees steel. They can go through concrete. They can go through mud walls, anything like bunkers and things like that. And personnel carries that the enemy might have.
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Quickly, let's go. Metal targetry, beaten zone all around it. There's your TRP1. Who does not see TRP1?
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A weapon this large needs a lot of training to master. Hey, come directly to the right of that.
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They started uh last Friday on these weapon systems and they got classes from basic characteristics, troubleshooting, unloading, loading, and they just started from there.
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We good? That's up to you to judge the distance, right? They have to learn how to take this gun apart and uh put it back together under three minutes, which is pretty dang tough.
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A twoman crew is needed to fire the M2. And some of these trainees may not make the cut in learning the M2's elaborate firing process.
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First of all, to load the weapon, we had to clear the weapon. We put on the track side handle the rear, clear it out, make sure there's nothing in there so it was clear empty chamber.
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We put the rounds on the feedway right here. And now we're in condition three. We pull the bolt back to the rear once for condition two, half load. We pull it back once more for condition one full load. So now we're gunned up. And
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now we're ready to fire. We good? Yes sir. Cover down under your guns. These students have spent over a week mastering the intricacies of the M2, but they have never fired the weapon until now.
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The soundwave of a dozen 50 calibers firing at once literally shakes the flack jackets and helmets of the instructors.
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Get my target now. Each twoman crew begins zeroing in on their targets. Let's go, Nicholas. Get him on target.
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Hulks of reinforced steel hundreds of yards away. Today we had the armor piercing incinerary rounds. It's basically showing you where those rounds are landing. So you can have your team leader adjust you on the target. They'll even like light stuff on fire.
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[Applause] Once each marine has fired a few hundred rounds, that first ring, get up here. It's time to take their place behind a Humveymounted M2.
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It takes practice to keep the M2's thumb trigger depressed against the massive kick of full auto mode.
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Push into it. Push into it all the way to freaking right. It takes a lot to get each step right with the M2 and keep from being cut.
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I kind of go through the mental checklist of am I doing everything right? I mean, pretty much the mental checklist of is my sergeant going to start yelling in my other ear or not if I'm doing something wrong.
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Let's go. Set all your weight down to the right. So, they might raise the voice to make a correction, but then again, we are firing 50 cows. You know, if they're yelling at you, you might be doing something unsafe, and that needs to be
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reinforced because, you know, there's no playing around with these weapon systems. You know, you you got to be safe with them.
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Hold on to the damn gun. 1 2 3 4 5 A dozen machine guns, 21 new Marines, several thousand rounds of ammo, and these Marines have a new appreciation for their own firepower.
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It takes your breath away. It's loud. When you shoot, you can just feel the the percussion going through your body and it's it's unreal.
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My adrenaline got pumped so hard that my goggles started fogging up. You know, it definitely gets under your skin a little bit to the point where you're in that moment absolutely loving life.
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I mean, firing on these weapon systems is there's not a feeling like it. It It feels amazing.
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Each step in the school of infantry is watched and evaluated. The goal is not to fail those who aren't prepared, but to make sure every Marine is ready to go directly into combat.
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Okay, just get the gun on target. That's all I'm worried about. Go fire when ready.
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We're always being graded. Like everything that goes on, it's it's a performance-based thing. So, if you're not doing well, they're going to coach you up and they're going to set you up and prepare you to do better.
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Sergeant Nathan Glowey has overseen these young Marines through the first half of SOI. There's a lot of transformation from when he shows up in classroom on day one to when he leaves cuz they're already Marines. They've already made it that
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far. It's making them confident in their abilities to actually conduct warfare when needed and yet still uphold the standards that a Marine has to uphold.
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The challenges are about to become greater. As these new Marines experience night combat, shoulder fired rockets, and the awesome firepower of Marines in the air.
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Day 45 of the US Marine School of Infantry. Does everybody understand? A band of men straight out of boot camp are halfway through this graduate school of combat.
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Hey Jets, we ready to fire rockets? Yes, all that hard work. Yes, this group is about to deploy one of the most powerful singleman weapons in the entire US arsenal.
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The Mark 153, also known as the SMA. The Small is a shoulder fire multi-purpose assault weapon. It's got four different types of rockets.
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The rockets that they're shooting today are the uh high explosive dual mode. If it's a soft target, such as a bunker or a building, it goes through the target and detonates. If it's a hard target, such as a armored vehicle, a
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tank, or a heavily fortified building, as soon as it hits the target, it explodes.
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MK 153 small, right? Yes sir. How much does it weigh? 16.92 lb, right? Yes sir.
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All right. Immediate action. What do we each marine begins to unpack the weapons components from the high explosive rocket to the launch tube.
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These pieces, when put together, can take out anything from a reinforced bunker to the world's most powerful tanks.
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The small developed from the original bazooka of World War II, but new generations of development have created a far more powerful weapon.
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This is how the Marines are taught to carry the weapon. It's the uh cradle carry, what we like to call it. And this is their life and limb right here.
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You have your shoulder rest right here. So, you're going to just simply pull it out, put it in your shoulder just like this. So, after you pull it out, you're going to hold it the small just like this. Looking down range, acquiring your
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target. Once you have the target locked on, then you go ahead and uh fire your rocket down range to your target.
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Gunner, a gunner, make two lines right now. Training is intense because the consequences of failing could be deadly.
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Instructors stand next to the marine shooters to give guidance. Load. You shot your spine rifles. It's too fast. Marine and great performance.
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You just think about the training. What runs through my mind is uh all the steps. Okay, you got to do this. You got to do this. So that way I'm perfect when I get on the line cuz I don't want to
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mess up. You know, these are dangerous weapons we're handling. So you definitely don't want to mess around with them.
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But when deployed properly, there's nothing like the small deadly effectiveness. These trainees are required to make an 80% hit rate.
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or face getting cut. Everyone's doing outstanding. As you can see, my target down range got blown up and that's the first time I've ever seen that one. So, the Marines are hitting their targets very very continuously.
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So, I I my hats off to him. Go. Go. Reload. Hit. Save. On another range nearby, the training takes on another aspect. This section of new Marines not only has to hit their target, they have to work as a team. The
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weapon, a mortar. We have the uh 60 mm mortar out here today. It's a smooth boore muzzle loaded. It's a high angle of fire weapon. Um there's no rifling in the bore, so it's strictly straight up, straight down. And we actually have to
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have a high angle of fire so it comes down on top of targets. Since World War II, the 60 mm mortars mobility and explosive power have defended Marines in combat and they're found on battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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At night, mortars can fire illumination rounds that drop using parachutes, lighting up the entire battlefield for machine gunners.
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Most of the time, a mortar is deployed in the field actually to cover the advance of an infantry unit. I mean, it's my job and the job of my students in the future to actually put rounds there so that enemy has to duck. Now,
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they can't shoot at anybody and hopefully there's not as many of them when the riflemen get there.
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Training in mortar fire is as much about working together as it is about hitting a target.
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Good to go. Good. From the time you see an enemy, you have to get the gun set up as quickly as possible and get your sights on target.
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The faster you get it up, the faster you get on target, the faster you can fire.
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Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. If you can see them, rule of thumb is they can see you. So when you fire, then you need to get up and get out of dodge real fast. Otherwise, they might be
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coming to find you. [Music] station. As the weeks of training have progressed, these Marines are now being graded on teamwork as much as skill.
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Marine instructors witness the development firsthand. As the intense study and hardcore training forges a new character, they basically start getting more mature. They understand that we're going to give them tasks to do by themselves and to actually do it by themselves
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without anyone telling them to do it. Day by day, they just keep growing smarter.
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They'll have to be smarter. As these Marines now take a step up in their training.
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Now, these new Marines are about to get up close and personal with the enemy in the highintensity adrenaline pump that the Marines call Room clearing.
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After six weeks at the school of infantry, Marines have trained with powerful long-d distanceance weapons like the 50 cal reload and the shoulder fired small.
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[Music] But real combat is more intense and up close. Down right side clear. Every Marine is going to enter a house at some point during combat. In Afghanistan and Iraq, 90% of the combat that's coming through there is coming from a building or an area
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that they're going to have to go into clear. Here at a mockup of a small village, the students of the School of Infantry face the intensity of urban warfare.
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Just like in actual combat, they'll be fighting an unseen enemy in close quarters. Move up.
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Using live ammunition. Room clearing is completely explosive kinetic event. From the kick down of the door to clearing the corner straight into the room. It's a lot of flow and you have to know the guys in your squad.
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You got to know what's going on with everybody else because I mean if you don't someone could get shot.
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They begin with an unloaded walkthrough and a grenade toss. Instructors stand behind each marine on the first pass.
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Explaining exactly what to do and when up front right sir. How many rounds did it get?
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Two. Sorry. Then what? Two. Then what? And then what? There are specific rules to follow in the chaos of close quarter combat.
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All right, so basically what happens is the marine comes in. He's going to check his fatal front.
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He's going to move towards the side to check his first threat. His first threat is this target right here. So he shoots a hammer pair into the chest. The next is going to be a hammer pair into that
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chest right there. Then to ensure that the target is down, he shoots one shot to the head, one shot to the head as he moves to the corner. Bang bang bag right side clear.
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Left side clear. Room all clear. Once both sides of the room are clear, they say room all clear. They're going to move their weapons down and then they'll move on to another room if there is another room.
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The intensity of the training can cause these new Marines to make mistakes. One head. One head.
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Okay. Why did you do that? Which is why this training is so vital. When you get in country, there's not going to be those safety checks. And the last thing you want to do is hurt another Marine. So
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if they're yelling, it's for a damn good reason. I'll tell you that. Okay. What was that? What was that?
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What were you taught? House clearing. It's a lot of fun when done right. It's beautiful to watch when done right, but it can be very dangerous. It's very harrowing experience in real life.
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Now, after walkthroughs with their instructors, the teams of Marines go into mock combat, fully loaded.
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[Music] side. The targets are green plastic. Maintain where your two inter but these students and their instructors know that soon this is going to happen.
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This scenario may be all too real. All right, that's all I have for you, Jim. Nice.
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It's a sobering insight, not only for the new Marines, but for seasoned trainers. When we leave here, we'll go back out to the fleet. And a lot of these kids that we've trained are now, you know, now I'm
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the section leader for my squad and I trained half those kids. So, I mean, you almost want to do better knowing that they're going to be under you and your life is in their hands.
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By the time these Marines master room clearing, hardcore training has molded raw youthful energy into a unified fighting force.
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Can we do this quickly? Yes sir. All right, make it happen. Let's go. Remember, originally when they come to us, they're instant willing and obedience to orders, and they don't think about why they do orders. here. We teach them what to do
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and why they're doing it so they can understand it when they get to the fleet and move on to combat units so that they become a thinking marine instead of just an acting marine.
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For some Marines, the stakes are about to get higher. aboard an attack helicopter for a mission that demonstrates the awesome firepower of Marines in the air.
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[Music] Every Marine learns his basic fighting skills at the School of Infantry, but some Marines will go on to take the battle into the air.
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For nearly 100 years, US Marine aviators have been flying missions, from the days of biplanes to today's deadliest assault helicopters.
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We fight as a MAGTA, a marine air ground task force. So anytime we go to fight, there's a ground combat element, there's an aviation combat element, whether it's in contingency operations, whether it's disaster relief or whether it's fighting
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full-scale combat operations in Afghanistan, the MAGTF is really the fundamental of our war fighting ethos as Marines.
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Marine aircraft ranges from C130 cargo planes to the massive troop transport helicopters. At the Marine Air Base at Camp Pendleton, pilots are preparing for a training run.
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Today, they're loading rockets and machine gun ammo for a mission that simulates an air assault on a distant target.
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These pilots have maneuvers to practice and weapons to master, just like the grunts on the ground.
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And the primary weapon platform of the Marine Aeros Assault Arsenal is the AH1. The Cobra.
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58 ft long, only 38 in wide at the cabin. This sleek four-bladed chopper is the cutting edge of military helicopter technology.
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You can see by the nature of that platform, it's not for hauling cargo around. It's sole mission in life is to deliver ordinance against our nation's enemies.
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Today's training mission is about to go hot. The Cobra is designed to deliver massive firepower with brutal accuracy.
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The Cobra's nose contains the lead spitting 20 mm cannon capable of firing 750 rounds a minute or 11 rounds per second.
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We have different types of warheads on them. We got tracers and we also have our semi-armored piercing high explosive incendiary round which essentially it's got a little explosive inside it and acts like a little mini grenade every time we shoot those out. So one can
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imagine that you're essentially getting shot 11 rounds per second with these high explosive rounds. It creates a lot of damage.
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Outboard wings carry banks of high explosive hydra rockets fired at 1,500 mph. Right now they're loading up some 2.75 in H rockets. They're loading 14 right now on the Zulu there. High explosive.
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They're going to go boom when they hit their target. But I believe the cage rates is about 50 meters per rocket.
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It's pretty destructive. [Music] These 5 lbs of high explosives can flatten buildings. Fragments of iron erupt from the warhead, killing everything in a circle of 150 ft.
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The Cobra can carry 19 of these devastating devices on each side. Basically, you have a lot of things rolled up in one in the Cobra. I mean, go out there and fight pretty much anything on the battlefield today.
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Today, the Cobra's targets are empty shipping containers painted red. Even these giant halts present a small target from the air.
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And in real combat, the enemy inside these targets can shoot back. The sound of incoming marine cobras is known and feared around the world.
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It's a very very large blade, distinctive sound. As a matter of fact, that oral signature is what the enemy fears. So when you have AH1s flying overseas in Afghanistan, typically the shooting stops until they go away. When the enemy hears those helicopters
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coming, they know that it's it's typically not going to work out very well for them.
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Attacking cobras usually have backup from the Marines workh horses of the air, the legendary Hueies.
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[Music] The original model flew thousands of missions in Vietnam, becoming an icon of that entire war and era.
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You watch Vietnam movies, you see the Huey gunships going in. Everything from resupply to troop insert. Now you have the same Huey for this century which has better sensors, better avionics, carry more people, more fuel, and also more
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ordinance. So utility helicopter with a twist in a sense. Hanging from one door, a Huey gunner can re death from a 50 cal machine gun.
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On the other side, lead spews from a GAU7 minigun with six rotating barrels. has exceptionally high rate of fire, uh 3,000 rounds per minute. It's really going to give you the capability to throw a lot of rounds down range. Has a
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great suppressive capability. It will give you a lot of firepower when you need it. So, it's uh one of the guns we love to have overseas.
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[Music] Together, Hueies and Cobras make up a brutally effective tactical unit. The combined guns providing a devastating field of fire front, side, and rear.
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Whether practiced in Camp Pendleton or deployed on battlefields around the world, these air tactics are designed to work directly with the troops below. Our number one, our sole purpose in life and every Marine aviator understands it is to support that individual uh marine on
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the ground. Our sole purpose is to ensure that when called upon, we're there to deliver accurate fires. Being a Marine pilot, again, you're a Marine first, aviator second. So, all of us as riflemen fighting, I just happen to
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fight in the air. So, when those guys on the ground are getting hurt or getting shot, we take it personal because those are our brothers in arms down there.
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Now, those brothers in arms are about to face their final exams as they prepare for the last steps that will put everything they've learned to the test.
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It's a highstakes war game. That's your enemy up on that hill. Under combat conditions where the bullets are real.
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The Mojave Desert. It's dawn and the Marines are moving in. It's the most intense live fire training these Marines will ever face.
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A dress rehearsal for war. The Marines call it Mojave Viper. It is the Marine Corps's premier live fire training range in the United States due to it being just under 940 square miles of what is essentially free fire
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area. It's mainly for all the platoon working together as one maneuver warfare essentially. how to use all of our elements and assets organic to our company and apply them all at one time.
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New Marines have trained for two months. Those that survived the cut at SOI must now spend 30 days here at Mojave Viper under combat conditions to complete this notorious final exam.
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Just the aspect of living in austere conditions for close to a month allows the Marines to get in the mindset that they need to deal with the conditions and the environment that they'll be facing in Afghanistan.
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Today's training mission doesn't have a name, just a number. This particular one, it's it's known only as range 400. There is no other name for it because everybody in the Marine Corps knows that Range 400 for probably close to three decades now has
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been the literal crucible for a marine rifle company. It has made any number of rifle companies significantly more advanced and it's probably broken its fair share of companies as well.
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Today's mission is a simulated assault on a single objective. The target is small, a simple rectangle of 2x4s, but the company will have to fight across hundreds of yards of enemy terrain to get there.
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The goal of the company is to use the terrain to its advantage to seize those positions by force, clear them out, and also use those positions as stepping stones to gain the next position.
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The exercise begins with a bang, literally. We will initiate the attack with a deception breach. The deception breach is a charge designed to draw the enemy's attention in a direction other than where you're attacking.
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That'll be followed up by 81 mm mortars suppressing separate targets that have been identified to them.
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Mortars re destruction on the distant target. Now the skills learned during weapons training at Camp Pendleton become part of the combined operation.
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Machine Gun Hill is really a critical component of this range. We're going to put our entire medium machine gun section up there. Their purpose in life is to provide our most responsive and arguably our most accurate uh suppression on each and every objective
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in advance of maneuver elements pushing up onto those objectives. As suppressive fire keeps the enemy's heads down, the main assault begins on the ground.
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We have to continue to push and use what we call micro terrain. Wadis, washes, small hills, dirt mounds, rocks, or even somebody's bootprint in some case can become micro terrain depending on how bad you want to use it.
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Let's go. These are the skills that pay off in the real battlefield. Feel it. That's your enemy up on that hill. Try to get the mindset of combat where fear and personal safety come second to the job at hand.
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You uh kind of zone it out. You're more in tune to what your squad's doing. It's almost an internal feeling. You are aware of what's going on around you. You hear the blast. You hear the gunshots going, but you're uh you're more focused
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into your job and everything else is kind of secondary. At that point, the battle reaches its climax. as the Marines near their objective.
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Arguably one of the more dangerous points in in an infantryman's life is when he's the first man through. But that being said, everybody understands the risks associated with that and the strength comes from the trust that your brother Marines are right behind you and
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will be following you into that regardless of what awaits you on the other side.
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After three grueling hours, the Marines finally reach their target. Victory is achieved. At least for now.
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But the real victory comes from the lessons learned and the specific feedback from instructors.
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Staged well right behind cover. They kind of jumped the gun. Rushed into it. a little bit a little bit of friction between the squad leaders as far as squads moving.
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I was very pleased. I don't make a habit of uh giving out compliments too easily, but they certainly put out a 100% effort throughout. You can see it in each and every one of their eyes. They're clearly exhausted due to the effort required to
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get up that range, but that has not in any way, shape, or form dampened their spirits. They're proud of what they've done.
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At the end of Mojave Viper, both officers and enlisted men feel ready for whatever comes next.
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I have 100% confidence in this unit deploying to wherever they need to send us and carry out all missions for the United States.
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It's been a long journey for these young Marines from raw recruit to combat ready warrior.
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They joined up for a variety of reasons. I wanted an adventure, a challenge. I want to do something that make, you know, family, loved ones, friends proud.
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And so far, it's been the toughest challenge I've ever done. I chose to come into the Marine Corps because I wanted to be part of a team whose history and traditions are rooted in winning battles. So, I figured if I'm
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going to war, I might as well go to war with these guys. Three months of intense training has created not only better warriors but better individuals.
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I think it was the transformation of a person looking at who I was before I went through it and who I was after. I mean as cliche as it may sound like there was definitely a huge transformation and it was the best thing
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I ever did in my life. 59 days in the School of Infantry, 30 days in the Mojave Desert, and a new batch of young men have transformed from simply citizens to battle ready Marines, ready to protect and defend their nation
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wherever it may send them.
Topics:US MarinesMarine CorpsSchool of InfantryCamp PendletonMarine trainingM240 machine gunM2 50 caliber machine gunMojave Viperlive fire traininginfantry tactics
