I took the time to read a transcript of Secretary of War Hegseth’s speech to the gathered generals and admirals. To my surprise, I agreed with a lot of it, though not all. The crazy bits, especially combined with Trump’s statements, are the talk of domestic enemies and using the military against them.
But most of the speech is about standards. No beards, no slobs, and most of all, fitness standards:
Because war does not care if you’re a man or a woman. Neither does the enemy, nor does the weight of your rucksack, the size of an artillery round or the body weight of a casualty on the battlefield who must be carried. This — and I want to be very clear about this. This is not about preventing women from serving. We very much value the impact of female troops. Our female officers and NCOs are the absolute best in the world.
But when it comes to any job that requires physical power to perform in combat, those physical standards must be high and gender-neutral. If women can make it, excellent. If not, it is what it is. If that means no women qualify for some combat jobs, so be it. That is not the intent, but it could be the result. So be it. It will also mean that weak men won’t qualify because we’re not playing games. This is combat. This is life or death.
And the thing is, I more or less agree with this.
But. (You knew there’d be a but.)
What fitness standards are really required?
Junior Lieutenant Aleksandra Boiko at the 4th Soviet Women’s Anti-Fascist Meeting, 1944.
Aleksandra and Ivan Boiko, a married couple, served together as tank commander and driver, respectively.
She commanded a crew on an IS-2 and had 5 confirmed enemy tanks/SPGs destroyed pic.twitter.com/lDcDPBI6RK— USSR Pictures (@PicturesUssr) September 30, 2025
Roza was one of more than 2,000 female snipers trained and employed by the Soviets to put fear in the hearts of the invaders by striking thousands from the Germans’ “rations list.” Other women were even more deadly and more famous. Lyudmila Pavlichenko, for example, had 309 confirmed kills and was selected to go on a wartime goodwill tour of Allied countries that included a visit to Franklin Roosevelt’s White House.
The initial female snipers were individuals like Nina Petrova, who served as a nurse on the front, although she had been a physical education instructor who had trained marksmen before the war. At first, the Soviets had been reluctant to employ her as a sniper because of her sex and the fact that she was 48 years old.
But the nurse was persistent, got her hands on a sniper rifle, and eventually was given permission to “go hunting” in her free time. As her official kill tally mounted, she gained the go-ahead for further outings, and she began to teach frontline sniper courses.
Other units also set up similar frontline programs, and in March 1942, a Central School for Sniper Instructors was established in Veshnyaki near Moscow. Petrova, Pavlichenko, and other women on the front lines had already demonstrated their abilities and coolness under fire, so it was a fairly logical follow-through when the Soviet high command established a separate three-month-long women’s training program there in December 1942.
The Soviets thought that women made excellent snipers because they could handle cold better than men, and they were more patient and willing to wait for the right opportunities. The confirmed kill numbers on many of them were very high, in the hundreds, and there’s little question that unconfirmed kills were much higher.
That and other “decamping” events to the front lines led to further sanctions and an angry fit when a political commander refused to let her go on additional excursions. She was an adrenaline junkie who begged to go back on the front lines. “Some force draws me to the front lines,” she wrote. “I’m bored in the back. Some people say I just want to get back to the boys, but I don’t have anyone I know there. I want to see real war.”
In one frontline attack alone, Roza reportedly killed 54 Germans and captured three others. Those figures were not included in her official sniper tally but resulted in a front-page feature in a Moscow magazine. Her action prompted Soviet writer-propagandist Ilya Ehrenburg to “thank her 57 times over. She has saved the lives of thousands of Soviet people.”
I don’t have a strong view on this. I just suspect that there’s a sort of generalized misogyny at the heart of the MAGA movement, a resentment of women who “took our jobs” that will lead to the standards not actually reflecting the requirements of the field. Hell, I’m not even a fan of women in war (some latent chivalry from my upbringing, I suspect.)
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The snipers carried two grenades. One was to be used against the enemy, the second to avoid capture by killing themselves and hopefully taking some Germans with them. If captured they could expect rape and torture. (Many looted a German pistol and saved the last bullet for themselves instead.)
That said, fairness requires that those who can do the job and want to, be allowed to. The only thing that matters in war is if you can do what needs to be done. How many air force technicians are going to be separated because they’re a bit too fat, say? Does it really matter if they are? With widespread recruitment issues, can you replace them? The US military letting in more women and so on wasn’t just about “woke” it was about fairly consistent problems meeting recruitment goals with people who weren’t criminals or morons or who have serious health issues. Is it better to have American women serving, or to offer non-citizens a route to citizenship in exchange for service? (Hire mercenaries, in effect?)
Not, of course, that the US military being high functioning is in almost anyone’s interest, including most Americans. After all, Trump has deployed troops against Americans and wants to deploy more, against his domestic enemies. Nor has America been “the good guys” in many wars. America losing its wars, historically would have been good nine times out of ten. (Fortunately Americans have become better and better at losing wars.) Hell, America’s currently helping the Israelis commit genocide and a carrier task force is currently steaming thru the Med, perhaps to attack Iran again.
So perhaps Hegseth’s reforms will just make America’s military even crappier. Let’s hope so.
mago
I’m not a fan of killing whatever the cause because not only the killed but the killers suffer the results from cause and effect.
different clue
The Hegseth long goal is to create a White Supremacy/ White Power National Christianist military which can eventually be used to “reconquer” America for Jesus Christ and the White Man.
Part of reaching that goal would be to expel as many Black soldiers as possible and permit as few as possible new ones from joining. His order against beards may well be designed to achieve that goal.
Apparently Black men are very prone to ingrown beard hairs after shaving causing severe irritation problems. There is even a name for the condition.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudofolliculitis_barbae
So I have heard that numbers of Black men in the military have medical exemption-permission to wear beards for that reason, to avoid that problem. So “no beards” would be a very clever exclusion filter designed to discriminate racially against Black people in the military under cover of the “plausible deniability” of targetting “beards” without mentioning “any race” of people by “racial name”.
Purple Library Guy
As a bearded longhair myself, and as someone interested in history and realizing that historically, most warriors were longhaired and, if they could grow them, bearded, I’ve never really been a big fan of the North American military’s fixation on very short hair.
I suspect Hegseth’s fitness fanaticism is going to do the Trump regime political harm, in that all the overweight generals who thought they were past this crap because their job isn’t to hump packs it’s to plan strategies, are now going to be pissed off at this jumped-up junior officer telling them to act like recruits.
But the part I found the most interesting, and repellent, is the stuff about how the US military will now be with extra hazing, bullying, beating up recruits and so forth (all redefined as “leadership”), not to mention extra atrocities in battle. No more “rules of engagement” and such. I predict that the next time the US finds itself in an Afghanistan-type situation, it will fall apart WAY faster as they start indiscriminately killing every civilian that startles or annoys them, prompting the insurgency to build faster and harder than ever before.
NR
The other thing that struck me from that speech is that Hegseth said that drill sergeants are going to be allowed to hit recruits again. Just another example of MAGA, and conservatives in general, confusing being cruel with being strong. A good drill sergeant shouldn’t need to hit a recruit; they should be providing training and leading by example, and if a situation arises where a drill sergeant does need to intimidate a recruit, a good one can do that without resorting to physical violence.
Not that I would expect anyone in this administration to understand that, of course.
mago
dc, I know you’re serious, but please. Ingrown face hairs count diddley squat.
Your black ass is cheap and expendable cannon fodder. So keep signing up sucker.
There’s enough kool-aid for you and your kith and kin.
Enjoy!
different clue
Well, I am certainly seriously suspicious. You seem to have missed the part about the Hegsethians and the Klanmaga wanting a White Christianist Race-Crusader military.
If ingrown face hairs cause distracting pain-problems which interfere with carrying out the mission, then that is a readiness problem right up until the cannons are foddered. Strange that you should first be hearing about this from me, given that I am not even Black, as far as you know.
Now, if you start hearing about this from growing numbers of Black people, will you still dismiss it? Even if a racial discrimination suit were to be brought over this issue?
GrimJim
“The Hegseth long goal is to create a White Supremacy/ White Power National Christianist military which can eventually be used to “reconquer” America for Jesus Christ and the White Man.”
This.
They cannot yet limit the military to white, male, Protestant Christians with the “right” political leanings, but they are doing everything they can to throw out and limit further recruitment to fill that description.
The reason they are pushing for cruelty and unlimited rules of engagement is to get the “right kind of people,” who are not only willing but eager to be cruel to “the enemy” and anyone they consider weak, a core MAGA belief.
The moment they can, they will get rid of everyone else in the military who does not fit their description. They want to turn the military into a large ICE, filled with rapid dogs happy to kill whoever they are told to kill, even American citizens.
both sides do it
Ian, you’re the best, not sure if the syntax / structure of post is implying something you’re not meaning to say, might have been written quickly etc. but as written the post is very wide of the mark.
The structure of the intro implies that the standards of no beards, slobs, fitness etc. aren’t crazy bits.
“The crazy bits, especially combined with Trump’s statements, are the talk of domestic enemies and using the military against them.
But most of the speech is about standards. No beards, no slobs, and most of all, fitness standards:”
However *those are also crazy bits*. All dragged straight from the feverdream swamps from which the domestic enemies stuff also came:
– The “no beards” stuff, due to the physiology outlined by different clue in a comment above, has been an explicit goal white supremacists have been wanting the military to adopt for awhile.
– The “no slobs” stuff is just pure fantasy and comes from the authoritarian worship that the “hitting recruits again” stuff comes from
– The “fitness standards” stuff has also been around for decades in a way that in no way restricts military effectiveness in combat, indeed conspicuously aware of and incorporating the dynamics outlined in the post. The armed services aren’t dumb. (Malicious, systemically chaotic, evil, etc. of course but not *dumb*.) They have been able to integrate neoliberal diversity requirements in such a way that primary functions aren’t affected.
There is no part of the drunk guy’s speech that isn’t straight up authoritarian gibberish.
To quote a wise man: you don’t, under any circumstances, “gotta hand it to ’em”
The post’s intro and subsequent argumentation, while not like “wrong”, gives a nonetheless inaccurate analysis of the drunk guy’s rhetoric.
Marc
Regarding the Soviet female snipers:
When I was a kid, I once heard my late uncle calling them “Flintenweiber” (closest translation would be “gun bitches”). Thats what the German army was calling them. My uncle was “old school”, eg a pretty misogynistic asshole, though.
Jack McKinley
One thing you may misunderstand is that the “no beards” grooming standard is decidedly against Black men. Many Black men have coarse hairs that are difficult to shave which should be acknowledged by a medical variance from the standard.
Because Hegseth and Deferment Trump are racists, they will block competent Black men fir any reason,
mago
@dc, I wasn’t referring to your ‘black’ ass. Just talking in general. I make no assumptions about race or skin color here.
On another note, this whole thing reminds me of the movie Straight Metal Jacket. Let’s bring back the days of abusing recruits.
I come from a military family, btw. When I was a teenager I had long hair (still do) and my mother was like, what are you going to do when you join the army? You can’t have long hair. I let her know that I had no intention of joining the military. I’m the only male in the family lineage up to that point who didn’t join up and I dodged the draft as well. As I mentioned, I’m no fan of killing.
NGG
The majority of service members in the army and navy are in logistical, technical and administrative support services, The direct ratio of front line troops in the army is around 2 out of seven. The tip of the spear is driven by a huge support network. An Army can’t move without food, fuel, logistics, etc. A friend of mines wife in Desert Storm was a fuel truck driver. Not to mention in today’s military, technical skills are imperative. And to top it all off- war is evolving into a more technical / drone affair. Hegseth sounds like he wants to fight WWII or Desert Storm all over again. The senior leadership of all three services have spent at least three decades assimilating diverse Americans into a cohesive armed force. While tweaking fitness standards is nice, physically beating recruits to instill spirit de corps is way off base.
Mark Level
An epic post from Ian, I’d like to start by thanking him for the data on Soviet women soldiers and their kick-ass effectiveness. Shocked that for the most part I was unaware of this. This points to one of the virtues of early Communism, before it became a sleazy bureaucrats’ club, at one time they had very avant-garde views regarding gender, sexuality, art and other old fusty standards that revolutionaries wanted to at least question, if not sweep away in the name of liberty. I think this is clearly why, if you look at the openly racist Russophobia of the Europeans that makes them obsess with “breaking up Russia, ‘all Russians are beasts’, etc. it dates from the original events of the Revolution. Some of the biggest taboos they broke included: the peasants could kill and dispossess their betters (as had been done to them for generations) like offing the Romanov scum, some level of women’s and racial liberation, etc. How dare they!!
N.B., the quote “all Russians are beasts” comes from the formerly Lefty publisher of a NorCal (Mendocino County area) newspaper, Bruce Anderson of the Anderson Valley Advertiser. I left California in 2021 & even though the AVA was just a small weekly paper (8-12 pp.) Anderson had come up in the hippy era but was a smart Lefty, not self-indulgent or druggy, who had many contrarian views, often proven correct over time. A famous example. There was an anti-logging activist named Judi Barry who was trying to save the forest locally, and on a fundraising trip to Oakland, she and a pal had a pipe bomb blown off in their car, neither died but both were badly injured, in 1990. So the Oakland PD and the FBI did the predictable thing, blamed the victims, “Oh, they must’ve bombed themselves, with a device against Capitalism” against all the evidence. It was planted under a seat targeting them.
This was so absurd and clumsy that within a couple of years they won a lawsuit and a large award from both the Feds and the OPD, a bit of poetic justice. But Anderson knew the truth, and publicized it. The bomb was most likely planted by her ex-husband, a fake lefty who somehow rose to run some big Mendo agencies with large budgets, it was a personal vendetta. He bucked the official story, never proved it to the satisfaction of all, but Ockham’s razor suggests he was right, & he showed integrity over the years sharing the full picture.
Anderson had been a crusader for genuine (not performative) populism, the paper emblazoned with mottoes like “Peace to the Cottages!” “War on the Estates!” (might’ve garbled that last one. He ridiculed the finance-owned corrupt Demo shills of the area as fake “Lib-Labs”, NPR-watching cheese-eaters, also tore into the reactionary Right. Anyway, when Putin started the SMO belatedly in the Donbass, Feb. 2022, the paper immediately came out with the standard Lib-Lab stories, straight from Bruce’s mouth– “Putin is a madman”, “He started this war because he wants to take over all of Europe,” etc. And yes, 2 weeks in he slurred an entire people, “All Russians are beasts.” He knew what NATO had done in the region, not a stupid man, undoubtedly knew the Bush “not one inch East” pledge, but just fobbed that aside. “His neighbors obviously LIKE Nato, so how dare Putin object to tearing down WW II Victory monuments and replacing them with Stepan Bandera monuments in Ukraine? How dare the Russians try to protect Russian-speakers who were burned alive in the Trade Union Hall during the Maidan Coup by Azov thugs? How dare 45% of Ukrainians speak Russian (incl. Zelensky) if the Ukrainians say it is ‘the language of the Imperialist’.” etc. (Interestingly, even the EU Court called out the murder of 40+ people burned to death in the Union Hall, though I’m sure that’s in the memory-hole by now.)
My larger point here is that some genuine Lefties are okay with the French Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite, but many (like Anderson himself, who pretended for years not to be boozhie-hypnotized) are the typical “Scratch a Lib, and you’ll get a fascist.” Anderson is an instructive case because he was never openly reactionary, so the hypocrisy and the blanket racism, 1 group are subhuman beasts, the others, even while wearing Nazi Insignia, are “good” victims, must be supported with our tax $$$. Even Chuck Toad on Beat the Press was less hypocritical at the time and admitted, Well, okay our guys are kinda Nazis, BUT I’m on a show sponsored by big Corporations and Finance, so I’m willing to openly say that Nazis are preferable to dirty Reds, Russian filth.
Alright, back to Manic Peter and his ravings. I will agree with Ian that some of the things he says are unobjectionable “anti-Woke” red meat for the base (if you are a Republican over 45, you are only “Woke” for 1 group, Israeli/Zionist, these are “special” little people who need extra governmental protections because they are sooooo oppressed, and any criticism of Israeli genocide is obviously coming from “anti-Semitism”, well, even though Ukrainians, Estonians, Russians who invaded Palestine under the British mandate mostly aren’t Semites like, say, the Arabs and Palestinians are.)
Chapo Trap House had a really good take on Pete’s enraged spittle: 1. Pete is conflicted by his bisexual longings so he postures as the most manly man imaginable. He does slip in little clues though, one of the new “reforms” will be a Make-Up Office in the Pentagon, so everyone looks “presentable” on Camera. (Remember his first term when Trump was bragging about all “my handsome Generals, so handsome!”) Pete didn’t really distinguish himself or last long in his “military” career, this was just canned ressentiment he had stored up for a long time, and he wanted to dress down the superior officers who didn’t recognize his Martial Genius and promote him. (Credit where credit is due, even some deadhead at Lawyers, Guns & Money recognized and called this out.)
Before Pete’s needy turn in the spotlight, the True-Anon podcast did a segment on Pete’s personal life, titled something like “One bottle after another.” Pete was raised a rigid Puritan in Minnesota, did not drink until he was 21 (no law-breaking! a good boy) then became a raging alcoholic, as well as misogynist, and a confused bi Size Queen on the side. Chapo pointed out that he wants to “restore” practices like those seen in Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket, superior officers can publicly strike and beat the subs, obviously abusive language, “Fag!! Disgrace!!” becomes a means of building morale is welcome as well. The Trump admin, like many right-wingers and some on the extreme Maoist left, are big on public humiliation rituals. He drunkenly cheated on his first possible fiance, got caught, then married the next one and had multiple children to prove his “manliness.” Chapo also pointed out that the violence toward women that plagued the army a decade or so ago is being welcomed back in. Some top brass thought all the rapes and murders of women soldiers were harming the military’s rep, and tried, ineffectually, to stop it, were obviously blocked all down the chain by people who liked raping and sexually abusing women. Hey, that’s why they’re there, right?
While I understand and generally respect mago’s “I’m not a fan of killing,” I do not forget Malcolm X’s point about self-defense and when violence is acceptable. I was in High School in 1975 when the Vietnamese drove the US out, and as a 15 year old I quietly (for my own safety) celebrated their victory. I’ve certainly been a critic of DC on this site many times, but this is one time when he is absolutely correct about the racial animus that inspires Pete’s hair/grooming regulations. I understand mago’s emotional take that if you are going to become a paid killer for the Empire, you perhaps don’t deserve my sympathy. Yet I also recognize that some people, evidently a majority who are not white for economic reasons are forced to be foot soldiers for the Empire that oppresses their own caste. Every case of this kind of self-conflict should be looked at individually, we do not need to broad-brush like Anderson’s “All Russians are beasts”, which has the Colonel Kurtz corollary, “Exterminate the Brutes!!” (PS– the black soldiers’ hair/ grooming exception was made under Admiral Zumwalt, a genuine progressive in a Dept. of War/ Killing.)
Hegseth, like the violent unhinged Zionists, imagines that by becoming a Beast you can wash away the pain of being a human: ancient Sparta is the model. (See also Stephen Miller, an ugly, bald little man who imagines he is a 2nd Alexander Magnus.)
This 4th Reich shit is ugly and miserable as Hell, obviously, so I’d like to end on a lighter note. Back during the deranged Bush II term, “Jesus’ General” ranking 110% on the scale of Absolute Manliness satirized this kind of stuff very skillfully. He’d do posts about dressing up in Sandals and Sashes and being spanked by a male friend also in Military gear, the Spartan ethic, etc. (Also some good ones on Sarah Palin’s meth-driven resignation speech as Alaska Governor.) I don’t know how far back his archives go, it was a little difficult to find, but here is a link for those few who might be interested. https://patriotboy.blogspot.com/
Roy Batty
When I joined the US Army in 2000, the PT test consisted of 3 events: push ups, sit ups and a 2 mile run. You had to be in decent shape and work out regularly to be able to pass the test at any given moment. 5 years ago the PT test was changed to six events, to include the run, and it became much harder to max the test but very easy to pass. I, and most other soldiers I know, don’t keep nearly as fit as before because it’s easy to pass the test. Most of us old timers feel the test was changed to stop kicking out soldiers who couldn’t pass the old one.
As far as beards go, I always thought it was odd that the Marines had just as many black recruits but none of them had beards. It’s pretty well known in the Army that black soldiers can easily obtain a “shaving profile” if desired by shaving incorrectly with an old razor until the lumps and ingrown hairs appear. For everyone else, shaving can now be avoided by claiming a religious exemption. Astonishing how many Norse Pagans have popped out of the woodwork in recent years…
Feral Finster
We keep hearing about the “slobs and beardos” part of Hegseth’s speech, but was that *all* he talked about or just the part that made headlines?
That is an honest question, FWIW.
Purple Library Guy
There’s another angle to all this. To my mind, what it underlined was that Hegseth has no idea about what the upper levels of the military do, is completely out of his depth, barely knows what strategy is much less has any ideas about how the military should work in current times in any serious way.
So, he falls back on a pep talk about fitness standards and snappy haircuts. And cruelty, ’cause he’s a fascist, and that’s important to fascists for various reasons. But aside from the cruelty, the point is he has nothing relevant to say, so he talks spit and polish. It reminds me of this time quite a few years ago now when the Vancouver Canucks got a new coach, who had previously coached in more junior leagues. This new coach talked big about “pride, hustle and desire” and was all about maxing out the fitness training. The Canucks promptly lost and lost, badly, and they quickly got a new coach who knew something about tactics.
Purple Library Guy
Now I’m thinking of Arnold Rimmer from Red Dwarf: “As my father always said, “Shiny clean boots and a spanking short haircut, and you can cope with anything.” He said that just before that rather unfortunate suicide business.”
different clue
@mago,
Thank you for the clarification. As well as having a chronic irony defficiency, I have a ploddingly literal linear mind. ( Luckily with some pattern recognition features and a decent memory).
My own family has a very unmilitary tradition ( except for during World War Eye Eye when just about everyone served who was eligible). My mother was very anti-military and she spent quite some time being very upset when my youngest brother first entered the National Guard. But she finally got used to it.
So thank you again.
different clue
Here’s a little video from the DamnThatsInteresting subreddit. It is not related to Hegseth’s speech but it is certainly military. So here it is.
Titled: ” How to drop Grenade from an aircraft “.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/1nx4441/how_to_drop_grenade_from_an_aircraft/
different clue
Now, here is a little military historical vignette which is very relevant to this topic.
It is from the InterestingAsFuck subreddit.
Titled: ” During the Korean War, Lt. Gen. Matthew Ridgway declared racial segregation to be “wholly inefficient” to military effectiveness, as well as “both un-American and un-Christian,” and moved quickly to disband all-Black units and reassign their men. By May 1952, the entire US 8th Army was integrated. ”
https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1nx0734/during_the_korean_war_lt_gen_matthew_ridgway/
TI don’t think the new religion of National Christianism which is emerging on the Right is the same as Christianity. I think we need a name for this emerging religion which describes it more accurately. I suggest ” Christianazianity”. As in ” First Klanmaga Church of Christianazianity”. House Speaker Mike Johnson is a prominent member of the First Klanmaga Church of Christianazianity. He is part of the movement to Christianazianise America. He and his kind want to turn America into a Gilead Republic with a Christianazian culture and society, with Christianazianity as the State Religion.
mago
Sorry. The movie’s title is Full Metal Jacket.
Probably best to not comment before dawn.
DMC
One is put in mind of the French Army between the World Wars, where the generals thought winning battles would be a matter of “toughness”, rather thsn strategy. The French listened to Liddell-Hart and built the Maginot Line. The Germans(Guderian especially) listened to JFC Fuller, and developed the use of combined arms, armored assault and what came to be termed Blitzkrieg. History shows who wone that argument
And how many bearded Afghans managed kill American soldiers? The no beards policy will also effectivly prohibet American Sikhs from joining the military, which seems to violate the First amendment’s free exercise clause. C’est le guerre
Purple Library Guy
To be fair, the Maginot Line was probably effective. That’s why the Germans went around it.
NGG
The Generals /Admirals silence was deafening. The top echelon of our military knows political oriented crap when they hear it. Whiskey Pete wants to eliminate the diversity the senior leadership have spent decades molding into a coherent force. Meanwhile Trump was advocating the military should be used against what I would estimate as 50% of the US population. Whats next “brown shirt” uniforms?
GrimJim
“Whats next “brown shirt” uniforms?”
No need for brown shirts when they’ve already traded their white hoods for camouflage masks…
different clue
@DMC,
I remember having read many years ago that Major( at the time?) De Gaulle spent some time in the 1930s developing concepts of mobile tank-countertank warfare and his concepts were rejected by all the French Higher Command people. But Guderian read these articles by De Gaulle and liked them and applied them. If my memory is correct, then De Gaulle was also contributory to German Blitzkrieg methods in a way he would not wanted to have been, given that he wanted to give this knowledge and approach to the French, who rejected it.
Since this is a many-years-old memory, I decided to see if Verizon’s Yahoo AllTheWeb search engine could allow me to find out something about it. And it did.
” De Gaulle’s Concept of a Mobile, Professional Army: Genesis of French Defeat?” by
Captain Robert A. Doughty, USA.
Here is the link (if it works) . . .
https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA509926.pdf
different clue
( My apologies . . . as I read deeper into the article I see that De Gaulle was a Lieutenant Colonel as of 1934. )
different clue
@NGG,
The Proud Boys are the “Brownshirts” and their ‘uniform’ is the “sartorial brown shirt” of today.
ICE might be better considered a combination SS/Gestapo.
I once read somebody refer to ICE as ” Vanilla ISIS”.
different clue
I remembered an article about a Hegseth action very early in the Administration, which was the firing of all Senior JAG Officers. And not replacing them at all. I remember Hegseth saying something like ” firing them will allow us to do what we want to do later”.
I found an article about it titled: ” ‘People Are Very Scared’: Trump Administration Purge of JAG Officers Raises Legal, Ethical Fears ”
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2025/02/24/people-are-very-scared-trump-administration-purge-of-jag-officers-raises-legal-ethical-fears.html
somecomputerguy
This was mind-boggling ignorance, for someone who has served.
The only way Hegseth could have pissed them off more, was if he had ended his little inspirational homily by making them all get down and knock out 20.
These guys already spent 30 years doing that and untold other humiliations and compromises and sacrifices, with the intended end result that nobody, but nobody, is ever going be in a position to order them around like that again.
Forget their personal politics. Added to the mix is civilian control, and teaching the civilians that they don’t have it.
I was shocked by the drill Sergeants brutality in “Full Metal Jacket”, and especially when the actor explained that he played that role exactly the way he did his job in real life.
Then Ermey went on to explain; As Vietnam heated up, the Marine Corps increased class sizes, cut the the class training time, and decreased the number of instructors. That is when he started slapping people.
Jorge
About dropping a grenade from an airplane: early on in the Ukraine war, they acquired drones with remote-control grabber arms. They did this exact trick (put a grenade in a jar or ceramic cup, pull the pin), fly the drone into position over a tank, open the grabber arms- jarred grenade falls into a tank, enfilades the inhabitants.
Carborundum
Having seen the Canadian version of this little adventure, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, I’d say there are two things that one needs to do:
1) Baseline fitness standards need to be functionally based (i.e., what key representative tasks does the basic role actually entail?) and not use proxies like a certain score on a Cooper test. Generally this means that baseline fitness standards will be lower than people expect.
2) Combat arms need their own supplemental standards, certainly branch specific and maybe unit specific. These also need to be functionally-based (though there won’t be enough money to do full workups), but will sometimes end up seeming insanely high to outside observers. That said, folks administering the tests need to be wary about fetishizing fitness for fitness’ sake.
Ian Welsh
A friend of a friend is a PT instructor in the Canadian armed forces. In his 50s now, so he’s seen a lot of changes. I’m told that he’s not allowed to punish people who don’t do what he says. (Not talking “no hands on”, but not even “drop and give me 50”.
Don’t know if this is true, entirely hearsay, but if so, that seems terrible. Heck, even back in my old school the teachers could do that.
Carborundum
I don’t know anyone still in who is involved in training, so no insight, but I’m sure being directly involved your friend is correct. Given the current context of rapidly changing social norms and image obsessed oversight, the helpful CANFORGENs will be abundant.
One of the things that I hope we’ve learned over the years is the value of polarized training, particularly in a Reg Force context where time is made more available for PT (polarized approaches require significantly higher training volumes, but are ultimately more effective). Thinking about all the years I devoted to puritanical, day after day threshold efforts makes me cringe, knowing what I now know about performance physiology. In the right context, backed by a combination of enough training time and ruthless requirement that people *actually* continue to train and show gradual improvement, less punitive approaches to PT might work better.
From what I’ve seen, our training approaches have always seemed a little different than other militaries (e.g., we fail more candidates from BMQ than other forces without as much reliance on screaming and yelling), but generally do seem to work for us. The key is setting and enforcing the right standards. Everyone always focuses on the costs of setting standards too low, but the costs of having inflated standards are also very real. I can think of an instance some years ago now when a famous elite unit let their fitness standards run amok and found they were passing nothing but PT studs who, while absolute specimens, were less likely to have the required mental toughness that candidates who had to struggle more with the physical demands tended to have.