The Army just made it harder to graduate from basic training

[rangerrebew]

The Army just made it harder to graduate from basic training
By: Meghann Myers   1 day ago


FORT JACKSON, S.C. ― It’s day three of basic training’s culminating field training exercise, and the soldiers of 3rd Battalion, 39th Infantry Regiment are lined up along the side of a road on a thickly wooded training range.

It looks a lot like a scene out of “American Gladiators,” actually — two soldiers at a time are suiting up to whack each other about the head and body with foam-padded pugil sticks. The weapons are stand-ins for rifles, and the soldiers are in round one of a battalion-wide combatives competition on the road to graduation.

https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-army/2018/04/08/the-army-just-made-it-harder-to-graduate-from-basic-training/

[Maj. Bill Martin]

The most hopeful line is this:

This class, he said, started at 820 trainees, 74 of whom didn’t make the cut.

Now, if that is a higher failure rate than they've had previously, that's a good sign.  On the other hand, unless they actually fail out a higher percentage of people because they don't satisfactorily complete the new training, it won't really matter.