The Air Force Academy has just announced a new training policy for this year, the Agenda for Change. This summer the old in-your-face yelling and drill instructor harassment was replaced by "positive reinforcement" for the new recruits.

Col. Debra Gray reports, "The main focus is to make sure they are getting counseling." The 1,000-plus incoming freshmen were introduced to new training sessions in human relations, gender roles, alcohol education, sexual assault, lawful and unlawful orders, and military law. Only specially vetted upper classmen will now be allowed to contact with the cadets, ending the ribald rivalry and rough testing by the senior classes over their junior platoons characteristic of a academy training from their founding.

Military training will all be quieter, gentler, more humane and sensitive.
While class spirit and loyalty to unit are still taught, National Public Radio reports the school is "hammering home" the necessity of reporting on fellow classmen. Col. Gray says, "Its tough, because we've always stressed through the ages here your loyalty to your class." The lesion is that reporting sexual misbehavior is more important.

Is it? Somehow these schools managed to produce warriors like Ulysses Grant, Robert E. Lee, George Patton, Curtis LeMay, Chester Nimitz, Dwight Eisenhower and Douglas MacArthur without positive reinforcement. They even turned out to be gentlemen, if that is not too old-fashioned a term. More importantly, every study of military effectiveness shows that the most important factor in success is unit loyalty and cohesion. While most warriors will not fight for abstract concepts like nation, they will sacrifice their very lives for their comrades-in-arms. Sensitivity training is unlikely to motivate soldiers to run at machine-gun nests.

Perhaps the days of the human fighter pilot are numbered and nonwarriors will be able to direct drones from the back lines. But until that day, warriors even from the Air Force Academy will remain in demand if the nation expects a victory in battle.

The good news is there still are two weeks at eh Academy where "warrior" training is allowed, at the end of basic training, including the shouting and harassment. Two weeks of real training is undoubtedly better than none at all but some may think American airmen should be warriors all the time.

Some cadets still think so. Regarding the charges of sexual assault that were the motivating force behind the new curriculum, academy senior Nicole Nwen told and interviewer: "I guess I question the validity of the accusations. And maybe we can help the girls out, as in if you just keep yourself out of the situation, you won't have to come up with stories to make yourself look better-because a lot of guys, their names are slandered, and I don't think its right."

The liberal NPR reporter attributed "this mind set" to "loyalty to their classmates." The job of the new rules is to change this mindset whether it is "right" or produces effective air officers or not. Ideology is to triumph military effectiveness. Presumably future Ms. Nwens will know better than to rally to their classmates under fire.

But wait. News has just leaked out of the Academy that, despite the new policy, two sexual assaults have taken place already on its campus in the first few days of this new term. Is it possible that placing the two sexes so close in such an intimate environment can override all of these nice positive personnel policies?

Former member of the Pentagon's Committee on Women in the Armed Services, Elaine Donnelly, has a more practical solution: single gender training. She is petitioning the president to stand up for a common-sense personnel policy of appropriately separating the sexes in military instruction, as a means to promote unit loyalty and real warrior training for our wonderful military forces.

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Donald Devine, former director Of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, is a columnist and a Washington-based policy consultant and a Vice Chairman for the American Conservative Union.