Army Pushes a Sweeping Overhaul of Basic Training

[Khephra]

The United States Army is pressing into place sweeping changes in its basic training program, introducing rigorous new drills and intensive work on combat skills to prepare recruits for immediate missions to Iraq and Afghanistan.

In what officers describe as the most striking changes to basic training since the Vietnam era, soldiers whose specialties traditionally kept them far from the front - clerks, cooks, truck drivers and communications technicians - will undergo far more stressful training. The new training regimen includes additional time dodging real bullets, more opportunities to fire weapons, including heavy machine guns, and increasing the time spent practicing urban combat and hiking and sleeping in the field during the nine-week courses.

Before Iraq, freshly minted soldiers could expect months, if not years, of additional training in their assigned units before seeing combat.

But with the Army stretched today by long-term deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, a growing percentage of new soldiers are in combat zones within 30 days of being assigned to a unit, Army officials say. Even those whose specialties are not combat arms often face situations where the traditional distinction between hazardous front lines and secure rear areas has vanished.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/04/politics/04training.html?pagewanted=all

[Kagemusha]

1. So now we know what draftees will go through.

I pity the fools, as Mr. T would say.

[saigon68]

2. CANNON FODDER

They will be shredded to a pulp when they get there

They will die for nothing

And come home to A CHEAP BOX in the cold earth----- where their survivors will fight endlessly with the Govt agencies for mere crumbs for their dependants

THEY ARE FOOLS TO JOIN UP AT THIS TIME.

[trogdor]

6. This is where casualty numbers start to spike.

As seasoned troops are displaced by green ones in large numbers. We'll be back to where we were pre-1975.

[Judi Lynn]

3. Doesn't this seem like the opening step on the way to a draft? n/t

[Scooter24]

5. That's what I assumed..

but we'll have to wait and see.

[lebkuchen]

4. This is, in part, Rummy's/Cheney's plan to privatize base support

and cash in on the big contracts.

[Tellurian]

8. Yup, right on target..

The only part of the military that hasn't been expolited to it's fullest potential.

[DS1]

7. mmm, sleep practice, gimmie summa dat!

and be sure to put me in an intergender training unit :evilgrin: