
Why dumb recruits cost the Army, big-time (2006) - gwern
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2006/01/gi_schmo.html
======
Bucephalus355
During World War II, there were tons of issues with the healthiness of
recruits. Sadly, this was because of all the malnutrition of children (and
adults) that occurred during The Depression.

This did not really effect the war effort during WWII. Fascinatingly, the US
never really fully mobilized for WWII, and could have easily fielded an output
2-3x higher than it did. One of the more famous pieces of data is a survey at
the end of the war that asked “did you feel you had to make significant
sacrifices in your life or living style during the war”. 7 out of 10 said no.

Also, the US has always ramped up INCREDIBLY quickly during war. It’s a
testament to the latent, incredible power of democracies. For example, it was
just 6 months between Pearl Harbor and the Battle of Midway, where 4 Japanese
aircraft carriers were sunk and hundreds of planes / pilots destroyed.

~~~
neffy
To be completely fair about this, the US was ramping up a long time before
Pearl Harbour. (This is part of the extended discussion around the attack
itself, and whether it should have been anticipated.) British rearming began
in 1936, the US was certainly planning in the late 30´s, actual spending began
in 1939, and ramped up quickly after that during 1940.

In war, as in many other things, if you want to ride the wave, you have to be
ready long before you see it coming.

~~~
travmatt
Roosevelt definitely saw the war coming and prepared for it. He was hampered
by the strong isolationist feelings at the time but he never gave in to them,
and was careful never to run too far ahead of public opinion.

~~~
Andre_Wanglin
Roosevelt saw the war coming because he wanted it to come and engineered a way
for the US to be attacked (the US way of war has alway been to provoke and
goad the other side into firing first [or outright faking such a provocation]
then feigning moral outrage) and overcome these (sensible) sentiments. The
"isolationist" strain of US diplomacy was part of its founding ethos and WW2
was responsible for obliterating it from the American identity. Was this
really a good thing?

~~~
travmatt
Seeing as those same America First party people are the same strains of
America trying to sell the upside of neo-nazism, I’m going to go with yes?
Sorry I’m not edgy enough to sell myself on the upsides of racial and ethnic
cleansing...

~~~
Andre_Wanglin
Seeing as how those America First people are the ones who came around to
fighting and defeating the Nazis, that's quite a disgusting and loaded remark.
It is a shibboleth among the alt-right that they are called Nazis by people
like you for sharing beliefs of their grandfathers who fought Nazis and you
are reinforcing that perception.

~~~
threepipeproblm
But not a disgusting remark like when you stated that 'the "genocide" of
native Americans was a result of European diseases, not barbarism' in another
thread and argued that evidence of deliberate killing was more like a
"rounding error".
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17023220](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17023220)
Not disgusting like that, right?

~~~
Andre_Wanglin
Yes, that's right.

------
phaus
I've been in the Army for 16 years. Dumb recruits are their bread and butter.
They wouldn't give them up for anything in the world. Independent thought,or
intelligence in general, are strongly discouraged unless you're lucky enough
to be in one of the tiny,incredibly rare units that does something
interesting.

The military desperately needs smart people, but they only begrudgingly allow
them to exist.

~~~
chrisseaton
> Independent thought,or intelligence in general, are strongly discouraged
> unless you're lucky enough to be in one of the tiny,incredibly rare units
> that does something interesting.

That's not been my experience in the Army (British, but I've worked with
Americans).

The Army fights hard to get soldiers to think intelligently and independently.
One of the foundation stones of how the Army does things is 'mission command'
(which the US uses as well) that is designed to make sure junior soldiers can
think and act independently and that commanders allow them to do this and do
not over-control them.

One of the major lessons you learn as a leader in the Army is to decide what
you want your soldiers to achieve, and then to give them the time and space to
achieve that without excess control or direction.

In fact I think the Army is uniquely good in society at developing young
people to able to make their own confident decisions. The biggest difference I
see between soldiers and civilians is that soldiers are able to make a
decision and come up with a plan in any kind of chaos, and it's the Army that
develops that.

Junior soldiers who show potential are mentored and nurtured, up to the point
of plucking them out of the ranks and commissioning them if they show enough
potential, no matter what their background is.

~~~
lovich
I was in ROTC for a few years, which isn't the actual military, but it is the
future officers. They worked pretty hard to make sure we understood that even
asking clarifying questions when assigned a task was both insubordinate and
showed that you were incompetent. I don't know ow where it started but at some
point one group of upperclassman took the approach of teaching the lower
classman that they are allowed to listen and not speak under all
circumstances, and every class after that felt like it was their turn to be in
charge when they became upperclassman

~~~
chrisseaton
> They worked pretty hard to make sure we understood that even asking
> clarifying questions when assigned a task was both insubordinate and showed
> that you were incompetent.

That's so totally inconsistent with everything I know about Army doctrine,
people in the Army, the approach to training western militaries use, and ROTC,
that I'm honestly not sure to believe you (but I'm sure you're telling the
truth if that's what you say).

When you deliver orders do your crib cards not include a massive highlighted
block that says to _at this point ask for questions from the subordinates and
answer them_?

Don't you do that thing of keeping taking questions and then when they run out
turning it around and asking them questions back to check they really asked
about everything they weren't sure about?

Doesn't the US Army have a sort of little ceremonial tick that after every
point of instruction the instructor pauses to ask 'do you understand that?'

If there's one group that I know that does 'there's no such thing as a stupid
question' it's the Army.

~~~
lovich
Military doctrine as stated and as practiced are routinely inconsistent in
practice. In the same ROTC course we spent the entire year being taught about
how militaries that jumped on new technologies and adapted to change faster
was the way to win war, and then right after class all but two of the cadets
thought that we should never even think about replacing fighter jets with
drones that had better performance because of A: the drones might take control
of themselves and it'll be like Terminator, B: we've never used drones before,
and C: being a fighter pilot is cool and being a drone pilot isn't.

There are undoubtedly a number of good officers and enlisted in the military
by sheer virtue of their numbers, and I'm sure many of them helped write those
forward looking doctrines. The reality of the actual situation inside the
military is a morass of waste, micro managing and simultaneously not giving
enough instructions, and politics.

The meritocracy of the military only comes into play when it is facing a
mortal enemy and the people who do their jobs poorly actually are removed by
dieing. When you are in the situation that US military is where it outclasses
every enemy it's fought for decades by orders of magnitude then incompetence
is covered over just by the momentum of the entire system.

Just look at the waste and turmoil over uniforms[0] When I was in the program
it became apparent through scuttlebutt from the officers that most changes or
cancellations in programs like this lined up 1 for 1 with people being
promoted into positions and deciding to clear out their predecessors work so
they could make their own mark. A common complaint about new second
lieutenants as well, was that they were always making up some new work or
replacing working processes so that they could point towards their
accomplishments when going for a promotion. Those are all the hallmarks of a
system dominated by politics, not meritocracy and if it's happening at the
junior level those same officers are going to bring those habits with them
when they promoted to higher ranks

Edit: They had the "do you understand that" pauses when I was in the program
as well. After indicating that I did not understand I was taken aside and told
that if I planned on continuing in the military then I should not be voicing
any doubt. It was not told to me as a threat but as career advice, and they
coupled it with techniques for finding out what needs to be done when you
don't have information such as nodding politely and saluting your commanding
officer, immediately forgetting what they said, and then finding a seargant to
ask what should really be done. My school's program may have been an outlier
but I heard the same stories and advice from the upperclassmen, the teachers
who we're actual officers and enlisted, and enlisted members we met on base
visits

[0][https://www.cnn.com/2016/08/29/politics/military-uniform-
red...](https://www.cnn.com/2016/08/29/politics/military-uniform-redesign-
aquaflage/index.html)

------
s2g
I'm curious how this problem has aged a decade on, when these soldiers (and
their fellows) should be taking up more and more leadership positions. Are
they up to it? Does having to put up with incompetence lead good soldiers to
bail on the military as a career?

~~~
gwern
As I understand it, with combination of the Great Recession and the winding
down of Afghanistan/Iraq, recruiting became _much_ easier and so the need for
gimmicks like moral waivers or tweaking test scores disappeared and recruiters
could afford to try to get a better grade of recruit. I imagine that something
similar took place with all of the people who did get recruited beforehand:
commanders took opportunities to get rid of those who hadn't excelled or
simply not encourage them to re-enlist etc, and natural attrition takes care
of it all.

------
ErikAugust
I took the ASVAB after I graduated college. 99 on it, and 93 on the AFQT. I am
not a whiz kid. That scared me a lot.

------
drpgq
When people deny the usefulness of IQ tests, I always point out how useful it
is to the US army.

------
Karishma1234
Honestly entire Army is a about being dumb. (In my opinion). And it is costing
ton of money for us any ways.

Instead having a good productive life where you engage with society (Pizza and
Netflix) and create value it is stupid to join a cult like Army where you are
brainwashed into being a robotic human being fighting wars for old infirm men
in Washington. Are we really supposed to feel proud about young soldiers dying
in Syria, Afganistan or Iraq ? What for ?

~~~
toasterlovin
As a counter point: most young men I knew growing up (in a upper middle class,
left leaning neighborhood) really could have used some time in the military. I
know I could have. I ended up getting a similar-ish experience working
construction.

And that's just at the personal development level. As a society, I think some
kind of compulsory service (not necessarily military, but military as an
option) for young men and women would go a long way toward healing the
political, class, and racial divisions in the US. It's hard to other a group
of people when you've worked alongside and bonded with individuals of that
group.

~~~
ItsMe000001
As a counter point, since throughout history we have had plenty of states with
a big role for the military, I don't think your theory that it helps "heal"
the nation passes the test. I'm not sure, I'm far from being a historian,
maybe somebody could offer an educated opinion on the subject... but my point
is we don't need to wait, there should be plenty of data to look at.

~~~
watwut
One data point would be Germany prior WWII the other soviet russia. In
Germany, the lower levels of government being composed of ex-soldiers was
factor that made Nazi takeover easier (based on Evans books for example).

As for eastern block, I knew personally people of older generation that have
been through draft and their memories were not rosy. A lot of bullying, a lot
of having to submit yourself to bullying or various abuse of higher ups or
just stupidity. (Turned out smartest profesional soldiers were not the ones
dealing with draftees). One was forced to steal, many learned to smoke and
generally it was exercise on avoiding duty+doing minimum once you are after
basic training. Army quality went up after all those people who really did not
wanted to be there were not there.

Israel has draft too, but it is real war going on there so it might be
different. Switzerland has military duty, but they do shorter stints at time.

I really don't think you can solve racial divisions by that. Racial divisons
are a lot about ideologies and believes and legacy of history and so on.

~~~
manfredo
Interesting, I've actually heard the opposite point made about Germany. My
understanding is that the Allies considered _Junkers_ , a Prussian and later
German hereditary military class, to be one of the key factors that led a
Germany to instigate WWII in Europe. This is why the Allies wanted Germany to
institute a draft, to prevent one segment of the population from exerting near
total control of the military.

At least that's my understanding of the establishment of the West German
military.

~~~
watwut
Both can be true, but i dont know much about after ear. Prior WWII ex-soldiers
had guaranteed employment in goverment. By law. So, trains, post, police,
social help etc were all ex-soldiers. Meaning socialized in military, military
values of obeisense, duty to do what is told, etc determining how all those
institutions worked. They adjusted to Nazi rule remarkably well and without
any fuss, including in beginning. Also, Germany had conscription since 1935
including labor for those not trusted to be in military.

Hitler wanted war two no matter who ruled army, germany foreign policts wanted
imperium, so I think it would happen even if hereditary officers were someone
else.

One more thing here. Nazi army and conscription and also school system were
preparation for brutal war where Germans were meant to be the most brutal.
Which essentially happened. One issue with military as mandatory training to
teach you values and discipline and what not is that they might teach you
wrong values including to be remarkably brutal.

