An Exploratory Analysis of the Feasibility of Developing a Combat Medic Primary Military Occupational Specialization Within the USMC

Abstract

In this thesis, I investigate whether the United States Marine Corps (USMC) would benefit from producing and regulating its own medical support personnel. Currently, USMC troops rely on United States Navy (USN) corpsmen (HMs) for lifesaving assistance in battle. HMs are not trained riflemen nor permanently assigned to USMC billets. The Department of the Navy (DON) allocates “blue” and “green” monies to the USN and USMC. USN human capital (HMs and chaplains) and other direct support commodities not covered by green-dollar allocations are acquired using “blue-in-support-of-green” (BISOG) resources. Utilizing an ex-ante cost–benefits analysis methodology framework, I performed a feasibility analysis to compare two possible courses of action (COA). Each COA assumes annual throughput of 2,000 enlisted personnel and redistribution of existing USMC enlisted end-strengths to accommodate a combat medic primary military occupational specialty (PMOS). COA-1 uses the field medical training battalion platform to train USMC combat medics and would cost $24.3M annually. COA-2 utilizes the medical education and training campus training pipeline with an annual cost of $26.7M. Comprehensive cost comparisons between the status quo and COAs were not achieved due to ambiguity in BISOG budgeting toward procuring HMs. However, both COAs provide additional non-monetary benefits, including improved medical training interoperability, personnel continuity, force resilience, and diversity.