Ever since James Mattis was appointed by President Donald Trump as defense secretary, he has made no secret of his commitment to maintain and improve the effectiveness and caliber of the United States military.
“I’m not subtle,” Mattis told GOP lawmakers earlier this year. “I need to make the military more lethal.”
According to a report from The Washington Times, the United States Army just took a huge step to ensure that its soldiers will continue to be the most effective and powerful force on Earth.
In what is a major shift from the Obama administration era, fighting and battlefield skills will now take priority over social justice issues like transitioning transgender troops.
In service-wide memorandums obtained by The Washington Times, military leaders are making optional what used to be mandatory training on transgender transition, drug abuse and other issues.
The memorandums were approved by both Army Secretary Mark Esper and Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley.
“The move, Army leaders argue, is designed to relieve stress on the overburdened troop training regimen and refocus on soldiers’ ability to fight in combat,” The Washington Times reported.
The Chief of the Army’s collective training division Col. John O’Grady said that the former training requirements “served as barriers to maximizing time … to build readiness and lethality” within combat units.
“The Army’s regulations and policies that deal with training were pretty settled, and there were not a lot of detractors to it. … It was all the other [training] requirements that we levied on ourselves, or we had levied from other places” that led to the burdensome approach to combat readiness, O’Grady explained.
These changes will bring the Army in line with the Pentagon’s new National Defense Strategy under President Trump, and the policy initiatives of Defense Secretary Mattis, which include more focus on challenging rivals such as Russia and China, and increasing the military’s overall lethality.
In addition to doing away with mandatory non-combatant training, the Army is also extending the time soldiers spend in infantry training.
“Soldiers graduating from the nine-week basic training course will now spend an additional two months in advanced individual training before heading to their first duty stations,” The Washington Times reported.
“The military is expected to prepare its members in warfare: to kill, destroy, and break our enemies. The most important factors in preparing a strong military are not hormone therapy, surgical sex changes, or politically correct education,” wrote speaker and author Walt Heyer for The Daily Signal. “We need psychologically fit, emotionally sound, highly trained troops to protect our nation from its enemies.”
Under the leadership of Trump and Mattis, military men and women can take comfort that they will be prepared for the challenges they will face on the battlefield and be spared from Obama era indoctrination.
Via WesternJournal
