CATC develops new U.S. Army Europe Marksmanship Training Course

Photo By Staff Sgt. Christopher Stewart | U.S. Army Soldiers, attending the U.S. Army Europe Marksmanship Training Course taught by the Combined Arms Training Center staff, practice peer instruction at a range at the Grafenwoehr Training Area, Germany, June 25, 2020. The course is designed to give Soldiers the required leadership and marksmanship training to help them in their units complete the recently changed individual marksmanship qualification. (U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Naaman Taylor)  

VILSECK, BY, GERMANY

07.10.2020

Story by Staff Sgt. Christopher Stewart 

7th Army Training Command

VILSECK, Germany — The Combined Arms Training Center completed a second operational tryout of the new course called the U.S. Army Europe Marksmanship Training Course, or UMTC, at distributed locations within the Grafenwoehr Training Area and Vilseck, Germany, July 1.

CATC partnered with the Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia, to develop the 10-day course for training unit leaders on the U.S. Army’s new standard for marksmanship qualifications. The goal is for this course is to be validated by the Infantry School at Fort Benning as a U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command certified course.

The U.S. Army already released the new guidelines and standards on the updated marksmanship qualification earlier last year, outlined in TC 3-20.40, “TRAINING AND QUALIFICATION - INDIVIDUAL WEAPONS” otherwise known as the “Dot-40,” and is currently being taught to new trainees at Basic Training.

“To ensure Soldiers can comply with the new standards, the Army has a course at Fort Benning called the Marksmanship Master Trainer Course (MMTC),” said Capt. Richard James Well, the outgoing Combat Skills Training Branch chief at CATC.

MMTC is a course designed for a future Marksmanship Master Trainers, a position held at a division-sized echelon and below encompassing expert level marksmanship training to supplement the organization.

“The [MMTC] course focuses on teaching noncommissioned officers how to shoot (their assigned weapons) and advise commanders on how to build marksmanship training courses for their units,” said Well. “There are many Soldiers who aren’t quite there yet with marksmanship so the idea behind the UMTC is to become a prerequisite to the MMTC at Fort Benning.”

Last summer, a mobile training team from Fort Benning, came to Bavaria to conduct the MMTC here, said Staff Sgt. Naaman Taylor, the course manager and primary instructor for the UMTC.

Of the 31 students from within U.S. Army Europe, 13 graduated. A major problem annotated from the initial after-action review was that the class was not able to move past basic marksmanship on to the higher-level tasks such as unit training plans. A solution was requested by the Fort Benning Infantry School and Command Sgt. Major Franklin Velez, the senior enlisted advisor for 7th Army Training Command, to come up with an entirely new course to explain the qualification. In addition, the course aimed to build the shooters that do not know the 10-20 level marksmanship tasks so they can be prepared for the 30-40 level tasks outlined in the MMTC.

“This class will help leaders better develop a training plan for the Soldiers in the unit,” said Staff Sgt. Brice Kelly, assigned to 4th Battalion, 319th Airborne Field Artillery Regiment, 173rd Airborne Brigade, and a student in the course.

"We expect to see this course ready for Soldiers to attend the live course in the next fiscal year," said Taylor.

• Date Taken: 07.10.2020
• Date Posted: 07.10.2020 08:54
• Story ID: 373690
• Location: VILSECK, BY, DE