Arrrrrrmy Training, SIR!
I’m sure you’ve all read that the Army, for some stupid reason, is changing basic training. Their reasons are specious and indicative of why Army training was changed thirty years ago. No one illustratates how misunderstood BASIC COMBAT has become more than pseudo-warfighting-expert, dicksmith of VetsVoice. Of course, as is often the case at VetsVoice, the story is all about how smart he is;
When I went through Basic Training in the early part of the decade, even then it was obvious that what we were being taught was outdated.
I’m pretty sure there are days that you, as a college student, you think you know more about a subject than your professor. That’s the arrogance of youth.
We were still digging fox holes in the middle of the woods, and I’ve never heard of anyone digging a fox hole in post-9/11 operations.
But, it’s still something everyone should know, isn’t it? It might not relate to the current battlefield, but as Haiti has demonstrated, the job changes in an instance and too often involves sending inexperienced troops into a fluid situation. Read about Task Force Smith someday.
We, however, were not learning how to enter and clear buildings or how to lay out guard posts or sectors of fire in a safe house. In retrospect, the latter seems far more applicable in today’s combat environment than anything I was taught in boot camp.
No, but you learned all of that when you got to your unit, didn’t you? Do you think college is going to prepare you for everything you’ll ever encounter in your chosen field? No, colleges can only bring you up to speed with your peers and establish a base line of knowledge from which you can launch your career. Just like Basic training.
But of course who was going to teach us what was relevant to combat? There were only two drill sergeants out of 16 in my company with any combat experience.
Yeah, that’s just ignorant – I’d expect better from someone who spent a year in the Army as a sergeant. Drill Sergeants are restricted to training TRADOC (Training and Doctrine Command) policy – they don’t write the training schedule. Whether they’ve been to combat or not is irrelevant as far as basic trainees are concerned. Dicksmith’s problem is that he’s looking back on his training in the context of the remainder of his career.
I think that’s the Army’s problem, too. The Army wants to do away with the endurance running and focus on some sort of short distance sprints and zig-zagging. Dicksmith seems pleased about. I’d remind the Army and dicksmith that endurance running builds soldiers’ immune systems and their aerobic capacity – improving their overall internal health. Do away with distance running and you’re going to make the force less effective.
But what would you expect from the heavy drop wide bodies at TRADOC.
Basic training provides a baseline of skills that every soldier needs to know on the first day he arrives at his unit, and a minimum level of fitness. TRADOC and dicksmith would prefer that soldiers be trained to a narrow set of skills that should be taught at the unit – after all, not all graduates are going to be sent straight to Marjah the day after graduation. Nor will the current style of warfighting be the norm for all of eternity.
This is what dicksmith wants to teach in basic training;
Having troops respond to vehicle roll-overs, react to an ambush while mounted and enter and clear rooms are things that can be taught.
Sounds like specialized training that should be taught at the unit rather than something embedded in initial entry training doctrine.
Category: Military issues
Jonn, not even at their units. I’d assume all that will be taught at AIT to the troops that need more of that sort of thing. I mean, I don’t know, I think soldiers need to learn to be soldiers before cooks need to learn how to be combat infantrymen…
For what it’s worth, my company (A.CO 3/325 AIR, 82nd) dug-in and built foxholes in As Samawah Iraq, 2003. We built hasty fighting positions and continued to fortify as we planned an attack. Use my e-tool and all.
You know, as a tanker I always thought I was lacking in training on how to clear a room….of course, we just did it with 120mm of room clearing shitstorm….seemed to work pretty well too….
Basic is exactly like college.
I went to college to learn how to think like an accountant. You know speak the language so to speak.
My employer had little to no expectation of my ability to perform the specific tasks for my job, only that I had the baseline knowledge needed to understand the detailed training.
In basic I learned what it took to be a soldier; how to eat, breath, think, and move like a soldier. When I got to my unit I learned the units SOP for clearing a mined wire obsticle.
If a unit uses hmmwv’s a lot then they need to train on IED induced vehicle rollovers.
My unit used Brad’s, I rode in an LMTV more than I rode in a hmmwv.
I too think that cutting distance running is a mistake.
running a couple of miles teaches recruits to drive the F-on.
If I am doing crunches and hit muscle failure halfway through the set, I have no consiquence. If I an half way through a 5 or 8 miler and I start calling dinosours, I got a long way to walk. There is no way to cheat a long run.
Also, Running helps prepare troops for road marching. An invaluable skill for any war fighter.
In Iraq when we patrolled whe did at least three hours of patrols three times a day, for a week. We were not at EIB standard for speed, but we probobly covered 8-10 miles; depending on what we were doing, a patrol.
Above is what the world looks like without spell check.
Sorry.
My unit still does hip pocket training on foxholes and hasty fighting positions, although the environmental weenies on camp Ripley say you can’t actually dig dirt without a special permit.
Unfortunately, dick’s problem is shared by some at higher in the Army. They are focusing everything-training, equipment, and tactics-to the current wars and nothing else. At some point, the US will find itself in a large scale set piece battle, weighed down by vehicles with thousands of pounds of armor, soldiers with hundreds of pounds of armor, and leaders with years of a COIN only mindset.
Don’t guess dicksmith has ever been to NTC in Ft Irwin. Dug, at least tried to dig, many a foxhole in that desert. Scraped out what we could.
MOUT, urban fighting is something best taught at your advanced school, since there ain’t a whole of call for linguists who can clear a house but it is a critical skill for an Infantryman.
Basic training is just what the name implies. A chance to level set the force and give them all a common set of skills, which they may never use again, but more importantly a chance to mold a civilian into a soldier imbued with a sense of purpose and an appreciation for Army culture and not designed to make anybody an expert in anything.
I am sure all those admin folks appreciate the one and only time they might ever get to fire a machine gun or throw a grenade. Maybe we should time to train folks on to apply First Aid for paper cuts.
Dave Thul,
Camp Ripley? Do I know you perhaps? I used to teach at the RTSM from 90-97.
There is always a basic set of skills that every soldier must have. The house to house training, etc. is “advanced training”, thus that little acronym AIT. Bayonet training is part of that basic skill set. That the upper echelon, along with dickhead…I mean dicksmith think that it’s ok to go away from the basics in order to focus on the reading of miranda rights and sharing feelings on the battlefield will get soldiers killed. The lack of thought by dicksmith about the use of bayonets is bullshit. A young fire breathing British LT has proven that point moot, since he was just decorated for………..wait for it……killing an enemy machine gunner with a bayonet! (story at B5). The Marine Corps thinks that bayonet training is essential and has a really good bayonet that they developed for use in these crazy times. I happen to agree with the Marines (did I just say that?).
You could wrap up what dickhead knows about the combat needs of our troops into the bottom of a thimble.
As for foxholes, there dickhead; what do you think some of our troops were digging during the invasion of Iraq, while they were in a static position waiting for their ops? Yeah, defensive positions using what?…….yep, foxholes, or shallow fighting positions. Fucking amazing using those basic skills like that!!!!!!!
I went through Basic at the beginning of the last decade as well. Fighting positions vary by terrain, and if you actually paid attention in Basic, you learned that what they were teaching you was fundamentals that could be applied to any fighting position, digging in the dirt, securing a house and setting up urban fighting positions…it doesn’t matter, you don’t always get to pick your terrain.
Several of the gentlemen in Smokey Bear hats who knocked some sense into my head had combat experience, whether it dated back to Panama, Mogadishu, or the Meals on Wheels programs of the later 90’s. Maybe it’s because I was in Infantry Basic/OSUT, but maybe that’s where they stuck those guys because we literally could get to our units and be on the way to foreign lands in a matter of weeks or days after getting there.
Obviously, once we progressed into AIT we got more specialized training and furthered that when we got to our units and even more as we prepared for deployment. Basic is what it says on the level-BASIC training. Specialized training is mission dictated. If we’re noticing non-combat units need more applicable combat training, their units need to be addressing that. There’s only so much you can cram into 9 weeks and still retain it. You’re laying building blocks, not finishing the house.
That said, recognizing that GFT could be updated with fighting techniques that are more current, or adjusting physical training to move away from longer runs and move more towards burst conditioning, core strength and flexibility better suits a body to resist injury and fight the way we fight now. These aren’t bad things per se.
DOn’t make the training weaker-but don’t knock change just because it’s change.
Vehicle rollovers, react to ambush (is that react to contact?) and enter and clear a building, usually known as battledrill 6, are taught and trained at the unit before going over. For reserve and national guard units, these are taught by active duty combat veterans at their mobilization sites again.
I spent a year training non-combat arms units at Atterbury once I returned from Iraq. Our motto: It’s not a good day until we make then cry.
If bayonet training is outdated, then why did the Scotts lead a bayonet charge on May 16th 2009 in Southern Iraq? This is the link to the site i found the story on, for those that don’t believe it happened http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1138046/posts
Didn’t get any fighting with an e-tool training in 1968…but learned it real quick in 1969….LZ CAROLYN. The Scots charge was in 2004 and shows in war there are no certainties. Improv is the name of the game. Basic is just that…basic combat skills. I think to get rid of bayonette training altogether is ridiculous. I saw it used in Vietnam.
Honor and Courage
Odd, that is the sort of thing that the Marine Corps teaches in INFANTRY TRAINING SCHOOL/INFANTRY TRAINING REGIMENT.
Is this guy an idiot or something?
Yes. this guy is an idiot, and it is the sort of stuff that is taught in Infantry Basic and AIT. Not so much in Truck Driver or Communication Specialist AIT.
Oh come on guys.
You have all seen the recruiting posters, watched the commercials, and watched the news right?
Any idiot knows that all military people are Infantry…unless they are SEALs or other SF types. That’s why the cooks need to learn how to fight light Steven Segal in Under Siege!
Dickhead (thank you OT) is playing into the sound byte, by-line age style of news where the details and context does not matter.
My unit used advanced hand to hand techniques while deployed to GTMO. Guess what? We didn’t train on those skills until we were prepping for the deployment.
I too have scraped earth at drink-water Lake, and broken a platoons worth of pioneer tools on the bedrock. Not my fault, I swear. Our CO told us that we had to dig until we had fighting positions or we broke all of the tools.
Oh come on guys.
You have all seen the recruiting posters, watched the commercials, and watched the news right?
Any idiot knows that all military people are Infantry…unless they are SEALs or other SF types. That’s why the cooks need to learn how to fight light Steven Segal in Under Siege!
Dickhead (thank you OT) is playing into the sound byte, by-line age style of news where the details and context does not matter.
My unit used advanced hand to hand techniques while deployed to GTMO. Guess what? We didn’t train on those skills until we were prepping for the deployment.
I too have scraped earth at drink-water Lake, and broken a platoons worth of pioneer tools on the bedrock. Not my fault, I swear. Our CO told us that we had to dig until we had fighting positions or we broke all of the tools.
Ahem, dicksmith, I think the experience of Ranger Godz like Col. Lew Millet trump your 3 months in the motor pool… BTW, I saw plenty of fighting positions & bunkers in Ghanny-land.
Not a Ranger, but I heard when Lew Millet was at Ranger Dept. back in the day, there were 3 MOH RIs including himself!
You guys are on a tear, to expand would be redundant. Jonn some other thoughts…
1)What mos did Smith have again? I know he was in the 82nd but anyone know what unit? He speaks like a true goddamn remf to me.
2) The bayonet again? The army did this at least once before that I know of.
a) Wasn’t that the lesson of the mythical private lump-lump? Goes to basic, writes to mom telling her how barbaric and immoral that they have to train with bayonets. Mother writes to congressman, who complains to the army, that then does away with the training. Kid goes to Korea(or Vietnam) is killed by an enemy bayonet. Mother writes to congressman complaining how immoral it is that american soldiers don’t have bayonet training like they’re enemies! I think that was a Hackworthism.
b) My father who had been commissioned an infantry officer in the late 70s, had a similiar experience. Either when he had a basic training company in the regular army or after joining the national guard, there was a unit he was in right when the army decided to bring back bayonet training. He was one of the few in the unit who had been taught.
3) “But we’re all infantry now.” Bullshit! Just becomes your in the army does not make you infantry! Having basic skills does not make you infantry! Remember the Combat Action Badge? Skys the limit, Chief could have picked anything. Branch specific(ex armor badge)ANYTHING! What do they do? Steal the CIB! The cab even has the blue of the infantry!
Can’t say I’m supried though, I’ve heard that very few people wash out of basic anymore. Wood and Jackson(remember relax’in Jackson) have been notorious for at least a decade. Maybe there is hope at benning its not the OSUT side.