The Army's senior leadership must approve the plan for it to become a formal part of the service's training, and additional financing must be secured for the changes to become permanent, since more realistic live-fire training and longer field maneuvers are more expensive. The changes grew out of various studies dating to last summer, of lessons learned in both Afghanistan and Iraq, when senior officials realized it was time to update the tasks and drills in basic training, with an emphasis on combat skills for all those in uniform.

"This is the new mentality that says, 'Everybody is going to be a warrior first,' everybody is going to have the ability to defend themselves and survive in combat," said William F. Briscoe, director of the directorate for training plans and capabilities review at the Army's Training and Doctrine Command at Fort Monroe, Va.

In discussing the changes to basic training, Army officers do not specifically acknowledge how deeply the military was stung by some high-profile combat failings, including the attack on an Army support convoy near Nasiriya, Iraq, early in the war. During that firefight, troops of the 507th Maintenance Company were outmaneuvered and then outgunned by Iraqi irregulars.

Previous Army training programs for these noncombat specialties required less than one week of field training. Under the interim training program, they will spend up to 16 days in the field. And that time out in the woods has been consciously designed to be more stressful, requiring soldiers in training to carry heavier loads of water and ammunition, and allowing less time for them to sleep and eat.

Support soldiers are also receiving added training for military operations in urban areas, which includes drills in how to enter a building held by hostile forces and to run convoys through contested territory. They will receive additional practice in how to manage prisoners of war and how to maneuver and fight when civilians are in the line of fire.

"We are teaching quick-fire techniques, moving in an urban environment — things that have not been done in basic training for combat support and combat service support before," said Lt. Col. Fred W. Johnson, commander of a basic training battalion at Fort Jackson, S.C., where the Army conducts its mixed-sex training.

"And we are introducing an emerging leadership program," Colonel Johnson said. "We don't expect to create junior officers, but we are teaching basic leadership techniques: accountability, precombat inspections, how to motivate a small element to accomplish a mission."

The changes in basic training will be seen mostly in the initial nine-week course given recruits whose tasks will be combat support or combat service support — two categories of Army duty that include engineering, personnel, transportation, maintenance and logistics — rather than for those in the combat arms specialties of infantry, armor, artillery and aviation. After basic training, the support troops receive focused training in their specialties before assignments to units.