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A force multiplier for the Marine Corps
"Our greatest legacy as leaders are well-trained Marines." With those words a newly minted communications battalion commander and his S-3 (operations) embarked on a comprehensive training program that resulted in their Marines successfully executing 1 20 days of simultaneous operations in three different countries across the Western Pacific. At the time (July 2000 to June 200 1 ), some of the battalions' officers, SNCOs, NCOs, lance corporals and below, and sailors thought that the colonel and the "3" were setting the bar "too high," but as the predeployment cycle began they soon realized that they could do the impossible - as long as they trained hard and led from the front.
Today, in the ninth year of the global war on terrorism, the U.S. Marine Corps Communication-Electronics School (MCCES) continues that tradition of hard training and leading from the front in the form of the communication training centers (CTCs). For the past 60-plus years the Marine Corps communications community has relied upon the formal schoolhouse (MCCES) to provide all of its MOS progression training. However, as the operating tempo increased and the Marine Corps began a rapid expansion of its command and control (C2) systems to the point where almost every Marine is equipped with a personal tactical radio and/or data communications device, MCCES realized (in 2002-03) that it needed to create a global just-intime training capability in support of the Operating Forces.1
CTCs Become a Reality
With Headquarters Marine Corps Command, Control, Communications and Computers (C4);2 3 Training and Education Command (TECom);4 and Training Command5 support, MCCES established that capability in 2004-06 in the form of the CTCs. Collocated with each MEF command element (CTC-I Camp Pendleton, CTC-2 Camp Lejeune, and CTC-3 Okinawa), the CTCs offer onsite, flexible, timely, and relevant training that meets the needs of the high deployment tempo of the Operating Forces. This support includes predeployment training, 2000level training and readiness events, new equipment training, and just-in-time training for the rapidly emerging technologies that must be understood in order to plan, install, operate, and maintain current and future Marine Corps, joint, and coalition C2 architectures, to include Department of Defense Direoive 8570. 1 (DoD Dir 8570. 1), Information Assurance Workforce Training and Certifications}1