There are some major changes coming to U.S. Army training protocols this summer, much to the relief of many senior personnel. Rather than focusing on Transgender Awareness, Drug Abuse Recovery or Fighting the Entrenched Patriarchy (okay… I may have made that last one up) the troops’ training will be focused on more effectively fighting and defeating the enemy. I know this sounds like a shocking idea, but it’s just crazy enough that it might work. (Washington Times)

Actual fighting will now take precedence over dealing with transitioning transgender troops, drug abuse and other issues as the Army seeks to overhaul its training regimen to hone its soldiers’ battlefield skills. In a series of recent service-wide memoranda approved by Army Secretary Mark Esper and Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley and obtained by The Washington Times, service leaders are now making optional previously mandatory training on issues like transgender transition and drug abuse. The move, Army leaders argue, is designed to relieve stress on the already overburdened troop training regimen and refocus on soldiers ability to fight in combat. “The Army’s regulations and policies that deal with training were pretty settled and there were not a lot of detractors to it. … It was all the other [training] requirements that we levied on ourselves, or we had levied from other places” that led to the increasingly cumbersome approach to combat readiness, said Col. John O’Grady, chief of the Army’s collective training division.

The transgender awareness training isn’t being officially “ended” at this point, but it’s being made optional at the discretion of unit commanders. (Which means it’s probably going to be vastly reduced.) The same goes for the drug abuse training, which can be handled on an as needed, case by case basis. Basically, it sounds like the new Secretary of the Army has decided that we needed to decide whether we’re building up a generation of social justice warriors or just plain… warriors.

A lot of the changes in training and priorities over the past decade have been dismaying. Unlike the agenda inside the beltway and on the coasts back home, we don’t need a “woke” army. We need an army that’s ready to go out and destroy the enemy when asked to do so. And that requires discipline and conformity, traits which aren’t exactly hallmarks of the progressive social justice movement.

One area this recent announcement didn’t touch on was the question of women in combat. The die has been cast in that regard and combat positions will apparently be open to women. (Still a mistake in my humble opinion.) But if they’re going to get serious, we need to stop pushing for quotas and favorable headlines about how many women make it through combat training. Either they meet the same standards as everyone else and pass the courses or they don’t. If this renewed push for common sense in the military is going to continue, that’s a question which also needs to be addressed. But until then, this is at least a good start.