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JOINT BASE LEWIS-McCHORD, Wash. – Students with packed bags and high hopes take the first step on their final journey of achieving prosperous military careers during the beginning of the Leader Development and Assessment Course 2011, also called Operation Warrior Forge, at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, June 13.
“The purpose of Warrior Forge is to bring cadets here in order to assess their overall leadership abilities so that they can go back to school and be further assessed either into the United States Army, United States Army Reserve or the National Guard,” said Lt. Col. Jim G. West, chief of personnel and administration for Operation Warrior Forge. “This is absolutely the most important step in what will become a pretty short process for these cadets.”
More than 6,000 cadets from colleges across the country left their comfort-zones to travel to JBLM for LDAC to complete the crucial 29-day training requirement.
“When you bring them into this environment where there are no two cadets from the same college, rarely if ever, in any regiment the result is that they have to automatically start to interact with 40 brand new people,” said West. “You’ve got personalities, and you’ve got conflicts that are going to develop, so part of their leadership assessment is their ability to be a leader when in a leadership position, to motivate them to do hard tasks and then when not in a leadership position to be a good follower, to support their peers and their intent to shine as a leader.”
The cadet’s are divided into 14 different regiments that will be cycled through Warrior Forge at different times throughout the summer.
“Here, they have to stand up on their own and be totally independent. This is a good starting point because that’s what they are going to be expected to do as young Army officers, to adapt and overcome to changing conditions and to learn how to think and interact on their own,” added West.
The training certification is designed to challenge and test the aspiring leaders on a compilation of skills that they’ve earned through training in The Reserve Officers' Training Corps.
“This is the graduate level dissertation for them to find out how much [knowledge] they’ve retained, and then to assess their leadership ability to move on to become second lieutenants in the Army. It is the ground level for identifying the Army’s future leaders,” said West.
The training structure includes assessment in land navigation, confidence training, a field leaders reaction course, chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear training, weapons familiarization, cultural awareness, first aid, maneuver training and a variety of tactical training activities.
“I feel like it’s all engraved in our heads now. Its second nature because we’ve done it over and over again,” said Holly N. Schultz, a cadet in 1st regiment at Warrior Forge and student at University of Wisconsin, about the evaluated tasks.
About 90 percent of cadets successfully complete LDAC and most who do not pass return for a later cycle said West.
“I would like to do well and exceed my expectations of myself and to better myself as a person,” said Schultz. “Everyone has been anticipating this for years now and it’s here and we are almost there.”
Cadets confidently stepped into the event full of prospects and expectations in hopes of leaving as newborn leaders.
| Date Taken: | 06.13.2011 |
| Date Posted: | 06.20.2011 18:02 |
| Story ID: | 72445 |
| Location: | JOINT BASE LEWIS-MCCHORD, WASHINGTON, US |
| Web Views: | 80 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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