As the 135th MMA Corps of Cadets completes the first days of training for the year and begins academic classes on Monday, I want to share a message that will soon be sent out in our Eagle magazine. I want to remind you, our alumni and friends, of the strength of our conviction and belief in the education we provide for our cadets. As always, thank you for your support of the Academy and our young men. Together, we make a difference in their lives!
The Purpose of Military Drill and Ceremonies
The benefits of drill and ceremonies (D&C) are numerous and I won’t restate them here but I will use a couple of them to make my point about the purpose and to see how we are generally failing to use drill and ceremonies for its intended purpose and thus unable to reap the benefits.
“Every Honor Guard Invents Their Own Standards”
Quoted from an AFROTC cadet. A cadet who is going to commission into the USAF/USSF. The quote was relayed to me. If the above statement is true, then writing AFMAN 34-515 (the USAF Honor Guard manual) culminated in several years of wasted of time and abuse of resources. Standards are written and applied to uphold laws and regulations and avoid …
What Makes a “Military Uniform”?
Military uniforms grew out of fashion preferred by French Nobility of the 17th Century
The Argument From AFPAM 34-1203
What argument would this be? It’s about using the other two service manuals. It gets a bit complicated, but bear with me as we go through why the AFPAM has so little information and what to do about it. We need to understand that all three drill and ceremonies manuals are lacking in certain aspects and using ones best judgment …
The Firing Party Timing
Forensic Experts Galore What you hear and what you see can be two different things. A firing party fires so quickly that it can be impossible to hear that a single shot fired by all seven team members is not at exactly the same split second. We hear perfection, but a photo or still from a video can show a …
The DrillMaster Response
While a massive majority of readers understand exactly what I do, there a tiny few who feel that I need to be told how to do what I do. However, those few are very few and are disrespectful, arrogant, selfish, prideful, vulgar, and many times childish.
The AF D&C Manual Right Face in Marching is Wrong
While initially reading through AFMAN 36-2201, you may skim across the information and accept it at face value, however, if you look deeper into the Face as in Marching, you will see there is a problem.
NJROTC Cadets and Commands
The MCO was written for a purpose, just like all other military manuals. We need to use it as it was intended.
“Happy” Memorial Day
DrillMaster explains a little bit about the idea of Memorial Day.