“It’s a revolution,” said Col. Dan Kessler, who directs the training here. He’s one of the young Turks who’s come back from combat determined to change the old ways.
In addition to a sense of urgency, combat has brought one other influence back home: you have to innovate, take risks, and try new things. That’s always acceptable out in the field. It’s not been so acceptable in garrison, where promotions seemed to come from “following procedure” and not making mistakes.
An excellent little article about what we are doing differently in boot camp to make better soldiers for the war effort. I posted this as an example as to what is required of today’s military, but it also has application to the way security contractors should think out there. Good stuff and it certainly highlights the importance of the kind of concepts being brought up under Jundism. –Matt
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‘Mindless’ Basic Training Gets Some Smarts
06/12/09
FORT BENNING, Ga. — When seasoned combat soldiers began returning from the war to help train new recruits here, the first thing they did was to stop training for what the Army called “convoy live fire.”
Nobody actually does that in Iraq or Afghanistan, they explained.
In fact, they said, much of what the Army was teaching its new recruits at this premier training center was wrong or irrelevant to actual combat.
Instead, what was being force-fed to recruits seemed drearily familiar to old soldiers who’d gone through “basic” here a generation ago. Marching in formation, for instance; rifle bayonet training that dated to World War I (“Lunge! Kill!”). And convoy live fire, a technique invented after Jessica Lynch was abducted in 2003, which became dangerously outdated almost immediately.
That it took five years to get this stopped says something about the Army.
It also provides a glimpse into a struggle inside the Army and, indeed, across the entire U.S. military. Let’s call it the combat military versus the “garrison” or “headquarters” or “always done it this way” military.
