Not Enough RCOs For Marines To Qualify With

Categories: Military, News
Company K recruits use Rifle Combat Optic's on their M16-A4 service rifles to fire down range June 12 aboard Edson Range, Weapons and Field Training Battalion, Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, Calif. Not every company that comes through recruit training is given the oppurtunity to use an RCO, but all Marines are now required to use them when qualifying each year.

Surprise surprise surprise! Recruits at Parris Island and “other entry level training facilities” for the United States Marine Corps don’t have enough RCOs to go around. They’ve either broken them or the optic has reached its “serviceable age”.  Let’s address the main complaint we’ve had for a while…

WHY THE HELL ARE WE NOT QUALIFYING WITH IRON SIGHTS? We know we sound like salty old timers with an ax to grind, but teaching proper sight picture, sight alignment and shooting technique never really goes out of style. Yes, it is important for combat troops to understand how to utilize an optic given the changing technology in warfare…buuuut, also you know…shit breaks. As we’re seeing, and as we could have told everyone; Marines break shit. Even shit that wasn’t mean to be broken, Marines will find a way to break it. Case in point they’re breaking the RCOs IN TRAINING (when we use all caps, we’re not shouting, we’re emphasizing).

And now the Marine Corps has a problem. Not enough RCOs for recruits to train with. You know what comes standard with every single rifle? Iron sights. Problem solved, just right there. 

Don’t get us wrong the RCO is dope as hell and we were hitting shit way beyond the range we’d normally hit at, but we also learned to shoot with iron sights in case you know…the optic broke and the bad guys didn’t respect us calling “Time out” during the firefight to call customer support and have a new RCO shipped out to us. 

In a world where so many people bitch and moan, where people try to force you to pick one side or the other, we alone ask…why not both? Last time we checked, 2nd phase is four weeks long, you can’t train recruits to shoot with iron sights and an optic in four weeks?

Guess there are more important things to teach than how to hit your target whether you have an optic or not. (obvious sarcasm should be obvious by now)

Know what we're sayin fam?

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5 thoughts on “Not Enough RCOs For Marines To Qualify With”

  2. I had iron sights in recruit training and RCO from fleet on. In Afghanistan I had a spare set of irons and thank god I bro those because sand found it’s way in the RCO while on a mission. Luckily I knew how to use the iron sights.

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  3. We can’t waste valuable training time on war fighting skills like marksmanship. There’s more important topics to be addressed; Tolerance and inclusion, personal finance, resilience training (don’t kill yourself), sexual harassment and please don’t forget thumb drive safety

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  5. What the hell is an RCO?? I trained with iron sights and anything between 1-300 meters was as good as dead. If you’re going beyond that then why do we have snipers? Yes im old school…but iron sights worked just fine in the sandbox and never failed me.

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