I have been in the Marines and the U.S.Army and I can tell you that the difference is a matter of degree. Both services train their troops properly. The problem is Americans in general-not the Army or the Marines. Americans are highly anti-authoritarian. This can be a source of strength and weakness at the same time and has been a characteristic of Americans since the Revolutionary War. A foriegn officer named Von Steuben at that time complained in a letter back home about American's unwillingness to obey orders and demanding explanations for everything. This has continued to the present day. It's not just American soldiers - American workers don't respect their managers - American students don't respect their teachers - American children don't even respect their own parents. Of course, we have no respect for politicians. Americans don't automatically start repecting authority just because they joined the Army. The good thing about this is that Americans will quickly discard tactics, techniques and procedures that don't work as the Germans found out in both world wars. The bad thing about it is that if the tactics, techniques and procedures that they trained in are correct, the troops don't necessarily believe it and of course this leads to the poor discipline that you commonwealth troopers have observed in your American counterparts. There is a lot more that can be said about this but I don't want to write an essay. Those Marines and soldiers that you observed on the news are doing what they are doing because they believe that those tactics work for them. Urban warfare is the bane of armies and if the American military is getting good results, maybe we're on to something. Maybe the regimental system that the commonwealth uses would help (I'm a big fan of it)but it's not the answer to everything.

The regimental system as per the UK isn't Commonwealth wide. Australia doesn't enlist directly into units like the UK does. A soldier is told which unit he will go to after his corp training and can be moved around, though most seem to spend the majority of time in one unit. Given that our troops are generally regarded as about on par with the UK, it obviously isn't the driving factor behind the difference with US troops. Also, Australia has a pretty anti-authoratarian culture as well, which has carried over to the present day. The way the army gets around this is a combination of very strict discipline during basic, to condition the soldiers into following orders easily, a continuing strict military discipline code and the philosophy of mateship. The later involves indoctrinating the troops to follow orders, not because it is what the authority figure wants but because that is what is best for the group. This indoctrination is done by a stick and carrot approach, with rewards and punishments often being doled out to the group, rather than indivuduals, when it comes to performance of a unit's task, though serious breaches of military discipline still lead to individual punishment. Therfore, a lot of support and encouragment for better performance, but also discipline, therefore comes from peer pressure. The latter has had some down sides with abuse in "rite of passage" type rituals, but by and large has been a very successful way of dealing with a culture less respectful of authority than say the English are.

Those are some interesting points on initial training. The US seems to tinker around with initial training (standards and methods seem to change a lot) and leaves a lot more up to be worked on (or fixed) after basic training. Maybe some changes on how the US brings troops into the military could make for some improvements..

Don't think that we have anything like mateship. Buddyship just doesn't quite do it. Everything you cited has been done traditionally in the U.S. Military but has been watered down considerably in recent years. Social expiriments at the service academies and basic training have had the result of turning out soldiers that are cynical at best and problem children unable to meet the standards at worst. The training is provided to them. They just may be unable or unwilling to follow it. We're often not permitted to apply the traditional cure for anti-authoritarian recruits so their civilian attitudes remain intact. Most Americans do not enlist for a career but as short-timers. Often, they are just marking time until they figure out what they want to do with their life, they enlisted for some job training they hope to turn into big bucks on the civilian side, or they want something to brag about when they go back home. The U.S. military has to expend almost as much effort to re-enlist servicemen as it did to recruit them in the first place. High turnover means instability in the squads that do the fighting. As each soldier gets it in his head that he's just going to get out anyway, any soldier values that he's adopted are immediately replaced by civilian values. There's little we professionals can do about this. While we advocate stricter discipline and teamwork, the Department of Defense and the government believe that the solution to the problem is to make life nicer for the troops. There's no way that those soldiers and Marines can be inadequately trained. Each unit goes through a required table of training before deployment. Once in theatre, they get more training before they are pushed into the hot areas. It's a strict certification process. The alarming sloppiness that you are seeing is attributable to: 1) Rampant individualism or anti-authoritarianism that hasn't been corrected at the basic training stage. 2) Short-timer's disease. 3) Lack of self-indentification with the unit. 4) Lack of higher level support for those who must deal with these problems and try to correct them. 5) Lack of realization that there is a problem. 6) Lack of warrior ethos. This is why we talk about it so much - we see ourselves as workers who are forced to fight by circumstance kind of like what you see in cowboy movies. Rather than have a really disciplined military that would frighten the civilians and be considered unamerican, we have a lax military with a lot of firepower. This is what we are permitted to have. This is what we work with.

Don't worry, we have had our social scientists and bleeding hearts, who have tried to water down our training as well, with varying degrees of success. Fortunately though, the basic model has been sound enough to still produce good troops, despite the tampering. I hope it remains so in the future.

The problem is less likly to be the Basic training as it is the unit manning system. It is very hard for an active duty uint (or reserve for that matter) to get into a platoon and company SOP due to individual soldiers constantly rotating out of the unit and even MORE so with the officers. All this talk about train-up is cheap, becouse train-up quality varies from unit to unit (I went in for OIF1, and my training was clearing trenches, WORTHLESS) and soldiers rotate into theatre all the time w/o recieving the train-up. A better solution is to use a rotational readiness system (3-4 combat teams under a HR and training HQs) with one unit on "ready", one unit on trainup (can deploy in 30 days) on unit earlier in trainup (can deploy later then 30days) and a unit on recovery, individual training, replacement cycle, maintenance etc. Combine with a unit manning replacement system (units cycle in new troops ONLY in the beginning of the training cycle) and you have fully staffed, trained units that know how to work with each other. Personal emergency cases and soldiers enlisting away from a manning cycle can be in the HQ OPFOR force untill slots open or personel emergency is no longer valid. I do think that Infantry training needs to be more marksman oriented and patrol basics oriented, but having a dedicated training cycle with the unit would be a great advantage. Spc. Reed Dyer

i think it is a question of fearless soldiers .a fearless soldier win what is not the case with coward soldier.Fear put in game the motivation of fighting .A soldier which is trained to take cover every time even when it is not needed, develop with the time a reflex of fear which is shown in any little engagment .This soldier is parlysed by the fear he developped during training and so he is vulnerable and useless.US marine with no fear usullay go after the enemies during exchanges to kill them.What is sure that US marine tactics bring fear to the enemies.FPR army in africa adopted US marine tactics with great succes in the battlefield, they defeated all their enemies they encountered. Now they have one of the best armies in africa

I am a active duty marine that has spent two tours in Iraq. And we do train individual skills quite extensively. My marines would never do the things your talking about. On the other hand we do have a very tough job. You will start out a patrol handing out candy to kids trying to win the hearts and minds and finish the patrol killing some badguys. So you may have seen some footage of that. But it is up to the nco's like myself to kick the boys in the butt and put them where they need to be. You can train combat leadership all you want but doing it is a whole other thing. I like to think I did it right when I was there and I train my boys the same now. But good points all around

0352Warrior, It is very interesting to have the opportunity to have an active duty American sailor/soldier on the thread. Since you have mentioned the subject, I would like to ask you the following question: Can you give me some clues about your "winning hearts and minds" Sops ? Thanks kindly Vanguard

Ugg, haven't read this thread in a bit. But I have a theory about why we are seeing some Marine units bunching up more than we would like – I do recall a few clips where I wanted to yell ‘spread out!’ Back in the mid-90's SWAT-style CQB tactics were in vogue in the USMC. It was not uncommon to see a squad stack up outside a building prior to entering b/c the entry team hit a snag. During one large exercise, an entire squad was killed by the OPFOR dropping a grenade from a second story building and more thought went into the tactics. The tactics evolved and they are a lot more fluid and do not depend on an element stacking before entering a room or building. Some of this mind set still exists, but I think that we are doing a better job of spreading out. You can never get enough training before deployment and there are a lot of wickets to tick off before you do. Prior to deployment, USMC units go through the Basic Urban Skills Training as a refresher and then to SASO training. Both are good evolutions, but I’m sure everyone would like more of both. Unfortunately, these evolutions sometimes turn into just checking the box, as I’ve heard from other threads.