Army to gut combatives training
Greg sends us a link to The Army Times which reports that, in an effort to save money at the expense of lives in combat, The Army is planning on gutting combatives training – hand-to-gland combat;
The Modern Army Combatives Program, headquartered at Fort Benning, Ga., consists of four skill-level courses — a weeklong basic course, a two-week tactical course, and a basic combatives instructor course and a tactical combatives instructor course, each of which is four weeks long.
Proposals from Training and Doctrine Command call for eliminating all four levels of training and creating a master combatives trainer course that would be no more than two weeks long.
In an email obtained by Army Times, officials from TRADOC call for “implementation of the new program as quickly as possible.”
We’ve read countless stories about modern soldiers who had to resort to combat by other means when their weapons jammed or they ran out of ammunition. TRADOC, the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command hasn’t responded to The Army Times inquiries to this change in training, and I don’t blame them.
You can talk about reducing pay raises, jacking up healthcare costs and such, but when Big Army decides to reduce essential training opportunities, that will cost lives. A few years ago, Big Army decided to cut back on bayonet training and now hand-to-hand training? Do they think the troops live in a perfect Hollywood world in which they never run out of ammo and their weapons always function?
It’s too bad the troops don’t have a Sergeant Major of the Army worth a shit to stop this loss of a valuable skill. The one they have now is more worried about neck tattoos and cultural sensitivity, though, to be bothered with having a lethal fighting force.
Category: Big Army
No money for combatives training, but “low emissions” vehicles get reserved, up front parking at Building 4. Shows where the Army’s priorities are.
This is the least of our worries. Have you seen what they have done to basic training? The stories I get from my son, who is in basic at Fort Sill, would blow your mind. I expected some changes from when I went through in ’92, but damn!
I remember in 1966 being taught to chant “What it the spirit of the Infantry? The bayonet! What is the spirit of the bayonet? To Kill!” I went through OCS in 1967 and didn’t see the front gate for about 19 of the 23 weeks. My son-in-law went through the 11 week course in 2011 and called me from a mall in Columbus on the first Friday night. WTF?
So is the new curriculum designed to train the trainers and have the new “Masters” go back to their units and try to fit combatives into a training schedule already over-burdened with feel good sensitivity?
Nah this isn’t about saving money this is about making it easier for certain people to make it through training…just saying.
Well, society has been busily sissifying boys for years now with zero tolerance school policies for fighting (whatever the reason), banning dodge ball, forbidding tag (kids push, you know) and such crud. Thus, this doesn’t surprise me at all. It’s another step in neutering our men.
Yea that’s nice. Well, here is exhibit A to refute that idea. A real BAMF of a Marine. Maybe we don’t get taught this specifically, but we do get taught hand to hand, and certainly about weapons of opportunity on the battle field.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/11/10/marine-valor-award-veteran/1674665/
FTA on :
“In brutal hand-to-hand combat, Wooldridge grabbed the machine gun of an enemy insurgent and beat him to death with it.” If that ain’t straight up BAMF, then I don’t know what could possibly be more. And yes, I did get a chubby reading about it.
@2: Dan, how bad are we talking?
Glow belts. Can’t forget those.
Glow belts are more important, too now – apparently.
@5: Yep. They’re raising our sons to be pussies in schools all over the country. They don’t want boys to be boys, so they label them and drug them so they can control them and get them to be more like girls (just look at the Fraud-in-Chief for a prime example). Naturally, that will affect other things, including our ability to defeat our enemies. They want a kinder, gentler military, where everyone gets to be in the infantry.
When I was a Platoon Sergeant I got asked why I didn’t like doing combatives training. My reply was that if I was using combatives in combat as a Platoon Sergeant I knew of four Squad Leaders that were getting fired.
That being said, I’m not a fan of how we train combatives. We didn’t train with body armor on and how many times are you going to be without body armor. Training in hand to hand combat is neccesary though. I only had to do it once in combat (nothing like the author of House to House), it consisted of me introducing a goat humpers face to my chest plate.
Guys, long time reader, however I typically don’t comment on active duty stuff. This time though, I’ll throw in my 2 cents. As an infantry officer, commander, and 3 time combat vet (1xIraq, 2xAfg) I can honestly say that in a time of shrinking budgets, this is something that can get the axe. Look at it from a numbers perspective: As badass as they are, how many reports of men going hand-to-hand have actually been read? The smallest fraction of a percentage point of our soldiers in combat have had to do that (not talking about subduing prisoners, but actual, no shit run out of ammo/or jam and have to fight for their lives?) As cold as the math may be, it’s not something that we need to focus on. Basic training is place for combatives, especially for those young kids who’ve never been in a fight in their lives, and at the unit level, where you have weekly combatives sessions as part of the PT schedule. However an entire Army school and all the requisite support is not justified right now. Shooting, combat fitness, and basic medical training are the priorities. As bad as it sounds to read, this was nothing less than a cost benefit analysis. I agree with the misplacement of our priorities in regards to sexual harassment and sensitivity nonsense, but that doesn’t mean cutting this course was a bad idea. Everyone was up in arms when we dropped bayonet training (I had to do it too back in 2002), but I’ve used my bayonet 1 time in over 10 years in uniform, and it was a threat, rather than any real attempt to stab someone. To summarize, the article does a good job highlighting the misplaced focus of our military (see Gen. Odierno saying sexual assault is the greatest threat to our Armed Forces) but that doesn’t mean scratching this course, which in the end offers very little to the warfighter, wasn’t the right call. Now if we can just drop the F-35 program we can pay for the rest of the military for the… Read more »
we train for the war we fight tomorrow. Army combatives teaches you how to subdue a person of interest as well as close the distance and defeat an enemy. What possible costs are there to most combatives schools? the initial equipment and that’s about it. Most are held in established gyms and taught by soldiers who get paid either way. Other than initial costs and replacement for used equipment years later, these schools don’t cost anything and provide valuable skills and confidence to our fighting forces. We are not a company or business. We aren’t office workers. We are here to fight wars. All the way down to the paper pushers.
@11: Thanks for the insight.
I like the comment about the F-35 🙂
“I don’t know but I’ve been told, Eskimo–SERGEANT!”
“Yes sir?”
“Don’t you dare say that!”
“Pies. P=I-E-S. I was going to say pies, sir.”
“Oh. Carry on.”
@10, “We didn’t train with body armor on and how many times are you going to be without body armor.” We certainly trained combatives in full battle rattle – not when you’re just learning how to shrimp, but as we went along we layered it in…train as you fight!
@11 – the number of hand-to-hand encounters may be low, but aggression can’t be trained by ruck marches. The only thing that trains aggression is closing with an adversary and finishing the fight.
And honestly, how expensive is this school? We aren’t talking about a big capital investment, we aren’t talking about maintaining equipment. This school must cost less to maintain than your average basic training company! I’m sure there’s areas where savings can be leveraged, but gutting this training seems utterly foolish.
@7, pretty bad (Dan’s in the cubicle next to mine, lol). I’ll let him know to answer you, though…I don’t want to steal his thunder.
Yeppers, its the 90’s all over again. Cutting combat, cutting troops, cutting Veterans bennies, but using the military just as much. Hope all the younguns who voted for Obama are taking note. Now you know why all us older military and dependents are staunch conservatives.
#2 I imagine my son’s JROTC instructor might be harder than today’s basic training. He was after all my husband’s senior drill sergeant in AIT(13F) at Fort Sill in 1992. 🙂
Well…between claims of “more sleep in the field than in the rear”, requests for mix cd’s to play in the bay, cell phone use ALL day on Sunday and requests for softer toilet paper!
Get this shit. Son’s sends his mother a letter asking for softer toilet paper. I’m like WTF! I tell her “Don’t send that shit, they will never let him keep it”. She sends it anyway. Guess what, they let him keep it.
He also claimed that less than half of his class actually qualified with their weapons. He told us that the DS’s stated “we are tired of being out here”, meaning at the range. So they just checked everyone off.
No money to train soldiers how to survive combat. But plenty of money to spend on social experiments that allows everyone to be Infantry so they feel good about themselves.
@11: Also; if we don’t “train the trainer”; how is combatives going to be taught in basic training or in your unit PT? There has to be some guidance and standardized training inorder for it to be effective.
I mean; do we start training “kill them with kindness”? Do we make them sit through a powerpoint session on it?
@18: OK. That is bad. Ugh.
So, they’re going to send them through WAVES basic training from 1967?
It was put out by our Garrison CSM that Combatives as any kind of match or contest is banned by the SMA because the representatives of the Army level combatives matches tend to not represent the actual Army with their full-sleeve tattoos and overly aggressive demeanor. I kid you not. Three years left to retirement. Three. Long. Years.
@11…yes the platoon and company level is where most of the combatives training should take place but what about the trainer’s training? That is what the combatives levels are for. They are train the trainer schools. Army doctrine mandates formal combatives training but that doesn’t mean sending everyone through all 4 levels. It just means that everyone needs training with it and weekly platoon combatives PT is just fine. They’re valuable schools. I went through the first three and learned a lot. If you have untrained trainers teaching combatives, the risk of injury is more likely
what comes to mind… I went through what was rumored to be the last of the old Vietnam BCT in ’77, my wife the first of the ‘new coe-ed’ training. She never even saw a M2, never threw a grenade, never fired an M60, and didn’t even know what a LAW was when looking at one! Extend that by over 35 years…..Second random thought…. green bunker fuel at several times the cost of petroleum based, green jet fuel at several times the cost of JP-whatever they use now… how much are we spending on ‘green’ alternatives instead of things like training or ammunition? Just asking…
My apologies to you Navy folks if ‘bunker fuel’ or ‘bunker oil’ are incorrect terms – I was Army. My only alternative was to say “ship oil” and I knew some Zorro the Gay Blade fan would stuff that in my ear….
@24…that’s funny because it describes perfectly almost everyone that worked at the fight house in 2007 when I went through level 3. They were some bad ass mean mother…you get the idea. I loved that course although going in May/July wasn’t the best idea because it was on Ft. Benning and the building had no a/c. I lost about 20 lbs in 4 weeks
The Combatives Tournament in Vicenza was cancelled this year, but the boxing tournament was allowed to continue.
I went into Basic Training with a Black Belt in Aikido. I made the mistake of actually raising my hand when the D.S. asked if any of us knew Martial Arts. Mind you, this D.S. was a recent grad of the Ft. Jackson D.S. school. He called me up first to “demonstrate” a move… I ended up getting smoked for “not performing the attack correctly” that would have let the D.S. block it and get me into a lock. He ended up on the ground in a wrist lock.
I went through Combatives in BCT and it was a joke in 2000. They taught how to get someone into a perfect chock with the BDU jacket, how to get out of that perfect choke, and how to generally get your ass kicked if you are fighting anyone who knows anything about fighting.
When I got to my National Guard battalion, we went through level 2 training and it was the same thing. Most of the new recruits weren’t able to fight their way out of a paper bag (and they were Infantry). In head-to-head, I was able to take each one down with moves I was taught as a white belt (as in first-level, since all Aikido belts are white until you earn black).
If Big Army is cutting it back even further, then I have to ask WTF, over? I bet they aren’t even going to suggest that all soldiers find a good martial art to get into (at least unless they are high speed Platoon Sergeants and First Sergeants).
All they are doing is guaranteeing that the Army is second-rate compared to “civilian” defense agencies. I wonder who would have thought that one up?
Sorry, that Anon was me… new computer.
@24…I’m deployed at the moment, there was a SSG in the reserve MP company that RIP’d out from my FOB a couple months ago who is a hand-to-hand combat trainer for his PD in civilian life. He wanted to run an informal Combatives course for any of the 100 or so soldiers who were here at the time who wanted to take advantage of it, but it was nixed at the BN level because Combatives is “too aggressive”. Those exact words. The SSG was good enough to roll with a few of us a few times a week, but it was all off the books and it would’ve been his ass if anyone had gotten hurt.
Another FOB in RC(S) banned squatting and deadlifting at the base gym a few months back. They also banned all weightlifting competitions and any sort of competitive sports (pickup basketball, soccer, etc.)
It might help to solidify the programs usefulness and relevence if they would remove the F’ing Octogon from the school house and stop recruiting dumbass instructors who want to be MMA fighters.
Grew up in 2/75 (where MACP started), Level 4 instructor been doing MACP since it started…Just sayin’
Tough
I went through basic training in 1992 and again in 2007. And I’ve been screaming at the top of my lungs about how bad the training has become since 2007. What Dan’s saying is spot on. I was so stressed, I had a panic attack on my 35th brithday while at reception, my brain just locked up and said “My God, this sucked at 18, how the hell am I going to manage it at 35?”, and you know what? It was so much easier and not just because I was more mentally prepared for it. We were bused everywhere, no marches, no cattle trucks. We were threatened with smokings that never happened, we had published schedules so we knew exactly how much time we had between training events, no random wakeup calls at night, no uniform inspections, no boots to polish, and BRM and PT were jokes. Seriously 2/3rds of the company were “pencil passed” on their weapons qualification, and at least 1/3rd were pencil passed on their PT. Ruck marches? We had people falling out on the 5K ruck around the barracks, this means they fell out and got a ride in the truck the 200 yards to the barracks door, and then got a note from the doctor waiving the rest. This was at Lenoard Wood, so we had to do the live fire sand crawl plus 20K night road march as graduation events. Only half the company did so, and yet the rest of them were there waiting at the bonfire for those of us who had shut up and rucked up. I’m still pissed, to this day, furious about how gutted the training had become. We learned more, I’ll be honest there, they packed more “training” into our days, but they never really trained us to be soliders. As for the combatives being dropped, I called this one when they dropped bayonet training from BCT and I encouraged my soliders to get the combatives training while they could, not because it would turn them into blood drinking hand to hand combat badasses, but because it… Read more »
I went to Navy basic in 1981. Even though we did not carry a weapon, the CC’s were on us like white on rice 24/7 for the first 7 weeks. In 1989 I joined the Army and I noticed a big change in attitude. I only had to go through part of basic and meet the pt standards to get to go to my school. This was a communications school at Ft Sill. Our Company Commander was a female and she limited the amount of push ups at 20. The Drill Sgt got around this rule by giving out 20 four count pushups. In the little bit of basic I went to no one was pencil whipped through on marksmanship or pt. Physically I expected it to be harder. When one Drill Sgt asked if this was harder than the Navy I said no. There was definitely a different mindset than 9 years ago. He agreed. He said it was the feminization of the military. Thats what I think is going on now.
I graduated last October from the Benning school for boys. I got there in the middle of June, and between arriving and departing, I saw a MASSIVE change in the way OSUT was being handled. On our Day Zero, we were picked up from 30th on busses, and driven to our company. From there, we had the standard welcome: Shouts, smoke, blanks fired overhead, around 30 round browns lurking, and several hours of fun in the sun.
Around week 12-13, we saw our sister company’s new cycle come in. They too were bussed there from 30th.
At that point the similarities ended. They were quietly and gently led into there bays, where (as we later found out) they were quietly explained what would be expected of them, the rules for “corrective physical improvement”, and the guidelines (not joking) for swearing.
Yep. Not only were the Drills not allowed to swear, the TRAINEES weren’t either.
As far as rifle qual and combatives, everyone in our company at least passed on the range, except for one who was later recycled. Our combatives instructor, however, refused to teach us after the second session because (again, not making this up) he had wandered into our 4th platoons bay in the middle of the day, and found some of them taking showers. As it turns out, they actually had permission to do so, but none of them thought to tell him at the time. So after removing such offenders from the showers, he had them make the walls sweat for a few hours. Now this alone is just a standard happening, right? They messed up, got punished, everyone moves on, right?
Wrong. This platoon wrote a letter (and the majority of them signed it) to the base JAG, complaining of mistreatment due to some of them having been smoked in towels, which fell off during 8-counts.
I could go on, but I don’t want to make this excessively long. Basically, even Benning is becoming a joke, albeit not as much as other BCT/OSUT locations.
I am a twice deployed combat arms officer.
And am ecstatic that combatives is getting scaled back. I never comment on this page, or most blogs, but just wanted to leave these comments:
Combatives was a bloated, self important program. The number of personnel, and amount of money and time invested was shameful for the poor results we gained.
I totally support tough, realistic, and combat focused training. Combatives was none of those. It could be a good workout sometimes, but the resources to get that workout….just no. Juice wasnt worth the squeeze.
The army needs a simple, stupid, 80% solution hand to hand combat program that is easy to train (so I don’t need four levels of benning trained master ninjas) and easy to remember. You don’t need to pin the other guy, you just have to not die long enough for your section to save you.
I get that there has been a sense that training is softer. That may be true. But combatives was a terrible program that had more to do with being edgecore MMA xtreeeeme than making good soldiers.
@36: David Bellavia’s section didn’t come save him when he was in a hand-to-hand situation, so he had to get real ugly on his enemy. Sometimes it really does come down to that.
It just looks to me like they removed the main objection to women in frontline combat roles, that’s all. Given the cutbacks all over, I can’t see this ending well. Think heads on pikes.
I have mixed emotions on this.
While it is definitely an asset and can make for realistic combat training and PT, you have the “UFC” NCOs as I termed them, that try to do this shit at PT all the time and it becomes a joke.
The focus is on TV, high school toughness, and gear. You have a lack (now, not always) of supervision which turns into wasted training time being taught by unqualified folks. Plus when people are untrained and unsupervised, people get hurt. Try explaining that to the man, why your PLT is beat the fuck up. Does not go over well.
As I said, not always, but frequently. Especially in the CS and CSS MOSs.
There has to be some training value and it is not there. If possible, send a few NCOs (or Officers) to the Combative(s) Course. Train the trainer as mentioned earlier, but select good NCOs with time on station and not morons.
@28, Yeah, I sit in on the meetings. I don’t know how he managed to pull that one off after bashing the combatives program. Maybe the former Garrison CDR approved it.
Who cares combatives is just a dick measuring contest taught bymoral reprobates so they feel good inside, only good for promotion points