Army to extend infantry training

One unit station training is increase the infantry course from 14 weeks to 22 weeks.


The U.S. Army is refining a plan to extend by two months the service's 14-week infantry one station unit training, or OSUT, so young grunts arrive at their first unit more combat-ready than ever before.

Trainers at Fort Benning, Georgia will run a pilot this summer that will extend infantry OSUT from 14 weeks to 22 weeks, giving soldiers more time to practice key infantry skills such as land navigation, marksmanship, hand-to-hand combat, fire and maneuver and first aid training.



Currently soldiers in infantry OSUT go through nine weeks of Basic Combat Training and about 4.5 weeks of infantry advanced individual training. This would add an additional 8 weeks of advanced individual training, tripling the length of the instruction soldiers receive in that phase.


"It's more reps and sets; we are trying to make sure that infantry soldiers coming out of infantry OSUT are more than just familiar [with ground combat skills]," Col. Townley Hedrick, commandant of the Infantry School at Benning, told Military.com in a June 21 interview. "You are going to shoot more bullets; you are going to come out more proficient and more expert than just familiar."