Scandal in RASP class 5-12?
The Discovery Channel has been doing a series of shows covering the entry level screening and training courses for the American military’s elite units for some time. They’ve already covered BUD/S, SFAS, Marine Corps Scout/Sniper School and the Air Force’s PJ and CC selection courses, among others. Inevitably they’d get around to the newly revamped Ranger Assessment and Selection Program, known as RASP. RASP is the initial entry and training course for the 75th Ranger Regiment. The 75th’s three line and one support battalions are the pinnacle light infantry formation in the Army, almost exclusively tasked by, although not part of, the Joint Special Operations Command. You may know a few contributors here who were once part of the 75th.
The show has been pulled from YouTube and the 75th Facebook page. I haven’t yet seen it but my understanding is that follows the same formula as the other segments still available on Youtube, albeit with one difference: The class followed by the Discovery Channel, 5-12, reached a graduation rate of approximately 80%. Once this uncomfortable reality set in some in the Ranger community were outraged. Traditional graduation rates in RASP hovered between 20-30%. “Jack Murphy” over at SOFRep had an absolute conniption fit at this revelation. According to him this signifies a “plummeting” set of standards in the Regiment:
With the Army issuing a press release to announce a new Discovery Channel Special called Hell and Back, Special Ops Ranger, there was one curious factoid published with it that left many of us in the Ranger community taken aback. The documentary follows a class of prospective Rangers through RASP, the Ranger Assessment and Selection Program which is a pre-requisite for serving in the 75th Ranger Regiment.
The Ranger Regiment is known to maintain tough standards in regards to everything from physical appearance, to maintenance of equipment, and most importantly, performance in combat and job competency. These standards are enforced, violators are shown the door and Released For Standards but more critical than that, these non-performers are usually never allowed through the door to begin with, they are weeded out during the selection process which historically only has a 30% graduation rate.
This is why we were shocked when the Army press released stated, “114 Soldiers started Class 5-12; 91 Rangers graduated.” This is a shockingly high graduation rate of about 80% as opposed to the historical 30% that pass RASP and before that RIP. These graduation rates signify is massive drop in the physical and/or academic standards that RASP students are being held too in order to move on to a Ranger Battalion.…
Something changed with RASP class 5-12. In the class that the Discovery Channel filmed, 20 RASP students failed Land Nav and still graduated. 7 students were caught drinking and still graduated. A student received 90% negative peer reviews and still graduated. Since class 5-12, graduation rates have continued to be abnormally high with upwards to 130 students graduating per class.
After being held accountable to standards and enforcing them as well, these numbers leave many current and former Rangers embarrassed, disgusted, and ashamed.
I can’t vouch for Mr Murphy’s credentials nor the truth of insider assertions. From the perspective of a Pouge Marine I’d say it’s all pretty out of my lane. I also view his negative view of the Army’s 18-Xray program as unusual. His assertion is that the program was “a failure” while everything I’ve heard has said the opposite. Then again, it’s always hard to decipher what really going on in the Special Forces community. They take the entirety of their “Quiet Professionals” manta pretty damn seriously.
Nonetheless, it will be interesting to see what the Ranger community at large has to say as this unfolds, membership here included.
Category: Who knows
RLTW? Used to be in divorces… now gradation rate?
As for the 18Xs… before there was ever an 18X program… we called them the “Untainted”! Today they are called “Special Forces babies”. I know there is a posthumous MOH earner (Afghanistan) who was a “baby.” Another I know “untainted” (before 18X) received the SS in Mogadishu.
For some god forsaken reason… there is always a class, somewhere in time, that gets a pass. And if you went through the “last hard class” like we ALL did, it drives you nuts! many many years ago…I heard (later CONFIRMED) a 20th Special Forces Group (National Guard-Alabama) had a 100% graduation rate from its Jumpmaster course. My Jumpmaster class (10th Group-Devens-the last hard one ever!)… we started with 55 and graduated 11. Those numbers (20th vs. 10th) drove (and still does) me nuts!
Don’t get me started on the SF swim test…
Looks like the days of “Look to your left, look to your right, they will not be standing there when you graduate” are long gone?
re #1
Right, I and everyone prior are “Old Corps”.
Can’t say much on how the regiment now handles what we used to call ‘pre-ranger’. In 78′ there weren’t that many slots for 1st and 2nd Bat. I know things have changed though. Heck each year back then you would have the battalion or a least a company going to 29 Palms, Panama or Camp Riply for training. And of course Ranger School has changed so many times, phases have been added and dropped. Actually I think RIP was harder than Pre-Ranger, maybe it was the shock factor it had on some yet to get to Battalion. Running around Sabre Hall in a holding pattern with a wood pallet on your back and being denied request to land and the wind sprints out on the tarmac…..heck I would rather patrol than that any day. Of course 1st Bat was still at Stewart then and Rip was at HAAF. There again Rip had been established for awhile and Pre-Ranger in earnest didn’t start till after the Battalion moved to Hunter.
Hope they did not change the ole saying from Lights, Camera, Action! To Lights, Camera, Pass!
RLTW
Regardless, I am more than certain once they get to Battalion, the weeding process will ensure that only the best of the best will stay in Regiment.
As someone with public relations experience this is troubling.
We need to tell the story warts and all, without making up a favorable one.
If, and I say IF they compromised standards to play to the potential audience watching Discovery Channel, then they blew it.
[…] Strange goings on in the Ranger Assessment and Screening Program. […]
Kinda-sorta related in that in my field, one of the biggest complaints from old-timers is the bitch that the nuke pipeline has gone from being a filter to being a pump to get as many bodies to the fleet as possible.
I remember hearing/seeing Nuclear Power School classes with attrition in the 50 percent range being the norm (we were lucky and only lost about 35 percent.) That’s just one of the three schools we went to–it wasn’t at all unusual to have maybe 15-20 nuke wannabees in boot camp drop to 5-6 nukes actually hitting the fleet, and not all of those would qualify or would get de-nuked for integrity or other issues.
Now I hear horror stories about how kids who should never be anywhere near a plant getting passed at academic boards, etc, but the instructors can’t get rid of them even though they know there’s going to be issues when that kid hits the fleet.
While nukes are a serious business, I don’t recall seeing a fuckup getting anyone killed lately–a very distinct possibility in the Ranger Battalions.
Damn NHSparky beat me to the filter to pump comment. Thats what I get for spending the day in the crawlspace of my neighbors house hooking up a furnace( not to mention the cobwebs up my nose
Jack is a solid guy. He went on to be an 11B and is a friend. H’s good people.
So you can join the Rangers directly out of recruit training? To get into Recon or Force Recon you had to have successfully completed Infantry Training School and be at least a Lance Corporal (E-3) which means, at a minimum, you have one year in the fleet.
yes the regiment wants “untainted meat” those who come from the big army, are not wanted once they reach battalion level. maybe that doesnt sound right but thats how it is.
Maybe they’re just getting prepped for when Odeniero starts sending women through.
I’ll skip my resume but add that my youngest son is a medic who graduated RASP in early Feb 2011 (I don’t know the class number, can someone help me out on that one?). They started with 98 in Pre-RASP (yes, small class, but it happens), then 89 when it started, & graduated 19. The standards held pretty well then, which must have been not too long before the camera crews showed up.
My son told me that some LtCol showed up to give one of the “I’m proud of you/carry on” talks. He was shocked at how small the class was, even considering its size to start with. I don’t know if this has any bearing, but it shows that the change was pretty dramatic, not a slide over time.
Not sure wtf happened in this one. It seems as though the public relations people wanted to ensure that the Army was being shown as fair and forgiving. There are the “solid standards” in every course. You have to perform a specific task in a specific time to a specified Standard ( Pass a written or hands on eval, run or hump so many miles in under a certain time, etc,,). Then you have the intangibles, leadership, integrity, mental toughness and judgement. These may change a bit but when there is no apparent shift other than a camera crew showing up, its bullshit.
@7 and 8- The adjustment the navy made for LOK (2.8 to 2.5 or something; before my time, anyway) was indeed to allow for more wrench turners in the fleet. It takes a ton of people to staff an A4W, because the navy doesn’t trust conventionals with much of anything in the machinery rooms (even though the only difference between the JFK and the Nimitz was how the steam was being made on the other side of the bulkhead). More Nimitz class ships in the fleet means more nukes needed. Reactor department on a Nimitz is about 400 nukes. We probably had as many ELTs as an attack boat has MMs overall.
Despite the drop in standards (whenever they occurred) my class, 9706, still had a decent failure rate. Don’t know the overall score, but I was the only one out of 10 or so in my bootcamp division to make it through, and only one of those was a medical drop. None in my sister division made it.
Also, there’s always a healthy contingent of booksmart dumbasses in the fleet- those who aced power school but squeaked by prototype- that need to be buffered by people who have their heads out of their asses. I know that on the ‘Dub, our RT division and our div office weren’t big enough to fit all of the people who were “promoted” to book duty because they couldn’t switch a lineup or perform maintenance without fucking something up. To the man (and one woman) they held above a 3.4 in power school. The drop in standards probably helped a ton with that.
The stakes are considerably higher for lowering the standards in ranger school, though. Not knowing the prompt jump equation as an electrician or mechanic, when you will never have to shim rods anyway, has significantly less impact on warfighting capability and surviuval rates than a ranger who can’t navigate without a GPS.
Also, I’m getting impatient waiting for DeWald to come up with something that he thinks is witty to tie Jonn into lowered ranger standards.
“Maybe they’re just getting prepped for when Odeniero starts sending women through.”
That’s the first thing I thought too, Stacy. When they start letting women in, nobody will be able to say the standards have been lowered to allow women a chance to succeed because the standards will already have been lowered far enough in advance to deny the connection.
@15 and when “that” happens, no more white thread on the tabs, everybody will sew on tabs with pink thread. AND then previous classes can talk about the “last hard class”!
Ranger Class 7-11 here, I can’t really talk about the old days of RIP, but I can at least give some perspective on current classes. I know my class was told that RASP was still a developing program when I went through, and the guys I talked to from 5-12 were told the same thing. It showed too, the class before us lost 30 guys to the review board going into phase II while we only lost a handful. The class after us lost about 40 guys on the 12 mile ruck were as we lost 4. Really things seemed to vary a lot from class to class. So I wouldn’t say that class 5-12 is so much the rule as it is an exception. My class didn’t have their 80% pass rate, it was about 50%.
I know that’s still going to seem high to some of the older Rangers, but one of the other changes that came with RASP was Pre-RASP which helps to weed out a lot of the guys who would quit in the first few days anyway. A lot of those with weak hearts don’t even make it to RASP and won’t show up in the attrition rates.
Also one other thing with class 5-12 that I think made a crucial difference was that they were being filmed. It may not apply to everybody, but I know if I was being filmed and put on national television I’d be a lot less likely to quit. And I think all Rangers can agree never quitting is probably one of if not the most crucial part of making it through RASP and RIP for that matter.
I recycled Florida years past.
The stats are off.
This whole thing smells of BS. It kills me to pass on to my “BUDDY” who graduated from the ..1 st. Officer Ranger class.
Ranger School sucked ass. Fat, nasty ass no less.
But to command you need to check the block.
Never forget why the sky is blue.
Roger that.
Out.
Too many beers.
Sometimes, you just have “One of those cycles.” When I was on the trail back in the 90’s, every now and then you’d get a good, teachable group and everything after red phase ran smoothly.
Then there’s the other kind of “One of those cycles.” I had a cycle where I started out with 58 and graduated 35. All sorts of red flags went up. Fortunately, my partner and I saw what was happening early on and kept copies of all the ELS packets so when the inevitable “Inquiry” started about our attrition rate we were prepared to defend our actions.
@20. Yes, I agree, Ranger School sucked.
When I went through Sand Hill and Airborne school in the 1990s, many of my peers were on their way to RIP. Later on I saw most of them at Campbell or in Alaska. Only one guy I know went on to Bat and stayed in Bat as a tabbed Ranger, the other guy got kicked out of 1st Bat before going to Ranger School.
My experience with RIP/RASP is largely anecdotal, and seldom do the tab-less batboys ever admit to how/why/when they got kicked out. It’s a shame, too, because I know it significantly impacts their sense of self-worth as soldiers for a while. I was in LRSD with a tabless batboy for a while who told us and himself fictions about his battalion exploits, and it was unnecessary, because he was a solid performer without that.
As an instructor in the early 00s:
“The Soldier took and failed Version A. He was retrained, retested and failed Version B.”
“Is there a Version C?”
It depends on the chain of command and what pressure is being hoisted on them at the time, unfortunately. Although in this case, I don’t grasp why they’d pass with a higher percentage for the cameras, it goes against why there are cameras there to do a show.
@21: One time I had a cycle that the commander was ready to do a 100% recycle on because they were the worst bunch of individuals ever. No teamwork whatsoever. They were warned when they threw the final straw on the commander, went home on Christmas Exodus and it was as if they had a conference call as a class to come together to graduate. They came back and for the last three weeks of their cycle, they pulled together, did their job and showed they could function as a team as if they were all invaded by body snatchers. Strange the things you see as Cadre.
I served with the NCOIC (Martinez) of that RASP class at 1/75. When I asked him these same questions, here’s what he said in response to the article written by Murphy on SOFRep. “That article really pissed me off. Everyone wants to see 200 start and 20 finish because that makes them feel “Special”. Well being a good Ranger is what made me “Special”. Having good leaders is what makes us “Special”. I am curious to know when the writer graduated rip. Here is the part that the writer failed to mention. First, so called PFC A graduated from RIP meaning that RIP was not in any way developing great Rangers. Second, the RFS numbers speak for themselves. A high percentage of all RIP graduates were RFS’ed within two years for one reason or the other. There has only been a handful of RFS’s that RASP has produced. By the way RASP has been around for nearly two years now. Thirdly, this whole article wreaks of, “I was in the last hard RIP class”. The writer does not understand the big picture. The big picture is not about numbers. It is about having the right person in the right spot. Pre-RASP is an awesome program and it does a lot more than raise the graduating rate by 10% (on the high end). Here is another part that the writer failed to include, how many people quit Pre-RASP on a daily basis. I can even count how many times I will call Pre-RASP and ask them about how many guys is RASP picking up for the next class and they would say, “X number just quit today and 17 out the 40 airborne students we picked up today quit”. Martinez also went on to say that they have cadre plugged in at key areas of the initial training of a soldier coming in on RASP contracts, which really helps out the process. Although I’m not sure on the exact details of how this works. Now, Martinez I do trust and value his opinion. But my personal opinion is that the documentary… Read more »
“The Soldier took and failed Version A. He was retrained, retested and failed Version B.”
“Is there a Version C?”
@23. Sounds like an NCOES Course.
As far as outside pressure from higher goes, An old friend from Bragg was my son’s Brigade commander at Benning during his OSUT. While his company was doing ARM, the Brigade Commander was out checking training and asked for PV2 Lebben the Younger. My son double times up and he and the Brigade Commander have a quick chat and he gives my son a pat on the back and a Brigade Coin. The Brigade Commander departs the area. His DS’ pounce on my son. “How long have you known the Brigade Commander?” They asked. “Since I was in grade school. Our families would have picnics out by McKellar’s Lodge and do some shooting and grilling. He’s a really funny guy.”
“Why didn’t you tell us you knew the Brigade Commander?”
“I really didn’t think it was that important.”
“Do push ups, dumbass.”
I think the move to rasp from rip was for the most part a good one, but that being said having people fail land nav or have honors violations and pass still is unacceptable. What that is telling the new rangers is that standards are their as guidelines not the rule. Also with rasp one thing I do not like that they started in the late days of rip was when someone recycled they got injected into that week of training again with the next class. Back in 2006 and before it was you could recycle but you had to start back day one which meant that they had to be serious. For those with honor violations or failed standards you could choose to quit and never be allowed back or keep with it and finish that course with a fail and go back for seconds with the next, hopefully you made it by learning from your mistakes.
This whole 80% pass though is just too fishy I could understand a 40-50% that is a realistic increase from the norm but 80% sounds like higher levels in the army said make it look good.
In the Aviation field we started wondering what was happening. We got new soldiers that wondered where they could hook their safety harness up when they climbed up on top the Chinook…
And then I went to BNCOC… And I saw what had happened. They had placed foam over the VHP top and bottom. I read the safety board. Evidentally in one quarter seven students hit their damn heads climbing up onto the aft work platform. SEVEN people who probably learned that you LOOK UPWARDS WHEN CLIMBING UPWARDS UNDER BLADES.
Instead they put foam on them, and from then on had TO BRIEF THE DAMN STUDENTS WHERE THE VHP WHERE ANYTIME THEY DID AFT PLATFORM WORK…
And when we talked to the “Best” student in the class we got dragged away and yelled at for hours. They did not want actual trained CH47 people talking at all with new students.
I started getting scared then.
I went through 5 RIP classes and was dropped from each one. i refused to give up, but i knew i would eventually be a Ranger. i gained my tab a few years later, but never made it into bat. I went through RIP back in fall of 02, and knew how few people i started with would graduate. i wasnt deterred by being one that was dropped, because damn near every one else was too. im not sure if its the cameras, or politics that is making RIP soft now, but i have a feeling, with the announcement that the standards need to be “reevaluated”, this is just a warm up to dropping the standards. our fearless leader keeps telling us we need a more spec ops style force and smaller total force numbers, i guess we are just stream lining everyone into the Rangers.
“cameras, or politics” – It’s both.
The glare of publicity and the expense of inadequate training for people because of budget cuts make for lower standards, period.