Jogging in anti clockwise on a jogging track can help soldiers with pain

Include a training session with barefoot exercises, (short foot exercises ), pilates exercises. The boots could be manufactured with diferent materials, like materials used by sports industry.

Functional orthoses that are properly made with bring a level surface of support up to the foot instead of the foot collapsing to the boot.  

Hi Zimmerman: Which part of the foot is experiencing discomfort? If it is the soles of the feet which extends to the heel area, then they could be experiencing plantar fasciitis. Plantarflexion and dorsiflexion stretches before wearing and upon removing their boots can help strengthen the tendon and ice packs upon training can help reduce the inflammation. If the toes and the end of the heels are experiencing discomfort, probably the boots are too tight. Perhaps cotton socks can help reduce the friction between the foot and the edges of the boot. Alleviating the feet also helps reduce discomfort until the boots have been "broken-in". It is possible to retrain in boots but this has to be done gradually so that it does not further cause pain and discomfort to the soldiers. Furthermore, the number of years wearing and walking in boots may also be a contributing factor towards this phenomenon. 

This is an excellent question required all analysis. But, initially statistics matters. What is the percentage of soldiers causing pain and discomfort? I do agree with mostly what Pri said. I am neither soldier nor athlete, I was just a first eleven opening batsman and wicket keeper in the school cricket team during school days. My personal experience at the age of 30s was the insertion of a small shock absorber made up of smooth rubber to the heal area provided what Pri’s judgment on the pain area is correct. Anyway, this question would have been ideally answered by a physical strength conditioning specialist.

Anyway, the question opens my eyes into another dimension of research by inserting relevant sensors together with shock absorber and monitor soldiers with such pain. Shock absorber will not make just the comfort of heal area as well as plantar to the toe due to the kinetics induced by the shock absorber. Instead of gait retraining in boots, I do apply recurrent neural networks with deep learning (AI system) so that soldier will be notified pain and discomfort together with all kinematics and kinetics profile of an individual soldier and the boot using sensorized insole interfaced with the shock absorber in real time.

If you are interested, we can discuss in greater details.