How to become a U.S. Army TANKER? | Army Lethality

At the end of the day, if you want to be part of something greater than yourself, if you want to be part of something that matters, learning how to work as a team, this is the place to be. It's a big learning curve for soldiers coming in that have never left home, right? First time away from home, being in a different state, away from your family, away from your friends, not having that connection, and that takes time to adjust. And so that would probably be the biggest personal challenge. I remember myself personally had that challenge of being married at a very young age, but I would tell you at the end, though, it's 100% worth it. Once you walk across the field and you get to graduate, all that hard work you put into it, it's very self-rewarding. This job as a tanker is wild. I got bored of sitting behind a desk. So what inspired me to become a tanker in the United States Army is the fact that I am huge on mechanics and big vehicles. As you can see, this is a huge machine here. Takes a lot of mechanics. That and my personal beliefs and my personal values, I am a huge advocate for teamwork. I joined the U.S. Army and became a 19 kilo to seek adventure and to be able to experience things that I wouldn't expect on the civilian side. With the benefits and everything that this offers, I'm able to take my bachelor's degree and use it to become a better leader and be able to serve this country while being able to provide for my family. My grandfather was in the armed forces for a good 20 years, and he actually did a bunch of mechanical work for tanks, and he never actually saw combat. So I wanted to actually be in the tank and not only finish what he started, but for me, being a tanker, it tells me that I'm doing something. I'm part of the 1% of men and women who are going out to fight for this country. Being a tanker has changed my life. Being in the military has changed my life. I've been on my own since I was 16 years old. There was a lot of struggle associated with that. So my personal Army journey, to be able to go from that to being a field grade officer in the service of my nation, and being able to see true impact and the fruits of your labor, this is where you want to be. It's not about the tanks. It's not about the Bradleys. It's about the people. As I look through social media, as I look through what retired tankers say, every one of them will put up posts that say things like, the best job I ever had. They don't miss the tank. What they miss is the people they are around. And quite honestly, when I leave, that's what I'm going to miss. You know, in one tank, your crew consists of four people. You got your tank commander, gunner, loader, and driver. During training, you become very close. That's where you get that camaraderie. You work together every day. If you go to the field, you're with each other 24-7. If you go on deployment, same thing, right? So that brotherhood and that camaraderie that you would get from that is something different. Because a tank never operates by itself. It usually has two or more working together. So I always find the best qualities is to know not only your tank, but your crew members, as well as your entire platoon, so that way everyone works together more effectively to make a more effective tank platoon. You know, everybody has different opinions, different ways, different outbringings, so you just got to find your crew's niche and how you guys can work together as a team. That's always the biggest challenge, because you have four people from four different areas, grew up four different ways. They all have four different minds, and you just need to find a way to make those four minds one. Inside the tank, you have four crew members. You have the driver, the loader, the gunner, and then you have the tank commander, vehicle commander. They have to work cohesively as a crew to actually make that tank operate. Nothing on the tank can be done by yourself. You'll never be on a tank alone. So it's very vital for you to know how to work as a team and a good team player. If I could speak to the sheer power of a tank round, it's literally like thunder and lightning. As a 19 kilo, you're going through basic training, AIT, what we call one-station unit training here. Armor O sits fundamentally broken down into four phases. The first three phases are known as red, white, and blue. That's where we take a citizen off the streets of the United States, and we bring them in, and we show them what it's like to be a soldier in the United States Army. So in basic combat training, we take civilians and we turn them into soldiers. We teach them how to march, how to wear the uniform, how to operate a rifle and a M17 pistol, and just basic soldiering skills. Red phase, we go through the basics of foot marches. We go through drill and ceremony. Let's go. Stack the bags, hold the line. Stack the bags, hold the line. You're being taught how to be a soldier, you know, from marching, going from point A to point B. During white phase, that's where we introduce them to the basic skills that any soldier needs to learn to survive on the battlefield. Land navigation, combatives, how to talk on a radio. That's what they learn during white phase. And then we progress on to what we call the black phase. That's the second half of this one station unit training that we do here, and that's where we bring them on to the vehicles. Once you get to your line unit, you get assigned to a crew, you train with that crew, and shoot a gunnery, and you guys qualify together. That's when you, that's when you become a tanker. My name is Dominic Williams. I'm a specialist right now. I'm in AIT training as a 19-kilo. My first name is Adan, and I am a PV-2 in the United States Army. My name is Jacob House, and I am a PV-2. We work our way into black phase, where we start learning about tanks, doing things like VID, learning other countries' vehicles, making sure that we don't accidentally shoot friendlies, making sure that we can positively identify those. On the AIT side for OSUT, we have a black and gold phase. They learn all the basic tasks to be a tanker. Operating the driver station, operating the loader station, operating the gunner station, all the steps it takes to get those stations ready. I think one of the major evolutions in terms of training that we've made, and the ability to train armor formations, the introduction of simulations into the force. So the trainees we have today are from Fury Company 181. We are the first step in what is considered their AIT, the second half of their training of their technical job. They have to learn how to drive the tank here before they go drive the real-life M1A2. Over time, what happened is it became more and more expensive to train these type of operations in a live environment. The introduction of simulations allows us to train them to a high level, and then go out in the field and refine that training over time. They understand how to properly employ the equipment on the battlefield, and if something goes wrong, they know how to troubleshoot it, they know how to fix it. We teach the trainees how to conduct maintenance on the tank, we teach them how to drive the tank, and then the big one is we teach them how to shoot and reload the main gun on the tank. So they're in black phase right now, which means they have about four weeks left before they graduate. So just somewhere around three to four weeks left. They have gold phase left, which is a little bit kind of a more formal kind of ending of basic training, but right now gunnery is like the big thing that they've been waiting on, the big culminating event that they've been waiting on. They get to shoot tanks for the first time. Next week we're going to be in gold phase. We are about to be a real tanker. You finally get to shoot the tanks, which is super cool. Loading those main gun rounds, I love seeing that breech just go back forward, staying up, and you hear on the way and just hear that cane just boom. If you want to be part of something greater than yourself, if you want to be part of something that matters, learning how to work as a team, this is the place to be. I won't take you back to the invention of the bow and arrow. We started our lineage with cavalry forces, the ability of mobile, well-armed, fast soldiers on the battlefield that can move quickly and go destroy our enemies. Tank development throughout history, it follows along the same lines that development had occurred before the tank, which is the whole idea that mankind has always looked at combat power on the battlefield that can move faster than the infantryman. Whether it's man and horseback on the Mongolian steppes, whether it's a Syrian chariot, English medieval knight, there's always been the idea of something that can move faster, farther, hits harder than any other man or weapon system on the battlefield. In World War I, we encountered what we called no man's land. It was literally a killing field that nobody could figure out how to get across. Someone had the idea of, well, what if we tried to outfit a mechanized vehicle using the internal combustion engine that was well enough protected that worked in concert with our infantry on the ground to get across that field and break that stalemate. That's how the tank came to be in World War I, and since then it's just continued to evolve. The evolution of the tank has always been about the big three features of protection, usually considered armor, but these days that can mean other technologies. Mobility, how fast can the vehicle go, but how far can it go and where can it go, and also the firepower it brings. The M1 Abrams, my book any day of the week, is the pinnacle of that. The perfect combination of mobility, firepower, protection. Few vehicles are like it in the world. But will it be five, ten years from now? And so the work done by the tactics people, the doctrine folks, the research folks here at Fort Moore, is all to look at the future, and I can tell you that stuff is already happening. They're already looking at how can we make Abrams tank better, and maybe it won't be an Abrams tank. Maybe it'll be something else, and so we'll just have to see. Wait and find out. No spoilers here. That's it. That's the end of the video, but don't worry. There's more just like it. Do yourself a favor. Hit that subscribe button below to watch more U.S. Army content, and when you're done with that, drop and give me 20.