Should Basic Training go back to being a difficult, earned course, or should it be given to any trainee that doesn't quit for the ten weeks?

Just wish a PVT could pass the APFT when they are done with IET

I think it needs to be difficult and lot less than band camp. I think in the long run it prepares people for the real world. I know when I went it was difficult but looking back it prepared me for all types of situations and the most important I do not get my butt or feelings hurt too quickly.

I think we're doing our young troops a disservice coddling them the way we do. Over the years I've received a number of young troops fresh from OSUT. Over half of them couldn't pass an APFT at their first drill. Some had been out of OSUT less than 2 weeks! Discipline has also suffered. I remember walking up on one of our new PVTs who was leaning against a car with his hands in his pockets. His greeting to myself and the senior NCO next to me? "Sup?" While the correction was made, he too had been out of OSUT less than a month.

Beyond the discipline issue is the matter of building physical and mental toughness. BCT is supposed to help prepare our young men and women to go to war. When most PVTs I speak with say BCT was "fun" it tells me that we're not challenging them enough. We're losing an immense opportunity to build these young men and women up. The next opportunity they have to learn some of these lessons may be combat.

Sir,

I feel this is sort of a loaded question. We need to make the system harder but at the same time from what I heard it was the same way in the "old" days you could keep your head down and still graduate. Even if BCT was harder the end state is still for you to graduate. 

well giggles....I know now why I see some of the panzy post that I see now days hehehehe It a kidndler gentler army now....You actually can't tell a PVT he a waste of his own daddy sperm....Cowboy/Cowgirl up everyone

Basic Training is a joke and the Army is quickly becoming the laughing stock.