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Corps looking for more Marines to go recon

First-term Marines hoping to re-enlist for the $61,000 bonus offered for a lateral move into reconnaissance no longer have to pass a screening test with their local snake-eaters before shipping off to the toughest military occupational specialty school the Corps has to offer, according to a Corps-wide message released Wednesday.

The recon lat-move bonus, currently the highest offered to first-term Marines, speaks to the Corps’ need to draw personnel into a field that must grow on pace with the service’s efforts to add 22,000 Marines to the force by 2011.

Even with its increased need for recon Marines, the Corps isn’t lowering standards to meet personnel shortfalls in the recon field, and removing the first step in the screening process does not change the basic requirements, according to MarAdmin 417/07.

“The intent of these pending changes is to optimize 0321 entry-level training and to relieve operational units from physically screening and preparing Marines for [the basic reconnaissance course],” the message states.

Marines who don’t meet the Corps’ body composition standards “will not be considered” for the basic reconnaissance course, and those who are accepted to the school will have to pass a first-class physical fitness test before graduating. They’ll also have to pass a recon water-survival training package currently under development at Training and Education Command in Quantico, Va., the message said.

Marines who move laterally from any military occupational specialty outside the infantry field are required to earn the rifleman MOS at the School of Infantry at Camp Pendleton, Calif., or Camp Lejeune, N.C., before starting the recon course, which will be offered at Pendleton’s SOI exclusively by the end of this fiscal year, according to the message.