The Marine Corps’ new forces will train partner militaries around the globe

By MATT HILBURN, Associate Editor

Less than two months after the creation of the Marine Special Operations Command, its Foreign Military Training Units (FMTUs) were ready to deploy this spring on missions in Africa, South America and, eventually, around the globe to train indigenous military forces to deter budding terrorist networks before they have a chance to fester and grow.

The new Marine force partially fulfills a key strategic requirement of the U.S. military generated in the aftermath of 9/11 and the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Defeating terrorist networks requires new capabilities, including “multipurpose forces to train, equip and advise” indigenous militaries and deploy with partner nations, according to the Quadrennial Defense Review, the Pentagon’s assessment of future strategies and resources.

However, the training of partner nations thus far has been insufficient, said Army Gen. Bryan D. Brown, commander of the Pentagon’s multiservice Special Operations Command (SOCOM), headquartered in MacDill Air Force Base, Fla. In March 8 testimony to the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities, he said alliances with foreign military forces are a vital element of the war on terrorism, but SOCOM was not doing “as much as we would like around the world” because of commitments to the U.S. Central Command in the Middle East.

Comprised of specially trained units, such as Army Green Berets and Navy SEALs, from the Pentagon’s four services, SOCOM’s purpose is to plan and execute global operations against terrorist networks. The Marine Special Operations Command is an element of SOCOM created in 2005 after forceful discussions among top Pentagon officials about the Marine Corps’ role in the MacDill command. Previously, Marines were detached to SOCOM by the Pentagon for special missions, rather than assigned to it, as were units from the other services.

The purpose of the Marines’ FMTU teams is to intervene in selected countries and train local military forces to counter incipient terrorist threats. Their overall objective is to target nations with active or emerging terrorist groups, bolster the local forces and thereby avoid major conflicts such as the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Marine Col. Peter Petronzio, FMTU’s commanding officer, said the fundamental idea is to “deploy 11 guys today into a reasonably unstable region and … make a difference and create a capacity so that region can take care of itself.”

That would preclude going in four years from now with the II Marine Expeditionary Force, possibly comprising several divisions and air wings, “because the place fell apart on us,” he said.

FMTU teams will not have the capability of a Special Forces Operational Detachment Alpha, the primary operational unit within a Special Forces Company. The FMTUs, instead, will focus on lower-level training.

“They will not be in a foreign country training the national counterterrorism force,” Brown said. Instead, the FMTUs “will train the rank and file and help them establish a military capability in the country.”

A classic example of how successful a U.S. training mission can be is El Salvador. Starting in 1981, according to a SOCOM spokesman, the United States began training the El Salvadoran military in the face of an offensive launched by Farabundo Marti Liberacion Nacional (FMLN) to overthrow the government. Those U.S. training missions helped increase the size and capability of the Salvadoran military to the point that, in 1992, the FMLN sued for peace.

The FMTU organization is headquartered at Camp Lejeune, N.C., and now has just over 200 Marines in its ranks. By the end of fiscal year 2006, there will be six teams of 11 members each ready to move to countries relevant to the global war on terrorism. The Marines will create two additional teams per quarter, building the FMTU force to 24 teams. Once fully manned, FMTU will have about 434 members, or one-sixth of the Marine Special Operations Command that eventually will comprise about 2,600 Marines.

In 2007, the FMTUs will conduct 24 missions typically of 60 and 90 days, with each team deploying about three times a year. Three missions already are set, including two to Africa and one to South America.

The mission process begins with SOCOM, which will assign the FMTU unit, for example, to teach weapons operations and communication to a foreign military unit in a particular country. FMTU then analyzes the mission and develops a mission-specific training package that supports the goals of SOCOM and the regional U.S. combatant commander. Then a Pre-Deployment Site Survey team of Marines goes to the host country to be sure the proposed training package meets the needs of local forces. They then return to FMTU and refine the training package before the team deploys.

“By the time we get there, we know exactly what everyone’s expectations are and we’re prepared to meet those expectations,” Petronzio said. FMTU will provide training to host nations in a variety of skills including weapons, hand-to-hand combat, first aid, basic tactical communications, small unit tactics, antiterrorism/force protection and basic logistics.

Each FMTU team will be headed by a major, who will act as the external face of the team. Under that officer will be a captain, who will be responsible for the day-to-day operation of the team. Each team will have a team sergeant, a communications specialist, a corpsman, and light, medium and heavy weapons specialists.

While the teams will be made up of specialists, Petronzio said members will cross-train, so the light weapons people could teach the heavy weapons component of any training package FMTU might deliver.

“We are a small piece of what SOCOM does,” Petronzio said. In the world of Special Operations Forces, “there are thousands of guys out there doing this.”

Training foreign militaries is not a new mission for the Marine Corps. However, Petronzio said many missions of the past, no matter how well done, were “random acts of training” and often lacked focus and a long-term plan that now will be provided by SOCOM.

Members of FMTU will not only have specific skills tailored to the foreign internal defense mission, but, according to Petronzio, they will be a special kind of Marine.

“There are a lot of Marines who are absolutely great at what they do,” he said. “They are a great sergeant or a great corporal” while operating in standard Marine platoons, companies and battalions. However, “I need to find who’s really great when he’s one of 11 making decisions that have national-level impact — when he’s one of 11 Americans in a country. Who’s great in that context?”

There is no formalized screening process for members at present, and Petronzio said most Marines in the FMTU units sought the assignment.

“I’ve done pretty much everything I could do as a sergeant in an infantry battalion,” said Sgt. Jeremy Thomas. “[Not] everything you do in the Marine Corps is combat related. We’re going to go to these other countries and pass on some knowledge.”

Hospitalman 2nd Class Hieu Thai called joining FMTU “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

Petronzio said FMTU will chiefly undertake the foreign internal defense mission, but that down the line the Marines will take on the much more difficult unconventional warfare mission, also a core competency of SOCOM. A prime example of this type of mission is Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan during which U.S. Special Forces teamed up with Northern Alliance forces to overthrow the Taliban regime.

“We can do bits and pieces of it, but we’re not really ready to take it on as a core task right now,” Petronzio said. “Unconventional warfare, by definition, is with, by and through surrogate forces. That takes a little bit of magic, and we’ve got the art of it down, but not the magic of it, and that’s what we’re training to eventually get to: to be able to conduct that core task as well.”

The training “pipeline,” which Petronzio says may change as the unit matures and gains experience, currently consists of three phases, which in total last about six months.

Phase 1 is called “team forming” and is only two weeks long. It’s basically bringing all the Marines back up to a baseline level with instruction in land navigation, as well as pistol and rifle skills.

Phase 2 is three months long and consists of 16 training blocks covering a wide scope of skills, including basic force protection, squad and platoon tactics, basic foreign weapons, basic and advance communication skills, fire support and more.

“It’s definitely a crawl, walk, run process,” Petronzio said.

Training culminates with Phase 3, which will incorporate language and cultural training concentrated on the FMTU’s future areas of responsibility. Language learning will focus on French, Russian, Arabic and Spanish, possibly branching out into Tagalog, Thai and perhaps even Chinese. After 180 hours of structured cultural and language training, the FMTU Marine will be expected to achieve an elementary proficiency.

FMTU will lean heavily on SOCOM’s prodigious resources for language and cultural training. Phase 3 ends with an Operational Readiness Evaluation, which is a “realistic evaluation [of a team] under deployment conditions.”

While Petronzio hopes FMTU will be able to impart in-depth military know-how to foreign militaries, he said it’s important for “typical Type-A personality Marines” to realize that training might not be perfect the first time around and that simply being there could pay huge dividends down the road.

In Africa, many militaries probably would not be interested in waking up at 6 a.m. and going to physical training, he said. Marines will have to be patient and develop their training packages in concert with the culture of the host nation.