Posted on 02/10/2018 6:26:58 AM PST by Strac6
The U.S. Army will soon launch a redesign of Basic Combat Training intended to build more discipline after many commanders complained that new soldiers often show up to their first units with a sloppy appearance and undisciplined attitudes.
The program will also feature three new field training exercises that place a greater emphasis on forcing recruits to demonstrate Warrior Tasks and Battle Drills, the list of key skills all soldiers are taught to survive in combat.
The new program of instruction is the result of surveys taken from thousands of leaders who have observed a trend of new soldiers fresh out of training displaying a lack of obedience and poor work ethic as well as being careless with equipment, uniform and appearance,
"What leaders have observed in general is they believe that there is too much of a sense of entitlement, questioning of lawful orders, not listening to instruction, too much of a buddy mentality with NCOs and officers and a lot of tardiness being late to formation and duties,"
"The other big piece we are doing in Basic Combat Training that helps with the esprit de corps and the discipline aspect and also lends a measure of grit and resilience to [BCT] is we have three major field training exercises that we are going to do now. We are calling them the Hammer, the Anvil and the Forge," Frost said, describing how the final Forge FTX is an homage to the Army's historic ties to Valley Forge.
"That is going to be a culminating FTX which is a graduation requirement. It will be an 81-hour field training exercise with about 40 miles of tactical road marching that is conducted through a series of tactical events and mini field training exercises."
(Excerpt) Read more at military.com ...
What do they expect when they coddle them and protect them like babies? Why does anyone need safety glasses and a safety belt draped over their shoulder to take a walk?
See stupid picture in article.
Geez! How will they ever fight a war?
Treat ‘am like wimps and you get wimps.
How did we ever learn to ride bikes without government-approved helmets, elbow pads, knee pads.... and not kill ourselves in the process!!!
Right before they were breaking apart AIT and basic there. 16 wonderful weeks of basic and 19D Tanker school all rolled into one. B-3-1.
We whomped a MARINE platoon in drill and ceremonies during graduation competition!
The farm boys that grew up during the Great Depression, and later were on the battlefields in Europe and all through the Pacific, already came into service knowing how to aim and fire a rifle, to get up early, to get going with the duties of the day, and take orders, as they had been getting that discipline from early childhood, and stood in grave danger of severe corporal punishment for failure to move with alacrity. This legacy of duty, honor, country stood even through the Korean “police action”, but it was also bolstered with the implicit threat of conscription if you did not enlist first.
But then, suddenly conscription became TOO effective, and a great number of individuals from the pool available for conscription could not be taken in, resulting in assignment of a lottery system based on date of birth, and whether or not your birth date had a high or low number. It was finally determined the military service should be ALL volunteer, in which instance, the vast majority, with no tangible fear of being conscripted, did not even consider enlisting, and simply opted to never serve.
Which is a pity. Now we have snowflakes grown up with no realistic expectation of what they would do should they find themselves in a position where it is either to fight for the preservation of yourself, or to abandon all the life you have known before, even to the point of being simply slaughtered, because of a total lack of self-preservation instinct or the basic skills of self-defense.
If one did not start developing these skills as a child, age twenty is WAY too late to start.
That’s what im hoping will turn around under Trump
they took the power away from the parents too!!
All joking aside; check my profile. 22 Years in US Air Force, retired as E-8.
Back in the Pentagon when I was an E-7, a fellow Army E-7 (SFC Phil), said to me derisively, “Babylon, I don’t know how you can stand it with these Air Force troops! I tell them to do something, and they wanna know why, how come, what for... You people absolutely have no discipline!”
Maybe because I went through the NCO ranks expecting the questions, or not, I think the questions helped me give better orders and instructions. Hell, in my earlier days I asked questions, too. And even if it was a Colonel ordering me, I usually questioned those orders, too, at least to clarify them and follow his (or nowadays, her) thinking. It isn’t necessarily disrespect.
The questions, and anticipating them, made my own orders more precise and meaningful. It required me to be better at it (leadership), as I was less likely to give a BS order or “do as I say cause I said so” order. So I could always explain why we had to do something even if it seemed stupid or worthless.
What I did remind SFC Phil, was that when the balloon went up, or in our case in the Pentagon, it was more like the $hit hitting the fan, Airman NCOs needed far less leadership, and got things done a hell of a lot faster.
So decisions are made at E-5 and E-6 ranks in the USAF, rather than waiting for a SNCO or officer to tell what to do. And Phil actually agreed with this, as he saw it with his own eyes.
But that also reflects a whole different mission of each service. The Air Force isn’t out there in the field with a live, skilled and crafty enemy peering behind a bush with a huge likelihood of getting shot or blown up! I sincerely respect the Army (Navy and Marines also) and would probably want instant obedience in such a situation.
However, the Air Force enlisted ranks are almost always technical, and need technical skills and even expertise. When I was a Staff then Tech Sergeant, I was an expert at what I did (Communications-Computers). But by the time I was a E-7/E-8, there were newer and younger E-5’s and E-6’s who were now the technical experts—not me.
It took some getting used to and even understanding that.
I knew a few fellow SNCOs who never learned that, and where often overruling the expertise of their E-5/6s, and this often caused a lot of tension, because those E-7/8s were usually wrong, technically.
I am seeing specialists that have never completed a road march, deployed or passed an APFT. These are people that were allowed to graduate BMT and AIT.
Getting tougher in BMT and not graduating these people will save tax dollars.
Thank you for your service. I too was in the Air Force but only for 5 1/2 years, not a career.
I got out and got my degree in Computer Science and I know what you mean about being passed up technically. I know a lot about computers in general, but very little about Windows based computers. I’m mostly just a user.
[How did we ever learn to ride bikes without government-approved helmets, elbow pads, knee pads.... and not kill ourselves in the process!!!]
I told my youngest granddaughter that the reason I’m so tough and rugged is because we rode bikes all over town and out in the country without helmets. The poor girl really can’t believe that kids actually did that back in the day.
Sometimes I laugh out loud to see grownups riding bikes with helmets, knee pads, and all the rest of that crap riding around.
I worked daily with a Command Sergeant Major during my 4 years of ROTC. He did more than anyone to make me an effective officer.
On my very first day with my first platoon, a squad leader came in to gripe about one of his soldiers: he wouldn't follow orders, do his job right, etc. My PSG said we'd talk to him, work things out. You don't just ship off people when you're effective strength is under 75%.
About an hour later, I had my first meeting with my squad leaders. When the PSG handed out the week's assignments, that same squad leader was bringing up objection after objection as to why his squad couldn't do those tasks.
After they left, I asked my PSG, "Sergeant, let me see if I have this straight: this squad leader was questioning your orders, yet he wanted us to discipline one of his soldiers for doing the same thing?"
With a broad smile, he replied, "LT, we're going to get along great!" Off duty, we were the best of friends. During duty hours, we knew our roles, but we trusted each other completely.
He'd later move on to be the Ops Sergeant at Battalion S-3. When rumors started flying around the Dept. of the Army was going to do an IG inspection of battalions' NBC operations and supply accountability, he convinced his superiors that they needed to bring me to HQ to straighten this out.
That was one of my extra duties at my unit, NBC officer. We did a lot of training in that regard, and we kept a tight ship on the equipment. My training came in handy during AF alerts, too. I spoke up on my first time in the Wing CP when the Base Disaster Preparedness officer went overboard on his recommendation.
I chimed in (to the consternation of several AF O-6s, lol) that a better recommendation was Alarm Yellow, thus not forcing everyone on the flight line to put on masks and protective gear.
Wing Commander liked what I said, as did the evaluators...I saw the Evaluation Team Chief nodding his head. 15 minutes later, I hear the Wing Commander's voice boom out, "as long as I'm in command, I want that Army LT up here whenever there's an NBC input!"
About a year later, the first female base commander was installed at Hahn. During her first tac eval, she was unaware of the Wing Cdr's directive. After the first input, she questioned why I was up there to offer my recommendation (which were always agreed to). Let's just say the exchange between those two colonels went one way, and it was uncomfortable for us underlings. Damn, he dressed her down!!!
My neighbor retired from the Army as an E-7. He was offered E-8 but says he had to be a 1st Sergeant bailing the E-2s out of jail every weekend, etc., so he declined.
Were Air Force E-8s always 1st Sergeants, or at least had to do a stint as a 1st Sergeant?
Basic training at Ft. Knox, lamentably the former “Home of Armor,” was held at Ft. Knox from WWII through the end of the Cold War. I don’t know the exact date, but it ended around 1990. I went through basic there during the summer of 1973. I had enlisted for the 194th Armored Brigade, wanting to be a tanker. 50 of us arrived at the brigade HQ on graduation day and found out that we were being assigned to the field artillery battalion that had been rotated from Vietnam to Ft. Knox as replacements. I ended up being “on the job trained” as a 13E, Fire Direction Center, however 4 years later I was a Reconnaissance Sergeant/Forward Observer, and became the FO for a tank company in Germany (B/1/32 Armor, 3d Bde, 3d AD) and spent the next two years being a field artilleryman who did his FO work as the TC of a M60A2....thus I got my desire to be a tanker.
Anyone else out there who did Basic/AIT/OBC/OAC at Ft. Knox?
Or a whole bunch of other things.
Don’t those people look stupid in all that sissy protective gear?
I got my Microsoft Certified System Engineer certification in Windows NT 4.0 a year after retiring, so this old boy had plenty of tech know-how! Actually, it was great getting back in the saddle where I belong. I hated management! All I did as an E-8 was go to meetings and paperwork. Sure, I got to hob-nob with the wing and group commanders, and even the AETC staff, but talk about b-o-r-i-n-g.
Now I am getting ready to retire from my “second” career. 20 years working networks and teaching at a major university. Now I’m going to settle back and write tech articles and videos.
But you know what? My military years were the best!
That the Army would admit that basic trainees had trouble making it to formation on time as a recurring problem is obvious proof that someone had imposed a training plan and a set of standards upon them that was outrageous.
“sissy protective gear”
How about a 80 year-old man, on an adult tricycle, in a bright pink helmet, in St. Petersburg last week!
It was the “Quad-Fecta!”
No. Air Force E-8’s are line or staff. They are what the Air Force calls Superintendents, and are oversight for collected similar AFSCs, or MOSs. So my last job was in a base level communications squadron, where I oversaw all the enlisted computer operations and programming, network technicians, communications technicians, tech controllers, etc. The comm squadron had a similar E-8 for the telephone/radio guys and another for the radar/air traffic control guys. Great guys and my friends when I saw them last!
Air Force E-7s thru E-9s can be a first sergeant, but that is an official role, not a rank.
Kind of like a Wing Commander rank is a Colonel or Brigadier General, but other Colonels and BGs are doing different jobs on staffs, etc., and not all are Wing Commanders.
I have a special place in my heart for Air Force First Sergeants. Mostly wise old gentlemen at their best. VERY few are crusty or rough, but like a good, strong dad or grandpa! And yup, while they may get you in a heap of trouble, their first job is to help you and your family out. I used to tell the young wives that the Top was their go-to for all kinds of issues. Sometimes the troop didn’t want to whine about a deployment when the family was in trouble, but if the Mrs. talked to the First Shirt then he/she would normally get it taken care of pronto.
The attrition rate in our boot platoon was about 40%.
Sempr Fi
Platoon 2109 Sept-Dec 1974
MCRD San Diego
There was a reason for having “kickass” drill sergeants. It seems the Army has forgotten “train hard, fight easy.”
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.