# How much better, if any, would soldiers trained from birth be? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 17, 2012, 9:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-better-if-any-would-soldiers-trained-from-birth-be/609780 "2012-01-17T09:14:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2012, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-better-if-any-would-soldiers-trained-from-birth-be/609780/21 "2012-01-17T19:36:10Z")
I believe that the more valuable part of such training, more so than skills training, would be the brainwashing aspect, to make these children believe that their country’s cause is always right, they should sacrifice themselves for the good of their country, etc. You can take an adult and train them in just about everything but loyalty. It is no secret that if you get 'em while they’re young you’ll have them forever. ---
**Author:** ![Argent\_Towers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e8c25b/32.png) [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2012, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-better-if-any-would-soldiers-trained-from-birth-be/609780/22 "2012-01-17T19:45:12Z")
People are really missing the point with the whole comparison to “child soldiers” thing. “Child soldiers” as currently used are not soldiers at all; they have no real training; they don’t know what they’re doing at all. Even looking at pictures of them, they don’t even know how to hold their rifles properly (neither do most of the adult soldiers in these African civil wars.) We’re talking about a totally disorganized, backwater, rinky-dink collection of incompetents. There is _no comparison_ between these so-called “soldiers” and a society with actual strict, regimented, highly-supervised training like what we have in the U.S. military academies. ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2012, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-better-if-any-would-soldiers-trained-from-birth-be/609780/23 "2012-01-17T19:57:17Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Gurkhas generally do not train from childhood. > > Nitpick: nobody surrendered to remote drones in 1990. The first armed UAVs did not enter service until 1995. Nitpick: you’re not – what’s the technical word? – right. March 02, 1991 Baltimore Sun article –[Iraqi soldiers surrender to AAI’s drones](http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1991-03-02/business/1991061100_1_rpv-aai-drones) [Wikipedia article on USS Wisconsin](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Wisconsin_%28BB-64%29#Gulf_War_.28January.2FFebruary_1991.29) [PBS episode summary on drones (rpvs) in the Gulf War](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/gulf/weapons/drones.html) ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2012, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-better-if-any-would-soldiers-trained-from-birth-be/609780/24 "2012-01-17T20:10:45Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Gurkhas generally do not train from childhood. > > Nitpick: nobody surrendered to remote drones in 1990. The first armed UAVs did not enter service until 1995. Yes they did. The drones were not armed. They were waving white flags at the gunfire observation drone of a US battleship (the Iowa?) and possibly others. Ah, [here’s a cite.](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/gulf/weapons/drones.html) ---
**Author:** ![Quintas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/48db29/32.png) [@Quintas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quintas)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2012, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-better-if-any-would-soldiers-trained-from-birth-be/609780/25 "2012-01-17T20:54:50Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > What was that line? “In WWII the average age of the combat soldier was 26. In Vietnam it was 19”. Its from a song “19” from the 1980’s, and i’ve always doubted it. I think someone is comparing 2 sets of statistics. I think it’s more likely that the figure of “26” in WW2 was the average age of _all_ draftees into the U.S army. Many were drafted up to their late 30’s and I think were eligible up to age 42 at the time. There was a huge administative and logistical tail in the WW2 army that would have raised the average age. ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_Robson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gary_robson/32/3448_2.png) [@Gary\_Robson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Robson)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2012, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-better-if-any-would-soldiers-trained-from-birth-be/609780/26 "2012-01-17T21:36:18Z")
[moderating] Moved to IMHO. [/moderating] ---
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2012, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-better-if-any-would-soldiers-trained-from-birth-be/609780/27 "2012-01-17T22:00:12Z")
> [@slaphead](#): > > Or you may get the Hitler Youth, [Young Pioneers](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Pioneer_organization_of_the_Soviet_Union), or similar. I was a “Young Pioneer”. There was _very_ little military training. Maybe a day or so (“Zarnitsa” camp-outs) in 5 years. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2012, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-better-if-any-would-soldiers-trained-from-birth-be/609780/28 "2012-01-17T22:31:12Z")
> [@](#): > > Quoth **Fubaya** : > No need for a specialty, you could train them in teamwork, physical fitness, survival, weapons, military history etc until they are old enough to join the real military and learn a specialty. We already try to train all kids in teamwork and physical fitness, and many kids also end up getting training in survival, weapons, and military history. ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2012, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-better-if-any-would-soldiers-trained-from-birth-be/609780/29 "2012-01-17T22:32:36Z")
“from birth?” Like toilet-training a toddler, and if he has an accident he gets beat up by a French Foreign Legion chef-caporel? (wait - that’s not too different from what happens to a lot of kids already) ---
**Author:** ![Theophane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/77aa72/32.png) [@Theophane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Theophane)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2012, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-better-if-any-would-soldiers-trained-from-birth-be/609780/30 "2012-01-17T23:10:16Z")
> [@grude](#): > > To make sure the soldiers have more compatible genetics and constitutions we’ll probably need clones, and to keep them from questioning their lives or humanizing with the enemy we should give them short lives say oh four years? ;)😛 Have you seen the movie _Soldier_ with Kurt Russell? In that movie, Major Todd (Russell) was a product of something called the Adam Project. Pretty nightmarish stuff. Speaks to a society for whom war is not just a way of life but a reason for life. ---
**Author:** ![drastic\_quench](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e36b37/32.png) [@drastic\_quench](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drastic_quench)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2012, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-better-if-any-would-soldiers-trained-from-birth-be/609780/31 "2012-01-17T23:55:56Z")
It’s not worth the investment unless you can give them a mutant healing factor. ---
**Author:** ![ZPG\_Zealot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e47c2d/32.png) [@ZPG\_Zealot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZPG_Zealot)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2012, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-better-if-any-would-soldiers-trained-from-birth-be/609780/32 "2012-01-18T00:14:42Z")
Well, we do have private military academies below the university level some of which do take early adolescents (I have heard of at least one that takes 12 year olds). Has there ever been a study comparing their graduates vs. graduates of regular public schools as cadets in any of the service academies? ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2012, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-better-if-any-would-soldiers-trained-from-birth-be/609780/33 "2012-01-18T00:31:50Z")
> [@Posted by grude](#): > > To make sure the soldiers have more compatible genetics and constitutions we’ll probably need clones, and to keep them from questioning their lives or humanizing with the enemy we should give them short lives say oh four years? > [@Theophane](#): > > Have you seen the movie _Soldier_ with Kurt Russell? In that movie, Major Todd (Russell) was a product of something called the Adam Project. Pretty nightmarish stuff. Speaks to a society for whom war is not just a way of life but a reason for life. It sounds like \*\*grude \*\*is referencing the film Blade Runner. Supposedly Soldier takes place in the same universe. > [@ZPG Zealot](#): > > Well, we do have private military academies below the university level some of which do take early adolescents (I have heard of at least one that takes 12 year olds). Has there ever been a study comparing their graduates vs. graduates of regular public schools as cadets in any of the service academies? I’ve read somewhere that to join the upper ranks of the military, one typically has to graduate from one of the main military acadamies (West Point, Annapolis, etc). But that is probably due as much to institutional bias as actual performance. One question is what would be the advantage of such a soldier, trained from birth? We already train our soliders from a young age. As soon as they are old enough to buy an XBox360 or Playstation. We don’t need freakin Spartans anymore. “The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea. They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by small robots. And as you go forth today remember always your duty is clear: To build and maintain those robots.” -Rommelwood Acadamy commencement speech, The Simpsons ---
**Author:** ![Argent\_Towers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e8c25b/32.png) [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2012, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-better-if-any-would-soldiers-trained-from-birth-be/609780/34 "2012-01-18T03:02:08Z")
> [@Theophane](#): > > Have you seen the movie _Soldier_ with Kurt Russell? In that movie, Major Todd (Russell) was a product of something called the Adam Project. Pretty nightmarish stuff. Speaks to a society for whom war is not just a way of life but a reason for life. I’m pretty sure it’s possible to train elite soldiers without taking away their humanity and making them brutes. I am not convinced that an intensive military training program beginning at early childhood would result in people with sociopathic, brutal, or otherwise undesirable personalities. Nor would these trainees need to be completely kept apart from typical kids their age; they would have plenty of socialization with non-trained kids. ---
**Author:** ![Theophane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/77aa72/32.png) [@Theophane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Theophane)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2012, 3:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-better-if-any-would-soldiers-trained-from-birth-be/609780/35 "2012-01-18T03:07:30Z")
> [@Argent\_Towers](#): > > I’m pretty sure it’s possible to train elite soldiers without taking away their humanity and making them brutes. Excuse me, but isn’t the taking-away of humanity the \*real \*goal of military training in general? To turn young people into merciless robots? The fact that combat veterans come home with crippling PTSD speaks to the fact that they are, in fact, still human, and that the military failed to take away their humanity completely. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2012, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-better-if-any-would-soldiers-trained-from-birth-be/609780/36 "2012-01-18T03:33:47Z")
A lot of what soldiers do doesn’t involve fighting the way we did 400 years ago with barbaric hand to hand fighting. So I don’t know how it would really matter. I don’t know a lot about the military, but an ability to follow orders and work with machinery and technology seems a lot more important than being physically elite or barbaric. Unless you end up training the super soldiers to basically have the level of fitness and training seen in commando units. If you had thousands of thousands of them, them maybe. But you can’t run a military just on them. If anything the gov would be more willing to risk their lives since there is no political capital lost in dead soldiers. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2012, 3:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-better-if-any-would-soldiers-trained-from-birth-be/609780/37 "2012-01-18T03:41:24Z")
I think the advantages of training children to be soldiers from birth would be primarily in the areas of discipline, teamwork, conviction and esprit de corps. Think about the things your parents taught you that are a part of your very being; in many cases this is religion, ethical considerations, a tradition of charity, bad eating habits, etc… For most of us, these habits and teachings are VERY deeply ingrained and extraordinarily hard to shake or change. Now imagine soldiers who have been taught from birth to be loyal to their comrades, to follow orders, and to put the mission ahead of themselves. They’d be VERY hard to beat, assuming they got the proper training as children, and as adolescents/adults. It’s disicipline and morale that wins wars, not technology, and soldiers trained from an early age would have a distinct leg up. That’s why the Spartans, Mamluks, Janissaries, and other historical examples were so effective and feared. ---
**Author:** ![devilsknew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4da419/32.png) [@devilsknew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/devilsknew)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2012, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-better-if-any-would-soldiers-trained-from-birth-be/609780/38 "2012-01-18T03:45:44Z")
Well, we can look to the statistics of Ganglife or Thuglife in the U.S and worldwide as an equivalent binary to the modern equivlent of the militarization of youth and bringing them up in those structures. It’s quite an effective, directed, disciplined, culturized, and mobilized force of violence, to put it in sterilized terms. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2012, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-better-if-any-would-soldiers-trained-from-birth-be/609780/39 "2012-01-18T03:48:35Z")
Anyone remember the Jules Feiffer cartoon, Munro, who was drafted at a very young age? “I’m only four!” “I’M ONLY FOUR!” “It is the official policy of army not to draft draft men of four, ergo, you cannot be four, you only think you’re four. Go on sick call.” I hope I put this post in the right thread this time. ---
**Author:** ![Gagundathar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a183cd/32.png) [@Gagundathar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gagundathar)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2012, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-better-if-any-would-soldiers-trained-from-birth-be/609780/40 "2012-01-18T03:55:27Z")
> [@IntelliQ](#): > > [This](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120157/combined) 😃 > > PLOT "In the near future, as part of a new military recruitment and training program (“Project Adam”), a group of infants are selected at birth to be raised as soldiers. Undergoing extreme mental and physical training, they become virtual sociopaths, with no understanding of anything except military routine and war. " That movie actually wasn’t as horrible as I thought it would be. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-better-if-any-would-soldiers-trained-from-birth-be/609780.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-better-if-any-would-soldiers-trained-from-birth-be/609780.md?page=3)