USMC Marksmanship: Marines and Competition Shooting

Part 3. How do the standards to qualify with a rifle in the Marine Corps compare to competition shooters?

Part 3. How do the standards to qualify with a rifle in the Marine Corps compare to competition shooters? How well do Marines shoot? A deep dive into Marine Corps rifle standards. This video has important details supplementing this article.

A report from a knowledgeable shooter:

When I went to the Marksmanship Training Unit for help in 1985, all my team and I (a Lieutenant Commander at the time) got the same training from start to finish. And what was the start? That damn 55 gallon barrel and hours of dry fire. And when on the line, yes we had individual coaches (senior NCOs with years of competition experience) and yes we had live pits to give immediate feedback.

When my elder daughter went to U.S. Army training... I didn't hear much back. What I did hear was what you said in Part 1, or worse.

When my younger daughter went to USMC OCS and The Basic School, the routines were as you specified in Part 1. However, her “coaches” were not particularly skilled or demanding. But she went there already an experienced shooter, especially with pistol. Out of approximately 250 in her class, she finished in the top six or so. Her rifle scores weren’t that good - but still an “expert” qualification with lots of buffer.

- J. C. Tate, CDR USN (Ret)

Officially, the Marine Corps has transitioned to a new Annual Rifle Qualification. I’ll be discussing that one in detail soon! While that change has been in the works for a few years, the course described here has been the mainstay of the USMC for many decades.

There were numerous courses in use before it was solidified as a single, unified National Match Course. One example, Col. Stanhope Blunt published a series of military courses with targets.

Col. Stanhope Blunt’s manual and courses will be featured in upcoming issues here and YouTube videos. Please subscribe to both!

Skirmisher Courses featuring running and the engagement of silhouette targets under reduced time limits were part of it. Field use of small arms was commonly known as Musketry. Yes, concerning the field use of rifles, the name is a misnomer but that’s what identified shooting courses testing the practical application of skills from pure marksmanship for shot process development.

The USMC has been using a qualification based on the National Match Course for nearly the entire twentieth century and only very recently has changed. Targets from World War 2 looked like this:

Previous targets were smaller than current qualification targets.

By World War 2, the field/practical/musketry portions had been dropped, largely due to the pressures of qualifying huge numbers of personnel for the war effort.

This morphed into this:

As the USMC continued to drop shooting standards and use increasingly larger targets, by the mid-1960s, competitive shooters had transitioned from the 5V targets to decimal targets (ten points possible) as enough good shooters were posting not merely perfect 250-point scores but perfect 50 V-counts as well. With no way to break ties, a smaller target was required. Note, even with a easier course of fire and larger targets, a mere 220 makes “expert” by USMC standards, and even that was not required after Table 2 was added.

This has been the trend for all U.S. military services: Since World War 2 qualification standards have steadily declined. Either targets were made larger, score zones were removed to hit/miss only, courses of fire were made more simple, or some combination of these. The U.S. Army has been especially bad about this. Every documented change to all qualification courses for every small arm in inventory has systematically lowered or reduced standards, making the course easier.

During this same time period, every change to competition courses of fire for every shooting discipline and organization has made the challenge more difficult or more stringent. As the skills of competitive shooters have improved, the marksmanship skills of our military has regressed. I have documentation on all this and will cover it in upcoming articles and videos.

More info:

Part 1:

Part 2:

https://firearmusernetwork.com/high-power-with-issue-rifles/

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