My son just left to see Navy recruiter.

[Borderland]

I have a friend/coworker whose oldest son went Army with the Ranger contract. He did a lot of work getting ready for it physically and mentally. He had a lot of former Army mentors who were able to tell what to expect and how to get through training. He’s a tabbed Ranger now who’s about to go on his first deployment.

His youngest son is following in his brother’s footsteps. He’s about to leave for boot camp with the same Ranger contract. His goal is going to the same battalion his brother is in. As they like to say RLTW!

A good friend of mine was a Ranger. I don't know anything about them but I know a few things about him. He used to bet younger guys who thought they were buff to a push up contest. When he got to the one armed part they declined. He could do about 15 when he was too old to reenlist.

Not a bad way to start out. Wish him luck.

[BigD]

Beware of the 18X contracts, too. I know several Soldiers that enlisted on 18X contracts and got washed out for the smallest, silliest shit. In one case, a family history of diabetes (despite him being absolutely jacked) was enough to get a guy washed out of selection and reclassed to 92F (fueler) because 'needs of the Army'. Want to hate life? That's a good way to hate life. Better to enlist directly into a 35 series intel or counterintel MOS so you at least get a security clearance and do something cool with upward career progress that isn't just babysitting more and more of the same logistics weenie bullshit.

I think you might have been misinformed. I'm not an expert on the med requirements, but you do a SFAS physical before you go. The 18x-rays that wash out are still Airborne 11Bs so when I went through they typically got sent to the 82nd or 4-25th in Alaska as 11Bs. They aren't sent to a new AIT to reclass (unless things have really changed and the Army has lost it's mind.) If you weren't an Xray and were coming from the Big Army, you went back right back to your unit.

I never met anyone that flat out said they quit Selection because they couldn't hack it. It was always an injury, or maybe something about the cadre having it out for them (like the cadre have time to pick out a Joe at random at SFAS and decide to fail him for no reason. Having said that, no doubt that later on in the Q Course you could get a target on your back and get extra scrutiny from instructors, but usually that would have been warranted. Or if not warranted, at least certainly the person brought it on himself in some form or another.)

[TGS]

I think you might have been misinformed. I'm not an expert on the med requirements, but you do a SFAS physical before you go.

I don't think he's misinformed. I've personally heard of this happening, including other SOF units in other branches. A personal friend of mine went for the PJs, and despite meeting all the requirements initially they ended up finding a reason during the medical upon his arrival to training to bounce him. He ended up going AFOSI after serving as a med tech for a couple years.

Point being, there's the process, and the process is the process, but if they have to shitcan X-number of individuals due to changing requirements and overallocated classes, then they'll find a way to shitcan X-number of individuals. Luck of the draw to a certain extent.

[BigD]

I don't think he's misinformed. I've personally heard of this happening, including other SOF units in other branches. A personal friend of mine went for the PJs, and despite meeting all the requirements initially they ended up finding a reason during the medical upon his arrival to training to bounce him. He ended up going AFOSI after serving as a med tech for a couple years.

Point being, there's the process, and the process is the process, but if they have to shitcan X-number of individuals due to changing requirements and overallocated classes, then they'll find a way to shitcan X-number of individuals. Luck of the draw to a certain extent.

I'm speaking to the claim an 18xray went to US Army SFAS and was dropped for a pre-existing family medical history condition that was supposedly discovered at Camp Mackall (during Selection), and then was forced to reclass as a fueler. Like I said, your SF physical takes place before you go to SFAS. Don't pass the physical, then you won't get orders. Of the tens of thousands (?) that have gone to SFAS, I'm sure somewhere sometime a candidate got dropped when the med clinic noticed something that should have been caught before he arrived there, but that's the normal way of doing things. (Is a family history of diabetes even a disqualifying condition? And who is dumb enough to disclose that?)

And like I said, 18x-rays are 11Bs. Unless something has changed, they don't get reclassed. Needs of the Army? Pretty sure the Army always needs Airborne-qualified 11Bs. Again, in the 15+ year history of the current 18X program, maybe someone somewhere had to reclass, but that's certainly not the normal way. So that's two things don't make sense. (Three things if you count family history of diabetes is supposedly a disqualifying condition for SF.)


Much more likely is the poster didn't get the full truth about what happened. Perhaps when he says washed out of Selection he means never made it to Selection, but even then I have my doubts.


And to your point, much has been made about the need for more 18 series. I can't speak for the Air Force PJ program, but post 9/11 no one is getting shitcanned because there are too many 18 series. The complaints are the opposite - that standards have been lowered to allow more to graduate.

------------

As far as your friend - did they find a reason to shitcan him? Or did they find a legitimate disqualifying medical condition, because that happens all the time (just doesn't happen while at SFAS, in the case above. It happens before.) And, you must consider the possibility that he quit in Indoc (not sure of the terminology in the PJ pipeline) and he just doesn't want to say it. He wouldn't be the first that lied to family and friends about what happened.

[TGS]

As far as your friend - did they find a reason to shitcan him? Or did they find a legitimate disqualifying medical condition, because that happens all the time (just doesn't happen while at SFAS, in the case above. It happens before.) And, you must consider the possibility that he quit in Indoc (not sure of the terminology in the PJ pipeline) and he just doesn't want to say it. He wouldn't be the first that lied to family and friends about what happened.

Something to do with his eyeballs, I can't remember specifically but I do remember it being something benign and common enough that it should've been noted during MEPS as DQ for his enlistment contract option, instead of just being noted and sent on his way. Chances are they overcommitted with PJ contracts, and probably didn't want somebody sitting around waiting to class up when that time could've been spent gainfully employed. I'm under the impression that series goes in swings with enlistment contracts.

So, he passes through MEPS, completes basic and whatever he had to go through, shows up to PJ school and turn him away at the physical for something with his eyes that was recorded during MEPS but allowed to enlist under his contract option regardless. I think the zoomies call them "GEP" or something, guaranteed enlistment program, some such. In any case, he didn't get into the actual training pipeline to even have a chance to quit. He's still in AFOSI today as a reservist while simultaneously serving as an agent with us, and although he's super happy with his life there's some understandable butthurt over the whole affair.

Something similar also happened to a close friend of mine who enlisted in the Navy with a nuclear power MOS. He got dropped from the training program for some pretty ridiculous stuff. Their school is all on the classified side, so they can't take anything outside the classroom building. He didn't take anything out, but "someone" made an anonymous complaint that he left with a notebook. No effort was made to investigate or recover said notebook which would theoretically have had classified information in it, but rather he got a one-way 5 minute conversation about his lapse in judgement and a boot out the door, find a different job. He stayed for 8 years as an electrician's mate. My brother had gone through the nuke school around the same time frame, and he confirmed that they had just come out of a spell of dropping people for nonsense (on top of Nuke school's already ridiculously high failure rate).

Around 2005 or so, there was a massive purge of junior grade Naval officers because they had over-hired. A couple ended up in the Marines with me....one day at flight school in the Navy, they showed up to class and the instructors said "everyone who has a note card on your desk, please come outside". And just like that....poof, they were cut. I know it wasn't a lie because I had applied for a commission in the Navy around the same time and been told that big Navy had made cuts and all few thousand of us "College Program" applicants had been summarily denied regardless of qualification. We (the Marines) over-hired flight contracts a few years later, but thankfully guys were given the option of serving a tour in the fleet in 3 other MOS's that were short, and then return to flight school after the backlog had subsided. 15 went through IOC and most of them deployed with a reserve battalion that had zero 2Lts, 5 went logistics, and I can't remember the other MOS.

I'm not sure why I feel the need to explain this, anyway. I thought it was self-evident that the military "plays games" like these when such games are advantageous to Uncle Sam. The same thing happens in reverse when a given roster gets too short and all the sudden guys with legitimate medical issues suddenly cannot get a diagnosis from a military doctor in order to pursue a med-sep. I honestly didn't think anyone would be so contrarian to act like this doesn't happen when it's a pretty well known, accepted occurrence. I don't think that @JRB is talking out of his ass either, given his number of years in.

[Hambo]

Any advice for either him or me as his dad?

Tell him you're proud and let him roll.

[Wake27]

I'm speaking to the claim an 18xray went to US Army SFAS and was dropped for a pre-existing family medical history condition that was supposedly discovered at Camp Mackall (during Selection), and then was forced to reclass as a fueler. Like I said, your SF physical takes place before you go to SFAS. Don't pass the physical, then you won't get orders. Of the tens of thousands (?) that have gone to SFAS, I'm sure somewhere sometime a candidate got dropped when the med clinic noticed something that should have been caught before he arrived there, but that's the normal way of doing things. (Is a family history of diabetes even a disqualifying condition? And who is dumb enough to disclose that?)

And like I said, 18x-rays are 11Bs. Unless something has changed, they don't get reclassed. Needs of the Army? Pretty sure the Army always needs Airborne-qualified 11Bs. Again, in the 15+ year history of the current 18X program, maybe someone somewhere had to reclass, but that's certainly not the normal way. So that's two things don't make sense. (Three things if you count family history of diabetes is supposedly a disqualifying condition for SF.)


Much more likely is the poster didn't get the full truth about what happened. Perhaps when he says washed out of Selection he means never made it to Selection, but even then I have my doubts.


And to your point, much has been made about the need for more 18 series. I can't speak for the Air Force PJ program, but post 9/11 no one is getting shitcanned because there are too many 18 series. The complaints are the opposite - that standards have been lowered to allow more to graduate.

------------

As far as your friend - did they find a reason to shitcan him? Or did they find a legitimate disqualifying medical condition, because that happens all the time (just doesn't happen while at SFAS, in the case above. It happens before.) And, you must consider the possibility that he quit in Indoc (not sure of the terminology in the PJ pipeline) and he just doesn't want to say it. He wouldn't be the first that lied to family and friends about what happened.

I don't know any brand new x-rays off the top of my head, but I know that the pipeline in the last few years was definitely enlist w/ 18X contract -> infantry OSUT -> airborne -> SFAS. My only guess as to how someone was reclassed after starting off on the 18X contract is because they failed OSUT.

[JRB]

I think you might have been misinformed. I'm not an expert on the med requirements, but you do a SFAS physical before you go. The 18x-rays that wash out are still Airborne 11Bs so when I went through they typically got sent to the 82nd or 4-25th in Alaska as 11Bs. They aren't sent to a new AIT to reclass (unless things have really changed and the Army has lost it's mind.) If you weren't an Xray and were coming from the Big Army, you went back right back to your unit.

I never met anyone that flat out said they quit Selection because they couldn't hack it. It was always an injury, or maybe something about the cadre having it out for them (like the cadre have time to pick out a Joe at random at SFAS and decide to fail him for no reason. Having said that, no doubt that later on in the Q Course you could get a target on your back and get extra scrutiny from instructors, but usually that would have been warranted. Or if not warranted, at least certainly the person brought it on himself in some form or another.)

Before I was pulled for my last deployment, I was a platoon daddy with 33 assigned - so I'm hardly new to how Soldiers love to BS around their weaknesses when they fail.

The particular case I cited is absolutely 100% true and I saw the paperwork to back it up because I dealt with the Soldier personally when he in-processed into my old unit. He was understandably sour at the Army because he had the integrity to fully disclose everything he knew and he got burned for it. I strongly doubt he would have failed the Q course, he was motivated, put up 325-335 extended scale scores on his APFT and had a 114 GT. He was awarded the 11B MOS but was sent to reclass at Ft Lee due to 'needs of the Army'.
Punishing compete honesty is a deeply rooted cultural problem we have across the entire DoD that needs to get unfucked, but I wouldn't have the faintest idea of where to begin to truly fix it.

That said, it sucks that someone didn't tell this troop to cool it on family history stuff and play dumb, but he got off-ramped because of it.
@TGS's assessment of 'only so many slots and have to wash out X number of bodies' parses with my own experience on how the Army does other shit similar to this, and that is routinely at odds with what is actually needed at the unit level.

[Stephanie B]

I'm not sure why I feel the need to explain this, anyway. I thought it was self-evident that the military "plays games" like these when such games are advantageous to Uncle Sam. The same thing happens in reverse when a given roster gets too short and all the sudden guys with legitimate medical issues suddenly cannot get a diagnosis from a military doctor in order to pursue a med-sep. I honestly didn't think anyone would be so contrarian to act like this doesn't happen when it's a pretty well known, accepted occurrence. I don't think that @JRB is talking out of his ass either, given his number of years in.

Ancient history: In the very early '80s, the Navy was so short of department heads for surface ships that they were taking promising JO's who had done 24-30 months at sea and then sending them to some ships (amphibs and replenishment ships) as instant department heads. Go forward a couple of years and they had so many lieutenants on shore duty waiting to get into department head school that they rescreened everyone and shitcanned what they needed. In the `90s, there were so many ships scrapped that a lot of lieutenant commanders were involuntarily retired early.

They also had a hell of a time persuading people to become pilots, to the point that they offered surface officers a "try it, you'll like it" deal-- they could do flight school and their first tour and if they didn't like it, they'd go right back into the surface program with a guaranteed slot at department head school. Then some midget in elevator shoes made a movie about naval air and that ended the need for the program.

The needs of the service prevails above all. Everyone in it is a replaceable part.

[Trooper224]

Something to do with his eyeballs, I can't remember specifically but I do remember it being something benign and common enough that it should've been noted during MEPS as DQ for his enlistment contract option, instead of just being noted and sent on his way. Chances are they overcommitted with PJ contracts, and probably didn't want somebody sitting around waiting to class up when that time could've been spent gainfully employed. I'm under the impression that series goes in swings with enlistment contracts.

So, he passes through MEPS, completes basic and whatever he had to go through, shows up to PJ school and turn him away at the physical for something with his eyes that was recorded during MEPS but allowed to enlist under his contract option regardless. I think the zoomies call them "GEP" or something, guaranteed enlistment program, some such. In any case, he didn't get into the actual training pipeline to even have a chance to quit. He's still in AFOSI today as a reservist while simultaneously serving as an agent with us, and although he's super happy with his life there's some understandable butthurt over the whole affair.

Something similar also happened to a close friend of mine who enlisted in the Navy with a nuclear power MOS. He got dropped from the training program for some pretty ridiculous stuff. Their school is all on the classified side, so they can't take anything outside the classroom building. He didn't take anything out, but "someone" made an anonymous complaint that he left with a notebook. No effort was made to investigate or recover said notebook which would theoretically have had classified information in it, but rather he got a one-way 5 minute conversation about his lapse in judgement and a boot out the door, find a different job. He stayed for 8 years as an electrician's mate. My brother had gone through the nuke school around the same time frame, and he confirmed that they had just come out of a spell of dropping people for nonsense (on top of Nuke school's already ridiculously high failure rate).

Around 2005 or so, there was a massive purge of junior grade Naval officers because they had over-hired. A couple ended up in the Marines with me....one day at flight school in the Navy, they showed up to class and the instructors said "everyone who has a note card on your desk, please come outside". And just like that....poof, they were cut. I know it wasn't a lie because I had applied for a commission in the Navy around the same time and been told that big Navy had made cuts and all few thousand of us "College Program" applicants had been summarily denied regardless of qualification. We (the Marines) over-hired flight contracts a few years later, but thankfully guys were given the option of serving a tour in the fleet in 3 other MOS's that were short, and then return to flight school after the backlog had subsided. 15 went through IOC and most of them deployed with a reserve battalion that had zero 2Lts, 5 went logistics, and I can't remember the other MOS.

I'm not sure why I feel the need to explain this, anyway. I thought it was self-evident that the military "plays games" like these when such games are advantageous to Uncle Sam. The same thing happens in reverse when a given roster gets too short and all the sudden guys with legitimate medical issues suddenly cannot get a diagnosis from a military doctor in order to pursue a med-sep. I honestly didn't think anyone would be so contrarian to act like this doesn't happen when it's a pretty well known, accepted occurrence. I don't think that @JRB is talking out of his ass either, given his number of years in.

Regardless of branch, everything you sign ends with something along the lines of, "Providing it meets the needs of the service." That means everything you just agreed to is really just optional. Some people don't seem to take that seriously.