The Army is Going Back to the Fundamentals of Soldiering

The ground branch is brushing up on neglected—but vital skills.

According to the Army Times, the U.S. Army is going back to the basics of soldiering. Critical skills such as marksmanship, land navigation, and even mundane tasks like taking inventory have atrophied in the face of technological solutions and continuous deployments.

Modern military technology offers huge advantages to armies that invest in them. These technologies can assist soldiers in doing key tasks, or even do them better than the soldiers can. At least while they're working, that is.

One example is land navigation and map reading. Today, a combination of GPS and accurate, digitized maps makes finding your way much, much easier than ever before in history. Enter your starting point and your destination, and your cell phone will tell you how to go virtually anywhere, overlaying your virtual route on the most accurate map possible.

That's in contrast to the "good old days" in which people read paper maps and needed to know compass directions to figure out how to get from Point A to to Point B. And yet a savvy, high-tech enemy that could destroy vulnerable American communication and navigation satellites could return us to the "good old days" in a matter of seconds.

The article highlights officer candidates who "couldn't find North on a compass," and quotes an anonymous soldier who says "If I took 10 (Specialists) and below and dropped them off in the middle of the woods with a map and compass, there's no way they're going to find their way out."

Over-reliance on electronic devices isn't the only cause of the problem. The Army's high operational tempo over the last fifteen years—with many units and individual soldiers going on multiple deployments overseas—has prioritized getting into the field and getting things done over more traditional soldiering tasks. But perhaps not for much longer.

Source: Army Times

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