Professional Development

[nonniey]

Professional Education

Fellow Tailgaters I noticed a couple of posts talking about the amount of resources we go into training military personnel. Currently, I’m in one of the of the Army’s many professional development courses.

The Army has professional training and development courses spread throughout ones career for both enlisted and officers. These are the required courses.

On The Enlisted Side in Order

Basic Training (You’ve all heard of that) - Usually 9 weeks

Advanced Individual Training (AIT - start off with acronyms early - doh!) 15 weeks to a year . It is the second half of initial entry training and trains on specialties

Warrior Leader Course (PLDC) – 2 Weeks. This course prepares junior enlisted to become Non Commissioned Officers (NCO i.e. Sergeants)

Basic Non-Commissioned Officer Course (BNCOC) length varies 8-14 weeks. Develops NCOS to mid range NCOs (Staff Sergeants)

Advanced Non-Commissioned Officer Course (ANCOC) length about 5 weeks

Sergeant Majors Course – 9 months. Need to get to highest enlisted rank.

Officers (This is after you enter, there are in several ways to get there ROTC, OCS, West Point which are all school/courses as well but I’ll exclude them).

Officer Basic Course (OBC)– varies from 4 months to almost a year. Branch focused, this is for Lieutenants

Officer Advanced Course (OAC) – usually 6-9 months depending on the Branch

Intermediate Level Education (ILE) - usually 1 year but there are now 4 month versions. One usually needs this to make Lieutenant Colonel

Senior Service College (SSC) – usually 2 years but can be longer. Mid grade LTCs and Colonels compete for slots. (Future Generals need this)

As you can see enlisted soldiers require about 2 years or 10% of a 20 year career while officers must be schooled for 4 years (figure those going to SSC go to 30 years). And that training doesn’t include additional specialties such as Language Courses, Airborne, Air Assault, Special Forces, additional specialties etc. Some of that course can last years as well.

I just wanted to point out how serious the army and the military in general puts into education and professional development.

Do any of you have examples on how much training and development the civilian world uses?