I’ve been wondering about for a while, but all the military people I know went in as enlisted personnal, not officers.
I was wonder if someone who has gone through it could tell me what it’s like, and if possible, how it differs fromt he Boot Camp enlisted people go through.
Haven’t gone through it, but I know a few things about it.
First of all, you have to be a college graduate to get in. No ifs, ands or buts. In addition to the “standard” boot camp experience of military indoctrination, physical training and mental conditioning, there is also an intense “management level” course of study, basically cramming all of the knowledge an officer is expected to pick up by either completing a four year ROTC course or a four year degree at his service academy into a six-week OCS course.
In the USAF, OCS is how most doctors, chaplains and dentists get their commissions - competition for OCS openings is intense, and many career fields are not represented there at all. I don’t know how things are lately, but when I was paying attention, it was rare for a pilot to come out of Air Force OCS - they graduated maybe one a year.
I’ve been through both, in the Air Force.
In boot camp, you don’t have any responsibility. You don’t what they tell you, when they tell you to. And they will tell you what to do for every minutte of the day.
In OTS (AF’s version of OTS), they give you about 6 hours of unscheduled time and 30 hours worth of stuff to take care of. You need to prioritize and cooperate and stay up past curfew to get it all done. The stress level is higher.
That was the main difference for me.
Also, officers get a little more training in leadership and management issues. Enlisted people get that later, in classes for NCOs (Non-commissioned Officer).
I went to Marine Corps OCS at Quantico, VA (Bulldog, Golf Company, Second Increment) in 1987. There are several “styles” of OCS, each with varying degrees of preparation. Mine was only six weeks at OCS, but I also had ROTC classes and drill every semester in college, and a month each summer on active training, for added training and evaluation.
In a nutshell, Basic Training (Boot Camp) breaks you down emotionally and psychologically, then builds you back up as a functioning member of a unit, and as a person you didn’t know you could be.
OCS is more of a screening process, weeding out those who don’t have what it takes to be a leader. There certainly is that aspect of breaking you down, but I don’t believe the emphasis is quite so much on that as it is on performing and making sound decisions under duress.
It is extremely physical, emphasis on endurance and upper body strength. Classes are not academically challenging, but they are hard to stay awake in, which is a challenge in and of itself.
In 1987, they did not give you enough time to do everything you had to do (at least for 90% of the Candidates), and you had to prioritize your uniform, rack, weapon, and person appearance for inspections. Lights out were at a given time, but most people stayed up afterwards working on something for the next day. That may have changed since then.
I lived in a squad bay just like they have on Parris Island (very similar, at least). I think we had less time to eat chow than enlisted Recruits get, but I am not sure. There was more of a push toward leadership at OCS than Boot Camp. I had many Enlisted Marines in my platoon (my rack mate was a Sergeant, guy next to me a Corporal, one guy was actually promoted to Gunnery Sergeant during OCS) so they talked about the differences they saw, but I have never been through Boot Camp, so all I know is second hand info.
Marine Corps OCS Instructors (Staff Sergeants, Gunnery Sergeants, and Sergeants Major) are all Drill Instructors with at least one tour on the drill field, so they are practiced and professional yellers and screamers, and as Drill Instructors, they are the cream of the crop.
Well, I went through the Air Force version about <ahem>15<ahem> years ago. A six-week course, accompanied by ROTC every semester in college.
There was a lot of the “get acclimated to the military” stuff at the beginning, which must be similar to boot camp. We rapidly progressed into the “Do these 5 things but you only have time for 2” phase.
Most of the field exercises we did focused on developing leadership and followership skills. Like any good training program, your weak points were exposed and worked on: ie someone who was afraid of leading was forced to lead a group. Likewise, someone who always wanted to lead was forced to follow. The methods changed (physical training, Leadership Reaction Courses, intramural athletics, administrative duties) but the goal was the same: learn to adapt and lead (or follow) in a stressful situation.
The academics were of course focused on our branch of the service, but as UncleBill said the hardest part was staying awake. I have no fond memories of “The Big Blue Bedroom”.
Inspections were non-stop, of course. Your room, your uniform, your flight (squad), tests, etc. The inspections are a very effective way of adding stress to the environment, and preparation for them can eat up enormous amounts of time. This gets back to the time management thing - sometimes you made a decision to take a hit on some inspection because something else was more important, and there was no way you could get both done.
To sum it up: get us tired (through PT and lack of sleep), add some stress, perform some task, debrief it, repeat, and don’t forget we’ve got a miltary to run here!
UncleBill and pilot141,
I thought if you went through the full ROTC program, you got commissioned on graduation. Am I just wrong on this, was OCS taken at some point in the ROTC process, or is there something I’m missing?
The Navy has commissioning programs that don’t require a college degree: LDO and CWO programs, for example.
Billdo: ROTC and OCS are different paths to a commission, along with other paths.
Billdo you are not missing anything. With ROTC you do get commissioned upon graduation, and my 6-week “OCS” experience was done between my sophomore and junior years of college. The Air Force wants everyone to go through some sort of experience like this before commissioning.
FWIW, they also used it as a pilot screening process: pilot slots were not awarded until after you had completed this training. Knowing this added some stress to an already stressful environment!
If you’re not in ROTC, Air Force OTS is 13 weeks long. Boot camp is about 6 weeks long.
In OTS, for the first six weeks you’re a lower classman, and the upper class has a lot of responsibility for your training (teaching you to march in formation, doing inspections, general babysitting). During the last six weeks, you become an upper classman, and have to do the same thing for the incoming class. It’s another opportunity to learn leadership. (Or to act like a sanctimonious jerk to fellow students because of your awesome seven weeks seniority. :mad: (Oops! I thought I’d gotten past all that… never mind.) )
Monty, I thought CWO’s differed in that they had a Warrant, and not a Commission. Subtle difference. Is that incorrect?
Billdo, as I recall, Navy ROTC folks do not go through any OCS, they do a First Class Cruise on a boat. Army ROTC called their training between Junior and Senior Year “Advanced Camp”. I don’t know if it is comparable to OCS or not. The Marines (at least in 1987) sent ALL Officer Candidates to OCS at Quantico, even the USNA guys for the first time that year that I am aware of. Before that they didn’t have to go. In my “Bulldog” course, we had Candidates from the MECEP (Marine Enlisted Commissioning Education Program) and NROTC. Other types of classes were the Platoon Leaders Course (PLC) which had either a one-shot 10 week course, or two 6 week course in two successive years. There was also the OCC, or Officers Candidate Course, which took guys “off the street”. Only the OCC Candidates had to already have a degree, all others were still in college.
I taught at Army OCS over twenty years ago (sigh). A tough job.
OCS is conducted at Fort Benning, Georgia. Some Candidates are “College Ops,” that is they are straight out of basic training. Others are “Prior Service,” long-serving soldiers who are selected for officer training. They go through side by side.
The training is conducted over at Infantry Hall, right across the street and pretty generic stuff. Mostly the same classes given to the Infantry Officer BC.
That is secondary. Back at the barracks it is the job of the Tac Officers (First Lieutenant “Drill Sergeants”) to keep you busy and stressed. The idea is to make you quit.
Obstacle courses on weekends, road marches, inspections all kinds of chickenshit. Few people enjoy it.
If you do not freak out you should do fine.
Any more recent experiences?
"I went to Marine Corps OCS at Quantico, VA (Bulldog, Golf Company, Second Increment) in 1987. "
Damn, just missed you. I was a civilian cook at Quanitco for OCS during the summer of 1985. I tried to do right by you guys, really I did.
I went thru both in the Navy, but it was so long ago, my experiences are probably not relevant to the military today.
Recruit Training in 1973 - we were the last group of women’s companies that weren’t organized in platoons and never carried weapons or went to the obstacle course or gas chamber training. The most challenging part of our training was passing the swim test - tread water 5 minutes, then swim 50 yards. No biggie for me since I’d been around water all my life, but many of my fellow recruits had a hard time with this. I think we were still supposed to be learning to be a team, but I remember way too many things we just did on our own.
OCS - 1978 - I was part of 4 companies of former enlisted folks. Our OCS was abbreviated, since we didn’t need the “introduction to life in the military” part. My most vivid memories are of the Military Justice classes - one would come out thinking you would spend most of your time writing up the enlisted folk in your division and going to courts martial. Very skewed picture, to my mind and my experience. I guess we were supposed to be learning to be leaders, but that lesson didn’t rub off on me. Guess I’m not a very good leader. Mostly, OCS was a summer vacation in Newport, RI. Heck - if we weren’t on duty, we could go off base. Yeah - we were allowed to have our cars.
Approximately half my company got salmonella from the chow hall (yes, my half of the company). We could have used you in '87. It made SULE II a bit more challenging than it would have been normally.
UncleBill, AFAIK these days all CWOs get commissions. The remaining straight-warrant appointment is WO1 (which the Navy does not use).
Billdo as you may have noticed, there are different sequences of “OCS” for each service depending on whether they get you straight off the street or have prior enlisted service or are doing the course as part of your ROTC. Plus, traditionally the entry course given for the direct-commissioned staff professionals (physicians, lawyers, chaplains, etc.) has been an abbreviated “lite” version of OCS/OTS (dunno how that may have changed lately). Back when I was in the Army, it was not uncommon to have personnel officers keeping an eye on the high-performing recruits in Basic or AIT, and offer them the chance to apply to OCS straight away.
Billdo: There’s a bit of a difference. An Army Warrant Officer is a Warrant Officer. The Navy’s Warrants are Commissioned. It’s a bit silly if you aske me since they’re the same paygrades! And a college degree is not required for all commissioning programs.
One can check www.bupers.navy.mil & click on Instructions and then search the instructions (secnav & opnav) for the different programs involved.
I don’t know about the rest of the services, but USMC OCS, unlike boot camp, attempts to teach them (usually with negative results) the difference between the big fork and little fork during dinner 
Actually, “Salmon Ella” was a fish dish we used to cook up on a regular basis.
We all had shirts that said
Mess Staff
Death from Within
Turbo Dog, OCS does no such thing. The course of instruction is from 6 to 12 weeks total. Fork and Knife school (TBS) is SIX MONTHS long. You didn’t honestly think it would only take a few weeks to teach that etykit thing, did you?