Higher Drill Instructor Standards Urged

WASHINGTON — As possible remedies for the military’s sex scandal, the Army’s top training official on Wednesday proposed better screening and perhaps psychological testing to ensure that the service does not give its powerful drill instructor jobs to the wrong people.

Gen. William Hartzog also said that he is redoing the training in interpersonal relations provided to drill instructors and trainees alike. Taken together, Hartzog’s proposals would represent the most sweeping changes yet offered in Army procedures in the wake of the sex scandal.

“A trainee looks up to a drill instructor, expects them to be a fount of knowledge, a setter of standards . . . ,” Hartzog--head of the Army Training and Doctrine Command--said at a breakfast meeting with reporters. “I do think there are some changes needed” in the selection process for instructors.

He said that he wants the Army to look more extensively into past records of applicants when it screens candidates for the 1,400 drill instructor jobs that open up annually. Currently, the service requires that some checks cover only an applicant’s latest three years.

Hartzog also said that he has sought advice on whether the Army should employ psychological tests, which are already used by elite Special Forces units before they entrust top jobs to their troops.

Currently, soldiers must submit to psychological examinations if they volunteer to be drill instructors. But if they are recommended for the post by superiors, such testing is not required.

Hartzog, whose command oversees the scandal-plagued Aberdeen Proving Ground in northeast Maryland and other training centers, said that he is withholding judgment on how much responsibility rests with the Army officer corps for the scandal, which has brought to light sexual misconduct allegations in bases across the nation.

But Hartzog fixed part of the blame for the scandal on a “few bad apples” in the enlisted ranks and lamented the lack of discipline in the high school graduates who make up most of today’s recruits.

Four soldiers at Aberdeen have been court-martialed--including one convicted of multiple rape charges--and 20 have faced disciplinary proceedings of various kinds since the scandal came to light last fall.

The Army selects drill instructors based on recommendations of their superiors, on general-aptitude test scores and on the lengthy personnel files compiled on the applicants during their time in the service.

Officials also review performance reports by the applicants’ superiors. But they only review disciplinary records for the latest three years, a figure that Hartzog believes may not be sufficient.