Bruce McDonald wrote:
The training time does look short but its not as short as you think. You do basic training, employment training, accelerated SF training(not the full program), then after all that they see if you are suitable. You take the SF entry test, then if you pass you do full special forces training which goes a lot longer than 41 weeks.
I was pulling stuff from the Australian Army site and here, and adding in all the courses mentioned above it totalled 41 weeks until you're in a regular company of 4 RAR (bearing in mind that they only had 2 regular companies last time I looked, and had reinforcement from 1 Commando Regiment, their reserve equivalent).
However, the implication is that if you don't make the grade at any point you're moved out to another RAR Battalion instead, so the onus was on the recruit to be good enough, not the army to make the recruit good enough. In that way you can cut down on some chaff in training I suppose. (Although the Commando Barrier test makes Junior Brecon look like US Ranger school...).
It should be noted that the RAN has no Marine type contingent, and these are provided by Army units. Bearing in mind Australia has a third of the population of the UK, the fact that it has a third of the commando forces shouldn't be surprising (it also has 1/3rd the airborne and 1/3rd the Special Forces), although these specialist units back a larger portion of the ground forces than in the UK.
Bryn
; you will not know that I had to leave RM trainnig over two thirds of the way into the course !I am now so bored at home and am desperatly trying to get back into the forces ,I had conjured up a long drawn out way of getting back into the RM but it is looking less likely !I have the option of serving in the Irish army; however I am very interested in the Australian forces (4RAR CDO)so if any of you have any info on them or experienced working with them I'd really appreciate it !
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