The Marine Corps has announced a new pilot program that will allow some signals and cyber recruits to enter the service at high enlisted ranks, including up to gunnery sergeant.
The Marine Corps Talent Acquisition Pilot program, or MCTAP, began this month and will last two years. Its aim is to recruit critical personnel, the cyberspace warfare operator and signals intelligence collection manager specialties, into the Corps as the services compete against the civilian sector’s often higher-paying salaries for those skills.
The announcement last week is a culmination of several years of conversations and planning by the Corps on how to incentivize people with highly technical and marketable skills to come to the Marines without sacrificing the cultural fabric of the most tradition-bound service in the U.S. military.
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“The time and investment in identifying, acquiring, and developing talent is significant, especially in these fields,” said Lt. Gen. James Glynn, deputy commandant for Manpower and Reserve Affairs. “This initiative enhances readiness and contributes to lethality by leveraging proven private-sector talent to rapidly meet critical areas of capability.”
For this program, the Corps is looking for prior-service Marines, veterans of other services, and civilians with a degree in computer science, information systems engineering or…
