General overhauling training aims for combat-ready troops - Local / Metro - TheState.com: "Army basic training needs to get back to basics.
That's the word from Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling, who's in charge of overhauling Army training.
'We need to make sure that what we're training is a good soldier we can hand over to their first unit and make sure they're ready for combat,' Hertling, deputy commanding general for initial military training, said Wednesday during a visit at Fort Jackson.
Before the war on terror began in 2001, U.S. troops trained to fight a large, mechanized force like the Russian army in the woods and mountains of eastern Europe.
But in recent years basic training has undergone a number of changes as the Army adapts to an enemy in Afghanistan and Iraq that lives among the general population and travels by pickup and donkey cart.
To prepare soldiers for today's battlefield, a number of tasks have been added to the 10-week training program and a few have been removed, said Hertling, a former tank commander.
Soldiers are taught a number of skills, but don't have the time to master all of them, said Hertling, who's assigned to the Army's Training and Doctrine Command at Fort Monroe, Va.
'We were teaching soldiers too much stuff,'"
