MARINE CORPS BASE CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. -- More than 45 Marines and civilians from Camp Pendleton are currently going through a course designed to help service members stay alert and make sound decisions in combat.

“The life you save may be your own or the life of your Marines,” said Greg Williams, who developed the combat profiling portion of combat hunter.

The combat hunter program is intended to teach Marines how to be more proactive, rather than reactive in combat situations.

The four-week combat hunter course consists of enhanced observation, profiling and tracking during classroom and practical-application portions.

The observation portion focuses on optics and knowing how to effectively use binoculars, night vision goggles and thermal goggles that detect heat. The next class is profiling, trying to identify of a persons intention in order to determine hostile threat. The last class teaches Marines how to track an individual in different terrains.

“Originally, combat hunter was designed for infantry units,” said Sgt. Jay N. Baldino, Marine combat instructor, Marine Training Company, School of Infantry West. “Now we want to provide this training Marine Corps wide.”

The Marine Training Company currently has two teams specialized in combat training.

“Our main mission is to teach combat hunter and identify it as a skill set to train all Marines in the future,” said Capt. Brian K. Pittson, team one officer in charge, MTC, SOI-W. “Every Marine needs these skills provided in the training.”

The program is still new to the Marine Corps and is going through its experimental stages, to fine tune it so it suits best for the Marine’s needs.

The instructors teach Marines to be aware of potential threats in combat zones by detecting the signs of attack before they happen.

“The Marine Corps brought in subject matter experts from different fields to determine what is lacking in our combat training,” Baldino said.

Marines picked from different units on Camp Pendleton attend the course, take back the information they learned and push it out to Marines in their units.

“February 2007 was the first experimental stage of teaching combat hunter to Marines on Camp Pendleton,” Baldino said. “The training was a success and helped a lot of Marines in Iraq.”

Combat hunter is greatly utilized to make Marines situational aware and to help them make better decisions in life-threatening situations.

“It doesn’t matter what rank you are or what job you have, every one will learn something at the combat hunter course,” Baldino said.