Posted on 01/06/2005 9:30:48 PM PST by Former Military Chick
bttt
I joined army ROTC in 1988 after my sophmore year so I had to complete the "ROTC Bootcamp" to make up for missing the first two years of campus courses. The ROTC basic training consisted of 6 weeks at Ft. Knox and was a modified form of basic training. We had saturday night and sunday's off, and since most of us weren't under contract we could leave at anytime. However, the field training excercises were pretty tough, we did spend a lot of time in the woods.
Once it was over they tried to get you to sign up. If you did (like me), they sent you to Ft. Bragg the following summer for another 6 week program that essentially was the army's way of paying you back for all that time off at Ft. Knox. We had the morning of July 4th off, that was it (except for a few hours each Sunday morning to attend church). We also spent about 25 of the 42 nights I was there in the field, and Ft. Bragg in June/July isn't exactly a hospitable place to spend your summer.
Good luck to your son, hopefully he gets a good assignment and the broken arm doesn't keep him out long.
Regardless, my answer to you is an unequivocal "yes".
Right, I understand your post. Now you join the ROTC Unit when you start college, in your freshman and sophmore year you attend classes during the school year and go on different exercises during the school year. You do not receive any financial support from the Military for you College Tuition. It is in you Junior year of college that you "CONTRACT" with the Army for your tuition and you receive a monthly stipend. I believe it's the equivelent pay a sargent (E-5) receives, during the last 2 years of college. This coming summer he will attend the courses, Air assault and other at various Military Instalations, Ft. Lewis being one of them. He will also go to the ROTC Bootcamp!
My son joined the Army reserves so that he would be able to go to the Enlisted Bootcamp. He did this because he wanted to!! You have to know my son! He has been running all through middle school and high school. I suggested he use his old book bag to put weights in from his weight bench. So he has been running with an extra 40lbs on his back.
I told him his back pack would be 60-80 lbs so he better get used to it. So he was running 2 miles in @ 12-13 min with the 40 bookbag. He went for his Army physical and ran the 2 miles 11 min and 40 secs. When he went to the Enlisted bootcamp he was in the 11 -12 min range, they caught him limping and found he was running that time with a broken bone in his foot!!
He's sure he can break the ten minute barrier. He also like to rapel down the sides of the barnes around where we live. He went down the Warrior tower face first and walked down the side of the tower!! Like I said you have to know my son. He's been getting ready for bootcamp for about 5 years. He even took his bed out of his room and sleeps on the floor. He did that when he was in high school, he is finishing his sophomore year in college.
Officer: Army May Change Reserves Policy
January 07, 2005 9:11 AM EST
WASHINGTON - Stretched thin by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army is considering a National Guard and Reserve policy shift that could result in part-timers being called to active duty multiple times for up to two years each time, a senior Army official said Thursday.
The official, who discussed the matter with a small group of reporters on condition of anonymity because the matter has not been fully settled inside the Pentagon, said the Army probably will ask Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in the next several months to change the policy. The official also said it appeared likely that the Army will ask Congress to permanently increase the statutory size of the Army by 30,000 soldiers, to 512,000. He said that decision would be made next year.
The Army has the authority to add 30,000 soldiers, but arranged for it to be only a temporary boost because it did not want a long-term commitment to the cost of a larger force. But now it appears that the Army has no choice but to accept a permanent increase, the official said.
The Army estimates that a permanent increase of 30,000 soldiers will cost it about $3 billion a year. The Pentagon is sending retired Army Gen. Gary E. Luck to Iraq next week to conduct an "open-ended review" of the military operations there, including troop levels, The New York Times reported on its Web site Thursday night.
One reason that the National Guard and Reserve have been used so heavily over the past three years is that the active-duty Army is too small to meet the demands of war - particularly in Iraq, where troop levels have far exceeded original predictions - while also maintaining a presence in traditional areas of influence such as Europe and the Korean peninsula.
The Army now has about 660,000 troops on active duty, of which about 160,000 are members of the Guard and Reserve. The Army wants them to be eligible for an unlimited number of call-ups, so long as no single mobilization lasts more than 24 months, the official said.
Under current policy set by Rumsfeld, a Guard or Reserve member is not to serve on active duty for more than 24 total months. Thus, for example, if a Guard or Reserve member was mobilized for six months after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and later for nine months in Afghanistan, then that person is off limits for duty in Iraq because a yearlong tour there would exceed the 24-month limit. A standard tour in Iraq, for both active-duty and reserves, is 12 months.
If the limit were set at 24 consecutive months, with some break between tours, then in theory a Guard or Reserve member could be mobilized for multiple 12- or 24-month tours in Iraq or elsewhere.
That is the kind of flexibility the Army has decided it needs in order to sustain the forces needed in Iraq and Afghanistan, the official said. He stressed that the Army would make only sparing use of the authority to call up soldiers for longer tours because it would not want to alienate soldiers.
The National Guard, with about 350,000 members, and the 200,000-strong Reserve already are seeing signs of a slide in recruiting and retaining soldiers. Some may question whether a policy change that results in longer mobilizations could further erode the Guard and Reserve's ability to attract new soldiers and keep the ones it has. The Guard in particular has been used so much in Iraq and Afghanistan that the Army now has deployed - or put on notice of plans to mobilize in 2005 - all 15 of its main combat brigades.
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