I posted last week that I thought the Army needed to go to a more "Marine Corps" style of basic training. In '53, I did 8 weeks of basic, and 8 weeks of clerk typist school. I can see Schoomaker's hands all over this move.
Army Pushes a Sweeping Overhaul of Basic Training
By THOM SHANKER - NYT
WASHINGTON, Aug. 3 - 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.
"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. "The emphasis in their training was more on the technical side of their specialties, not on the combat side."
But in the missions soldiers face today, "there is no front, there is no rear," he said. "Soldiers of all specialties will face direct contact with an adversary. They all have to have a common set of combat skills. A sense of urgency dictated that we analyze what skills are required of them in Iraq, or in Afghanistan, and how to update the nine-week program back in the States."
The changes were endorsed at a meeting of the Army's training brigade commanders in June, and were promptly put into effect on an official, if still interim, basis at all five installations where the Army conducts its basic training.
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. The changes grew out of various studies dating to last summer of lessons learned in both Afghanistan and Iraq, when senior officials realized it was time to update the tasks and drills in basic training, with an emphasis on combat skills for all those in uniform.
"This is the new mentality that says, 'Everybody is going to be a warrior first,' everybody is going to have the ability to defend themselves and survive in combat," said William F. Briscoe, director of the directorate for training plans and capabilities review at the Army's Training and Doctrine Command at Fort Monroe, Va.
In discussing the changes to basic training, Army officers do not specifically acknowledge how deeply the military was stung by some high-profile combat failings, including the attack on an Army support convoy near Nasiriya, Iraq, early in the war. During that firefight, troops of the 507th Maintenance Company were outmaneuvered and then outgunned by Iraqi irregulars.
Previous Army training programs for these noncombat specialties required less than one week of field training. Under the interim training program, they will spend up to 16 days in the field. And that time out in the woods has been consciously designed to be more stressful, requiring soldiers in training to carry heavier loads of water and ammunition, and allowing less time for them to sleep and eat.
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.
"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.
"And we are introducing an emerging leadership program," Colonel Johnson said. "We don't expect to create junior officers, but we are teaching basic leadership techniques: accountability, precombat inspections, how to motivate a small element to accomplish a mission."
The changes in basic training will be seen mostly in the initial nine-week course given recruits whose tasks will be combat support or combat service support - two categories of Army duty that include engineering, personnel, transportation, maintenance and logistics - rather than for those in the combat arms specialties of infantry, armor, artillery and aviation. After basic training, the support troops receive focused training in their specialties before assignments to units.
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.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company |
