United States Army Basic Training (also known as Initial Entry Training or IET) is the program of physical and mental training required in order for an individual to become a soldier in the United States Army, United States Army Reserve, or Army National Guard. It is carried out at several different Army posts around the United States. Basic Training is designed to be highly intense and challenging. The challenge comes as much from the difficulty of physical training as it does from the required quick psychological adjustment to an unfamiliar way of life.
Basic Training is divided into two parts: Basic Combat Training and Advanced Individual Training.
Basic Combat Training (BCT) consists of the first ten weeks of the total Basic Training period, and is identical for all Army, Army Reserve, and Army National Guard recruits. This is where individuals learn about the fundamentals of being a soldier, from combat techniques to the proper way to address a superior. BCT is also where individuals undergo rigorous physical training to prepare their bodies and their minds for the eventual physical and mental strain of combat. One of the most difficult and essential lessons learned in BCT is self-discipline, as it introduces prospective soldiers to a strict daily schedule that entails many duties and high expectations for which most civilians are not immediately ready.
Advanced Individual Training (AIT) consists of the remainder of the total Basic Training period, and is where recruits train in the specifics of their chosen field. As such, AIT is different for each available Army career path, or Military Occupational Specialty (MOS). For example, if an individual has an MOS of Human Intelligence Collector, they would be sent, following completion of BCT, to the Intelligence School at Fort Huachuca in Sierra Vista, Arizona. If an individual instead had the MOS of Army medic, they would be sent, after BCT, to the Army Medical Department School at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas. AIT courses can last anywhere from 6 to 52 weeks. Although many AIT schools don't center around combat the way BCT does, individuals are still continually tested for physical fitness and weapons proficiency, and upon MOS, may be subject to the same duties, strict daily schedule, and disciplinary rules as in BCT.
Read more about United States Army Basic Training: Locations, Reception Battalion, Basic Combat Training, Advanced Individual Training, Discharge From Basic Training, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words united states, united, states, army, basic and/or training:
“Scarcely any political question arises in the United States that is not resolved, sooner or later, into a judicial question.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)
“When Mr. Apollinax visited the United States
His laughter tinkled among the teacups.
I thought of Fragilion, that shy figure among the birch-trees,
And of Priapus in the shrubbery
Gaping at the lady in the swing.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“It may be said that the elegant Swann’s simplicity was but another, more refined form of vanity and that, like other Israelites, my parents’ old friend could present, one by one, the succession of states through which had passed his race, from the most naive snobbishness to the worst coarseness to the finest politeness.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“Methinks it would be some advantage to philosophy if men were named merely in the gross, as they are known. It would be necessary only to know the genus and perhaps the race or variety, to know the individual. We are not prepared to believe that every private soldier in a Roman army had a name of his own,—because we have not supposed that he had a character of his own.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Just as the constant increase of entropy is the basic law of the universe, so it is the basic law of life to be ever more highly structured and to struggle against entropy.”
—Václav Havel (b. 1936)
“... the time will come when no servant will be hired without a diploma from some training school, and a girl will as much expect to fit herself for house-maid or cook, as for dressmaker or any trade.”
—Lydia Hoyt Farmer (1842–1903)