Category: Military issues

Thanks to Old Trooper for sharing

I’m sure you’ve all read that the Army, for some stupid reason, is changing basic training. Their reasons are specious and indicative of why Army training was changed thirty years ago. No one illustratates how misunderstood BASIC COMBAT has become more than pseudo-warfighting-expert, dicksmith of VetsVoice. Of course, as is often the case at VetsVoice, the story is all about how smart he is;

When I went through Basic Training in the early part of the decade, even then it was obvious that what we were being taught was outdated.

I’m pretty sure there are days that you, as a college student, you think you know more about a subject than your professor. That’s the arrogance of youth.

We were still digging fox holes in the middle of the woods, and I’ve never heard of anyone digging a fox hole in post-9/11 operations.

But, it’s still something everyone should know, isn’t it? It might not relate to the current battlefield, but as Haiti has demonstrated, the job changes in an instance and too often involves sending inexperienced troops into a fluid situation. Read about Task Force Smith someday.

We, however, were not learning how to enter and clear buildings or how to lay out guard posts or sectors of fire in a safe house. In retrospect, the latter seems far more applicable in today’s combat environment than anything I was taught in boot camp.

No, but you learned all of that when you got to your unit, didn’t you? Do you think college is going to prepare you for everything you’ll ever encounter in your chosen field? No, colleges can only bring you up to speed with your peers and establish a base line of knowledge from which you can launch your career. Just like Basic training.

But of course who was going to teach us what was relevant to combat? There were only two drill sergeants out of 16 in my company with any combat experience.

Yeah, that’s just ignorant – I’d expect better from someone who spent a year in the Army as a sergeant. Drill Sergeants are restricted to training TRADOC (Training and Doctrine Command) policy – they don’t write the training schedule. Whether they’ve been to combat or not is irrelevant as far as basic trainees are concerned. Dicksmith’s problem is that he’s looking back on his training in the context of the remainder of his career.

I think that’s the Army’s problem, too. The Army wants to do away with the endurance running and focus on some sort of short distance sprints and zig-zagging. Dicksmith seems pleased about. I’d remind the Army and dicksmith that endurance running builds soldiers’ immune systems and their aerobic capacity – improving their overall internal health. Do away with distance running and you’re going to make the force less effective.

But what would you expect from the heavy drop wide bodies at TRADOC.

Basic training provides a baseline of skills that every soldier needs to know on the first day he arrives at his unit, and a minimum level of fitness. TRADOC and dicksmith would prefer that soldiers be trained to a narrow set of skills that should be taught at the unit – after all, not all graduates are going to be sent straight to Marjah the day after graduation. Nor will the current style of warfighting be the norm for all of eternity.

This is what dicksmith wants to teach in basic training;

Having troops respond to vehicle roll-overs, react to an ambush while mounted and enter and clear rooms are things that can be taught.

Sounds like specialized training that should be taught at the unit rather than something embedded in initial entry training doctrine.

According to the USAToday (Army Times link), all of the nations who are helping the Haitians recover from the devastating earthquake that hit the already impoverished nation are flying their respective flags over the compounds that house their support personnel. All of the nations except the one that’s shouldering most of the burden. You guessed it;

“We are not here as an occupation force, but as an international partner committed to supporting the government of Haiti on the road to recovery,” the U.S. government’s Haiti Joint Information Center said in response to a query about the flag.

Why do our colors represent an “occupation force” any more than the UK’s or France’s?

A U.S. flag went up at a temporary consular station set up in the first few days on the airport tarmac, according to Charles Luoma-Overstreet, a State Department spokesman in Haiti.

“Apparently, the prime minister (Jean-Max Bellerive) saw this” and thought it appeared as if the United States were taking over the airport, Luoma-Overstreet said.

He said Bellerive said something to U.S. Ambassador Kenneth Merten, who agreed that flying the flag wasn’t a good idea and told the consular officials to take it down.

OK, when the flag came down, everyone should’ve climbed on the first thing smoking back to the US. That’s US tax payers’ money being spent on the recovery on that perpetually backwards slab of the island of Hispanola and if they don’t want our flag flying over the heads of our troops and our government employees, they don’t want our money either.

It sounds like something that would happen during the Jimmy Carter years. We’re there to help them, for fuck’s sake. Naw, bring our troops home from Haiti – the ingrates.

Thanks to Cortillaen for the link.

The Washington Times‘s Rowan Scarborough writes about the emails between Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan’s supervisors at Walter Reed. Apparently, his superiors were worried that actually disciplining him would cause them to do actual work related to their profession;

“He is a chronically somewhat unprofessional officer with a somewhat poor work ethic,” Maj. Scott Moran, residency director, wrote in e-mail to a superior.

Maj. Moran said he was preparing to put Maj. Hasan on probation and extend his residency.

But the superior rejected the idea, saying it would prompt a total re-evaluation of Maj. Hasan.

The superior wrote back to Maj. Moran: “Please don’t go forward on anything yet. If you put him on probation, even administrative, will require me to convene a relook board.”

And then there was the evaluation of his research project for completion of his residency at Walter Reed;

“I must admit that I am confused as to how this is acceptable as a scholarly activity,” the supervisor wrote. “While information about Islam, this seems to be a history/religious class report rather than a psychiatric scholarly activity. I would expect better academic efforts from a graduating resident.”

Although I hold these guys responsible for allowing an obviously incompetent boob to treat our soldier for what are clearly Politically Correct reasons, the Army has to accept some of the responsibility for fostering a climate that allowed this incompetent boobery to germinate into a weapons grade blindness to the obvious.

Could they have predicted the final outcome? Doubtful that no one, even Hasan, could have seen it coming. But if the Army had been doing it’s job as far as selection, Hasan never would have gone to Fort Hood in the first place.