Basically Trained

*You are now on Allied Nations Recruit Training Center, Parris Island.*

 -First sentence Peacekeeper applicants hear on arrival to Parris Island.

## The First Steps

All military forces require a constant influx of fresh recruits to maintain their strength and stave off stagnation with new officers and NCOs moving up through the ranks. All military forces need recruits to continue their operations, or they will falter. Of course, you can't just grab a random person off the street, hand them a gun and uniform, and expect them to suddenly become a commando. They must be trained to a point where a nation can consider them ready to face combat or even just to stand guard on a distant garrison. Each faction will have standards different from the others, but the outcome is the same: Basically trained infantry.

## He Wears Nothing, He Is Nothing

The basics of military training rely on the ability to take a human being and override their base instincts to *not* kill their fellow man. First however, they must be broken.

The reason military forces prefer to recruit from teenagers is that they're essentially blank slates that can be molded before their personalities are set in stone. That isn't to say that older recruits are considered an issue, in fact they're often the most professional and intelligent of recruits. Despite that, the mass majority of recruits must be molded from "nasty civilians" into soldiers. The first step is to strip a recruit of their personal identity. Nearly as soon as a recruit arrives at training, they have their civilian clothes taken from them, their heads are immediately shaved, and in recent years many training programs have had recruits not even refer to themselves in the first person. Instead, they are forced to call themselves, "This recruit". By stripping as much of the personal identity as possible, the military can mold the recruit as they need.

Following this is the most basic education in military science. Basic history of the force they've joined, basic drill movements to teach recruits how to follow orders, and proper uniform wear all instill the discipline necessary to become a basically trained soldier. Yet while most civilians imagine that every day of boot camp is an unending physical struggle, the true strain is on a recruit's mental state. The fact is that war is a continual mental nightmare. A soldier is put under stress constantly, forced to kill their enemies, and faced with the reality that at any second, their life could end. To make sure their recruits can handle this strain, instructors are themselves trained to constantly put recruits under continuing mental stress from the start to the end of boot camp. They are put down, insulted, browbeaten, and demeaned to the point of breaking. Those that do are typically placed in separate platoons, kept away from the other recruits until their leadership has decided they can be safely let go.

For the ones that persevere and press onward, the rigors of training changes them. Muscles become leaner and more defined. Stamina builds to the point where runs of several miles become simple jogs. Men and women learn to properly clean and maintain their weaponry, their gear, their bodies. They begin to fill out their missing body fat with new muscle and strong limbs. They realize who is a leader, who is a follower, and who was better off just staying behind at home instead. While in the past basic training was simply repetition over shooting, physical fitness, and drill, recently some military forces have began to emphasize some kinds of "final test" for recruits that proves them ready for their next steps as soldiers, and eventually moving on to war.

## Fledglings

In a way, the Allied Nations have two training programs for their forces. The first part is really the training of the Allied Reservists in their national military forces. While these still vary wildly between the various Allied Nations, there is some rough standardization between the Western European nations and in North America. Focusing on creating professional soldiers capable of following lawful orders and fighting only with as much force as necessary. The primary interest is that the soldiers understand the basics of infantry combat and squad-based tactics. From this, these soldiers are sent to their military specialty schools to continue their training in their job. Now while this could take up hours of discussion and information, the focus here comes to Peacekeeper training for American reservists on Parris Island, South Carolina.

Applicants that are accepted into the training program are first taken from the nearest airports and arrive on Parris Island at about 0100. As the bus rolls onto the perimeter of the base, the trainees are told to place their heads down to make sure they can't remember the layout of the base to prevent possible escapes by trainees suffering mental breakdowns. Once aboard the island, the trainees are met by a drill instructor who gives a rehearsed speech and immediately orders the trainees off the bus and onto the now-famous blue footprints outside the receiving company. For the next two days the trainees are kept awake and fed only the most basic meals as they are mentally tested. Constantly the recruits are pressured into revealing any illegal or questionable actions during their pasts. Anyone that breaks or falters is removed from training and separated from the training immediately. Depending on the severity of the incident, they're even removed from their home nation's military service entirely.

For the next thirteen weeks, these trainees are put under an entirely new training regimen carefully developed by the Peacekeepers command structure in conjunction with leading psychologists and MDs on how to put these candidates under the maximum amount of strain without purposefully injuring or killing them. Those who make it through twelve weeks without being placed into a medical holding platoon or recruit separation platoon must then face their ultimate test; The Cauldron. For fifty-two hours, with only three to four hours of sleep a night, the trainees are put under grueling physical and mental strain on events developed to replicate obstacles found on the battlefield, named after the heroic actions of the Peacekeepers that came before them. Eating only two field ration kits a day, the Cauldron is only finished when the candidates are finally marched back to the parade ground, standing before the famed Normandy monument. This is when they're finally issued their Peacekeeper emblems, the Soaring Eagle.

From here, they're sent to further schooling to learn the proper means to operate Peacekeeper equipment. Infantry and ground combat support are sent to Camp Geiger, North Carolina, while officers are sent to Quantico, VA. Armor and armored vehicle operators are shipped to Fort Knox, Kentucky. Naval enlisted are sent to Naval Station Great Lakes, while their officers are sent to Annapolis, Maryland. Finally, pilots and pathfinders are sent to Colorado Springs, Colorado. With this method, the Peacekeepers have been able to maintain their strength while continually refreshing their methods of thinking about warfare and taking in new ideas and ways of thinking about conflict. Similar programs are set in place for England, France, and Germany, while small Allied Nations send their best to train in these nations.

## Freedom's First Steps

In the Continental Army, training is a messy affair. Gen. Carville has done his best to try and set a standardized regimen of training for any new applicants to the Confederacy. Several camps have already been put up by the Continentals, with the largest being in the desert outside San Bernadino, California, in the plains around Minot, North Dakota, and in the Continental controlled Fort Sill, Oklahoma. Recruiting in the Confederacy is unfortunately a difficult thing to regulate, as it isn't uncommon to find new recruits lying about their ages or criminal records to try and use the Confederacy as an escape from their lives.

It isn't helped that the Confederacy hasn't been able to gain the same kind of modern training techniques used by Allied Nations members. Relying on the same methods that veterans of World War II were trained under. Basic drill, basic marksmanship and weapons maintenance, while the only thing missing is the same harsh discipline utilized by the American military to train massive numbers of draftees before WWII. It isn't helped that there are no specialized facilities for training armored or airborne troops. For the Confederacy, recruits are simply organized by whatever camps they're closest to. Thankfully, the regions the Confederacy has been using as training camps are typically far removed from major population centers, meaning they can safely operate armored vehicles and aircraft without fear of undue collateral damage (Though noise complaints from Minot and Lawton are a constant now).

The biggest problem is that compared to the veterans in the Continental Army, the new recruits are still individuals. Unable to afford or even find standardized uniforms or training facilities, these recruits have a greater sense of self about themselves. Drill sergeants have noted that these recruits are more insubordinate, more vocal, more free thinking during their training. This has created the problem of retaining the best drill sergeants, as command has noted a dangerous projected burnout rate for these men and women thanks to these recruits. Worse, training materials are harder to find. Recruits may only be issued one magazine of ammunition to fire with during their time with their rifles, have only half of their uniforms by the time their training is over, and the vehicles and aircraft used by the Confederacy in training are somehow even *worse* than those found in the field. Naval training is just as difficult, as any Continental sympathizers willing to take to the seas are essentially given the same training found in the 1800s; get aboard the ship and do what you're told.

Still, there's enough of a patriotic fervor that new recruits for the Confederacy aren't difficult to find. The hope is that there will be enough of a force available to the Continental Army that they can keep the Allies tied up long enough to stretch them thin worldwide, and force the Peacekeepers to withdraw and bring Allied diplomats to the table. At least, that's the hope for *some* of the Federalist Party. For the leadership of the Continental Army, they're just trying to make sure that their forces are sufficiently trained to actually survive an enemy engagement.

## For Mother Russia

One thing the Soviet Union is famous for is the fact that they have constantly and consistently have been forced to essentially haul off entire cities and farms to feed their war machine. Of course, thanks to Premier Davidova there have been some improvements in the Union's policies; now they only drag off city blocks and parts of a collective farm to ensure manpower is kept up to where it needs to be.

In more serious terms, the Union has always known they have a problem with manpower. Ensuring steady meals and quality clothing compared to the average party member can only entice so many men and women to enlist. While the results of the Union's conscription during desperate times are now infamous (Watch this video, take this rifle, kill the enemy), presently the Union is able to at least put a little more effort into training their recruits. Unfortunately, this essentially amounts to minimal drill, minimal rifle training, and minimal knowledge of military bearing and discipline. The average Soviet enlisted is about as well trained as the local Moscow militia, while Soviet NCOs are about as capable as any other nation's enlisted. And since problems roll downhill, Soviet junior officers are often forced to take on the duties of an NCO. Only career NCOs and officers can be considered of any worth to the Union's military, along with specialists in armored and aerial warfare. Naval training is essentially the same situation for the Union, where the majority of men and women serve their time and leave before their commissars get a little too Tesla pistol-happy.

While the majority of actual training occurs for career enlisted and NCOs, it can be argued that the best training for the Union's forces is given to their special forces. The feared Spetsnaz for example are trained to incredibly exacting standards. Unlike the Peacekeepers, Spetznas trainees have only one rule governing their training; survive. Only the most skilled and motivated Soviet soldiers are offered the opportunity to apply for the training, and even fewer are accepted to actually become Spetznas in the first place. Trainees can be beaten, assaulted, even electrocuted to instill the necessary discipline and stamina required to survive in the dangerous missions given to these elite operators. By the end of their training, it can safely be said that the Spetznas are trained to handle anything they're faced with.

## Honor and Duty

The Empire of the Rising Sun, as a mesh of the old and new of Japanese culture, has a training program that they believe draws on the most valuable tenets from their traditions and their advancements. For example, recruits aren't only vetted for a criminal history, they also have their family lines combed over to ensure an honorable family history.

While still focused on physical fitness, the EotRSSDF also has recruits focus on close combat drills for their first training stages. Either issued their own katana or using their own ancestral family weapons, these potential warriors also train with the traditional weapons a samurai would use as well. Bows, naginata, no-dachi, all are issued to trainees during their first training days along with learning karate and judo. They're taught to be a warrior in the classic sense, able to kill their enemies in honorable one-on-one combat before being given their pulse rifles. From that point they're educated in the modern military sciences, from squad tactics to proper CQC techniques for clearing a building. By the time they're considered warriors for the Empire, an average Imperial warrior is considered to be capable of fighting and holding off at least five enemy soldiers.

Of important note is that the defense forces of the Empire have two massive separate training commands. Where their ground and air forces are trained in the basics of military tactics, the Naval Self-Defense Forces are exclusively trained in naval warfare. Unlike in other military forces, where the differences between ground and naval arms are considered a friendly rivalry, the race for funding between the GSDF and NSDF have resulted in both ramping up their training standards in a game of chicken that is threatening to put the lives of recruits and trainees at risk. Unlike in the Allied Nations, however, these recruits only see it as another challenge to go through for the sake of the Empire and their Emperor. Which marks the biggest issue of the Empire's training system, what many consider a dangerous holdover from before World War III. While the reformation of the Empire's military into the Self-Defense Forces has calmed many nerves, the fact that Imperial recruits are still convinced to swear ultimate fealty to the Emperor during their training has many observers on-edge about the future of the Self-Defense Forces and their immediate futures.

## Academic

The thousands of unfortunates in the Sprawl are forced by necessity to pick up arms to protect themselves and their own. As life in a sprawl is nasty, brutish, and short, sprawl dwellers become well-versed in hand-to-hand combat, basic firearms use, and if they're really good they know something about explosives. Once they're hooked on the cocktail of drugs that Legion Security pumps through them once they're shanghaied into service. Thankfully (for the ones that survive), their instincts are so ingrained in combat that even when the ones who aren't interested in being in battle can remember how to fire a gun and how to duck away from someone firing at them. Of course, as expendable cannon fodder, training auxiliaries isn't high on Legion Security's to-do list.

Training actual legionnaires is another story entirely. Thanks to their wetware implants, any new recruit to the Legion can be trained to the level of a relatively experienced Reservist or even a green Peacekeeper. Of course, even for these new recruits the Legion requires a short period of training to ensure that their wetware programs have installed correctly and that the new legionnaires can properly initiate their programming. Similar programs are utilized to train vehicle and aircraft pilots. Ships crews require slightly more work to train, since even the organizations that operate the ships and boats "associated" with the Legion still can't operate seagoing vessels with a single crewman.

While some believe that this could allow the Legion to essentially recruit at will from the population, the truth is that the surgeries required to implant the wetware cybernetics are still a relatively expensive process per recruit. As the Legion has to monitor the bottom line, they at least try to recruit from men and women with some military experience, though they've found through process of elimination that career military veterans are the worst to recruit from. Their neural pathways are too set in stone, as it were, to easily accept the wetware programming that all Legion recruits are required to accept. Of course, the Legion always seems to have feelers everywhere, looking for the most promising recruits to "headhunt" before they become too far gone to train.

## Echoes of the Past

In the still-glowing ashes of what was once China, the isolated "cities" of the Atomic Kingdom are busy breeding the new generations of "fighting men" for China. Like Soviet conscripts during World War II, these clones can literally be blasted with their most basic training programs and sent to the frontlines. Unlike said conscripts, these clones need no commissars to remind them how to fight, or to force them to keep fighting as their fellows fall around them in battle. From basic combat techniques to vehicle operation, the clones of the Atomic Kingdom are the perfect blank-slate recruits that any military in the world would gladly give any amount of treasure to get their hands on. Unfortunately for their leaders, this also makes them problematic on the battlefield. Clones can't be taught initiative, how to command each other, or even how to make many battlefield decisions on their own without even the lowest ranking nobles nearby.

Nobles have their own sets of problems during training. Older nobles are a nightmare to train due to how many can be set in their ways. Instead, these nobles are often instead put in posts that are typically similar to the missions they were skilled in before the bombs and the rise of the Atomic Kingdom. In an admitted irony, former members of the KMT are placed on defensive garrisons ready to repel enemy assaults, while PLA survivors lead the massed clone assaults against the Soviets to the North and Allies to the South. Many of these veteran survivors have noted the irony rather bitterly. Despite this, these older survivors have come to accept their place for now, since they know that there's an actual out once their war is over.

For those few survivors that were never trained as soldiers or just thrown into the meat grinder of the Chinese Civil War, their training is utterly grueling and exact in what goals it must accomplish. First there is training in basic military science, from marching clones in formations to simple infantry tactics. They are then trained in the advanced matters of warfare, of managing the logistics behind grand armies, and learning about the political ins and outs necessary to create a new world out of their future colonies. Most worryingly to anyone with any real experience in military training, these young nobles also kill a clone during their training. While some might ask why this is an issue, every expert on military training knows that the stress of killing another being, even a clone that the Atomic Kingdom doesn't think is actually human, weighs incredibly heavy on the conscience. After months of terrifying training, the revelation that nobles are trained to kill by killing is simply more proof of how dangerous the Atomic Kingdom is.