Got an e-mail from his mother this morning:
I know that he's done a lot of rappelling over the years, but for the really interesting & technical upward climbs they use the ultimate mountaineering tool-- a helicopter.
I've read about Ranger/SF training and I had to deal with similar safety/standards issues in teaching firefighting & damage control to submariners. Some of the student "rules" will inevitably have higher priorities than others or will even conflict. Safety aside, a student's choice isn't so much which rule to follow as it is for them to decide which one(s) to break and how to handle the consequences. So an instructor will have a number of reasons to ding a student, or partial credit can be awarded for the minor issues. Of course the major rules don't offer much flexibility, and teamwork always counts for more than individual brilliance.
Some instructors may feel more strongly about some priorities based on their backgrounds or experiences. Methods of accomplishing various tasks may have been taught differently even with the same curriculum, or there may be controversial changes among the curriculum revisions-- this happens all the time when a student gets hurt and a reflexive procedural change is instituted. Instructors deliberately deceive the students by being "easy" one day and "impossible" the next to keep the students from trying to game the administration. Or the boss may have just realigned the priorities of instructors who were perceived to be "easy", and suddenly they seem "inconsistent" to the students.
The instructors also expect each student to perform to the utmost of their ability. One student may have more potential than another, and if he's not living up to it then he's in trouble. I suspect this is the source of most of the controversy.
The students don't see behind the scenes, so much of the "randomness" has a purpose not understood by the them (yet). The instructors encourage an atmosphere of fear & uncertainty, too, and RI Roulette is a great tool for it. Last week's standards aren't good enough this week. Rules change with terrain. Objectives change. "National Command Authority" changes the priorities. Of course when a student's starving and awake for 72 consecutive hours it doesn't take much for something to happen that he's tempted to blame on the instructor. Sitting in on the instructor's critique (or getting a good night's sleep) would clear up 99% of that confusion.
My nephew isn't able to be part of the discussions among the instructors, which is why it seems so whimsical & even random to the students. But each instructor is responsible for a group of "their" students and the instructors have to justify their actions among themselves and to their supervisors. Capricious, weak, inconsistent instructors are detected fairly quickly and reined in before they cost a lot of money and time.
The military is under tremendous pressure to boost the size of the classes, to shorten the course, and to start popping more SF out of the pressure cookers. The instructors are under tremendous pressure to pass anyone who demonstrates even minimal proficiency, let alone skill. Heck, they're probably going to make more/longer deployments if they don't create more helpers to share the load. But one of the core tenets of SF, widely advertised, is that the process can't be ramped up just because there are more job openings. They have to hold the line-- a mistake by a marginal graduate will quickly kill a lot of better graduates.
In my experience, submarine training has actually become much harder over the last 25 years. Most of it is due to technology allowing us to speed up the pace and make things more realistic. Some of it is realizing that we're capable of doing better than our predecessors and training accordingly. I think Ranger students are seeing the same ramp.
Dick Couch is able to explain the military's Ranger/SF training & culture much more articulately than most. (He's the only author to have been allowed to sit in on both Army Ranger/SF and Navy SEAL training.) Reading his "Chosen Soldier" or "The Warrior Elite" gives an appreciation for the number of times these guys get it right and how hard they work to avoid letting someone squeak through by mistake. So it's slightly more likely that a qualified student will be dropped from the course, but both mistakes are extremely rare. That is a waste if it happens, but dropped students continue to serve with infantry or another branch.
As for frustrated & discouraged students-- if the students don't see those actions as challenges then they don't belong at the school and should be dropped as quickly as possible. Complaints about "fair" are simply not tolerated, and if it even occurs to a student to make a complaint like that then he's not SF material. The instructors are searching for the students who are insanely competitive and who will not quit no matter the conditions.
Maybe the Eglin AFB food stores have a hard time keeping things in stock... or else they charge dearly for the "good" stuff. But I think he's hallucinating and worried that there won't be any left by the time he gets there!
I'll ask him on my next letter and get back to you when he rejoins the electronic world.
I know that he's done a lot of rappelling over the years, but for the really interesting & technical upward climbs they use the ultimate mountaineering tool-- a helicopter.
My nephew has been an outstanding student for eight years and he's done a pretty good job of being an instructor at various times, but he (like the rest of the students) doesn't understand what's going on behind the scenes and he therefore decides that it's an instructor's fault. 'Cause he knows he was doing it right, dammit!
I've read about Ranger/SF training and I had to deal with similar safety/standards issues in teaching firefighting & damage control to submariners. Some of the student "rules" will inevitably have higher priorities than others or will even conflict. Safety aside, a student's choice isn't so much which rule to follow as it is for them to decide which one(s) to break and how to handle the consequences. So an instructor will have a number of reasons to ding a student, or partial credit can be awarded for the minor issues. Of course the major rules don't offer much flexibility, and teamwork always counts for more than individual brilliance.
Some instructors may feel more strongly about some priorities based on their backgrounds or experiences. Methods of accomplishing various tasks may have been taught differently even with the same curriculum, or there may be controversial changes among the curriculum revisions-- this happens all the time when a student gets hurt and a reflexive procedural change is instituted. Instructors deliberately deceive the students by being "easy" one day and "impossible" the next to keep the students from trying to game the administration. Or the boss may have just realigned the priorities of instructors who were perceived to be "easy", and suddenly they seem "inconsistent" to the students.
The instructors also expect each student to perform to the utmost of their ability. One student may have more potential than another, and if he's not living up to it then he's in trouble. I suspect this is the source of most of the controversy.
The students don't see behind the scenes, so much of the "randomness" has a purpose not understood by the them (yet). The instructors encourage an atmosphere of fear & uncertainty, too, and RI Roulette is a great tool for it. Last week's standards aren't good enough this week. Rules change with terrain. Objectives change. "National Command Authority" changes the priorities. Of course when a student's starving and awake for 72 consecutive hours it doesn't take much for something to happen that he's tempted to blame on the instructor. Sitting in on the instructor's critique (or getting a good night's sleep) would clear up 99% of that confusion.
My nephew isn't able to be part of the discussions among the instructors, which is why it seems so whimsical & even random to the students. But each instructor is responsible for a group of "their" students and the instructors have to justify their actions among themselves and to their supervisors. Capricious, weak, inconsistent instructors are detected fairly quickly and reined in before they cost a lot of money and time.
The military is under tremendous pressure to boost the size of the classes, to shorten the course, and to start popping more SF out of the pressure cookers. The instructors are under tremendous pressure to pass anyone who demonstrates even minimal proficiency, let alone skill. Heck, they're probably going to make more/longer deployments if they don't create more helpers to share the load. But one of the core tenets of SF, widely advertised, is that the process can't be ramped up just because there are more job openings. They have to hold the line-- a mistake by a marginal graduate will quickly kill a lot of better graduates.
In my experience, submarine training has actually become much harder over the last 25 years. Most of it is due to technology allowing us to speed up the pace and make things more realistic. Some of it is realizing that we're capable of doing better than our predecessors and training accordingly. I think Ranger students are seeing the same ramp.
Dick Couch is able to explain the military's Ranger/SF training & culture much more articulately than most. (He's the only author to have been allowed to sit in on both Army Ranger/SF and Navy SEAL training.) Reading his "Chosen Soldier" or "The Warrior Elite" gives an appreciation for the number of times these guys get it right and how hard they work to avoid letting someone squeak through by mistake. So it's slightly more likely that a qualified student will be dropped from the course, but both mistakes are extremely rare. That is a waste if it happens, but dropped students continue to serve with infantry or another branch.
As for frustrated & discouraged students-- if the students don't see those actions as challenges then they don't belong at the school and should be dropped as quickly as possible. Complaints about "fair" are simply not tolerated, and if it even occurs to a student to make a complaint like that then he's not SF material. The instructors are searching for the students who are insanely competitive and who will not quit no matter the conditions.
