How common was and is this?

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Depends what you mean Sarong.

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Gimme a minute to read through Jay's latest observations...

The military outsourcing military training---news to me.

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Some subjects take most of a life time to master. Often past the age when most men can actively serve in thier militaries. They then call them tech reps or technical representitives.

We had men who would go out to sea with us who had been working on aircraft since WWII, a perfect levening for a bunch of brilliant 20 years olds no?

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Gimme a minute to read through Jay's latest observations...

Yikes! (picturing BD at 20, buff and 'brilliant')
What sorts of things did these tech reps do?

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I don't believe I was ever trained by a civilian. Even the instructors in Nuclear Power School - a classroom setting - were naval officers. This was in the 1970's. Of course, that involved a lot of classified material, so maybe the navy was slower to use civilians in that capacity.

'Tech reps' are technical representatives - employees of equipment manufacturers. I don't think you could call civilian instructors tech reps, but I could be wrong about that. Maybe the Blackwater folks are referred to as tech reps.

The military has been outsourcig training for years. I know most of my Air Force Tech School instructors where Contractors or at the very least GS employee's. I can only remember one of them who was active duty. They do a good job of teaching us and believ eit or not, in the long run its cheaper to pay civilian contractor instructors then it is to pay military members. That retirement pay and medical benifits adds up after 20 years.

I don't think anyone is outsourcing Military training. We are outsourcing the Technial training required to keep all this crazy hardware they are buying us running. Military training goes a lot deeper then folding underware in 6 inch squares and keeping in step now-a-days. Now, on top of all the military training we have to learn to work on nuclear reactors, keep F-22 Raptors flight worthy and build computer networks for 40k+ users from scratch. Heck, I spent 5 years at Vandenberg AFB test launching Intercontiental Ballistic Missiles. We don't just pull people off the street and tell them to light the fuse on an ICBM and run like hell

Been doing it for years. Pilot training in Pensacola and Whiting is given by contractors, usually retired Navy pilots.

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I am Mugs, of the Alien clan of Usa, Nordamerica, a Terran, of Sol. Human.

Whoever says "perception is reality" is daft. It's merely an abstraction, and often not a very good one.

I had civvy instructors at HMS Dryad when i did my Radar School back in the early 80s

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'The eye can only see what the mind is prepared to accept'

Actually I didn't get really huge until my forties. Must be like that oxen thing. I stayed a steady 180 (at 5' 10") most of my adult life then for some reason began to bulk up without any particular change in routine other than moving furniture for a living. Then I muscled up to 225. I'm happy at that size but want to shoot for a solid 245. I'm back on track and I'm confident I can do this. All it will take is time.

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Gimme a minute to read through Jay's latest observations...

...and calories!

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Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

I had civilian instructors twice in my years in the military. The first time was a civil service linguist who tried (in vain, alas) to teach me Hebrew. ("In God we trust - all others we monitor). This happened 30 years ago.

The other time was when I learned to be a Planner Analyst on DSCS-III satellites. Our instructors were all Lockheed contractors. This happened 21 years ago. It's certainly nothing new.

For technology training, it makes sense, no doubt. Nobody possibly CAN teach how to use a new gadget but the people who invented it and know how it works.

For the more routine training in basic military practices, it does feel weird. I know that they're former military people themselves and the contracts are paid by the government so it's really the same as the government's armed forces doing it themselves except for some organizational technicalities, but I'm still not getting the point of why those technicalities are arranged that way. How does it help the armed forces to turn their own employees into outsiders and then pay them through contracts (including for labor and equipment that the contractors must buy), to do what they could instead do as employees being paid a wage or salary using equipment the armed forces bought for themselves? Does it free these people up to make decisions on their own without going through an extra dozen layers of approvals and possible denials?