[QUOTE=WarriorDiplomat;558997]
Quote:
Originally Posted by Flagg
If I may inquire, I'm a bit confused about the part in bold regarding SOPC/SFPC.
Assessment for any career should be completely raw and kept pure, SOPC is Special Operations Preparation Course where soldiers who are recruited for SpecOps are trained to pass selection essentially gaming SFAS through preparation. This is wrong on many levels specifically for us it is because it removes a few of the key elements of assessment and that is initiative. drive and perseverance. We deem this as critical to the right person for the right job. Our career is initiative based and we are deployed without supervision and very little guidance thousands of miles from our Command, the desire to succeed must be inherent in the individuals character without question!.
For us the soldier making a decision to be a Special Forces soldier is the first step the next step is his own initiative to prepare for the training this may include learning how to navigate, physical conditioning and learning about the career so as to better understand what he is joining and why.
What SOPC does is takes away much of the character assessment of what we deem most critical to the core of who we are and what we do. The course itself is the other half and is the performance assessment that is where the soldiers commitment is tested, he must value team above self and mission above self. What selection does is force a soldier to make decisions that are revealing of his character such as when he is in pain and fatigue, hunger, cold, hot, wet etc….. This forces the soldier to make a decision to quit and seek comfort or continue to place the accomplishment of the objective above his own needs this puts his basic values into perspective for not only the soldier but for the cadre.
What you seem to be confused on is the conditioning for training and as I stated earlier SFAS is not training. IMO the coming to SFAS not conditioned for it is the first step in accepting personal accountability for our own actions or lack thereof. Fitness can influence the assessment for a soldiers psychological resistance to physical stress and fear of the unknown we should not interfere with the individuals own initiative or again lack of.
The issue with us running a preparation course is we are having cadre who know what is going to be expected and training recruits just to overcome the events and reduce the stresses placed on the recruit who now has an idea of what SFAS is going to be like and has the confidence going into it that he was prepared and guided to pass the events. The stress of not knowing what was next the uneasy quiet of the cadre and lack of detailed guidance was part of why soldiers would quit or why they would perform above and beyond the average soldier.
The conditioning phase should not exist and would not be needed if there were hard standards that professional soldiers understood and were held accountable for. Accountability is only effective if an individual must face his own failures, unpreparedness and denial of the desired end state. What we owe and all we should offer during the training is the information and opportunity to improve themselves the rest is on the individual. We do not want soldiers who have to be led we want soldiers that need to be guided once they "choose" to follow us.
By running these programs and controlling these critical portions of an individual’s character it conditions our soldiers to be led and controlled and never allows for the ability to honestly assess these attributes needed to operate independently as a representative of our country. We must allow the assessment and selection process to be untouched by us in order to preserve our force competence in the future.
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Cheers for that.
Do you believe there is scope for any organized physical conditioning program pre-selection?
Truth #3 states SOF cannot be mass produced.
But are any allowances able to be made to adjust for a less physically active and more sedentary society(18X pool) that funds a fast shrinking pool of uniformed candidates?
Is society producing candidates today who are less initially physically capable and resilient today on average than 20,40, 60 years ago?
If so, can anything be done to assist potential candidates to exceed the required physical standard and develop physical/mental resilience without gaming/corrupting that physical slice of selection?
Down here I see a high anecdotal correlation for successful candidates from very active rural backgrounds and endurance athletes.
But that pool appears to be at high risk of shrinking.
Would a minimum threshold of circa 250+ AFPT and <58 minute 4 mile ruck times as a minimum standard to attending SFAS, paired with physical fitness mentoring to well exceed the minimum standards both make SOPC/SFPC redundant as well as mitigate the potential for short-term masking of unsuitable candidate characteristics?
As found here:
http://www.professionalsoldiers.com/...18&postcount=7
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a245729.pdf
I hear what you're saying about inoculating candidates to stressors and ambiguity potentially polluting SFAS assessment results.
Could an argument be made that SOPC/SFPC corrupting SFAS assessment results would be quantifiably indicated in higher failure rates in Phases 1-4?
Once again cheers for your feedback.