any rangers/recon around here?

Maybe you should ask the military?

GI,

I once worked for an officer who got on the Ranger course. We send a few people every year. This guy is part of one of our best units, and is in incredibler shape. He said that course was the most physically and mentally exhausting thing he'd ever done. It literally took him months to recover from it. This is a regular force infantry officer who's been on the special operations side of the house for a couple years now.

To put it simply, get yourself in peak physical shape. Keep working to improve yourself every day between today and they day you go to Ranger school. You'll still kill yourself physically on the course, but the better the shape you're in, the more easily you'll recover.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranger_school

carl_the_sniper wrote: Hey brihard: maybe a dumb question but what opportunites are there for officers in very specialized units such as jtf2 or SAR techs?

 

SARTECH is a noncommissioned air force trade. As an officer you're out of luck.

As for JTF2/CSOR, worry about it again in eight years or so. And if the time should come that you actually have an interest in it and you've been around long enoguh that you're in consideration, you wouldn't be asking me about it. There are positions in those organizations for officers of any trade, but you've got enough on your plate already. If you have ambitions of doing this kind of thing later, do yourself a favour and keep them to yourself through your years at RMC and your first posting as a troop commander, should you make it to that point. The special forces wannabes get noticed quickly in training, and nobody takes them seriously.

By the time you're in any position to be looking at doing that kind of stuff, you'll know it.

I'm not privy to how they do things, but I know that they do have officers in combat leadership positions as well as all the normal staff positions. At that level, those units don't really care what your trade is if you're better at doing the job than the other guys.

So on August 3rd, what do you start? IAP/prep year in St. Jean? Or are you here in Kingston in the fall?

carl_the_sniper wrote: I realize this and beleive me, it is just an interesting thought as I haven't even decided what I want to go into at first. (I'm thinking armor) Curious... would those officer roles be combat? I leave August 3rd by the way.

I cant picture Carl leading troops into combat.

As for what Role Officers have in combat. From my own experience Minimal. Officers get the word and pass it down to Platoon Sargent and platoon leaders who depending on the mission write the Five Paragraph Order which the LT signs off on and then the LT is sent with the Command Element and NCO's are the ones that actually conduct most of the leading and ordering. Thou the LT keeps busy by chatting on the radio and with the occasional call for fire. But that's how the Marines work where most of the orders are issued down from Squad and Fire Team Leaders. I know a few of the Foreign troops I trained with are very reliant on Officers telling them what to do. Best LT is the one that gets out of the way enough to let his NCO and staff NCO run the house.

jtf2 armour??  when i was still in jtf planned on expanding the unit, 1000 more positions or so. did that happen??

or should we even be talking about this? :|

Buddy of mine finished Ranger/Airborne/whatever a couple of years ago...  I'll see if I can remember to ask him about it.

Evil Elvis wrote: Marine Recon is comparable to Special Forces. Not Rangers your average Marine Rifleman is comparable in training to a Ranger. They all have different Missions and Training requirements. I know Ken Majors is a Ranger. But those like even the new Marine Training changes with the years. So what he went through has probably changed. Your best bet is to work on your stamina and endurance. Then work on your Infantry god basics, Calling Fire Support, Land Navigation and your FMF6-5 Marine Rifle Squad or what ever publication the army uses for infantry field manual. after all you cant be an Elite Troop until your the best troop you can be.

Marine riflemen are not the equivalent of Rangers. Recon/Ranger are interchangeable, and both are SOC (spec ops command) units. Training programs are almost identical, and cadre from both forces often train each other, so you'll sometimes see Marines giving instruction at Ranger school, and Ranger NCOs giving instruction at Recon training. The only difference between the two is that the Army has better infrastructure, so Rangers have seen much more action than Recon Marines (as was said in a popular movie a few years ago, Rangers have been part of almost every American military action since the Revolutionary War).

The training is only as hard as you think it is. I remember a Ranger NCO (Staff Sergeant Johnson) lecturing us on "intestinal fortitude" the day we arrived for RIP. We were made to hold our arms horizontally while he talked, and during the lecture he held up his arms as well. 20 minutes later he was the only one of the 200 or so of us who was still able to hold up his arms.

Ranger PT alternates from day to day, between abdominals and upper body strength. Sit ups, rocky sit ups, Russian sit ups, vertical sit ups... Upper body strength was pushups and pushups, followed by more pushups. These are often done with your feet in an elevated position. The trees around Fort Benning are painted white to height of about one meter. You put your boots above that line and do your pushups from that position.

Run as much as you can, and run fast, no slower than six and a half minutes per mile. You should be able to run a minimum of 5 miles at that pace before you begin training. (You won't be doing much PT in Ranger school, but you will be using all of your strength and endurance, so stock up on it. Don't even think of starting if your PT score is under 270.)

For practice, Saturdays are march days. You take a loaded ruck and your favorite boots, distance is 20 kilometers, the same distance as held on the final day of RIP. Maintain a good pace, you should be able to cover the distance in no more than 3 hours. 

Ranger Joe's has information and an equipment list for those curious about Ranger school. I recommend getting their gear if you have the time, they sell bdu's with padding sewn into the knees and elbows (you'll appreciate it), and laminated Ranger hand books (it rained almost every day I was there). You'll be made to recite random info from the handbook from time to time, make sure you memorize it.

Make sure you know how to read a map. Get the land navigation handbook, and read every page 5 times. One of the most difficult parts of the course is land navigation, and it is usually the one that will give you the most grief. It may sound like it's not that hard, but at Camp Merrill, at nigh, when you are up to your waist in water, and there are no visible landmarks other than trees, and you haven't slept in 2 days, you'll come to appreciate the time you spent learning to use a map and compass.


Edited by TRAVELER - 08 July 2008 at 2:34am

TRAVELER wrote: Ranger Joe's has information and an equipment list for those curious about Ranger school. I recommend getting their gear if you have the time, they sell bdu's with padding sewn into the knees and elbows (you'll appreciate it), and laminated Ranger hand books (it rained almost every day I was there). You'll be made to recite random info from the handbook from time to time, make sure you memorize it. fortunately my ROTC unit lets us keep our gear during the summer so i can use that to train, the book sounds like something i'm going to definitely look into though.  It may sound like it's not that hard i know fort dix is really not that bad, but this past year i was a first year cadet who went out on his own, and ended up face to face with a swamp. tried wading through it til i realized i'd have to swim...long story short ended up at the back gates of the federal prison...i whole heartedly admit i need landnav work hahaha.

i just wanted to say thanks to everyone who helped, it did help a lot

Evil Elvis wrote: Rangers trained mostly for Specialized Raids from Either SEa, Air, or Land.

If only there were a clever acronym one could make from this job description...