[Music]
these soldiers will need to put aside the ultimate sin they will need to
forget the fundamental moral rule
[Applause]
these soldiers must now learn to kill a fellow human being
[Applause]
Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman is an Army expert on killing are entrusted
with the instruments of death and there is no room for amateurs on this team
because in this game if you lose you die every species every mammal has a
powerful built-in resistance against killing their own kind animals with antlers and horns in their territorial
and mating battles they slam into each other head-to-head the most harmless
possible fashion but against any other species that go to the side they'll cut and Gore human beings at that moment of
truth when we're scared to death we slam head-on into that resistance against killing our own kind
killing even in battle turns out to be far harder than ever imagine it's a
lesson learned from a unique study of the Battle of Gettysburg Civil War
soldiers were firing muscle loading muskets they take 20 seconds to load a
split second to fire
after the battle the quartermaster's analyzed over 27,000 discarded muskets
most should have been fired so why were over 90% and 24,000 still loaded and why were over 12,000 found with useless
multiple loads soldier was out his weapon powder ball Ram at home bringing
it to his shoulder the moment of truth he can't bring himself to pull the
trigger it brings a weapon back down again he loads it up again powder ball
brings it to his shoulder and again at the moment of truth he can't bring
himself to pull the trigger so the result is that we had all of these tens
of thousands of muskets with multiple loads in the barrel many with multiple
multiple loads one was found with 23 loads all the way up the pyramid could
it be that instead of trying to kill the enemy a soldier would reload his weapon
to appear busy reluctance to killing is a problem the
military encountered again during World War two at the Battle of Iwo Jima
I was second lieutenant within the second day and heard that my kid brother
had been killed so I started the survey around over through the Patroons trying
to find his body come bearing while Humphrey searches for his brother he is
able to witness platoon after platoon in action what he sees shocks him I never
saw a platoon everybody was fighting not one ever and I saw one where there were
20 and nobody was fighting in my platoon of seven of us there were only two good shooters and I wouldn't want it at Iwo
Jima Humphrey discovers the secret of war bravery is mainly in the movies the average soldier is so scared he doesn't
fire his weapon that is so frightening to hear that devotion of those weapons
and just the first time you see blood people just panic and they hide instead
of fighting these frightened soldiers also experienced a strong resistance to
killing a psychological safety catch that keeps humans from destroying each
other in the heat of the battle it is only a small fraction of the soldiers
who do most of the killing ultimately the flag is raised for many the flag
symbolizes bravery for Humphrey it is a reminder of the secret of war the thing
that shocked me most was a few men we're doing all the fighting and this was a
stunner to me it seemed like this was just almost two secret to tell about you
know that there was this kind of a breakdown one soldier SLA marshal did
break the secret and he had data to prove it
marshal an army historian invented a new way to study battle the after-action
interview after talking to hundreds of soldiers he came up with a startling
statistic only 15 to 20 percent of the rifleman who saw an enemy soldier would
fire at this hold this is not a good thing you know a 15% firing rate among
your infantrymen is like a 15% literacy rate among your librarians marshals 15%
figure is controversial to this day veterans who risk their lives in combat
would deeply offended and historians question his battlefield studies but for
others Marshall was dead-on there was no doubt in my mind that SLA Marshall was
telling the truth and that his statistics were good and I don't care
how he did his studies because I saw exactly the same thing the military had
a problem how do you get soldiers to overcome the
reluctance to kill before Vietnam the military adopted a systematic new way to
train killers it's still in use today
have you assumed the soldiers are there for a good cause and you're going to
give him the very finest physical equipment you can you've got to give him
the finest psychological what we did was we gave our soldiers a psychological equivalent of an assault right we turned
around and developed a systematic process to turn the safety catch off in
human beings to turn off the safety catch the military turned not to
technology but to psychology behavioral scientists like Tony Nevin have learned
how to bypass conscious thoughts and control behavior it's called
conditioning day after day Nevin experiments with
pigeons in these research chambers
in this simple demonstration he trains a pigeon to peck at a red light
when the red key turns on then if he pecks out at ten times he gets an
opportunity to eat a food reward reinforcer as we call it and we think of
the red is the stimulus the peck is the response the food is the reinforcer and
because he's been trained for several hours with frequent reward he becomes
very persistent in doing it the light is the stimulus the response is pecking and
the food is a tasty reward the army has systematically adopted these same
conditioning techniques uncomfortable as it may seem
humans can be trained just like pigeons
these individuals are learning rifle marksmanship but it's more than just
learning how to fire a rifle what they're doing is they're learning how to
respond to a stimulus that they'll actually find on the battlefield the the
idea is that a man shaped silhouette is popping up in their field of view that's
the conditioned stimulus conditioned response you have a split second to
engage that party stimulus feedback when you hit the target the target throws the
targets are popping up more or less at random as a target pops up stimulus
response stimulus response stimulus response that kind of conditioning is
absolutely vital to make sure that somebody will do the right thing on the
battlefield in battle when a man-shaped silhouette pops up a well conditioned
soldier will act reflexively automatically without thinking feel good
about yourself just like a pigeon make sure you call mom and dad and tell them
a great job you're doing in his lab Nevin is studying the best
way to condition burns a key factor his reward watch what happens when he
switches to a different reward schedule signaled by the green light now when the
green key comes on that's a signal that says to the pigeon that food is going to come at unpredictable times doesn't
matter how many times he's pecked or how long he's gone without packing food we'll just be available for the first
pack after some unpredictable time now look at the difference with the green
key he is pecking this more sporadic he
turns away sometimes he seems not to be anywhere nearly as interested in the
green key the lesson for the army is if you want reliable action you need
frequent rewards and punishment and that's one thing army training is famous
for
punishment is given out in the harshest terms of the drill sergeant yes there is
a scientific reason why drill sergeants yell so much say that's cover let's go
look left look right roll let's go right and even the smallest
rewards go a long way in the confines of basic training we have several different
ways we can reward the sons because this is such a controlled environment you
know something like a simple usage of the phone or opportunity to go to the PX
just for a few hours just to get away from them but not in their everyday
basic training can be utilized as it's a great motivator and not only do well but
to excel and even be better than well
any here we go the last step of the process is stress simulated here by the
flashing light for the closer training is to reality the stronger the conditioning
tracer round do it do not I say again do not do a modified hike walk
keep your buttocks low to the ground
this is the most dangerous stressful and realistic basic training exercise
tonight in pitch-black these soldiers will crawl through a field as machine
guns with live ammunition are fired directly above their heads
[Music] flares illuminate the night sky and as
in combat they all must freeze [Music]
rounds explode to either side the army is creating the extreme stress of combat
[Music] stress stimulus-response reward
punishment behavioral conditioning it only needs to taking the safety catch on
giving these soldiers the psychological equivalent of an assault weapon and in
the end creating the ultimate killer now the veteran is not like a pigeon he's a
human being he can talk to himself he can feel remorse and he will have to
live with that remorse and that's terrible but the behavior of shooting a
rifle at a target which looks like a human being and then later in combat is
a human being can be established so well that essentially you short-circuit the
process of which you might stop and say to yourself should I really be doing
this is this the right thing to do [Music] started after World War two and
perfected over time the new science of military conditioning would get its
first real test in Viet Vietnam presented many different ways to
kill shooting from helicopters infantry on the ground interrogation the ambush
unit the ambush unit would surveil an area for four days to pick the perfect
site on the fifth day we would go in and just lay in the the Killzone there and
wait for somebody to come into it and blow the ambush and then call for
extraction get out there would run hard fire he vividly remembers an early test
sweeping the killzone out of the corner of my eye I saw a person land there and he moved like he was gonna let off a
hangar and hit or something I just turned was real close to him and chopping him head then it was just off
of sight when a man shaped silhouette popped into view
he fired reflexively just as he had been conditioned the training had worked
soldiers unleashed a frenzy of fire 50,000 bullets for every kill
[Music]
Marshall repeated his famous after-action interviews he found the
firing rate rose from 15 percent in World War two to over 90 percent in
Vietnam but a new problem arose people with no inclination to kill when now killers
it was hard the first person I ever shot in the head and see the the results of
it no I just uh that hard the army had found a way to get people to kill but
they hadn't found a way to make people like it it's your job I don't think you
ever get in tune to it I don't think there's ever any excitement in it and I
think it's a mission of survival we are now living with the aftermath of
Vietnam conditioning may be one factor in the estimated 1 million cases of
post-traumatic stress disorder after Vietnam the military had one more
killing barrier to break from a distance killing is relatively
easy bomber crews feel only a fraction of the psychological trauma of infantrymen though they killed far more
people [Music]
we can trace the resistance to killing across distance and 20,000 feet you
don't look like it it's easy as you get closer it gets harder from 500 meters
with a anti-tank system for instance it's difficult but hardly impossible
when you get closer with rifle fire it's quite difficult by the time you turn
around and move yourself into an to hand combat range actual physical bayonet
range it is literally impossible for an individual to bring himself to kill
another individual here at Camp Lejeune Marines are tackling the ultimate
killing barrier hand-to-hand combat for if one can learn to kill up close one
can kill at any range we carry m16 8 to service rifles and we need to be
proficient with them but if a man does not have a warrior's heart those sights
will not get aligned and he will not have proper trigger control no matter
how many times you train him if his heart is not that of a warrior he will not be able to kill him
Master Sergeant Don Vito is teaching a new way to kill he's going to get the
body's muscles to take over from the mind smooth is fast
fast is not fast the first step is to teach basic technique the first
technique that ends in death of the opponent in line one which is the base of the program is the counter to the
front choke attack he's going to strike a wrist in the elbow breaking the arm at
the elbow joint which will force the person into what we call the inverted L position what we have to do now is we
must disorient him so we can eliminate his base and get him on his back so the
next thing that we're going to do is we're going to execute a kick to the
face with a boot we will then switch grips and they are now in position to
eliminate the base by executing a sweep at this point in time we want to drive
the cutting edge of our heel onto the bridge of his nose to cause death and that ends a technique stand by go
[Music] but technique alone will not create the
capacity to kill so the heart of don Vito's training is to physically ingrain
the motions of killing it will be repetition until exhaustion when to
combat is engaged in close combat one of them is going to end up dead
I have gone to the Armed Forces medical examiner and check medically and
scientifically that these techniques are the most efficient way to kill a human
as the Marines tire they forget about the consequences and focus entirely on
the action itself their muscles are being trained to act instinctively it's
called muscle memory we wide develop muscle memory in all of
our techniques especially a conscious thought is not needed Don Vito also uses
reward and Punishment he makes the Marines compete against each other the
first team Dunn doesn't have to do the entire drill all over again it's a
system that may create the ultimate killer you can heat skills you can heat
technology you can eat weapon tree on top of a cowering that person still a
coward but an unarmed warrior there's always dangerous perhaps too dangerous
now that the military knows how to take the safety catch off are we unleashing
killers on society conditioning experts insist there are adequate safeguards in
fire only under orders and the key thing that's being learned is discipline if you point the weapon in the wrong
direction then fire the weapon at the wrong time
horrific sanctions are brought down upon you and nobody would even dream of ever
doing anything inappropriate in that circumstance but with over a hundred
thousand new soldiers trained to kill every year what if even a few somehow escaped the safeguards
if we want the best army this may simply be the price we pay this is one of the
really terrible things about the nature of human behavior we can do this stuff
once a person has received that kind of training it's very very difficult for
them not to do what they have been trained to do the best way to avoid killing don't ever get into that
situation [Music]
[Applause]