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US Army May Relax Physical Requirements To Recruit Cyber Warriors
HughPickens.com writes Clifford Davis reports that only 30% of young people between the ages of 17 and 24 are qualified to become soldiers. This is primarily due to three issues: obesity or health problems; lack of a high school education; and criminal histories. While cognitive and moral disqualifications have held steady, weight issues account for 18% of disqualifications, and the number is rising steadily. It's projected to hit 25% by 2025. The current Army policy is that every recruit, whether enlisting for infantry or graphic design, has to meet the same physical requirements to join — but that requirement may be changing. "Today, we need cyber warriors, so we're starting to recruit for Army Cyber," says Major General Allen Batschelet. "One of the things we're considering is that your [mission] as a cyber warrior is different. Maybe you're not the Ranger who can do 100 pushups, 100 sit-ups and run the 2-mile inside of 10 minutes, but you can crack a data system of an enemy." "We're looking for America's best and brightest just like any Fortune 500 company out there," says Lt. Col. Sharlene Pigg. "We're looking for those men and women who excel in science, technology, engineering and math." Batschelet admits that a drastic change in physical requirements for recruits may be hard for some to swallow. "That's going to be an institutional, cultural change for us to be able to get our heads around that is kind of a different definition of quality," says Batschelet. "I would say it's a modernizing, or defining in a more precise way, what is considered quality for soldiers."
I left the DoD as a software developer largely because they couldn't get their heads out of their asses. The paperwork, mandatory training, and total risk aversion meant I developed code at maybe 25% of the speed that I did before, and after, in the private sector. And the stock options in the DoD were nothing to write home about.
I really don't see how the DoD can win any cyber fight. It would take losing a ground war on U.S. soil for them to give up their worship of bureaucracy.
...three issues: obesity or health problems; lack of a high school education; and criminal histories.
Yes, let's put people with repeated criminal offenses in positions of great power! It's not like they'd ever abuse it, would they?
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
"That'll do." -Lt. Col. Pigg
I wonder if they'll be as strict as the FBI about not hiring people who've "pirated" music or TV shows.
- In Soviet Korea, only old people loose all their bases to Natalie Portman's petrified hot grits overlords.
Imagine a "cyberwarrior" (whatever the FUCK that is), who is having trouble with military discipline. The chain of command then starts fucking with him. Sooner or later, he does something really stupid. Then the bastards send him to a line unit. HOW THE FUCK is that motherfucker going to cope there?
This is some seriously fucked up shit.
Does this mean the Army will procure quantities of military issue Diet Coke, Hot Pockets and Twinkies in camouflage packaging?
Really, they should just be recruiting an army of nerds to sit in a room driving avatars, whether they be drones, remote tanks, or humanoid robots.
J-walking, smoking weed, and downloading unlicensed copies of music online are illegal activities. If you want the best and brightest, it's not a good idea to disqualify 96% for no good reason.
Couldn't they just hire those fat guys and after they've signed the contract start train them physically? I've heard that you cannot really choose what you want to do when your in the army. Or do we talk about people with heart problems who will die after a light running excercise?
Think of the risks...
Ezekiel 23:20
Why can't they just be hired to do specific work like millions of other federal employees? This seems a bit stupid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
love it that they say they look for the same requirements as a fortune 500 company ... except they will only pay you a fraction of what you would earn at one of those fortune 500 companies
I think for this kind of role you want people who understand technology down to the metal. Transistors up.
But increasingly US universities are churning out legions of Java programmers who really have no clue how a computer works. Some of them do if they take the initiative to learn on their own, but those are the minority.
We need to stop dumbing down higher education if they want well qualified people. Bring back mandatory classes in assembly language, VLSI design, and other hard core technology topics. Don't let people coast by with fluff.
Otherwise, it's the tech equivalent of hiring Army Rangers who are too fat to do a single pushup.
When I enlisted in 1990 you only had to be able to complete something like 13 pushups to be assigned to a basic training unit. Those that couldn't were put into a "remedial physical training" unit, where of course they were roundly laughed at by those in real basic. Passing the actual PT test at the end of basic is different, but at 18 were only had to do around 45 pushups and 60 situps in two minutes, and run two miles in less than 17 minutes or thereabouts--don't recall precisely. And as you get older, the requirements lessen. Upon enlistment all we had to do was lift 40 pounds above your head on a weight machine. I was 5'3" and 115 pounds back then (still 5'3", beer has added a bit of weight over time :-)
IMO everything they could do with this should fall under civilian contract. Someone in the military, no matter what their training is, should be a soldier first and foremost. There is no 'safe' job in the military. You come under attack, standing orders are to hit the armory and draw weapons to fight. That's not going to fly with a bunch of people who couldn't pass Basic. They'll at best get dead and at worst be responsible for others getting dead alongside them.
There's something wrong with their numbers.
There's no way that only 30% of Americans are high school graduates who are not obese and don't have criminal records. It's just not possible.
The U.S. high school graduation rate is 80%. About 30% of the population have been arrested. Many of those will be found innocent, charges never pressed, or convicted of very minor charges, such that 8.5% of the population ends up with felony convictions. Does obesity account for all the rest?
The stats they are using are ages 17-24. Is it possible they are skewed by the fact that many 17 and 18-year-olds simply haven't finished high school yet (even if they are on track to do so)?
That's why they have the draft.
If you won't work for low pay, they'll force you to work for low pay. And get shot and killed. Most Fortune 500 companies don't require that last little bit...
Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
Not in civvy street, anyway.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
you will be despised by the rest of the service.
... that DoD has determined that geeks are typically fat and stuff?
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Instead of changing the requirements for enlisted personnel, why not hire civilians for 'cyber warrior' positions?
... if you'd just bulk up a little.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
If it's not fitting in with the rest of the entire Army, the perhaps it's something different. Similar to how when a new technology was created, we created a new branch, namely the USAF, perhaps there should be a USCF, or something like that. (Though using the word cyber is typically quite outdated.)
(Plus the Air Force would probably like it, all of the jokes about them and their hard physical work would be transferred to the new group.)
... to a military computer near you.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
The most violent on earth? By what metric?
Supporter of the +1 Over Dramatic mod option. In memory of apk.
AFAIK they recruit excellent engineers that meet their fitness requirements so what is so different about the USA?
Really, anyone who isn't disciplined enough to stay somewhat fit, or to get fit enough for basic, really isn't military material IMHO. Physical discipline and mental discipline go hand-in-hand. Are cyber-warriors allowed to stuff their faces at the DEFAC? Will they be excused from all field exercises? Will never be deployed in country, attached to MI units?
Son, we use American units here, none of this 'metric' bullshit.
Now, your question again?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I don't believe the mission nor the culture of a "cyber warrior" (yes, whatever the fuck that is) lends itself to the military. Sorry, no. Not even close. What makes those guys (and yes, it is mostly guys, by far) tick is utterly foreign to military culture. It's a bad fit.
AKA the war on young black men.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Isn't cyber-warfare part of the reason the NSA exists? Or are they too busy pointing their weapons at citizens?
They have whole colleges for the branches' officers. Have courses at West Point, the Air Force Academy, or whatever on compsci, programming, and make a course specifically on black hat hacking. Encourage CompSci majors to join ROTC, give out perks and automatically higher rank to CompSci majors who can demonstrate hacking skill when they join up.
Lowering the bar across the board is going to attract lower quality recruits, but most certainly not out-of-shape pale nerds to possibly the most testosterone-filled, macho organization this side of the galaxy. Grunts and much less CO's aren't going to think highly of a neckbeard with a smarmy t-shirt.
So they are looking for pasty scrawny geeks to fly their drones? (My son's comment upon reading the headlines...)
A lot of my cyber friends have profound issues. I'm diabetic, and would have loved to take a modified form of boot camp for a behind-the-lines role to pay for my college.
Mind you, I was also an idiot: gearing up to have the US military wasted in invading Iraq and Afghanistan to "stamp out terrorism" when we really should have stepped in and stripped Pakistan of nuclear technology was well, it guaranteed control of oil and waved a big military wienie around, but it's actually hightened the risk from Muslim fanatacism far beyond what it was even in the midst of the 9/11 attack.
There are lots of smart, fit people with the technical inclination and ability to become cyberwarriors. They all go to work for corporations, and always will, because the military cannot offer them anything like what they can get in the private sector.
1) Most countries invaded and/or bombed since the end of the 2nd world war, at least 27.
2) Six times the percentage of people in prison as European countries.
3) Most people killed since the end of the 2nd world war, approximately 11,00,000. (Stalin killed 27,000,000, Mao-Tse-Tung 50,000,000, but that was before the end of the world.) That estimate includes people killed because of waves of violence that happened because of the U.S. violence.
4) Most expensive, largest military, by far. The violence there is stealing from taxpayers.
5) U.S. citizens are not allowed to know many of the policies of the U.S. government. In that way, the U.S. is no longer a democracy.
6) Secret U.S. government agencies are allowed to kidnap or kill anyone, anywhere, sometimes with the help of secret agencies in another country. No regular citizen is allowed to know their activities.
he can apply for amnesty, change his name to General Lardass and asked to be put in charge of Cyber Command.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Why not simply order then to undergo physical training until they are no longer obese? Most of them would thank you for it.
(Yes, I know obesity is not that simple, but surely it could be one part of the solution.)
The military.com article mentions re-defining "what is considered quality for soldiers." How about re-defining what a soldier is? Instead of fighting a human soldier who invades your country, you're fighting the cyber-efforts of someone who is trying to control a nuclear power plant.
Think of several famous, highly-skilled software developers. I won't name names, but not many of them would pass the US Army physical fitness test. So even if they were young enough, the Army would reject them.
Instead of testing IT applicants on ability to run and do pushups, how about this test: Don't let the candidate sleep for 24 hours. Put him/her into a busy, noisy room with lots of distractions. Now make him/her write a fairly complex C program, or analyze a C program for errors. That's a more realistic test of the candidate's ability to do their job.
I think most desk jockies can train to do 100 situps. Plus the abdominal strength can improve posture and reduce the probability and severity of back injury. Very useful for cyber warriors who may have to sit at at a desk for 14 hours a day.
Do Army Rangers really have to run 2 miles in 10 minutes? That's crazy fast.
TL;DR: The Army gives zero consideration to a soldier's preference or educational background when assigning careers, even when highly-qualified soldiers are available. ********* From the Article: "We're looking for America's best and brightest just like any Fortune 500 company out there," said Lt. Col. Sharlene Pigg, head of the Jacksonville-based 2nd Recruiting Brigade. "We're looking for those men and women who excel in science, technology, engineering and math." ****** Hmmm. I'm among the enlisted soldiers with a STEM degree from the civilian world (BS - Mechanical Engineering) and 4 years industry experience. I can say for a fact that I received zero incentive to join the military beyond that of a 18 year old high school grad with a 2.0 GPA (save an automatic promotion to E-4 grade which would normally happen in about a year or so after enlistment). Today, 2.5 years into my military career, I have had not one conversation about how my skills from the civilian world could be used to benefit the Army. There is about as much substance to Pigg's argument as there is to the STEM shortage myth in the civilian world. Lt. Col. Pigg presumably wants to use this as a reason to throw more money at the problem in the form of bonus pay and enlistment bonuses, or perhaps to relax the already generous minimum standards for physical fitness instead of utilizing the best and brightest within the ranks who perhaps would be more productive behind a computer than behind the steering wheel of a cargo truck. Another example: I speak Italian and German fluently, yet this is not at all taken into consideration when deciding which soldiers will be stationed in Germany or Italy. Neither is the soldier's preference considered. The Army has a long transition ahead to change an organization of interchangeable warm bodies into an organization of non-interchangeable professionals with dissimilar skill sets and career goals. Any kind of incentive to attract more outside talent would only be a small piece of the puzzle. NOTE: I'm in combat arms because I joined to blow stuff up and play in the mud. If I wanted to sit behind a computer, I could bring in a lot more $$$ and put up with a lot less s*** as a civilian.
Not that different from Doctors (MDs), actually. Their basic is two weeks. Makes sense when you figure their basic probably costs $2-3 per minute.
Declare lack of academic and physical fitness of young people a national security problem on par with terrorism. Allocate trillions of budget accordingly to sponsor high quality educational and athletic programs to anyone willing to participate, including free healthy meals. A cost of enrolling all children in a state would be like half of a modern stealth plane.
Next, reach out to women, LGBT and other unrepresented demographics to consider enlisting. Experience instant boost in highly qualified recruits due to pent up demand just waiting for the right signal.
As a bonus, this approach will enormously boost the image and respect for US military both at home and abroad. Outcome of a war depends not only on strength of weapons, but also on how scared and traumatized majority of population in war zone perceives american soldiers. If you get outstanding people to enlist, the war will be won without firing many shots.
If they wanted to lose weight, they could have done so long ago.
You can filter out those that are unwilling, but then you risk potentially filtering out the best "cyber warriors".
This.
OCD people can generally accomplish anything they become obsessive about. They typically do not obsess about physical fitness, because it does not engage your brain.
It's almost that simple. If the caloric intake is limited and the P.T. requirements met, I guarantee *anyone* would slim up in time. In the army they can control what you eat just as much as how much P.T. you do, so the usual laundry list of excuses for obesity don't matter.
You're thinking about this wrong.
Cardio myopathy? Heart murmur? Arterial-venous malformation? Scoliosis? Spina bifida? Multiple Sclerosis? Myasthenia Gravis? Hypertension? Etc.?
There are many medical reasons for turning inward to concentrate on ones intellect which I will freaking guarantee that you will dedicate yourself to the task, and without the help of Jesus personally laying hands on you, will preclude you from becoming physically fit.
Way to address the 18% and not the 82%!
Given that you're not OK with the 70% remaining people that are currently unqualified, that'll get you another 12.6% overall, instead of 57.4% overall. Way to go for the 22% solution to the 100% of the problem there! Let's see... that'll give you a "C+" grade, on the standard scale... way to overachieve!
Perhaps you need to hire some otherwise unqualified STEM people to do your math for you, before you start making policy decisions based on your back of the envelope calculations...
... They didn't want people with disabilities back when I was younger and applying for IT jobs with them. :(
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
No. 40-minute 5 mile is their standard. I've never met a soldier who can run that fast.
... "Buy it for 250% the cost of doing it in house from the contractor with the most congressmen" compromise ...
While that is a factor it is exaggerated. The bigger factor, and the military's motivation, in turning to contractors is that fewer recruits have to be used for support and logistics, so more are available for combat specialties. We are seeing the exact same thing here. Highly technical roles filled by those physically unfit for combat, freeing up those recruits who are physically fit for combat specialties. In some ways it is a little bit parallel to the various WW2 Women's Auxiliaries for the various services. The idea at that time was to free a man from a desk job so he could go to the field.
In some ways it is similar to the WW2 Women's Auxiliaries that the various services had. The idea back then was to free up a man from a "desk job" so he could be sent to "the front".
That said, if we need a cyber whatever it could be an entirely different branch of service. These specialists could be placed with the military as needed.
I can understand the logic behind this decision, but I don't think it is the best way to achieve what they want to accomplish. Cyber warfare is the next big up-and-coming thing. It is officially considered one of the "theaters of operation" for warfare now and it seems like every week we hear about some new virus, exploit, or hackers from China breaking into US businesses' networks. Because of this, it makes strategic sense to recruit "cyber warriors" if you will. What doesn't make sense is how it is necessary to loosen the already lax (IMHO) physical standards. I don't consider myself to be a paragon of physical athleticism, but I got a 295/300 on my last PT test. My MOS also requires that I spend almost all of my time sitting at a desk. Despite that, I still keep myself in good shape. Why? Because it's healthy. Because it's good for my body and for my brain. Because there is a certain pride associated with knowing that even though I am a "desk jockey" I can still run, ruck and keep up with the rest of the operational Army. And because if all I did was meet the minimum standard for height/weight and PT, I would quite honestly just be outright fat. Instead of lowering barriers to entry and decreasing the quality of our armed forces, incentivise people. Offer them enlistment bonuses or give them monthly MOS-specific pay for special skills. It will cost more, maybe. But what really has the higher cost: lazy soldiers or better-paid soldiers?
it's time for a new branch of the military.
The less people able to sign up to kill for the profits of rich old white men, the better the world will be! Especially considering it's the USA!
The USAF is reducing their forces and kicking out thousands of communications maintenance troops with more than a decade of experience. They're so aggressive about drawing down that they are going after people with very minor 'quality of force indicators', including difficulty with PT tests. Some of these people had already completed the cyber curriculum or were looking to cross train into the new "cyber operations" career field.
The military will hire people with network exploitation skills as contractors or full time civilians, or they will recruit from their communications troops and through a bunch of money at them for additional training. Right now the individual services have some interesting doctrine being written, but there are very few discussions about their actual strategy for constructing military units in anything but the traditional way of military members sent to schoolhouses supplemented with commercial training.
The 'good idea faeries' at the DoD talk about recruiting experts who already do this stuff every day to keep US cyberwarfighting ahead of our enemies yet there hasn't been a single actionable plan to actually recruit these people as military members.
Much Madness is divinest Sense --
To a discerning Eye --
Much Sense -- the starkest Madness
Current field soldiers don't need to perform especially well on logic/intelligence tests, so why would a "cyber warrior" need to do especially well in demonstrating physical ability? Won't this make it so people with physical disabilities (amputees for instance) can help defend and maintain this country? I've always personally been interested in military service, but a congenital heart condition ruled that out. I had tested in the 99th percentile on the ASVAB (do they still use those these days?) and actually met with recruiters from the Marines and the Air Force. It was disappointing to find out that the heart problem we thought had resolved itself in early childhood was still present. I'm not at risk of dying, but it does affect physical performance with the lack of oxygenation holding me back. I wonder if someone like me can now join the Army and contribute despite being physically underwhelming.
Because people who do not qualify cannot be ordered. You have to lower the criteria, and accept the previously unacceptable, before you can order then to undergo physical training until they are no longer obese.
Lowering the criteria to enter recruit training and maintaining the current criteria for completing recruit training would not change the capabilities of those entering the service. The only real change is higher costs for recruit training. The marginal would just spend more time in recruit training. In the past the services could reduce costs by weeding out the marginal rather than habilitating them. That strategy may not be their best option right now.
If the military wasn't still using the idiotic BMI, they'd have almost NO weight issues.
But they've got a standard table of weight and height ratios, as well as tape lengths. This has been formulated against a prototypical 5'6" man with a mesomorphic body type. All they do is scale up and down. Unfortunately this makes several WRONG assumptions about the square/cube effect on human physiology, not to mention it assumes a universal sameness of lean muscle tissue versus skeletal type and other tissue mass.
Never mind that more than 2/3rds of people simply don't fit the body type standardized upon for the BMI calculations.
So you have guys with weightlifter physiques who are failing weigh ins and tape tests being assigned "remedial PT". Which only bulks them up MORE.
Conversely, you have guys with "matchstick" physiques who are actually OVERWEIGHT if they're at their BMI-mandated weight. So they're just being told to "bulk up". Regardless of the fact that they simply CANNOT put on that type of muscle mass, and that they're actually HEALTHIER at a lower weight.
Even now, 20 years later, this sort of thing still irritates the crap outta me.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
They know there are people like Alan Turing and the men and women codebreakers that performed such a valuable service in WWII
I read that although Alan was rather athletic, his personality was quite shy and it was unlikely he would thrive as an infantryman.
From wikipedia and borrowed from other places,
"Winston Churchill said that Turing made the single biggest contribution to Allied victory in the war against Nazi Germany.Turing's pivotal role in cracking intercepted coded messages enabled the Allies to defeat the Nazis in several crucial battles. It has been estimated that Turing's work shortened the war in Europe by as many as two to four years."
Hopefully, this time around they will be treated better.
And hopefully they won't produce another Bradley/Chelsea Manning.
I am no longer the lean mean fighting machine of my youth, but I would still love to serve my county. I wonder if I could get back into the Navy now?
Who says the US Army has no discernible sense of humor? The irony of having Lt. Col. Sharlene Pigg quoted regarding the US Army's recruitment of fat hackers cannot be accidental.
To each its own I guess. During my two years of military service (not for the US), I found the environment fantastic. No idiot with only a MBA trying to tell me how to program and setting arbitrary goals and deadlines without understanding what is difficult and what is easy, no sales VP changing his mind every two weeks, no coworker trying to suck dicks in order to get a promotion, etc.
Of course if you like doing quick and sloppy work, if you think good programming is about finding a cool hack that nobody could understand the first time they look at it, than the private sector is obviously where you should go. Oh, and by the way, Ada is the best programming language ever.
There's a practical reason the Army wants to lower standards for these cyber warriors: money.
If they just hired more civilian personnel, they would have to pay them 2-4 times what they pay a soldier. This way, they get to give a guy a uniform, and make him feel like he's in the military; while they get to save a nice chunk of change getting these cyber warriors at a discount.
I seriously don't even get the point of that. Wouldn't it make more sense to just patch the NSA into the operation? I mean... why does every branch have to half ass something another branch is better at? Every branch has to have its own soldiers, its own planes, its own boats, its own tanks. Totally unreasonable to just call the other branch in to cooperate... right?
I don't care if the army is having a hard time recruiting computer literate people. That's not their job. If you need to hack something, call the NSA. Enough of this stupidity.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Dork 1: LOL, I just invaded the Afghanistan instance! Look at em run! LOL!!111
Dork 2: OMG, I zoned in to the Russian instance! I'm so d3ad!!!1
Dork2 has died!
Russian dorks are invading Alaska!
Dork3: Guyz! WTH u m3ss w/teh Russians?!!1 OMG mah base!111LOL
Dork1: U got pwnd! LOL!!11
*Some generals face palm somewhere before the fan gets really dirty*
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
Gimme that bacon. For world peace!
Keep emasculating men and lowering standards so that women can feel superior. When China invades us they will also blame men of course. Ironically, the only fit ones in the military will be the gays, lol.
I was in the Navy from the early 80's until the early 90's. When I joined, there seemed to be an understanding that most sailors were, basically, technicians, so once they passed a basic level of fitness, they merely were expected to do their jobs. Then, beginning about 1983 or so, there started to be this concept that everyone needed to get in better shape. Pretty understandable. But by the 90's, that had changed into, "everyone needs to be an athelete". Ridiculous. We need to recognize that the vast majority of the jobs in the military are support or tech roles that do not require excessive stamina or fitness. You cannot on the one hand say that everyone needs to be an athelete, and at the same time say, we're friendly to pregnant females.
Proverbs 21:19
They call them 'The US Air Force!"
The costs of making a communications troop are insanely high aswell. Between recruitment, testing, training, certification, clearence, gear issue, room, board, benefits and dollars in pocket it can easily take 3 years and $500,000 to make a profiecient enlisted troop. When you couple that with the very poor retention rates (generally, due to pt, pay and living conditions, heck I turned down a bonus of $50,000 for 6 more years) you get a situation where the only route to hire those folks back as civillians or contractors. They have to hire the unfit, so they can keep chair's warm.
Back before 1976 their was a special group known as ASA (Army Security Agency), and a lot of special things were done for them to keep them. Big army doesn't like special children with special privileges. They neutered the ASA into INSCOM (Intelligence and security command), and with that they lost all the best and brightest within the next 4-6 years as the enlistments ran out, because the imposed the one size fits all mentality, and your always a grunt first. The best and brightest said hell no and bailed. This program is doomed even before it starts, and the best and brightest don't work for the government in any form.
From what I've read, that number is right, but it's because of additional restrictions. For example, there are restrictions on visible tattoos:
http://insider.foxnews.com/201...
IIRC, all people who need to take medication every day are also out. (I know that I'm out for medical reasons, even though I could handle those physical requirements.)
All the restrictions put together really limits the eligible pool.
Accepting poorer quality is OK. How American.
Why stop at criminal "background" ? They can use criminal "foreground"! They can recruit people CURRENTLY in prison. Additionally it solves any AWOL problem, as they can have 100% supervision, all the time (24/7)! They can also dispense with the expense of firearms training and having to pick up all that brass!
And what's with all this talk of putting people in positions of power? A cyber-private first-class is no position of power.
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
in America, we kill in Metric.
this imperial bullshit is civilian stuff.
...is this the plot to "Police Academy"?
The pen is mightier than the sword. I'm sure a lot of basement dwellers will be happy about this.
When I was in the U.S. Army I was a signal soldier. I wasn't a Ranger, I wasn't Special Forces. I wasn't the largest soldier, I wasn't the fastest or most intelligent. But, I strove to improve myself. When I went into basic training I was a computer geek. I was trained in digital communications prior to the military. Before basic training I couldn't do a pull up, I could only do 27 push ups and 39 sit ups. Thankfully I was near Junior Olympian in my two mile run (9:47). But I weighed in soaking wet at 153 lbs standing at 6'0" when I graduated basic training. When I separated from the Army in 2010 I was able to do 93 push ups, 112 sit ups and run a two mile in 12:13, I could ruck 10 miles with an 80 lb load in 72 mins (I had been smoking 12 years at this point) and I weighed 180 lbs with 6% body fat and stood at 5'10. In short, my determination and the military turned me into a soldier. They didn't lower their standards for me. In fact my Drill Sergeants and every Non-Commissioned Officer pushed me until I became faster, stronger and a more intelligent individual. Then when I was promoted to Sergeant I was able to push those around me to excel.
Even though I was a signal soldier (digital and analog communications) I still got into fire fights. You know the geek with the large BCGs and the laptop? The guy with the heavy radio on his back? Yea that was me. Except the military offers laser surgery to correct your eyesight these days. Even though I was a signal soldier, the enemy shot at me. I had to perform combat maneuvers in vehicles and on the ground. I witnessed people die and had to put personal effects into boxes to be shipped home to mothers, fathers, brothers & sisters, wives and children. I felt the anger, hate, fear, anxiety and all the rest of the emotions that come with the territory. My body was broken, battered, bruised and I have life long problems (check the difference in my height as previously stated for a small indication). The reason why I was exposed to combat was because of one simple fact:
I am an American Soldier.
I am a Warrior and a member of a team. I serve the people of the United States and live the Army Values.
I will always place the mission first.
I will never accept defeat.
I will never quit.
I will never leave a fallen comrade.
I am disciplined, physically and mentally tough, trained and proficient in my warrior tasks and drills. I always maintain my arms, my equipment and myself.
I am an expert and I am a professional.
I stand ready to deploy, engage, and destroy the enemies of the United States of America in close combat.
I am a guardian of freedom and the American way of life.
I am an American Soldier.
~Sgt Henry