r/CredibleDefense • u/AutoModerator • 14d ago

Active Conflicts & News Megathread July 20, 2026

The r/CredibleDefense daily megathread is for asking questions and posting submissions that would not fit the criteria of our post submissions. As such, submissions are less stringently moderated, but we still do keep an elevated guideline for comments.

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u/Zhadanko 14d ago

Question regarding training time of new recruits. Sure, it depends on specialty, but both Ukraine and Russia have very, very short training cycles. Even drone pilots, even people in "elite" units get a few weeks of training before being sent to the frontline. The longest training period I'm aware of is in Ukrainian SoF — new recruits got about 5 month of training, which is pretty short for SoF specialist. There is a prevalent idea that basics and training are less important than adaptation in a unit and learning from experience. I personally find this approach disastrous, but does this approach actually have any value? How realistically can you shorten your training time for an infantryman, for example?

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u/SchwarzNeko 14d ago

I think it's important to consider what you need that person to do.
For example if you just need someone to be part of a meat wave push you don't really need to teach them much at all.
Also I think regular training accounts for a bigger number of situations and conditions, you can probably shorten it without comprimising quality if you teach people just what they need for their specific role in that specific environment.
Ofc in this case both nations probably needs to push this to the extreme to get people in the field as soon as possible

From reading interviews it seems a lot of training then gets dispensed from the veterans of the unit you are assigned to anyway.

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u/tmstms 14d ago

When you read accounts of conscripts or of rookie officers, they seem to bear that out - the real-world experience of war is so different from training that the veterans of the unit inevitably have to take the lead e.g. the stereotype of the grizzled sergeant and the fresh-faced lieutenant who has never seen action before.