To staff the C-LIC program the Marine Corps is training Marines whose primary specialty is as infantrymen. This gives them the advantage of prior combat experience coupled with a new knowledge of the intelligence field. Each rifle company (roughly 150 Marines) will have with it one full intelligence Marine and four to five C-LIC Marines. Capt. Gabe Diana, project officer for the C-LIC’s, explained real-world use of these Marines:
“If we can train ourselves at this level, we can produce the intelligence we’re asking for,” which could save days of waiting for responses over the duration of a unit’s deployment, he said.
The paper also reports the battalion will receive 48 micro-unmanned aerial vehicles with night vision.
“They give the brief, and then squad leaders in the company can start putting requests for information in,” Diana explained. “Squad leaders, team leaders, are starting to see what the [C-LICs] can produce for them. And then, in turn, ‘here are areas where I’d like more information’ and now it becomes cyclical. It becomes a process, a battle drill, where the guys who are down on the ground and are going to be conducting the patrolling can now go back and pull information from these [C-LICs].”
