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Comment by kjs3 | Hacker News Reader

The Navy is good at training; I assume the other branches are as well. The Navy took both of my grandfathers, one urban, one rural, both very poor, both of very modest education but apparent potential, and in months turned them into electricians. They both made careers of being in the Navy based on that training, one as an electrician and one moving into logistics, both becoming Master Chiefs. They had the 1940s versions of these books and I learned a lot from them.

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>I assume the other branches are as well.

I have got some rather sad news for you. Joking aside, I was in the Army for 16 years. Almost all of the technical training is complete garbage. In fact, the best part of my training in Satellite Communications (at the time one of the longest and supposedly "toughest" technical courses the Army had) used the Navy's Electronics program from OP. We only used about 20 pages worth of it and that was our introduction to electronics.

The only technical training I did that was actually pretty good was run by the National Guard in Utah. It was a basic Information Technology course. The instructors were all really into what they were doing and had professional careers outside the Army before they volunteered to teach full time.

Things have changed since you were in. The Army leads the other branches in infosec training now. Other branches send their people to gordon for it.

I got out a couple of years ago. Their Cyber program is much better than most of their other technical training but it was heavily influenced by what other branches were doing. Maybe they changed it but another thing is that their cyber training was mostly SANS courses and the joint course someone else already mentioned. So it was good because it was some of the better training offered by the private sector.

I have met some ex NSA guys from the Army that were amazing. Not really sure what kind of training they got. Their experience isn't really a good representation of IT as a whole in the Army.

There are exceptions to everything. There are small teams/groups within every branch of the military doing really cool stuff. Some of them have many more opportunities for excellent training that the average person in a similar role in the Army will have.

>Other branches send their people to gordon for it.

Also, a lot of the technical schools at Gordon had instructors from the Air Force and the Navy teaching alongside the Army.

I don't think this is true. The gold standard of entry-level infosec training in the US military is the Joint Cyber Analysis Course in Pensacola, FL, taught by the Navy.

So you had a bad experience. Seems specific to you, or maybe the Army.

I was an Avionics Tech in the USN. I remember my initial electronics training being very accelerated and intense. I still remember much of it and use it from time to time even after not using it for many years - so I guess it worked!

I was an electronics technician in the Navy and concur with their excellent training. The NEETS series is great, I have the entire set in hard copy and still refer to them from time to time.

As a guy that spent a long time in the Army doing telecommunications we interacted with electronics techs in the Navy and they were almost always really really knowledgeable. We didn't have the same level of confidence when talking to our counterparts in other Army units.

I find this curious as a civilian exposed to PQS and gundecking

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