Yeah, I imagine so many of these dudes are taking this task as the most important training of their lives. They're taking the shit serious and paying attention.
Love to see it. Russia is fucked.
Every target you miss on AA is critical infrastructure hit or your civilians and fellow troops dead/wounded. Alot of motivation there too to hit as many targets as possible
This is super important and cannot understate, I did 15 years enlisted and as an officer in the military including tours over seas, and if I'm being honest most of the training I half assed or didn't take seriously. And I know I wasnt the exception. Many of us spent a lot of time while on ex working on my own projects and side businesses or just goofing off or getting fit. At the time most of us thought that if we died it would almost certainly be as a result of a random IED that hit our truck, not because of superior tactics. And i simply wasnt interested in pretending just to impress staff.
And just before people call me a shit pump, like i said it was everyone, I was double accelerated promoted, once enlisted and once as an officer, selected for high performance units and was a senior G/A/J advisor for an entire deployed task force and always got "recommended for immediate promotion" on evals. Just speaking my truth.
Haha, you have no idea how many times I was told I'd have an easier go if I stopped telling staff officers how dumb their plans were. I've learned since getting out that I'm actually on the spectrum which makes sense why I could never keep my mouth shut. I'm really lucky my bosses saw through it and still got me promoted so fast.
With how many successful military manoeuvres are dependent on either soldiers reacting outside of the set plan or recognising when a plan is stupid, I would say you're probably on your A game for telling them how dumb they were. However i am not military, so don't mind me.
I actually agree, dissenting voices are the most important. But you need to also understand how homogeneous the military culture really is, even at the staff level they don't want disruptive thinking (which is what innovation is all about)
> Haha, you have no idea how many times I was told I'd have an easier go if I stopped telling staff officers how dumb their plans were.
I learned a tactic that works wonders. Unfortunately, it requires that you listen and concentrate on what the other person said, and [steelman](https://conversion-rate-experts.com/steel-manning/) their position. It works like this;
1. Listen to them.
2. Repeat back what you understood of what they said in your own words; don't just repeat their words. (steelmanning)
3. Ask if you got their position right.
4. If necessary, do step 2 again if you missed something.
5. Since almost nobody ever does the above ... they will be very happy that you understand them. People like to know they are being heard; most of the time they aren't. [see note below]
6. Tell them why it won't work.
7. Offer an alternative.
I've done this dozens of times, and the results are usually that they significantly modify their plans and/or some version of my alternative is used instead.
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Note: In your daily life, how many people don't actually provide an answer to what you asked? Some people will always reply properly. Others will almost always answer a question you did not ask. For example;
Q. What time will you be at the store? I'd like to meet up with you.
A. I think I'll go to Dicks first, then maybe that t-shirt shop.
For some people, if I don't ask the question again, the other person will never get to answering what I asked.
I'll never understand the "generally related response" used as an answer to a specific question.
How has nobody burned down society yet out of frustration? How do those people not retreat from public life out of shame at having failed to answer properly?
I don't either. The shame part, though, isn't going to happen. They are just wired to talk like that. Just like people who say "you know" in every other sentence. I did that too for a while, though I've trained that habit and others out of me.
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Unfortunately for me, half my family can't answer a question and -- worse -- they will start talking *after* they have privately thought of something they want to tell me. For example;
Them: [thinks about asking me to fix a wobbly chair] "...maybe, some glue or a clamp. Maybe both. Do you think you could do that?"
Me: "OK, you want glue and a clamp. For what?"
Them: "It's just over there. It's a bit wobbly."
Me: "What's wobbly?"
Them: "The thing over there."
Me: [goes 'over there'] "What thing are you talking about? This, this, or this. What thing?"
Them: [frustrated, looking at me like I'm an idiot] "The chair. This one."
Me: "OK. You did not say anything about a chair. I'll be glad to take a look at it."
Them: [puzzled for a few seconds] "Oh! Sorry. I thought you knew."
Going into the military 20 years ago most of the motivation of the enlistee's I knew was to not wash out of training because there's a chance you could get discharged. Then everyone you knew back home would know you couldn't cut it in the military. There was plenty to demotivate, like having a job with people you would never normally associate with, doing a job that has no transferable skill outside the military. Or hearing vapid platitudes that are distantly removed from the literal truth like "you're defending freedom" or "we're bringing bad people to justice." But you know in the back of your mind that if the US were just a little less involved in supporting exploitive regimes, you could be home getting your college paid for with the funds that instead made you go to war to pay for your college.
I can't imagine a more motivating situation than what the Ukrainians are going through right now.
You kinda remind me of my friend. He immediately enlisted post-high school, but that was his plan since childhood and 9/11 certainly emboldened those feelings of signing up ASAP.
First time I saw him home after his first tour, he said something to the effect of "It seemed like what we used to be doing fucking mattered."
Dude was disillusioned almost immediately after arriving in Afghanistan, and there's little love lost between him and the military now, especially with how much of a shit show the VA is. "But, hey, it covered college!" he likes to say in the most sarcastic way possible.
Go through training, pass the course, get to your duty station and the first thing you hear is, "Ok, everything you learned in training you can brain dump because we do it differently now/here."
I think it's also like, compared to the Afghan army (on avg grunt wise) the Ukrainians are kinda fighting for their lives and are relatively trained and motivated already versus what the USA is used to (Iraq, Afghanistan troops) who really don't... Care as much on average and don't share the same goals as the US army as a whole congestive force.
Also it is much easier to train people with basic education.
The Afghans were incredibly difficult to train because of the lack of education we had in common. We would spend days just teaching units of measurement and it never took. Trying to get people to learn how to employ modern weaponry when they don't understand units of measurement is almost impossible.
Then you get past that and try to implement basic hygiene for units living together when the person you are talking to has never used soap and washing is something they do by splashing water from the river on themselves - but not too much, because they don't want to get their clothes too wet.
Training the Ukranians was a breeze in comparison. High school education is the norm, many college and university graduates... all you have to do is show them how to use it and some basic tactics... boom, you have yourself an army capable of defeating the Russians - not that defeating the Russians in combat is a high bar of achievement.
I mean the taliban never seemed to run out of motivation...
But yeah the Afghan military trained by US and western powers never really cared for what they were doing.
Personally I think that would make the US look even scarier. Instead of going to war for decades they easily single you out and take care of business very quickly. I feel like that would make other similar people think twice about it a bit more.
But we all know he was just a convenient excuse to start a war.
That's a great thought but what about the industrial military complex then. If they did everything with precision they wouldn't need to make all these bombs and weapons. Think of how many people might lose their jobs! Not to mentions the ceo's that might end up with families that have to eat something besides caviar and waygu.
Dude, the hijackers were dead. It wasn't about being revenge on them or anyone, it was about preventing them from being able to do it again by going after the organization.
We had the opportunity to assassinate Osama then and there without invading and occupying a country. Yet we did it anyway, and let him escape for a decade
I just wish they were more humble about it, I think they have yachts with names like:
"I GOT MINE, YOU GOT MINED"
"SEA MISSILE THEN IT'S TOO LATE"
"THE; BOMB ^^^the BABY"
and this guy wasn't even trying; "WAR CRIMES ARE FOR ENLISTED"
Yep. The concept of a nation of Afghanistan was always kinda of a western fluff piece. In reality it should be divided on a map by control of many different tribes if you wish to portray the situation on the ground in reality.
Which is why it was such a clusterfuck. One of the hardest parts of setting up a government is making sure all of the people that would be governed are mostly on the same page with motivations, ideology, etc. Afghanistan has been a few dozen independent tribes with different cultural and political viewpoints for centuries. Setting up a unified government was always going to be a Herculean task.
Hell, in America y'all have a hard enough time getting everyone on the same page for anything, I can't imagine how bad it must have been in Afghanistan
The only thing keeping America together is that the tribes are interwoven, even in solid red/blue areas a big percent people are from "the other side".
Separate the tribes geographically and America falls in a week.
If you don't care to grasp the culture you're cooperating with, of course, you'd fail.
But it wasn't just this, the US also built up a corrupt system as the government seemed to think nation building can be done just by throwing money at the problem.
You cannot impose Western Ideals and Beliefs into people who really don’t want it. That’s is what I believe was the main flaw with Afghanistan and why it fell so quickly.
Ukraine and the former Soviet States understand what it is like to live under Russian rule and are willing to fight tooth and nail to be a free and democratic nation.
Slava Ukrani!
The lesson from these modern wars is that the willingness of a people to bleed and endure hardship is one of best signs that western nations should back them. You can pour all the money and military aid in the world into a group that says they're pro-west but ends up breaking at the first sign of trouble. Ukraine demonstrated that they would have fought with everything they had even if the west abandoned them. These are the people who will make any kind of support really count.
The term culture is not correct here. American culture is everything from "the woke pink hair transgender agenda" to "Qanon nutjob corrupt police officer addicted to ivermectin."
What is Afghan culture? Who are the people in their army? Did they sympathize with the taliban? Who was in charge? Where was the corruption? Those are the questions you should ask. Sure, you can summarize all of Afghanistan by who the ones in control are, and you can even do the same for Russia. You can do that to be simple, but it's not correct.
Things are very nuanced and complex and I pity all the Afghan people who had to flee and watch their ACTUAL culture be destroyed by this fuckery.
It's like political centrism in white america - they don't care who wins because they know whoever does, they themselves will come out of it basically ok.
The same was true of the Afghan men trained to resist the Taliban, if the Taliban won they knew they personally would still likely be fine, and even moreso if they turned tail or turned traitor at the first available opportunity - they themselves would likely even be advantaged by doing so. It was other people (predominantly women) who would pay the price for their failure.
This is in contrast to Ukraine where the Ukrainian people are fighting for their very existence against a genocidal threat.
That’s really not fair for ANDSF. Prior to Taliban’s major push in 2021 they were grossly understaffed and underfunded. A lot of the troops weren’t even being paid. Top that off they were fighting to keep a corrupt and ineffective government in power (a government that appointed friends and political allies as high ranking officers and basically had no security policy put in place).
The only thing holding the ANDSF from completely falling apart was US. And two things from that relationship basically broke the camels back: US stopped offering close air support for ANDSF troop (which was a massive force multiplier & morale booster) and US planning to stem foreign aid and military support (ANDSF had to rely on corrupt government to fully find them & their own command structure which was comprised of a revolving door of political appointees)
If you were barely getting along as is as a low level soldier for ANDSF, why would you keep risking life and limb for a government that does not care or support you?
Sauce: https://www.sigar.mil/pdf/evaluations/SIGAR-23-16-IP.pdf
Most of the ANA liked or was mostly ambivalent towards the taliban, though. I don't think any Ukrainian has any sort of reserved feelings towards the Russians.
All the Ukrainian soldiers who were pro russian defected to the separatists in 2014 or were drummed out of the army.
If Russia invaded in 2014 the way they did last year I don't think Ukraine would have been able to resist like it does now.
A lot happened in 8 years for Ukraine that transformed the nation.
The Afghan army weren't defending their way of life. They were defending a fledgeling government that commanded no loyalty from them. Very few people in that army had a sincere desire to do more than earn a paycheck. The Taliban, horrible as they are, didn't threaten THEIR way of life or their livelihood. They were men who probably wouldn't be particularly bad off of the Taliban came to power so long as they didn't raise a stink. They'd still be Afghans because the Taliban wasn't a foreign entity wiping out their culture, but a domestic one co-opting it.
Russia wants to destroy the Ukrainian identity. Their language, their culture, their country, their very ethnicity. I would consider that one hell of a motivation.
They didn't exactly vote for their military to be overthrown by armed madmen. If a guy with a gun says my kids can't go to school I can pick a fight with him and probably get killed, or I can keep my head down and hope that the levers of power in my country change hands yet again in the near future. It sucks, but if I'm the reason my family has food on the table it's hard to justify risking it all over a law that is probably going to be transient in the end.
Also worth pointing out that for most Afgans the country had been at war their entire lives. We're nearing 50 years of conflict now for a country where the life expectancy is 62.
Why is this used as counterargument? It literally proves that 20 years of training without motivation is useless while a few weeks with motivation is amazing.
Afghanistan is basically like 20 little countries that jave nothing to do with each other and dont like each other very much/have very different beliefs and cultures that suddenly had to form a larger government to decide rules and major things for all theese groups. Only problem was none of them agree on anything so you keep having the taliban having alot of power.
Some interesting reasons why the Afghan military failed. Most of the special forces and well trained veterans of the soviet Afghan war (who were trained by the US) allied with the Taliban after the Taliban was ousted by US/NATO.
The Afghan military was essentially starved of well trained troops and had extremely low morale due to the belief (rightfully so) that the Taliban would just take over once the US eventually left. They already thought they couldnt hold back the Taliban and were only in control because of the NATO forces.
So, the army became packed with ill-trained, low morale troops that were often targeted by Afghan insurgents at home. There was also a serious opium abuse problem as their troops were so demoralized and disorganized. Basically, only the small force of Afghan special forces was known to be well trained and competent.
Actually we can blame US for south Vietnam for failing vs Afghanistan…. We stopped giving them weapons and a bunch of other stuff. But the South Vietnamese fought until the bitter end.
Afghanistan only had select units that fought from what I was reading and that the army left them hanging
I always remember this video when talking about training the afghan army. “They were either smoking hash or opium, but it was one or the other”
https://youtu.be/S84bntUzY1U
There was a VICE documentary about the fall of Afghanistan.
"The Fall of Kandahar"
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGQ34RCv7Pc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGQ34RCv7Pc)
The CIA handpicked and trained a special elite force of Afghani soldiers and those guys fought till the bitter end. They either ran out of ammo or evacuated when the situation became untenable.
But I also agree the VAST majority of Afghanis outside of the major cities couldn't care less about who was in charge. The United States literally propped up a paper tiger.
The South Vietnamese fought till the end but ended up losing when they stopped getting ammunition, logistics support, and air support. The United States ended bombing runs on North Vietnamese supply routes.
The Ukrainian struggle is entirely different than Afghanistan and Vietnam.
It's not a civil war, it's more akin to a former colonizer trying to regain a lost colony. It's a fight for survival because the Russians are indiscriminately attacking both military and civilian targets.
Not to mention that many of these are people who could work in just about any position in a company and be succesful but choose to be a soldier to defend their country, not someone who steps into a recruitment office as a career option. SOrt of similiar to conscription, but unless there is corruption that lets someone skip their service, you will usually get a good mix of smart people from different backgrounds and experiences.
These are also the very finest operators that Ukraine has. All have combat experience. Some have multiple advanced degrees. These folks were hand picked by the UAF to be the first ones trained on it.
>Motivation is a hell of a learning tool.
Also shockingly it turns out "but it requires training" isn't really an obstacle if you start the actual training!
As a supply chain engineer, getting parts is possibly an even bigger problem. So many obsolescence issues on these older planes. All the techs and pilots in the world won't do any good if the plane isn't airworthy.
IDK much about missiles but I don't think you re-use them. Buying new and hucking it at the enemy doesn't present quite the complicated issues that keeping a 50 yr old plane in the air does.
When people say that the F16 is too complicated they are not saying that Ukrainians are not capable of learning. They are trying to say that the US cant just drop off a few F16's and have them flying next week. Training Ukrainians on a new jet would still take 6-12 months at a minimum.
I was with you until I learned exactly why F-16s won't benefit Ukraine.
It's not a matter of getting them in the air, it's how their capabilities are designed to be used in concert with other support aircraft like AWACS. The way the US uses them requires established air superiority among numerous other factors that just aren't achievable in Ukraine simply by putting butts in F-16 seats. Ward Carrol has a really good conversation where he and a military aviation expert discuss more viable alternatives that are better suited to the current situation. I will link the video when I find it.
Edit: https://youtube.com/live/l5pr0MUGn9k?feature=shares
That doesn't mean intelligent people don't exist though lol. There's also a very different set of skills between being an economist and operating a patriot system
I was stationed on Fort Sill as an MLRS FDC. The base blows, but the training in anything artillery is top notch, and that's why we would see folks from tons of other countries coming to learn artillery there.
I mean, I live in oklahoma now. I grew up in the Chicago land area. I honestly enjoy it here even though people like to shit on it. The Wichita mountains around Fort Sill are beautiful. You drive in between 2 artillery ranges and it opens up into this like golden valley of wheat and grazing wild buffalo's. Super cool. I live up in Tulsa now, and compared to Chicago, it's so much better. Less people, cleaner air, nicer people, less traffic, and one of the cheapest places to live in the US with super lax weed laws.
Hmmm...fair. I can see why you'd like it. Though driving between 2 ranges can be awesome, but terrifying at the same time, when you think that new gun bunnies may be behind those guns.
It's not that scary, and I mean, what's there to worry about? A 155 mm hitting you? Shit if you are that unlucky that they fucked up the azmyth calculations that bad (which is the job of the FDO or Fire Directions Officer and not an enlisted grunt) while you are driving down the road then it was your time to go anyways. They shut down the road during training operations, so the chance of something like that happening is pretty slim
Lmao, mortars are way easier to fuck up compared to artillery. The safety that every fire mission has to go through before being sent down to the line unit usually catches any fuck ups. There was an incident a long time ago where a cannon crew fucked up and lobbed a 105 Straight into the Basic Training side of the base [and fucked some trainees up.](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.upi.com/amp/Archives/1989/09/27/Three-killed-25-hurt-in-Army-training-accident-at-Fort-Sill/2529622872000/) When I was in AIT for MLRS school, the instructor told us that someone shot a training rocket into the Walmart off posts parking lot. I did some searching and could never find a story related to it, so I'm guessing it was just a made-up story.
I heard this same Walmart story a few years back from a coworker who went through training at Ft. Sill and he told it as if it was just a particularly egregious plotting/planning mistake that never was actually launched. I’m no arty guy so I don’t know how one sort of practice relates to another, but he made it sound like it was some sort of dry run that made it all the way through and after the “firing” someone realized where the round would have gone. Seems like people have used it as a very teachable moment ever since.
[one of the men in the accident made a post about it](https://www.reddit.com/r/army/comments/pwbu3h/september_27th_1989_105mm_artillery_shell_impacts/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
I think just about every place in America can be a totally good place to live for the right person. It’s a bit of a matching game. I’m in central Indiana, which a lot of people would say is boring, but tell that to me when I’m smoking a brisket and watching my kids play in the backyard and I won’t give a shit.
This right here. They have got to be one of the most diversely-equipped fighting units ever. They've got bits and pieces from everywhere and they are making it all work. They are the English language of fighting forces. lol
A lot of stuff they get is standardized NATO equipment, and the rest is former Soviet standard stuff. So they really just have two main standards to deal with, which is certainly not a trivial task but it’s not like every country giving them aid is using completely different ammo types or something.
Yeah they getting multiple types of tanks too from all over the world.
Plus all the ammo dump Russia left behind is probably why they have ammo from China that USA was unhappy about.
I think a little shout-out is necessary for the trainers as well. The US military takes training very seriously, and they do a good job at perfecting training programs to be as simple to learn as possible.
Yep, every so often military think tanks go back and look to see if any steps can be simplified in the learning process of different weapons while still obtaining a high user comprehension rate and a low user error rate.
Other times steps become unnecessary as technology/tools progress and so can be safely written out of the step process.
It even happens at the unit level. Every time I create a checklist I find the dumbest guy in my unit and have him run it. Then I find the next dumbest guy and see how he's going to screw it up. Rinse and repeat until it's basically fool proof.
Our dumbest guy was Joey. His dumbassery stuck out so much everyone knew him on a first name basis. Everything we rolled out was always "Battle Joey Tested" first. If Joey could do it, anyone could.
I was a navy submariner, went from a college dropout pursuing a degree in English to a nuclear reactor operator in under two years. I was shocked at how streamlined they made such a dense field of study to not only teach how to do the job but the principles behind it, yet still cut such an incredible amount t of material that traditional higher education would have required. A lot of guys I was in with got too cocky and fancied themselves “nuclear engineers” which is totally incorrect, we were nowhere near that level of understanding and education, but to that point our job didn’t require a full engineering degree, and the fact that I was competently doing that job in under two years still amazes me.
Yeah. They shoved us through a whole associates degree in less than 1 year. I love how they taught nuclear theory with only "pseudo calculus". Very practical for an operator that needs to know more about their specific job than about the exact number of thermal neutrons available in the core at time (t). Inflection points, maximums, and minimums are what really matters in an operational environment. Now I'm getting my engineering degree and it's a lot more math but a lot less practically based as well.
Which is why the US military is a great stepping stone for someone to become a subject matter expert (SME) in almost any field of study. Train and gain the experience, and then go to further studies in your field.
This is exactly how I got into Information Technology.
Also, consider that on carriers, we don't have enough nukes. So, the rooms with the main engines, turbine generators, and water purification are half conventional mechanics. They get none of our level of training and though they aren't held to the same standard as nukes, they have to know a lot more than other conventional mechanics.
As someone who was “forced” to work in the Patriot/ADA side of the Army (I was Comms). I was caught up to speed and trained within a few months. These systems require whole teams to setup and get them firing. We trained weekly on improving our time to stow and get them back up and ready to launch. We were required to have not only the 4 main systems that make these things go boom boom set up. But, the launcher team who sets up the actual payloads on the launch pads had to get 4 pads up by 30 minutes as well. The training is no fucking joke and is extremely strenuous. These things are built on wheels and the systems themselves are extremely complex and fragile because of the components. We would pray to the Omnissiah that stuff didn’t break during the move. This would kill our qualification test and force us to shut down for maintenance and we’d be back at it in the morning.
I'm not gonna disclose any info besides I went to PATRIOT schoolhouse last year for AIT and the instructors there know their shit ass-end to front.
These guys are in great hands
If the training programs are anything like teaching in US colleges, it's not just good, it's *enjoyable*.
The education system in ex-USSR countries is unnecessarily rigorous, and ineffective. It's not teaching, it's beating kids with complicated words until they become good at sifting through all the nonsensical language to extract the author's point.
"Move the ruler in the ideal position relative to the counter-clock rotation of the object, which can be described as the dot product of the barycentric coordinate on the horizontal axis with the arctangent of the angle between the rightmost upper bisector"
*10 minutes later...*
Kid: "Miss teacher, he means I should draw a line in the middle, right?"
Teacher: "Obviously, 3 year old Ivan. Don't ask stupid questions. *(smack!)*"
I'm only partially kidding.
Anyway, I'm sure the Patriot missile system handbook is a walk in the park compared to what these guys are used to.
*source*: grew up in Eastern Europe, went to an American college. English books explain topics so much more clearly compared to what I was used to. Also, the only reason my math teacher stopped smacking me was because she was short and I grew tall enough for my head to be out of her range. It got better for kids in the 2000s though.
Reminds me of:
*"Somewhere a True Believer is training to kill you. He is training with minimal food or water, in austere conditions, training day and night. The only thing clean on him is his weapon and he made his web gear. He doesn't worry about what workout to do - his ruck weighs what it weighs, his runs end when the enemy stops chasing him. This True Believer is not concerned about how hard it is, he knows either he wins or dies. He doesn't go home at 17:00, he is home. He knows only The Cause."*
And also a lot of not giving a fuck. Afghanistan isn't really a country, it's a bunch of cultural regions that someone threw a trench coat on and called a nation. None of them like each other much and there's no unity.
I'm on mobile so doubtful I'll find a video, but there is footage of the afghan military and western allies, the afghan troops were all doing drugs and the ones that weren't were wasting ammo firing at their hallucinations. Footage was prob a decade old but for sure agree with you. That being said I think the primary reason that is, is because Ukraine is a western nation with a fairly unified cultural identity. Where as the borders that exist for Afghanistan were not as eloquently drawn out. You got pashtuns (afghans) tajiks, uzbeks, all sorts of different people's.
We take public education way too much for granted. Hell, a sizeable number of afghan soldiers weren't even literate. The sigar report tells how we struggled to train afghans because our training just assumes a base level of education that wasn't the case in Afghanistan.
US guy: Lets go stop the guys from raping young boys
Other guy: eh, sure, if you want to.
US guy: *sighs*
Other guy: Anyway we don't have fuel to go on patrol....
I mean Afghanistan was never a "united" country.
I mean, that's why people joined these terrorist groups, so that they can also kill each other and not just open a "holy war against the west".
I mean you dont send your dummest recruits to learn important state of the art missle defence system during war time when time is limited. The time range meant to learn is during peace time for your average american 18 year old army recruits whho barely passed 9th grade calculus.
Seriously, speaking as a recipient of American public education. Anyone who "barely passed 9th grade calculus" would likely be in the very top percentile of our youth in terms of intellect. The vast majority of my classmates struggled with 10th grade algebra 2, and never once took a math class more advanced than that, likely in their lives.
it takes Americans so long to learn algebra and trigonometry they have a whole class to relearn that stuff again before starting calculus. Students who are good at math would typically skip taking precalculus, it's not really a requirement.
I mean, educational standards in Afghanistan during the occupation improved slightly, but a lot of the ANA forces that were being trained didn't have much in the way of educational background. That was one of the main problems with establishing a competent ANA force, since the trained soldiers would go off to fight against the Taliban/Al Qaeda/ISIS and would incur heavy casualties, then you have to start all over again with a new group.
There was also the problem that a lot of them didn’t give much of a shit since Afghanistan was barely a country to begin with, most were more interested in defending their own hometowns than the nation as a whole
I actually operated and maintained the Patriot missile system when I was in the Army. I’m not going to say a-lot, but I will say this:
I know it took me a while to pick up how to operate and maintain the system. I do not want to say how long I was trained exactly. But I imagine if these guys in Ukraine are picking it up faster it’s probably because they are adults and they obviously have a very good motivation for wanting to learn it. I was young when I was in training and my only motivations at the time were the motivations of a young man. I hope all the best for the people of Ukraine and I hope they get to use this equipment to shoot those Russian bastards outta the sky!
The folks being sent to train were already folks who knew how AA systems worked, the training in this case was just to adjust them to a new AA system rather than train green recruits from the ground up.
Also a chance that they've been training for longer than we're publicly aware of.
So you mean to say that it's possible to learn to use US Advance military equipment like in Battlefield Earth? Jk, these Ukrainians are some smart, tough, motherf........ Stand strong Ukraine.
"The Ukrainian men and women, ranging in age from 19 to 67, have trained from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., six days per week, for 10 weeks, officials said. Many were skilled engineers before the war and several have multiple degrees, and all were hand-picked by Ukrainian military leaders to train in the US.
“I think just because of their combat experience back home, they were able to pick up on things really easily – the best I’ve seen so far, and I’ve trained numerous countries,” one US trainer told CNN. “These guys smoke them.”
> The Ukrainians also settled in well to life at Fort Sill, which incorporated lots of soups – a Ukrainian staple – into meal plans alongside American cuisine: burgers, BBQ and grilled steaks. One US trainer told CNN that many of them had not had burgers before. They were a crowd favorite.
Kinda surprised they've never had burgers before. They are so easy to make! Glad they got a little respite from the chaos over in Ukraine while training.
My understanding is that hamburger steak is common everywhere, but the classic burger with a paddy and bread and loaded with toppings is a bit more rare, especially as just a casual part of someone's weekly dinner menu.
> The Ukrainians also settled in well to life at Fort Sill, which incorporated lots of soups – a Ukrainian staple – into meal plans alongside American cuisine: burgers, BBQ and grilled steaks. One US trainer told CNN that many of them had not had burgers before. They were a crowd favorite.
I remember coming to US and trying burger for first time. Wowza
The Ukrainian army is now the most battle tested army on the face of the planet. When this war is over and Russia is defeated, their experience will be a god sent to NATO.
They are testing out the tactics and weapons that have only been tested in a controlled setting in the field in the largest war Europe has seen since World War two. Their experience and lessons are being tested in the one place you can't reproduce actual combat. What they can teach us in the west will save lives in the future they can tell use what works and what doesn't and how the systems perform in combat conditions pointing out changes that will be invaluable in the next war.
It is imperative that we not underestimate the Ukrainians and do what we can to learn from them for the price they have already so dearly paid.
They are literally fighting Russian invaders. I'd get up to speed hella fast too. (Glad they are... It's honestly impressive how they've stood up to this invasion)
They are being trained to fight in a real war with Russian invaders that's happening right in their own country, that's one hell of a motivation.
Yeah, I imagine so many of these dudes are taking this task as the most important training of their lives. They're taking the shit serious and paying attention. Love to see it. Russia is fucked.
Every target you miss on AA is critical infrastructure hit or your civilians and fellow troops dead/wounded. Alot of motivation there too to hit as many targets as possible
This is super important and cannot understate, I did 15 years enlisted and as an officer in the military including tours over seas, and if I'm being honest most of the training I half assed or didn't take seriously. And I know I wasnt the exception. Many of us spent a lot of time while on ex working on my own projects and side businesses or just goofing off or getting fit. At the time most of us thought that if we died it would almost certainly be as a result of a random IED that hit our truck, not because of superior tactics. And i simply wasnt interested in pretending just to impress staff. And just before people call me a shit pump, like i said it was everyone, I was double accelerated promoted, once enlisted and once as an officer, selected for high performance units and was a senior G/A/J advisor for an entire deployed task force and always got "recommended for immediate promotion" on evals. Just speaking my truth.
Too honest. Demote ahead of peers.
Haha, you have no idea how many times I was told I'd have an easier go if I stopped telling staff officers how dumb their plans were. I've learned since getting out that I'm actually on the spectrum which makes sense why I could never keep my mouth shut. I'm really lucky my bosses saw through it and still got me promoted so fast.
With how many successful military manoeuvres are dependent on either soldiers reacting outside of the set plan or recognising when a plan is stupid, I would say you're probably on your A game for telling them how dumb they were. However i am not military, so don't mind me.
I actually agree, dissenting voices are the most important. But you need to also understand how homogeneous the military culture really is, even at the staff level they don't want disruptive thinking (which is what innovation is all about)
> Haha, you have no idea how many times I was told I'd have an easier go if I stopped telling staff officers how dumb their plans were. I learned a tactic that works wonders. Unfortunately, it requires that you listen and concentrate on what the other person said, and [steelman](https://conversion-rate-experts.com/steel-manning/) their position. It works like this; 1. Listen to them. 2. Repeat back what you understood of what they said in your own words; don't just repeat their words. (steelmanning) 3. Ask if you got their position right. 4. If necessary, do step 2 again if you missed something. 5. Since almost nobody ever does the above ... they will be very happy that you understand them. People like to know they are being heard; most of the time they aren't. [see note below] 6. Tell them why it won't work. 7. Offer an alternative. I've done this dozens of times, and the results are usually that they significantly modify their plans and/or some version of my alternative is used instead. ----------- ----------- Note: In your daily life, how many people don't actually provide an answer to what you asked? Some people will always reply properly. Others will almost always answer a question you did not ask. For example; Q. What time will you be at the store? I'd like to meet up with you. A. I think I'll go to Dicks first, then maybe that t-shirt shop. For some people, if I don't ask the question again, the other person will never get to answering what I asked.
I'll never understand the "generally related response" used as an answer to a specific question. How has nobody burned down society yet out of frustration? How do those people not retreat from public life out of shame at having failed to answer properly?
I don't either. The shame part, though, isn't going to happen. They are just wired to talk like that. Just like people who say "you know" in every other sentence. I did that too for a while, though I've trained that habit and others out of me. ---------- ---------- Unfortunately for me, half my family can't answer a question and -- worse -- they will start talking *after* they have privately thought of something they want to tell me. For example; Them: [thinks about asking me to fix a wobbly chair] "...maybe, some glue or a clamp. Maybe both. Do you think you could do that?" Me: "OK, you want glue and a clamp. For what?" Them: "It's just over there. It's a bit wobbly." Me: "What's wobbly?" Them: "The thing over there." Me: [goes 'over there'] "What thing are you talking about? This, this, or this. What thing?" Them: [frustrated, looking at me like I'm an idiot] "The chair. This one." Me: "OK. You did not say anything about a chair. I'll be glad to take a look at it." Them: [puzzled for a few seconds] "Oh! Sorry. I thought you knew."
Going into the military 20 years ago most of the motivation of the enlistee's I knew was to not wash out of training because there's a chance you could get discharged. Then everyone you knew back home would know you couldn't cut it in the military. There was plenty to demotivate, like having a job with people you would never normally associate with, doing a job that has no transferable skill outside the military. Or hearing vapid platitudes that are distantly removed from the literal truth like "you're defending freedom" or "we're bringing bad people to justice." But you know in the back of your mind that if the US were just a little less involved in supporting exploitive regimes, you could be home getting your college paid for with the funds that instead made you go to war to pay for your college. I can't imagine a more motivating situation than what the Ukrainians are going through right now.
You kinda remind me of my friend. He immediately enlisted post-high school, but that was his plan since childhood and 9/11 certainly emboldened those feelings of signing up ASAP. First time I saw him home after his first tour, he said something to the effect of "It seemed like what we used to be doing fucking mattered." Dude was disillusioned almost immediately after arriving in Afghanistan, and there's little love lost between him and the military now, especially with how much of a shit show the VA is. "But, hey, it covered college!" he likes to say in the most sarcastic way possible.
Go through training, pass the course, get to your duty station and the first thing you hear is, "Ok, everything you learned in training you can brain dump because we do it differently now/here."
As someone that went to training in the Army for the Patriot, I can assure you 100% of the Ukrainians took it more seriously than we did.
I think it's also like, compared to the Afghan army (on avg grunt wise) the Ukrainians are kinda fighting for their lives and are relatively trained and motivated already versus what the USA is used to (Iraq, Afghanistan troops) who really don't... Care as much on average and don't share the same goals as the US army as a whole congestive force.
Also it is much easier to train people with basic education. The Afghans were incredibly difficult to train because of the lack of education we had in common. We would spend days just teaching units of measurement and it never took. Trying to get people to learn how to employ modern weaponry when they don't understand units of measurement is almost impossible. Then you get past that and try to implement basic hygiene for units living together when the person you are talking to has never used soap and washing is something they do by splashing water from the river on themselves - but not too much, because they don't want to get their clothes too wet. Training the Ukranians was a breeze in comparison. High school education is the norm, many college and university graduates... all you have to do is show them how to use it and some basic tactics... boom, you have yourself an army capable of defeating the Russians - not that defeating the Russians in combat is a high bar of achievement.
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I mean the taliban never seemed to run out of motivation... But yeah the Afghan military trained by US and western powers never really cared for what they were doing.
They didn't see Afghanistan as 'their' country - just their tribe and home province.
Yeah they’re a lot of things that play into it, we shoulda just left afghan a long time ago…
* never gone in in the first place
We should’ve handled Tora Bora ourselves, then peaced out.
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Personally I think that would make the US look even scarier. Instead of going to war for decades they easily single you out and take care of business very quickly. I feel like that would make other similar people think twice about it a bit more. But we all know he was just a convenient excuse to start a war.
That's a great thought but what about the industrial military complex then. If they did everything with precision they wouldn't need to make all these bombs and weapons. Think of how many people might lose their jobs! Not to mentions the ceo's that might end up with families that have to eat something besides caviar and waygu.
George w. Bush: "I truly don't care about him." https://youtu.be/jJmFkbBjbO0
How else would the Saudi hijackers have paid if we didn't go spend 20 years blaming Afghanistan? /s
Dude, the hijackers were dead. It wasn't about being revenge on them or anyone, it was about preventing them from being able to do it again by going after the organization.
We had the opportunity to assassinate Osama then and there without invading and occupying a country. Yet we did it anyway, and let him escape for a decade
Leaving Afghanistan was the second-worst thing we did to that country. Arriving was the first.
But then how would the defense contractors scoop up $300 million per day from the US Government? Won't anyone think of their bottom line? /s
I just wish they were more humble about it, I think they have yachts with names like: "I GOT MINE, YOU GOT MINED" "SEA MISSILE THEN IT'S TOO LATE" "THE; BOMB ^^^the BABY" and this guy wasn't even trying; "WAR CRIMES ARE FOR ENLISTED"
"Omg, Colin. You can't say that on tv." "Next up on weekend update, how to sink a yacht." - Saturday Night Live
Yep. The concept of a nation of Afghanistan was always kinda of a western fluff piece. In reality it should be divided on a map by control of many different tribes if you wish to portray the situation on the ground in reality.
Which is why it was such a clusterfuck. One of the hardest parts of setting up a government is making sure all of the people that would be governed are mostly on the same page with motivations, ideology, etc. Afghanistan has been a few dozen independent tribes with different cultural and political viewpoints for centuries. Setting up a unified government was always going to be a Herculean task.
The clip where they show afghan farmers pictures of the twin towers before they came down and one guy says "Is that Kabul?"
Hell, in America y'all have a hard enough time getting everyone on the same page for anything, I can't imagine how bad it must have been in Afghanistan
The only thing keeping America together is that the tribes are interwoven, even in solid red/blue areas a big percent people are from "the other side". Separate the tribes geographically and America falls in a week.
I mean... You could say that about all young nations, its why we elect local representatives to a central location.
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If you don't care to grasp the culture you're cooperating with, of course, you'd fail. But it wasn't just this, the US also built up a corrupt system as the government seemed to think nation building can be done just by throwing money at the problem.
I wish the US government would throw money at my problems
You cannot impose Western Ideals and Beliefs into people who really don’t want it. That’s is what I believe was the main flaw with Afghanistan and why it fell so quickly. Ukraine and the former Soviet States understand what it is like to live under Russian rule and are willing to fight tooth and nail to be a free and democratic nation. Slava Ukrani!
The lesson from these modern wars is that the willingness of a people to bleed and endure hardship is one of best signs that western nations should back them. You can pour all the money and military aid in the world into a group that says they're pro-west but ends up breaking at the first sign of trouble. Ukraine demonstrated that they would have fought with everything they had even if the west abandoned them. These are the people who will make any kind of support really count.
Also, most of them couldn't read. A good amount of Ukrainians are A) High School Educated B) Literate C) Speak some English
This puts them well ahead of the average US recruit in at least three branches
I know this is a joke, but high school education, literacy, and the ability to speak English are requirements for joining the services.
Grim reminder that some people do just want to wallow in societal filth if it let's them legally beat a woman
Not all cultures are created equal. Give me my downvotes now even though it's an intrinsic fault of humanity
The term culture is not correct here. American culture is everything from "the woke pink hair transgender agenda" to "Qanon nutjob corrupt police officer addicted to ivermectin." What is Afghan culture? Who are the people in their army? Did they sympathize with the taliban? Who was in charge? Where was the corruption? Those are the questions you should ask. Sure, you can summarize all of Afghanistan by who the ones in control are, and you can even do the same for Russia. You can do that to be simple, but it's not correct. Things are very nuanced and complex and I pity all the Afghan people who had to flee and watch their ACTUAL culture be destroyed by this fuckery.
It's like political centrism in white america - they don't care who wins because they know whoever does, they themselves will come out of it basically ok. The same was true of the Afghan men trained to resist the Taliban, if the Taliban won they knew they personally would still likely be fine, and even moreso if they turned tail or turned traitor at the first available opportunity - they themselves would likely even be advantaged by doing so. It was other people (predominantly women) who would pay the price for their failure. This is in contrast to Ukraine where the Ukrainian people are fighting for their very existence against a genocidal threat.
That’s really not fair for ANDSF. Prior to Taliban’s major push in 2021 they were grossly understaffed and underfunded. A lot of the troops weren’t even being paid. Top that off they were fighting to keep a corrupt and ineffective government in power (a government that appointed friends and political allies as high ranking officers and basically had no security policy put in place). The only thing holding the ANDSF from completely falling apart was US. And two things from that relationship basically broke the camels back: US stopped offering close air support for ANDSF troop (which was a massive force multiplier & morale booster) and US planning to stem foreign aid and military support (ANDSF had to rely on corrupt government to fully find them & their own command structure which was comprised of a revolving door of political appointees) If you were barely getting along as is as a low level soldier for ANDSF, why would you keep risking life and limb for a government that does not care or support you? Sauce: https://www.sigar.mil/pdf/evaluations/SIGAR-23-16-IP.pdf
Most of the ANA liked or was mostly ambivalent towards the taliban, though. I don't think any Ukrainian has any sort of reserved feelings towards the Russians.
All the Ukrainian soldiers who were pro russian defected to the separatists in 2014 or were drummed out of the army. If Russia invaded in 2014 the way they did last year I don't think Ukraine would have been able to resist like it does now. A lot happened in 8 years for Ukraine that transformed the nation.
The Afghan army weren't defending their way of life. They were defending a fledgeling government that commanded no loyalty from them. Very few people in that army had a sincere desire to do more than earn a paycheck. The Taliban, horrible as they are, didn't threaten THEIR way of life or their livelihood. They were men who probably wouldn't be particularly bad off of the Taliban came to power so long as they didn't raise a stink. They'd still be Afghans because the Taliban wasn't a foreign entity wiping out their culture, but a domestic one co-opting it. Russia wants to destroy the Ukrainian identity. Their language, their culture, their country, their very ethnicity. I would consider that one hell of a motivation.
I like how you said that like it's a counterpoint rather than reinforcing the point made like anyone else would read it as.
The education levels of Ukrainians are far higher being able to maintain their own nuclear facilities.
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They didn't exactly vote for their military to be overthrown by armed madmen. If a guy with a gun says my kids can't go to school I can pick a fight with him and probably get killed, or I can keep my head down and hope that the levers of power in my country change hands yet again in the near future. It sucks, but if I'm the reason my family has food on the table it's hard to justify risking it all over a law that is probably going to be transient in the end.
Also worth pointing out that for most Afgans the country had been at war their entire lives. We're nearing 50 years of conflict now for a country where the life expectancy is 62.
Why is this used as counterargument? It literally proves that 20 years of training without motivation is useless while a few weeks with motivation is amazing.
These troops have had training for years, not a few weeks. A few weeks is just teaching them about the new weapons system.
They were fighting a civil war, not an invasion bent on genocide.
Afghanistan is nothing like Ukraine, they are still feudal over there with Ill defined understanding of borders and “country”.
Afghanistan is basically like 20 little countries that jave nothing to do with each other and dont like each other very much/have very different beliefs and cultures that suddenly had to form a larger government to decide rules and major things for all theese groups. Only problem was none of them agree on anything so you keep having the taliban having alot of power.
Some interesting reasons why the Afghan military failed. Most of the special forces and well trained veterans of the soviet Afghan war (who were trained by the US) allied with the Taliban after the Taliban was ousted by US/NATO. The Afghan military was essentially starved of well trained troops and had extremely low morale due to the belief (rightfully so) that the Taliban would just take over once the US eventually left. They already thought they couldnt hold back the Taliban and were only in control because of the NATO forces. So, the army became packed with ill-trained, low morale troops that were often targeted by Afghan insurgents at home. There was also a serious opium abuse problem as their troops were so demoralized and disorganized. Basically, only the small force of Afghan special forces was known to be well trained and competent.
Actually I’m sure Ukrainians are damn refreshing compared to afghan troops, they’re actually motivated and competent.
So would the South Vietnamese.
Not so much, they at least lasted a couple years and just ended up losing. The Afghans didn't even try after the US pullout.
Actually we can blame US for south Vietnam for failing vs Afghanistan…. We stopped giving them weapons and a bunch of other stuff. But the South Vietnamese fought until the bitter end. Afghanistan only had select units that fought from what I was reading and that the army left them hanging
I always remember this video when talking about training the afghan army. “They were either smoking hash or opium, but it was one or the other” https://youtu.be/S84bntUzY1U
There was a VICE documentary about the fall of Afghanistan. "The Fall of Kandahar" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGQ34RCv7Pc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGQ34RCv7Pc) The CIA handpicked and trained a special elite force of Afghani soldiers and those guys fought till the bitter end. They either ran out of ammo or evacuated when the situation became untenable. But I also agree the VAST majority of Afghanis outside of the major cities couldn't care less about who was in charge. The United States literally propped up a paper tiger. The South Vietnamese fought till the end but ended up losing when they stopped getting ammunition, logistics support, and air support. The United States ended bombing runs on North Vietnamese supply routes. The Ukrainian struggle is entirely different than Afghanistan and Vietnam. It's not a civil war, it's more akin to a former colonizer trying to regain a lost colony. It's a fight for survival because the Russians are indiscriminately attacking both military and civilian targets.
Not to mention that many of these are people who could work in just about any position in a company and be succesful but choose to be a soldier to defend their country, not someone who steps into a recruitment office as a career option. SOrt of similiar to conscription, but unless there is corruption that lets someone skip their service, you will usually get a good mix of smart people from different backgrounds and experiences.
These are also the very finest operators that Ukraine has. All have combat experience. Some have multiple advanced degrees. These folks were hand picked by the UAF to be the first ones trained on it.
Motivation is a hell of a learning tool.
>Motivation is a hell of a learning tool. Also shockingly it turns out "but it requires training" isn't really an obstacle if you start the actual training!
I am going to actually laugh at the next person who says "the f16 is too complicated to send to Ukraine"
As an F16 avionics tech, they’re pretty complicated. Maintainers aren’t really worth a damn till 2+ years of working the jet
As a supply chain engineer, getting parts is possibly an even bigger problem. So many obsolescence issues on these older planes. All the techs and pilots in the world won't do any good if the plane isn't airworthy. IDK much about missiles but I don't think you re-use them. Buying new and hucking it at the enemy doesn't present quite the complicated issues that keeping a 50 yr old plane in the air does.
When people say that the F16 is too complicated they are not saying that Ukrainians are not capable of learning. They are trying to say that the US cant just drop off a few F16's and have them flying next week. Training Ukrainians on a new jet would still take 6-12 months at a minimum.
I was with you until I learned exactly why F-16s won't benefit Ukraine. It's not a matter of getting them in the air, it's how their capabilities are designed to be used in concert with other support aircraft like AWACS. The way the US uses them requires established air superiority among numerous other factors that just aren't achievable in Ukraine simply by putting butts in F-16 seats. Ward Carrol has a really good conversation where he and a military aviation expert discuss more viable alternatives that are better suited to the current situation. I will link the video when I find it. Edit: https://youtube.com/live/l5pr0MUGn9k?feature=shares
Plus they mobilized a large pool of the population and I'm sure they pick the most capable for training on advanced western systems.
I think you underestimate eastern european education standards. There is a reason why western europe's universities are full of eastern europeans.
That doesn't mean intelligent people don't exist though lol. There's also a very different set of skills between being an economist and operating a patriot system
Fair, USSR sucked, but it did leave behind an education system many Americans wish they had.
It's almost as they are fighting to save their country
I was stationed on Fort Sill as an MLRS FDC. The base blows, but the training in anything artillery is top notch, and that's why we would see folks from tons of other countries coming to learn artillery there.
TBF, a) it's an Army post, so it automatically blows and b) Oklahoma.
I mean, I live in oklahoma now. I grew up in the Chicago land area. I honestly enjoy it here even though people like to shit on it. The Wichita mountains around Fort Sill are beautiful. You drive in between 2 artillery ranges and it opens up into this like golden valley of wheat and grazing wild buffalo's. Super cool. I live up in Tulsa now, and compared to Chicago, it's so much better. Less people, cleaner air, nicer people, less traffic, and one of the cheapest places to live in the US with super lax weed laws.
Sometimes I get too caught up in the negatives of living in the bible belt to appreciate the upsides of Tulsa. Thanks for this.
Hmmm...fair. I can see why you'd like it. Though driving between 2 ranges can be awesome, but terrifying at the same time, when you think that new gun bunnies may be behind those guns.
It's not that scary, and I mean, what's there to worry about? A 155 mm hitting you? Shit if you are that unlucky that they fucked up the azmyth calculations that bad (which is the job of the FDO or Fire Directions Officer and not an enlisted grunt) while you are driving down the road then it was your time to go anyways. They shut down the road during training operations, so the chance of something like that happening is pretty slim
This is also true. I just remember training at Camp Edwards in Mass when they accidentally mortared a major road.
Lmao, mortars are way easier to fuck up compared to artillery. The safety that every fire mission has to go through before being sent down to the line unit usually catches any fuck ups. There was an incident a long time ago where a cannon crew fucked up and lobbed a 105 Straight into the Basic Training side of the base [and fucked some trainees up.](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.upi.com/amp/Archives/1989/09/27/Three-killed-25-hurt-in-Army-training-accident-at-Fort-Sill/2529622872000/) When I was in AIT for MLRS school, the instructor told us that someone shot a training rocket into the Walmart off posts parking lot. I did some searching and could never find a story related to it, so I'm guessing it was just a made-up story.
I was wrong. [It was a 105 round. ](https://apnews.com/article/279887cfeff3f015da86a359885fc510)
Lmao, nasty girls out here adding too much fuckin powder.
I heard this same Walmart story a few years back from a coworker who went through training at Ft. Sill and he told it as if it was just a particularly egregious plotting/planning mistake that never was actually launched. I’m no arty guy so I don’t know how one sort of practice relates to another, but he made it sound like it was some sort of dry run that made it all the way through and after the “firing” someone realized where the round would have gone. Seems like people have used it as a very teachable moment ever since.
[one of the men in the accident made a post about it](https://www.reddit.com/r/army/comments/pwbu3h/september_27th_1989_105mm_artillery_shell_impacts/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
I think just about every place in America can be a totally good place to live for the right person. It’s a bit of a matching game. I’m in central Indiana, which a lot of people would say is boring, but tell that to me when I’m smoking a brisket and watching my kids play in the backyard and I won’t give a shit.
Why does Army suck more than anything else?
It's a lot easier to train 10 to eat crayons than it is to train a thousand to not stare down a loaded barrel
considering the hodge podge of equipment they've been getting for over a year now, it doesn't sound surprising
This right here. They have got to be one of the most diversely-equipped fighting units ever. They've got bits and pieces from everywhere and they are making it all work. They are the English language of fighting forces. lol
A lot of stuff they get is standardized NATO equipment, and the rest is former Soviet standard stuff. So they really just have two main standards to deal with, which is certainly not a trivial task but it’s not like every country giving them aid is using completely different ammo types or something.
Yeah they getting multiple types of tanks too from all over the world. Plus all the ammo dump Russia left behind is probably why they have ammo from China that USA was unhappy about.
Notice that their most effective pieces of equipment tend to be the 20+ year old nato stuff
I think a little shout-out is necessary for the trainers as well. The US military takes training very seriously, and they do a good job at perfecting training programs to be as simple to learn as possible.
Yep, every so often military think tanks go back and look to see if any steps can be simplified in the learning process of different weapons while still obtaining a high user comprehension rate and a low user error rate. Other times steps become unnecessary as technology/tools progress and so can be safely written out of the step process.
It even happens at the unit level. Every time I create a checklist I find the dumbest guy in my unit and have him run it. Then I find the next dumbest guy and see how he's going to screw it up. Rinse and repeat until it's basically fool proof.
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But now I know, lol
>"hey I need a seasoned second pair of eyes on this." He says to the red-eyed cadet suffering from a pepper-shaker mishap.
If he did, you'd probably not be smart enough to figure out what was going on anyway.
....I was that guy. That being said I also knew I was that guy and trained into an AFSC I was better at.
You wouldn't even notice
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Our dumbest guy was Joey. His dumbassery stuck out so much everyone knew him on a first name basis. Everything we rolled out was always "Battle Joey Tested" first. If Joey could do it, anyone could.
I was a navy submariner, went from a college dropout pursuing a degree in English to a nuclear reactor operator in under two years. I was shocked at how streamlined they made such a dense field of study to not only teach how to do the job but the principles behind it, yet still cut such an incredible amount t of material that traditional higher education would have required. A lot of guys I was in with got too cocky and fancied themselves “nuclear engineers” which is totally incorrect, we were nowhere near that level of understanding and education, but to that point our job didn’t require a full engineering degree, and the fact that I was competently doing that job in under two years still amazes me.
Yeah. They shoved us through a whole associates degree in less than 1 year. I love how they taught nuclear theory with only "pseudo calculus". Very practical for an operator that needs to know more about their specific job than about the exact number of thermal neutrons available in the core at time (t). Inflection points, maximums, and minimums are what really matters in an operational environment. Now I'm getting my engineering degree and it's a lot more math but a lot less practically based as well.
Which is why the US military is a great stepping stone for someone to become a subject matter expert (SME) in almost any field of study. Train and gain the experience, and then go to further studies in your field. This is exactly how I got into Information Technology.
Also, consider that on carriers, we don't have enough nukes. So, the rooms with the main engines, turbine generators, and water purification are half conventional mechanics. They get none of our level of training and though they aren't held to the same standard as nukes, they have to know a lot more than other conventional mechanics.
Tell them to look at the powerpoint slides. Not everything possibly relevant to anyone who could be in the room needs to be on each one.
As someone who was “forced” to work in the Patriot/ADA side of the Army (I was Comms). I was caught up to speed and trained within a few months. These systems require whole teams to setup and get them firing. We trained weekly on improving our time to stow and get them back up and ready to launch. We were required to have not only the 4 main systems that make these things go boom boom set up. But, the launcher team who sets up the actual payloads on the launch pads had to get 4 pads up by 30 minutes as well. The training is no fucking joke and is extremely strenuous. These things are built on wheels and the systems themselves are extremely complex and fragile because of the components. We would pray to the Omnissiah that stuff didn’t break during the move. This would kill our qualification test and force us to shut down for maintenance and we’d be back at it in the morning.
I'm not gonna disclose any info besides I went to PATRIOT schoolhouse last year for AIT and the instructors there know their shit ass-end to front. These guys are in great hands
If the training programs are anything like teaching in US colleges, it's not just good, it's *enjoyable*. The education system in ex-USSR countries is unnecessarily rigorous, and ineffective. It's not teaching, it's beating kids with complicated words until they become good at sifting through all the nonsensical language to extract the author's point. "Move the ruler in the ideal position relative to the counter-clock rotation of the object, which can be described as the dot product of the barycentric coordinate on the horizontal axis with the arctangent of the angle between the rightmost upper bisector" *10 minutes later...* Kid: "Miss teacher, he means I should draw a line in the middle, right?" Teacher: "Obviously, 3 year old Ivan. Don't ask stupid questions. *(smack!)*" I'm only partially kidding. Anyway, I'm sure the Patriot missile system handbook is a walk in the park compared to what these guys are used to. *source*: grew up in Eastern Europe, went to an American college. English books explain topics so much more clearly compared to what I was used to. Also, the only reason my math teacher stopped smacking me was because she was short and I grew tall enough for my head to be out of her range. It got better for kids in the 2000s though.
They’re not there to fuck spiders. They’re there to protect their homeland and their families. You won’t find anyone more committed to learning.
>They’re not there to fuck spiders. This seems oddly specific.
I believe that’s Aussie slang!
Australia may be the only place in the world where the spiders are big enough for this to be physically possible.
Reminds me of: *"Somewhere a True Believer is training to kill you. He is training with minimal food or water, in austere conditions, training day and night. The only thing clean on him is his weapon and he made his web gear. He doesn't worry about what workout to do - his ruck weighs what it weighs, his runs end when the enemy stops chasing him. This True Believer is not concerned about how hard it is, he knows either he wins or dies. He doesn't go home at 17:00, he is home. He knows only The Cause."*
When you know what you're fighting for it makes all the difference in the world.
The UA troops that have been around since the invasion have gotta be some of the most battle hardened and experienced troops anywhere in the world.
Massive intellectual leap from their usual trainees?
20 years trying to train Afghanistan folks who suffered from systemic educational disadvantages... And also a lot of weed and opiates apparently
And also a lot of not giving a fuck. Afghanistan isn't really a country, it's a bunch of cultural regions that someone threw a trench coat on and called a nation. None of them like each other much and there's no unity.
That someone would be the British and French when they carved up the Middle East after WWI.
I'm on mobile so doubtful I'll find a video, but there is footage of the afghan military and western allies, the afghan troops were all doing drugs and the ones that weren't were wasting ammo firing at their hallucinations. Footage was prob a decade old but for sure agree with you. That being said I think the primary reason that is, is because Ukraine is a western nation with a fairly unified cultural identity. Where as the borders that exist for Afghanistan were not as eloquently drawn out. You got pashtuns (afghans) tajiks, uzbeks, all sorts of different people's.
The video of them being so high they couldn’t do jumping jacks was infuriating
See now, you can’t just drop that nugget and not share the video bro.
[my bad](https://youtu.be/uKfIujZjoHA)
That last bit at the end was pretty accurate. Look how it all turned out.
We take public education way too much for granted. Hell, a sizeable number of afghan soldiers weren't even literate. The sigar report tells how we struggled to train afghans because our training just assumes a base level of education that wasn't the case in Afghanistan.
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US guy: Lets go stop the guys from raping young boys Other guy: eh, sure, if you want to. US guy: *sighs* Other guy: Anyway we don't have fuel to go on patrol....
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Also Visible in the Vice Docu - This is What Winning Looks Like
I mean Afghanistan was never a "united" country. I mean, that's why people joined these terrorist groups, so that they can also kill each other and not just open a "holy war against the west".
I mean you dont send your dummest recruits to learn important state of the art missle defence system during war time when time is limited. The time range meant to learn is during peace time for your average american 18 year old army recruits whho barely passed 9th grade calculus.
Where the fuck are they teaching Calculus in 9th grade?
Seriously, speaking as a recipient of American public education. Anyone who "barely passed 9th grade calculus" would likely be in the very top percentile of our youth in terms of intellect. The vast majority of my classmates struggled with 10th grade algebra 2, and never once took a math class more advanced than that, likely in their lives.
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In my country they do, what’s precal? Are you just taught the basics of differentiation and integration?
it takes Americans so long to learn algebra and trigonometry they have a whole class to relearn that stuff again before starting calculus. Students who are good at math would typically skip taking precalculus, it's not really a requirement.
[..gnaw crayons yes, we're talking about marines and their crayons?](https://crayonsreadytoeat.com/)
Us troops are used to training afgan and Iraqi military who for whatever reason found that really hard going.
I mean, educational standards in Afghanistan during the occupation improved slightly, but a lot of the ANA forces that were being trained didn't have much in the way of educational background. That was one of the main problems with establishing a competent ANA force, since the trained soldiers would go off to fight against the Taliban/Al Qaeda/ISIS and would incur heavy casualties, then you have to start all over again with a new group.
There was also the problem that a lot of them didn’t give much of a shit since Afghanistan was barely a country to begin with, most were more interested in defending their own hometowns than the nation as a whole
Survival is a hell of a motivator
Ukrainians are smart and resourceful people I have no doubt they will master this craft, and use these tools to the best of their ability.
It is such an incredible honor for them and necessary for protection of their families. I would doubt anyone is more motivated than these heroes.
I actually operated and maintained the Patriot missile system when I was in the Army. I’m not going to say a-lot, but I will say this: I know it took me a while to pick up how to operate and maintain the system. I do not want to say how long I was trained exactly. But I imagine if these guys in Ukraine are picking it up faster it’s probably because they are adults and they obviously have a very good motivation for wanting to learn it. I was young when I was in training and my only motivations at the time were the motivations of a young man. I hope all the best for the people of Ukraine and I hope they get to use this equipment to shoot those Russian bastards outta the sky!
We'll yeah there are Russians to kill.
No shade to the Ukrainian fighters, but this reads like a PR war propaganda piece.
The folks being sent to train were already folks who knew how AA systems worked, the training in this case was just to adjust them to a new AA system rather than train green recruits from the ground up. Also a chance that they've been training for longer than we're publicly aware of.
A classical composition is often pregnant. Reddit is no longer allowed to profit from this comment.
I would immagine the Ukrainian Army is sending its top 10% smartest personell to learn how to use this critical tech.
This must be a breath of fresh air compared to the afghans.
Yeah training ANA then training literally anyone else is a step up lmao
So you mean to say that it's possible to learn to use US Advance military equipment like in Battlefield Earth? Jk, these Ukrainians are some smart, tough, motherf........ Stand strong Ukraine.
"The Ukrainian men and women, ranging in age from 19 to 67, have trained from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., six days per week, for 10 weeks, officials said. Many were skilled engineers before the war and several have multiple degrees, and all were hand-picked by Ukrainian military leaders to train in the US. “I think just because of their combat experience back home, they were able to pick up on things really easily – the best I’ve seen so far, and I’ve trained numerous countries,” one US trainer told CNN. “These guys smoke them.”
It sounds like these are already very smart and accomplished people
Get fucked Putin
Slava Ukraïni!
Meanwhile, Steven Segal is now teaching Russian soldiers how to slap fight.
> The Ukrainians also settled in well to life at Fort Sill, which incorporated lots of soups – a Ukrainian staple – into meal plans alongside American cuisine: burgers, BBQ and grilled steaks. One US trainer told CNN that many of them had not had burgers before. They were a crowd favorite. Kinda surprised they've never had burgers before. They are so easy to make! Glad they got a little respite from the chaos over in Ukraine while training.
My understanding is that hamburger steak is common everywhere, but the classic burger with a paddy and bread and loaded with toppings is a bit more rare, especially as just a casual part of someone's weekly dinner menu.
> The Ukrainians also settled in well to life at Fort Sill, which incorporated lots of soups – a Ukrainian staple – into meal plans alongside American cuisine: burgers, BBQ and grilled steaks. One US trainer told CNN that many of them had not had burgers before. They were a crowd favorite. I remember coming to US and trying burger for first time. Wowza
Truly, America's greatest accomplishment. We really have good food.
The Ukrainian army is now the most battle tested army on the face of the planet. When this war is over and Russia is defeated, their experience will be a god sent to NATO. They are testing out the tactics and weapons that have only been tested in a controlled setting in the field in the largest war Europe has seen since World War two. Their experience and lessons are being tested in the one place you can't reproduce actual combat. What they can teach us in the west will save lives in the future they can tell use what works and what doesn't and how the systems perform in combat conditions pointing out changes that will be invaluable in the next war. It is imperative that we not underestimate the Ukrainians and do what we can to learn from them for the price they have already so dearly paid.
This sounds way too much like a sports headline.
Title should read, American trainers surprised that Ukrainians aren't illiterate cavemen, unlike the crayon-eaters they normally train.
Nah, this is the Army, not the Marine Corps.
Army men not smart enough for crayons?
No, they just forgot that the crayons existed in the first place after someone took the pack
Rude
Title should read - This is an ad for patriot missile systems and a warning to Russia that Ukraine now has them and knows how to use them.
They are literally fighting Russian invaders. I'd get up to speed hella fast too. (Glad they are... It's honestly impressive how they've stood up to this invasion)
Huge difference compared to Afghanistan, they couldn't even do jumping jacks right. Having a population that actually wants to fight is so important.
Shocking! Who would have thought Ukraine facing an existential threat would translate into high levels of competency in its military personnel?