The US Army’s notoriously tough Ranger School at Fort Benning, GA, is adding a new challenge for students — a bayonet assault course designed to prepare troops for the brutality of close combat and teach them to hold their own when high-tech warfighting goes dark.
Army officials said the training is meant to rapidly instill “grit” and “violence of action” in Ranger students while also testing their physical endurance and tactical decision-making under stress. The bayonet element is part of the school’s grueling obstacle course, where students must navigate trenches, tunnels, walls, smoke effects, and now, an assault against silicone human-like targets with bayonets.
Bayonets, formidable knives fixed to the end of a rifle barrel, are not commonly used by US troops today, though some units still keep them on hand.
These weapons were still widely used by militaries until the mid-to-late 20th century, including by some US troops in the Korean and Vietnam wars, though it is more closely associated with World War I and early conflicts. Bayonet combat is especially gruesome, forcing soldiers into close-range killing.
A seemingly archaic tool, the bayonet can still serve an important purpose in modern militaries even as troops prepare for fights dominated by missiles, electronic warfare, and drones.
Training with bayonets can bolster” the moral fortitude of soldiers in times of battlefield crisis,” wrote historian John Stone in a 2012 article on the point of the bayonet in the armed forces. “What has proved important is [the bayonet’s] role in motivating scared, and frequently isolated, soldiers to continue fighting when their instincts demand otherwise.”
Though rare, these weapons haven’t been phased out in modern warfare. Some Marines fixed bayonets during the bloody Second Battle of Fallujah in 2004, as did British soldiers that same year in Al Amara, Iraq. Marines and recruits today still practice bayonet fighting with pugil sticks and other substitutes during hand-to-hand combat training.
US Army Ranger School is one of the military’s most extreme tests of fortitude, designed to push soldiers through prolonged sleep deprivation, physical exhaustion, and stress.
Army leaders said the bayonet training reflects a broader push to prepare soldiers for increasingly contested and chaotic future battlefields where advanced tech and communications may not always be reliable.
“If all technology fails, [Ranger students] will have the fundamentals,” Command Sgt. Maj. Patrick Hartung of the Airborne and Ranger Training Brigade said in an Army release. “This is why we have them navigate terrain, close with and destroy the enemy with a bayonet — so they’re capable of accomplishing their mission with the people to their left and right.”
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