 This is the modern army, people. True, it takes the latest in firepower, mobility, communications. And General Westmoreland, the Army Chief of Staff, speaks of the four M's of today's army. Mission, motivation, modernization, and management. All these are essential, yet all must be put into action by individual people, citizens, soldiers. Good afternoon, men. Welcome to E Company, 7th Battalion, 2nd Training Brigade. I am Captain Mouth, your company commander. And during the next 100 minutes... Basic combat training. It doesn't mean a great change in a man's way of living. It means a total change. From the first, he will acquire precision, discipline, in every smallest detail of his daily living. He does this under calculated, impersonal pressure. And he does it on the double. To soldier, a man needs to be in shape. The army sees to it. A modern soldier may never need to be handy with a bayonet. Still it could happen, so he learns how, just in case. He learns as realistically as possible, using the latest training techniques, building speed of reflexes, honing down reaction time. The people who do the training are professionals. It's their job to see that their men learn to perform on that level. They work at it. In fact, they can get downright fussy about it. Each man starts working with the fundamental tools of the soldier's trade. In Basic, each man discovers something important about himself. How much more he can do than he thought he could do. And how much longer he can keep it up. Basic combat training, he's only taken the first step. But it's an important one. Today, when he sees the visitors in the stands, he thinks of them as civilians. He can start learning, makes a modern army. People, people learning the exacting skills of the airborne soldier, for example. Preparing to go against all that's natural in human behavior by stepping into empty air with nothing but a piece of nylon to break the fall. Jimmy Durante had a song. Did you ever have the feeling that you wanted to go, still you have the feeling that you wanted to stay? He's mastered combat techniques that would have seemed completely fantastic to soldiers of the past. He's airborne. What else is there? If Ranger Training is the next step, he really has to get into shape. Rangers take hand-to-hand combat beyond mere skill to make it instant reflex action. And Ranger Training covers a lot of ground, difficult ground. Each man must learn to handle terrain that would make a mountain goat think seriously about moving to a new location. He learns to take care of himself and his fellow Rangers. And it's not just the high rocks and vertical cliffs. He's got to be equally at home in mosquito and quicksand country. A man stay on the move day and night in country where every step is a major accomplishment and still stay alert and ready for effective action. In Ranger Training, he finds that he can. Then at the end of 36 hours on his feet, he reaches down for the hidden reserves of stamina that let him handle physical challenges like these. A man finishes Ranger Training. He knows he can do his job. A veteran army is a highly complex organism. It's functions are many and it's a locking. So it may be that a man's training after basic takes him down a different road to specialize skills of a different kind. Helicopter maintenance, for example. Training hands and eyes and intelligence to seek out trouble spots and equipment on which the lives of other men depend. To search a mechanism of 10,000 parts, find the problems, correct them, forestall them. Or maybe the skill he gains will be in terms of field communications. If so, he'll learn to do it right. Roger Wilco, out. Roger Wilco, wrong. We never use Roger Wilco together. What do you mean when you use the pro word Roger? I have received your transmission. I have received your transmission satisfactorily. What do you mean when you use the pro word Wilco? I will comply. Before you can comply, you first have to receive it, understand it, and then comply. Again, never use the pro word Roger Wilco together. Nor will the pro word over and out be used together because they have opposite meanings. Maybe what he learns is the army way to run a railroad. The modern army has a lot of rolling stock and soldiers have to move it. Then again, someone has to be trained in the techniques of visual ground control. And for that matter, the piloting of helicopters themselves. It's the teamwork of sling load operations. Someone has to learn it and do it in a modern army. There's also engineer training. Learning to put a bridge where there was no bridge in a matter of hours. Eliminating a water barrier between a fighting force and the place it has to get to. A modern army needs stevedores too. Some of the places the army unload ships are a little too risky for civilian dock wallopers and too far from home. So it trains its own to do the job. As a crew chief on a copter, a man may go to school to learn how to make his spare moments more productive. As a door gunner, the route his training takes him. As a soldier in the modern army, the teaching he gets will meet the highest professional standards. It has to. Nothing less will get the job done. Even so, training must produce something more than just a wide variety of skills. Historically that's something more is typified here at the United States Military Academy. What we're talking about of course is leadership. A quality as intangible as air and just as indispensable to any army modern or ancient. The building of leaders like an underlying drumbeat is part of all the widely varied disciplines taught at West Point. The academics are there and they are essential. But every cadet learns from the first. But what he is here to learn is more than just academic. Give me MacArthur's message. Sir, General MacArthur's message. In the Far East I send you one single thought. One small idea written in red on every beachhead from Australia to Tokyo. There is no substitute for victory. As we said, leadership is typified here. But it is found nurtured and polished in ROTC, National Guard and OCS as well. What are the two basic responsibilities of all leaders? Kennedy Burns. Sir, Kennedy Burns. Take care of my men to get the job done. Sure, exactly right. The accomplishment of the mission and looking out for the men's welfare. The two basic responsibilities of any leader. However, if you must select one, which one would you choose and why? Kennedy's helping. Sir, Kennedy's helping. I feel that they are equally important. Okay, I'll buy that. Sure. Leadership, then, is learned. The capacity has to be there. But the quality itself can be brought into focus by teaching and example. Command! Sir, Kennedy's part of force of counseling. Take a seat, Sparks. Learning doesn't always come easy. Kennedy Sparks, you're being counseled on your tour of duty as platoon sergeant the first half of last week. Yes, sir. When in a command position, you seem to go easy. I'm afraid I don't understand, sir. You try to play as if you were just one of the boys. When in a command situation, you take command. You can't do it gingerly. The men you lead will have buddies. They won't look to you to be a buddy. They'll look to you to take command. You may be only 21 years old, but to the men you lead, you'll be the old man. If you're not, you'll be letting them down. Sergeant Kennedy's first report. On the patoon for Coast Order drill. Take charge of your patoon. The old man. The willingness to do this is something that somehow a man brings into the army with him. The ability to do it, to command and take care of his men, he learns from that army. That willingness and ability together spell leadership. There's another vital kind of leadership. It's what puts a squad leader from New England in the teacher's chair of a Sunday school class in the post chapel. Today, we're going to study the story Jesus told about the rich men who went on a trip and left each of his servants a talent. A talent was a coin. Upon his return, the rich man asked. The same motivation puts a communication specialist here, conducting a service for those of his faith in the absence of a regular chaplain. And the hands of a skilled aircraft mechanic may provide the organ music for a Sunday mass. The two are not incompatible. A man does well what he believes in. And a man who believes is animated by a source of strength outside of himself. Like the intangible of leadership, this is an unseen essential to the army's strength, effectiveness, capability. And that capability today is global in scope. As part of that global capability, a soldier's mission includes both present and contingency assignments. Things he must be ready to do if necessary. One present mission might be to keep watch over the border of an iron curtain country in Europe. Or to patrol the dangerous miles of the demilitarized zone in Korea. In West Germany, men constantly sharpen the readiness of Nike missile batteries, providing a potent deterrent to aggression. Deep inside Eastern Germany, Americans work with soldiers of other free nations along the strangely unreal miles of the Berlin Wall. In Italy, highly trained hands keep elements of the army's long-range striking power ready and able. This global capability requires global coordination. And that means communications. A world-spanning network. The nerve system, if you will, which flashes messages at the speed of light to and from all parts of the giant body that is the modern army. A communications man in a combat zone has no doubts about how important his job is. He and his working gear are the connection. The link for the information and instructions without which an army could not coordinate its operations is a modern army. Among a thousand other things, it's an army that can receive information from any corner of the planet it functions on and can pass instructions to its units wherever on earth their commitments take them. But again, this is just one capability. It must interlock with others. Once the instructions are passed, for example, you have to be able to move. Mobility. In today's army, it means just what it meant to the cavalry general of our civil war who said, you've got to get there fussed with the most. But today, the ways the army has of doing just that are beyond the fondest dreams of that commander in Confederate gray. Little foot slogging to be done when you come right down to it, but not until then. Today's soldier doesn't have to make long forced marches to arrive where the action is, all pooped out from just getting there. He goes to and from where the foot slogging has to be done faster and on shorter notice than his enemies like to think about. As the good general said, with the mostest. Mobility also means versatility. If you can't get there one way, you've got to be able to do it another. For every job, this is part of it too. Special design, adaptability, these make modern mobility possible. And the same go anywhere principle that applies on the tactical level operates in the strategic necessities of global army mobility. The capacity to move thousands of men with their combat gear across oceans if need be and on very short notice. This in turn means a massive supply operation or to use the army term logistics. The problem is nothing new. It's been with us since the day Adam and Eve ran out of fresh fruit. When you're dealing with not hundreds of thousands, but many, many millions of supply items destined for users in all corners of the world where the army has people, you can't keep track of the action with an adding machine and a sharp pencil. Only the massive electronic data handling machines of today could hope to deal with the mountainous job that is logistics in the modern army. Global logistics means getting the right kinds of supplies into the right stockpile locations in the right amounts and keeping constant track of where they all are and where they all have to go. On the face of it, the job is impossible, but the army gets it done. Like the flow of blood from main arteries down to the smallest capillaries, the needed items filter down through the chain of supply to their ultimate users. There is no place that can't be reached. All that's needed is to make a way. Mail and ammo and water and medical supplies and fresh uniforms. Insulated containers filled with hot chow and steaming cold ice cream in the middle of a topic combat zone. All the things that army people need get to them faster and more surely than ever before. Of course, the ultimate purpose of it all is to help the army bring its force to bear when and where it's needed. And force means fire power. The modern army can deliver a staggeringly wide variety of it. It calls for specialization so that the thousands of different jobs that must be done get done. It calls for a progressive and imaginative approach in using and caring for all the army's resources. But today's army can't just be today's army. It must cultivate within itself the seeds of tomorrow. This means research and development, staying in the forefront of technological advance. Working with new concepts in wheeled vehicles for greater cost country mobility is one example. Question, can new techniques like freeze drying provide fresh food quality to field troops with an absolute minimum of weight to be carried? The modern army's research and development teams are finding out. Already in the field is the Long Range Patrol Pack, a mere 11 ounces that becomes a full fresh meal when water is added. When an item like this helmet radio reaches the stage where it's ready for it, intensive and detailed field testing determines whether it can really deliver. In the air, the cobra with its streamlined shape and high speed maneuverability brings copper-born firepower to a new high. It carries built-in rockets and many gun pots. Still much that is vital to the modern army is not new but old, as old as the ideals for which so many Americans have given their lives. Perhaps more important than weapons or tactics, more powerful than fire and steel are the values that motivate individual men, citizens who are soldiers. As we said in the beginning, the essence of the modern army is mission, modernization, motivation and management put into action by people. People in every corner of a troubled world, people ready and able to deal with whatever challenge may arise. If there can be a single answer to the question, what makes a modern army? That answer can only be the citizen, the soldier.