Surprise! Female PT standards will have to change
Chief Tango sends us a link to a Military.com article which reports speculation that the services will have to adjust their PT standards so that females will be able to qualify for entry into combat arms professions. The article begins with the author’s own speculation with no reference to actual spokespeople from the services being quoted, so I don’t knwo if this is an opinion piece, or what;
The Marine Corps may have to lower its physical standards in order to put females in positions to one day lead infantry platoons in combat.
Both the Marine Corps and the Army continue to wrestle with the mandate that former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta issued in January, directing the U.S. military to open hundreds of combat-arms jobs that have been closed to female servicemembers.
But the article continues;
The service conducted “proxy tests” this summer, involving 400 females and 400 males at Quantico Marine Base, Va., and at Camp Lejeune, N.C. The tests looked at tasks such as “lifting a tank round and loading it,” Krebs said.
“The data from the performance on those proxy tests will be correlated against the performance of the Marines doing physical fitness and combat fitness test events,” Krebs said.
“And we will kind of see … if a Marine gets a 300 on the PFT and CFT; how well they do on the MOS tasks. So we are looking at that to see … whether or not these physical standards are applicable to these MOSs.
“Depending on what the data says, and what it shows, it will decide whether or not any of the standards for the MOSs need to change.”
Maybe they can develop a tank round that will meet the weight standards instead of exploring the possibility that females can be trained to the standard.
Category: Military issues
Oh ferpetessake! Seriously?
Hey, women! Want to be in combat professions just like men? Start by being as fit and capable as men! This spoken by a woman who passed the APFT by male standards, so shut your pieholes and start working out!
GRRRRRRRR.
I am shocked. I was told all my life that women can do anything a man can do.
There should be one standard across the board, none of this “MOS specific” crap either. No lowering of standards in order to make something work, as I see it the male standards have not changed since I was in during the age of dinosaurs… why should they change now?
Yeah, well, if one wants to do so, he can read reams about the actual physical; differences bewteen males and females, post puberty. From skeletal size and muscle mass to how fat globules travel and settle in the adult male and adult female. All the wordsmithing in the world won’t change that–and I’m not even going to the other, more subtle differences, or anything else. Got a dexterity job? Give me a woman. Got a brute-force job? Give me a man.
They won’t change anything. Back in the 90s the Electronics Warfare Technician (EW) rating was opened to women in the Navy; I believe the Aviation Ordinanceman (AO) and Torpedoman’s Mate (TM) ratings were opened about the same time. The result? A lot of females standing around watching the guys handle and load the chaff rounds, torpedoes, and bombs and missiles.
If they lower the standard for, say, infantry officers, then the few women that are then barely viable will be competing against an even larger number of men that are also now viable because of the lower standard. That will in no way increase the chances of women earning positions in the combat arms. Every lowering of physical standards will just put more men into the zone as well.
This ain’t going to work. I don’t care how hot the female are!
If and only if the standards remain the same … allow females to try out.
Lowering the bar, lowers combat effectiveness … PERIOD!
Lift and load a tank round?
What is the actual weight of the tank round?
What is the rate of reloads per minute?
Those are my questions, as this is real-world stuff, not theories on paper.
I assume it’s not that of a fully-loaded purse, about 8 pounds. I can still lift a 50 lb. bag of cat litter, which is completely dead weight, and load it into my car, and lift and carry a 50-lb bag of cedar chips from my car to the yard.
Nicki’s right — either they meet the requirements and shut up about it, or they don’t do the work.
And one last thing: if women are to be expected to lead troops into combat, they’d better be prepared for it mentally, because it isn’t a desk job. It’s combat. People get killed right in front of you, blown to bits in the blink of an eye. There is no time for tears and hysterics and being nice. It ain’t nice. It’s warfare.
What a surprising and TOTALLY UNFORESEEN development! /s
Haha, Krag(@6) supposes that, after circumventing open competition by reducing the standards, open competition between genders will be allowed at the new standard levels instead of pure quota-filling. Good one!
Nobody saw this coming…… Effing Panetta.
We all know that it came from higher than Panetta (I mean, he still sucks and all, but he was just doing his master’s bidding). The delusions of the gender feminists must be entertained, to hell with combat readiness. Most likely just mean more of those horrible right wingers will suffer and die anyway when it comes down to it, so win-win for the lefty doucheweasels who pushed this.
@ 8 Ex-PH2 : The M830A1 High Explosive Anti-Tank-Multi Purpose – Tracer (HEAT-MP-T) 120mm round weighs 22.3 kg(49.06 pounds). The M829A2 Armor Piercing, Fin Stabilized, Discarding Sabot-Tracer(APFSDS-T) 120mm round weighs in at 20.36 kg(44.79 pounds).
The Abrams’ Main Battle Tank maximum rate of fire is about six to eight rounds per minute, and that is humping. No easy task. A slow loader will find their Tank Commander’s boot in their ass, if they are slacking.
How do differing standards protect you when you’re deployed and the shit hits the fan? What would have happened if the Marine mechanics at Camp Bastion were trained to a ‘mechanic standard’ instead of a combat standard when they were attacked? What about all those cooks and clerks in convoys that get attacked?
Simple question… is the military training for war or for jobs?
I know women (not military) who can do P90X, climb mountains, etc. If they can do it, female soldiers and Marines can do it. If you don’t like high physical fitness, don’t join the military. It’s voluntary these days you know.
I don’t know about tank rounds but 155mm HE arty rounds weight in at about 98 pounds each. When you emplace or displace EVERYBODY in the crew helps load and unload ammo. Lets not forget the boxes of section gear, nets and manipulating the artillery piece itself.
I can remember times during fire-exs when I went to sleep with my arms and shoulders spaz
zing out because of exhaustion,
Yeah exactly 68w, Panetta was just doing his masters bidding. Why do so few stand up and say NO. It’s easy. I do it all the time. “No. I won’t do that. it’s wrong.”
@8 Ex PH2
In addition to Pendragon’s comment. The round has to be pulled out of the ammo compartment, flipped end for end and inserted into a moving target….the breech stays still actually, it is the rest of the tank that is moving around the breech. All this in under 5 seconds….at least that was the time standard during my day. We could lap load M!’s much more quickly than that but I wouldn’t dare lap load an M1A1…
No surprise here.
The main argument from female officers mostly, is that lack of access to the closed MOses hurt their careers.
If they adopt a dual physical standard to open up all career fields for women, male servicemen, especially Officers, should sue the Military under equal protection laws and claim that lower standards for females but not males gives them an unfair advantage in promotion and career opportunities.
Same Standards, Same Opportunity. That’s equality.
They lowered the standards for jump school years ago to allow the girls to pass. Nothing new here, simply just more lowering of standards.
Kumbaya!
Those pimping for the MOS specific standards are purposefully ignoring the fact that the Rear Area can quickly become the FEBA.
@20 They lowered the standard to let every unfit female pass long before they touched the airborne standard. Maybe its time to change that, instead of more female comfort pandering.
I refuse to believe that our military leadership is going to go along with this travesty. I keep hoping that some of them still have an ounce of testicular fortitude and will tell all of the panty waste politicians and interest groups to go fuck themselves. I keep hoping……
What did one of my battalion commanders tell me one time…..oh yeah, hope is not a course of action. We are so fucked.
Master Guns–of course they are! Gotta stay in the running for that next star, dontcha know, and fuck it, not like they’ll have their asses on the line, right?
My battalion S4 looks like a bowling ball with a bob cut. After her last pt test, she stood up after push-ups and said “90%, take that, legs!”
90% on her scale is 33 very poorly executed half push-ups, just under 1/3 of the number I did. I couldn’t believe the audacity that she did so poorly, and that she thought that going to airborne school five years ago made her a paratrooper. None of my soldiers did so few push-ups, and three of them failed the test and got negative counseling statements. One standard, that’s all I ask.
The really sad part is how we all know that this will be put into effect.
The powers that be will mess around with this, that and the other thing until it’s been “proven” that women can do the job by getting a few highly selected females through a weakened course.
Then, it’ll be straight up quota. Every unit will have a quota percentage of females it must meet and hold. Women will be shuffled through training that is ever more “adjusted to the new norm” that allows women to be certified as having passed, but provides zero actual filter to ability.
Fine. Fuck it. If this passes, then they need to go ahead and allow co-ed boxing smokers.
(Just venting…)
From the time this noise about women in combat started, how many here on this blog, saw this coming and even predicted it would come? Why am I not surprised at all! The debate has become ludicrous considering what we will get in the end. If standards are help the same, some men (as always) and most every woman, will not meet them. If they are changed, you will get a lesser quality of boot on the ground. That costs lives! I was 11 Bravo, L.I.B. Everybody had to carry their weight, a lot of it, and sometimes someone else’s as well. From the beginning this has portended bad things and it is going to come to reality, like it or not. I would not have wanted to serve in Vietnam again next to a woman, or man, trained and accepted at lesser standards. Sorry but if that makes me a chauvinist or whatever you want to call me, then so be it. Combat is about killing people and breaking things and sometimes humping a ruck many miles to get to the place you do it. There is just no upside I can see in this. If I am missing something and someone can enlighten me, I am open to all criticism or being schooled to changed my thoughts.
Pendragon, Old Tanker, and Old Dog, thanks for the info. a 55-lb round does not sound unreasonable. The speed required to work that weight, however, is the telling factor. These are practical factors, not something on paper that you adjust downward to accommodate someone less capable or physically weaker. You can’t make smaller, lighter, equally effective rounds. If you put women into tanks or artillery, they will have to be physically strong enough to handle the loads AND the speed. And if women are put into combat, with no acknowledgement of the realities involved in fighting in the field, it is a recipe for disaster and you all know as well as I do. I’ve argued both sides of this coin before. What I see going on here is a disconnect from reality generated by people who are politically ambitious (meaning greedy for advancement), and who have no idea what or how much damage they are inflicting on national defense. Nor will they listen, for one second, to people who are IN the BTDT category, because the majority of those are men. I’m not saying keep women out of combat. If they want to volunteer for it, fine, but they should be required to meet the real standards, as Nicki indicated in her post at the start. The real standards, the real-world, real-time requrements are what will keep them alive to fight another day. The people who are proposing this utter crap on the taxpayers and the lower ranks can’t even come up with guns that don’t jam when they are needed the most, or real adequate protection from seriously nasty homemade ordinance. Nor will they train people in older methods, like line of sight navigation to keep a multi-million dollar ship from ground on a coral reef. So how does anyone expect me, the taxpayer, to swallow this line of crap, just because a bunch of spoiled brat women think being in a combat position will get them promoted faster? Sorry about the rant, but there is a helluva lot more at stake here than those silly bitches’ wounded… Read more »
Since you all know my thoughts on this, I’m going to go in a different direction.
This is a question to all the LEOs out there: How many female tactical (SWAT, ERT< etc.) officers are there, that you know if?
Just how many Pounds of extra weigh will each Light Infantryman have to hump every time some EO Quota female craps out on a road march, either in training or when deployed? And what happens to cohesion and unit effectiveness when the inevitable pregnancies occur? Morale? Cohesion? They mean nothing to the snot-spined politicians in DC, Military or civilian, doing [wannabe] Emperor B. Hussein 0bama’s agenda seems to be top priority.
Er…Annie get yer gun? Mwahaaa. They’re having dumbass attacks all over the fucking place, now aren’t they? Oy. This whole thing just sucks. Sorry guys, it wasn’t me. I was taught by some cool dudes that it’s okay to be a chick…Phew!!
@28, Sparks, you hit the nail on the head. No upside at all. Until infantry combat changes to something much more “civilized” women do not need to endure it. History shows us, that for all of the advances made to weaponry, combat for an infantryman is still, in the end, up close and personal, dirty, brutal and unforgiving. It was that way for the 300 at Thermopylae and for the assault battalions at Marjah and Fallujah. Legislating stupidity will not change the truth.
Interesting. The U.S Army Basic Airborne Course (BAC) just added (1) Students will also be tested on the flexed-arm hang and must maintain the flexed-arm position for at least 10 seconds, (2) must be able to complete a 5-mile run within 45 minutes 30 days prior to the class start date, and (3) must weigh 110 pounds or more student perquisites.
It appears lacking upper body strength to slip riser maneuver the T-11 parachute has been identified as a problem in several mishaps. To slow of a rate of descent due to bodyweight or bodyweight combined with equipment weight resulted in a parachutist or two just floating off into the sunset off the DZ and separated from other jumpers who landed on the DZ.
@#30, OT, I knew of two in my department. One was usually working when there was a call-out. She usually ended up as the recorder(there has to be a recorder, to document what was said by who, and when). Or, on the outer perimeter. I never saw a female officer on the actual entry team.
@33, read David Bellavia’s book, then replace him in the fight for his life, and substitute any female for him. The outcome would have been far different.
@35 Sounds like it’s all a sham. Why am I not surprised?
And roger on the Bellavia scenario.
One thing is for sure, message from DC to the US Military: BOHICA!
Dagnabbit!!! @33 was me!!
@30 OldTrooper, when I was on Honolulu PD from 2005 to 2008, there were no women at all on the SWAT team. Can’t speak to now.
One thing that I did notice was that when we beat cops got into a real jam and were getting ready to scrap, most of the women were content to step back and let the boys handle it.
I found that there were more than a few good female cops, but we men were more aggressive and ready to go hands on when we needed to.
When I was in the academy, my dojo partner weighed maybe 95 pounds soaking wet. Just for fun, I used to pick her up and swing her around the room. She couldn’t do a thing about it. That’s scary cause that limited how she could deal with a physical confrontation. Rapid escalation to lethal force. Not good.
Having said all that, I have to say that the PT standards for the department were not tough at all. I am no Olympic athlete and I did fine as a 50 year old! I did better than a lot of the youngsters! I was flabbergasted though at the number of young kids, man or woman, who couldn’t even do one situp. Thankfully, they got weeded out before they showed up for the academy.
@39 Your dojo example is why I never bothered with martial arts. Because of my personality and body type, I have exactly three choices in a physical confrontation: run like hell, fight dirty, or break out the firepower. Knowing that, I saved a whole lot of time, aggravation, and money over the years not getting tossed around on the mats.
I’m not going to say there aren’t some women who can fight. I’m just not one of them.
Testing. One. Two.
Testes. Left. Right.
No, I haven’t completely lost my mind. I seem to have been unable to post anything for hours. Damn intertube.
Just my luck. I’m back on between shifts.
@35 & 39: Yeah, that’s what I thought. I have never seen pictures/video of women tacticool officers as door kickers, and I don’t see too many that will engage in the physical takedown of a larger perp with an attitude. Sure, I’ve heard many talk tough and posture when they have the guys around to take care of the physical stuff, but never on their own. I did have the misfortune of witnessing a smartass policewoman get her ass kicked by a larger perp when her crocodile mouth overloaded her tadpole ass. Luckily, the perp realized that he just added a few years to his upcoming sentence, so he stopped short of knocking her ass out. She quit the force shortly after that.
We all knew it was coming.
And I’ve seen the results in the past. In “non-combat” units that had teams that humped rucks heavier than infantry, with the infantry, females were assigned, and got the NCOERs for it. But when it came time for the actual patrols, they were magically re-assigned to other, mechanized teams, sometimes backfilled with males from those other teams, and sometimes leaving their team to cover their weight as well.
Or then there’s the unit extra tasks, like helping load the supply truck, where, one looks at the roster and says “No, that ‘Soldier’ can’t lift the load. Send me someone else.”
Have said it before and will say it again: it doesn’t matter what the job is, who is or is not qualified, wants to, or anything else, any job has requirements to perform that job. If it’s driving trucks, typing papers, putting out fires, brain surgery, or any other task, it is the job itself, not the personalities of we who wish things were this or that way, that determines what attributes anyone must have to accomplish the job.
I am beyond tired of hearing those who wish reality to change based upon their desires. Sure, I could have been a lot of things if I were something other than what I am. Every job in which I have ever worked had requirements, and I met them or failed to get the job. Some things can be studied or overcome in other ways, but without the physical ability to do a job combined with the aptitude to learn how to do it better, wanting to do it is irrelevant.
Forcing people into jobs for which they have no aptitude, physical capability of performing the job, or ability to learn is ridiculous. Lying about real job requirements is no better than having arbitrary “requirements” which are not related to doing a job, any job.
@44, yeah, I saw that a time or two. I could regale you with myriad tales, but I’ll just relate one. I was flagged down by a suspect in an assault. He was trying to get an ambulance for his victim. He’d walked up to a female officer who’d been sitting in the same parking lot, writing a report(or fixing her makeup), and when the two bloody guys walked up to her, she dropped the cruiser in gear and left the area, without even calling it in.
Political correctness setting the standard, not reality… will political correctness keep us from needing bodybags, too?
I’d pay money to see WM’s do a infantry company fleet hump with just weapons, flak, kevlar, and pack. It would be a god damned mass causality scenario. There wouldn’t be enough safety vehicles on Camp Lejeune and the that shit stain Air winger Amos would call a safety stand down.
@Ex-PH2
http://www.scribd.com/mobile/doc/12779685#fullscreen
On page 12-51 of FM3.20.12(tank gunnery) is the standard for loading the main gun on a tank.
Current TCGST standards are 5 seconds for both sabot and HEAT rounds.
Real world/gunnery range scenario, however, says that SSG-(P) Pottymouth will begin to question if his next round’s arrival time has been delayed after 4 seconds.