When I joined the Army in the last years of the Cold War, I first reported to Fort Dix, New Jersey, to attend the regular enlisted basic training. (This was before I allowed the Army and an act of Congress to make me an “officer and a gentleman.”) Our basic training company, while it contained a few misfits, as any group of 120 or so young men will, was mostly made up of two types: Lean, tough rural kids, and lean, tough, urban and suburban kids. We rural kids were lean and tough from years of farmwork and choring. The urban and suburban kids were lean and tough mostly from sports and youths spent outdoors, riding bikes, playing, and so on.
Through that eight-week course, there was one overlying theme we were never allowed to forget: Our training was intended to make us warfighters; our primary goal was to close with and destroy the enemy by fire, maneuver, and shock effect.
A lot has changed in the years since Ronald Reagan was our commander-in-chief. Now, the Army, in an attempt to “rebuild the force,” is expanding the basic training program – but exactly how they intend to do so is unclear.
The added training will begin in October and comes as the Army tries to reverse years of dismal recruiting when it failed to meet its enlistment goals. New units in Oklahoma and Missouri will train as many as 4,000 recruits every year.
Army leaders are optimistic they will hit their target of 55,000 recruits this year and say the influx of new soldiers forced them to increase the number of training sites.
“I am happy to say last year’s recruiting transformation efforts have us on track to make this year’s recruiting mission, with thousands awaiting basic training” in the next year, Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said. Adding the two new locations, she said, is a way to get the soldiers trained and into units quickly, “with further expansion likely next spring if our recruiting numbers keep improving.”
One thing stands out from that linked article: The included image, of prospective soldiers who appear to be undergoing physical training (PT), are all looking a little soggy around the midsection. Transforming these people into warfighters will be a challenge, indeed; these kids look like they are much more familiar with a keyboard or game controller than a chainsaw or a hay bale–or even a bike.
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Here’s the stated goal:
The expanded training is part of a broader effort to restructure the Army so it is better able to fight against a sophisticated adversary such as Russia or China. The U.S. military spent much of the past two decades battling insurgent groups in Iraq and Afghanistan rather than fighting a broader war with another high-tech, more capable nation.
As to how this may be done, there is at least one sort of hopeful note; the Army, it seems, at least is acknowledging the problems they are having with the physical fitness of recruits.
Driving the growth is the successful Future Soldier Prep Course, which was created at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, in August 2022 as a new way to bolster enlistments. That program gives lower-performing recruits up to 90 days of academic or fitness instruction to help them meet military standards and move on to basic training.
That’s a fine how-do-you-do when the United States Army is having so much trouble finding recruits who can pass the minimal physical and academic standards, that they have to stand up an extra 90-day camp to try to whip these soggy specimens into something approximating a useful state before they can even enter basic training.
And what’s not at all clear is precisely how these prospective soldiers will be trained to deal with Russian or Chinese troops. Will their training be focused on making them warfighters? Will it transform them, to paraphrase one famous piece of American cinema, into “lean, mean, fighting machines”? Will they be taught their primary purpose, to find, and identify bad guys and un-alive them quickly, and efficiently, with as little risk to themselves and their fellow soldiers as possible?
In short, will these young people be inculcated with the skills and attributes that will make them fighters?
Some of these young people will stand out, of course. There are always those who take to the soldier’s life better than others. There are always those who not only become soldiers, they become leaders – they become warriors. Heraclitus of Ephesus knew this when he wrote:
Out of every one hundred men, ten shouldn’t even be there, eighty are just targets, nine are the real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle. Ah, but the one, one is a warrior, and he will bring the others back.
The Army’s training should be focused on warfighting. It should be focused on training these kids to close with and destroy the enemy by fire, maneuver, and shock effect. And it should focus on finding those young, motivated leaders and placing them in positions to use their leadership skills. Everything else is second to that. Let’s hope that today’s Army, at some point, remembers it.
This seems appropriate:
