COUNTERCOLUMN: All Your Bias Are Belong to Us

The New York Times runs an article today saying the Army is toughening up initial entry training standards, throwing in more stress, and focusing more on the warrior skills soldiers need to survive in combat.

Somehow--and God only knows how they missed it, because it's freaking obvious to anyone who's been in the Army since 1993 and before--the New York Times has totally glossed over the fact that any such reforms amount to a quietrepudiation of Clinton-era training policies and social experimentation within the military.

From a 1997 Heritage Foundation report on Basic Training standards and gender integration:

The Clinton Administration's frontal attack against military standards has undermined basic training. Specifically, integrated basic training has lowered standards, engendered resentment, and undermined morale. At the Great Lakes Naval Training Center, for example:

Recruits are shown a video telling them that "physically, anybody can make it through boot camp."13 The "anybody-can-make-it" mentality is harmful because it devalues the prestige associated with completing basic training.

Recruits no longer drill with rifles.14 Until 1996, the Navy believed having recruits drill with weapons was an excellent way to instill discipline. Having executed an about-face, the Navy now claims that drilling with rifles is anachronistic.

Recruits are issued a "blue card" to deal with stress.15 Recruits are encouraged to hand their card to a trainer if they feel discouraged.

The Navy is not alone in allowing standards to slacken. The Army, too, has developed a kinder, gentler boot camp:

Recruits no longer run wearing combat boots. Studies have shown that female recruits suffer stress fractures more readily than male recruits.16 The Army's response has been to substitute jogging apparel for combat boots.

Drill instructors are warned to avoid verbally stressing their recruits.17 With this prohibition, drill instructors have been stripped of a time-tested technique for instilling discipline and inculcating mental toughness in their recruits.

Basic combat skills are receiving less emphasis. According to a 1997 report by the Army Inspector General, "There is no clearly articulated or enforced standard for soldierization skills to graduate from Initial Entry Training [IET]."18

I don't think the Army going to running shoes is a terrible thing. But read on:

The softening of boot camp standards has not passed unnoticed. A growing number of personnel, especially among the more junior ranks, have expressed grave concerns that boot camp has become less demanding than it should be. As one Army noncommissioned officer has commented, "There's less discipline across the board. They [recruits] come through an easier boot camp, and arrive at a duty station where their rooms aren't inspected."19 Expressing similar disappointment, an Army warrant officer asserted that "Basic training is too soft these days. Soldiers are reporting to advanced individual training and their next duty assignments with attitudes, no military bearing and less military knowledge than before."20

Alarming evidence of dissatisfaction with basic training also comes from another highly credible source: the recruits themselves. "I expected basic training to be tough, like the movies. This is more like summer camp," lamented an Army recruit at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri.21 At Fort Benning, Georgia, another recruit voiced similar concerns about boot camp: "This year I think it's getting soft, and it shouldn't. It's like these drill sergeants, and you can just tell, they are trying not to lose their rank."22

In the present political climate, the military forces appear incapable of taking appropriate measures to restore rigor and common sense to basic training. For example, after a recent Army survey revealed widespread sexual harassment in the ranks, the Army recommended adding a week of "human relations" classes to basic training.58 The Army's Senior Review Panel Report recommended that the Army "incorporate ethics and human relations training in recruiting and IET cadre courses, to include professionally facilitated sensitivity training."

Remember, now--this was written in 1997. The New York Times piece picked up on NONE of this context.

Here's David Hackworth, writing in 1999.

These young folk are far more willing than the brass-and-staff weenies think to make the sacrifices that will turn them into the winners they joined up to become. But the new-breed brass haven't got the word. So things just keep getting softer with the hope that the quit rate won't skyrocket even more. Now, the Army recruits actually have their choice of omelets for a leisurely breakfast and get to use a knife and fork instead of the Basic Spoon most vets still consider a primary weapon. Not only are our selfless drill sergeants worried, so are America's fathers. Especially fathers like Nevada's Nick Olguin, a 10-year Army veteran, who says, "Two of my sons are senior Army NCOs. They'll tell you in a heartbeat what the problem is: The old standards of discipline and hard knocks which turned boys into men are gone in an Army spending too much training time in touchy-feely, non-warrior programs, like the now mandatory 'Sensitivity Training.'

"Soldiers aren't being challenged as they were in the past. Physical standards have been lowered, mostly to make 'coed training' acceptable." Olguin, whose sons have almost 40 years' active service, says, "Some soldiers coming out of Basic Training often cannot even pass a PT test. "Sergeants no longer get 'Sergeants Time' where they work one-on-one with their troops to teach them skills required in war. "Many NCOs are not permitted to go into the barracks unannounced to inspect in the time-honored tradition. Nowadays, inspections have to be 'scheduled.'" Citizen Olguin has good reason to be worried. As do the thousands of parents and small-unit leaders who write with similar messages like this one from a drill sergeant: "I hope we don't go to war and have to depend on what we are being forced to graduate. It will be ugly!"

More from Hack here:
I wouldn't let my two sons join today's Army. The initial entry training has been too watered down, made too politically correct to accommodate women and to give the recruits that warm, fuzzy Boy Scout summer camp feeling.

A Fort Benning Drill sergeant says "A private can tell a Drill to ---- off and be told ' The private's having a bad day, leave him alone.' No more Article 15's (Unit punishment) - way too many in the brigade this month. If a gung ho private squares away a dirtbag, it's the Drill Sergeant's fault, so relieve him. My battalion Sergeant Major's favorite saying is 'This is a business. We are putting out a product. Don't take too much pride in the product because the soldier's going to graduate whether you're here to train them or not'".

A rifle company commander doesn't think much of the product that Fort Benning's pushing out. "The troops coming out are in terrible physical condition. They're weak with a rifle -- most can't zero in under 18 rounds and usually just squeak out Marksman. In my estimation, if a guy isn't with us for at least three months and two field problems, he would be a casualty in the first five minutes of battle."

If I were King, I'd close Army entry training and send all future Infantry grunts to the Marines.

Again, the Times article misses the entire history of the problem.

But it's this problem which may have been a decisive factor in the lost convoy which nearly cost us Jessica Lynch--and DID cost us the lives of another of other soldiers, thanks in part to neglected weapons training and maintenance--something that ought to be unthinkable to any graduate of a quality basic training program.

From the Times article:

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.

Just who does this knucklehead think was doing all the record keeping, cooking, truck driving, and communications setups for the front line units since--ohhhhh--since the dawn of modern warfare?

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.

Gee. Training for actual warfare. What a concept. But real warrior leaders have been arguing the case for years.

"Historically, combat support specialists had been in the rear of the battlefield, far from direct contact with the enemy," said Col. Bill Gallagher, commander of the basic combat training brigade at Fort Benning, Ga.

That has only been true of the linear battlefield. It has never been true of the nonlinear battlefield, including mechanized desert warfare. Erwin Rommel wrote in his diary: In modern mechanized desert warfare, there is no front line. Or more precisely, it is front all around."

Furthermore, check out what these transportation corps soldiers were up to in Viet Nam.

The Army's senior leadership must approve the plan for it to become a formal part of the service's training, and additional financing must be secured for the changes to become permanent, as more realistic live-fire training and longer field maneuvers are more expensive.

True. And unlike fancy new weapons systems and bases, training, training ammunition, and spare parts budgets do not have well-financed lobbyists pulling for them, nor do they have constituencies in congress.

Support soldiers are also receiving added training for military operations in urban areas, which includes drills in how to enter a building held by hostile forces and to run convoys through contested territory. They will receive additional practice in how to manage prisoners of war and how to maneuver and fight when civilians are in the line of fire.

Actually, the Army was looking at increasing the urban component of small unit training before the war, incorporating lessons learned by the Israelis on the West Bank. Most officers that I knew thought it nearly unthinkable that the next war would be fought anywhere BUT the cities and towns, and were pushing for new and better MOUT training areas. This goes back years--at least to the end of the Kuwait war, and to Panama. Unfortunately, few quality MOUT sites had been built when it came time to go to Iraq. I spent some time in one at Benning during IOBC in 1992, and a couple of days in one at Schofield Barracks. That's the sum extent of my MOUT training experience in 12 years as an infantry and Armor officer.

"We are teaching quick-fire techniques, moving in an urban environment - things that have not been done in basic training for combat support and combat service support before," said Lt. Col. Fred W. Johnson, commander of a basic training battalion at Fort Jackson, S.C., where the Army conducts its mixed-sex training.

If quick fire techniques weren't tought to combat support soldiers for all these years (i.e., Military police and ordnance troops, including explosive ordnance disposal teams that go on more and more dangerous patrols than anyone in country) then that is a failure bordering on criminal.

Quick fire techniques aren't rocket science. They're right there in the Marksmanship Training field manual. I've never yet been on an M16 qual range that didn't have plenty of downtime for topics like this to get taught. And practiced in garrison. All soldiers should master the quickfire drill. What's more, they should be able to do it right or left handed. This takes practice. I practiced a lot myself in the Iraqi deserts, since I sat on the passenger side of the vehicle. I'd spend half an hour at a time drawing a quick bead on a boulder or rock in the desert as we drove by, until it was second nature. I advised others to do the same. (Unless you practice, the tendency is to bring the rifle up to the wrong eye, and use the wrong sight aperture.)

Quick fire is a survival skill. Use it. Learn it. Drill it.

While previous generations may recall basic training being the same for all recruits, the modern Army allows many new soldiers to choose their specialties when they sign up, and basic training is divided between those who go into combat arms and those who go into support jobs

.

Which put the lie to the notion that Basic was seriously challenging new troops. Infantry troops had been using OSUT for years. That's "one station unit training." In a nutshell, enlistees who volunteered for the infantry all went to basic training together at Fort Benning, and then went to Infantry Advanced Training together. And then, to the extent possible, they all went to the same post and served in the same division or regiment.

Why'd the infantry do this?

Two reasons: It makes sense for the infantrymen, and because they knew that Basic Training for the loggie wasn't cutting the mustard. Not to the standards required of combat soldiers.

Again, the Times article misses all of this. And any Army or Marine Corps veteran on the Times Staff could have clued them into some of the background and history of the story over the last 12-15 years.



Splash, out

Jason