Knee Deep in the Hooah!

I sense a great disturbance in the Force. As if thousands of new recruits nation wide cried out all together … and then … silence.

Yes, yes, it’s Mr.Hooah! again. Claire is so busy that I thought I would sneak in while she wasn’t watching and post.

This news item just appeared in the Stars and Stripes:

Army to start 10-week boot camp in fall
By Lisa Burgess, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Tuesday, July 1, 2008

ARLINGTON, Va. — The Army will extend boot camp from nine to 10 weeks for all recruits beginning Oct. 1, an official at the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command confirmed Monday.

Last October, TRADOC leaders said that they would add an extra week to boot camp in the fall of 2008, following a pilot program involving five of the Army’s basic training facilities, TRADOC spokesman Harvey Perritt said Monday.

Army officials started the 10-week Basic Combat Training pilot course on Nov. 2, marking the first time boot camp had been lengthened since the program went from eight weeks to nine in 1998.

The article goes on to say the extra week will not be used to add additional training or tasks. Whewww. That’s a relief. Instead, the week will be used to evaluate and retrain those tasks already on the schedule. That’s actually pretty smart.

But I have a couple of thoughts. You knew I would. Right?

The last thing any recruit wants to hear is “We’ve extended your stay by one week, private.” Not that a recruits feeling count one wit in this argument but rather basic training is already too long. Too long? Did I just say that? Yep. I did.

I went to basic last year at Ft.Benning. It is one of the bastions of good basic training sites left on today’s Army. Not that the others are “bad”. But Benning is just that good. It’s more old school without all the crap one got in the old school. I personally think it has something to do with being the home of the Infantry. And yet I found that the schedule of events was not very tight. Something on the order of a week could have been cut out of the training and no one would have missed it.

Following basic, I arrived at OCS to find my friends coming from other BCT Units off other bases were not as fully prepared as I and my friends from Benning. Turns out their training schedule was even less tight than ours … with even less emphasis on physical training or the modern soldiers tasks and drills. I really felt for them when they began to struggle in their new OCS environment (which is essentially 11 bravo training for those who need to know).

Don’t get me wrong. They and their fellow recruits passed BCT. There was no fudging of the numbers just to push recruits through the door. Nope. But there is a difference between passing with a “A” and passing with a “C”. Sure, in some cases it’s a simple “go” vs. “no go”. However a “go” doesn’t mean you’ve really mastered the task. My drill Sergeants knew this. For us … a “go” meant we could start the mind numbing but necessary drill of “repetition”. We repeated our tasks until we could do ‘em on our sleep. Some of us did repeat ‘em in our sleep. That’s a good part of ‘old school’.

So what’s my rambling point? Adding a week to test and retrain: Excellent idea. Adding an additional week of training to the total: not so good if you’re not using what you’ve got to its most efficient level.

Proving that some BCT units are not as efficient as they could be? Near impossible. Because that would make their leadership look bad.

We all know what that means.

Mr.Hooah!, out.

Tags: Army, Mr. Hooah! Writes, military //