Big Changes Coming Too Camp Snoopy

Discussion in 'Warfare / Military' started by APACHERAT, Feb 13, 2018.

  1. APACHERAT

    APACHERAT Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Low Recruit Discipline Prompts Army to Redesign Basic Training

    May explain why the "Military Times" polling where over 80% of those surveyed don't want to march in a military parade. The U.S. Army hasn't been turning out real soldiers for some time.


    Military.com 9 Feb 2018

    The U.S. Army will soon launch a redesign of Basic Combat Training intended to build more discipline after many commanders complained that new soldiers often show up to their first units with a sloppy appearance and undisciplined attitudes.

    By early summer, new recruits will go through Army BCT that's designed to instill strict discipline and esprit de corps by placing a new emphasis in drill and ceremony, inspections, pride in military history while increasing the focus on critical training such as physical fitness, marksmanship, communications and battlefield first aid skills.

    The program will also feature three new field training exercises that place a greater emphasis on forcing recruits to demonstrate Warrior Tasks and Battle Drills, the list of key skills all soldiers are taught to survive in combat.

    The new program of instruction is the result of surveys taken from thousands of leaders who have observed a trend of new soldiers fresh out of training displaying a lack of obedience and poor work ethic as well as being careless with equipment, uniform and appearance, Maj. Gen. Malcolm Frost, commanding general of the U.S. Army Center of Initial Military Training, told defense reporters on Friday.

    'A SENSE OF ENTITLEMENT'
    "What leaders have observed in general is they believe that there is too much of a sense of entitlement, questioning of lawful orders, not listening to instruction, too much of a buddy mentality with NCOs and officers and a lot of tardiness being late to formation and duties," Frost said. "These are trends that they see as increasing that they think are part of the discipline aspect that is missing and that they would like to see in the trainees that become soldiers that come to them as their first unit of assignment."

    As commanding general of IET, Frost was tasked with increasing the quality of training and reducing new soldier attrition.

    After compiling the data from surveys of about 27,000 commissioned officers, warrant officers and non-commissioned officers, the message was very clear, Frost said.

    "The number-one thing that was asked for five-fold or five times as much as any of the other categories was discipline," Frost said.

    "First-unit-of-assignment leaders want Initial Entry Training to deliver disciplined, physically-fit new soldiers who are willing to learn, they are mentally tough, professional and are proud to serve in the United States Army."

    In addition to discipline and physical fitness, leaders also wanted technical and tactical proficiency in warrior tasks and battle drills.

    BE A SOLDIER
    After working out the details in a pilot at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, the Army has approved a new POI that Frost hopes will better instill into recruits exactly what it means to be a soldier.

    "We really tried to attack it by getting after more discipline and esprit de corps," Frost said.

    One new aspect features a series of history vignettes of major battles that the Army has fought in, from Valley Forge in the Revolutionary War all the way to Iraq in Baghdad, Frost said.

    "We highlighted those battles; we tied them to Army Values and the Soldier's Creed and highlighted an individual who received the Medal of Honor or other valor award for actions during each battle," Frost said.

    "So soldiers will learn across all of Basic Combat Training at all the Army training centers what it means to be a soldier, the history of the United States Army through the battles and the campaign streamers and the wars that we have fought and they will be able to look to and emulate a soldier who executed a valorous act during that war."

    The new standardized booklet will be given to each recruit along with their Blue Book at the beginning of training.

    Recruits will also learn discipline by doing more practice at a skill that may be as old as soldiering itself -- drill and ceremony.

    DRILL AND CEREMONY
    When the war began after the attacks of 9/11, the Army decreased its focus on D&C, inspections and other skills that stress attention to detail to make more time for combat skill training.

    "There are a lot of folks that say 'we need to go back to the drill and ceremony because we have lost a lot of the discipline aspect of what it means to be a United States Army soldier,'" Frost said.

    "It's not like they are going to be sitting out there just doing D&C all the time. The drill and ceremony is going to be interwoven into when they move to and from places ... so the movements won't just be lollygagging, non-tactical movements, they will be actually executing some team drill and ceremony as they move to and from the chow hall and move to and from the barracks."

    But the new BCT isn't all about spit and polish, Frost said.

    HAMMER, ANVIL, FORGE
    "The other big piece we are doing in Basic Combat Training that helps with the esprit de corps and the discipline aspect and also lends a measure of grit and resilience to [BCT] is we have three major field training exercises that we are going to do now. We are calling them the Hammer, the Anvil and the Forge," Frost said, describing how the final Forge FTX is an homage to the Army's historic ties to Valley Forge.

    "That is going to be a culminating FTX which is a graduation requirement. It will be an 81-hour field training exercise with about 40 miles of tactical road marching that is conducted through a series of tactical events and mini field training exercises."

    The Forge will include a night infiltration course and a medical evacuation mass casualty exercise. There will be ethical dilemmas soldiers have to negotiate as well as a battle march and shoot, a resupply mission which involves moving supplies, ammo, water to a link-up point, patrol base activities, combat patrols as well as an obstacle course, Frost said.

    "If you succeed in making it through the 81-hour FTX ... then what will happen is you will earn the right to become a soldier," Frost said. "You will earn your beret, you will earn a 'soldier for life' certificate, you will get your National Defense Service Medal and your uniform will look exactly like a United States Army soldier."

    'GET AFTER THE BASICS'...

    continue -> https://www.military.com/daily-news...ers-prompts-army-redesign-basic-training.html


    History of the U.S. Army's Camp Snoopy...-> http://www.hackworth.com/article04032002c.html

     
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  2. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    This is all to true. It always amazes me when I see a Specialist (or even a Sergeant) that can not drill soldiers. Or a PFC that can not do more than a few basic drill movements.

    I think part of that is attributed to the love of the Army of OSUT. Where the boot phase is scattered among a great many bases, which ultimately are more concerned in turning out specialists in their respective MOS than in turning them into soldiers first. And it is a very different culture than any other branch, which conducts all of their initial training at a single (or 2) depots designed for only that purpose.

    I know that when I went through Boot Camp, the Drill Instructors only had one mission, to turn us into Marines. Not make us Clerks, or Infantrymen, or Radio Technicians. Their first, last, and only job was in making Marines. Period.

    I think ultimately the Army might be better off following the system the other branches use. Set up 2 or 3 bases to serve as boot camp bases, and nothing else. Extend that phase to 2+ months, and treat them like recruits. Everybody the same, not even knowing what their MOS will be until the end.

    Many times I have heard prim donnas in the Army saying things like "I am 92A clerk, why do I need to know how to run a patrol?" Or "I am a 25C Radio Specialist, why do I need to dig a foxhole?"
     
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  3. APACHERAT

    APACHERAT Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Chief Of Staff To Soldiers: You're A Rifleman First
    The Army Times | Oct 20, 03 | Sean D. Naylor

    The Army’s new chief of staff is tearing a page from the Marine Corps playbook and insisting that every soldier consider himself “a rifleman first.”

    “Everybody in the United States Army’s gotta be a soldier first,” Gen. Peter Schoomaker told reporters during an Oct. 7 roundtable meeting with reporters in Washington.

    The specialization of jobs in the Army pulled the service away from the notion that every soldier must be grounded in basic combat skills, he said. But Iraq has demonstrated that no matter what a soldier’s military occupational specialty is, he must be able to conduct basic combat tasks in order to defend himself and his unit.

    “We’ve dismounted artillerymen in Iraq, and we’ve got them performing ground functions — infantry functions, MP functions,” Schoomaker said. “Everybody’s got to be able to do that … Everybody’s a rifleman first.”

    That phrase echoes a Marine motto that has been around since at least World War I — “Every Marine a rifleman.”

    Schoomaker’s emphasis on individual combat skills is part of a larger program to infuse the entire Army with a “warrior ethos.” Senior Army leaders are convinced that the focus on technical skills, particularly in the noncombat arms branches, has resulted in a neglect of basic combat skills.

    “In our well-intentioned direction of trying to develop very technically competent soldiers in branches of the service, perhaps we lost some of the edge associated with being a soldier,” Lt. Gen. William Wallace, commander of the Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., told reporters Oct. 6.

    Service leaders are looking to change the Army’s training and education systems, which have “reinforced the culture where you’re a technician first and a soldier second,” Gen. Kevin Byrnes, head of Army Training and Doctrine Command, told an audience at the Association of the United States Army’s annual meeting in Washington on Oct. 7.

    “We’re removing those impediments,” in order to reverse that mindset, he added.

    “To be a warrior,” Wallace said, “you’ve got to be able to use your individual weapon. You’ve got to be able to operate in small, lethal teams if called upon to do so. You’ve got to have that mental and physical capability to deal with the enemy regardless of whether you’re a frontline soldier or you’re someone fixing helicopters for a living, because you are a soldier first and a mechanic second.”

    Back to basic soldier skills

    Leaders are pushing forward with combat-skills training that will be mandatory for all officers and enlisted troops:

    *Every soldier will be required to qualify on his or her individual weapon twice a year, Byrnes said. The current Army standard requires soldiers to qualify only once a year, although some commanders have their troops qualify more frequently.

    *New recruits will qualify on their individual weapons in basic training and then again in advanced individual training, Byrnes added. Until now, qualification in basic training only was the standard.

    *Every soldier, regardless of MOS and unit, will conduct at least one live-fire combat drill a year. For higher headquarters rear-echelon units, it might include reacting to an ambush, Byrnes said.

    Top gear, real-world training

    The Army embarked on the “warrior ethos” program shortly before Schoomaker became chief Aug. 1, but he has folded it into a larger effort aimed at ensuring “the soldier” takes priority over any other program in the Army. “Humans are more important than hardware,” he said in his Oct. 7 keynote speech at the AUSA meeting.

    “The Soldier” is the name given to what Schoomaker said is the most important of the 15 “focus areas” within the Army that he has targeted for immediate action. Putting the soldier first also means making sure no soldier deploys to a combat zone with anything less than the best gear available.

    Schoomaker is determined to do away with the practice that sees later-deploying units into a combat theater fielded with gear that’s different — and usually less modern — than what’s issued to the Army’s “first-to-fight” combat units.

    Another “focus area” aimed in part at getting all personnel to think of themselves as warriors deals with the Army’s combat training center program.

    The service’s so-called “dirt” combat training centers include the National Training Center, Fort Irwin, Calif., the Joint Readiness Training Center, Fort Polk, La., and the Combat Maneuver Training Center, Hohenfels, Germany. The CTC program also includes the Battle Command Training Program, which puts division and corps headquarters through rigorous simulation exercises called “Warfighters.”

    The CTC program has received much of the credit for the Army’s successful performances in the Iraq wars of 1991 and 2003 and Afghanistan in 2002. But it originally was designed to train units how to fight the Soviet-style armies. Now, Schoomaker and other senior leaders say, the CTCs must change faster than usual to prepare soldiers for the operations they likely are to face in the near future.

    “These combat training centers are the main cultural drivers in the Army,” Schoomaker told the AUSA audience. “How we train there dictates how people think when they get on the real battlefield,” he later told reporters.

    Schoomaker noted that at the NTC in particular, the Opposing Force was designed to replicate a regimented, easy-to-predict Soviet-style threat. “Today, we are fighting a different kind of enemy, and we’ve got to be prepared to fight and win in different kind of terrain, under different conditions than we have in the past,” he said.

    Units now arrive at the training centers under relatively benign conditions and are given time to prepare for their “battles” against the opposing force before moving into the maneuver “box” where the real force-on-force fighting occurs.

    “We now have to look at perhaps having to fight our way into the training centers and fight our way out,” Schoomaker told the reporters.

    Schoomaker and other senior Army leaders also are keen to increase the participation of the other services at the combat training centers. “They must be more joint,” the chief said.

    Mix-’n’-match units

    The new chief also wants an Army that is more “modular,” meaning one composed of units that can be mixed and matched without tearing apart other units, as occurs now. He explained the concept using an analogy.

    “If you only got paid in $100 bills, and you want to go buy a can of snuff down at the Quik-Stop, and it costs you $3.75 … what do you get back? A big old pocketful of change.

    “Then you go to the supermarket and now you’re going to buy your groceries.” But the groceries cost more than the change you have in your pocket. “So what do you do? You spend another $100 bill. And what do you get back? More change.

    “And you do this until you spend all your hundreds, and then you’ve got a bunch of change. And now you try to aggregate this change into something that’s meaningful, and it doesn’t work. And that’s quite frankly a little bit of the condition that we’re in.”

    The point Schoomaker was making is that every time the Army deploys a brigade combat team of armor or infantry, it must augment it with pieces of other units — MPs, aviation and artillery, for instance. Eventually, the service finds it has deployed all of its brigades, but still has lots of pieces of units left over, sitting all but useless at home station.

    Schoomaker thinks the Army can get more out of its current force by redesigning it. Most divisions have three ground maneuver brigades. But Schoomaker wants to create five maneuver brigades within each division, without increasing the number of soldiers in the division. The first two divisions to return from Iraq, 3rd Infantry Division (Mechanized) and the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), will be the guinea pigs in this experiment, with their division commanders leading the redesign.

    “I asked them, ‘Could you make yourself into five maneuver brigades, out of the three that you’ve got, and could you make each of those five at least as capable as each of the original three?’” Schoomaker told reporters.

    “ ‘And if we gave you the right technologies, could you become one-and-a-half times more capable?’”

    The chief said that the Army is not prejudging the issues. “These are just questions,” he said. But, “I believe in my heart that each of those five brigades can be as effective as the current one,” if equipped with the right technologies.

    Staying together in the fight

    Schoomaker also said he was trying to change the Army’s policy relating to battalion and brigade-level changes of command in combat theaters. Until now, the Army has insisted on enforcing the two-year command tours, with no accommodation made for the fact that a unit might be in combat. Thus, a battalion commander might leave his unit halfway through its one-year tour in Iraq because his two-year command is up and the Army wants him to attend the War College in Carlisle, Pa.

    This policy has infuriated many in the Army, especially the outgoing commanders, who feel it forces them to abandon their troops just when their soldiers need them most.

    Schoomaker is sympathetic to those who feel the policy should be changed, and has told the units preparing to deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan that he does not want midtour changes of command. Staying with a unit until it redeploys is “a fundamental role of leadership,” he told reporters.


    second source:
    Every soldier is a rifleman.
    https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Every+soldier+is+a+rifleman.-a0141213041
     

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