WTF? Back in the day, we threw at a 1-meter bunker port 20m away, and you had to sidearm the thing to not hit the trees overhead, just like in the real world. Not throw from 10m at a 5-foot square basketball hoop. And they STILL can't pass?? Let's get down to the rat killin'...
No, really, I did.
I warned you here.
And here.
And again here, here, here, here, and here.
Now, you get this news:
(FORT PUSSYWIMP) The needs of the Army and the quality of the recruits it is acquiring have changed, so the Army is adapting. One of the many changes coming to Army Basic Training (BCT) is the removal of grenade qualification from basic training, which could happen as early as this summer.
The Army says this training takes too long and the time could be used for more needed training.
Commanders have complained about receiving undisciplined and “sloppy” appearing soldiers to their units after BCT. So the Army has decided to dedicate more time for recruits to become physically fit and develop discipline by spending more time on drill and ceremony, inspections, and learning military history.This is how you can tell a reporter knows Jack and Shit about military training, because none of those things build any increase in physical fitness. Discipline, maybe, at least with drill. Inspections only teach discipline afterwards, when you're getting thrashed, but the actual inspection is just standing around waiting. Learning military history, valuable as it is, is purely sitting-on-your-ass time, building neither discipline nor muscles. The way you get fitter recruits is by smoking their asses with countless pushups, pull-ups, sit-ups, along with the rest of the Daily Seven, and by running their dicks into the dirt. The trouble is, most of the problem recruits don't have dicks. How can we tell?
What General Fuck-Up failed to mention in his PC-sanitized statement is that it's countless women recruits who "throw like girls" and haven't thrown a damned thing heavier than a lipstick tube their entire wasted young lives, who also can't toss the horrendously heavy 1 pound M67 frag grenade far enough away to keep from hitting themselves with their own shrapnel, thus making them more of a danger to everyone in their own unit than the enemy would be.“What we have found is it is taking far, far too much time. It’s taking three to four times as much time … just to qualify folks on the hand grenade course than we had designated so what is happening is it is taking away from other aspects of training,” Maj. Gen. Malcolm Frost, commanding general of the U.S. Army Center of Initial Military Training, told defense reporters on Friday.“We are finding that there are a large number of trainees that come in that quite frankly just physically don’t have the capacity to throw a hand grenade 20 to 25 to 30 meters. In 10 weeks, we are on a 48-hour period; you are just not going to be able to teach someone how to throw if they haven’t thrown growing up.”
Hell, our last Secretary of State gave himself Purple Heart medals to get out of Vietnam by shooting himself in the face with his own grenade fragments. These wimpy Army chicks are being robbed of a chance to someday become Secretary of State! Sexist pigs!
SecState Chickenshit recalling his Swift boat exploits
The Army's pre-Barbie-era Grenade Qualification Course, when last I looked, was seven stations requiring one to throw grenades at six targets successfully, then finish up by IDing the grenades in current US inventory using the Mk I eyeball.
Passing all stations earned you the Grenade "Expert" bar. I earned mine with a perfect score, with ease, back when the CinC was another ass-kicking outsider Republican with a questionable dye job.
- Station 1.
Engage a group of F-type silhouette targets in the open from a two-man fighting position. The targets are located 35 meters to the front of the fighting position, simulating enemy movement through and beyond the squad's protective wire.
- Station 2.
Engage a bunker using available cover and concealment. The bunker can have one or two firing portholes oriented toward the direction of the buddy team's movement and a rear exit.
- Station 3.
Engage a fortified 82-mm mortar position from 20 meters.
- Station 4.
Engage a group of enemy targets behind cover at a 20-meter distance.
- Station 5.
Clear an entry point to a trench line at a 25-meter distance.
- Station 6.
Engage troops in a halted, open-type wheeled vehicle at a 25-meter distance.
- Station 7.
Identify hand grenades. Soldiers must be able to identify grenades by shape, color, markings, and capabilities.
But the current crop of wannabe Combat Barbies can't fight physiology and biology, and grow the muscles they never had and never will, and certainly not in the weeks allotted for Basic Combat Training by the Army.
Which is why - exactly as predicted - the Army is lowering the standards to get the Combat Barbie non-hackers from a No-Go to a Go status.
Otherwise, the generals would have to go to Congress and tell them HopeyDopey's DoD had made a horrible and tragic mistake, which was going to get American troops killed in combat, and that's too hard for the gutless wonders wearing stars in Big Green.
Those gutless wonders should kill themselves now, en masse, and save time. And the first (probably only) general who had the fortitude to nut up and tell that truth shouldn't be court-martialed, he should be made Army Chief of Staff tomorrow, and everyone above him fired on the spot, but that'll never happen.
And in the article, they're also announcing they'll be dropping Land Nav.
"North to the ceiling, South to the floor,
West to the window, east to the door"
...but there's no windows out here anywhere...??
Far be it for me to suggest it's because women's brains have immense spatial recognition difficulty in reading a map and applying the image to the terrain, without far more time to train them than basic training allows.
I didn't have to say it though, because the US Army just did.
When the Pussy Platoons can't climb the hurdles, you lower them until they can.
It's not like map reading or use of grenades are basic combat skills now, though, unlike they have been for the last century for grenades, and knowing WhereTF you are since forever.
Best wishes with that dumbass plan in combat, sugar britches. The enemy isn't liable to make the same allowances. Ask faux hero Jessica Unconscious how that works out for you and your entire unit in the real world.
Barbie Clusters optional...
Second-place Combat Award, aye.
ReplyDeleteIt has now been far too long (Jesus, going on forty-five years!!!)since I was a Recruit at Parris Island but I'm pretty sure I have the strength to pass that grenade course. It might take a couple times through to get the accuracy, though. As noted it's been a long while since I threw a grenade and I'm unable to practice, though I'd gladly take possession of a couple of cases of frags.
I DO still shoot regularly
Boat Guy
After thinking about no more basic training in grenade-throwing and map navigation, here are some classic war movie sequels:
ReplyDelete"A Bridge at Ramagen? Where's Ramagen?"
"The Bridge Over Some River in the Jungle"
"The Longest Daycare Center"
"Thiry Seconds Over Some Place in Japan"
"The Flirty Dozen"
"The Cute Little Bed-and-Breakfast of Navarone"
"Ice Station Zebra Print"
"Von Ryan's Espresso"
"Where Eagles Dare to Go Braless"
"Shaving Ryan's Privates"
O.K. I'm done.
Hey, they don't need Land Nav classes. They'll have GPS's!
ReplyDeleteNot to change the subject, but did you see the recent story about the PRC working towards enhanced ASAT capability up to the Geostationary Orbit region?
PS before Pedantic Nerds Are Us rolls in on the last comment; I know SATNAVs aren't in Geostationary orbits. But if you can get up there, hitting the other stuff is a lot easier.
ReplyDeleteYou don't think so at the time, but "Army Training, Sir" has been a joke for some time. I trained in Reagan's military myself, and looking back a LOT of it was a joke, only good for filling uniforms with warm bodies. Good for racking up the body count. I don't doubt it is far worse with Bitches Lib, but let's not delude ourselves too much with selective memory. Glad I served, really glad I didn't make it a career. If I made it through the tainted shots from Storm, they'd probably have Stop Lossed me at the eighteen to twenty year mark.
ReplyDelete@Randy:
ReplyDeleteIf you have a link, I'd like to take a look.
And James,
If the training was "Aaaaaaaaaarmy Training!" in your best Bill Murray/Stripes voice back in our day (and I did drill on the same Ft. Knox grinder Bill & Co. did), how much worse is it now, trying to get Pvt. Cupcake through it, when TPTB are more worried about not making her mascara run than they are about making her run?
The point of the story was that rather than admitting an obvious mistake, they're hamstringing every soldier going forward, in perpetuity. That's doubling down on max stupid, and it's going to fill those body bags.
Fuck I'm legitimately crippled and my shoulder sounds like a cement mixer when I try to throw a ball these days but even I think I could even pass the grenade toss. Hell, I might just put sand in a couple of inert grenade bodies this weekend and try. Seriously. If a legitimate cripple with a torn up shoulder can hurl a grenade per army requirements anyone should be able to.
ReplyDeleteAs for land navigation we were doing that stuff in boy scouts before we had pubes. It's not that hard. To this day I never use satnav in a car or GPS when I'm trail riding. It wrecks your internal compass and terrain/landmark awareness. I occasionally use GPS for some mapping, coordinate notations and as a backup but never rely on it. It dulls the navigation abilities in your brain.
When I was young, I could throw a rock so high up that you would lose sight of it.
ReplyDeleteHi Aesop,
ReplyDeleteThis thing about "body bags!!"... don't laugh!! 'Bitch is, ..every one I ever saw or carried one it had a dead United States Marine in it, Killed in Combat!! So be careful where you tred!!
skybill
Aesop, can't find it and will keep looking. It was a short blurb in a newsletter type e-mail (Jane's or Air Force Association possibly) in the last month or so, looking at the combined capability of their demonstrated LEO ASAT capability with the heir Geosynchronous launch capability.
ReplyDeleteJeebers in '69 that little ball was a qualifying station in the 5-event PCPT. And no LandNav? Someone should ask anyone from the 507th Maint Co how that worked out...
ReplyDeleteMy experience is one of the corset brigade threw the live grenade 10 feet up, it hit the top of the protection wall and luckily bounced on the other side. The drill sergeant tossed her into the safety pit and jumped on top of her to save her ass. The stream of yelling and cussing that came out of him when he got her back into the bunker was epic, deserved and awesome!
ReplyDeleteOn a positive note, these are the snowflakes the socialist progressives will be sending to put down any uprising from those who won't willingly give up their arms.
ReplyDelete