(07-07-2023, 03:35 PM)Infolurker Wrote: Women at Ranger School get Their OWN STANDARDS (Diversity Hires)
...
Army BCT Now Trains for Combat Like a Stress Free, Gentle, Low Stakes Fat Camp
Drill Sergeants Are No Longer Volunteers. 60%+ are FORCED To Do It Like Guard Duty.
And get this, no headgear... no helmets while training??? Not even a soft cover??? WTH?
A couple observations on your post from an old, over-the-hill fart.
Part 1: Ranger School
Ranger training is not BCT, and it's not supposed to be like BCT. It is essentially, in common with all Special Operations schools, "stress training" to prepare you for an whole different set of stresses. In SpecOps, Rangers included, your operating environment is not going to be like that of regular infantrymen. You will often be operating mostly alone and isolated behind enemy lines. For regular infantry, you'll be at a camp or firebase, surrounded by your bros with a fairly defined direction where you will find enemy. Behind the lines, you are isolated, just a small group of bros, with the enemy all around you, in all directions, and no berm or wire between you and them. You may be called upon to assume leadership at any instant if the Team leader gets popped, so there is a leadership component to the training as well as stress - maybe "leadership under stress" is a fitting descriptor.It's a whole 'nuther level of pucker-factor.
Also in Ranger training, if you are not assigned to one of the Ranger companies upon successful completion, you are expected to be able to return to your parent unit and train THEM on everything Ranger School taught you, and assume a leadership position on short notice as well. How you gonna lead folks if you're in the habit of losing them?
Because of that difference, the stresses are different, and so should the training be. When the bullets start flying, how are you gonna feel knowing that the person next to you, whether male or female, couldn't live up to the same stresses YOU had to? Why should they drop the standards for some people and not others, and start milling out sub-standards soldiers for high stress situations?
It's a recipe for a body count - yours, not the enemy's.
Part 2 - Drill Sergeants:
Drill sergeants are not their to be your friend. if you want a friend, buy a dog. Drill sergeants are there to provide an example of what you could be if you weren't such a pussy, and to motivate you to not be a pussy - to be more like that hard-ass bastard that is running you through the mill to become a hard-ass bastard yourself. In short, they are there to be a mentor, not to be a friend.
In the end, you may realize they were the best friend you've ever had, if what they taught you brings you back alive, but while the teaching is happening, You're not going to realize that, and are not supposed to, if they are doing their jobs right. Instead, you're going to be thinking they are the meanest baby-eating bastards that ever lived, and you wanna be just like them when you grow up. Their job is to tear down the pussy you were, and replace that with the hardest sonuvabitch you'll ever be.
It takes a special kind of dedication and love to get that job done right. "Appointees" to the school, as opposed to volunteers FOR the school, are not all going to make that grade.
Personal note: I've never been a drill sergeant, but my blood brother was one for several years. So, I may be talking out of my ass here, but I don't think so. Any drill sergeants in the crowd are welcome to correct me.
Now, that drill sergeant friend of mine got me up at 5 am one morning for a 5 mile run. He just wanted someone to run with him, it wasn't a matter of me being in training. So I said "bro, you've got a broke ankle - how the hell are you gonna run 5 miles?" And he replied "you just hide and watch, youngling!" So he laced up his combat boots so tight I thought they'd cut blood flow off to his toes, and proceeded to run rings around me on a broken ankle.
That sumbitch was TOUGH... and that's what drill sergeants are supposed to be.
.