Quote Originally Posted by carl View Post
That's four out of four of our last really big fights.
do note that though we started out behind in all four we got to at least draw status in fairly short order, usually about two to three years..

While I agree with Sam -- and Gladwell -- that about 10,000 hours is needed for 'expertise' and that seven to ten years produce quite expert soldiers or marines, I will point out three things.

- Most Soldiers do not have to be expert; they just should be better than the competition. Good journeymen will work fine. Leaders should be bordering on Expert status -- today, many are there or close to it; a few are quite expert.

- Around six to eight months of good training versus our current 16-18 week norm is needed for the enlisted entrant; about a year for new officers. That will make them good enough if it's done right --and any combat adds impetus and reinforcement to all things learned and accelerates the attainment of skill. Thus it take seven to ten years in peacetime to develop 'expertise' but in wartime that can be halved in light combat as now or accelerated even more in heavy combat. It took about 18-24 months in WW II to turn marginally trained folks into pretty competent soldiers. The naturals, about 10%, can do it in weeks in sustained combat.

- Other Nations who might be problematic for us have improved their training in the last few years mostly as a reaction to our obvious basic competence and the fact that we have the most combat experienced Soldiers and Marines in the world. We have also improved our training -- but we can and should still do much better to preclude some nasty surprises down the road.

As an aside, Malcolm Gladwell in doing the research for that book also discovered that identifying potential experts at early stages was quite difficult. A great deal of specificity was needed in even trying. He pointed out that the college to pro football selection process for linemen was pretty straightforward and usually worked as predicted. Quarterbacks, OTOH, due to the vast differences in the job in college ball as opposed to pro ball, had a poor success rate on ideal selects.

The point there is that we can train the linemen better and get a an adequate product. The quarterbacks take longer -- and not everyone can do it...