We spend a lot of time conducting training on SHARP, Suicide Prevention, Resilience, etc. Do you think we are spending too much time on them?

Sir, I believe we overall have cookie cutter classes and need to rely and teach instructors how to make the material theirs so its fresh and new and more meaningful for the audience.

"Opportunity Cost"

It's not that we are spending too much time on any one of these subjects, it is that we only have so much time, and therefore ANY time we spend must be at the expense of something else.

There are 250 training days in a year (365/7*5 - 10 federal holidays). Each Service Member accrues 30 days of Leave (22 usable if you account for weekend loss). So call it 225~ days.

There was a great article mentioned a few weeks ago about (Congressional) Mandated Training. It exceeded the number of total available training days.

So when we add in "common sense" subjects which are important, it takes their toll on operational requirements like the Range, Swim Qual, Pro-Mask, etc. Would we rather sit in a Death by PPT, or do Military Themed Training that "feels" useful to our day to day work?

Sir,
When resiliency training requires staying late to get it completed. This is very counter productive. The comment, I can't commit suicide, they are killing me by PowerPoint has been spoken at one of these training sessions.

The key to a successful program is fresh, relevant material and an instructor that cares about the subject.

The check the box mentality that comes with these redundant classes ruins any chance of the training doing any good.

These are check the block courses so command can pass the buck when something goes wrong. They replace leadership. We use to cover this in short commander safety briefings before weekends and holidays.

Sir, I am an MRT Level 2, ASI 8J, and have trained hundreds of Soldiers, Family members and DA civilians, and yes, we spend too much time on it...but I say that with a caveat: we have trainers who don't "own" the material, and a similar paradigm is at work with most, perhaps all of the Army's other "Human Resources" initiatives.

The skills taught in MRT are basic life skills that most of us of a certain age or older acquired by living before we raised our hands and took an oath. But the talent pool from which we draw has changed, and new Soldiers adapt to the technical side of the Army lifestyle with relative ease, but often struggle with the human side: They struggle to communicate effectively. They struggle to deal with failure. They struggle with perspective.

So anything that the Army values, it standardizes and replicates, in my opinion, to the detriment of the real, meaningful interactions that were the hallmark of Army service before.

My very very small Army MOS has lost three senior NCOs to suicide in the last six months, so in full disclosure, I'm a little mad and very frustrated, because I don't know how to fix the human element of the Army. We are supposed to be built to take relatively incompetent young men and women and develop them into competent, skilled, confident officers and non-commissioned officers. That is the critical capability that enables us to fulfill our mission: "deter war, win in combat when called upon."

It seems that the more formal we get, the more undesirable outcomes we see.

As a reserve commander, these programs never made sense to me and only added to the ever growing burden of non-mission required training. We got no returns, much less diminishing returns, from these programs and the others we had to conduct. When we added up all the hours of this required training I think we exceeded the time allotted for two weeks annual training and 48 drill assemblies. To get any individual or mission essential training done we had to find "creative" ways to meet the requirements.

BOTTOM LINE - These social engineering Band-Aids are useless and are a distraction from our mission and purpose....to kill people and break things in the pursuit of our national objectives.

A few questions, if I may. How much time does the Army spend on these topics? Is it a few hours a year, or days of training quarterly, etc? What is resiliency training? And finally, what does MRT stand for? Thanks.

Sir, I don't believe we are spending too much time on them. I think we are doing it to check a block now versus the trainings being an actual learning experience. With all of the funding that we do put into the programs we should also put in the effort to mix up the training, train the trainers how to not sound so cookie cutter, and to make the trainings more interactive.

Yes Sir-particularly MRT. I don't "hate" it, but I highly question its effectiveness in the real world. I find to be barely above a generic, pop-psychological, shotgun approach done in desperate hope of hitting home with some troubled soldier who MAY possibly be swayed by certain aspects of the program. Time, money and energy would be better spent on better identifying and helping troubled soldiers specifically; and in general, giving leadership time and support to work with and develop their soldiers.

But I digress.

Yes some of that training we DO need, but the question as you stated is what training and how often. At least Active Duty can better absorb the time required to do such training--whether its truly beneficial or not--Guard and Reserve simply cannot, which leads some brilliant minds to conclude that "gosh, more training time is needed". No, better time management and (this I think is key) a more critical evaluation of the real tangible benefits of the training we are saddled with is what is needed. Drilling soldiers should not have to cut their training time in HALF just to satisfy some on High regarding questionable, yet mandatory "training".