Air Force Nine Week Brainwash
Weapons, shields and armor are forged by blacksmiths repeatedly hammering molten pieces of raw steel; so are Airmen. Twenty seven weeks to sculpt Staff and Technical Sergeants into drill instructors. These men and women learn to walk, talk, stand, dress, and drill; then they learn how to command fifty plus personalities, from fifty different walks of life to do as they do. Drill instructors have eight weeks to shape civilians. By constant hammering; yelling, discipline, teaching, discipline, and more yelling, the drill instructor hammers away until Airmen are created.
The moment we download off the bus everything we do is wrong. The way we walked, the speed walked, the way we stood, the panting from doing fifty yard sprints with the luggage we arrived with all wrong. We were shaped through constant ridicule, yelling …show more content…
Fifty trainees have five minutes to “shit, shower and shave.” We don’t wake up, we spring out of bed. We learned to sleep in our physical training (PT) clothes in order to save time in the morning. Jump into our running shoes, grab the razor and toothbrush and file into the latrine. We secure our items and line up in order of marching number. We are lined up downstairs in a grid pattern with tallest members of the flight lined to the front and right. We sound off our flights and accountability, listen to the safety briefing, and sing the Air Force song. Once commanded we march over to the track and exercise pad. We run two miles followed by an hour or two of calisthenics. Taught to shoot for the top of physical standards; for men we must complete sixty seven push ups in sixty seconds, fifty eight sit-ups in the next sixty seconds and run the mile and a half in nine and half minutes or less. We are chiseled through PT and discipline till everyone performs to the standard and the further an Airman is from perfection the harder they’re