USMC Combat Diver School
- Thread starter Chuckman
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I will never understand why each branch as the same dang thing. I wish that all schools were DOD schools, and not Branch schools.
You want to do combat diver program? SF, Marines, go to Navy BUD's. You want to do Infantry School? Army and Marines all go to the same Infantry school, etc
It's would be a much better system.
You want to do combat diver program? SF, Marines, go to Navy BUD's. You want to do Infantry School? Army and Marines all go to the same Infantry school, etc
It's would be a much better system.
OP
Chuckman
Senior Member
BUDS is more than diving; diving is just one phase. But I understand your point. Each has different terminal objectives based on doctrine, but what I do think would work is that all services go through to a certain point: pool comp/water con is the same, open circuit and closed circuit are the same, same dive medicine, same dive physics, same equipment. As that point, everyone gets the basic SCUBA bubble. Then each branch could have a follow-on 'advanced' school based on their terminal objectives and doctrine and earn their branch 'cool guy badge'.
Not sure SOI would work, especially now that the Marines are reorganizing the squads, fire teams, and platoons, eliminating some MOSs and consolidating others.
But I totally get your point.
Even with branch specific school, when you get to an active unit, it was always forget what the school told you, we will teach you our way.
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Chuckman
Senior Member
The 'how to dive' never wavered, but some of the things we learned, we never really did; a couple things we did, we never learned in school. But every 2 years (I think...) we had to revalidate everything in the syllabus or you'd have to go to a refresher course.
I will say the one place we had some real jealousy, and I imagine the air force diver school guys thought the same, was that the army SF dive school was in Key West. That would've been awesome.
@JBoyette , I was also going to mention but forgot, at least the Navy finally consolidated the schools. At one point the Navy had scuba schools in Okinawa, Hawaii, San Diego, Florida, and Norfolk. The Marines would send guys to any of those places to get basic scuba and then do follow-on courses at either Lejeune or Pendleton/Coronado.
Back in the 90’s at Sill, we Army guys went to 13-F school (Forward Observer) and right next door the Marines went to Naval Gunfire school. We were taught Naval Gunfire a little bit, and they were taught artillery calls for fire a little bit. It did seem like a waste of resources.
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Chuckman
Senior Member
The Marines did send all of their armor and arty guys to the army's schools. I think they did with MP as well, and they still do with some of those weird MOSs like musician, intel, and a few others (they go to all-service schools). Makes sense.
Yessir, I agree. While often similar, they have different doctrines/uses/priorities. In the early 90's the Marine Corps and Army sniper programs were very different, I'm sure tankers and other MOS' were somewhat different also.. I guess they could have DoD basic schools, then shorter, more specialized training within their own service. Not sure if there's a great benefit to that though.