Pathfinder School To Get Cut

I might have been confusing it with the 3/504 jump in 3002 in Afghanistan. It was declassified back in 2014.

Was just a company though. I don't believe anyone of them have been as big as ours though.. at least since '89
 
I hear mentions of needing CAC cards, and I wonder if we're going to a place not meant for public discussion. Just be careful everyone.
 
I hear mentions of needing CAC cards, and I wonder if we're going to a place not meant for public discussion. Just be careful everyone.
I think we're going to be OK brother, there's a lot that's CAC-card accessible that's freely releasable to the public. I don't think anything about what's been discussed so far is going to wander into FOUO or whatever we're calling it now.
 
When we jumped into Bashur, we had folks that hadn't jumped in a like a decade. I had a surgeon next to me that I think hadn't jumped since probably the 80s, I ended switching to be in front of him... All that being said.. I didn't jump again for over 5 years when I transitioned to the SOF side. After less than a 10 minute pre-jump, I jumped my first ramp and steerable... no issues.

An argument could maybe be made that we don't need to keep people qualified for airborne, but train more in it. Maybe rotate units every 5 years or something.. i dunno

I would get rid of other bullshit badge courses. Get rid of Air Assault and just give more people the 2 week sling loading course. As far as Pathfinder, we'd send our logistics folks.. but you can train up on CARP/VIRS and any other DZSO abilities without having to go through a course. Any actual operation is inherently joint and we have a variety of options. We had CCT and TACP with us
 
I never went to Air Assault School...but I did several Air Assaults in training. Air Assaults are a METL task for Stryker units, god only knows why.
 
I never went to Air Assault School...but I did several Air Assaults in training. Air Assaults are a METL task for Stryker units, god only knows why.

When you say air assault, do you mean just a helicopter insertion or a sling loading operation?
 
Of the three training missions I did that were called "Air Assaults" only one involved a sling load operation.

On a separate exercise, there was Stryker Battalion that executed I guess an "Air Insertion." We had to do route reconnaissance for them, because they definitely didn't sling load an entire BN of Strykers (they drove them). Their Air Assault METL task went green on the Division metrics following that.
*oh, yeah I was definitely up for 120 hours straight, good times. šŸ˜¬šŸ‘šŸ¤ 
 
I was an infantry platoon leader in the 101st for three years. I rappelled out of a helicopter exactly zero times during that period.

Now that I think about it, I've rappelled from a helicopter zero times in my entire life. I did Air Assault at Fort Drum in the fall of 1994 or so, and the weather was so bad that all of our attempts at helo rappel were cancelled. I guess it's not a graduation requirement.

I always thought that Air Assault was probably two Sergeants' Time training sessions crammed into ten days. But hey, I got another cool badge out of it...

That brings me to another thought about schools like Pathfinder, Air Assault, and Airborne. It's hard to compare tangible costs (time, money, manpower, injuries) of the course with intangibles (morale, esprit, recruiting, retention). I think Airborne in particular should stick around for the prestige and motivation it affords. But again, I have never done a thoughtful cost/benefit analyis.
 
I was an infantry platoon leader in the 101st for three years. I rappelled out of a helicopter exactly zero times during that period.

Now that I think about it, I've rappelled from a helicopter zero times in my entire life. I did Air Assault at Fort Drum in the fall of 1994 or so, and the weather was so bad that all of our attempts at helo rappel were cancelled. I guess it's not a graduation requirement.

I always thought that Air Assault was probably two Sergeants' Time training sessions crammed into ten days. But hey, I got another cool badge out of it...

That brings me to another thought about schools like Pathfinder, Air Assault, and Airborne. It's hard to compare tangible costs (time, money, manpower, injuries) of the course with intangibles (morale, esprit, recruiting, retention). I think Airborne in particular should stick around for the prestige and motivation it affords. But again, I have never done a thoughtful cost/benefit analyis.

In the Navy, both active and reserve, they dangle all sorts of courses and classes from all branches for retention. I got to rappel out of helos but I didn't get any badges for it. That would have been cool.

I think (true for all branches and schools) can look at the courses from a point of time/money/manpower, etc. One of our Marines said airborne was three days of training crammed into three weeks.
 
I was an infantry platoon leader in the 101st for three years. I rappelled out of a helicopter exactly zero times during that period.

Now that I think about it, I've rappelled from a helicopter zero times in my entire life. I did Air Assault at Fort Drum in the fall of 1994 or so, and the weather was so bad that all of our attempts at helo rappel were cancelled. I guess it's not a graduation requirement.

I always thought that Air Assault was probably two Sergeants' Time training sessions crammed into ten days. But hey, I got another cool badge out of it...

That brings me to another thought about schools like Pathfinder, Air Assault, and Airborne. It's hard to compare tangible costs (time, money, manpower, injuries) of the course with intangibles (morale, esprit, recruiting, retention). I think Airborne in particular should stick around for the prestige and motivation it affords. But again, I have never done a thoughtful cost/benefit analyis.

But did you ever do field sanitation? because that course may not be as prestigious, but it is as important, or more, than the others
 
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