End Rant
Ok, I had my little rant and want to make it clear that my position is as follows:
1) We need to expose our junior leaders to PSYOP as a capability as soon as possible.
2) RTK is correct in pointing out the realities of the situation.
Now, for my constructive comments:
Never having been a sir type myself I am not that familiar with the normal POI for OCS or USMA types when it comes with giving an overview of the capabilities of each of the branches. I imagine that it is one of the areas that receive quite a bit of attention as everyone want to know what they will be doing for the next few years.
For the enlisted Marine types we have our “knowledge” tucked into our cargo pockets every day of basic. It is chock full of that sort of stuff. It was not as detailed as I would have liked but it gave me a starting point.
After basic I was able to take any number of PME correspondence courses, both Army and USMC, which gave me more insight into other MOSs, supporting arms, combat arms, and combined operations.
However, there were no courses or reference material that I could find that gave any detail on the purpose for, and capabilities of PSYOP. When one considers the fact that the Army only created the PSYOP branch a short while ago and that the USMC still has no dedicated PSYOP professionals (PSYOP NCO and PSYOP Officer are secondary MOSs that do not require any formal schooling to be awarded) it is not surprising that the material is not out there for people to use.
What I am suggesting is not world revolution, but simply making some of the information available to those who want to find it. There should be MCI or ACCP introduction to PSYOP course. The USMC does a great job with their PME correspondence program in introducing the basics of combined arms. Perhaps adding a module that covers the proper employment of PSYOP would be a useful piece of the pre-deployment training that will help the artillery officer who finds himself in charge of the IO targeting cell.
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