Mattis’s Infantry Task Force: Righting ‘A Generational Wrong’
26th November 2018
The Task Force’s main line of effort is devoted to recruiting, selecting, training and acculturating superior infantrymen. We can’t go back to the days of “Willie and Joe,” the iconic World War II caricatures of poorly-treated and poorly trained doughboys. From now on, infantry will be treated as an “excepted” category, a force set apart from other arms and the usual personnel bureaucracy. Initiatives the Task Force has launched or is considering include a new system for evaluating recruits for the special attributes of close combat soldiers; increasing the time leaders spend in a specific small unit before being reassigned; adding additional professional schooling for small unit noncommissioned officers; extending the training time for new recruits; selective bonuses and incentives to serve in the close combat branches and policies that exempt close combat units from the distractions of non infantry duties.
I have a copy of the author’s book Scales On War. Highly recommended, if you’re interested in that sort of thing.