Future Soldier Preparatory Course to become permanent
The Army stood up the Future Soldier Preparatory Course. It’s designed as a pre-basic training program to help recruits to get within academic and weight standards needed to start basic training. These Soldiers receive up to 90 days to reach the standards needed to ship to basic training. The graduation rate for this program is 95%.
From Fox News:
“Our insistence on not lowering the standard to enter basic training means that we have to be ready to remove obstacles for those that want to serve,” Brig. Gen. Jason Kelly, commander of the Army Training Center and Fort Jackson, told Military.com. “So, this is a program of record. Next month, that will be true. We’re moving away from pilot.”
The program, which was launched in August 2022, allows recruits who do not meet the Army’s weight or academic performance standards to enlist into the course, where they receive up to 90 days to reach compliance with Army standards and ship off to basic training. So far, 10,260 solider have moved on from one of the courses and entered basic training, according to data provided to Military.com, a 95% graduation rate.
The success of the program comes at a vital time for the Army, which has battled its worst recruiting crisis in decades over the last few years. In fiscal year 2022, the Army was 15,000 recruits short of hitting its 60,000 goal and is expected to come up short again this year.
One issue the service is facing is a shrinking pool of qualified candidates to recruit, with youth obesity numbers steadily rising over last few decades at the same time academic scores have slipped.
The Future Soldier Preparatory Course provided two separate tracks, one for recruits who do not meet the Army’s weight standards and one for applicants who have struggled to pass the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) test. The Army also began allowing applicants to go through both courses after initially only allowing recruits to go through one.
Army leaders say the courses have been a resounding success, with soldiers boosting their ASVAB scores by 19 points on average during the academic track and shedding an average of 1.5% of body fat each week during that course.
Fox News provides the balance of the story here.
When you’re fat and stupid…..
Class VI to the rescue…
DELTA Farce (2007) ?
Pi392aPIVHc
Can’t wait to hear the tales of heroism from those who served as future soldiers;
“There we were at Arby’s, knee deep in roast beef and all out of horsey sauce. In desperation I threw an apple turnover. It exploded and cream filling went everywhere.”
Arby’s? Golden Corral, man! Not one gets into highchair-throwing family brawls at Arby’s.
You want chair-throwing brawls? You want Waffle House my friend.
Not as bad as that big rumble at the seafood place, battered fish everywhere!!
Just an idea, but maybe make military service more attractive to intelligent and athletic people. How about making it more than a jobs program for people without opportunities. They always talk about high standards but need a tutoring program and fat camp to make quotas. So much for standards.
They do. But that the fact that you and so many others see it that way is a testament to the power of the liberal media. Therefore smarter people tend to shy away because they have no clue and have been told or led to believe that it is the employer of last resort. This turns into quite a shock for the people that are stupid to join, which is about half the population when they come knocking.
…to stupid to…
it’s gently ironic that you refer to folks as “to stupid to join”…as one of the reigning kings of fat-fingered typos, that is funny.
A large part of my opinion is from talking to kids that have joined and recently discharged veterans. Most of them do not recommend joining and now are years behind their peers and disappointed with the experience. They say that it’s very different from what they thought they were getting into and far from the way older family and friends described it. One of my sons wanted to join from the time he was little and all he’s heard from friends is stay away “ it’s not what you think “.
“it’s very different from what they thought they were getting into”
What? First call wasn’t at 0900? No 40 hour week? No private bathrooms? The “Dining Facility” didn’t have a Michelin star? No shit, Sherlock. Childish expectations are quite frequently thwarted by reality. I am willing to bet civilian life will also disappoint them. Life is like that.
No they thought they were training to be warriors they expected quality and challenging training. What they got was far more cushy and less physically and mentally challenging than they anticipated. And sorry dick head two of them are police officers, one is working on an MBA and another is an assistant hockey coach at a college. Listen to what I have been saying for the last year! The military is spending more time on social issues, the training at most levels isn’t what it used to be and our leadership is failing badly. By the way most of the kids I know where high school athletes with good grades. You know the kind of kids you want.
Sorry business degree and pursuing MBA next year after graduation.
“less physically and mentally challenging than they anticipated”
Imagine that. You mean the job can be boring or bureaucratic or just sheer drudgery instead of a constant stream of exciting, adrenalin pumping stuff like night HALO jumps into hostile territory to rescue captive Americans from terrorists? Cleaning toilets instead of blowing things up or shooting weapons on the range? Yeah, life, even soldiering, is like that. Not quite as exciting or challenging as the movies or “Sergeant Rock” comic books.
Hey, they sell it as a challenging adventure. No recruiter ever says its crappy job with low pay and they treat you like a five year old. Please, if you want someone to give years of their life you need to have a product worth buying, sitting in tranny class learning pronouns and gender theory then having a rah rah lifer spouting more useless bullshit that he doesn’t even believe in, then not even feeling challenged is not the way to go.
And don’t spout the service aspect we all just watched our leaders sell out a generation of people who joined for a higher purpose and performed at the highest levels and then had their sacrifices thrown away. This country has changed and it’s not the younger generations that fucked it up, the apathy and rot started with us over 50 crowd. The politicians and career military leaders are the ones who damaged the country and military. Cut the deadwood, make it a meritocracy again and for gods sake make it apolitical.
I am lucky to have known Great Men:
A Platoon mate of mine went off to Bragg after we returned from Iraq in ’05. He had just gotten to the unit and situated before they got tapped to walk the rubble of Katrina. I asked him what that was like and his reply was that it was multiple times worse than what we had experienced in and around Kirkuk, both in conditions and politically. Since he opened the door I asked bluntly about the confiscation of Arms order by that piece of shit Honore, and he said quite confidently that “they weren’t doing that shit”. He emphasized he wouldn’t let his mother stay in NOLA unarmed, why would he do that to others.
Fast forward to Benning 2009 or 10, a Committee of NCOs of various political leanings. We had a frank discussion about if we got spun up for disaster response if we would follow orders to seize arms of citizens a la Katrina.
There was one idiot that swore he’d do it, and I emphasize idiot. The rest of us where in the ‘HELL FUCKING NO’ camp.
I’d like to think this spirit remains in our NCO and Officer corps, but it’s never a known-known until the situation arises for people to shine.
Plan accordingly.
Honore is quite the douche from what I’ve heard.
“And don’t spout the service aspect…”
You forgot service, sacrifice, and a few other virtues. According to what I read here those are the main, if not exclusive, motivators of enlistment, especially in “The Good Old Days”.
They were mine. But it was a different time and in many ways a different country. I miss the good old days also.
What happened to joining the armed forces to serve your country as opposed to joining for the experience? If someone is joining to serve their country, their motivation is very different than that of someone joining to get three squares a rack. I realize that this generation if far different from the group of men and woman of the past as this generation is the ” gimme what I want now and I want what you have without working for it” generation, but just saying…….
Exactly we need to convince the best and brightest to come in and serve their country. Lower standards, and social indoctrination isn’t going to convince the best and brightest to sacrifice years of their lives and maybe their actual lives.
Kids are being taught in school that their country is a fascist, systemically racist empire who’s wealth and power was built on slavery and oppression.
Then we expect them to want to sacrifice to serve that country?
Good luck with that. Let me know how it turns out.
Most kids still love their country and believe in somewhat traditional values. No doubt that some in our educational system are working hard to change that but parents still have a responsibility to instill a sense of pride and values, work ethic, etc. besides if you want to point fingers then it’s the older generations that allowed the rot to start and fester. No criticism of the young can discount the failure of the older generations that raised them.
With this current crop, we can only hope they will be too lazy to fuck and will eventually just fade away.
“What happened to joining the armed forces to serve your country…”
Very few people have ever joined the military just to “serve the country”. That’s why conscription was invented. I know the script says all members of the military are there for purely altruistic reasons, to serve and sacrifice, etc. but reality says differently. That’s why they have enlistment bonuses, choice of jobs and/or duty stations, and all those “cushy” things Av8… complains of.
No shit, it isn’t what you think. I spent my HS years around the DC area. My father was in the Marines and worked an office job. When I signed up I just figured you did BCT and then got an office job. That sure was a surprise.
After a 24 year career I had surpassed 85% of my peers and could retire if I had wanted to while they were still trying to figure out how to.
Smart and motivated people with options need a reason to join. From about 2002 to 2005 or 2006, it took a GO review to ship a Cat 4 and the only way you were getting a weight waiver was if you did a lot of pull-ups so we knew the extra weight was muscle not fat. This was because people remembered 9/11 and saw a purpose to joining.
Now we fill our cannon batteries and motor pools with Cat 4 mental midgets and wonder why they can’t pass Section Chiefs course.
Quality will fix itself next crisis that brings purpose. In the meantime, maybe we should plan how to increase Reserves use and shrink our military to fit our recruiting without lowering standards to nothing.
We also have a distrust of the military and government in general right now and unfortunately I don’t see that changing anytime soon. The self inflicted damage of the Afghanistan withdrawal and the politicization of the military in conjunction with a generation of disillusioned veterans isn’t helping convince people with options to join.
“Infantrywomen” and chick “Rangers”…
The “victors” renaming the conquered military installations was a final straw for many, me included.
Stolen elections, subsidized stupidity, and neofeudal fascism has its consequences.
Prepare.
Cat IV dudes breaking $multi-million equipment can add up– 25% more than Cat I folk for the same job, regardless of how big/small. RAND did a study.
Agreed. That is why I would rather shrink than accept lower standards which cost money and don’t actually provide any capability because the Cat 4s break everything and are difficult to train
Quantity does have a quality all its own (credit where due), but one great caliber soldier is worth more than three shitty joes combined – if you intend to use them as anything more than meat-shields.
We’d be a much more capable military at half the size with double the standards. The second half of that is the vital part that leadership seems to overlook.
We cannot get too much smaller and still be able to win fights. Right now the military is almost as small as it was right before the Korean War broke out. And to a significant extent, almost as unprepared.
Hmm, how about “Service guarantees citizenship!” Go Gordon R. Dickson.
How about cut out the deadwood, raise standards across the board and make it a privilege to serve. Then maybe you will get the cream of the crop and not have to scrape the bottom of the barrel.
“make it a privilege to serve.”
How do you do that?
Raise standards, challenge people, make it something that is difficult to achieve and be proud of. In short make it a winning team and make it a winning team culture.
Heinlein.
These days it seems to be easy enough to acquire all the benefits of citizenship, even citizenship, that service is not needed, so why bother?
Durn..
The US Army JUST brought back their famous recruiting slogan “Be All You Can Be”…and now they are gonna hafta eat those words…
Liars!
😉😎
Whoopies…🙄
😋
He musta thought it said “Be as much as you can be.”
Another “Army Strong”..
Don’t forget…”Be All You Can Be! Join The Army!”
gabn
Which one interned at All-Points Logistics?
So does this mean if one is overweight and academically challenged, they can’t join the Navy, Air Force, Marines, Space Force, Coast Guard?
Asking For A Potential Recruit…
Pretty much.
At 0600 the Marines are drinking their post-PT booze
Moo!
90 days pre-basic training.
Yeah. That sucks.
Seeing this at sort of close hand, I’m gonna say that the program is actually fairly decent, and helping people—that society failed—to meet the standards to serve. It’s not a lowering of standards but a recognition that our society is creating fat, stupid people and the army is not lowering the bar to let them in, but helping to get them to a minimal threshold. At least these people are willing to serve. I reserve my harshest judgment for those who are unwilling. (While acknowledging concerns over military service… which will hopefully be rectified with the next elections.)
Concur. The existence (necessity) of this program says a hell of a lot more about society at large 😉 than it does about the Army.
I also agree. Not sure when kids got so dumb but am thinking it was self inflicted.
About the time when schools started indoctrinating with libtard nonsense rather than teaching useful stuff.
Kinda thought this was what recruiters used to do….
This is what basic training used to do. If they couldn’t do it, recycle and do it again.
No one is untrainable. It’s a matter of cost-benefit and, right now, this seems more than worth the cost.
As long as they do it right… I’m not sanguine.
Sounds like an expensive DEP program because the recruiters cannot run a proper Delayed Entry Program to get civilians ready for Boot Camp
Parents and schools aren’t getting civilians ready for DEP.
Is that a phat female lieutenant in that photo?
The black 1LT bar, it seems…
Hey, don’t hate on the messenger…
What a fucking leader….
Appears to like the white rice with a side of mashed.
That too.
Yep. This fucking turd sundae’s whole fucking life can be a mess, a testament to poor life decisions and shit discipline but a senior NCO with more time in combat than in garrison gets one little DUI and it’s to Fort fucking Livingroom for Tommy this an’ Tommy that.
Justice?
Maybe, maybe not.
But I know who the fuck I’d want on a mission.
Occupational politics aside, I’d still rather be Tommy and deal with all the societal shit he faces than be that woman, period.
One thing to remember is that those who enlisted before 31 Dec 22 will have an NDSM upon graduating from Basic some five and a half months later, while those recruits who went straight in and started Basic right away won’t have one.
The Brotherhood Weeps. / s
So, it is kind of an extra three months of basic training to get them ready for basic training?
I’m going to assume that we’re not allowed to call it “Fat Camp”.
Operation obesity?
Corpulence Corps?
BBQ Team
Slovenly Squad
Porcine (or Plump) Platoon
Blubber Battalion
Rotund (or Rolls) Regiment
Blimp Brigade
Dinertime Division
5th (Serving) Corps
If we can get them to fight the SV assholes at the yearly Battle at the Golden Corral it’d be a win for us AND the local heavy equipment operators when the mess needs to be cleaned up.
I hope this makes my FiB handler chuckle a little bit
I surrender.
Welp, they couldn’t fill the ranks with muh die-ver-city, maybe they’ll do better with phormerly phat and borderline stoopid. God help us.
Prepare
And the Army goes rolling along.
Then it’s hi! hi! hey!
The Army’s on its way.
Count off the [chins] loud and strong;
For where’er we go,
You will always know
[by earthquake]
That the Army goes rolling along.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
I went to USAF basic in 1975. Some members of my flight went to a remedial physical fitness flight for 30 days of exercise before being allowed back into basic training. We had one guy who couldn’t do 1 push-up. It wasn’t because he wasn’t strong enough; he just didn’t know how to do push-ups, he had never done one before. Some went to remedial reading training. Obviously they scored well enough on the ASVAB to get in; but, they couldn’t read the handbook we were issued. They must have used the second hand method of filling in the bubbles; if the second hand was between 12 & 3, the answer was a, between 3 & 6 b, etc. Then there was the rocket surgeon; he was discharged because he didn’t get to work on nukes as the recruiter guaranteed. How he expected to get to wrench nukes with his criminal record is beyond me. One guy got a discharge because the recruiter told him he wouldn’t have to work on Sunday; working on Sunday was against his religion. One guy cried for his mother every night at 2115 hrs, he was sent home. Our fearless leader, the dorm chief the USAF called him, was sent home for fraudulent enlistment. One guy went to corrective custody the first week of basic training.
I’ll stop now, 60 people in a basic training flight and so few graduated.
When my flight finished basic training, the TI wasn’t a TI any more. His boss told him he wasn’t cut out for it. I met him years later, great guy, sharp troop, excellent at his job when he wasn’t a TI.
When I returned to Lackland years later, not as an instructor, I had a buddy whose job was to check each enlistment contract. His best day was when he sent a guy home before the recruit got his hair cut, he forgot to tell the recruiter about the warrant for his arrest.
How does one end up in CC after 1 week in the Air Force?🤣
The Army of the Future is Meal Team Six?
So will they get a ribbon in the colors of a Big Mac?
“So will they get a ribbon?”
Yes, it’s called the Army Service Ribbon. And, yes, it’s color scheme does mimic the McDonalds’ products. / s
When I was a Recruiter, we had the Future Soldier Training Program, which essentially had all the DEPs come in once per week for PT and such. Those who were disqualified due to height/weight were more than welcome to join us, and we had a few young men and women take us up on that.
I was sitting around 220 (“Fat Ass” standard) when I came down on orders in mid-2015. I still made tape and passe the PT test, but I knew it wasn’t good reporting to Drill Sergeant School weighing nearly 25 pounds more than the Army wanted, so I started eating better, came in for cardio over an hour before PT formation, and within three months I was down to 185. It takes discipline and focus.
I can see where this might be of benefit, and for better or worse, it might be what’s necessary for today’s enlistees. They’ve grown up addicted to the internet, knowing life through video game controllers, school, and maybe a part-time job, and both diet and exercise are barely thought of for many. Unless they play a sport or are into gym culture, they are likely to be more physically weak than previous generations. I say this based on my own adult children as well as my teenagers. I played plenty of Nintendo, but also got out in the woods quite a bit and was always on the move. The same goes for the ASVAB… how many public schools are more focused on agendas and standardized testing than they are on hiring quality teachers that actually give the kids good instruction? Much like the APFT, you can prepare for a test and do decently on it, but that doesn’t prepare you for the big picture. A kid getting a marginally passing score on the SOL, LEAP, GMAS, or whatever is likely not going to score but so well on the ASVAB. Similarly, a weaker Soldier doing pushups, sit-ups, and running two miles daily may do okay on the APFT but fall out of every 5-mile run and ruck march.
“Army leaders say the courses have been a resounding success”…
*sigh*
Army “leaders” have never, in the present, been able to point at a program that was a failure. But they get all Nostradamus-y several years later.
Isn’t it always a resounding success no matter what the outcome? The problem is that the leadership never admits when it makes a bad decision, they just declare it a success.
I know round is a shape, so she’s in shape.
It just goes chin chin chest belly belly.
My army buddy who served in two wars and retired as E-7 near Ft Jackson said the troops he saw around there were disgusting- fat, sloppy, pregnant females who had kids, no husband, unable to deploy. He said they were basically welfare cases with a bad attitude and no discipline. Sure sounds like the bottom of the barrel (and I realize Jackson is not Benning or Bragg- hopefully the combat arms are not like this).
They could cut this back some by declaring unmarried females getting knocked up were guilty of a self inflicted wound to avoid duty, and writing them up for it.
That creature in the top photo is an officer? Wow, if she was told to haul ass, it would take two dump trucks and a skip loader.
Back in the Bronze Age when I was in, we called it “fat boy camp.”
I think it was only 6 weeks, then you got the boot if you didn’t make it.
McNamara’s Morons return. I’ve said it here before – third-world population, third-world country, third-world military. All these machinations from the military are just early attempts to deal with that fact. You can’t really blame them, they have to play the cards they’ve been dealt. But 20 years from now when President AOC and Secretary of Defense Stacey Abrams run the show there will be no spinning it, no patch work that can hide reality. The Chinese would be fools to try and take Taiwan, they only have to wait a few decades until America slides into the third-world and it will fall into their hands like a ripe plum. They are a patient people.