Infantry weapons officer
military position within the US Marine Corps
The United States Marine Corps MOS 0306, infantry weapons officers, commonly referred to as "the Gunner" or "Marine gunner" are non-technical chief warrant officers (CWO-2 to CWO-5) that are weapons specialists and are knowledgeable in the tactical employment of all the infantry weapons in the Marine Corps arsenal—all weapons organic to Marine infantry units.
Overview
The requirements to apply for selection are very stringent and much higher than what is needed for other warrant officer appointments. For example; minimum time in service is sixteen years and minimum rank to apply is gunnery sergeant (E-7) versus eight years and sergeant (E-5). They are not appointed warrant officers, but rather commissioned directly to the grade of chief warrant officer-2 and are the only officers who are officially designated the title, "Marine gunner" and authorized to wear the "Bursting Bomb" insignia. This insignia has twelve points, which originates from the twelve military occupational specialty (MOS) fields present within the Marine infantry community.
The title "gunner" is almost always used in lieu of rank (i.e., "Gunner Deykerhoff" as opposed to "Chief Warrant Officer Deykerhoff"), and the rank insignia worn on the left collar is replaced with a "Bursting Bomb." A larger "Bursting Bomb" insignia is worn ¾" above the rank insignia on both shoulder epaulets when a coat is worn. Occasionally other warrant officers are referred to as "gunner", but this is incorrect.
The gunners' technical skills complemented with infantry field experience fundamentally posits them as advisers to the force commanders within the Fleet Marine Force's task forces (i.e. Marine Expeditionary Force (MEF) and its subordinate units). Marine gunners may be responsible for developing and monitoring weapons training protocols, tactical employment of weapons, preventive maintenance of the unit's infantry weapons, management of the unit's ammunition allocation and the unit training plan, infantry training, and fire support planning.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6029122. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Infantry weapons officer” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.