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New in 2019: The Army’s basic infantry training is about to get longer, and it could be a sign of broader changes to come
The Army has been playing with these ideas for a while, and it is finally coming.
Hopefully this will cut down on Soldiers arriving at their first duty station unprepared.Early in the year, Fort Jackson, South Carolina’s basic training program of instruction was updated to encourage more fitness and discipline in new soldiers, while infantry one-station unit training at Fort Benning, Georgia, was extended from 14 to 22 weeks.
Senior leaders have said that extension will be made permanent in 2019, along with extensions for OSUT for the other combat arms, such as armor and engineer. Also under consideration: changes to the length of basic combat training.
“We have packed a lot into basic training — we have — and we need to extend it,” Sergeant Major of the Army Dan Dailey told reporters in June. “We know we can make a better product.”
I wonder who will be platoon leaders for training units?Longer training will require more drill sergeants, so before a decision is even made, the Army has started a push to hire more cadre and decrease the ratio of instructors to trainees.
“We want to essentially cut those ratios in half,” Army Chief of Staff Mark Milley told Army Times in October, while adding a platoon sergeant and officer platoon leader to each training unit.
“What we want, ultimately, is we want any soldier who graduates from OSUT, that they can immediately go and join any formation that they need to go to, no matter what phase of the sustained readiness model they’re in,” Brig. Gen. Christopher Donahue, the infantry school commandant, told Army Times in March.
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Originally Posted by Peter1469
