A top priority for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is making America's warfighters a more lethal force, which necessarily involves toughening up recruits and trainees to withstand the chaos and stress they may face on a battlefield one day.

As such, Hegseth is bringing back to basic training a recently banned drill sergeant tactic intended to test the resolve of newly arrived recruits known as the "shark attack," according to Fox News.

Relatedly, the secretary has also restored a drill sergeant training tactic known as "bay tossing," which is intended to strengthen unit cohesion and individual adherence to military standards.

Drill sergeant "shark attacks" are back

In 2020, per Fox News, the U.S. Army largely phased out and effectively replaced the Day One boot camp practice of the "shark attack," in which fresh-off-the-bus individual recruits were immediately swarmed and yelled at by multiple drill sergeants, to gauge how well the recruit holds up under intense fear and pressure.

During an appearance on Thursday on The Will Cain Show," Sec. Hegseth was asked about his goal to "make basic training great again" and the restoration of the "shark attack" practice for drill sergeants, to which he replied, "It's the basic stuff that anyone who went through any form of basic training for decades understood as a recruit, you were going into a crucible."

"You were gonna be forged. You were gonna be challenged. You were gonna be scared, nervous, and anxious. And by coming through that, you are gonna be forged an American warrior," he continued.

"A shark attack is when drill sergeants surround one particular enlistee, right? Creating a stressful situation that they have to figure out how to manage," Hegseth explained. "Bed tossing inside barracks after you've had a long day doing mapwork, out on the range, or walking patrol -- this is basic stuff. This is not beyond what's been done. This is a restoration."

"If you start soft, you end soft"

Sec. Hegseth went on to say that while the U.S. military would focus on doing "complex stuff" really well, "We're also going to do the basic stuff well. If you start soft, you end soft. If you aren't strong from the beginning, you won't finish the fight properly. It starts at basic training. It starts at our military academies."

"We are going back to basics," he continued. "Drill sergeants will be drill sergeants with knife hands, who ensure -- who maintain good order and discipline, and train up great recruits who will make great formations."

"Just like we need military officers with that same rigorous discipline and background," the secretary added. "So, we're going back to the basics, and it's bearing fruit."

"Bottom Line: Make BASIC Great Again"

Just a few days earlier, Just the News reported that Sec. Hegseth had reversed a localized ban at Georgia's Fort Benning against the drill sergeant tactic of "bay tossing," in which infantry trainees' mattresses were flipped, footlockers emptied, trash cans knocked over, and bunk rooms left in general disarray, to be immediately cleaned up by all of the trainees, if anything was found not in compliance with standards.

An unnamed Pentagon source told the outlet of Hegseth's moves, "Bottom Line: Make BASIC Great Again. Tossing bunks is back. Drill sergeants are back. Getting cursed at is back."

Those moves were made "in part because the people we want to recruit want to be challenged, and the tougher the training, the more cohesive the units are," the source continued. "We don’t want to have training that is designed to breed undisciplined people and recruit those that gravitate to wanting to be wimps."

Just the News noted that Hegseth gave an early indication of his stance on how tough basic training should be in his 2024 book, The War on Warriors, in which he wrote, "As each Soldier, Sailor, and Marine is put through the test of boot camp, many are demeaned and criticized by drill sergeants to toughen them up and prepare them for things that are much more damaging to the body, mind, and spirit."

"If a soldier falls apart because they are called by the wrong pronoun, then they are not mentally strong enough to endure the rigors of combat. If they are not, then they have no business being in a combat-ready military force," he added. "You cannot care about an individual when the collective -- the interlocking parts of a smooth, steady, yet complex military machine -- is in the balance."