You bring up the military's growing fitness problems - it is incredible, truly incredible, the extent of the lack of fitness even in the 'good' units.
Almost equally distressing is the amount of useless equipment the soldiers are required to bring along on foot marches. The light infantry's greatest enemy is 500 meters
There's a book 'The Soldier's Load and the Mobility of a Nation' by SLA Marshall. He gives good reasons for limiting the weight; in his opinion the combat load should not exceed ~42 lbs, if I remember correctly. Probably a bit heavier for machine gunners
SLA Marshall is such a fraud I hesitate to trust a single statistic he gives. He also thought in a WW2 mindset for his entire life anyways, so even if he was legitimate it would be questionable.
Hackworth was traveling with him in Vietnam and Marshall would always complain that soldiers carried too much, but he didn't consider the fact that soldiers had to sustain themselves for three or more days at once
That being said I do agree with the gist that soldiers carry way too much and destroy their knees way too young nowadays, even more so since they're generally unfit already
You bring up the military's growing fitness problems - it is incredible, truly incredible, the extent of the lack of fitness even in the 'good' units.
Almost equally distressing is the amount of useless equipment the soldiers are required to bring along on foot marches. The light infantry's greatest enemy is 500 meters
Yeah it's ridiculous, my ruck alone weighed 160lbs on one op
There's a book 'The Soldier's Load and the Mobility of a Nation' by SLA Marshall. He gives good reasons for limiting the weight; in his opinion the combat load should not exceed ~42 lbs, if I remember correctly. Probably a bit heavier for machine gunners
SLA Marshall is such a fraud I hesitate to trust a single statistic he gives. He also thought in a WW2 mindset for his entire life anyways, so even if he was legitimate it would be questionable.
Hackworth was traveling with him in Vietnam and Marshall would always complain that soldiers carried too much, but he didn't consider the fact that soldiers had to sustain themselves for three or more days at once
That being said I do agree with the gist that soldiers carry way too much and destroy their knees way too young nowadays, even more so since they're generally unfit already
Interesting...didn't know that..
You should give "About Face" a read, especially if you're still in. If nothing else it 100% will make you a better leader