Thursday, March 4, 2010

General sounds alarm on U.S. Army training

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/03/03/89799/general-sounds-alarm-on-us-army.html

Are you outraged yet?
Our military does not even train our troops, most of them are now trained by outside contractors.
Can you say BlackWater or Xe?

The Army's ability to train its forces is "increasingly at risk" because of the nation's protracted commitments to Iraq and Afghanistan, the general in charge of training has told the Army's chief of staff.

In a Feb. 16 memo to Gen. George W. Casey, Gen. Martin Dempsey, the commander of the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, says that the Army has lost thousands of uniformed trainers because of troop demands in Iraq and Afghanistan, has had to put junior officers in charge of some key training functions and has delayed initial instruction for nearly 500 pilots because it doesn't have enough trainers.

Only 30 percent of the instructors at Army training schools are in the military, Dempsey says, with the Army increasingly dependent on outside contractors