Leadership Training & Assessment Course
An experience common to all Officers commissioned through ROTC is the Advanced
Camp at Fort Lewis, near Seattle, Washington. All ROTC cadets attend the Camp
during the summer between their junior and senior year. The purpose of LDAC is
to assess the leadership ability and potential of cadets during a common
experience. The assessment is very important in the determining what type of
jobs and training the cadets will get when they come onto active duty in the
Army after graduation.
The assessment is a 35 day experience that goes from 5 am to 9 pm everyday
and there are no days off. The cadets are put into platoons of 30 people and
cadets of the platoons are usually strangers when they begin. The cadets go
through physical training tests, weapon qualification, and land navigation
training. Then they spend time at a confidence course and then at a leadership
reaction course. Then they have refresher training on infantry tactics and go to
the field. They go to the field for 5 days come in for 2 days and go back out
for 7 days. While they are in the field they have only the gear they carry with
them. After the field phase, cadets clean gear and out process. Cadets are truly
stressed during the training.
The entire focus of the camp is assessing leadership. The cadets take turns
leading squads (10 people), platoons (30 people), and companies (120 people).
Each cadet is assessed seven times and the evaluator observes the cadet the
entire day for the evaluation. There are also self evaluations and peer
evaluations. At the end of the camp the leadership ability and potential of the
cadet is known with a fairly high level of certainty. The LDAC is generally seen
as the "final exam" for ROTC even though there is still another year of training
prior to the commissioning. Seniors then use their experience at camp to train
juniors to meet the standards expected of cadets at camp.
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