Supposedly Panama Jungle School is so tough that it makes the course run in Okinawa look like a cake walk (I seriously doubt that but I'm just guessing...besides how bad can monkey meat actually be?)
But more importantly, when the Army ran the school, Google indicates that it ran almost everyone of its Light Fighter and Airborne/Air Assault units through it in addition to Special Operations Forces. The Marine Corps is showing an interest in a formalized Jungle School instead of a course. This present the US Army with another opportunity. Check this out from DefenseNews....
Q. The commandant recently discussed an overhaul of jungle warfare training. What is being considered?
A. We’ve kind of been thinking about this for a while. There’s the training center on Okinawa, Japan. But it’s not anything like what the Mountain Warfare Training Center is for mountain training or cold-weather training because it’s not a service school right now.
The commandant wants us to look at a service-level jungle warfare training center on the model of the Mountain Warfare Training Center up at Pickel Meadows in California. So who is it that we’ll put through this training? Is it forces that are going out to Asia-Pacific? Or could it be anyone?
[At] the Mountain Warfare Training Center we train in mountain climbing, we train in cold weather, but it’s not all that school’s about. It’s about small-unit leader training. In the future, it will be a venue where people will work in those ITXs, so they might be at [different training locations]. So it’s really more than just mountain and cold weather. And as we develop the jungle warfare training center, it’ll be the same thing.
We are also looking at costs because if we were going to take forces from the U.S. that aren’t on their way to deploy to the Pacific, it would cost a heck of a lot to get a unit over there to go through jungle warfare training and then come back.
So is there somewhere here in the western hemisphere where we can do it as well? Do we want one, do we want the other? But we are going to — within a reasonable amount of time — develop a service-level jungle warfare training center if that’s what the commandant decides.
The opportunity for the Army is simple.
It can be fully on board with the turn to the Pacific by running a joint service Jungle School instead of seeing all the services develop individual schools. The difficulty will in the Army's current structure. Its a mechanized force and for the Jungle School concept to work for the Army then they'll have to get back to its light infantry roots.
I'm not a fan of purple so it would help if the Army ran and maintained the school and the other services simply had detachments to take care of their service member when they came through.
An Army School, with Army instructors, teaching service member from all the services.
That would be a pretty good way for the US Army to get feet wet and relevant when it comes to the Pacific.
NOTE: If the Army won't step up and the Commandant wants a good Jungle Warfare School to fall in on then I would recommend teaming up with the French like we have in North Africa, but this time in S. America. French Guiana reportedly has a tough, effective jungle school that French Marines rotate through. Anything further South would probably become a cost issue...so that makes Brazil a no-go.