Quote:
Originally Posted by swaghauler
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... ALL US Soldiers (and Marines) should go through the FULL OSUT training for INFANTRY AS A BASIC TRAINING. They should then be "scored" based on their "performance" on various criteria (ASVAB, PT, SQT, attitude, road marches, etc...). Only the highest scores should be allowed into the Combat Arms with lower scores having to take alternate MOS training. You then send the troops to ANOTHER MOS school where they will learn more advanced skills (in addition to their initial Infantry training). This would cost a lot more but would produce a better grade of soldier.
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Most of what you said I think was a good thing, but I have to disagree with sending all troops through the infantry OSUT. I think that it would not be a bad thing for most, but some I think it is not beneficial. I started my career as a 19K (M1 Tank Crewman) and my duty location also had a Marine Reserve tank (I do not know what number a marine tanker is) unit stationed there so we trained with and around them quite a bit. They were a good unit, but we were better in almost every tank task as that is what we trained on almost exclusively, where they had to split there time between tank and infantry training. So maybe the average Army tanker at the time could not hit a 300 meter target with a M16, what did it matter we did not even have M16 our crew had two M3's and four M1911's. What would it matter if we could do Infantry squad/platoon based tactics, they are different than the Armor based one (even though some are called the same thing they are different) in some ways because they call them the same thing, it can cause confusion in newer troops, and that can be very bad on the battlefield.
The other thing I see and this might just be semantics but I am not sure that it would be the best use of time/money for some of the others. But with just a little modification I think it could be very workable. These are like the Combat Engineer who right now learns most (or a large % at least) of the infantry tactics so making them go through the entire infantry school and then the engineer school just seams a waist to me. But either extend engineer school and add in what they are not getting and have them only do this, or reduce it and cut out all the infantry stuff so it is engineer only and have them go through the infantry school first would work I think (I would personally say the add to engineer school).