You know, from what I remember...basic training really wasn't that difficult.
From what I remember, there weren't all these team level tasks. The drill instructors taught us stuff, and if someone messed up it was PT for the whole platoon. And that was just PT for time. I don't remember ever having to have the whole platoon do something correctly x number of times before it ended. I also think that a LOT of training techniques the military uses today on regular troops (and programs like we're seeing here) has filtered down from the SpecOps. And, I think it is a fairly recent phenomenon, say last 7-10 years or so. I could also be mis-remembering since almost 30 years have passed since I was in basic training.