"We don't know."Īnd some Navy officials are grousing that the rush to cut attrition may soften boot camp too much and force the Navy to accept enlistees who should not remain in service. "Are we just delaying attrition to a future school or the fleet?" Holme asked. Training officials caution that the new training program is too new to draw definitive conclusions from the statistics.
The percentage of recruits dismissed for other reasons, however, such as failed drug tests, homosexuality and personality disorders, has increased. And attrition blamed on attitude problems is one-third the previous level. Initial figures indicate that boot-camp dropout rates at the Orlando training center have been reduced from 10.5 percent to about 8 percent since the program began last summer.Īccording to center records, the number of men and women who are ousted for "non-adaptability to military life" is one-fifth the level it was the year before the new initiatives began. Boorda, the Navy's personnel chief, wrote in a memorandum distributed to service commanders last year.Īs a result, Boorda ordered major changes at the Navy's three basic training centers, in Orlando Great Lakes, Ill., and San Diego, where 95,000 fresh enlistees get their first taste of Navy life each year. "If we keep throwing away about one-third, given the tough recruiting market and lessening numbers of enlistment-eligible people in this country, we are fighting a losing battle unless we do something to stop the exodus," Vice Adm. Many of those recruits, according to Navy officials, never made it past the initial ego-wrenching, body-aching days of boot camp. In recent years, the Navy has been losing one-third of its new enlistees between the day they entered boot camp and the time they were eligible to reenlist at the end of their first tour.
We don't baby them, but we don't terrorize them." "We don't destroy a kid to build a sailor out of a quivering mass of jelly left on the deck. Tom Holme Jr., who heads the center's recruit-training program. "We don't have the luxury of dumping recruits that don't measure up as quickly as we'd like," said Capt. And instead of a snarling drill instructor, a soft-spoken chaplain greets the future sailors and airmen when they step off the bus at the Orlando Naval Training Center here. The mandatory swimming requirement - long a staple of the sea service - has been eliminated. Recruits are no longer required to wear heavy, steel-toed chukka boots in their first weeks of training they keep their jogging shoes because too many youths were suffering muscle strains and other injuries. That new Navy, confronted with dwindling dollars and soaring attrition rates among a new generation of youth more at home on the couch than the exercise field, is changing one of its most symbolic rites of passage - boot camp. "It's that new Navy, sir," snapped their frustrated company commander. "What's going on here?" bellowed an impatient drill instructor, glaring at the trio that refused to keep up with other classmates. Amidst the swarm of sweating bodies, three recruits stood idle, breathing heavily.
At 0700 the Grinder was covered with hundreds of panting Navy recruits struggling through push-ups on the cold, damp concrete.