Generals endorse plan to end grunt shortage - Marine Corps News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Marine Corps Times

Generals endorse plan to end grunt shortage

The Corps can’t put infantry sergeants in every squad leader position designed for them because too many are assigned outside of the operating forces.

That’s why the Marine Requirements Oversight Council approved recommendations Oct. 5 to enlist infantry Marines on six-year contracts, meritoriously promote around 200 infantry corporals each year, offer a little something extra in squad leaders’ monthly paychecks and increase cash bonuses for those who agree to stay in a grunt unit upon re-enlistment, said a Marine Corps headquarters official familiar with the plan.

The MROC “advises the commandant on a wide range of corporate functions and issues” and is comprised of the Corps’ assistant and deputy commandants, according to information on the Corps’ Web site. It weighs in on policy and management issues, operational matters, force structure, resource allocation, war-fighting capabilities, future operational concepts and other critical issues.

It is unclear whether Commandant Gen. James Conway has seen the proposed changes, but a plan to attack the problem has been brewing for months. In an Aug. 15 speech, Lt. Gen. Ronald Coleman, deputy commandant for Manpower and Reserve Affairs in Quantico, Va., said the Corps was studying what to do about the shortage of NCOs — primarily infantry sergeants — in the operational forces.

“We are doing nowhere near as well as we wanted to,” Coleman said in his speech.

There are approximately 2,400 rifleman sergeants in the Corps, but less than 900 in the operating forces. The rest are scattered throughout training commands, headquarters units and recruiting duty, according to a briefing of the plan obtained by Marine Corps Times. This is in addition to the hundreds of machine gunners, light armored vehicle crewmen, mortarmen, reconnaissance Marines and other infantry Marines also included in the MROC-approved plan.

The briefing illustrates the conflict between the demand for infantry sergeants in the operating forces and the natural career path that takes them away.

In the infantry, corporals pick up their third stripe around the four-year mark, about the same time many can be expected to leave the service or re-enlist for a choice duty assignment outside their military occupational specialty.

More than 97 percent of infantrymen re-enlist for assignments outside the operating forces and only return to grunt units after completing a three-year tour in a “B-billet” that will set them up for promotion later on, according to the briefing.

This leaves only an 18-month window for infantry sergeants to lead a squad of grunts into battle before they’re promoted to staff sergeant and put in charge of a platoon. As a result, many corporals as well as “a handful of s--t-hot lance corporals” are filling squad leader billets throughout the Corps, the Marine official said.

Promoting these Marines early gives them a chance to wear the rank that befits the job and gain experience as a sergeant that can still be put to use in the operating forces, which is why up to 200 of these corporals will now be meritoriously promoted each year, under the MROC plan.

Making sergeants early will help on the front end, but the intent is to retain their experience, so the key is keeping them longer, the official said.

Manpower officials also recommended that Conway authorize a bonus for Marines who insist on staying in the operating forces as a condition of their re-enlistment, and that squad leaders be granted some form of “assignment incentive pay” each month for as long as they hold that billet, according to the briefing.

These recommendations were approved by the MROC, along with another that authorizes recruiters to begin enlisting infantrymen on six-year contracts, with a follow-on obligation of two years in the Individual Ready Reserve, the headquarters official said.

The briefing also included a recommendation to shave as much as a year off tours outside the operating forces — with the exception of recruiting duty — in an attempt to funnel re-enlisted sergeants back into grunt units with more time to lead a squad before pinning on a rocker. That recommendation was shot down, the official said.

DISCUSS: Will the proposal resolve the shortage?