Marine Corps’ SOTG: Making Special Warriors

By SUE A. LACKEY, Associate Editor

It’s midnight in the Big Easy. In the French Quarter, music and liquor flow and Christmas lights punctuate the starless night. Down the road from a popular Wal-Mart near an industrial section of the port of New Orleans, the night is split by the sound of Super Cobra helicopters, and sniper fire rings out. Seconds later, a convoy of Marines screeches to a stop, blocking a major intersection as Force Reconnaissance troops assault a deserted building.

The assault in New Orleans was, in fact, an elaborate training exercise staged by the Marine Corps’ Special Operations Training Group (SOTG) to replicate an assault on a suspected insurgent headquarters in Iraq. The map of the city has been superimposed with a map of Baghdad, and target sites were chosen to duplicate enemy strongholds the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) will encounter during its upcoming deployment.

SOTG was created in 1985 to support the training and certification of the Marine Expeditionary Unit-Special Operations Capable (MEU-SOC) program. The highly structured Training in an Urban Environment Exercise is designed to train and evaluate the MEU for its SOC certification.

A year in the planning, the SOTG took over portions of the city for nearly two weeks, staging elaborate scenarios designed to mimic current battle conditions in Iraq, and challenge the troops with new and unexpected situations. In New Orleans, the SOTG focused on the Maritime Special Purpose Force, specifically 72 Marines including a platoon from the elite 2nd Force Reconnaissance Company.

An urban environment exercise on this scale can be a logistical nightmare to plan, with constant coordination between local and state governments, state Homeland Security personnel, a Marine Corps-FBI liaison who works with local law-enforcement authorities, the U.S. State Department and other governmental agencies, as well as massive coordination with naval and aviation support.

“SOTG makes it easy on us,” said Col. Thomas Qualls, commander of the 26th MEU. “For the set up of an exercise of this scale there is a great deal of coordination with local and government agencies involved. The MEU’s focus is on tactics and the application of military force. By having all those constraints taken care of by SOTG, it allows us to focus on our mission.”

State Department trainees are utilized as role players, assuming the identity of ambassadorial or embassy personnel interacting with troops. In one scenario, a Canadian citizen is grabbed in a roundup of insurgents, and remains as a prisoner for more than an hour. A role player acts as a Canadian embassy official, berating the Marine commander.

Snipers and reconnaissance teams are inserted at specific locations where they will remain in place for two days or more. During that time, the SOTG trainers will recruit personnel — several of them young and pretty — to try and lure the men from their positions.

“They get complacent sometimes,” said Gunnery Sgt. Terry Sahlbom. “They get confident when they do their job well, and we have to throw in things to shake them up a little.”

Various intelligence scenarios are developed, and Marine volunteers are used as insurgents to be captured, “killed” or interrogated.

“You can do anything you want, kill them if you can,” said one SOTG trainer as he instructed Marines who are suited up to play insurgents barricaded in a building. “You can resist if you want, but they will mess you up.”

He reminds the role players that even though dummy paint rounds called Simunition are being used, the exercise is deadly serious and troops will treat them like the enemy under combat conditions.

The MEU-SOC is a unique force in the U.S. military structure because of its level of overall training. Its certification gives it additional capability and personnel qualified to perform in extremis hostage rescue; urban deep reconnaissance and surveillance; counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency missions; surgical assaults; and visit, board, search and seizure of maritime vessels.

The SOTG provides training for the predeployment SOC certification for the MEU, for Marine specific missions and mission-specific training. While other services handle their basic and mid-level special operations training at schools, such as the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare School at Fort Bragg and the Naval Special Warfare Center in California, the Marine Corps utilizes the SOTG at an operational level.

The Corps maintains three SOTG groups, one with each Marine Expeditionary Force (MEF). The 2nd MEF, of which the 26th MEU is a part, has only 109 men in its SOTG, all of them highly qualified and tasked with nonstop training of deploying units. As the Marine Corps puts more emphasis on small unit tactics for its Distributed Operations concept, the role of SOTG will become even more important. Trainers must be a sergeant or above, and have a special operations background. They are considered the best of the best, and must be able to instruct Marine units on everything from close-quarter battle to demolitions; precision and amphibious raids; mountain-arctic operations; and counter-insurgency tactics, techniques, procedures and equipment.

“SOTG instructors are a mature group with experience and background in the skills they train,” said Maj. Dave Falk, SOTG operations officer. “Instructors for Force Recon can come from any Recon unit throughout the Marine Corps, but to be one of these instructors they have to have succeeded in one of those units. You need a good professional reputation or you’re not going to get recommended here, and we’re going to do a pretty thorough screening of you.”

At any given time, the Marine Corps maintains seven MEUs. After deployment, each MEU is restructured because of attrition, reassignments and future specific mission deployments. This means each MEU must be constantly recertified, a process that keeps it in the training pipeline theoretically for 180 days, but in actuality about 210 days. SOTG has modified its training programs so that troops train together, regardless of previous certification.

“Training now stresses unit cohesion,” said Falk. “The units continue to train as a group. It used to be one in four Marines didn’t finish his enlistment because of constant rotation in and out. Training as units fosters the unit cohesion and loyalty that combats that attrition.”

While the SOTG conducts intensive troop training in every aspect of warfare, it does not train the entire MEU to the level of mission-specific units such as those associated with the Special Operations Command (Naval special warfare, Army Special Forces, etc.). Since MEUs are not given the designations “Special Operations” by the Secretary of Defense, they are designated “Special Operations Capable.”

The Marine Corps does maintain a unit, Marine Detachment One, designed to work in association with Special Operations Command, but the Corps itself does not contribute units to the command, unlike the other services [See related story, page 14]. This is partially to protect the availability of specially trained Marine Corps aviation assets, and also to insulate the Marine Corps from missions it may not deem appropriate.

The SOTG has the capability to train units to the highest standards for specific missions, and its general training program ensures the MEU can provide the Corps with a special operations capacity in times of war or crisis. One of the most dramatic examples of MEU-SOC capability was the daring daylight rescue of Air Force Capt. Scott O’Grady, who had been shot down behind enemy lines in Bosnia in 1995. The MEU-SOC picked up the mission when it was rejected by other special operations units.

In the training of elite Force Reconnaissance units, SOTG trainers are working with specialized troops with an average of nine years in service. But they must also train other MEU forces with enlisted Marines readying for their first deployment.

“SOTG are the problem solvers,” said Falk. “They are unbelievably patient, especially when you see some of the mistakes these guys make out here. We emphasize training over evaluation. They are able to see what the training problems are, and they’re able to see how to solve it; screening these guys out is not the solution. Making them warriors is the solution.”