Everybody in the United States Army’s gotta be a soldier first,” Gen. Peter Schoomaker told reporters during an Oct. 7 roundtable meeting with reporters in Washington.
*Every soldier will be required to qualify on his or her individual weapon twice a year, [Gen.] Byrnes said. The current Army standard requires soldiers to qualify only once a year, although some commanders have their troops qualify more frequently.
*New recruits will qualify on their individual weapons in basic training and then again in advanced individual training, Byrnes added. Until now, qualification in basic training only was the standard.
*Every soldier, regardless of MOS and unit, will conduct at least one live-fire combat drill a year. For higher headquarters rear-echelon units, it might include reacting to an ambush, Byrnes said.
They should have done this twenty years ago when I was in the Army. S.L.A. Marshall was advocating this back during the Korean War.
The notion that infantrymen are expected to be detailed to defend the Artillery and the logistical tail, thus allowing them to not practice basic combat skills, was nonsensical back during World War One and proven to be total bullshit (in several ways) by the Wehrmacht during the Second World War.
It is nice to see that someone (apart from The Marines) in the five-sided funny farm is actually engaged in rational thought.
(We should point out for our readers that active and former military people have every right -- Hell, every duty -- to be critical as to how the folks in the Pentagon run things. More so than any of the totalitarian-socialist-thug-hugging brain-death cases who filled out the ranks of the so-called peace movement.)
No comments:
Post a Comment