Do these fine specimens* look like your aspirational peer group?

Are you willing to sell your hide to the state for thirty thousand dollars annually?

https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2018/11/24/not-your-daddys-boot-camp-why-great-lakes-got-tougher-2

Step right up! You may be a match!

Join the finest military establishment in the world, and you, too, can have the opportunity to…

Bring Freedom, Democracy, and Human Rights to the Middle East, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and, finishing off, Iran!

Guard poppy fields in Afghanistan!

Blow up goatherds from the air-conditioned comfort of an exclusive Air Force facility in Nevada!

For all this and more, simply sign on the dotted line today!**

*These photographs are not even slightly cherry picked.

**Possible side effects include but are not limited to: loss of limb, loss of life, psychological trauma, chronic physical ailment, tattoos, disgusting sexual proclivities, adult-onset slave personality, bad breath, and mild rash. These side effects are uncommon, but you should check with your friendly neighborhood conflict-of-interest-free recruiter before signing any of his legally binding documents.

Me? I look at the attrition/washout rate. If there is one…

Not everyone is suited to military life, or will be able to function well under duress. The training is meant to weed those men and women out, mentally and physically. The recruiters, I’m sad to say, will take anything with a pulse that can pass the qualification gates, so don’t look to that as a sieve. Initial Entry Training should be a place where that winnowing takes place, a metaphoric Lantern of Diogenes. When you look at the passage rates, you can get a fair idea if it is actually doing the job. Absent that, you get to wait until later in the serviceman’s career, by which point you’re also going to start losing other people who relied on that weak link.

It is an ugly thing, but I would rather take the approach that you’re better off weeding them out early on, before they fail and take others with them.

Honestly can’t appraise the current Army or Navy training, but I remain ever suspicious of anything like that which does not include a significant rejection rate. There has to be consequence for failure, accountability for performance–And, if soldier or sailor does not perform to standard, standards can not be relaxed in favor of passing them deeper into the system. High passage rates indicate low standards, especially with today’s couch potato recruiting grounds.

Based on experience, however? I rather doubt they’re actually shitcanning the unfit the way they should be. The female graduation rates alone tell us they probably aren’t. Friend of mine was a Navy Chief; it was his despair that the brass had thrown out the standards when it came to damage control, and that there were so many on board who could not hack the basic tasks like moving pumps and other damage control equipment. He made a dire prediction that we’d start losing ships because of crap like putting females who didn’t have the upper body strength to do things like lift up pumps and haul hoselines into key damage control positions.

So, if they’re actually doing this sort of thing, and discharging the incapable and inept, all to the good. I somehow suspect that they really aren’t, however–If they were, we’d be hearing all about how the sexist Navy was destroying women’s careers. Which, I’ll note, we aren’t.

If our military ever does embrace actual reform, that will be the first sign of it: Massive amounts of bitching by the females who think that the military is a sinecure for them to have cute little careers with, rather than a national defense force vital to the survival of this nation. Don’t hear that? There probably isn’t any real “reform” going on.

An after the fact recommendation, I admit.

So long as the potential for failure exists, and its consequences enforced, then this training will prove effective at preparing Sailors for emergencies.

This reform’s effectiveness will weaken over time, but for now, it can only help.