No one ever asked for your opinion in Boot Camp — it’s a place where the rules are put down and you follow them, period. But now it’s the leadership at Great Lakes who are asking active-duty sailors have a chance to weigh in with their fixes. who hit the fleet in the past decade to give them feedback on their training — now that they have some salty perspective to give.

Enter "Recruit Reboot," an online game designed for sailors who've graduated from Recruit Training Command Great Lakes, Ill. in the past decade to offer their feedback. They do this via playing cards used on the anonymous brainstorming forum, known as a Massive Multiplayer Online War Game Leveraging the Internet.

"Our training programs must keep pace with what is going on in the fleet," said Rear Adm. Stephen C. Evans, who commands Naval Service Training Command, overseeing all accessions training in the Navy except for the Naval Academy.

Evans said the online technology allows NSTC to poll fleet sailors about their boot camp experience in a way they haven't had before.  spoke April 20 to Navy Times saying that before now, RTC and his command didn’t have a way to poll deckplate sailors about their training, once they had come fleet context. 

What they're using is an internet wargaming technology platform through with sailors play the interactive "Recruit Reboot" game online.

The technology was developed by the Naval Postgraduate School and is called the "Massive Multiplayer Online War Game Leveraging the Internet."

Though called a war-gaming platform, it wasn’t designed to develop strategy or tactics. Instead, Naval Postgraduate School designed it to "war game" in another way — buy helping the service solicit ideas to solve complex problems or as in this case get feedback about training programs. 

Evans said last year, the same format was used to help officer accessions planners rework the "core competencies" that young ensigns need to come out of accessions training with, regardless of whether they came from the Academy, Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps or Officer Candidate School.

Players provide their ideas through playing "idea cards." The ideas must come from what they learned about six areas of training — militarization, damage control, seamanship, personal financial development, Navy policy, and watch standing. Points are earned when sailors play the cards they develop and when they comment on other players' cards.

While the points add up, Training officials are tracking the ideas communicated on the cards and in the comments made by others. But, Evans stressed, the submissions are entirely anonymous.

"On the first day alone, 277 players from all corners of the Navy created 1,121 idea cards and the numbers continue to grow as the days go by," said Lt. Sean Brophy, spokesman for NSTC.

You can sign up to join the game on this website, which goes until May 13.  in the fun and feedback, go to http://mmowgli.nps.edu/recruitreboot/ to sign up and and play the game until May 13.

The best feedback so far, Brophy said, has been on the topics of live fire weapons training, nutrition, financial planning, and military marching drill, though he did not have more details. 

Another topic has been the In addition, training already being done -- such as the Battlestations 21 trainer, which every sailor must complete before leaving boot camp was getting high marks from those giving feed back. 

One card put put out to encouraged feedback asked about the the BST-21 experience discussion and if it added to the recruit experience, Brophy said. 

"From there, players clicked on it to discuss their thoughts on BST-21," he said. "Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive."

One example Brophy provided: "This was the best real life training that stuck with me by far!" and " Of course you need to keep this! It definitely incorporates the main concepts of boot camp & tests you in more than one way."

About Mark D. Faram

Mark D. Faram is a former reporter for Navy Times. He was a senior writer covering personnel, cultural and historical issues. A nine-year active duty Navy veteran, Faram served from 1978 to 1987 as a Navy Diver and photographer.

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