From mil.com.
Posted Fri 26 October 2007 01:26 PM
As a recent graduate of the SF Q course, and being an 18X a lot of things have been running through my head about how the past two years of my life has went and how it could have been used some of the time, to accomplish more important tasks, critical tasks that we XRAYS aren't aware that the rest of the Army does. Maybe it is because the leaders don't realize, or even care that we get the training, or just don’t know how to approach the problem but from my knowledge that can’t be too astray, 18X's don’t know jack about how the regular army is run, common military courtesies and the base culture of the army, and things like REAL unit rank structure and relationships between officer and enlisted (I have a first name basis with many captains from my courses and never really see day to day interaction with E's and O's)
The Q course lacks skills and knowledge that is relevant to the time at hand.
The Q course now pretty much in a nutshell is changing, however the base of knowledge put out is still the same as it were 10 years ago. Teach basic patrolling, be a man among men, be a leader, and LEARN A LANGUAGE. I will tell you that a specialist does not get any leadership experience unless you demand it, which will piss many people off in the process. However, the weathered E-7 gets all of the leadership, and all of the burden. He has the basic troop leadership behind him, why should it fall on him? Is the lonely E-4 not capable of handling the same responsibilities. He should be, right?
Notice the capitalization. Being bi-lingual has been the keystone of SF, train indigenous forces. Though everyone’s combat mission in Iraq and Afghanistan is similar in nature, using translators because of all the dialects in the countries is the accepted way of communicating.
The biggest problem I have in all of the training has been language. Patrolling sucks, but you find purpose in it. You know that you’re gaining knowledge of your strength, weakness, and that of others. Teaching those skills however, is never focused on (when working in Sage it was hard to convert those skills into common sense, I didn’t understand why the g's couldn’t comprehend a mission)
The problems with Language
-native speakers of Spanish have a hard time with the test
-DLPT 5 in Arabic, French, and Spanish is way too hard for a 3 month, and 4 month course
-there is no way to take a 18 month DLI course and crunch it down to a 2 week block, another 2 week block, and a 3 month block spread out throughout a year. It cannot be done, stop doing it.
-no one will pass the DLPT5 in Arabic in the year 2008 until changes are made to the program
-years ago the language proficiency was O+/0+/0+ which is a very weak understanding of the DLPT. That is getting about 25/65 questions right on the test. It used to be a 20 week course.
-now the standard is raised to 1/1 with a 16 week program, that has seen no change in the way they go about teaching the language, do the math, no amount of studying can immerse you to a understanding to pass it
-there is open conversation of the SOLT testing. Teachers openly told us the answers, and we cheated with another to pass. Now I have a friend that had his language changed to French from Arabic because he failed a SOLT test
-my language was Arabic. I took the Arabic DLPT and passed with a 1/1. My friend failed with a 0+/1 and had to retrain and missed his sage class by 2 months
-I had to relearn the Arabic alphabet in depth 3 times because of the length in between training, won’t even go to the lost vocabulary
-here’s the kicker. I blind shot GUESSED on 40/65 questions on the language test. I don’t know how I passed, and I can tell you that all of us who took the test had informed guesses on 80% of the test. I do not know Arabic despite studying 4 hours a night for 3 months straight
-there’s no way you can tell me that you are successfully training SF operators to speak Arabic with the program at hand
PROBLEMS WITH THE Q COURSE
If you want us to be rangers, just send us to the school
If you want us to be linguists, send us to DLI
I know every military program and unit is not perfect. But for a program that is so highly boasted throughout the world training the future SF warrior, I feel cheated, and I hope my training will be enough for the challenges ahead.
The horse and pony show at SWC is disgusting. Nothing is changed in the programs because the leadership isn't aware of it. The burden on the lower leadership would be too much if the truth came out of what was really going on in some of the programs.
I went to the range a combined 2 weeks in 2 years. I Only qualified once on a paper target. Only put around 500 rounds downrange.
I never once drove a humvee or shot a .50 cal. I only learned how to turn one on when I was walking down Ardennes.
This is what you want your future warrior to know?
That’s only a start to the lack of soldier skills we are allotted time to be current on.
Robin sage is so canned anymore that the training value is almost zilch. Just because two students were shot doesn't mean you have to take the risk assessment equal to a dry fire battle drill, and G's that come out of character after the first day
The reaction to this might be "you’ll learn these things when you get to your team"
Well you know what? I am sick of hearing that. In basic training I heard the same thing "you’ll learn that once you get to your unit" Well guess what, I am here, and there’s a plethora of things that I don’t know, wish I would of known then, or even had the resources to achieve the mission.
These things combined is why the Q course is a waste of 2 years, and the 18xray program is a JOKE
Currently, a few of my friends are being threatened to have their languages changed. They are in the first part of BLITZ and the class ahead of them had their failures of language REMOVED FROM THE COURSE COMPLETELY! GOODBYE! This is most likely due to SWC meeting their numbers for the fiscal year. You failed your language. See you next year, it’s too bad you MOS qualified and will forget most of the skills you learned. It’s too bad you couldn’t learn Russian and Arabic in 4 months. What a joke.
It’s a sad truth but I would have done just as well at group if I went from basic training to 10th group.
Gripes and complaints they might be, but this is an annoyance of a lot of 18X not being prepared, and a lot of prior enlisted ideas about the course, not just mine.
I thought I would put them out there so maybe you older cats can see how things are now, those coming to the course can be aware of, and maybe things will change a bit.
I am greatful for the fact that the Q course isn't what it used to be, however.
P.S. The title to this thread is a joke.
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