There was a story in this last week’s Army Times about “Basic Training getting softer”. However that headline was just to grab attention, because if you read the actual story they talk about changing some tasks in Basic Training, part of it building on the technical knowledge that today’s soldiers come in with. Part of the changes are also in recognition that the men and women joining the Army today are not in as good of physical conditioning as in the past so they can’t push them too hard and injure the potential soldiers.
LTG Hiertling who is the Deputy Commander for Initial Military Training was at the TRADOC Conference last week, but accept for small talk at the bar or at breakfast, I never really had a chance to talk with him. However I heard he was not happy about the article, and I can understand why. It wasn’t so much about the article as it was the headline that Army Times used to grab attention.
Once a person reads the story, you can see that they are cutting some of the crew-served weapons training, but they are dedicating more time to individual weapons training, which is the weapon that soldiers are going to spend more time with than anything else. In fact they are even going to dedicate more time to Drill and Ceremony (which I think should not have been cut back when it was a few years ago). Are they taking the physical training at a more controlled rate? Yes they are, but if young recruits are not in as good of shape as normal, pushing them too hard, too fast will just cause them to be injured or even a wash-out.
Its just sad that the Army Times has to resort to spin in order to try and sell a few more papers.
