Should Airborne School be a requirement to serve in an Airborne Unit?

During the surge, 1 BCT 82nd ABN was supplemented with a lot of Non-ABN personnel to give us some bodies. They did fine in the deployment, but as soon as we got back they had two options. Go to Airborne school, or go somewhere else.

This question has been asked a number of times on this forum, SPC (Join to see), and I just realized I have already responded!

If during the performance of their normal duties they would have occasion to jump out of an airplane I would say yes if their primary duty would not require them to jump out of an airplane I would say no. That's like asking that if everyone attached to an F-18 squadron be qualified to fly the plane or if everyone in a tank Battalion know how to drive the tank so the answer is no.

Absolutely. When I was with the 82nd we were ALL airborne qualified.

Off hand I was going to say yes.
But then .. my old unit in Vietnam (26th Inf Reg) was straight leg.
Recently they got reassigned to the 101st.
Are you going to send an entire Regiment thru Jump School?
There ain't enough beer in Georgia!

Not all slots in Airborne units require you to be Airborne. Honestly I think that number will decrease as budgets contine to shrink.

SPC (Join to see) - Spec; Did you know that, during WWII, the British SOE developed a method of training parachutists what resulted in one quarter the amount of training injuries that jumpers in traditional airborne units suffered?

Do you know what it was and do you know how many jumps were made before the person was qualified?

If their position is not tactical and they by duty position would never be a part of an Airborne operation... Then no, every person that is on jump status takes away from a trigger puller that needs to jump. Getting birds/chutes/Riggers and support costs money that we just dont have. I would limit it to only folks that support the actual Airborne mission as outlined in the METL.

If your job will ever require you to jump, or require you to have specific knowledge about the process of jumping out of a plane, then yes. However, spending the money to train someone for something they'll never do, just to "fit in", seems to me like a waste of resources. In my opinion, the cost-benefit trade-off is not worth it.

It would be nice to be a requirement for everyone to be airborne, but that's not really realistic because you will always have soldiers who don't need the quall's because of there jobs as a support soldier in the unit. But if they are part of the unit they should be offered the opportunity to go if they are will to take the challenge and want the glory of be one of the family of airborne.