It's not poor planning, it's reality.

Medical skills are an add on to other skills. If I'm reading the original story correctly,these are most likely soldiers who are highly trained infantrymen (Lrsd, spec ops) who are learning emergency med care prior to deployment. NOT average soldiers.

Even in spec ops units, you have a fair amount of turnover. You need X number of trained CLS or other emergency med care specialists (normally around 20% of the soldiers in your units). One or more soldiers rotate to another unit, the skills have to be replaced, whether the incoming soldiers want to replace those skills or not.

You WANTED to go to med school. The soldiers are being told "Here's your new job....and you also have to learn emergency medical care in addition to your MOS"


As to "we", I'm recently retired, but I had to assist training CLS several times during my career, and trained soldiers throughout my career.

CLS doesn't involve shooting pigs, the class the article is referring to is an extremely small number of soldiers.