‘Mindless’ Basic Training Gets Some Smarts

‘Mindless’ Basic Training Gets Some Smarts – David Wood, Politics Daily.

When seasoned combat soldiers began returning from the war to help train new recruits here, the first thing they did was to stop training for what the Army called “convoy live fire.”

Nobody actually does that in Iraq or Afghanistan, they explained.

In fact, they said, much of what the Army was teaching its new recruits at this premier training center was wrong or irrelevant to actual combat…

That it took five years to get this stopped says something about the Army.

It also provides a glimpse into a struggle inside the Army and, indeed, across the entire U.S. military. Let’s call it the combat military versus the “garrison” or “headquarters” or “always done it this way” military.

This is the dynamic behind Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ effort to refocus the gigantic defense budget on real combat needs for today’s wars — and the resistance from the bureaucracies and defense contractors entrenched around lower priority budget programs…

Much more at Politics Daily.