Standards? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Standards in the Army

Take a seat and watch Act II, in the Death of the US Army, a Shakesperaean tragedy powered by gutless generals, candyass Millennials and Barry Soetero, worshipping social justice warriors.

It seems that every week there is a story detailing the newest clusterfu*k to hit the US military.

Today, CNS News reported, “Army Basic Training to Drop Hand Grenade Competency as Graduation Requirement.”

Maybe, I’m just a cynical ex cav trooper, but maybe, just maybe, the US Army might need soldiers who are competent at throwing grenades in any future conflicts.

The Army in 2018 is about coddling Millennials, placating feminists, sucking up to the LGBT lobby and being As PC As You Can Be…

According to Major General Malcolm Frost, “The U.S. Army will drop its hand grenade competency requirement for graduation from basic training because getting recruits to pass it is taking ‘too much time’ and they’re just not strong enough.”

“What we have found is it is taking far, far too much time. It’s taking three to four times as much time … just to qualify folks on the hand grenade course than we had designated so what is happening is it is taking away from other aspects of training.”

Plus, trainees just aren’t strong enough to throw the grenade far enough away – and simply can’t be taught to properly throw a grenade “if they haven’t thrown growing up” – Maj. Gen. Frost explained:

“We are finding that there are a large number of trainees that come in that quite frankly just physically don’t have the capacity to throw a hand grenade 20 to 25 to 30 meters. In 10 weeks, we are on a 48-hour period; you are just not going to be able to teach someone how to throw if they haven’t thrown growing up.”

So, in a nutshell, Army recruits now largely consist of wussified young men who throw like girls and a ton of female recruits, who strangely, throw like girls.

Guess what. Our enemies…they can throw grenades. Because our enemies are men who aren’t soy boys.

“Still, the amount of grenade training won’t be reduced – developing enough proficiency to meet the current standards just won’t be required “- “Just because we took it off as a graduation requirement does not mean they won’t be conducting hand grenade.”

“Rather than spend time getting soldiers through the hand grenade and land navigation qualification courses in order to graduate basic, those skills will be incorporated into three new field training exercises, dubbed Hammer, Anvil and Forge.”

General, you’re tap dancing on a minefield. What you’re saying is there are no standards anymore, either on the grenade assault course with dummy rounds, and for actually learning how to throw a live grenade. Soldiers can depart US Army Basic Training whether they can throw a grenade three feet away from themselves and blow their fat Millennial bodies to bits, or maybe twenty feet away in the wrong direction, where they can blow their fat Millennial buddies to bits.

And, oh by the way, apparently land navigation is no longer a requirement at Basic Training. We wouldn’t soldiers to know how to read a map would we?

“What leaders have observed is that, in general, they believe that there’s 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,” Frost said.

Recruits questioning lawful orders? Not listening to instruction? In the old days the recruit would be run over by Smokey the Bear driving the Kiwi Express. What was left of him would be digging a ten foot hole to bury a cigarette after he ran two miles around the barracks with a M-60 over his head.

Drill sergeants will evaluate recruits on their discipline, inspect their bunks and bays, and hold drill and ceremony competitions to make sure soldiers are learning how to march, move in a tight formation and handle their weapons in the most basic way.

Competitions? How about barking, “You’ve got ten seconds to get your Millennial asses outside in formation for an hour of D&C and five seconds have already expired!”

“It depends on which side of the fence you sit. There are a lot of folks who say we need to go back to drill and ceremony, because we’ve lost a lot of the discipline of what it means to be a United States Army soldier.”

“This won’t mean hours set aside for marching around outside their barracks, however.” Frost said.

We wouldn’t want to drag Kaylee, Chelsea and Dylan away from their I Phones for some D and C.

“The drill and ceremony is going to be interwoven — when they move to and from places, drill and ceremony will be dispersed inside of that,” he said. “

“They’ll actually be executing some drill and ceremony when they move to and from the chow hall, when they move to and from the barracks.”

Can’t read a map? Don’t worry about it. You’ll never need land navigation skills as a soldier.

Don’t like drill and cadence? No problem. It will be interwoven when you move from your bunk to the latrine.

Here is the whole story:

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.

By early summer, new recruits will go through Army BCT that’s designed to instill strict discipline and esprit de corps by placing a new emphasis in drill and ceremony, inspections, pride in military history while increasing the focus on critical training such as physical fitness, marksmanship, communications and battlefield first aid skills.
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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, Maj. Gen. Malcolm Frost, commanding general of the U.S. Army Center of Initial Military Training, told defense reporters on Friday.
‘A Sense of Entitlement’

“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,” Frost said. “These are trends that they see as increasing that they think are part of the discipline aspect that is missing and that they would like to see in the trainees that become soldiers that come to them as their first unit of assignment.”

As commanding general of IET, Frost was tasked with increasing the quality of training and reducing new soldier attrition.

After compiling the data from surveys of about 27,000 commissioned officers, warrant officers and non-commissioned officers, the message was very clear, Frost said.

“The number-one thing that was asked for five-fold or five times as much as any of the other categories was discipline,” Frost said.

“First-unit-of-assignment leaders want Initial Entry Training to deliver disciplined, physically-fit new soldiers who are willing to learn, they are mentally tough, professional and are proud to serve in the United States Army.”

In addition to discipline and physical fitness, leaders also wanted technical and tactical proficiency in warrior tasks and battle drills.
Be a Soldier

After working out the details in a pilot at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, the Army has approved a new POI that Frost hopes will better instill into recruits exactly what it means to be a soldier.

“We really tried to attack it by getting after more discipline and esprit de corps,” Frost said.

One new aspect features a series of history vignettes of major battles that the Army has fought in, from Valley Forge in the Revolutionary War all the way to Iraq in Baghdad, Frost said.

“We highlighted those battles; we tied them to Army Values and the Soldier’s Creed and highlighted an individual who received the Medal of Honor or other valor award for actions during each battle,” Frost said.

“So soldiers will learn across all of Basic Combat Training at all the Army training centers what it means to be a soldier, the history of the United States Army through the battles and the campaign streamers and the wars that we have fought and they will be able to look to and emulate a soldier who executed a valorous act during that war.”

The new standardized booklet will be given to each recruit along with their Blue Book at the beginning of training.

Recruits will also learn discipline by doing more practice at a skill that may be as old as soldiering itself — drill and ceremony.
Drill and Ceremony

When the war began after the attacks of 9/11, the Army decreased its focus on D&C, inspections and other skills that stress attention to detail to make more time for combat skill training.

“There are a lot of folks that say ‘we need to go back to the drill and ceremony because we have lost a lot of the discipline aspect of what it means to be a United States Army soldier,’” Frost said.

“It’s not like they are going to be sitting out there just doing D&C all the time. The drill and ceremony is going to be interwoven into when they move to and from places ... so the movements won’t just be lollygagging, non-tactical movements, they will be actually executing some team drill and ceremony as they move to and from the chow hall and move to and from the barracks.”

But the new BCT isn’t all about spit and polish, Frost said.
Hammer, Anvil, Forge

“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.”

The Forge will include a night infiltration course and a medical evacuation mass casualty exercise. There will be ethical dilemmas soldiers have to negotiate as well as a battle march and shoot, a resupply mission which involves moving supplies, ammo, water to a link-up point, patrol base activities, combat patrols as well as an obstacle course, Frost said.

“If you succeed in making it through the 81-hour FTX ... then what will happen is you will earn the right to become a soldier,” Frost said. “You will earn your beret, you will earn a ‘soldier for life’ certificate, you will get your National Defense Service Medal and your uniform will look exactly like a United States Army soldier.”
‘Get After the Basics’

The new BCT POI weeded out “lot of redundant areas and areas that have crept in that did not get after the basics” — shoot, move, communicate and protect or survive, Frost said.

For weapons qualification, recruits will be required to qualify with backup iron sights instead of just on close-combat optic sights.

Physical fitness standards will also be increased, requiring each soldier to score at least 60 points on all three events of the Army Physical Fitness Test instead of 50 points on each as a graduation standard.

Each recruit will also receive 33 hours of combatives training instead of 22 hours, Frost said.

Recruits will receive an increased amount of tactical combat casualty care training such as basic combat lifesaver.

The course will also teach “some of the basics that we had kind of lost with respect to communications such as basic hand and arm signals, and we have doubled the amount of basic reporting on the radio communications” such as MEDEVAC and similar requests, Frost said.

I OTHER WORDS, BCT IS BACK TO A BIT OF KICK ASS!

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