I know the article is old.
Anyone served/serving who can comment on this?
- US Army will no longer require recruits to show adequate hand grenade skills
- Change is being made because many enlistees 'can’t throw it far enough'
- Recruits also won't be required to pass land navigation course to graduate
- Army's redesign of Basic Combat Training is aimed at instilling more discipline
- Many on Twitter used the development to attack influx of female enlistees
- But the US Army denied that the change had anything to do with gender
If we're picking and choosing, the same can be said for pt. Some of the reasoning why acft is now supposed to be job related, as opposed to universal pt standards.
I think there's value in basic qualification and marksmanship, not sure if I'd want the average Joe being less than worthless if they have to grab a weapon. The ambush on Lynch' s unit is maybe a cautionary tale.
This also reeks far less of cost efficiency, and more about physically weak or otherwise inept recruits (also dropping standards to suit agendas).
Absolutely. And that's why they're back to reviewing the whole damn thing to see if it even makes sense. Standardized PT is stupid and usually counter-productive, mainly because you're always going to be setting the bar too low for most people. The ACFT is no exception, nor is the APFT (of course). The reality is that standardized tests are a terrible way of measuring the fitness of a highly diverse population of people doing a wide range of jobs. The fitness standards should be set be set at the battalion level and PT should be overseen by company grade officers to ensure the standards are being met. This would be how they did it prior to the APFT being introduced. This would also require far more leadership, integrity, ingenuity, and dedication than most officers posses, so it's not much more realistic than the standardized tests. But at least we wouldn't be deluding ourselves into believing we can reduce people to mere numbers and expect uniform results.
There is, just not at the basic training stage of a soldier's career. They can learn plenty when they get to their unit, and it will be far more efficient and safer.
It's certainly a cautionary tale, just not for rifle marksmanship.
Have you ever been to basic training??
Not sure what marksmanship has to do with strength. I don't think you're picking up what I'm putting down. I'm not talking about dropping all rifle marksmanship for everyone across the board forever and just shortening basic training. I'm saying put that burden on their gaining units, where it already is anyway, and spend the time and resources on more important things in basic training, like more effective soldierizing methods. Do you have any idea how much time is wasted just moving recruits to and from the range? Or how much time is wasted having all those recruits sitting around waiting to use the range? It eats up an entire training day just to have each recruit go out and shoot 40 rounds. Tell me how cost efficient that is...
Yes. Ah. I see the disconnect, you're thinking in terms of time savings/ efficiency for the generating force (actually from the perspective of the recruit as well). Big army could care less about that, aside from filling spaces slightly faster. I'm talking about $$, in which that calculus (outside of training resources e.g. fuel, ammunition, etc) is honestly laughable compared to other programmatic concerns and budgeting decisions. Even after we stopped Grow The Army, and started downsizing (nothing like the paucity of earlier peace dividends though) there's still relatively substantial funding for readiness and new toys. Basic training expenses are unlikely to dent those decisions. If you care deeply about efficiency, the military or its gov partners/masters are institutionally opposed or at least blinded, even at the billion dollar levels.
The idea of better "soldierizing" is interesting but underspecified. Does drill and ceremony matter in the long run? Traditions/history etc. If it's just training for a job, then break everyone up based on contract and start advanced individual training early. That would be optimal and efficient. You'd eliminate the collective experience of having the volunteer force having gone through some kind of shared experience regardless of career (or maybe the experience is more minimal than it already is). Folks have advocated this position before. Maybe that's where it ends up. Maybe that's where it has to end up with the physical (and arguably emotional) erosion of the able bodied population. We have more human veal showing up stunted and unprepared by their lifestyle.