[Webstral]

Law, why are you yelling so much? We can hear you just fine. The guys who respect you are going to read your feedback without the implied volume. The guys who don't respect you aren't going to listen anyway.

There's a lot for us to learn from the USMC about a lot of things besides CRM. There's a rationale for training soldiers to shoot out to 300m and no further, but I've never bought into it. The Army wastes huge amounts of money on all kinds of ridiculous garbage--money that could be spent on the range.

Of course, the USMC has a different center of mass than the Army. The Corps is a fraction of the Army's size and enjoys a superior reputation. I don't know when the last time the Corps failed to meet its recruiting goals was, but if you told me it hasn't happened since the 70's I'd believe you. This sort of thing has a real impact on the quality of the troops. Since initial entry training is aimed at the bottom half of the recruitment pool, the superior motivation of the Marine recruits vis-a-vis Army Basic troops has a huge impact on the design and quality of the training. (This is not to say that the upper half of the recruits aren't challenged.)

All this said, the Army could stand to tighten its group when it comes to training soldiers on their individual weapons. The cost of small arms ammunition pales compared to the cost of the dead and wounded. The infantry should be on the range once a week; everybody else should be on the range once per month. As I've said many times, the Army could learn a lot from the USMC.

This is one of the reasons why in Thunder Empire Basic at Fort Huachuca is designed and run by the Marines who happened to be on-post at the TDM and who survived the fighting at Yuma to join with Huachuca. Although it tweaks some of the Army drill sergeants and former drill sergeants who want to do things their way, Thomason recognizes that a force with a great numerical inferiority has to have superior troops. Superior troops means superior privates. (As distinct from superior leadership) Given some of the wide-open spaces of Arizona, training riflemen to engage targets at 500m with an M16 is not unreasonable. Also, Thomason recognizes that the USMC has a superior method for instilling esprit de corps, which is another thing the troops at Huachuca are going to need when fighting potentially much larger Mexican forces.

Regardless of what labels one wants to apply, a firefight in a small room in Baghdad seems like pretty close quarters battle to me. I frankly don't give a damn what label a manual writer wants to apply, though I recognize that for the purposes of providing definitions and planning doctrine and training such labels do need to be applied.