{"id":18042,"date":"2010-03-17T05:30:02","date_gmt":"2010-03-17T10:30:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=18042"},"modified":"2010-03-17T05:30:02","modified_gmt":"2010-03-17T10:30:02","slug":"arrrrrrmy-training-sir","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=18042","title":{"rendered":"Arrrrrrmy Training, SIR!"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m sure you’ve all read that the Army, for some stupid reason, is changing basic training<\/a>. 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<\/a>. Of course, as is often the case at VetsVoice, the story is all about how smart he is;<\/p>\n

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through Basic Training in the early part of the decade, even then it was obvious that what we were being taught was outdated.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

But what would you expect from the heavy drop wide bodies at TRADOC. <\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

This is what dicksmith wants to teach in basic training;<\/p>\n

Having troops respond to vehicle roll-overs, react to an ambush while mounted and enter and clear rooms are things that can be taught.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sounds like specialized training that should be taught at the unit rather than something embedded in initial entry training doctrine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m sure you’ve all read that the Army, for some stupid reason, is changing basic training. … Arrrrrrmy Training, SIR!<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-military-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18042\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}