Reaching Out

Quantico center underpins the explosive growth of Marines’ foreign training

By MATT HILBURN, Associate Editor

Reaching out to foreign militaries has become a key strategic requirement of the U.S. military in the aftermath of 9/11 and the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Defeating terrorist networks and fostering goodwill require 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.

The Marine Corps’ Security Cooperation Education and Training Center (SCETC), based in Quantico, Va., under the Marine Corps Training and Education Command, has been around for years. But today it is thrust onto the frontlines in helping the Corps advise foreign militaries, particularly in Iraq where it is likely the American role will increasingly be advisory as the Iraqi Security Forces become more capable.

Michael Vickers, a former Special Forces officer, former CIA officer and now a director of strategic studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said the advisory effort in Iraq needs to be stepped up, adding that the United States will likely see its role in Iraq shift to a supporting role during the next two years.

So while SCETC’s role appears likely to grow, the center and the Marine Corps face the challenge of not having a cadre of dedicated individuals to train the advisors who will be assigned to foreign militaries. Instead, the Corps takes an “ad hoc” approach by plucking advisor trainers from Marine units and arranging with outside organizations for other types of training, said SCETC Deputy Director Leon M. Pappa. Still, that has not kept the center’s workload from growing.

“This mission has exploded,” said Pappa. “We’ve grown by leaps and bounds in just the last seven months.”

In 2004, the Marine Corps fielded nine teams comprising about 150 people to 12 countries. In 2006, Pappa said it would deploy about 77 teams totaling about 820 people to 13 countries, such as Saudi Arabia and Chile.

Marine Gen. James L. Jones, commander, U.S. European Command, discussed the importance of establishing military-to-military ties April 7 before the House Armed Services Committee during testimony on ways to bolster the capacity of foreign military forces.

In the past, the United States often resorted to cutting military-to-military ties with nations it had disputes with because that was “the easiest thing to do,” Jones said.

“If you look at our relations today with Pakistan and Indonesia, two countries that we virtually terminated military-to-military relationships with over policy disputes, it had the effect of essentially creating almost a generation of officers in those countries that had no ties with the United States,” he said.

Pacific Commander Adm. William Fallon said, during a recent Seapower interview, “We haven’t had much engagement [in Indonesia] because, as a result of the human rights violations, we had restrictions put on us by Congress. … Our ability to influence things in Indonesia really waned.”

Jones noted there are a lot of places for nations to obtain training and materiel in lieu of the United States. For example, China is a very active player in Africa, he said.

“It’s very important to understand how crucial it is to be proactive in our engagement as opposed to reactive … so that we can prevent and deter future conflicts, which are always much more expensive and much more longer lasting,” he said.

The Army and the Marine Corps need to take this on as a mission and institutionalize the advisory role, said Vickers, “not just stand it up because you’ve got to do it for this war we’re in right now, but for the longer war.”

He said both services need to “professionalize” the advisory role to provide a career path for would-be advisors as well as to reward those who undertake the advisory mission. Along these lines, the Navy and Marine Corps have established Foreign Area Officer communities offering officers with culture, language and regional expertise a viable career path.

“We’re going to be in this business for quite a while,” Vickers said. “We need to put some of our best people on this, not just anybody we can find.”

SCETC, with three primary areas of training, is at the forefront of the Marine Corps’ push to increase military-to-military ties. SCETC plans and administers all U.S.-based Marine Corps training programs for international students. It prepares and supports Marine advisory teams that deploy overseas, and provides a link to governmental and nongovernmental organizations in support of humanitarian assistance and civil-military operations.

According to Pappa, the second mission keeps the center the busiest, due to training assignments for Iraq and Afghanistan.

“There was a general consensus around the Corps that we needed to do more training,” he said. “We needed to be able to say more than just ‘good day’ [in a foreign language]. We’ve got to know [foreign] weapons; we’ve got to have more combat lifesaving because we might not have a corpsman with us. And what about all the communications equipment we might have to use or understand?”

SCETC, with a staff of 18, does not provide all the training to every team, but Pappa said the main goal of the center is to relieve some of the pressure felt by the Marine Expeditionary Forces, which bear the brunt of training advisors.

SCETC is focusing on standardizing advisor training across the Marine Corps, Pappa said. Once that is done, the center will be in a much better position to help the Expeditionary Forces with training curriculum and trainers to teach advisors soon to be deployed abroad. The actual teams of advisors will still be drawn from regular units.

“We’re still constructing what it should be,” he said. “Seven months ago, SCETC didn’t have a very robust training cell. Up to this point, we’d been facilitators.”

For the Afghan Embedded Training Teams, SCETC arranged for weapons instructors and training ranges through the Infantry Officer Course or The (Officer) Basic School staff. Combat lifesaving instruction was provided by the Quantico Naval Medical Clinic. Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE)/High Risk Capture training was provided by the SERE School Staff from New Brunswick, Maine.

SCETC also helps coordinate training in cultural appreciation and language skills, proficiency with foreign weapons, convoy driving tactics, advanced communication skills and guidelines on how to work with interpreters, among others.

“These teams are fairly rank and Military Occupational Specialty specific,” Pappa said. “For the most part they’re heavy in senior staff noncommissioned officers and officers. We’re talking about some fairly seasoned Marines.”

Advisory teams are embedded within the 1st and 7th Iraqi divisions, manning posts on the Iraq-Syria border along with the Iraqi Security Forces and supporting the Iraqi police, Pappa said.

“It’s a bit of a shift for the Marines, especially if they’ve been deployed before,” he said. “Your job there isn’t necessarily to be the first man to clear a building, but teaching your Iraqi counterpart to do it.”

In addition to helping prepare advisory teams to deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan, Pappa said the center coordinated the deployment of a martial arts team to Brazil to train Brazilian forces and could, for example, provide training packages to Taiwan should the island nation purchase amphibious vehicles from the United States. In 2006, the Marine Corps was slated to provide stateside training to 540 students from 81 countries, much of it coordinated through SCETC.

Though the center’s role has dramatically increased, the Marine Corps is not where it needs to be in terms of preparation for foreign training missions, Pappa said. He favors a unit dedicated to the training of advisors, which he calls a Marine Corps Advisory Group, that would be based somewhat on the Army’s model.

The Army has a dedicated cadre of advisor trainers called the Foreign Security Force, based at Fort Riley, Kan. Formally established in June, it provides training for all advisors who will deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan. Col. Sean Ryan, chief of Security Force Generation within the Joint Center, International Force Security Assistance, said there are about 800 advisor trainers stationed there.

Ryan said having the training in a centralized location and provided by a dedicated group of trainers adds “efficiency and responsiveness” to the process.

“Transition teams work in a very dynamic environment. As the environment changes, the training has to change,” he said. “The mission has grown over time. We’re completely rebuilding the security structure of a nation.”

Pappa said the idea of establishing a Marine Corps Advisory Group was brought up at a recent “executive offsite,” a meeting of top Marine officials. There is as yet no formal proposal for the creation of such a unit, but “various command elements are exploring the feasibility.”

The establishment of an advisory group would require about two years because of the demands for Marine Corps manpower in Iraq and Afghanistan. For now, potential advisor trainers will have to be taken directly from operating units.

Even if the Corps stands up a dedicated advisory group, the success of advisors, as always, hinges on the local citizens’ desire to fight for their security.

“The advisors are worthless without the locals,” said Vickers. “They better be getting what they need, then it can be a powerful combination.”