With the information provided in the article, it looks like a good plan.

Marine Corps seeks to make 'smarter' infantry force with new course


The Marine Corps is ditching some of its formation marches and adding board games to a new, longer entry-level infantry training course aimed at creating Marines who can better think and act for themselves.

The Infantry Marine Course pilot program launched last month at the service’s School of Infantry-West on Camp Pendleton, Calif., where instructors were pictured instructing new Marines on how chess relates to battlefield tactics. The course focuses less on micromanagement and more on individual responsibility, the service said in a statement.


“Rote memorization, instant obedience to orders are good for certain things, and they’re not getting thrown away from this course,” Chief Warrant Officer 3 A.J. Pasciuti, the training battalion’s gunner, said in Friday’s statement. “We’re just going a step further, and understanding that the individual — and a collective of individuals — is what wins in combat.”


The new course was developed over a year and is based on Commandant Gen. David Berger’s plan for revamping the service for future conflicts.


Under Berger’s vision, grunts will be expected to fight in small units that will be highly mobile and independent, and often dispersed far from headquarters. The new course is aimed at giving rookie Marines the tactical and cognitive skills to act on their own, and takes a “fundamentally different approach” than its eight-week predecessor, the Corps said.