Posted on Sep 17, 2016
How do we rebuild the mental toughness of new troops while keeping with the military's new direction?
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PTSD out of basic? Night terrors out of AIT? IG and EO complaints? Reports of "hazing" for being dropped for 20 push ups? How do we, as leaders, compensate for the decline of mental toughness in today's new recruits? How can we produce a quality product when we are expected to treat a new E1 with the same respect as an O10?
Training
Military bearing
Recruit
Discipline
Leadership
Edited >1 y ago
Posted >1 y ago
Responses: 61
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This is the result when you allow a society to let their young continue to believe that they are entitled to things that they have no appreciation of or for the cost at which it was obtained! Spank your kids and teach them respect and appreciation for others, mental toughness will follow!
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This is a result of the politically correct, everyone needs to appease everyone else world we live in. Listen, not everything is going to go your way. Not everything is a happy walk in the park. You will not always get a participation award, sometimes you have to actually perform up to or above the standards.
Basic training needs to push these kids physically and mentally to their breaking point. That is what war will do. We have to be sure they can handle the stress before it becomes a life and death issue.
Basic training needs to push these kids physically and mentally to their breaking point. That is what war will do. We have to be sure they can handle the stress before it becomes a life and death issue.
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Recruit from prisons. A lot of people coming out of there are generally hard motherf*ckers.
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PO1 Aaron Baltosser
If you need to go into combat, and need something to get done the hard way, there is a population that would be good for it. I saw a study once that said people needing multiple waivers to get in, were more likely to remain, awarded at a higher percentage than the totally clean recruit, and awarded for valor at a higher rate as well. To me it made sense. If you send a guy into a knock down drag out street fight, you don't want a squeaky clean type that has never done that before.
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1. Set standards. 2. Enforce them. We can complain about the younger generation all day, but as leaders we have a responsibility to shape them into productive service members. Not everyone is cut out for the military life, and those individuals usually don't last long (4 years at the most). Most others are willing to be led and trained and do the job they signed up for. Some require more of a push than others, but I have seen bad Sailors turn around, and vice versa.
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MAJ (Join to see)
I hope you are right...I just think that our accession methods will change..The kids that have been in sports and understand what it is like to be on a team, and have a good grade point average will have the best promise I think.
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MAJ (Join to see)
There was a great quote by CS Lewis which came to mind with the whole Bradley Manning Edward Snowden dustup: "We scoff at courage and bravery and are then shocked to find TRAITORS in our midst" As for instilling or developing toughness? Not sure you can train that into a man or woman. Remember all the D -Day Normandy guys were mostly teenagers who had survived the hardship and deprivation of the Great Depression. It "prepped" them for wartime in Pacific and Europe. What exactly in our culture has prepped anyone for anything other than downloading a new app?
The next war's heroes are likely going to be the kids from the Rust Belt whose family moved off to chase jobs in Texas or elsewhere. They will have been largely self educated given the piss poor quality of most major metro public schools these days. We really need in our culture what the churchmen used to term a Revival.
The next war's heroes are likely going to be the kids from the Rust Belt whose family moved off to chase jobs in Texas or elsewhere. They will have been largely self educated given the piss poor quality of most major metro public schools these days. We really need in our culture what the churchmen used to term a Revival.
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So glad I retired way before any of this got so bad. I saw it coming during my BNCOC when fellow NCO's went to our Commadant to " report" Drill Seargents for dropping a trainee in the rain and getting him muddy. It also just happened that most of the Drilks and Instructors were guys I just recently served with as they were all taken out of my Platoon at Ft Carson. So needless to say I thoroughly enjoyed telling them about it when our CSM told them to mind their own training and let the Dtolls mind theirs BWAHAHAHAHA
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They wouldn't have lasted when I was in the army. They got chaptered out real quick don't need a wimp cry baby lazy ass. You're training for war. Do you think they're going to stop a firefight just because you're stressed out. Oh you poor thing would you stop his firefight so you can just unstress yourself right..... Totally different when I was in you either got with a game or you just got your ass killed. Wars hell.
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You can't "rebuild" something that was most likely non-existent to begin with. The right question is how do you develop it? That depends largely on the individual, and from the 20 year olds I've met recently it didn't look like that's going to be an easy task.
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