I went to Fort Jackson (then to Fort Leonard Wood) and the most demanding (cardio wise) was the bayonet course. I think they need to do a few things to BCT:
1. They need to clean up the act of Drill Sergeants. It’s become a hazing exercise into a frat club instead of true training. Drill Sergeanting has become a vile, filthy-mouthed, non mentoring job that provides a horrible, non-Army-valued example of what a soldier aspires to be.
2. They need to concentrate heavy on urban warfare and, like the General says, get away from bayonet training (never in my career have I been assigned a bayonet).
3. They need to continue battle field drills and three to five second rushes, as well as the mock urban drills in place. However, they need to incorporate paint-ball guns as Fort Leonard Wood has done with their Battle Focus Training.
4. Women need to be segregated from males in BCT and they need to be trained for their roles in the Army.
5. ALL Basic Training Schools need to be made one-stop-training-schools (like the Combat Engineers and Infantry soldiers have). ALL MOS’s should have their AIT and BCT incorporated into one stop that focuses on their jobs from the start in order to focus upon their MOS’s.
I went through BCT in 72. In one course we used BB guns to train for quick fire. It was very good training and I wonder if they still use it or a more modern version of it?
In 1972, in the 9th Infantry Division, they started sending us men directly from basic training for us to train them into our units, bypassing AIT.