Army Eliminates Online Training Requirement for Noncommissioned Officers, Saying It's Too Burdensome

The Army has eliminated a significant part of its online training for enlisted troops -- a learning program that has drawn the ire of the rank and file for years -- and in effect revamped how it handles enlisted promotions.

Effective immediately, the Distributed Leader Course, or DLC, is discontinued and will no longer be required, the service confirmed to Military.com on Wednesday after an internal briefing leaked to the Army Reddit forum. The roughly 40-hour courses were previously required for enlisted soldiers before they were authorized to attend a noncommissioned officer academy and eventually be promoted. All those courses added up to roughly 346 hours of training at a computer if a soldier completed all of them during their career.

The elimination of the DLC comes as the Army has shifted its requirements for noncommissioned officer promotions, removing barriers and tweaking schooling requirements. The DLC in particular has long been considered by many soldiers as overly burdensome, mostly due to it taking days or weeks to complete.