Opinion Piece: How’s Recruit Development Wing?

If you were to ask any soldier if the Australian Army should lower its standards in order to allow more women to join, you would receive a resounding ‘no’. From recruit to RSM, although diplomacy may vary, no soldier would be willing to argue that the standards developed to reflect job requirements within the Army should be reduced. As biscuit company Arnott’s says, ‘there is no substitute for quality’. However, in 2012, Defence senior leadership made a unified statement of cultural change through the release of the cultural statement ‘Pathway to Change: Evolving Defence Culture Strategy’. This strategy is a conclusive metric informed through independent and government reviews into gender and culture related issues within Defence, which acknowledges that gender inequality is an organisational hindrance as well as a moral issue. Independent reviews such as the 2011 Broderick review into Defence culture presented results that drew a strong conclusion between gender diversity and capability. The findings of the Report on the Review into the Treatment of Women in the ADF, tabled in August 2012, made 21 recommendations for reforms to the recruitment and retention of women—all of which were accepted by the Chief of Defence and three service chiefs.

In short, the Australian Government elected by the people of Australia, through the Minister for Defence, announced several reviews into aspects of Defence culture, and found that the services need to diversify—that is, recruit and retain more women (and Indigenous members). It has been decided and is happening.

So the question which arises is how to do this. The need for diversity saw the birth in 2016 of the Recruit Development Wing (RDW), a wing of the Army Recruit Training Centre (ARTC) focused solely on developing and implementing programs to attract, recruit and increase diversity at the lowest level: recruits. RDW has developed and implemented several unique programs, each focused on bridging the enlistment requirement gap to attract female and Indigenous recruits, one of which is the Army Pre-Conditioning Program (APCP), to which I was recently attached following three years of training Army recruits in standard recruit training platoons at the 1st Recruit Training Battalion (1RTB). The APCP was designed to attract women who do not yet have the required physical or mental resilience to commence recruit training at 1RTB. These women are ‘marched in’ under a provisionally enlisted status from not achieving the enlistment standard at Defence Force Recruiting, and commence their course at RDW. They are required to meet the regular entrance standards of the Pre-Enlistment Fitness Assessment (PFA), comprising 8 push-ups, 45 sit-ups and level 7.5 on the beep test, at RDW to be eligible to commence the Army Recruit Course. They are, however, individuals who have volunteered to be subject to the Defence Force Discipline Act and service law, and forfeit many freedoms to spend approximately seven weeks building up their physical fitness, confidence and resilience before commencing their journey at 1RTB, to become a soldier in the Army. They voluntarily spend more time at Kapooka, under the same restrictions as 1RTB recruits and the same sufferance of recruit life, with perhaps a little less bed-making, initially.

Why would Army want to recruit women who lack mental resilience? How will they cope on the battlefield? They aren’t the kinds of soldiers I would want in my Army. Why don’t we recruit people who can meet the standards, not lower the standards? These are some of the comments and thought processes I have encountered during my brief time at RDW, usually through conversing with my peers who have had no experience of or exposure to RDW. These are attitudes and beliefs of serving members with experience, often in influential positions as instructors or in the chain of command. Reflecting on these comments, it is fair to say there aren’t many people who have spent time at RDW. The wing is quite new in terms of Army training establishments and so it can be expected that there is some ignorance or naivety to provoke the above statements.

My responses to these kinds of statements, from my experience and exposure, are as follows.

Why don’t we recruit people who can meet the standards? The Army is currently recruiting people who can meet the physical standards and do have the mental resilience to join the Army. They start their training usually on a Tuesday, day zero at 1RTB. The issue is that there aren’t enough women signing up who fit into this category. The women who want to join the ADF and meet this standard are enlisting; however, their numbers are too low, in accordance with the demands of the opening paragraph. The women who don’t meet this build, but still want to enlist, provisionally enlist to do additional time to build up to this level to join. The women who are at this standard who aren’t enlisting don’t want to. We can’t make them, because that’s conscription—we stopped doing that a little while ago.

How will they cope on the battlefield? Let’s consider why they may be at RDW in the first place: physical or mental resilience. If anything, they have been exposed to more mental resilience-building activities built into the course; they have had more opportunities to practise various coping strategies whilst in a controlled environment; they spend more time under the continuous stress associated with recruit training. It seems, if anything, that their stress inoculation may consequently be higher than, if not on par with, a recruit from 1RTB. Then after 1RTB, I imagine, they would experience the exact same training, pre-deployment package and preparedness as any other soldier expected to face the battlefield. They abandon their ‘orange tab’ on completion of their program and blend right into a standard recruit training platoon and off into the wider Army.

They aren’t the kinds of soldiers I would want in my Army. The people who truly take ownership of the Australian Army are alluded to in Army’s mission statement: ‘Army is to prepare land forces for war in order to defend Australia and its national interests.’ The democratically elected government of Australia is Army’s ‘1 up’, if you please, from where our mission statement is derived. Hence, the true owners of the Army are the people of Australia, whose interests we serve to protect and who, through exercising their political expression and by means of the Minister for Defence, create the priorities and actions of government. These are the very same people who have expressed that they want gender equality and diversity in the Services—see the opening paragraph above. So the participants of the RDW program and the female instructors conducting the APCP are in fact the soldiers the voting public want in the Australian Army. I would suggest that anyone who has a deeply rooted concern or disagreement with this information would likely find their views to be in isolation from the majority of Army’s thinking, with the focus on building capability for the future and meeting the demands of the public.

Why don’t we recruit people who can meet the standards, not lower the standards? The only assessment the provisionally enlisted trainees completing the APCP are required to pass (to meet the provision of their enlistment) is the PFA. If the trainees fail to meet the standard, they are afforded another opportunity aligned with ARTC reassessment policy, and if they cannot meet the standard after reassessment, they are not enlisted. They leave. The standard is not lowered. The physical enlistment standard of the PFA (8 push-ups, 45 sit-ups and 7.5 on the beep test) becomes the end goal, the ‘Holy Grail’, the end state for these trainees, and to lower it would disappoint each and every one of them who work towards it.

Training individuals who have volunteered to join the Army yet lack self-confidence and mental resilience presents its own challenges. Recruit Instructors (RIs) traditionally take recruits with a somewhat steady character and resilience, and enforce the military environment and ‘regimentality’ through tough training, breaking down individuality to a degree and ‘bulldozing space’ for teamwork, mateship, determination and myriad ‘soldierly qualities’. The introduction to service life is confronting and the adaptation to cultural norms of the Army is keenly supervised and guided by the RIs responsible for the end product, the ‘firm-foundations soldier’ equipped with enough knowledge of the Army societal cues to get through the first week of their Initial Employment Training. This relies heavily on the individual having the strength of character and confidence to become compliant, even if through friction and resistance, to this process. Those recruits who don’t comply or who resist the process completely submit their Resignation of Own Request and depart. RDW trainees do not have this self-confidence or courage yet. They are more fragile and have vulnerabilities that mean they may struggle more than others with this initial process at the commencement of their training. The unknown courage these individuals do possess is evident by virtue of the fact that they have put themselves into this expected confronting environment despite their lack of self-confidence. They have volunteered to be uncomfortable and to give it a go, an enduring quality of the Australian soldier.

As a part of their training, the recruits are exposed to many facets of Army life, including Army history, Army environmental survival techniques and navigation, and barracks routine and drill. This is all done around two physical training sessions a day, aimed at passing the PFA. Their barracks training leads up to peaks of intensity not dissimilar to that imposed by RIs at 1RTB. This gradual increase in training is deliberate and exposes the trainees to the environment they will shortly be in, on completion of the APCP. It acts as another resilience-building technique. The confidence and character that builds in these women, many of whom have far deeper issues—often societal, financial or familial, and often a mix of all three—is impressive, as well as their physical capability progression. The way they carry themselves and their eagerness to learn and develop as a soldier is refreshing and they are regularly overheard discussing earlier lessons while ‘foam rolling’ (a recovery technique used to decompress and relax stiff muscles) or critiquing one another’s personal drill during their recovery time. Though they may begin not as fit as they might wish, their motivation and drive is as good as any.

To steer away from the technique of building recruits that has been reiterated for decades (despite being dynamic and modern, the basic principles endure) and guide trainees through their initial time in the Army without instilling a false sense of comfort or familiarity takes a skilled individual. Instructors at RDW require a genuine interest in the development of the individuals on the course, yet need to remain professional and distant enough to not foster overfamiliarity and reliance. The hierarchical nature and discipline of the Army needs to be impressed on the trainees; however, instructors cannot lose their humanity. Tact, creativity, firmness, compassion and professionalism are all essential for an instructor at RDW. Often, due to course sizes, there are significantly fewer staff allocated to a course, and so the pressure and responsibility for each individual is amplified. They will also foster in the trainees initial impressions of what the Army is and the appropriate way to conduct oneself.

There is no escaping the principle of leading by example. Staff are expected to participate in physical training sessions with the trainees (at least one a day), keep their dress and bearing to a high standard, and keep their interactions with trainees professional and empathetic without babying them. Section commanders will often work ‘day on / day off’ driving the platoon, frequently delivering more platoon-level training than section-level training. Many of the RDW programs are in their infancy, and organisationally some of the course tools such as lesson plans and Learning Management Plans are still being refined. Yet the platoon staff of these programs, in particular the section commanders, through their creativity, networking and resourcefulness continue to meet and deliver the course content to a high standard, as well as inspiring the trainees they are responsible for. The staff I had the pleasure of working with in my time at RDW were commendable.

Finally, I would like to address the stigma associated with RDW. My recruits with their orange tabs were often referred to as the ‘fat camp’ and other labels that can only be overheard or initiated by recruits who have heard such things from their staff. The fact is that the majority of APCP recruits do not align with these immature labels and they simply need guidance on technique, strength development and directed, consistent training and building mental toughness. For anybody who has the privilege of leading soldiers, it is a poor reflection of oneself to allow them to have such ignorance about diversity. These people, regardless of which program they are a part of, have volunteered themselves to spend an additional amount of time as a recruit to address their shortfalls to make it into the Australian Army. They have chosen to leave their comfort zones to spend more time eating at the recruit mess, making beds repeatedly, enduring tough training, away from loved ones and complying with an imposed routine to fix what it is about themselves that is not yet good enough to allow them to enlist in the Army. To recognise your own weaknesses and take affirmative action to rectify it is an incredible feat for anybody and should be praised. These volunteers who, just like you and me, are willing to devote this time in their lives to serving in the Army should be welcomed with open arms.

In conclusion, I have learnt many things from my short time at RDW. I have been exposed to the nature of delivering these programs, the hardship experienced by the staff and the true grit possessed by the recruits, and am humbled to have had the opportunity to do so. To the course I was privileged to be a part of, APCP 25, thank you for your uniqueness, your relentless sense of wonderment and curiosity, and the overall will to win.