Compass Points - Warrior Culture
The real strength of the Marine Corps
Compass Points - Warrior Culture
The real strength of the Marine Corps
May 17, 2026
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Sunday is a good day for reflection.
This Sunday is a good day to reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of battlefield technology.
Just last year, the Marine Corps bought more than $100 million of night vision goggles.
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To enhance its nighttime operational capabilities, the US Marine Corps has awarded a $112 million delivery order to Elbit Systems of America to produce Squad Binocular Night Vision Goggle (SBNVG) systems.
. . . The SBNVG is a state-of-the-art, helmet-mounted night vision system that combines high-performance white phosphor image intensification tubes with an enhanced clip-on thermal imager.
This fusion allows Marines to detect and engage targets in low-light and no-light conditions, providing a significant tactical advantage on the modern battlefield.
. . . The recent order highlights the strong partnership between Elbit America and the Marine Corps, aimed at improving the readiness of Marines worldwide.
Erik Fox, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Warfighter Systems at Elbit America, stated, “SBNVGs provide our Marines a decisive advantage. They can see, detect, and react more quickly than their adversaries, an edge critical in today’s complex battlefield.”
-- Interesting Engineering
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Night vision goggles are crucial technology. With night vision goggles, Marines own the night.
As useful as night vision goggles are, however, the foundational strengths of Marines are anchored not in technology, but in a warrior culture, character, and ethos.
Consider a Marine squad at night on some foreign battlefield. It is meeting engagement between the Marine squad and an enemy squad. On this night, for some reason, it is the enemy squad that has the night vision goggles and the Marine squad has none. What will be the result of the meeting engagement? While the Marine squad will be at a disadvantage in the dark, the enemy squad may not be as formidable as it first seems.
The Marine squad might have significantly more experience, more discipline, more unity, better leadership, better training, and stronger bonds. The enemy squad may be inexperienced, undisciplined, have little training, and be led by corrupt and cowardly leaders. The enemy squad may not even know how to operate or maintain their goggles. The goggles may not even function. Technology can provide a significant advantage to a strong squad, but little or no advantage to a weak squad.
US Marine squads are strong because Marines have a history and culture of strong NCO leadership. Upon graduation from boot camp every Marine private is a potential fire team leader, a potential squad leader. Marines are trained to be leaders, continually building their Marine Corps leadership traits and principles.
The Marine Corps grows Marines with 11 Leadership Principles.
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1. Set the example.
As a leader, you are in an ideal spot to do this. Marines are already looking to you for a pattern and a standard to follow. No amount of instruction and no form of discipline can have the effect of your personal example. Make it a good one.
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2. Develop a sense of responsibility among your subordinates.
Tell your Marines what you want done and by when. Then leave it at that. If you have junior leaders, leave the detail up to them. In this way, kill two birds with one stone. You will have more time to devote to other jobs, and you are training another leader. A leader with confidence will have confidence in subordinates. Supervise and check on the results. But leave the details to the person on the spot. After all, there’s more than one way to skin a cat. And it’s the whole fur you’re after, not the individual hairs.
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3. Seek responsibility and take responsibility for your actions.
The leader, alone, is responsible for all that the unit does or fails to do. That sounds like a big order, but take a look at the authority that is given you to handle that responsibility. You are expected to use that authority. Use it with judgment, tact, and initiative. Have the courage to be loyal to your unit, your Marines, and yourself. As long as you are being held responsible, be responsible for success, not failure. Be dependable.
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4. Make sound and timely decisions.
Knowledge and judgment are required to produce a sound decision. Include some initiative and the decision will be a timely one. Use your initiative and make your decisions in time to meet the problems that are coming. If you find you’ve made a bum decision, have the courage to change it before the damage is done. But don’t change the word any more than you absolutely have to. Nothing confuses an outfit more than a constant flow of changes.
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5. Employ your unit in accordance with its abilities.
Don’t send two Marines on a working party that calls for five. Your Marines may be good, but don’t ask the impossible. Know the limitations of your outfit, and bite off what you can chew. In combat, a “boy sent to do a man’s job” can lead to disaster. In peacetime, it leads to a feeling of futility. Conversely, those who have a reasonable goal and then achieve it are a proud lot. They’ve done something and done it well. Next time, they’ll be able to tackle a little more. Don’t set your sights clear over the butts; keep them on the target.
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6. Be technically and tactically proficient.
Know your job. This requires no elaborations. It does require hard work on your part. Stay abreast of changes. Techniques, Tactics, and Procedures (TTPs) are constantly being changed and updated. Stay up-to-date on the latest weapons and equipment. Stay current with international and national news and recent developments in the Marine Corps and other services.
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7. Know yourself and seek self-improvement.
Evaluate yourself from time to time. Do you measure up? If you don’t, admit it to yourself. On the other hand, don’t sell yourself short. If you think you’re the best leader in your platoon, admit that also to yourself. Then set out to be the best leader in the company. Learn how to speak effectively, how to instruct, and how to be an expert with all the equipment that your unit might be expected to use.
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8. Know your Marines and look after their welfare.
Loyal NCOs will never permit themselves to rest until their unit is bedded down. They always get the best they can for their Marines by honest means. With judgment, you’ll know which of your troops is capable of doing the best job in a particular assignment. Leaders share the problems of their Marines, but they don’t pry when an individual wants privacy.
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9. Keep your Marines informed.
Make sure your Marines get the word. Be known as the person with the “straight scoop.” Don’t let one of your unit be part of the so-called “10 percent.” Certain information is classified. Let your Marines have only that portion that they need to know but make certain they have it. Squelch rumors. They can create disappointment when they’re good but untrue. They can sap morale when they exaggerate enemy capabilities. Have the integrity, the dependability to keep your unit correctly posted on what’s going on in the world, the country, the Corps, and your unit. Never forget that the more your Marines know about the mission that has been assigned the better they will be able to accomplish it.
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10. Ensure that the task is understood, supervised, and accomplished.
Make up your mind what to do, who is to do it, where it is to be done, when it is to be done, and tell your Marines why, when they need to be told why. Continue supervising the job until it has been done better than the person who wanted it done in the first place ever thought it could be.
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11. Train your Marines as a Team.
Train your unit as a unit. Keep that unit integrity every chance you get. If a working party comes up for three, take your whole fire team. The job will be easier with an extra hand, and your unit will be working as a team. Get your Marines on liberty together now and then. They work as a team; get ‘em to play as one. Put your Marines in the jobs they do best, then rotate them from time to time. They’ll learn to appreciate the other person’s task as well. When one member of your team is missing, others can do that share, but don’t ever permit several Marines to do another person’s job when they’re around. Everybody pulls their load in the Marine Corps.
-- Marine Corps Association
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The day is coming when every Marine squad will be issued another new technology, Artificial Intelligence. Like night vision goggles, AI will give Marines the ability to see easily what they could not see at all before. Where before the Marines saw only darkness, now they will see the battlefield with greater clarity. They will see obstacles and opportunities that they could not see before. Like night vision goggles, squad level AI will be a tremendous advantage for Marines.
Yet as powerful as squad level night vision goggles are today and as powerful as squad level AI will be tomorrow, the real strength of a Marine Corps squad has much deeper roots.
Compass Points salutes all those working everyday to make sure the Marine Corps squad of tomorrow is even stronger than the Marine Corps squad of today. Technology provides powerful tools, but the roots of the Marine Corps squad go much deeper than any technology. It is not so much technology, but more the warrior culture of the Marine Corps that allows Marines, “to locate, close with and destroy the enemy by fire and maneuver, or repel the enemy assault by fire and close combat.”
The leadership from Marine NCO’s and Staff NCO’s is stronger than any technology.
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Interesting Engineering - 05/15/2026
US Marines to get goggle’s that see in dead darkness to target enemies silently
This fusion allows Marines to detect and engage targets in low-light and no-light conditions, providing a significant tactical advantage on the modern battlefield.
By Kapil Kajal
https://interestingengineering.com/military/us-marines-to-get-2lb-binoculars
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Marine Corps Association
Marine Core Values and Leadership
https://www.mca-marines.org/core-values/
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A good listen from an outstanding Marine.
https://warontherocks.com/what-does-southcoms-new-autonomous-warfare-command-herald/
The technology changes but the warrior spirit is the bedrock. That ethos is hard to create and easy to undermine. Every single decision a leader makes must reinforce the ethos or it undermines the ethos. The question must be asked: “ Does this make us a better war fighting unit with discipline and high morale?” Every Marine Corps Order and policy must be evaluated in that light. There will be constant societal and social pressure to do the opposite.
There is no need to list the misguided and delusional actions that detract. The well wore slogans of a liberal society repeat them daily. We all know them. Resisting them and reversing them is the key.