Usans too fat to fight

Hellbound said:
Yes, but some areas do require higher scores than others. Admittedly, this is currently limited to Rangers and Special Operations (I believe both require a score over 70 on the 18-21 year old scale in each event in order to qualify).

But in general, you are correct.

As for lugging things, 87mm Mortar with base plate. Those ******* is heavy!
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Try loading 35+ 120mm sabot, HEAT, and CAN rounds into the semi ready rack and ready rack in a tank...
 
Quad4_72 said:
Try loading 35+ 120mm sabot, HEAT, and CAN rounds into the semi ready rack and ready rack in a tank...
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Yeah, but at least you and your ammo get driven around :p

The mortars were light infantry...we didn't even have HUMVEES for the most part.

And we had to walk to the war uphill, both ways, through 8 feet of snow in a sandstorm! ;)
 
Doubt said:
The average does matter. Most soldiers are not crack athletes and never will be. Also a soldiers MOS is picked before starting training. Noting is there to stop the couch potatoes from picking infantry. Everybody takes the same fitness test in the army. (BTW, SAWs are not all that heavy. Try something in the medium anti-tank role for serious weight.) For combat and combat support, fitness matters. The performance curve is still going to be there. A guy that is out of shape but enlists in the infantry is only going to improve incrementally over time. There is a good chance his condition will degrade after basic rather than improve unless he is in a unit that really does stress physical fitness more than most have done traditionally.

The most likely exception to that would be if the guy is in a light infantry unit. But even then, they are still not going to produce great results is they start with poor material. The better the average condition, the better the unit performs.
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It sounds as if the military needs continuing fitness programs then. If the troops really are at peak fitness right after basic, then that would be a much larger problem latter on than the average scores would it not?

If the minimum standard isn't good enough, doesn't do the job to satisfaction, then it needs raised. Raising the minimum would raise the average, correct?

I just picked the SAW because it's the first non-specialist that came to mind, and extra ammo is heavy.
 
Bikewer said:
My experience, way back in the 60s, was likely much different than what goes on now....

We had two obviously-obese individuals in our basic training unit. We had many who were in terrible shape (mostly due to smoking and inactivity) but the two chubby guys were unmercifully hounded over their inability to even do the morning run and washed out in a couple of weeks.
However, once we got to a permanent unit in Germany, all physical training was pretty much over.
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That has changed, a lot, in the US Army, and even to a certain extent in the US Navy.

Don't think it was ever a problem with Marines, but I may be wrong about that.

DR
 
Doctor Evil said:
And the trend continue:

Let N be the number of posts made by EJ, and T the number of threads started by him, then we have:
[qimg]http://www.randi.org/latexrender/latex.php?lim_%7BT%20%5Crightarrow%20%5Cinfty%7D%20%5Cfrac%7BN%7D%7BT%7D%20=%201[/qimg]

Please stay on topic. Thank you.
Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: LibraryLady
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QFT

Freaking awesome.
 
tyr_13 said:
It sounds as if the military needs continuing fitness programs then. If the troops really are at peak fitness right after basic, then that would be a much larger problem latter on than the average scores would it not?

If the minimum standard isn't good enough, doesn't do the job to satisfaction, then it needs raised. Raising the minimum would raise the average, correct?

I just picked the SAW because it's the first non-specialist that came to mind, and extra ammo is heavy.
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Raising the standards could be a good thing but does not get to the core issue which is poor starting material. Some of these people are headed for long term problems. Getting them into shape is going to take a while. Extending basic training could help, but that is going to cost a bit of money and some of the recruits still won't pass.

Side note: The army did raise standards in the '80s not long after my enlistment ended. Fast forward a couple of years later to when I am taking my entry PT test for ROTC. I was unaware that the standards had been raised until I reached 72 pushups and was told to keep going. 72 had been the max for 18 yearolds before. I was 24 at the time and very surprised to find out that I had to keep going to max out the score. I never managed to max out the whole PT test again thanks to the situps.
 
Generals had the opposite concern entering WW2 when many were malnourished. I seem to recall things turned out fine.

Is there a common perception that obesity is a uniquely American problem?
 
Doubt said:
Raising the standards could be a good thing but does not get to the core issue which is poor starting material.
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I just don't see how this is supposed to be much of a problem. Doesn't the military pride itself on 'be all you can be,' etc?

Some of these people are headed for long term problems. Getting them into shape is going to take a while. Extending basic training could help, but that is going to cost a bit of money and some of the recruits still won't pass.
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Here's the deal, until someone can show me that this is actually a problem, and not just a hypothetical problem, I'm skeptical. I'd be very much surprised if it turned out to be a significant source of cost.
 
Thunder said:
Americans are kick-ass. everyone hates us until they desperately need us. or our money.
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We're in debt up to our eyeballs to the Chinese and everyone else, printing fiat currency like a canary with drizzle diarrhea.:mad:
 
Americans too fat to fight? Wonder how the "other" side of the house looks...

100_0126.jpg


I'm not concerned.

/Took that picture myself
//Just north of Baghdad
 
tyr_13 said:
I just don't see how this is supposed to be much of a problem. Doesn't the military pride itself on 'be all you can be,' etc?
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Armies train a groups. If a platoon has one or two weak individuals, they can be removed and the group can train more effectively. If you have 10 weak soldiers, you cannot jettison them. Now when you train they become a burden on the group and hold the others back.
 
Doubt said:
Armies train a groups. If a platoon has one or two weak individuals, they can be removed and the group can train more effectively. If you have 10 weak soldiers, you cannot jettison them. Now when you train they become a burden on the group and hold the others back.
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Again, is this actually a problem? More so than smoking for example?
 
Doubt said:
Armies train a groups. If a platoon has one or two weak individuals, they can be removed and the group can train more effectively. If you have 10 weak soldiers, you cannot jettison them. Now when you train they become a burden on the group and hold the others back.
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Actually, the way it's done these days circumvents this problem. People who fail to pass an initial physical fitness test are dropped to a remedial platoon. There, they are physically trained until they can pass, at which point they are sent to newly forming training platoons, where the process goes on per usual.
 
tyr_13 said:
Again, is this actually a problem? More so than smoking for example?
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Given the lack of data, we don't really know.

Personally, I do regard smoking as a problem. From my perspective, the smokers were less fit than non-smokers. It took them longer to do almost all physical tasks than the non-smokers. But that is an anecdotal observation.
 
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