‘Make BASIC Great Again’: Hegseth looks to return drill sergeant ‘shark attacks’ to basic training

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recently directed the military to reverse a ban on “bay tossing” for recruits and is considering bringing back “shark attacks” by drill sergeants during basic training – part of an effort to “Make BASIC Great Again,” defense sources tell Just the News.

A military commander for one Army training unit issued an order in late July banning the practice of “bay tossing” – in which drill sergeants are allowed to overturn mattresses or bunks of military trainees, toss the contents of wall lockers or foot lockers onto the floor, knock over trash cans and otherwise cause a mess that recruits need to clean up. But Hegseth intervened and reversed the ban earlier this month, a Pentagon official told Just the News.

“Bottom Line: Make BASIC Great Again,” the Pentagon source said. “Tossing bunks is back. Drill sergeants are back. Getting cursed at is back.”

A defense official also told Just the News that the secretary of defense is further looking to bring back the practice of drill sergeant “shark attacks” – the longtime Army practice, largely abandoned just a few years ago, wherein fresh military recruits entering basic training faced a loud and chaotic reception from shouting drill sergeants in an effort to instill discipline and see how recruits dealt with the pressure.

Col. C.J. Hallows, the commander of the 197th Infantry Brigade at Fort Benning, in Georgia, had issued an order on July 30 wherein he banned “bay tossing” for the Army unit. 

The memo from the colonel banning the practice – and the memo from him reversing his own directive a few days later – were first shared by the popular social media account “U.S Army WTF! Moments,” which often shares news and commentary about the U.S. military.

The memo last month from Hallows, which cited regulations from U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), said that “our mission is to provide competent, capable, well-trained Soldiers of good character, ready to fight and win our nation’s wars” and that “there is no greater obstacle to the effectiveness of the IMT [initial military training] environment than the improper treatment of Trainees.” 

Hallows said that “abuse of Trainees undermines the trust of the American public by violating Army Values, disrupting military order and discipline, and destroying a positive training environment.”

“The practice of bay ‘tossing’ is strictly prohibited,” the directive from the Army colonel stated. “Drill Sergeants will not ‘toss’ the bay to include flipping mattresses, knocking over wall lockers, touching and/or damaging Trainee personal items or equipment. Drill Sergeants will not use bay ‘tossing’ for any reason to include methods of corrective action.”

TRADOC states that its mission is to train, educate, develop, and build the Army and to establish standards for it while driving improvement. TRADOC says that it “leads change to ensure the Army can deter, fight, and win on any battlefield now and into the future.” 

Hallows had cited a 2022 update from the U.S. Army to TRADOC regulations on the “TRADOC Trainee Abuse Prevention Program.”

Hallows soon issued a memo on Aug 3, however, which said that his prior memo “is RESCINDED.” The image shared by the Army-themed social media account also included a purported message from a command sergeant major, who said, “Information in that policy is already in line with Army regs, policies, and directives regarding good order and discipline, and treating Soldiers with dignity and respect. Bluff [Bottom Line Up Front], bay tossing is still not a practice that will go unpunished. Doing so still violates other directives.”

The Pentagon official told Just the News that Hegseth reversed this memo from the Army colonel “in part because the people we want to recruit want to be challenged, and the tougher the training the more cohesive the units are.” 

The official said, “We don’t want to have training that is designed to breed undisciplined people and recruit those that gravitate to wanting to be wimps.”

Jennifer S. Gunn, the director of public affairs at the Maneuver Center of Excellence and Fort Benning, told Just the News that “I can confirm the memos are authentic and were the result of a recent review by the brigade command team.”

 “During a recent training cycle, an instance of corrective action violated regulation and resulted in damage to both government and trainee personal property. The event drove the brigade to consider a change in how these actions are executed,” Gunn said. “After additional review, the command team determined the behavior (the property damage) was covered in existing policy regarding good order and discipline and treating Soldiers with dignity and respect and they rescinded the memo.”

She also said that “corrective action” is defined in TRADOC regulations “as nonpunitive action used as a motivational tool by authorized cadre members to address deficiencies in performance or conduct and to reinforce required standards.” 

The military spokesperson said that “within the training environment, corrective action is used to enforce conformity with cleanliness standards in the barracks” and that “failure to meet standards collectively produces negative outcomes both in training and on the battlefield not only for an individual but for the unit.”

“Drill sergeants are authorized to conduct corrective action, however, they are not allowed to take corrective action that leads to property destruction, as was the case in this instance,” the Fort Benning spokesperson told Just the News.

A defense official also told Just the News that Hegseth “is also looking to bring back shark attacks.”

The U.S. Army released a news article in September 2020 about the ending of “shark attacks” at the U.S. Army Infantry School at Fort Benning.

“Generations of Army veterans are familiar with what's known as the ‘shark attack,’ that shock-and-awe pile-on of shouting and in-your-face personalized commentary visited by bull-necked drill sergeants on new recruits fresh off the bus for basic training,” the Army article said. “But as far as the U.S. Army Infantry School here is concerned, the shark attack has had its day.”

The Army article from 2020 said that “the Infantry School trains Soldiers for service in the Infantry branch, and has come up with an entirely new approach to the first formative hours of turning civilians into proud members of the Infantry force.” 

The Army called the new approach "The First 100 Yards" and said “it's done on the first day the recruits report to the units they've been assigned to for Infantry One-Station Unit Training.”

“The First 100 Yards uses a series of training activities to instill – on the first impressionable day of a recruit's training – the Infantry's core warrior values and attitudes, and to foster pride in the Infantry, partly by drawing on its battlefield history,” the Army article said in 2020.

Command Sgt. Maj. Robert Fortenberry, who was then the top enlisted soldier at the School of Infantry at Fort Benning but who retired in 2021, attacked the “shark attack” practice in 2020.

"This activity … does not instill the spirit of the infantry; it betrays the innate trust between teammates and, worse, betrays the crucial bond of trust with our leaders,” Fortenberry told the National Guard Association of the United States in September 2020. “That's not how we want soldiers to view our NCOs [non-commissioned officers].”

The Defense Visual Information Distribution Service (DVIDS), run by the U.S. military, shared a photo in November touting what the Army had replaced “shark attacks” with.

“An image from a recent Army video shows recruits starting training here to become cavalry scouts taking part in an event designed to instill teamwork and attention to detail on their first day of training,” DVIDS said. “Called the ‘Thunder Run,’ the event replaces the traditional ‘shark attack’ in which drill sergeants swarmed newly arrived trainees and shouted orders and belittling comments to gain immediate compliance.”

A news article by the Army in November 2020 said that TRADOC “later called for training centers Army-wide to discontinue the shark attack and adopt their own versions of The First 100 Yards, tailored to the history and other specifics of the military career fields they train recruits for.”

Hegseth’s move to reverse a ban on “bay tossing” and to bring back “shark attacks” is not surprising, given the views he laid out in his 2024 book, The War on Warriors.

“To be blunt, the real military doesn’t care about your pronouns, or any other customized communication concerns you may have. Your squad and company couldn’t care less about these things,” Hegseth wrote. “The offenses that our combat soldiers experience every day on the battlefield are the true and critical test of human endurance.”

He also said: “As each Soldier, Sailor, and Marine is put through the test of boot camp, many are demeaned and criticized by drill sergeants to toughen them up and prepare them for things that are much more damaging to the body, mind, and spirit. 

"If a soldier falls apart because they are called by the wrong pronoun, then they are not mentally strong enough to endure the rigors of combat. If they are not, then they have no business being in a combat-ready military force. You cannot care about an individual when the collective – the interlocking parts of a smooth, steady, yet complex military machine – is in the balance.”