WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army is pressing into place sweeping changes in its basic training program, introducing rigorous new drills and intensive work on combat skills to prepare recruits for immediate missions to Iraq and Afghanistan.
In what senior officers describe as the most striking changes to basic training since the Vietnam era, soldiers whose specialties traditionally kept them far from the front — clerks, cooks, truck drivers and communications technicians — will undergo far more stressful training.
The new training regimen includes additional time dodging real bullets, more opportunities to fire weapons, including heavy machine guns, and increasing the time spent practicing urban combat and hiking and sleeping in the field during the nine-week courses.
With the Army stretched today by long-term deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, a growing percentage of new soldiers are in combat zones within 30 days of being assigned to a unit, Army officials say. Even those whose specialties are not combat arms often face situations where the traditional distinction between hazardous front lines and secure rear areas has vanished.
The changes were endorsed at a meeting of the Army's training brigade commanders in June, and were promptly put into effect on an official, if still interim, basis at all five installations where the Army conducts its basic training.
"This is the new mentality that says, 'Everybody is going to be a warrior first,' everybody is going to have the ability to defend themselves and survive in combat," said William F. Briscoe, director of the directorate for training plans and capabilities review at the Army's Training and Doctrine Command at Fort Monroe, Va.
Support soldiers are also receiving added training for military operations in urban areas, which includes drills in how to enter a building held by hostile forces and to run convoys through contested territory. They will receive additional practice in how to manage prisoners of war and how to maneuver and fight when civilians are in the line of fire.