Smartest, best trained, best equipped and best led?

Word is that we have the smartest, best trained, best equipped and best led armed forces n the nation. Let’s take a look at that.


The smartest?
Probably. But we all know that there different kinds of smart.

They may be 98% high school grads and even have a year or two of Jr. College, but smart goes way deeper. We all know the guy with 7 degrees who doesn’t know a Phillips head from a flathead screwdriver. The military requires both the types of guys. They need the guys with the 50 pound brains and the guys who can actually make things work. They need a whole heck of lot more of the latter.

Today’s kids may have a leg up in the GCT, but these kids may not be any smarter in the “let’s make this thing work” department. Here’s why:

This is the generation that grew up under the watch words, “it’s for the children”, which sadly translates into, “let’s make it easier for them.”

These kids are of the “everyone gets a trophy” generation. They are of the generation that if one kid in the school has a peanut allergy, instead of putting a peanut allergy table in the corner, no one in the entire school can eat peanut butter. This is the generation that lived under dodge ball, tag, finger guns, and all manner of other mindless liberal BS bans. Many of the bans were directed at restricting boys from being boys.

Let’s face it, they’ve grown up in liberal indoctrination centers of ever increasing budgets and ever declining test scores. So can they really be smarter? Smarter at what? In what way?

I’m just not so sure that this crew of computer trained brainiacs would be any more proficient at calculating the fall of an artillery round with a slide rule than their Korean War counter parts.

That would be an interesting test. If you took these wiz kids and transported them back 60 years, would their knowledge do them any good? Could you take a kid today, train him and drop him into a world without an i-phone, i-pad and i-pod and expect that they’d be able to function? I predict much grumbling, whining and fit throwing.

I’m pretty sure the experiment would work fine in the reverse. If you brought the men of derring-do from 60 years ago forward and trained them, they’d be able to function and be in marvel.

So yeah, the kids are smart coming into the force. But I worry that our culture is cheating them out of the get in there, stick with it and figure it out on your own process. Smart gets you down the track, but sooner or latter you actually have to do something.

The best trained?
With regard to physical training, Ha! Double Ha! Every former military man out there can recall running the obstacle course and having to clear a 6 foot wall unassisted. The most common method was to get the running start and jump to get your shoulder above the lip of the wall and then drag yourself over.

I watched a video recently of the smartest kids ever who couldn’t get over the wall without someone bracing themselves with their back against the wall, knees slightly bent and hands inter locked. The smart kids would place a foot into those interlocked hands to receive the literal leg up in getting over the wall.  To be honest, this was totally an accomodation to women in the force.

With regard to physical training the key has been to lower the standards and ignore the results.

Computers have offered a great training benefit for some high skill positions and even the not so high skilled. Pilot training is the best in the world. Other individual military occupational specialty training make use of computer simulation and is also top notch. That fact combined with the fact that most services put their best people into the positions that are responsible to train force make for a well trained force.  I do believe that in the force today, the guy that doesn’t know what he is doing is the rare exception. I believe the force is superbly trained.

Best equipped?
No doubt. The military industrial complex has provided the best of the best.

Best led?
No way. My opinion why tomorrow.