Last night on the news was a young man of 19 years of age off to do his first tour in Afganistan as the boards military expert can you tell me how long has this brave young man been training for to protect and serve over there.
Because if its 1 year or so why is it taken 6.7.8. years to train the Afgan soldiers can you enlighten me please.

Firstly, theres more than me on this board who have served. Pooliekev, Bresslaw, Blue Monkey and Snowy to mention but a few.

Onto your question;

A typical infantryman does a 24 week basic training course after which he is eligible to be sent off to A/Stan. More specialist roles such as Royal Marines / Paras are a little longer 30 & 26, weeks respectively. Other roles; logistics / Signal etc do a shorter infantry course but have trade training to follow. So basically six months from walking through the gate to being eligible for active service.

The second part of your question regarding the 6 - 8 years. I can only assume that they mean it will take that long to train enough of them and get them working cohesively rather than 6 years to train an individual.

Thank you.