WHY Does "Focus on the 25m Target" Matter?

AWP

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Why do we tell you this? When you show up with grandiose dreams of being a Space Shuttle Door Gunner, why do we tell you to focus on the 25m target and worry about Basic Training? Surely Basic is no match for a future Hall of Fame Superhero such as yourself?

You couldn't be more wrong if you were a football coach at Penn State.

First, what is the 25m target? It represents the closest threat, one within hand grenade range, one of those arbitrary distances with symbolic meaning.

There's the WHAT, now for the WHY:

Not only do you have to engage the threat, you have to defeat it. Take it as a real world scenario again where you either kill or neutralize the 25m target or you yourself will become a victim. The 25m rules, it is in front of you, and not just your biggest challenge, but the most immediate.

Consider any pipeline: SOF, conventional, college, a job...all of them have multiple steps which must be successfully completed. Basic Training, Airborne, some selection process, that Chem II class you need for a major, a job interview.....all of these are examples of the sort of hurdles you have to face. So, why do we tell you to worry about Enlisting, then Basic, then your tech school, then the selection process, then your first days at your unit?

Basic Training isn't a "gimme." We have a distinguished member on this board who injured himself in the last weeks of Basic/ AIT. Book it, done, rock star dreams fall by the wayside. A good friend of mine hyper-extended his knee two weeks before jump school. Goodbye silver wings, goodbye Green Beret....

Stuff happens. How would you like to be the guy who makes it through everything and is peer evaled out of your selection course? It happens.

Don't count your chickens before they are hatched. I seriously doubt we have a vetted member here who hasn't witnessed "that guy" who dealt with an injury or some failing before making it to the big leagues and never recovered. "That guy" who was a shoe-in to go on to great things and was then undone by some random, freak event, or maybe bad choice of his own or someone around him (drunk driver, car accident, pick up soccer game gone wrong, etc.).

Your "pissiness" when confronted about "Focus on the 25m target" admonitions tells us that you are arrogant and ignorant of the process and what The Process expects of you as an individual.

So, focus on the 25m Target, live it almost Day to Day and when all is said and done THEN you can wolf mad shyte about bad ass you are. THEN you can come back and tell us that we were wrong to make you focus on the immediate threat. The SEALs say that "The only easy day was yesterday" and more than that..it is also the only day that is done and over with. That day is on the scoreboard and as long as you live there is more ball left to play. Keep your head in the game. Keep your focus.
 
Something I wanted to add here. I saw 7 or 8 guys in my division have their SPECOPS/SPECWAR contract pulled about a week into boot camp (when we were still filling out paper work and getting shots) due to their vision. Guys who had cleared MEPS and were in DEP for 6-12 months with no issues got to boot camp and had to reclassify.
We had a guy leave because his father passed away. We had another guy leave (quit the Navy) with 2 weeks to go until graduation! He said he just didn't want to do it anymore. He was probably sitting in a holding unit for a week after we graduated.
Like Free said, there's no such thing as a gimme.
And on a personal note, Achilles Tendonitis wasn't in my "what usually gives people trouble in BCT" plan...
 
Something I wanted to add here. I saw 7 or 8 guys in my division have their SPECOPS/SPECWAR contract pulled about a week into boot camp (when we were still filling out paper work and getting shots) due to their vision. Guys who had cleared MEPS and were in DEP for 6-12 months with no issues got to boot camp and had to reclassify.
We had a guy leave because his father passed away. We had another guy leave (quit the Navy) with 2 weeks to go until graduation! He said he just didn't want to do it anymore. He was probably sitting in a holding unit for a week after we graduated.
Like Free said, there's no such thing as a gimme.
And on a personal note, Achilles Tendonitis wasn't in my "what usually gives people trouble in BCT" plan...

WTF? How did that work? Did he get a "failure to adapt" or something? And does NSW no longer do the LASIK program they were doing, or were these guys determined to not have correctable vision?
 
WTF? How did that work? Did he get a "failure to adapt" or something? And does NSW no longer do the LASIK program they were doing, or were these guys determined to not have correctable vision?

No. He was never an issue, flew under the radar. He just decided he wanted out. Now, come to think of it, one other guy did as well (he was a turd, though). They both went to THU for 3-4 weeks and then were separated. I have no idea how the logistics worked, but I guess the overmanning issue may have had something to do with it. And now that I'm writing this...I think if you say the right things, i.e. make yourself sound crazy or out of it, they'd send you to be evaluated and then to THU and then bye bye. The one guy who decided to GTFO with 2 weeks to go had been asking for a week or so prior but our RDC wouldn't let him go. They finally relented.
I'm not sure about the LASIK program. I think all but 1 guy was going AIRR. And no, they wanted their contracts but the Navy saw to it otherwise. It was not an issue of them using their vision as a way out.
 
COA 1: I will enlist in the Army under an 18X contract, get selected, complete the Q-course, and become an 18D SF medic.
COA 2: I will enlist under an 18X contract. If I fail some part of the Q-course or selection I will put in for RASP and become a Ranger.
COA 3: I will enlist under an 18X contract. If I fail prior to completion of airborne school I will do my best to be a valuable asset as an infantryman and take opportunities for further advanced training.
 
My story is in the thread about a back-up plan. I was gonna be a SARC; Father Navy said I was colorblind. Initiated Plan B. Them's the breaks.

Outstanding thread, and something I tell my kids and wife, often: focus on the immediate, what's in front of you.
 
This is incredibly important. I had a rash my second week of basic. They took a biopsy and had me RTT. I was packing up on the last day of BEAST (week 8) and they told me to go to the doctor. I showed up and got discharged for having Psoriasis. It took me 5 years to get my RE code. All of that training for a shot at TACP didn't help me there.
I am pretty good at Filling out Government forms though now.
 
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