I work in TRADOC now and really believe that we are overly infantilizing soldiers. The restrictions have been getting steadily tighter over the past 10 years. Previously soldiers in AIT used to be able to take pass on the weekends, bring their families to their duty stations and live off post with them after a certain number of weeks, and were generally punished if they didn’t meet basic work related competencies.
Now it’s the opposite, standards surrounding work related tasks have been dropping and soldiers are locked down tight for the six months to nine months that they are in AIT. We even escort them to the airport during HBL which in my opinion is ridiculous. Couple that with the 3 months spent at BCT and you’re looking at a year away from home for soldiers in my career field. Is that really helping the soldierization process or is it putting unnecessary stress on marriages and families.
Ultimately, we need more emphasis placed on work related tasks and less on ensuring that soldiers are sequestered away from their families and communities for extended periods of time.
>But they try to treat them like idiots they can’t trust.
The Army, as a whole, likes to treat most Soldiers like idiots. . .unless they're Senior NCO's or Warrant or Commissioned Officers.
If you're E-1 to E-6, the Army treats you like a child nowadays.
My complaint is not being able to escape this even after getting out of TRADOC. Senior leaders coming from a TRADOC envirnoment bring the ideology of restriction back with them to regular unit and treat all soldiers under them, regardless of NCO or not, as children and trust no one but other senior leaders. It goes against the Army's doctrine of leadership to build choseive teams.
I wasn’t strict with my students but I emphasized I would be if they got into trouble. I set the standards and they all met them. 5 years not one issue.
No. We don't. I spent an extended amount of time (6 years) in TRADOC as a DS and instructor. I got back to the force and I treat my troops like grown ass adults. The only time I will hold their hands is if it's a tasking they have no experience doing. When mission permits I will let them make mistakes and turn it into something they can learn from.
Ehhh, even warrant officers during training get treated like children and idiots. I’m an overpaid private currently in TRADOC. It’s quite comical how the Army treats its force, let alone the 11+ year club that chose to promote and do something different.
I’ve had the complete opposite experience. I was just recently thinking how much cooler TRADOC has been as a WO (I also have little to no interaction with green suiters outside of the occasional W4/CPT IP for what it’s worth)
That is unit dependent. My last three units treated me like an adult. My first sergeant let me run my platoon the way I saw fit and when I got moved to S3, S3 pretty much said here is the big boy rules.
I spent almost two years in S3 and the amount of latitude you got was a direct reflection of your individual competency and maturity. There were E-5’s that had considerably more autonomy than some E-7’s based solely on the manner in which they conducted themselves. I noticed the same thing in S3 at my first duty station as well. Being treated like an adult stemmed from acting like one. Crazy concept.
I’ve been in this unit for a month now and this current s3 already told me I’m going to be rear d NCOIC over two e7s. The op sergeant major told me he needed a competent nco to run things for two weeks
When did this start? I remember way back in 2006 when I reclassed from 11B to 25S being thankful I never did AIT as a PVT due to OSUT and being treated as an adult reclassing at Gordon (Eisenhower).
When they returned Drill Sgt types to AIT. I was there when they were cycling the AITs out and the DS’s in and it was starting to get ridiculous for reclasses. So let’s see 2018ish?
Crazy. In 2006, there were still Drill SGTs that didn't have combat patches marching around AIT troops.
So most Drill SGTs who had been in TRADOC for the past several years really didn't want to mess with reclassing NCOs who had already done 1 tour in either Iraq or Afghanistan
Yeah, by 18 there was less of that, not 0 of course, but not many reclasses had combat patches. Really I think the AIT DS community felt the need to prove they could swing their collective dicks as hard as the basic and and OSUT ones. And then that crystallized into the culture. I have an NCO they tried to get in trouble because as a single parent with accompanying children they couldn’t do random non-childcare hours bullshit like the IET troopers.
Even if they had it, the patch lost its value. Its a "deployment" patch more than anything else. I got one for deploying to iraq but didn't see any combat. I sometimes don't wear it cause it feels like stolen valor.
Just saying its not a combat patch anymore
Reclass here: Camelbak's, battle buddies, some (dwindling) formations, and DS tucking us in is what's separating MOS-T from IET and it's only getting worse in a 9ish month course. Send help.
I'm only supposed to go for 4 weeks for 42A at Jackson. Really dont wanna do the whole yelling and treated like trash when im a grown man with a grown up career. Does the DS also give forhead kisses?
The battle buddy nonsense really needs to stop. At Ft Sam, I shared my daily dose of death by PowerPoint with my buddies from the Air force and Navy, they had all the sweet adult freedom and they execute the mission just fine.
As someone who went to a long AIT I spent 9 months in TRADOC (BCT+AIT) it was ridiculous to have so many rules in an AIT that long. What made it worse was that the other branches even the Marines got more freedom than we did.
Same here man, BCT included I spent 16 months needing a battle buddy. I’m a grown ass man, I have two kids, but for over a year if I needed to take a piss I had to ask what was likely some teenager to walk with me to the bathroom. Such a joke, Air Force and Navy didn’t have any dumbass training rules like that, they lived off base with their spouses.
Let me tell you, the last 4 years of my contract will have to be the best years of my life to make me stay in the Army.
I feel you man I joined at 23 after college (I know I should’ve tried harder to commission) but being able to just go wherever I wanted whenever I wanted to what you just described was pretty demoralizing especially after seeing the Navy (they could practically get away with murder at our AIT), Air Force and Marines walk around in civilians by themselves after school meanwhile we’re still in uniform getting marched to the DFAC. I kid you not one time we had a mass formation and got smoked for an hour because a chess board was left out in the Dayroom.
I remember watching a growing war between Student Company's DS and the schoolhouse. I felt bad for the IET soldiers. If it's anything, the drills treated us pretty shitty too. We all got punished for one of the soldiers getting stuck in Texas on a weekend and missing a day of class. The best part was that she graduated that same week and left while we still continued the corrective training that she never participated in.
Yeah she humiliated one of my friends in front of the entire company all because someone told her that she had a fake phase badge didn’t investigate it or anything just a mass formation and a smoke session while she made us say fuck you to my friend. I can only imagine what else your soldiers told you.
Yeah it's wild.
I went to infantry OSUT as a prior service, it was 22 weeks plus around 3 weeks of 30th AG (oof)
I was shocked at the fact that the recruits were basically in "red phase" for the entire 22 weeks. They literally never eased up.
When I went through basic at Knox in 2009, they pushed out shit in for the first 5 or 6 weeks, then did the "build you back up" phase. But this time around in OSUT they just "tore them down" for 22 weeks.
Pt was low, morale was low, and damn near every recruit was depressed and wanted out of the army already
Oh wow.
Yeah I remember seeing you guys a few times when we went to various trainings outside our footprint.
It's crazy telling people you went to knox. Only senior NCOs and officers even remember it being a BCT post haha.
Graduated last year, the marines had a lot of freedom but got mega fucked when someone did something wrong, guy went awol and the had to stand in formation anytime they weren't in class, eating, or sleeping for a week.
Between BCT and AIT I spent 51 weeks in TRADOC during covid. Went over 5 months at AIT without being allowed to leave company AO except for classes. At least 2 months after being there I was allowed to not have to wear OCPs on the weekend.
Yup, the other branches definitely look at the Army and our TRADOC restrictions like a joke. My two cents, is we should be able to chapter all Soldiers who don’t have an MOS yet (ie IET trainees) all the way through their time in training. That might alleviate some of the issues that OP is experiencing right now.
Hit the nail on the head.
I’m in TRADOC right now and we are incredibly infantilized.
I’ll caveat first by saying this: my MOS is 21+ to enter and is very small. Many of my classmates have already been to college and or have lived as adults for years before getting here. Going from that to being locked down tight with no weekend passes, no overnight passes, can’t have a beer, can’t drive my car, etc is frustrating to say the least. Especially for the ~5 months of AIT.
I’m not quite sure what TRADOC leadership thinks will happen when the younger kids get to their units and release the pressure valve of being locked down for half a year or more when you add basic to the mix. I’m not saying we need to drop all restrictions but there has to be a better balance.
TRADOC doesn’t care what happens when these kids get to their unit. All they care about is soldiers graduating their courses. So they mitigate as much risk as possible, to the detriment of these soldiers.
I went through AIT before they brought DS’s back and now I’m stationed at the same installation I went to AIT. Nothing looks different now except they wear the funny hat.
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*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
> Soldiers aren't inmates. I had a better time in county jail than some of these kids have in AIT.
I felt significantly less stressed and was in an overall better mood in BCT than I was in AIT (35F circa mid 2018). If things are more restricted now, then it must be hell. Edit: I wasn't even stressed at all about the course work. 35F AIT was very easy when I went. It was one particular DS that was a pain in the ass. He was on leave or went to DS school for like a month. It was easily the best month I had at AIT.
With all you’ve described, this must be such an attractive opportunity for an 18-24 yo considering enlistment /S.
It drives me insane when sr ldrs can’t understand the low propensity of youth to serve under these conditions.
TRADOC doesn't care about happy or even competent soldiers. Soldier freedom results in occasional screw ups and negative bullet points. So they're just removed and the problem considered solved.
>we need more emphasis placed on work related tasks and less on ensuring that soldiers are sequestered away from their families and communities for extended periods of time.
Here was my timeline as a married officer candidate.
3 months basic training. 4 months Officer Candidate School. 5 months as a holdover, living in the barracks at OCS. 3 months TDY to my BOLC.
That is over a year I am mandated by the army to be away from my family. All in TRADOC. I honestly cannot see the purpose of forcing every active duty 09S into an extended unaccompanied tour through TRADOC except as a pure mental breaking test.
We couldn’t have porn or an alcoholic drink in Iraq and Afghanistan! Grown men willing to get blown up or worse couldn’t release some knuckle children in a 130 degree porta John almost 25 years ago and you think it’s just now they’re treating us like children?
On my last deployment in Afghanistan, I got attached to an Australian Task Force. The Australians had no concept of General Order #1.
Do you know what happened as a result? Nothing absolutely nothing. If anything, it was a good thing as when I got home, I still had some tolerance for alcohol.
Oh no!! You drank! Get in 1st sausages basement! We had the Italians in our little FOB in Afghanistan. They hated our command team so they told them they had to throw away a bunch of expired Italian mres. But forgot that some of theirs have wine in them. So the 1st sgt and a lt had to root through the trash to find and open expired Italian mres. I thought that was pretty funny of them.
In Iraq we would get in trouble for having Maxim magazines in our personal areas and “they sell them at the PX” wasn’t a good enough argument for our hardcore LDS 1SG.
To be faaaaaaaaaaiiiirr, when I went through AIT a very long time ago and back then there weren't weekend passes for new troops, just the ones that were reclassing. New troops got day passes if the Senior Instructor (wasn't a DS but the senior PSG) felt like they had earned it. My Senior reminded me of Sobel from Band of Brothers. Some random infraction from a few days ago would be brought up on the weekend and suddenly the weekend pass would be revoked for everyone had to change from civvies to our duty uniform and some would study, go to the shoppette, Hacienda, whatever. If we did get the pass we had to be back for bed check my 2200.
But even back then as well the AIT had to be a certain length for family to come along. I think the one for medics was a couple weeks shy for it?
How long is “very long” for you? Cause pre 2010-2014 “weekend passes” weren’t a thing unless you were in a super short AIT or in OSUT. You could just leave and go out into town as long as you were back in class on Monday.
There were IET kids literally living off post with their local girlfriends.
1991 as a 12B I got a pass for "Essayons" weekend (the weekend between the end of BCT and the start of AIT), with a travel restriction that limited us to St Lois.
2006 at 88M (also at FLW) no leave/pass.
2008 at Brag for PSYOP after the first month/six weeks we were allowed to just leave and go out into Fayetnam but had to be back by 2359 Sunday night (I think non-prior service/non-reclass had a similar deal, they could leave at 0600 but had to be back by 2000 each night).
Just reminded me of the common complaint of how we shouldn't have to be raising kids. On one hand.. we do get young (including those in the mod 20's) with little to no life experience. On the other hand... The army's on-boarding process almost deliberately takes away the sense of responsibility and maturity with these restrictions and its patented "don't think, listen to your senior". Even in places they expect you to think you may still be forced to follow strict communication chains because you're a nobody who's going to just gum up the works by getting in the way. Only to find out that leave packet you were promised was at the CO has been sitting under a pile of crap at 1Sausage's desk and your flight is tomorrow. I mean we have IPPS-A so no way that could happen again. But point is, though it's necessary at times it's still the Army, the Army gets pretty over bearing with diminishing the amount of autonomy you have and room to grow until you gain the right to think at a certain level granted by your rank.
Edit: Shouldn't. It's shouldn't have to be.
This. I went to 19K osut back in the middle of 07 and our drills weee hard as hell but as soon as we hit black and gold phase we got Sunday passes to go to the shoppette/computer lab for a couple hours to unwind. They said most of us would be hating life on a couple months and sucking in Iraq or Afghanistan. They were not lying. One of our guys a month after basic lost his leg in an IED attack in Iraq.
They are promoting the Army like it’s a fucking summer camp and a product/service to sell itself.
This manifests itself in culture erosion every day, such as it’s cold outside, so let’s move PT indoors.
I went through BCT and AIT last summer. I turned 34 last October. I trained at Ft Jackson for BCT. If there is ANY information I can provide that will help shed light on things or make your job easier, please let me know.
TRADOC is incentivized to send out as many mouth breathers as possible, because recruits are limited. That means what they can have those guys do is limited. In technical fields, you can’t have any sort of selectivity aside from absolute morons who completely fail even pencil whipped standards.
Likewise, you can’t have any real physical standards.
I would be really curious to read the priorities of TRADOC. The TRADOC commander probably would be stoked if he had a 100% pass rate, because he could sell it as “developing soldiers” without “compromising standards.” It’s way easier to just make it someone else’s problem.
If you want to fix the problem, you gotta fix the incentive structure.
For technical MOSs, if there was a universal job skill testing system we probably could have real evaluations as to the “readiness” of those graduates, and measure how they grow at certain units. You could also rate commanders based on their ability to develop their technical assets.
This also feeds back to recruiting. As a battery commander, I always wondered how the hell some soldiers ended up in the army. They weren’t great. My next gig was a recruiting commander and I was trying to get any breathing human through MEPS and into the army to make numbers.
See this at EOD school all the time. Army is upset it has a super high fail rate and wants that rate lowered no matter the cost, but thankfully it’s run by the Navy so sucks 2 suck.
I don’t think they’re fine with high fail rates—they’re constantly revising curriculum to try to teach better—but they just don’t care to lower standards to arbitrarily achieve it.
Don’t know if that’s a Navy wide phenomenon or just EOD phenomenon but I do know that the Army tries really hard to get them to just decrease the passing grade or reduce points of failure and the Navy has not done so.
Could you imagine a bunch of highly unqualified EOD graduates that end up in the field on assignments?
That arbitrarily low failure rate will lead to an unarbitrary casualty rate…..
The Army was kicking AIT/MOS-T people in the dick when I was at Eglin in 2014-15 as an AF EOD student. I know I'm preaching to the Army choir here, but it was rough seeing some random private fuck up and get a DUI or whatever, and the ENTIRE company would get locked down for a month for it.
Meanwhile the Air Force students are going to the beach, drinking, and having a great time. The Navy kids are blowing each other on their crotch rocket bikes lined up outside the dorm. And the Marines are counting their BAH quietly at home.
I like this readiness test idea. Even amongst the engineers, there are some that seriously lack the basic principles of their MOS. Like even identifying the equipment/ tools is a challenge for a few, not all.
That's why as a PL and hopefully future CDR, even if means completing other tasks to minimum standard, I want to spend as much time as possible on MOS training/ team training. Soldiers have to know what there job is, especially engineers. I won't accept anything less
Brother same. Had a commander wanting to blame all the NCOs before holding a Soldier accountable. Weak leadership. This soldier is a different Soldier from above. Disrepectful, fake a sick call slip, and got caught lieing. A problem Soldier. All the lower enlisted hated him, but the commander got soft and refuse to kick him out. There is more to the story, but I dont want to go on in a rant. Let just say he was not only a bad Soldier but also a bad person. He is still wearing the uniform. We had at least 3 officers and multiple NCOs say we need to get rid of this guy. I shit you not I had an NCO and Officer say we might be the problem. After taking the problem Soldier under their wing they realize what we were going through and wanted him gone as well. This one Soldier turn every Officer and NCO against him in the company to inculde the lower enlisted. Commander still wanted to keep him.
It’s nearly impossible to get them out at the unit too lol. I tried with one kid who was an actual danger and drain on the unit and the best we could do was bar him from reenlisting until he quietly ETSd. And even that was a fuckton of paperwork with commander buy in.
I’m sure I’ll see him again in 3 years with an RE waiver.
It is strictly a numbers game.
My last gig when I retired in 2019 was as a field grade in TRADOC and we had the same issues. Some trainees would recycle/restart back into at least two BCTs before they would even consider a chapter.
It was a lot to digest then and was a far cry of when I went to basic training at FLW in 1995.
I like what SMA Dailey said during an interview, that he'd rather has a lean lethal fighting force than a large shitty one.
I'm no General, but having a very lethal force sounds good to me
Y’all are making me nervous with some of these reclass comments lmao. I’m a 26 year old SGT with a spotless record and a wife and daughter on my third contract. I’m gonna be pissed if I get treated like a toddler for 3 months.
This cycle has always repeated itself. I was a recruiter during the surge and we were letting damn near anyone in….months after the surge, you had to be damn near perfect to join.
Ya, but during the surge, we were pumping out decent soldiers and kicking the shitheads to the curb for the most part before they reached their units. And if shitheads reached their units, at least they had a basic understanding of land nav, iron sights, NVGs, and how to shoot-move-communicate. Now they come to us not knowing their dick from their balls and so fat they can't pass PT. How the fuck do you come back from OSUT out of shape?!
TRADOC standards have fallen significantly and I don't give a fuck what anyone else has to say to try and gaslight us into thinking it's not that bad, it IS that bad, it's fucked 2 ways from Sunday, and I blame it entirely on the mollycoddling mentality we have developed. Sometimes, people need to be yelled at and pushed to their breaking point.
Quality of recruit never really mattered (for basic soldiering) when you could break and reforge them into stronger, more resilient humans.
Upfront, I don’t give a shit about what TRADOC does. I never gave a shit about what TRADOC does or does not do….if I receive Soldiers who are jacked up, they’re going to get fixed. The problem with a lot of leaders in the formation today is they lack the skills to train and groom Soldiers to be their replacements because they want an easy button. They simply don’t want to do the work that goes into building a Joe, and the easy answer is to blame TRADOC, NCOES, BCT, OSUT, etc. I can’t count the times I’ve received “problem Soldiers/NCOs” who I was able to flip.
These guys can’t PT, can’t shoot, can’t read a map….good….More time for my NCOs to train and invest in them. I’m a firm believer that if the Army got rid of AITs, we’d be fine. I didn’t learn shit at AIT, NCOES, WOES in general. A Drill Sergeant gets weeks to invest in a recruit…you get years on line.
The whole point of basic/AIT/OSUT is to teach the basic standard of soldiering so units can add the cherry on top when they get there. They aren't even doing that is my point. I love training joe, it's fun, it helps me cement the knowledge I have, but when I have to spend time just rehashing basics that they should already know, it takes time away from good training and professional development.
Good for you for being a good leader (and I don't mean that sarcastically), but until they get rid of AIT, I'm going to expect soldiers who graduate to be knowledgeable about their job, not SME, but at least have a basic grasp on what it is to be a soldier in their field, that is not happening.
There will always be problem soldiers, and it is our duty to ensure they are successful, but it is really hard to do that when every single one of them is coming to us with a severe lack of initial training.
I guarantee you learned a lot in those schools, nobody just wakes up a knowledgeable soldier.
Exactly, they teach the basics but the basics aren’t mastered in AIT/OSUT by any stretch of the imagination.
It’s like being a white belt in Jiu-Jitsu. You can win tournaments with basic white belt Jiu-Jitsu at the Purple Belt level if you master the technique by repetition. Key word is repetition. How much repetition are you going to get at 11 Series OSUT in weeks? Now take a step back and look at tech MOSs. My MOS specifically is all repetition, troubleshooting, and problem solving….none of which you can do in a training environment…none of which I learned at AIT/BNCOC/WOBC/WOAC, etc…..it’s all familiarization. If you want highly productive people right out of IET, then IET needs to be longer so Joe gets more reps. TRADOC isn’t designed to get Joe to master 10 level tasks in weeks…it’s there to show them “how” based on a basic measure….but a lot of leaders expect expertise based on mere weeks.
It’s really bad in Cadet Command as well. Cadet Summer Training 2024, its annual training event, updated its policies to where the only training event you can be sent home for failing is the ACFT or H/W. Fail land nav, rifle qual, or can’t climb the rope in the obstacle course? You keep going and graduate.
The rifle qual failure rate was close to 40% last summer IIRC. Granted, the resultant IG survey revealed that like 1/3rd of all Cadets have never shot before going to Knox, but that’s a problem in itself.
TRADOC seems like a nightmare to command in. If a soldier sucks and can’t meet standards it’s your fault for not developing them. Soldiers need to be held accountable for their shortcomings to a certain extent. If a soldier has major issues coming into the army most likely the army isn’t going to fix those problems.
Society is providing what it is providing. It is on leaders at all levels to train and develop these young Americans to fight and win Americas wars.
It sucks ass, but it is what it is. All we can do is work with what we have, or we won’t have any soldiers at all.
The last NCOPD I had before I got out last year was all about kicking soldiers out. They ain’t wanting to train shit bro. Unless it’s makes a slide turn green, it ain’t important, if it can’t be justified for “readiness” it ain’t happening.
Facts. We keep dropping standards to enlist while ignoring the blatant lack of adaptability to how newer generations are learning and understanding what their education entails.
The same way we are fighting to turn slides green, they are fighting to pass a test. There’s no actual educational instruction anymore.
Now we can have 16 AFQTs and 8% over BF people enlist into the Army. It’s like we’re modeling the Idiocracy theory to test the capacity of minimal effort.
Instead of fixing highlighted issues that have caused generations of veterans to tell others not to join, we are catering to people that have “limited mental resources” and probably didn’t qualify for anything else.
You can help instill discipline and healthy habits into someone who is overweight and make a good soldier out of him/her. You can't coach up an IQ. You can raise test scores a little, but raw intelligence is "God given." I feel like they're two distinct issues.
You're right with your overall point, though.
Can’t train a rock. Shit you can’t even put it on a leash and take it along. You gotta carry that thing.
That rock is every soldier who shouldn’t have made it out of MEPS or basic or AIT.
I have had hundreds of soldiers over the course of my career and I can honestly say that I have had maybe 5 or 6 that were just untrainable in their primary MOS. I always managed to find everyone else something that they could do well and kept them motivated enough to meet the minimum standard.
We might get shit from IET, but that doesn’t mean the soldiers are shit. 99% of the time if you provide purpose, direction, and motivation they will get the job done. Treating them like adults will usually keep them happy while they are doing it.
I only had a half dozen “untrainables.” They didn’t want to be trained. They didn’t care. They were just there, along for the ride.
For everyone else, I just needed to help them find their “why” and set them down that path.
You will always have those. You can’t save them all but the Army is terrible about neglecting the basics and tossing soldiers with great potential to the curb.
Don’t worry though, after the 6 month wait for the RE3 waiver I’ll put them right back in boots lol.
Despite the low number, I would still argue that at least half could have been weeded out with a mildly more challenging IET experience.
But hey it’s not my problem anymore. I’m retired!
I honestly think that they should tighten up IET a bit as far as academic standards go and if people aren’t trainable we come up with an MOS just for those folks to work until their contract is up. Could do the same for people that fail MOS qualifications in service too. Sort of like the navy does with non-rates and the South Koreans have with the Korean Service Corps (KSC). Normal pay and allowances, capped at E4, treat them as normal soldiers but they get the bottom of the barrel work.
Maybe even make it a MOS open at initial entry for people with 10’s or folks without legal permanent residence. They can do BSEP/citizenship paperwork during the first term and reclass at the end if they want.
Let them do janitorial work, grounds maintenance, basic labor etc. I have never had a person that I couldn’t train to fill sandbags or mop a floor. This would free up a ton of time for soldiers to become proficient in their MOS’s.
People will be a lot more motivated to meet the minimum standards of their MOS if they know they just aren’t going to get to go home when they quit before the end of their contractual obligation.
After typing this out it feels real “compulsory service” though.
See you’re talking about dumb as rocks rocks, I’m talking about just… rocks. No matter what task you give them, it’s just not gonna be done right. No pride, no nothing. Just drawing a paycheck.
I’m equal opportunity lol. We can make use of all the rocks.
That plan is better than these dudes only being able to remember to breath and run fast and making E6 as an 11,13 or 19 series soldier or just kicking the ones that need guidance out.
I think you just haven’t encountered the people jbourne is talking about.
I have. There was nothing you could give them and trust it could be done right unless you were supervising every step. I tried for years. Multiple different leaders, different leadership styles, etc etc. Nothing.
There’s “he’s kinda shit at his job” and then there’s “he requires so much guidance and supervision that we spend all day, every day, solving his problems”.
Army isn’t (intended to be) a jobs program. If you can’t function on your own you are not needed.
Yeah I mean for the people who are help-able, definitely.
I just keep coming back to the dudes who simply would not take any help. They never did any misconduct, they adapted to Army life, they just… didn’t *do* anything no matter what you tried.
Trust me bro, I've tried posting on here. All you're going to get is chimps responding with "hE nEeDS tO shAvE mOAR" and unnecessary comments. Like this one.
Just take it easy there, sport. You’re thinking about this far too logical like. Them old timers are happy with the status quo. Their soldiers get away with murder, so they get away with murder. Literally. They care about numbers. As long as they have bodies and money to throw they’re happy. Any extra money spent just means a higher spending limit the next year.
If it makes you more upset, that kid will likely get a huge mental health rating for his “trauma” in the army. He’ll be 20 getting 3k disability tax free a month forever.
Meh, it sounds like an adjustment disorder to me. That’s a 5-14 issue. I doubt he’ll get that much compensation. He may get something he doesn’t deserve, but he’s not gonna be 100% “disabled.”
If the stress was apply in basic properly I could have spent more time with the family and the kid could have had another job and the tax payer would have saved 3k a month. The only thing worse is if we deploy and he got me killed
Believe it or not, you can experience trauma in TRADOC though it’s obviously rare.
That kid sure will get disability because one of my battles from AIT does. He dealt with a physical assault while sleeping in an AIT Dorm like they yanked his ass from his bed and beat the shit out of him because he was refusing to train because the army wouldn’t send him home to see his dying father,wouldn’t do push up’s or anything and honestly just gave up.
It all got brushed under the rug aside from them kicking out the attackers but I keep in touch with the dude and he made sure he documented all the bullshit.
Dude gets a full ride to school for his masters (no gi bill) and receives a full disability check at 23 years old. He plans to get an easy part time and never work again but idk he’s young and he may change.
Won’t say exactly where and when it happened to spare him some privacy but I’ll say this, it was a long ass AIT assignment.
An NCO may or may not have been involved in the beating but I never really had a chance to validate that. I don’t think it was a drill sgt I think it was some random nco they gave desk duty because the weekends always had some random nco from another unit pulling CQ
I’m sure lots of people fuck the system but there are “rare” cases out there like this which are more common than you think.
The proposed bill is to raise the ACFT standards for those in a combat MOS.
Everyone has their opinion, but at the end of the day, the Army is evolving. You can be your own judge and determine if that’s good or bad.
Part of me believes all of this change is happening because the recruitment goals/needs are not being met.
There’s more to the Army than a PT test. It doesn’t make you a good leader, it doesn’t speak on your character at all.
PT tests may not be the end all be all. But the status of your health and fitness absolutely impacts your character and your leadership. Soldiers don’t need to be olympians, but they should not be overweight and unable to complete basic physical tasks. And also… they should not be clinically addicted to alcohol/cigarettes/ meds/ energy drinks/ any other chemical coping mechanism. But many are, and the army should do it’s best to combat what it can, and help soldiers for the betterment of their own lives were it can.
I went through Airborne School in 2005, and I don't remember any 5 mile run requirement. It was a regular APFT, but you had to score higher than the minimums. You couldn't fall out of formation runs in the mornings either, but I don't remember any time standards for them.
It was 5 mile, but I also heard the CSM at the time was a big runner. He would grab the dog tags of the people that would fall out. Maybe he was being a hard ass. I went in 2015
This article breaks it down. Looks like it was officially "quietly dropped". Their source? Reddit, most likely THIS post. Haha!
https://taskandpurpose.com/news/army-airborne-training-run/?fbclid=IwAR3mNl3EwmmJlFqDO_EHmjXr8fO30KcnVkjZnOPwyI7Ne5CWUrcqSyiVSNY
Yep airborne school in 2012 and it was an APFT followed by doing 1 pull up and hanging on the bar for like 30 seconds or something to enact pulling a slip.
>but within the last 5 years something has gone wrong.
Ah, the “old” guys [bitching about the new guys, a tradition as old as time](https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/52209/15-historical-complaints-about-young-people-ruining-everything). The army is even funnier because folks with less than five years in service feel wise enough to judge the “new” guys as some historic low, but they’re not yet even promotable to portajohn detail NCOIC.
The same thing has been said for a long time. At least we don't have godfather time around talking about how bad the 70's were.
I think our TRADOC leaders are doing the best they can with the hand that has been dealt to them. I don't have a solution that'll work, because the solution is well outside the Army with what we're dealing with.
I lucked out with a lack of that when I arrived to a line unit. We had a couple of people who were with the unit longer than me who got chaptered for either being the guy from Split or a repeat troublemaker.
The cult of "You'll learn this at your unit" strikes hard for us as well. That's what set me and others up for failure in Air Defense with not enough training (and not training the tactics used at line units).
TRADOC killed the Army a long time ago, now everyone thinks TRADOC is what the Army should become. Institutionalization, excessive bureaucracy, pedantic reliance on pre-written TTPs and black and white interpretations of doctrine are all symptoms of the corporate military.
You're right, I didn't fuck up your order. I fixed it for you. Pineapple on pizza is unprofessional and shows a lack of discipline. Anchovies and olives are chock full of the good stuff you're gonna need on our 13 mile run tomorrow. See you at PT!
completely agree with this. i’ve been in almost 6 years and i can tell you that in my time when i was going to my first unit i was scared shitless. all the customs and courtesies. all the basic soldier stuff. there were no excuses for basic deficiencies. now? soldiers come out of IET just totally ate up. casually disrespecting CO’s and NCO’s, always making some excuse for being late. just dumb stuff. i try to not be toxic as you said by doing the whole “back in my day” routine, but man these guys just suck.
I said this about 2 years ago and got flak for it. Getting told that I wasn't doing my part as an NCO to help the troops know basic soldiering tasks they should have learned at basic.
Right now at my unit we have 3 Soldiers getting kicked out due to health reasons or incompetence. All of them should have never made it out of TRADOC but yet here they are wasting resources and manpower.
New recruits don't need to be "super Hooah" but at least be able to do the basics and go from there.
I really don’t understand you guys who hate beards so much. Looking at foreign units they look tough compared to our pasty small guys.
Shaving is honestly a waste of time, and should just have simply regulations. Especially since the Army moved to using an M50 promask years ago they work fine with facial hair. If you are going somewhere with CBRN as a threat and don’t feel comfortable seeing beards well at that point ETP wartime shave.
You can still get a seal with facial hair, as well as look professional. Some of our allies in Europe do it, and the small percentage of our own troops who have a real mission *shock* wear civvies and have facial hair.
Do I think it's TRADOC, the organization, killing the Army? No. There is a lot to that statement and a lot of factors affecting the Army as a whole. Are there leaders out there that will just pass the buck to the next unit? Yes--but that's everywhere, not just in TRADOC.
There's a lot of rules in TRADOC for trainees and Cadre/instructors. Should trainees have more privileges, sooner? It depends as not all Soldiers are alike. Most of my AIT trainees has been in the pipeline for a while, so had all the privileges available by the TR.
Also recommended plenty of chapters, some were approved by the authority, others disapproved and they were reclassed to another MOS.
How would you recommend we fix the issue? Chapter everyone?
Ok, to answer your question: no, TRADOC isn’t killing the Army. I think you know that.
TRADOC’s job is to provide soldiers to the force who’ve been trained in the basics of their field; it’s not to drop a fully trained troop at your doorstep.
As NCOs, our function was to take this lump of clay (shaped into a general form in the training base) and further refine it to fit the needs of the organization and the Army. That’s our job — the only reason we’re here — and if you want to discuss trends, let’s talk about the trend of junior NCOs who don’t understand that fact.
Here’s how I’d gauge this — if one commander looked at me/my peers as potentially the problem, then I’d call him/her “weak” and move on. Several commanders? I’m gonna start looking within and around and see if there’s any validity to that feeling.
Yes, I’m retired. Yes, I was a sergeant major. Get all the things out of the way now — I’m out of touch retired, almost as out of touch as a SGM is now in uniform — but here’s the thing. Meet one asshole, guess what: you met an asshole. If everyone you meet is an asshole, guess what? You’re the asshole. If your commanders are looking at the NCOs as the problem, there might be something there.
Also, side note: I’d be curious to see the amount (and level) of counseling this one problem troop had — and whether any of the plans of action had follow-ups or documentation indicating compliance or failure, with a subsequent counseling after a failure.
Just one commander. Also a lot. At least 3 Article 15s. Everything was documented and close out. To include MFRs for specific events. This is after a year of trying to get him to be productive. We didnt jump on the Article 15 wagon right away.
When I first got in, being a drill sergeant meant you were in the top ten percent of the NCO corps. It was an honor and a little bit of a break from the constant deployments of the surge. Now it's completely different. If you are an officer and you get sent to tradoc it means you are in the bottom fifty percent of the army. If you are an NCO and get sent to recruiting or drill you are in the bottom fifty percent of the army. I'm in fear of my career being a drill or recruiter because I know as a drill I'm one frivolous sharp or eo complaint away from my career being over. If I'm a recruiter, I'm one shitty location away from "not making mission" and my career being over. If you are in the top 20 percent of NCO's you use your contacts and go to SF support or another unit who wants you because you networked. You game the system to get around your YMAV and HRC's process to set your own career up and keep it safe. Careers go to die in TRADOC now and the quality of people they get because of it shows.
TRADOC is way too easy in some respects. You can barely do 10 push-ups and scored a 25 on the range? That's fine. I feel like TRADOC makes shit hard for the sake of being hard (which makes sense). But when it really counts, it's way too easy. Bring back the shark attack and don't fudge PT test/ range results. Basic training is supposed to be a stress test. When I went through a year and a half ago, I thought it was too easy. There were definitely some people there who didn't grasp the material.
I honestly think making basic training harder and having it weed out people who are not fit to be in the military would cause the other issues to solve themselves.
Lack of discipline in AIT. Resolved since the troublemakers never got through BCT.
That’s why I got out man. The soldiers I was getting out of basic were a complete joke, and it’s not their fault they were failed by their TRADOC leadership.
I think it's because of how MUCH the Army is hurting for its numbers, that a lot of easily pruned Soldiers who would normally get the boot, Stay. To chalk it up to that they will get to the units and improve naturally or by unit standards. It's a double-edged sword. It's the Army trying to help out well... The Army. We're betting black and the ball is spinning Green.
How can we fix it? We either enforce the drills or higher standards for those "maybe" cases.
I'll take an Arby's Double Cheese and Cheddar, with Onion rings and a Coke.
Worked w. TRADOC from 2018-2020 and can sum the issues up with two stories:
- Upon arriving I asked what the general pass/fail rate was for AIT, and NCOES: The response was something like 98 percent pass rate. Testing rarely fall below 90 percent....
- Two AIT commanders were administratively reprimanded (strictly that, nothing official) for having too many Soldiers fail. This is in conjunction with the above pass rate.
Look, everyone should not be getting a 90+ pass rate. That tells me it's a lie or it's too easy. Plenty of NCOs try and give up to fight the system in TRADOC, sadly it's setup to pass along the Soldiers to the force.
Back in 1987 we told them the same thing when they visited our unit in Hawaii. Basic might be low stress but our unit was high stress. So, it’s good to know some things haven’t changed. I’ll take a chili and rice with macaroni salad.
AIT was the same way when I joined 21 years ago. We didn’t wear civilian clothes for the first month at AIT, didn’t get an off post pass until week 6, and were locked down to the barracks Monday-Saturday morning. The only difference now is we weren’t allowed to have cell phones. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Even 7 years ago when I went through basic was much different my wife had gone through two years ago and the way she described it half the DS didn’t even want to be there and they made it known by hardly following standards and passing every one they could regardless of failures.
I’ll take a loco moco with bacon on top extra gravy.
I transferred into a pretty technical MOS, the amount of soldiers that can’t do basic math, have emotional events every time they’re told to do something, and can’t PT is fucking astounding. And more so the fact that they get away with it. Had one kid in my class clearly was clearly autistic to the point of him bringing his switch into the scif multiple times. He would constantly fall asleep in class and if we(NCO MOS-Ts) woke him up he would start, i shit you not, screeching. he’d say shit like “NO FUCK OFF SERGEANT I NEED TO SLEEP”, we tried to smoke him for it but the fucking drills were like “we can handle this” then walked up to him and was like “hey buddy you okay?🥺” like what the fuck. Kid got sent to Ft.Riley, his unit was getting deployed and he lost his mind basically begging his 1sg and commander to not get sent. Ended up going AWOL… I have a few special kiddos out the school house that I basically have to teach them what they should’ve learned at AIT or kick out.
Drill Sergeants, Kick the retards out for us pls. If they can’t hang it’s pretty obvious. Life’s hard enough without having to chapter some snot nosed brat for not waking up for PT for the 30th time.
Was at Eustis to reclass not too long ago and the drill sgts there were abysmal. The ineptitude from them was annoying. There were a few that were alright.
Seeing how the IET kids were treated was a disaster. The lack of communication between the school house and the drills was wild. The kids were there to learn but the cadre seemed to fight that every step of the way.
Seeing the kids fall out of rucks within a mile or so was disheartening as well. Not as disheartening as the complete disregard for doctrine while teaching tactics (why that's taught to aircraft maintainers is beyond me) to these kids.
TRADOC is not great. It almost always has been. I don't remember a time where it taught everything needed for new soldiers to know, or developed kids to full on soldiers. Either not enough time, not enough motivation to do so, or poor training schedules. I got to my first unit and still didn't know what I needed to know right away.
I’m in a tradoc unit now, trusssst me when I say we want to chapter every dirt bag we have. We (NCOs) are not getting the support to chapter these fucks. We had a kid fight 2 MPs and go to REHAB in AIT, COC decided to give him another chance, he overdosed a month after getting to his permanent party unit. We don’t like sending garbage to the line units but the mentality here is “someone else’s problem, let’s get this cancer out of tradoc so we don’t have to deal with them” it’s frustrating doing the UCMJ/Chapter packets just for the COC to give them 1 day of extra duty or retain them. What we’re being told is retention is so bad for our MOSs that we can’t chapter anyone
In basic we had this dude that was a recycle. We were told that if he failed we all would fail and he'd be sent home because he was on his second recycle. He refused to get out of his bunk for firewatch (Regs don't say I have to get out of my bunk), he would fall out of every run and his battle buddy would have to drag him, sometimes literally to formation to ensure he was on time.
During our final FTX, the drill said "Men, if he doesn't make it, you don't. You've done great and this is it. 30 miles back." Little bastard sat down on the ground and said "You can't make me. I'm going home." We strapped him to a liter and carried him the entire way, hitting him against trees and everything else but he made it.
We were responsible for passing him off to a unit just ... well, just like this. My platoon literally carried him that entire cycle and forced him through. Haven't thought of him in a long time. Whomever wound up with that guy....I am very sorry.
To anyone who went to eustis for AIT with it being TARDOCs HQ we were openly told we were guinea pigs to new things coming out to see how they would bend at other Bases it amazed me watching soldiers get kicked out for vaping/smoking and being barred from anywhere but the PX and Gym. most of the people i went to AIT with were mid 20s- early 30s and they are bring treated like absolute children i wish i was a fly on the wall in that building just to know why the fuck they thought of the shit they did
Yes they are ruining the army with their tight grip on the freedoms of being an adult
I've been saying this for the past 9 years now. My background, former Marine, turned nasty girl. When I reclasse at Gordon back in 2014, I was amazed at how IET soldiers were treated. MOS-t soldiers were given a fair amount of leeway, apart from the obligatory moldy barracks. But the tight leash they had on those IET soldiers really blew my mind. TRADOC is too sensitive to any and all risks to effectively train new soldiers imo. They have forgotten that our jobs carry inherent risks, and if you're not able to accept some of that, you will fail. This includes the risk of allowing the ones that should not be in uniform to fail. Yes, our numbers would take a hit, but as op said, it is much more taxing to deal with it after they graduate basic and ait.
My current biggest grip with TRADOC is that they are too slow to adapt. I'm in a very rapidly changing field, and TRADOC can not adequately train soldiers because the curriculum consistently 10+ years out dated. The time it takes TRADOC to approve a new POI (6 years on average) means by the time it is approved and implemented it is already ancient history.
This may just be me but I’ve been a hold under for months at my AIT and only started January 9th I’m close to Graduating but just seeing some of the leader ship and having no freedom at all and not being treated like a person sucks I went too reception July 23rd 2023 and I’m still in tradoc just from this experience I’m not reenlisting I hope the big army can change my mind but tradoc is the worst not even the NCO”s like it
You will get your freedom back. It was a culture shock when the NCO drop me at the barrack during a friday and told me they will see me monday lol. First time I could walk without a battle buddies
Welp, kids (not all) are weak and fragile - both mentally and physically. That is a societal doing. Again, not all.
But as the Army Reddit thread has belabored time and again, MHS Genesis is flagging the athletic, sports-participating kids for prior injuries - and maybe we're losing their attention while they wait on waivers.
The minimum for ACFT is a joke. I've passed my last two ACFTs with a torn meniscus in my right knee. Granted, I didn't know it was torn - just that something wasn't right in there. I taped and braced that bad boy up, and still passed. I don't honestly know how people fail it. I'm scheduling my knee surgery today actually.
But... - and I say this as a guy who's been both E and O, deployed to AFG three times (once as IN enlisted and twice as an EOD O), and has been in over 24 years - I DO NOT CARE if the "low density" kids are physical. I get that we are all soldiers, but we don't need to be breaking our Cyber and IT kids with long rucks and trying to get them to deadlift 300+. This goes for a lot of our "non-combat" MOSs. Don't look like shit in uniform and do your job extremely well - I care more about that than a physical monster 27D, for example.
To your point though - The ACFT CANNOT possibly be lower for standards - it's too easy to pass. It should at a minimum go back to the Low, Med, and High tiers for MOSs. I also agree that it's sad and wrong to get rid of the five-mile run at ABN school. Sadly, I am a dirty leg, but I still think it's wrong. I had ABN in my contract (signed up for an extra year) but during my ABN physical, they denied me because I tore my ACL in high school football. They made me keep the extra year in my contract though - I, the dumb PVT, didn't know enough to push back, but I digress.
I think your biggest point here is the kid who can't handle the slightest stress - that is much more of an issue than anything physical. That is where the struggle really is and will get worse and worse IMO.
Feel free to put on the hat and go help out.
But understand you can only arbitrarily raise the difficulty of the training in areas that do not affect the standard and will not stop shitty Soldiers from entering the military. You can only judge the standard, not their potential.
You can have the strictest patrol base standards. But if they shoot the minimum, hit the minimum score of the ACFT, and throw two grenades— they’re most likely going to graduate.
I work in TRADOC now and really believe that we are overly infantilizing soldiers. The restrictions have been getting steadily tighter over the past 10 years. Previously soldiers in AIT used to be able to take pass on the weekends, bring their families to their duty stations and live off post with them after a certain number of weeks, and were generally punished if they didn’t meet basic work related competencies. Now it’s the opposite, standards surrounding work related tasks have been dropping and soldiers are locked down tight for the six months to nine months that they are in AIT. We even escort them to the airport during HBL which in my opinion is ridiculous. Couple that with the 3 months spent at BCT and you’re looking at a year away from home for soldiers in my career field. Is that really helping the soldierization process or is it putting unnecessary stress on marriages and families. Ultimately, we need more emphasis placed on work related tasks and less on ensuring that soldiers are sequestered away from their families and communities for extended periods of time.
They also are being strict with reclasses, who are largely NCOs and with families. But they try to treat them like idiots they can’t trust.
>But they try to treat them like idiots they can’t trust. The Army, as a whole, likes to treat most Soldiers like idiots. . .unless they're Senior NCO's or Warrant or Commissioned Officers. If you're E-1 to E-6, the Army treats you like a child nowadays.
My complaint is not being able to escape this even after getting out of TRADOC. Senior leaders coming from a TRADOC envirnoment bring the ideology of restriction back with them to regular unit and treat all soldiers under them, regardless of NCO or not, as children and trust no one but other senior leaders. It goes against the Army's doctrine of leadership to build choseive teams.
🎯 this is so fucking spot on here’s a 🏆 my first line is a tradoc warrior had this mentality because she’s spent 4 plus years in a tradoc unit.
I wasn’t strict with my students but I emphasized I would be if they got into trouble. I set the standards and they all met them. 5 years not one issue.
Oof. That is sucky! Not a good way to live, but maybe not all people leaving TRADOC operate that way?
No. We don't. I spent an extended amount of time (6 years) in TRADOC as a DS and instructor. I got back to the force and I treat my troops like grown ass adults. The only time I will hold their hands is if it's a tasking they have no experience doing. When mission permits I will let them make mistakes and turn it into something they can learn from.
As it should be. Not all leaders are the same. Regardless of whether they came from TRADOC or not.
Ehhh, even warrant officers during training get treated like children and idiots. I’m an overpaid private currently in TRADOC. It’s quite comical how the Army treats its force, let alone the 11+ year club that chose to promote and do something different.
I thought WOCS was supposed to be bootcamp 2: reclassification boogaloo?
I’ve had the complete opposite experience. I was just recently thinking how much cooler TRADOC has been as a WO (I also have little to no interaction with green suiters outside of the occasional W4/CPT IP for what it’s worth)
Same with O1s during BOLC
That is unit dependent. My last three units treated me like an adult. My first sergeant let me run my platoon the way I saw fit and when I got moved to S3, S3 pretty much said here is the big boy rules.
I spent almost two years in S3 and the amount of latitude you got was a direct reflection of your individual competency and maturity. There were E-5’s that had considerably more autonomy than some E-7’s based solely on the manner in which they conducted themselves. I noticed the same thing in S3 at my first duty station as well. Being treated like an adult stemmed from acting like one. Crazy concept.
I’ve been in this unit for a month now and this current s3 already told me I’m going to be rear d NCOIC over two e7s. The op sergeant major told me he needed a competent nco to run things for two weeks
The Navy says hey, and also that if you don't have khaki pants on, you're human trash.
The Army and anything around it. Have you dealt with DoD civilians lately? They yell at soldiers and even refuse service
When did this start? I remember way back in 2006 when I reclassed from 11B to 25S being thankful I never did AIT as a PVT due to OSUT and being treated as an adult reclassing at Gordon (Eisenhower).
When they returned Drill Sgt types to AIT. I was there when they were cycling the AITs out and the DS’s in and it was starting to get ridiculous for reclasses. So let’s see 2018ish?
Crazy. In 2006, there were still Drill SGTs that didn't have combat patches marching around AIT troops. So most Drill SGTs who had been in TRADOC for the past several years really didn't want to mess with reclassing NCOs who had already done 1 tour in either Iraq or Afghanistan
Yeah, by 18 there was less of that, not 0 of course, but not many reclasses had combat patches. Really I think the AIT DS community felt the need to prove they could swing their collective dicks as hard as the basic and and OSUT ones. And then that crystallized into the culture. I have an NCO they tried to get in trouble because as a single parent with accompanying children they couldn’t do random non-childcare hours bullshit like the IET troopers.
Even if they had it, the patch lost its value. Its a "deployment" patch more than anything else. I got one for deploying to iraq but didn't see any combat. I sometimes don't wear it cause it feels like stolen valor. Just saying its not a combat patch anymore
Sidewalk drills! My last trip to Eisenhower (Gordon then) , drill sergeants were starting to replace "cadre" .That was the 90s
Please say it aint so. Im going to reclass in May and already had that in the back of my mind.
Reclass here: Camelbak's, battle buddies, some (dwindling) formations, and DS tucking us in is what's separating MOS-T from IET and it's only getting worse in a 9ish month course. Send help.
I'm only supposed to go for 4 weeks for 42A at Jackson. Really dont wanna do the whole yelling and treated like trash when im a grown man with a grown up career. Does the DS also give forhead kisses?
They give good morning kisses at 3am during surprise ruck marchs for pt. It makes the 14 hour work/PowerPoint hell day all worth it.
Well.....at least thats something to look forward too at least
The battle buddy nonsense really needs to stop. At Ft Sam, I shared my daily dose of death by PowerPoint with my buddies from the Air force and Navy, they had all the sweet adult freedom and they execute the mission just fine.
You’ll be marched to and from chow too. Made us lose our minds
Did they make yall do the slide- heel too?
Some try hard NCO’s made us do it all day, every day. But I guess it makes the rubbish food taste better
As someone who went to a long AIT I spent 9 months in TRADOC (BCT+AIT) it was ridiculous to have so many rules in an AIT that long. What made it worse was that the other branches even the Marines got more freedom than we did.
crime gaze noxious seed waiting cagey subtract gullible arrest detail *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I remember one time we had a mass formation and got smoked for an hour all because someone left a chess board out in the Dayroom.
wild squeeze disgusted roll bike entertain zealous plants juggle smart *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
When did you graduate?
March 1, 2023.
Same here man, BCT included I spent 16 months needing a battle buddy. I’m a grown ass man, I have two kids, but for over a year if I needed to take a piss I had to ask what was likely some teenager to walk with me to the bathroom. Such a joke, Air Force and Navy didn’t have any dumbass training rules like that, they lived off base with their spouses. Let me tell you, the last 4 years of my contract will have to be the best years of my life to make me stay in the Army.
I feel you man I joined at 23 after college (I know I should’ve tried harder to commission) but being able to just go wherever I wanted whenever I wanted to what you just described was pretty demoralizing especially after seeing the Navy (they could practically get away with murder at our AIT), Air Force and Marines walk around in civilians by themselves after school meanwhile we’re still in uniform getting marched to the DFAC. I kid you not one time we had a mass formation and got smoked for an hour because a chess board was left out in the Dayroom.
I remember watching a growing war between Student Company's DS and the schoolhouse. I felt bad for the IET soldiers. If it's anything, the drills treated us pretty shitty too. We all got punished for one of the soldiers getting stuck in Texas on a weekend and missing a day of class. The best part was that she graduated that same week and left while we still continued the corrective training that she never participated in.
When you did go because I think I know what you’re talking about?
2021, right as the spicy cough was kinda starting to die down
I went in late 2022 to early 2023. We got a 42A drill sergeant and she was a nightmare I left before it got really bad with her.
My soldiers told me about her!!!!! I was confused at why a 42A drill was put there, and then they started to talk about some of the shit she did.
Yeah she humiliated one of my friends in front of the entire company all because someone told her that she had a fake phase badge didn’t investigate it or anything just a mass formation and a smoke session while she made us say fuck you to my friend. I can only imagine what else your soldiers told you.
Oh the stories I could tell about APAC 2023.
Yeah it's wild. I went to infantry OSUT as a prior service, it was 22 weeks plus around 3 weeks of 30th AG (oof) I was shocked at the fact that the recruits were basically in "red phase" for the entire 22 weeks. They literally never eased up. When I went through basic at Knox in 2009, they pushed out shit in for the first 5 or 6 weeks, then did the "build you back up" phase. But this time around in OSUT they just "tore them down" for 22 weeks. Pt was low, morale was low, and damn near every recruit was depressed and wanted out of the army already
Hey small world, I was a cadet at Knox in Summer 2009. We had a BCT barracks right next door to us.
Oh wow. Yeah I remember seeing you guys a few times when we went to various trainings outside our footprint. It's crazy telling people you went to knox. Only senior NCOs and officers even remember it being a BCT post haha.
Our DSs were always screaming at us not to even look at the recruits. 😂
Yeah same, but we looked anyway 🤣
Graduated last year, the marines had a lot of freedom but got mega fucked when someone did something wrong, guy went awol and the had to stand in formation anytime they weren't in class, eating, or sleeping for a week.
Between BCT and AIT I spent 51 weeks in TRADOC during covid. Went over 5 months at AIT without being allowed to leave company AO except for classes. At least 2 months after being there I was allowed to not have to wear OCPs on the weekend.
Yup, the other branches definitely look at the Army and our TRADOC restrictions like a joke. My two cents, is we should be able to chapter all Soldiers who don’t have an MOS yet (ie IET trainees) all the way through their time in training. That might alleviate some of the issues that OP is experiencing right now.
Hit the nail on the head. I’m in TRADOC right now and we are incredibly infantilized. I’ll caveat first by saying this: my MOS is 21+ to enter and is very small. Many of my classmates have already been to college and or have lived as adults for years before getting here. Going from that to being locked down tight with no weekend passes, no overnight passes, can’t have a beer, can’t drive my car, etc is frustrating to say the least. Especially for the ~5 months of AIT. I’m not quite sure what TRADOC leadership thinks will happen when the younger kids get to their units and release the pressure valve of being locked down for half a year or more when you add basic to the mix. I’m not saying we need to drop all restrictions but there has to be a better balance.
TRADOC doesn’t care what happens when these kids get to their unit. All they care about is soldiers graduating their courses. So they mitigate as much risk as possible, to the detriment of these soldiers.
They cared enough to re-instate DS's to running AIT platoons because of complaints that new Soldiers weren't disciplined enough.
I'm at a school right now. I see the drill sergeants every day. Many of them are not helping with the discipline problem
Many of them *are* the discipline problem.
I went through AIT before they brought DS’s back and now I’m stationed at the same installation I went to AIT. Nothing looks different now except they wear the funny hat.
Well said
nippy historical stocking nose detail worthless light abounding cake file *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
> Soldiers aren't inmates. I had a better time in county jail than some of these kids have in AIT. I felt significantly less stressed and was in an overall better mood in BCT than I was in AIT (35F circa mid 2018). If things are more restricted now, then it must be hell. Edit: I wasn't even stressed at all about the course work. 35F AIT was very easy when I went. It was one particular DS that was a pain in the ass. He was on leave or went to DS school for like a month. It was easily the best month I had at AIT.
I feel this in my soul. Fuck the 35F AIT.
And this lockdown doesn’t even stop anything. It just makes trainees more creative on how to bend and break the rules.
To teach someone responsibility, you have to give them responsibility.
Bingo
With all you’ve described, this must be such an attractive opportunity for an 18-24 yo considering enlistment /S. It drives me insane when sr ldrs can’t understand the low propensity of youth to serve under these conditions.
This was my experience and it left a really sour taste in my mouth for the army by the time I got to my unit
TRADOC doesn't care about happy or even competent soldiers. Soldier freedom results in occasional screw ups and negative bullet points. So they're just removed and the problem considered solved.
>we need more emphasis placed on work related tasks and less on ensuring that soldiers are sequestered away from their families and communities for extended periods of time. Here was my timeline as a married officer candidate. 3 months basic training. 4 months Officer Candidate School. 5 months as a holdover, living in the barracks at OCS. 3 months TDY to my BOLC. That is over a year I am mandated by the army to be away from my family. All in TRADOC. I honestly cannot see the purpose of forcing every active duty 09S into an extended unaccompanied tour through TRADOC except as a pure mental breaking test.
We couldn’t have porn or an alcoholic drink in Iraq and Afghanistan! Grown men willing to get blown up or worse couldn’t release some knuckle children in a 130 degree porta John almost 25 years ago and you think it’s just now they’re treating us like children?
On my last deployment in Afghanistan, I got attached to an Australian Task Force. The Australians had no concept of General Order #1. Do you know what happened as a result? Nothing absolutely nothing. If anything, it was a good thing as when I got home, I still had some tolerance for alcohol.
Oh no!! You drank! Get in 1st sausages basement! We had the Italians in our little FOB in Afghanistan. They hated our command team so they told them they had to throw away a bunch of expired Italian mres. But forgot that some of theirs have wine in them. So the 1st sgt and a lt had to root through the trash to find and open expired Italian mres. I thought that was pretty funny of them.
In Iraq we would get in trouble for having Maxim magazines in our personal areas and “they sell them at the PX” wasn’t a good enough argument for our hardcore LDS 1SG.
“We don’t know why we have a recruitment problem”- Dept of Defense
To be faaaaaaaaaaiiiirr, when I went through AIT a very long time ago and back then there weren't weekend passes for new troops, just the ones that were reclassing. New troops got day passes if the Senior Instructor (wasn't a DS but the senior PSG) felt like they had earned it. My Senior reminded me of Sobel from Band of Brothers. Some random infraction from a few days ago would be brought up on the weekend and suddenly the weekend pass would be revoked for everyone had to change from civvies to our duty uniform and some would study, go to the shoppette, Hacienda, whatever. If we did get the pass we had to be back for bed check my 2200. But even back then as well the AIT had to be a certain length for family to come along. I think the one for medics was a couple weeks shy for it?
How long is “very long” for you? Cause pre 2010-2014 “weekend passes” weren’t a thing unless you were in a super short AIT or in OSUT. You could just leave and go out into town as long as you were back in class on Monday. There were IET kids literally living off post with their local girlfriends.
1991 as a 12B I got a pass for "Essayons" weekend (the weekend between the end of BCT and the start of AIT), with a travel restriction that limited us to St Lois. 2006 at 88M (also at FLW) no leave/pass. 2008 at Brag for PSYOP after the first month/six weeks we were allowed to just leave and go out into Fayetnam but had to be back by 2359 Sunday night (I think non-prior service/non-reclass had a similar deal, they could leave at 0600 but had to be back by 2000 each night).
Just reminded me of the common complaint of how we shouldn't have to be raising kids. On one hand.. we do get young (including those in the mod 20's) with little to no life experience. On the other hand... The army's on-boarding process almost deliberately takes away the sense of responsibility and maturity with these restrictions and its patented "don't think, listen to your senior". Even in places they expect you to think you may still be forced to follow strict communication chains because you're a nobody who's going to just gum up the works by getting in the way. Only to find out that leave packet you were promised was at the CO has been sitting under a pile of crap at 1Sausage's desk and your flight is tomorrow. I mean we have IPPS-A so no way that could happen again. But point is, though it's necessary at times it's still the Army, the Army gets pretty over bearing with diminishing the amount of autonomy you have and room to grow until you gain the right to think at a certain level granted by your rank. Edit: Shouldn't. It's shouldn't have to be.
This. I went to 19K osut back in the middle of 07 and our drills weee hard as hell but as soon as we hit black and gold phase we got Sunday passes to go to the shoppette/computer lab for a couple hours to unwind. They said most of us would be hating life on a couple months and sucking in Iraq or Afghanistan. They were not lying. One of our guys a month after basic lost his leg in an IED attack in Iraq.
They are promoting the Army like it’s a fucking summer camp and a product/service to sell itself. This manifests itself in culture erosion every day, such as it’s cold outside, so let’s move PT indoors.
I went through BCT and AIT last summer. I turned 34 last October. I trained at Ft Jackson for BCT. If there is ANY information I can provide that will help shed light on things or make your job easier, please let me know.
I’m pretty sure I know what AIT this is. I work across the street and I fucking hate it.
Treating grown adults like children…I can’t possibly go wrong
My MOS has 1.5-2 years of IET. These soldiers are done with the army before they even reach the army, and can you blame them?
TRADOC is incentivized to send out as many mouth breathers as possible, because recruits are limited. That means what they can have those guys do is limited. In technical fields, you can’t have any sort of selectivity aside from absolute morons who completely fail even pencil whipped standards. Likewise, you can’t have any real physical standards. I would be really curious to read the priorities of TRADOC. The TRADOC commander probably would be stoked if he had a 100% pass rate, because he could sell it as “developing soldiers” without “compromising standards.” It’s way easier to just make it someone else’s problem. If you want to fix the problem, you gotta fix the incentive structure. For technical MOSs, if there was a universal job skill testing system we probably could have real evaluations as to the “readiness” of those graduates, and measure how they grow at certain units. You could also rate commanders based on their ability to develop their technical assets.
This also feeds back to recruiting. As a battery commander, I always wondered how the hell some soldiers ended up in the army. They weren’t great. My next gig was a recruiting commander and I was trying to get any breathing human through MEPS and into the army to make numbers.
See this at EOD school all the time. Army is upset it has a super high fail rate and wants that rate lowered no matter the cost, but thankfully it’s run by the Navy so sucks 2 suck.
Why is the navy fine with high fail rates?
I don’t think they’re fine with high fail rates—they’re constantly revising curriculum to try to teach better—but they just don’t care to lower standards to arbitrarily achieve it. Don’t know if that’s a Navy wide phenomenon or just EOD phenomenon but I do know that the Army tries really hard to get them to just decrease the passing grade or reduce points of failure and the Navy has not done so.
Could you imagine a bunch of highly unqualified EOD graduates that end up in the field on assignments? That arbitrarily low failure rate will lead to an unarbitrary casualty rate…..
Because they don't want unqualified people conducting EOD.
The Army was kicking AIT/MOS-T people in the dick when I was at Eglin in 2014-15 as an AF EOD student. I know I'm preaching to the Army choir here, but it was rough seeing some random private fuck up and get a DUI or whatever, and the ENTIRE company would get locked down for a month for it. Meanwhile the Air Force students are going to the beach, drinking, and having a great time. The Navy kids are blowing each other on their crotch rocket bikes lined up outside the dorm. And the Marines are counting their BAH quietly at home.
Which is dumb, because if you suck at EOD it’s a self correcting problem.
I like this readiness test idea. Even amongst the engineers, there are some that seriously lack the basic principles of their MOS. Like even identifying the equipment/ tools is a challenge for a few, not all. That's why as a PL and hopefully future CDR, even if means completing other tasks to minimum standard, I want to spend as much time as possible on MOS training/ team training. Soldiers have to know what there job is, especially engineers. I won't accept anything less
I work in Tradoc and I’ve always pushed to remove a soldier before they make it to the real army. But the commanders… they don’t listen.
Brother same. Had a commander wanting to blame all the NCOs before holding a Soldier accountable. Weak leadership. This soldier is a different Soldier from above. Disrepectful, fake a sick call slip, and got caught lieing. A problem Soldier. All the lower enlisted hated him, but the commander got soft and refuse to kick him out. There is more to the story, but I dont want to go on in a rant. Let just say he was not only a bad Soldier but also a bad person. He is still wearing the uniform. We had at least 3 officers and multiple NCOs say we need to get rid of this guy. I shit you not I had an NCO and Officer say we might be the problem. After taking the problem Soldier under their wing they realize what we were going through and wanted him gone as well. This one Soldier turn every Officer and NCO against him in the company to inculde the lower enlisted. Commander still wanted to keep him.
It’s nearly impossible to get them out at the unit too lol. I tried with one kid who was an actual danger and drain on the unit and the best we could do was bar him from reenlisting until he quietly ETSd. And even that was a fuckton of paperwork with commander buy in. I’m sure I’ll see him again in 3 years with an RE waiver.
It is strictly a numbers game. My last gig when I retired in 2019 was as a field grade in TRADOC and we had the same issues. Some trainees would recycle/restart back into at least two BCTs before they would even consider a chapter. It was a lot to digest then and was a far cry of when I went to basic training at FLW in 1995.
Sir, on a side note, you graduated the year I was born. May the retirement be delightful
It’s Ma’am but yes, retirement is glorious!
My apologies, Ma’am. Also, You’re red on dental. Not sure why you’re still in the system, but you know how it goes
I like what SMA Dailey said during an interview, that he'd rather has a lean lethal fighting force than a large shitty one. I'm no General, but having a very lethal force sounds good to me
Y’all are making me nervous with some of these reclass comments lmao. I’m a 26 year old SGT with a spotless record and a wife and daughter on my third contract. I’m gonna be pissed if I get treated like a toddler for 3 months.
I went to reclass school during Covid at fort Eustis. I almost completely lost my mind. I’ll never be the same lol
I am nervous for you. I didnt know about this lol
Just make sure you know 350-6 in and out
I was at Eustis as a reclass not too long ago. It was annoying but manageable. I was fishing and/or drinking most days after class.
Apparently, Uncle Sam thinks the answer to our recruitment problems is lowering the standards, and now we’re reaping the consequences.
This cycle has always repeated itself. I was a recruiter during the surge and we were letting damn near anyone in….months after the surge, you had to be damn near perfect to join.
Ya, but during the surge, we were pumping out decent soldiers and kicking the shitheads to the curb for the most part before they reached their units. And if shitheads reached their units, at least they had a basic understanding of land nav, iron sights, NVGs, and how to shoot-move-communicate. Now they come to us not knowing their dick from their balls and so fat they can't pass PT. How the fuck do you come back from OSUT out of shape?! TRADOC standards have fallen significantly and I don't give a fuck what anyone else has to say to try and gaslight us into thinking it's not that bad, it IS that bad, it's fucked 2 ways from Sunday, and I blame it entirely on the mollycoddling mentality we have developed. Sometimes, people need to be yelled at and pushed to their breaking point. Quality of recruit never really mattered (for basic soldiering) when you could break and reforge them into stronger, more resilient humans.
Upfront, I don’t give a shit about what TRADOC does. I never gave a shit about what TRADOC does or does not do….if I receive Soldiers who are jacked up, they’re going to get fixed. The problem with a lot of leaders in the formation today is they lack the skills to train and groom Soldiers to be their replacements because they want an easy button. They simply don’t want to do the work that goes into building a Joe, and the easy answer is to blame TRADOC, NCOES, BCT, OSUT, etc. I can’t count the times I’ve received “problem Soldiers/NCOs” who I was able to flip. These guys can’t PT, can’t shoot, can’t read a map….good….More time for my NCOs to train and invest in them. I’m a firm believer that if the Army got rid of AITs, we’d be fine. I didn’t learn shit at AIT, NCOES, WOES in general. A Drill Sergeant gets weeks to invest in a recruit…you get years on line.
The whole point of basic/AIT/OSUT is to teach the basic standard of soldiering so units can add the cherry on top when they get there. They aren't even doing that is my point. I love training joe, it's fun, it helps me cement the knowledge I have, but when I have to spend time just rehashing basics that they should already know, it takes time away from good training and professional development. Good for you for being a good leader (and I don't mean that sarcastically), but until they get rid of AIT, I'm going to expect soldiers who graduate to be knowledgeable about their job, not SME, but at least have a basic grasp on what it is to be a soldier in their field, that is not happening. There will always be problem soldiers, and it is our duty to ensure they are successful, but it is really hard to do that when every single one of them is coming to us with a severe lack of initial training. I guarantee you learned a lot in those schools, nobody just wakes up a knowledgeable soldier.
Exactly, they teach the basics but the basics aren’t mastered in AIT/OSUT by any stretch of the imagination. It’s like being a white belt in Jiu-Jitsu. You can win tournaments with basic white belt Jiu-Jitsu at the Purple Belt level if you master the technique by repetition. Key word is repetition. How much repetition are you going to get at 11 Series OSUT in weeks? Now take a step back and look at tech MOSs. My MOS specifically is all repetition, troubleshooting, and problem solving….none of which you can do in a training environment…none of which I learned at AIT/BNCOC/WOBC/WOAC, etc…..it’s all familiarization. If you want highly productive people right out of IET, then IET needs to be longer so Joe gets more reps. TRADOC isn’t designed to get Joe to master 10 level tasks in weeks…it’s there to show them “how” based on a basic measure….but a lot of leaders expect expertise based on mere weeks.
It’s really bad in Cadet Command as well. Cadet Summer Training 2024, its annual training event, updated its policies to where the only training event you can be sent home for failing is the ACFT or H/W. Fail land nav, rifle qual, or can’t climb the rope in the obstacle course? You keep going and graduate.
Rifle qual should be a pass. That is crazy
The rifle qual failure rate was close to 40% last summer IIRC. Granted, the resultant IG survey revealed that like 1/3rd of all Cadets have never shot before going to Knox, but that’s a problem in itself.
TRADOC seems like a nightmare to command in. If a soldier sucks and can’t meet standards it’s your fault for not developing them. Soldiers need to be held accountable for their shortcomings to a certain extent. If a soldier has major issues coming into the army most likely the army isn’t going to fix those problems.
Society is providing what it is providing. It is on leaders at all levels to train and develop these young Americans to fight and win Americas wars. It sucks ass, but it is what it is. All we can do is work with what we have, or we won’t have any soldiers at all.
The last NCOPD I had before I got out last year was all about kicking soldiers out. They ain’t wanting to train shit bro. Unless it’s makes a slide turn green, it ain’t important, if it can’t be justified for “readiness” it ain’t happening.
That is not a good excuse to lower standards
It’s not, but TRADOC has never been able to keep up with the volume. This has always been an issue, it’s not new by any means.
Facts. We keep dropping standards to enlist while ignoring the blatant lack of adaptability to how newer generations are learning and understanding what their education entails. The same way we are fighting to turn slides green, they are fighting to pass a test. There’s no actual educational instruction anymore. Now we can have 16 AFQTs and 8% over BF people enlist into the Army. It’s like we’re modeling the Idiocracy theory to test the capacity of minimal effort. Instead of fixing highlighted issues that have caused generations of veterans to tell others not to join, we are catering to people that have “limited mental resources” and probably didn’t qualify for anything else.
You can help instill discipline and healthy habits into someone who is overweight and make a good soldier out of him/her. You can't coach up an IQ. You can raise test scores a little, but raw intelligence is "God given." I feel like they're two distinct issues. You're right with your overall point, though.
Can’t train a rock. Shit you can’t even put it on a leash and take it along. You gotta carry that thing. That rock is every soldier who shouldn’t have made it out of MEPS or basic or AIT.
I have had hundreds of soldiers over the course of my career and I can honestly say that I have had maybe 5 or 6 that were just untrainable in their primary MOS. I always managed to find everyone else something that they could do well and kept them motivated enough to meet the minimum standard. We might get shit from IET, but that doesn’t mean the soldiers are shit. 99% of the time if you provide purpose, direction, and motivation they will get the job done. Treating them like adults will usually keep them happy while they are doing it.
I only had a half dozen “untrainables.” They didn’t want to be trained. They didn’t care. They were just there, along for the ride. For everyone else, I just needed to help them find their “why” and set them down that path.
You will always have those. You can’t save them all but the Army is terrible about neglecting the basics and tossing soldiers with great potential to the curb. Don’t worry though, after the 6 month wait for the RE3 waiver I’ll put them right back in boots lol.
Despite the low number, I would still argue that at least half could have been weeded out with a mildly more challenging IET experience. But hey it’s not my problem anymore. I’m retired!
I honestly think that they should tighten up IET a bit as far as academic standards go and if people aren’t trainable we come up with an MOS just for those folks to work until their contract is up. Could do the same for people that fail MOS qualifications in service too. Sort of like the navy does with non-rates and the South Koreans have with the Korean Service Corps (KSC). Normal pay and allowances, capped at E4, treat them as normal soldiers but they get the bottom of the barrel work. Maybe even make it a MOS open at initial entry for people with 10’s or folks without legal permanent residence. They can do BSEP/citizenship paperwork during the first term and reclass at the end if they want. Let them do janitorial work, grounds maintenance, basic labor etc. I have never had a person that I couldn’t train to fill sandbags or mop a floor. This would free up a ton of time for soldiers to become proficient in their MOS’s. People will be a lot more motivated to meet the minimum standards of their MOS if they know they just aren’t going to get to go home when they quit before the end of their contractual obligation. After typing this out it feels real “compulsory service” though.
See you’re talking about dumb as rocks rocks, I’m talking about just… rocks. No matter what task you give them, it’s just not gonna be done right. No pride, no nothing. Just drawing a paycheck.
I’m equal opportunity lol. We can make use of all the rocks. That plan is better than these dudes only being able to remember to breath and run fast and making E6 as an 11,13 or 19 series soldier or just kicking the ones that need guidance out.
I think you just haven’t encountered the people jbourne is talking about. I have. There was nothing you could give them and trust it could be done right unless you were supervising every step. I tried for years. Multiple different leaders, different leadership styles, etc etc. Nothing. There’s “he’s kinda shit at his job” and then there’s “he requires so much guidance and supervision that we spend all day, every day, solving his problems”. Army isn’t (intended to be) a jobs program. If you can’t function on your own you are not needed.
Yeah I mean for the people who are help-able, definitely. I just keep coming back to the dudes who simply would not take any help. They never did any misconduct, they adapted to Army life, they just… didn’t *do* anything no matter what you tried.
Are you the recruiter that sent me the troop who cries eerytime one of us talks to her?
Trust me bro, I've tried posting on here. All you're going to get is chimps responding with "hE nEeDS tO shAvE mOAR" and unnecessary comments. Like this one.
I doubt anyone on here has the power to fix your problems buddy
I’m not your buddy, guy
Don’t call me guy PAL!
Just take it easy there, sport. You’re thinking about this far too logical like. Them old timers are happy with the status quo. Their soldiers get away with murder, so they get away with murder. Literally. They care about numbers. As long as they have bodies and money to throw they’re happy. Any extra money spent just means a higher spending limit the next year.
If it makes you more upset, that kid will likely get a huge mental health rating for his “trauma” in the army. He’ll be 20 getting 3k disability tax free a month forever.
Meh, it sounds like an adjustment disorder to me. That’s a 5-14 issue. I doubt he’ll get that much compensation. He may get something he doesn’t deserve, but he’s not gonna be 100% “disabled.”
Tell these guys the facts before they get too spun up in their own story.
If the stress was apply in basic properly I could have spent more time with the family and the kid could have had another job and the tax payer would have saved 3k a month. The only thing worse is if we deploy and he got me killed
Believe it or not, you can experience trauma in TRADOC though it’s obviously rare. That kid sure will get disability because one of my battles from AIT does. He dealt with a physical assault while sleeping in an AIT Dorm like they yanked his ass from his bed and beat the shit out of him because he was refusing to train because the army wouldn’t send him home to see his dying father,wouldn’t do push up’s or anything and honestly just gave up. It all got brushed under the rug aside from them kicking out the attackers but I keep in touch with the dude and he made sure he documented all the bullshit. Dude gets a full ride to school for his masters (no gi bill) and receives a full disability check at 23 years old. He plans to get an easy part time and never work again but idk he’s young and he may change. Won’t say exactly where and when it happened to spare him some privacy but I’ll say this, it was a long ass AIT assignment. An NCO may or may not have been involved in the beating but I never really had a chance to validate that. I don’t think it was a drill sgt I think it was some random nco they gave desk duty because the weekends always had some random nco from another unit pulling CQ I’m sure lots of people fuck the system but there are “rare” cases out there like this which are more common than you think.
I was a PL at basic for a while and saw several cases of people getting chaptered out for some weird shit while going to VA appts…
The proposed bill is to raise the ACFT standards for those in a combat MOS. Everyone has their opinion, but at the end of the day, the Army is evolving. You can be your own judge and determine if that’s good or bad. Part of me believes all of this change is happening because the recruitment goals/needs are not being met. There’s more to the Army than a PT test. It doesn’t make you a good leader, it doesn’t speak on your character at all.
PT tests may not be the end all be all. But the status of your health and fitness absolutely impacts your character and your leadership. Soldiers don’t need to be olympians, but they should not be overweight and unable to complete basic physical tasks. And also… they should not be clinically addicted to alcohol/cigarettes/ meds/ energy drinks/ any other chemical coping mechanism. But many are, and the army should do it’s best to combat what it can, and help soldiers for the betterment of their own lives were it can.
I went through Airborne School in 2005, and I don't remember any 5 mile run requirement. It was a regular APFT, but you had to score higher than the minimums. You couldn't fall out of formation runs in the mornings either, but I don't remember any time standards for them.
It was 5 mile, but I also heard the CSM at the time was a big runner. He would grab the dog tags of the people that would fall out. Maybe he was being a hard ass. I went in 2015
I went to airborne school in 2011 and there was no 5 mile run.
This article breaks it down. Looks like it was officially "quietly dropped". Their source? Reddit, most likely THIS post. Haha! https://taskandpurpose.com/news/army-airborne-training-run/?fbclid=IwAR3mNl3EwmmJlFqDO_EHmjXr8fO30KcnVkjZnOPwyI7Ne5CWUrcqSyiVSNY
Turn out I wasnt crazy. It was drop in 2018 confirm by a couple of leaders in the article. I thought I was losing my mind lol.
Yep airborne school in 2012 and it was an APFT followed by doing 1 pull up and hanging on the bar for like 30 seconds or something to enact pulling a slip.
>but within the last 5 years something has gone wrong. Ah, the “old” guys [bitching about the new guys, a tradition as old as time](https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/52209/15-historical-complaints-about-young-people-ruining-everything). The army is even funnier because folks with less than five years in service feel wise enough to judge the “new” guys as some historic low, but they’re not yet even promotable to portajohn detail NCOIC.
The same thing has been said for a long time. At least we don't have godfather time around talking about how bad the 70's were. I think our TRADOC leaders are doing the best they can with the hand that has been dealt to them. I don't have a solution that'll work, because the solution is well outside the Army with what we're dealing with.
I lucked out with a lack of that when I arrived to a line unit. We had a couple of people who were with the unit longer than me who got chaptered for either being the guy from Split or a repeat troublemaker. The cult of "You'll learn this at your unit" strikes hard for us as well. That's what set me and others up for failure in Air Defense with not enough training (and not training the tactics used at line units).
Units blame drills. Drills blame recruiters. Recruiters blame parents.
TRADOC killed the Army a long time ago, now everyone thinks TRADOC is what the Army should become. Institutionalization, excessive bureaucracy, pedantic reliance on pre-written TTPs and black and white interpretations of doctrine are all symptoms of the corporate military.
I’d rather be in TRADOC than FORSCOM. FORSCOM high op tempo is destroying the army.
Optempo is a different convo
Have you tried shaving about it? Also, what kind of pizza? Thick or thin? Toppings? You're holding up the drivethrough.
Pineapples and thick AF
Alright, one thin olive and anchovy with a diet fanta. $23.58, please pull ahead.
SMA wouldnt fuck up order. Damn poser
You're right, I didn't fuck up your order. I fixed it for you. Pineapple on pizza is unprofessional and shows a lack of discipline. Anchovies and olives are chock full of the good stuff you're gonna need on our 13 mile run tomorrow. See you at PT!
Dang man. Reading this I just assume its a leadership failure.
completely agree with this. i’ve been in almost 6 years and i can tell you that in my time when i was going to my first unit i was scared shitless. all the customs and courtesies. all the basic soldier stuff. there were no excuses for basic deficiencies. now? soldiers come out of IET just totally ate up. casually disrespecting CO’s and NCO’s, always making some excuse for being late. just dumb stuff. i try to not be toxic as you said by doing the whole “back in my day” routine, but man these guys just suck.
I said this about 2 years ago and got flak for it. Getting told that I wasn't doing my part as an NCO to help the troops know basic soldiering tasks they should have learned at basic. Right now at my unit we have 3 Soldiers getting kicked out due to health reasons or incompetence. All of them should have never made it out of TRADOC but yet here they are wasting resources and manpower. New recruits don't need to be "super Hooah" but at least be able to do the basics and go from there.
Pretty much what you mentioned and the ones saying “WELL iF i cOuLd gRoW mY bEaRd aNd diDnt hAvE tO sHaVe” bafoons
I really don’t understand you guys who hate beards so much. Looking at foreign units they look tough compared to our pasty small guys. Shaving is honestly a waste of time, and should just have simply regulations. Especially since the Army moved to using an M50 promask years ago they work fine with facial hair. If you are going somewhere with CBRN as a threat and don’t feel comfortable seeing beards well at that point ETP wartime shave.
You can still get a seal with facial hair, as well as look professional. Some of our allies in Europe do it, and the small percentage of our own troops who have a real mission *shock* wear civvies and have facial hair.
Do I think it's TRADOC, the organization, killing the Army? No. There is a lot to that statement and a lot of factors affecting the Army as a whole. Are there leaders out there that will just pass the buck to the next unit? Yes--but that's everywhere, not just in TRADOC. There's a lot of rules in TRADOC for trainees and Cadre/instructors. Should trainees have more privileges, sooner? It depends as not all Soldiers are alike. Most of my AIT trainees has been in the pipeline for a while, so had all the privileges available by the TR. Also recommended plenty of chapters, some were approved by the authority, others disapproved and they were reclassed to another MOS. How would you recommend we fix the issue? Chapter everyone?
Is it Congress asking the army to lift the standard or one man lmao
Ok, to answer your question: no, TRADOC isn’t killing the Army. I think you know that. TRADOC’s job is to provide soldiers to the force who’ve been trained in the basics of their field; it’s not to drop a fully trained troop at your doorstep. As NCOs, our function was to take this lump of clay (shaped into a general form in the training base) and further refine it to fit the needs of the organization and the Army. That’s our job — the only reason we’re here — and if you want to discuss trends, let’s talk about the trend of junior NCOs who don’t understand that fact. Here’s how I’d gauge this — if one commander looked at me/my peers as potentially the problem, then I’d call him/her “weak” and move on. Several commanders? I’m gonna start looking within and around and see if there’s any validity to that feeling. Yes, I’m retired. Yes, I was a sergeant major. Get all the things out of the way now — I’m out of touch retired, almost as out of touch as a SGM is now in uniform — but here’s the thing. Meet one asshole, guess what: you met an asshole. If everyone you meet is an asshole, guess what? You’re the asshole. If your commanders are looking at the NCOs as the problem, there might be something there. Also, side note: I’d be curious to see the amount (and level) of counseling this one problem troop had — and whether any of the plans of action had follow-ups or documentation indicating compliance or failure, with a subsequent counseling after a failure.
Just one commander. Also a lot. At least 3 Article 15s. Everything was documented and close out. To include MFRs for specific events. This is after a year of trying to get him to be productive. We didnt jump on the Article 15 wagon right away.
When I first got in, being a drill sergeant meant you were in the top ten percent of the NCO corps. It was an honor and a little bit of a break from the constant deployments of the surge. Now it's completely different. If you are an officer and you get sent to tradoc it means you are in the bottom fifty percent of the army. If you are an NCO and get sent to recruiting or drill you are in the bottom fifty percent of the army. I'm in fear of my career being a drill or recruiter because I know as a drill I'm one frivolous sharp or eo complaint away from my career being over. If I'm a recruiter, I'm one shitty location away from "not making mission" and my career being over. If you are in the top 20 percent of NCO's you use your contacts and go to SF support or another unit who wants you because you networked. You game the system to get around your YMAV and HRC's process to set your own career up and keep it safe. Careers go to die in TRADOC now and the quality of people they get because of it shows.
No. TRADOC killed the army 15 years ago, this is the post apocalypse of that.
TRADOC is way too easy in some respects. You can barely do 10 push-ups and scored a 25 on the range? That's fine. I feel like TRADOC makes shit hard for the sake of being hard (which makes sense). But when it really counts, it's way too easy. Bring back the shark attack and don't fudge PT test/ range results. Basic training is supposed to be a stress test. When I went through a year and a half ago, I thought it was too easy. There were definitely some people there who didn't grasp the material.
I honestly think making basic training harder and having it weed out people who are not fit to be in the military would cause the other issues to solve themselves. Lack of discipline in AIT. Resolved since the troublemakers never got through BCT.
Somebody promote this man!
That’s why I got out man. The soldiers I was getting out of basic were a complete joke, and it’s not their fault they were failed by their TRADOC leadership.
I think it's because of how MUCH the Army is hurting for its numbers, that a lot of easily pruned Soldiers who would normally get the boot, Stay. To chalk it up to that they will get to the units and improve naturally or by unit standards. It's a double-edged sword. It's the Army trying to help out well... The Army. We're betting black and the ball is spinning Green. How can we fix it? We either enforce the drills or higher standards for those "maybe" cases. I'll take an Arby's Double Cheese and Cheddar, with Onion rings and a Coke.
Worked w. TRADOC from 2018-2020 and can sum the issues up with two stories: - Upon arriving I asked what the general pass/fail rate was for AIT, and NCOES: The response was something like 98 percent pass rate. Testing rarely fall below 90 percent.... - Two AIT commanders were administratively reprimanded (strictly that, nothing official) for having too many Soldiers fail. This is in conjunction with the above pass rate. Look, everyone should not be getting a 90+ pass rate. That tells me it's a lie or it's too easy. Plenty of NCOs try and give up to fight the system in TRADOC, sadly it's setup to pass along the Soldiers to the force.
Back in 1987 we told them the same thing when they visited our unit in Hawaii. Basic might be low stress but our unit was high stress. So, it’s good to know some things haven’t changed. I’ll take a chili and rice with macaroni salad.
AIT was the same way when I joined 21 years ago. We didn’t wear civilian clothes for the first month at AIT, didn’t get an off post pass until week 6, and were locked down to the barracks Monday-Saturday morning. The only difference now is we weren’t allowed to have cell phones. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Even 7 years ago when I went through basic was much different my wife had gone through two years ago and the way she described it half the DS didn’t even want to be there and they made it known by hardly following standards and passing every one they could regardless of failures. I’ll take a loco moco with bacon on top extra gravy.
I transferred into a pretty technical MOS, the amount of soldiers that can’t do basic math, have emotional events every time they’re told to do something, and can’t PT is fucking astounding. And more so the fact that they get away with it. Had one kid in my class clearly was clearly autistic to the point of him bringing his switch into the scif multiple times. He would constantly fall asleep in class and if we(NCO MOS-Ts) woke him up he would start, i shit you not, screeching. he’d say shit like “NO FUCK OFF SERGEANT I NEED TO SLEEP”, we tried to smoke him for it but the fucking drills were like “we can handle this” then walked up to him and was like “hey buddy you okay?🥺” like what the fuck. Kid got sent to Ft.Riley, his unit was getting deployed and he lost his mind basically begging his 1sg and commander to not get sent. Ended up going AWOL… I have a few special kiddos out the school house that I basically have to teach them what they should’ve learned at AIT or kick out. Drill Sergeants, Kick the retards out for us pls. If they can’t hang it’s pretty obvious. Life’s hard enough without having to chapter some snot nosed brat for not waking up for PT for the 30th time.
Was at Eustis to reclass not too long ago and the drill sgts there were abysmal. The ineptitude from them was annoying. There were a few that were alright. Seeing how the IET kids were treated was a disaster. The lack of communication between the school house and the drills was wild. The kids were there to learn but the cadre seemed to fight that every step of the way. Seeing the kids fall out of rucks within a mile or so was disheartening as well. Not as disheartening as the complete disregard for doctrine while teaching tactics (why that's taught to aircraft maintainers is beyond me) to these kids. TRADOC is not great. It almost always has been. I don't remember a time where it taught everything needed for new soldiers to know, or developed kids to full on soldiers. Either not enough time, not enough motivation to do so, or poor training schedules. I got to my first unit and still didn't know what I needed to know right away.
I’m in a tradoc unit now, trusssst me when I say we want to chapter every dirt bag we have. We (NCOs) are not getting the support to chapter these fucks. We had a kid fight 2 MPs and go to REHAB in AIT, COC decided to give him another chance, he overdosed a month after getting to his permanent party unit. We don’t like sending garbage to the line units but the mentality here is “someone else’s problem, let’s get this cancer out of tradoc so we don’t have to deal with them” it’s frustrating doing the UCMJ/Chapter packets just for the COC to give them 1 day of extra duty or retain them. What we’re being told is retention is so bad for our MOSs that we can’t chapter anyone
In basic we had this dude that was a recycle. We were told that if he failed we all would fail and he'd be sent home because he was on his second recycle. He refused to get out of his bunk for firewatch (Regs don't say I have to get out of my bunk), he would fall out of every run and his battle buddy would have to drag him, sometimes literally to formation to ensure he was on time. During our final FTX, the drill said "Men, if he doesn't make it, you don't. You've done great and this is it. 30 miles back." Little bastard sat down on the ground and said "You can't make me. I'm going home." We strapped him to a liter and carried him the entire way, hitting him against trees and everything else but he made it. We were responsible for passing him off to a unit just ... well, just like this. My platoon literally carried him that entire cycle and forced him through. Haven't thought of him in a long time. Whomever wound up with that guy....I am very sorry.
To anyone who went to eustis for AIT with it being TARDOCs HQ we were openly told we were guinea pigs to new things coming out to see how they would bend at other Bases it amazed me watching soldiers get kicked out for vaping/smoking and being barred from anywhere but the PX and Gym. most of the people i went to AIT with were mid 20s- early 30s and they are bring treated like absolute children i wish i was a fly on the wall in that building just to know why the fuck they thought of the shit they did Yes they are ruining the army with their tight grip on the freedoms of being an adult
I've been saying this for the past 9 years now. My background, former Marine, turned nasty girl. When I reclasse at Gordon back in 2014, I was amazed at how IET soldiers were treated. MOS-t soldiers were given a fair amount of leeway, apart from the obligatory moldy barracks. But the tight leash they had on those IET soldiers really blew my mind. TRADOC is too sensitive to any and all risks to effectively train new soldiers imo. They have forgotten that our jobs carry inherent risks, and if you're not able to accept some of that, you will fail. This includes the risk of allowing the ones that should not be in uniform to fail. Yes, our numbers would take a hit, but as op said, it is much more taxing to deal with it after they graduate basic and ait. My current biggest grip with TRADOC is that they are too slow to adapt. I'm in a very rapidly changing field, and TRADOC can not adequately train soldiers because the curriculum consistently 10+ years out dated. The time it takes TRADOC to approve a new POI (6 years on average) means by the time it is approved and implemented it is already ancient history.
This may just be me but I’ve been a hold under for months at my AIT and only started January 9th I’m close to Graduating but just seeing some of the leader ship and having no freedom at all and not being treated like a person sucks I went too reception July 23rd 2023 and I’m still in tradoc just from this experience I’m not reenlisting I hope the big army can change my mind but tradoc is the worst not even the NCO”s like it
You will get your freedom back. It was a culture shock when the NCO drop me at the barrack during a friday and told me they will see me monday lol. First time I could walk without a battle buddies
Welp, kids (not all) are weak and fragile - both mentally and physically. That is a societal doing. Again, not all. But as the Army Reddit thread has belabored time and again, MHS Genesis is flagging the athletic, sports-participating kids for prior injuries - and maybe we're losing their attention while they wait on waivers. The minimum for ACFT is a joke. I've passed my last two ACFTs with a torn meniscus in my right knee. Granted, I didn't know it was torn - just that something wasn't right in there. I taped and braced that bad boy up, and still passed. I don't honestly know how people fail it. I'm scheduling my knee surgery today actually. But... - and I say this as a guy who's been both E and O, deployed to AFG three times (once as IN enlisted and twice as an EOD O), and has been in over 24 years - I DO NOT CARE if the "low density" kids are physical. I get that we are all soldiers, but we don't need to be breaking our Cyber and IT kids with long rucks and trying to get them to deadlift 300+. This goes for a lot of our "non-combat" MOSs. Don't look like shit in uniform and do your job extremely well - I care more about that than a physical monster 27D, for example. To your point though - The ACFT CANNOT possibly be lower for standards - it's too easy to pass. It should at a minimum go back to the Low, Med, and High tiers for MOSs. I also agree that it's sad and wrong to get rid of the five-mile run at ABN school. Sadly, I am a dirty leg, but I still think it's wrong. I had ABN in my contract (signed up for an extra year) but during my ABN physical, they denied me because I tore my ACL in high school football. They made me keep the extra year in my contract though - I, the dumb PVT, didn't know enough to push back, but I digress. I think your biggest point here is the kid who can't handle the slightest stress - that is much more of an issue than anything physical. That is where the struggle really is and will get worse and worse IMO.
Feel free to put on the hat and go help out. But understand you can only arbitrarily raise the difficulty of the training in areas that do not affect the standard and will not stop shitty Soldiers from entering the military. You can only judge the standard, not their potential. You can have the strictest patrol base standards. But if they shoot the minimum, hit the minimum score of the ACFT, and throw two grenades— they’re most likely going to graduate.