Ken

The big debate among Army officers is not whether we should implement the BOLC system, but who should be involved with it. Infantry officers for instance already spend three months at IOBC and the majority of them go straight from there to Ranger school. That is five months of training already(that is if they make it through Ranger school as a first time go it could easily turn into 6 or 7 months) At what point do we say that experience is as important as good training. As a former infantry platoon leader I can say that I didn't know anything till after I went to Iraq with my platoon. For alot of combat arms officers BOLC can be repetitive and tedious. I think maybe a short BOLC phase before OBC would be good but at what point are you chnaging the career progression of that officer and making it so that captains and Majors have less experience as far as real line time than their predecessors. It is not what school you go to that counts it is how you perform in combat and no instructor is better than that platoon SGT that young officer will get when he takes over his first platoon. To deny that I think would be a mistake.
I would say that for non-combat arms officers a solid basis in small unit tactics would be beneficial and maybe that would be a good option for them. But we need our Jr combat arms officers in the field where their real training begins.

Dan