Note that many military branches/units are fond of spreading exaggerated rumors about their training, because this makes them seem more badass to peers and enemies. So read the following entries with a grain of salt.
- Sparta, is of course the Trope Namer and the Trope Maker. The training for their male citizen-caste (starting from age 7, when they got separated from their family) consisted of not getting enough food, getting beaten for stealing food and getting caught, possibly getting beaten for disobedience to their older peers, and once a year getting ritually beaten for no reason whatsoever... and it topped off with murdering a defenseless slave at night. Real military training wasn't part of the deal.
- Thucydides describes the real Sparta (as opposed to Plato's idealized Sparta) as a thoroughly corrupt military dictatorship in his History of the Peloponnesian War, so perhaps The Spartan Way is more or less a zig-zag of this trope.
- An Unbuilt Trope, after a fashion, since the goal of the Spartan agoge was to produce good citizens, rather than skilled soldiers (though it did realistically aid their usefulness as hoplites). Spartans only trained for battle on campaign after all allied contingents joined the army, so all warriors would learn the same skills. The Spartans were truly not soldiers as we would recognize - their day-to-day occupation was not engaging in or training for war, there's little evidence of them having effective weapons practice, and the centuries-long preconception of them being effective warriors may have been more Sparta trying to live up to the notion that they were post-Battle of Thermopylae with their victories thereafter being more attributable to the Spartans using basic formation drill and platoon-level units which made them far more wieldy on a tactical level than their adversaries.
- The Spartans continued their traditions long after time had rendered their tactics obsolete and the city militarily irrelevant. Wealthy Romans considered it a quaint tourist attraction.
- In the long term, even before the tactics themselves were obsolete, the system was hurting them badly. The regimented lifestyle and men not marrying until relatively late in life meant that they were permanently in a state of population decline; by the time they were conquered, they didn't have the men to field a real army. It also hurt that because of the rigid social rules they had, no one could join the Spartiate caste, but you could lose your status and that of your children, thus making the number of possible Spartan soldiers dwindle with time.
- There's also ample evidence to suggest that much of their training wasn't even meant for warfare, but for keeping their slaves in line and putting down potential revolts.
- Sparta has given rise to various expressions in the Japanese language that means "tough, harsh training" (e.g., スパルタ教育 "Spartanesque schooling/education"). Some poor translators might fail to account for that and that just literally translates it to "spartan", which in English merely means "lacking comfort".
- Scholars have noted that Sparta eventually suffered Crippling Overspecialization; they lived for warfare and nothing else, so it was a Dystopia for everyone who wasn't a free citizen — their slaves were known to be harshly abused even by the standards of other Greeks. Their logistics were also terrible, since logistics means working on food and transportation instead of the literal act of warfare, and despite being focused solely on warfare, they weren't known to be very adaptable compared to neighboring city-states.
- Ancient Roman military training, that included the soldiers exercising with an equipment twice as heavy as the actual weapons and armor and the trainers beating their soldiers with vine sticks was so harsh that the casualty rate was actually higher than during actual combat (hence the vine sticks: they caused harsh pain but didn't cause actual damage), leading to the motto "Bloody training and bloodless battles." And then we had the infamous centurion Lucilius nicknamed Cedo Alteram ("fetch me another"), a Drill Sergeant Nasty for Roman standards that got his nickname due his habit of beating the soldiers so hard he'd break the elastic vine stick and then shout his assistant to fetch him another stick so he could continue the beating (the soldiers killed him in his sleep). And of course, who could not forget the Roman military tradition of Decimation: If the soldiers performed poorly, committed desertion or had too little discipline, they were divided into groups of ten, and a drawing of lots would decide which one would be killed by the other nine.
- The German Empire in general. During its burgeoning ascension from being the Kingdom of Prussia (a descendant of The Teutonic Knights) it approached a militarist policy, especially during the reign of Otto von Bismarck and his policy of "blood and iron." The tradition of "Prussian Virtues" continued well into World War I. The Wehrmacht, the armed forces of the Third Reich, embraced this as well. During basic training 1% fatal casualties were expected and even encouraged, and that's just for the casual soldiers, hence contributing to their reputation of being a Social Darwinist Elite Army which was the most advanced and sophisticated military of the time. They had the strongest soldiers and the most intelligent generals (even one of them, Erwin Rommel, gave birth to the trope Magnificent Bastard). Even more with the Schutzstaffel, who are basically crazy fanatical soldiers trained brutally to show no mercy, enhanced with biological medication and drugs, brainwashed into believing the supremacy of the Aryan Race, and who only obey no one but the Führer himself.
- Within the current American system, there are a mix of semi-elite units like the US Marines or airborne and the truly elite units like Rangers, US Navy SEALS, Army Special Forces, Air Force Special Operations, and Marine Force Reconnaissance/Raiders. There is also the odd case of SERE School that is given to all special operations units as well as those like pilots who might find themselves trapped behind enemy lines, though pilots have an easier version of the course.
- It is also worth noting what exactly the harsh training is for, both for America and other nations. The reason is not to be punishing just for the sake of being punishing, it is to increase stress levels to the point at which people think they should break to show that they won't. Sleep deprivation and reduced rations are some of the best ways of doing this, and in combat you might not always have a chance to sleep or eat even when your body is telling you that you should. Outside of specialized training in resistance, it is also notable that none of these courses have direct physical punishment. Most of the time the elite status comes more from high standards rather than does punishing training.
- U.S. Marine boot camp makes all trainees pass through ordeals that would compare to special operations training in some other countries. It culminates in a three-day ordeal called "The Crucible," which tests all the basic skills they were supposed to have learned up to that point. This three-day ordeal is marked by a lot of physical exercises, team-based objectives, and testing of every skill in basic training, all on four hours of sleep. (Not four hours of sleep a night — four hours of sleep total.)
- Airborne and Air Assault School are sometimes considered elite training, but they are actually an aversion of the trope. Both schools are actually about intense drilling of necessary skills for the role of jumping out of airplanes or rappelling out of helicopters. There is some additional physical training added on to them, but airborne and air assault units are semi-elite because of their regular training and unique roles in which they have less conventional support, not because of harsher than normal training. In truth airborne units are not all that effective anyway
, they are essentially just glorified light infantry with the ability to jump out of planes as an option. - Army Ranger School is an interesting example because most US Army officers and NC Os especially in infantry units are all but required to go through it as a prerequisite for getting promoted beyond a certain point. it is technically a leadership school. Not everyone who goes through Ranger School is becomes a Ranger, as the Rangers are a fairly small unit, and starting Rangers that are not yet sergeants didn't necessarily go through Ranger School.
- An interesting difference in philosophy can be found in the difference between US Army Ranger School and US Army Special Forces Selection. While most go to Ranger School first, the handful that successfully go through Special Forces Selection first never fail out of Ranger School, while the inverse is fairly common. The general description is that Ranger School is more punishing, with things like reduced rations and sleep deprivation, but Special Forces selection is just harder to get through due to higher standards.
- One of the Delta Force entrance exams consists of having to march through 40 kilometers of rugged country terrain in less than 10 hours, all the while carrying 40 pounds of gear. Sounds bad? Did we forget to mention that they give you the absolute bare minimum of navigational information to find the endpoint of the route? Hope you didn't miss a turn.
- The US Navy SEALs infamously have a period of intense, brutal training called "Hell Week" that trainees must endure before they're allowed to begin the second third of SEAL training. They also do a few odd exercises like drownproofing in which candidates are forced to swim with their hands and feet tied together, but most of it is for the practical purpose that frogmen activities are some of the hardest things to do in the military. Those from US Army and Air Force units with overlapping skills also note that their shared Dive School is extremely hard not because their school is punishing but just because it is a hard thing to do (all of them had already been through the harsher parts of training).
- All three Air Force Special Tactics operators are well-respected in the military community as badasses. Before they even begin their job training, ALL Special Tactics hopefuls complete BMT, then a six week Indoctrination course. Called "Indoc" it is the most grueling ordeal most trainees have ever been through — including such novel practices as performing calisthenics while wearing diving masks. Filled with water. Indoc washes out a great deal of candidates due to the harsh training. And then it gets worse.
- Combat Controllers have to maintain qualification as Air Traffic Controllers (which is probably the second most stressful job in the world, the first being soldier).
- USAF Pararescue Training. They are the US military's Combat Search and Rescue specialists doubling as paramedics with technical rescue skills(like firefighters), and their pipeline is known as "Superman School".
- Should also mention the USAF's Special Operations Weather Technicians that were fully certified weathermen, now renamed Special Reconnaissance and converted to more of a general reconnaissance role with additional technical skills in electronic warfare added on to the weather recon role as computers made that job too easy.
- It is also interesting that US Marine special operations units, which includes both Force Reconnaissance and Raiders, aren't really said to have training that is harsh just for the sake of being harsh. They merely have higher standards for selection in the first place.
- SERE School, for survival, evasion, resistance, and escape, is given to military members who might be taken prisoner by enemy forces. Most people who go through it regard it as the worst part of training they experience. There are three levels of SERE training conducted depending on an individual's military occupation, rank, and probability of capture. Most of the training that takes place in at the highest levels of training is classified, and those who go through it aren't always fond of discussing it. It is commonly told that graduates are given a rabbit to kill and eat during exercises. Other exotic foods are on the menu as well. If you can catch 'em.
- Some of the exercises done to trainees during SERE school would be considered violations of the Geneva Conventions if done to enemy prisoners — understandable, since not everyone who might take them prisoner is going to respect the Geneva Convention, and since many of the missions rely on the ability to plausibly claim that the people involved are not combatants from your country, a technicality that the Convention recognizes.
- SERE training operates on the theory that the only realistic way to prepare people to endure torture is to torture them for real. For obvious reasons they avoid using methods that inflict permanent physical or psychological damage, but that still leaves a tremendous amount of room in which to be really really awful. Key word: "permanent".
- SERE training also operates on the assumption that everyone has a breaking point, no matter how much of a Determinator they (think they) may be. The point isn't so much to make you unbreakable as to teach you where that breaking point is, as well as how to cope and rebound once you've passed it.
- The British SAS are generally considered extremely tough also. The final stage of their 4-week Selection training is known as "Endurance", a forty mile march across the Brecon Beacons, completed in less than twenty hours carrying more than fifty-five pounds of weight, plus water, food and rifle. They then get to proceed to the six weeks in the Malaysian jungle. Then the survival training, then the interrogation training...and after all that, they are effectively on probation for a year, with many being returned to their parent unit in that time as unsuitable.
- The sister unit of the SAS, The SASR, better known as the Australian SAS, has similar methods. To date, more people have died in training for the SASR than they have for combat. Admittedly this includes 15 people dying in a helicopter crash, but it still stands.
- The British army has a nasty reputation for killing more people off via "disciplinary" measures ("beasting", where you're made to do the exercises again.. and again.. and again, this time in NBC gear) than in the actual functional part of the training, though. One recruit died this way over dropping a chocolate wrapper; another for shouting in the officers' mess. Apparently they have yet to get rid of the Drill Sergeant Nasty.
- The British Royal Marines have the longest and arguably most difficult training of any non-special forces unit. The Mountain and Arctic Warfare Cadre trains inside the Arctic Circle, including areas used for the location shots of the planet Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back.
- The Parachute Regiment is also somewhat notorious; according to the memoirs of Major Peter 'Billy' Radcliffe, bare-knuckle fights between squads of aspiring Paras were actively encouraged by their drill instructors at least as late as the 1960s, thought 'Bloody Sunday' may have resulted in a change of philosophy. The very nature of parachute training accounts for a fair number of additional casualties.
- The French Foreign Legion — in case none of the above is tough enough for you. With its methods based on sheer cruelty, and its diverse training grounds, ranging from the snow-laden slopes of the French Pyrenees through the rainforests of Guyane (aka "The Green Hell") to the dunes of the Sahara, it stands a pretty good chance of killing you. Motto: "March or die!" Women are not allowed to join. (Hear it from Bear Grylls himself: "I hadn't expected it to be so tough, having spent several years in the SAS.")
- The Foreign Legion is notorious for its high rate of suicide in training. Today it's only about .5% that can be proved, but historically suicides in training from those who simply can't take it any more but won't wash out has run higher.
- Japanese military training during WWII and the "China incident" took this to an extreme. Not only was the training extremely brutal a Japanese soldier was not considered fully trained until he killed a prisoner of war with a sword or bayonet. Some units even went so far as to eat their victims. We wish we were making this up.
- Japanese training might have been brutal, but that doesn't mean it was particularly good. The Japanese Army took casualties at the same rate (averaged for the entire war) as the Red Army in 1941. The Kwangtung Army in Manchuria was no match for the experienced and highly mechanized Red Army — the Soviet offensive sliced through the Japanese and achieved military victory in just over a week.
- Soviet stereotypes aside, Soviet forces in Manchuria were actually surprised and shocked to see the Japanese use human-wave attacks and men strapping explosives to themselves as suicide anti-tank weapons.
- The Japanese Air Force in WWII also had really demanding training. The pilots who passed it were excellent, but way, way too few. The Americans on the other hand not only produced more pilots, but could also afford to send combat-experienced pilots back to train new ones—while the Japanese couldn't spare any of theirs.
- In addition to not being able to spare some, the Japanese outright did not have a system for the veterans to train the newbies. The Americans did it on a systematic level while the Japanese Aces did it on a personal level if at all. The famous Zero fighter being a Fragile Speedsternote that is prone to burst in flames after being hit once doesn't help either.
- Forces from both the Soviet Union, and its successor, the Russian Federation, are notorious for harshness. The rank and file training for conscripted men not put into anything special such as Naval Infantry, VDV, or Border Guards, was considered tough. The training was tough, long, and continuous. Constant exercises, drills, and repetition characterized it. Russian elite troops such as the aforementioned marines, paratroopers, and guards, have even tougher standards. Of these, the Naval Infantry is considered the toughest. The VDV is open to women. However, no woman has managed to meet the physical requirements necessary to pass for a long time; in 2013 the Ryazan VDV Officer School finally released its first 14 female VDV lieutenants.
- Speaking of the "notoriously poorly trained" Red Army, this only held true for the vast number of troops mass-conscripted for WWII. Many established Red Army divisions were decently trained, if badly organized. In line with this trope, however, were the Siberian divisions, who were practically "trained" to be effective in winter combat by the brutal Russian winters in the notoriously cold Siberian regions. Many of these Siberian units, once diverted to the Eastern Theater against the Germans, were instrumental in the counter-push that booted the Germans out of the USSR.
- These are more accurately called Far East divisions — from the border with Japan, where the one Soviet peacetime front existed, and the so called peace had a good portion of battles of all scales thrown in — for about two decades.
- Russian special forces (the Spetsnaz) are notorious for this, going through training that wouldn't be tolerated by human rights groups in any western country.
- Example, possibly apocryphal: during military training, adherence to NBC drill is tested in a room filled with CS gas, a non-lethal incapacitant (i.e. tear gas). Rumour had it that Spetznaz NBC training is "live" — i.e. uses real, lethal nerve gas.
- One non-fiction book written about Spetsnaz training claims that they routinely held river-crossing and small-boat drills in full field gear — without any provision for lifeguards or search-and-rescue. If you couldn't avoid drowning, then you're not Spetsnaz material.
- Speaking of the "notoriously poorly trained" Red Army, this only held true for the vast number of troops mass-conscripted for WWII. Many established Red Army divisions were decently trained, if badly organized. In line with this trope, however, were the Siberian divisions, who were practically "trained" to be effective in winter combat by the brutal Russian winters in the notoriously cold Siberian regions. Many of these Siberian units, once diverted to the Eastern Theater against the Germans, were instrumental in the counter-push that booted the Germans out of the USSR.
- NORFORCE, the force responsible for defending the north of Australia includes in their training, dumping potential recruits into the rainforests in small groups equipped with knives and not much else to survive of what they can find. After a little while of this, and without giving them food or rest, they have whatever they've scavenged taken away, are lectured on important things they need to know, put into new groups, and they are dumped somewhere else. This happens two or three times. Apparently, the course is so popular, there's a several year waiting list.
- To be entirely fair, NORFORCE's training isn't an unreasonable thing for an Australian to learn given local weather conditions and teaches vital teamwork skills (again, mostly useful because of weather conditions).
- Brazil's BOPE (Special Police Operations Battalion) is well known for their rigorous training, acting mostly on urban warfare. There is a movie focused on the group, "The Elite Squad", famous for its shock value. Their logo is a skull pierced by a knife and two guns on the background; their main vehicle is called "big skull".
- One Native Brazilian tribe, the Satere-Mawe, train to be warriors by intentionally stinging themselves by bullet ants. Bullet ants have the highest ranking on the Schmidt pain index, which he described as "Pure, intense, brilliant pain. Like fire-walking over flaming charcoal with a 3-inch rusty nail grinding into your heel." It lasts almost 24 hours. They do it 20 times.
- Bullet ants are an inch long, the size of a bullet. This is not why they're called bullet ants. They're called bullet ants because being stung feels like being shot. The Satere-Mawe sew entire swarms of bullet ants into sleeves (stinger-end pointed inside) and stick their arms into the mess, wearing these sleeves for something around 10 minutes. After spending several days recovering, they do it again. And again. 20 times.
- One Native Brazilian tribe, the Satere-Mawe, train to be warriors by intentionally stinging themselves by bullet ants. Bullet ants have the highest ranking on the Schmidt pain index, which he described as "Pure, intense, brilliant pain. Like fire-walking over flaming charcoal with a 3-inch rusty nail grinding into your heel." It lasts almost 24 hours. They do it 20 times.
- The Swedish army is probably somewhat less badass than most of these examples. Still, they deserve an honorary mention, since part of the basic training of every Swedish soldier involves being set on fire. True, the soldiers are wearing protective clothing and their battle buddies are expected to put the fire out within seconds (the whole point of the exercise is to get used to putting out fires in case your unit is attacked with incendiaries). But still... set on fire.
- Same in the Finnish army. Plus also the Gas Chamber for gas mask training.
- Must be noted though that gas used isn't same concentration as the real thing.
- The gas mask training was and is standard for Eastern Bloc armies: lead the soldiers into a nearly-airtight plastic tent, gas masks on, and drop a tear gas grenade inside. The catch is: each trooper has to tend his field gear and assure the mask is in perfect order, so anyone who gets gassed is punished for his own neglect.
- Same in the Finnish army. Plus also the Gas Chamber for gas mask training.
- China's People's Liberation Army & People's Armed Police, with more young men wishing to join than they have room for, selects only the most physically fit without any physical "defects". Things like nearsightedness, tattoos, being over the age of 21, and inadequate education are amongst many disqualifiers. Once they do get accepted, the average infantry undergoes brutal training where they are expected to "hold bricks on their heads while others smash it to bits with a sledge hammer", or play "hot potato with explosives." This is only the regular forces, but there is a reason why their special forces won 8 1st places in the 2009 international military competitions in Slovakia, first place in the 2011 Sniper World Cup, and best overall performance at the Fifth Warrior Competition organised by the Jordan Armed Forces at the King Abdullah II Special Operations Training Centre. In other words, they competed against US, UK, and Russian special forces and won.
- Although it should be noted that NATO takes a Ned Stark-esque view of these events, and does not send its best, whilst China does.
- The British Royal Flying Corps in World War I refused to issue parachutes to its pilots on the rationale that the possibility of surviving being shot down would make them go soft. It turned out, to the surprise of absolutely nobody, that this was a bad idea; it's one thing to throw half-trained rookies into the trenches until it was time to bayonet-charge that machine gun emplacement for the hundredth time, but quite another to throw half-trained rookies into the cockpit of a difficult-to-operate and quite expensive piece of military hardware. Unfortunately it took them until the war was nearly over to work this out.
- The Golden Division of the Iraqi Army was trained by the United States to be a counter-terrorism squad akin to SEAL. As such, their training involved methods quite similar to the aforementioned SEAL training. In addition to to being highly trained and disciplined, many of its members are also very religious, giving the unit an extra level of motivation. Tellingly, when the Iraqi Army collapsed against ISIS in 2014, the Golden Division was one of the few units that remained active at peak capacity. Unfortunately, due to their reliability, they have been repeatedly deployed in theatres they were not equipped or trained to deal with. The intense, months long urban fighting across Mosul, in particular, has taken a toll on the numbers.
- The Italian Bersaglieri were originally created as an infantry force meant to take on cavalry. As such they need excellent running abilities and stamina, and to develop that they always run. Also, their marching band plays brass instruments only-while still running.
