Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
Not only that but if they change the physical requirements it's going to have a lot of repercussions.
First off, Basic Training. Is there going to be a "cyber warrior only" camp for that?
Secondly, promotions. Will the promotion points for Physical Training be altered for "cyber warriors"?
Also, you have to pass Physical Training tests every year to stay in. Will the guy who cooks the food the "cyber warrior" eats be held to a higher physical standard than the "cyber warrior" is?
I'm thinking that Lt. Col. Sharlene Pigg does not understand anything about morale or esprit de corps.
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.
I'd have failed that. Sure, I probably could have spent a lot of time working out and gotten to that point, but what's the point?
Anytime you introduce a selective pressure for one attribute, you're unwittingly selecting AGAINST other attributes. Do you want the best "cyber warrior" you can find, or the best "cyber warrior" who also happens to be able to do 13 pushups too? If the bad guys aren't so picky, she might find herself outclassed...
I got out in 1990 after serving for 7 years.
So that the other people in your unit know that they can depend upon you to perform the physical requirements of being in a war zone.
And I agree with that. 100%. Dr. Hawking wouldn't be physically able to serve (even if he wanted to). But you would want him working on your side.
I prefer to substitute "Facebook" for "cyber" in these articles. It puts them in perspective.
But that isn't the question. The question is whether these "Facebook warriors" will ever be deployed to a war zone.
If yes, then they need to meet the physical requirements the same as every other soldier.
If no, then hire them as civilians. Skip Basic and AIT and everything else. Classify them along with all the other GS-whatevers.
I'm thinking that Lt. Col. Sharlene Pigg does not understand anything about morale or esprit de corps.
Arguably, the bigger problem is that the concept of 'cyber warrior' is an iffy fit for the army at best; and just plain incoherent nonsense at worst.
Obviously, now that electronic systems are valuable enough to be worth attacking, defending, and spying on, it's perfectly plausible that somebody is going to end up doing that job; but that's quite different than inferring the existence of 'cyber warriors', much less ones sufficiently closely analogous to conventional warriors that the army would be a logical outfit to have some(not that the Air Force, which seems to be the branch making the most noise about it, is an obviously better fit). Whatever Tron might have told you, 'cyber war' isn't going to be physical combat except more neon...
If the army is serious about a mandate broad enough that 'cyber warrior' actually fits, they are going to have to suck it up and, yes, accept that their current arrangements for training, evaluation, promotion, etc. include elements that are either supported by outdated assumptions or mere nostalgia.
If they aren't, they should get over whatever territorial pissing contest and/or painful misunderstanding of 'cyber war' has them trying to search for a supply of cutting edge IT and security people who are willing to put up with a system bent on evaluating their ability to pick up a rifle when necessary and either contract it or develop a non-dysfunctional relationship with an agency actually suited to the task(ostensibly the NSA, if somebody could pry them away from our email for a few minutes).
They are just going to have to choose: if they want to have one-size-fits-all processes(whether justified by the theory that all their people might actually need combat skills, or by cultural and institutional cohesion considerations), then they just aren't going to get to do everything, at least not well. If they want to do a wide variety of fairly disparate things, they just don't get to keep all their existing practices, at least not well(the only thing that would depress enthusiasts of boot camp and physical training more than just exempting some people from it entirely would be watering the requirements down enough that any pudgy keyboard jockey would be minimally inconvenienced by meeting them...)
If you are in your early 20's and otherwise pass the basic health requirements, but can't do a dozen push ups in 2 minutes or stand for an hour, you probably should *not* be in the Army.
If you don't have any other health issues besides being so out of shape you can't accomplish those, then yes, I think spending the month or so it would take to get in a bit better shape to pass it would be a good sign of someone who might actually take pride and responsibility in their work.
The US has a few issues with civilian employees and its deeper .mil networks.
In the past 10 or so years the numbers of people in the US with some form of security clearance has expanded.
In the wild rush to get new language skills, cloud computing, reduce the walls between different areas of the mil and gov networks and other ideas a lot of staff where hired.
Staff with older security clearance paper work that was updated by a contractor or boss or firm, security clearance options given to staff who might be kind of dual citizens, new citizens or have no real connection with the USA.
Everything they see is sent back to their real country while been advanced deeper into cleared US projects over many years..
Thats 10 plus years of random strangers with rapid digital background work providing perfect paper work and clearances wondering around the contractor and private sector getting into any US mil work offered. Great for the boss, great for the investors, great for no bid contracts.
Some in the US mil seem to understand that this rapid uptake of random new people is not good long term and needs to be understood and story of life background work done each new and existing staff member.
Civilian employees or gov or mil all have to be cleared. What the US hired over the past 10 years was more a language and skill set hunt.
A lot of interesting people now have jobs for life, hidden faiths, hidden loyalties but the US gov has no real idea who they are, why their private sector boss cleared them or if any or some digital database work was really done on them. That is interesting over the productive life, many result and academic advancements.
Who really knows where a lot of the new gov cleared staff will end up in 30 years?
Smart people in the US gov have seen all this before in other nations and over history. A flood of new staff without deep background work allows a lot of people to get protected deep penetration agents in for decades and over many different projects.
A lot got in, a few will be found decades later.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
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.