I'm a Platoon Commander here in Camp Pendleton, CA. I'm looking for reputable instructors/training agencies in the Southern California Area (IVO Camp Pendleton) that we can contract with to execute the following:

Who: ~50 Marines stationed on Camp Pendleton.
What: Looking for basic to semi-advanced carbine training. Engaging targets 0-300m, shooting moving, target identification, shooting from barricades, improvised shooting positions, etc.
Where: Execute training on or around Camp Pendleton, CA
Why: I want instruction to be given by professional level instructors who actually know what their talking about and actually care about what they do (Not some disgruntled Cpl or Sgt who's just working at the range...)
When: Spring 2019

Any insight would be greatly appreciated. If you're a representative from the company, please send me an IM and I'll provide you my government email and cell phone contact info. Thanks.

Did you contact the USAMU?  Maybe they could teach your Marines to shoot.

John Farnam (Defense Training International) has done this type of training, in the recent past, for the Marine Corp.  You might contact him to see if what he offers is what you want.  Google (John Farnam DTI) to get his website and contact information.

He is a retired Marine (Vietnam), who currently makes a living providing firearms training to LEOs and civilians.

Not even the USAMU can teach jarheads to shoot.

Mike Glover of Fieldcraft Survival does a lot of classes in Cali.  Glover is a former SF SGTMAJ.

Have you reached out to SOTG or any HSLD guys?

BOOM! Headshot!

CACI has instructors embedded at the USCG Taclet and MSRT West. I would actually reach out to the training teams for MSRT West or Pac Area Taclet.

What kind of platoon?  Grunts, Bulk Fuel, Communicators?

When you talk to these instructors, have you thought about how they are going to be paid?

I am betting you haven't talked to your Company XO or Battalion S-3A.

Thank you to those with constructive input.

Tim_in_CO. I wanted to do research prior to having a conversation. I generally know what it is I'm looking for and what the Marine Corps has to offer. I very much prefer training hosted by instructors outside the Marine Corps (much higher quality in my personal experience). The Company XO is a brand new 1stLt and the Bn S3-A is a 2ndLt who was fired with cause; needless to say I'm only interested in selling the Company Commander who can get buy in with the Ops O. As for payment, it would obviously have to be a contract worked out with Supply and the vendor (pain in the A$$), but if the training is worth while, I've seen things get approved.

Why not send some of your Marines (ones that are motivated and show a general interest in wanting to shoot better) to coaches course? Talk to the Marine shooting teams also and see if they can set some time aside to come out and set up a training event. Your command would probably be more on board with that rather than spending unit funds on an outside source.

Because CMC is kind of a joke now. They don't teach much pertaining to actual combative marksmanship, and to that end it's in the most basic form.

Maybe OP can reach out to the NSW range (117 iirc?) and see who is training them, or maybe get ahold of recon/raiders.

Did they do away with the "table" system? That was far better than "field fire."

The guys with the 4th Force detachment in Hawaii put on a tactical skills course for my battalion's jump platoon. I'm not sure of the name of the company, but they said it was their day job. Since they're HQ'd in Cali, you might be able to get a hold of them.

I'm too young to know the field fire thing. Please elaborate?

Until I got out in 17, we used the table system.

1, KD range, traditional marksmanship (standard rifle qual)
2, KD range, basic combative marksmanship (25+100yds, later added to aggregate score for rifle qual)
3, KD range, basic speed shooting, incorporating moving (5-25yds)
4, same as 3, with PEQ and NVG
5, UNKD, popups
6, same as 5, with PEQ and NVG

The issue is that table 1 IMO exceeds the capability of the basic M16 FOW and ball cartridge. Average coaching time is limited and does not truly instill muscle memory of fundamentals. Subsequent tables are "check in the box" mentality and coaching on them is even more limited. The shooters are not made to THINK nor do they get to actually run their gun.

During my time (despite my best efforts) the coaching mentality was to get the shooters to pass. A pizza box was good enough. This is the worst failure of all.

Unit funding also always prevents average units from affording to run extra ranges. Exacerbating the issue is the average marine not having the desire to better themselves on the range. They whine and cry about every stupid range because then they have to clean their weapon... since they don't care, commanders/staff don't want to run better ranges and waste the effort beyond the check in the box requirements.

Field fire, if I remember right (last time I did it was in 2005), was essentially shooting from windows, with gas masks, over rooftops, and (I think) unknown distance.

Sounds like it's pretty much the same.

As far as the rest, that sounds like it's on your unit. When we were assigned to MTU, we would spend about a week prior to the unit's arrival at the range doing nothing but classes and snap in. One thing I did notice about the coaches is that many of them were happy to just be away from their unit and not shooting. They tended to not care so much about their shooters. We found a way to partially mitigate that, by giving prizes to the top shooter and his/her coach; but some just still didn't care. If they were bad enough, we could talk our Gunner into sending them back. Just like with anything else in the Corps, there will be good ones, and there will be bad ones. Pretty much any required training in the Marine Corps is check-in-the-box. I would try to instill a little bit more in my students when I taught them.

Two things to understand about the table system are:

1. There were actually two more, that they decided to leave out. Table 5 was a transition from 3 and 4 into basic (I mean BASIC) CQB; things like how to apply the previous tables to clearing corners, barricaded shooting, etc. Table 6, was [my favorite] a 100yd. range set with spinners at the end, two shooters, and sandbags set at irregular intervals to simulate cover. It was meant to train effective bounding. Both shooters had to hit their respective target once before anyone could move. Once each was hit, one shooter would bound to cover. While he was moving, the other shooter was maintaining fire on the targets. If the targets weren't being hit, they couldn't rush. Once the first rusher made it to his cover, he would take over suppressing the targets, while his buddy moved. It was actually a pretty fun evolution.

2. Those quals are meant more for shooting than tactics. The two are not mutually exclusive, but they blend into making gunfighters. Shooting happened then, tactics happened in the field. The point of the table system was to take shooters from the ground up and give them a grasp on the fundamentals (I'll get to that in a sec). They could then take those and apply them to the tactics they were training in to become lethal fighters.

The main issue, as you said, is mindset. Shooters in units that would likely face little threat (wing, IPAC, H&S Bn, etc.) didn't really care about what training they DID get. I recall teaching combat mindset classes to Marines who had little interest in combat. Shooters in, say infantry battalions, were in two groups: the boots who were pretty much lost in the sauce and terrified to ask questions to they could understand, and the seniors who thought that because they were "combat" vets, they already knew everything. Of course there exceptions in all of those categories. None of the "non-exceptions" truly got as much from the training as they could, because they were not willing to put the effort into it.

I can remember my battalions running tables 3 and 4 almost monthly, and soon following that up with a shoot house, and following that up with some kind of MOUT training. That's exactly how the progression should have been working. Whenever we weren't doing that stuff, we were working on the conventional stuff; patrolling, defense, IA drills, etc. So, I guess depending on what unit you were with, YMMV.

They also stopped training coaches worth a shit around 2014/15. It no longer includes the good ranges or any advanced marksmanship. Most of the course was reiterating classroom time and preparing for the pistol qual.

Anecdotally, they are also teaching that m193 is match grade ammo and the magnus effect. Why? Particularly the latter? No clue. The former is just straight wrong. But the CMT's were all book taught, not actual shooters so they refused to accept the falsehood and irrelevance, respectively. Then they tried to muddle with the LCPL I was shooting with on range. They tried to argue with his previous training (well versed machinegunner) on misfires. He had a lot of light strikes (of course getting his weapon repaired was not happening). So he was performing proper technique of yelling "MISFIRE MISFIRE MISFIRE", and waiting a few seconds for the round to cook off. No reason to screw that marine over during his day job. Thankfully I was able to reason/argue with range staff so he could get his alibi on the rapid fires.

Digressing, I couldn't find any useful reference to the magnus effect as it pertains to shooting after hours of searching.

PM me if you'd like a copy of the courseware.

I'll never understand why they sent mostly voluntold marines to CMC, and half the ones that actually wanted to be there weren't worth a shit on the range.

I do hope that OP can find some good instructors for his unit, and he can find some marines from his unit that actually give a damn about training marksmanship to send to CMC and keep our traditions alive. It would be even better if he can get some good coaches and have them get extra training from some professionals.

Also OP, try reaching out to the Santa Margarita Gun Club. Plenty of retirees that seem to do nothing but shoot service rifle who can surely teach your boys some good stuff on the square range.

Wow. I left the range in 2010, so I can't comment on the course info after that. They don't do the UKD range anymore? I'm not sure who would have decided that m193 is match grade. I hope TECOM isn't that rife with idiocy. As far as the magnus effect, the only thing I could ever find was MAYBE how the round would react to a severe crosswind--and that was part of the material when I was teaching from 08-10. While I have a decent grasp of external ballistics, I'm not a ballistician, so maybe that could be a thread in the ammo forum or precision shooting forum. I'm not going to lie, there were more than a few things that we needed to tweak in the classes we got from TECOM before we could teach them. On top of that, the classes I was handed when I first started, were so far gone from what we were supposed to be teaching, the we pretty much needed to start from scratch with the TECOM materials.

OP, sorry for hijacking your thread.

As per when I got out, UKD was still a thing with Ivan popups.

But we all know it's not unknown...

Shooting at those damn things on wilcox range at night was a major PITA. Barely visible with NVG at distance and the wind doesn't calm down too much. Just flinging rounds until you get a hit or run out

Good ole' Ivan. We actually moved our targets every so often at ours (we had more bases than targets, so it made it a little more interesting. Still not necessarily completely unknown distances, but you still had to think a little bit.

Google 88 Tactical

You're welcome....