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February 25,
2005
[Have an opinion about the issues discussed in this article?
Sound
off in our Discussion Boards.]
By Jon R. Anderson
Stars and Stripes, European Edition
WASHINGTON — Taking a page from the Army’s
special forces playbook, the Marine
Corps is creating a unit designed to train local militaries
in hot spots around the world, according to the commandant.
“We’re now in the process of standing up a training unit within
the Marine Corps,” Gen. Mike Hagee told a gathering of reporters
Thursday in Washington.
Tentatively dubbed the Foreign Military Training Unit, the new organization
will come in the wake of several training missions the Corps has
taken on in recent years in far-flung locations such as Niger, Chad
and the former Soviet republic of Georgia.
“It’s a capability that we’ve had, we’ve just never had a unit devoted
to this,” said Hagee.
The FMTUs will be built in partnership with the Army special forces
and the joint U.S. Special Operations Training Command. Indeed,
FMTUs will be treading into one of special forces’ core missions
— gunfighters with intensive language training and culture savvy,
capable of quickly inserting into a trouble spot to train up local
forces.
“One of the things we don’t have that the Green Berets have are
all these language skills,” said Hagee. “So, this is going to be
a joint effort, especially initially when we’re going to be looking
for help from them on some of the language skills and some of the
cultural understanding.”
Hagee said the unit will be manned with about 400 Marines and will
probably be based on the East Coast. Plans call for the unit to
be fully operational by the end of the year.
The FMTUs will fall under another new Security Cooperation Education
Training Center based at Quantico, Va., according to a Marine spokesman.
Meanwhile, Hagee said he was discussing with Special Operations
Command chief Army Gen. Ryan Brown the creation of a Marine Corps
special operations headquarters to fit under Brown’s command.
Currently, the Marine Corps is the only service to not have a “component
command” under SOCOM.
“I have to be honest,” said Hagee. “I don’t like headquarters upon
headquarters upon headquarters. But sometimes there’s a purpose
for a headquarters, and that’s what we’re looking at right now.”
Both initiatives come as the service looks to add 3,000 Marines to
active rolls this year. If approved by Congress, that would bring
the Corps’ strength to 178,000 troops.
The manpower infusion will allow the Marines also to create two
new infantry battalions and add more Light Armored Vehicle units.
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Hagee said the first infantry battalion will be based at Camp Lejeune,
N.C., under the II Marine Expeditionary Force by the end of the year.
He said it was still unclear where the second infantry battalion
would go.
The biggest hurdle in standing the new units up, he said, was not
finding enough Marines to fill the battalions but having adequate
facilities for them to live and work.
Funds earmarked in the Bush administration’s $80 billion supplemental
funding request now being considered by Congress will build new
barracks and support buildings, he said.
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