Are Drill Sergeants in the US military really as mean as they are in movies? If so, what’s the benefit?

Question

In American media, Drill Sergeants are often portrayed as mean and shouty. Yelling at recruits / treating them like garbage.

The only thing I could think of is that they’re going for a “military service is hard so I’m going to make this as unpleasant for you as possible because life is hard” kind of thing, but couldn’t discipline be instilled in soldiers without the yelling and humiliation? Why is this the only way?

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In: Other

Answer 1

One of the main theories of military training is that you’re trying to develop ingrained responses. You are training a person to act a certain way when presented with a certain stimulus without needing to consciously react to it.

MBT (Military Basic Training) is designed to get you to act in this basic manner when under stress. This also serves as a gage for how you react under stress, and if you react poorly, you’re let go. At AIT (Advanced Infantry Training) or specialist schools this is either ramped up or down depending on what you’re intended to be doing.

You want the person to react immediately to incoming fire, so you practice that by simulated (or not so simulated) fire. You want them to react immediately to an NBC (Nuclear, Biological, Chemical) warning, so you lead them several times through the exercise under stress then test them by doing it again and sending them through the gas chamber (CS tear gas, if you were wondering)

It’s usually never ramped all the way down and members of the military tend to be kept at a low simmer of stress, but it usually doesn’t get quite as bad as those previous examples except on military drills.

This does backfire. The military has a significant problem with every vice and crime you can imagine, as keeping someone consistently stressed leads to them seeking escape. There’s also some really well known horror stories in the military about how people react, especially after coming back from a tour of duty.

It’s also why you get people reacting immediately to stressful situations by firing their weapons. Basic crowd control is not a part of basic training, but firing during stressful situations is.