Services promise combat roles for females by 2016
Bloomberg News reports that “officials” from each military branch promised Congress today that they’re going to open up all occupational specialties to female members of their service by 2016 “without lowering the standards”;
“We’re not going to lower standards,” said Juliet Beyler, the Defense Department’s director of officer and enlisted personnel management. “It’s not a matter of lowering or raising standards. The key is to validate the standard to make sure it’s the right standard for the occupation.”
So I did a Vulcan mind meld with Juliet and discovered that she is going advocate lowering the performance standards and call that a “validated standard”. Um, Juliet, we’re not stupid, we can all read English, FFS. But, that’s fine, I hope you can sleep at night after your “validated standard” costs lives.
“I’m real excited to get this done,” said Representative Loretta Sanchez, a California Democrat, who described the task as providing equal opportunity for women. “Combat performance is an important issue when people are looking at moving up in all of these organizations.”
So, Loretta, you’ll be enlisting – you’re just that excited? I don’t see any of the women who are “excited” about this and the new lower standards being the ladies who are going to place themselves in danger – they’re all a bunch of old hags who will cluck about the failures that result from the implementation and integration and blame men instead of nature. when i see Loretta Sanchez and Juliet Beyler humping a ruck in the EIB road march or leading a squad on a live fire maneuver range, then I’ll believe they’re excited. Until such event, I’ll chalk it all up to political blather.
Category: Military issues
The more I read on here and on other sites about issues like this I thank the Lord that my time is done.
Best decision I made in a long time was to get out…
Hmmm… I get the impression that you guys think women will be assigned to combat infantry instead of applying for it. Am I understanding this correctly?
My understanding was that this was being opened up to women, which implies that they can apply/volunteer for it, as opposed to be sent into it willy-nilly.
Never mind the lack of current volunteers. If they volunteer for it, they have to understand up front that they’ll be expected to face what their male counterparts face, which meanas that the whole preggers thing is a non-issue. Isn’t it?
And yes, I do think that selective service registration should become a requirement for women as well as for men.
One would have to assume that there were a number of potential volunteers writing their representaives clamoring for the opportunity, otherwise why would there be a push for this if nobody in the services actually wanted it? 😉
I mean a reason other than to push a social agenda
Glad I’m retired….. S/F
PH: I am making that assumption, yes. Not immediately, but eventually, and in the not too distant future. Makes no sense to you and me, but when has any of this agenda made any sense?
What is the likely result of such a move? My opinion is that the numbers of women in the military will drop significantly.
“Under the law of unintended consequences this will also mean that all those spindly little males who couldn’t make the cut will suddenly find themselves qualified for combat as well”
Hear hear! It isn’t about keep girls out of the boy’s treehouse, it’s about maintaining standards FOR EVERYONE.
I know, I know. Preaching to the choir.
if they volunteer or not, it makes no difference. the standards will be lowered not just for them, but for the men as well. everyone gets held to the same sub par standard. women have volunteered for service and still used pregnancy to get out of deployments, why would being in the infantry change that? the pregnancy thing still stands, just because someone says “i want to do it” doesnt mean when shit hits the fan they wont back out.
that is totally separate from the fact that lower training standards doesnt lower how hard a bullet hits ya. we will weaken our standing force (while cutting personnel) and be unprepared the next time some of the millions of hajis that want us dead (and rest assured, liberal or conservative, they want you dead) decides to act.
Gunzrunner, from what I’ve seen in the media, the push for this is coming from female officers, not from enlisted women.
The female officers are saying that lack of combat-related positions bars them from advancing.
I don’t see how they can justify saying this, because there are plenty of example of women officers who have advanced rank with no combat-related experience.
At the same time, the women who are complaining the loudest are the least likely to suffer the consequences of this change in status.
@52 Actually I don’t think that will be the case at all, in all honesty I don’t think there will be any influx of new candidates. Just a straggler here or there, my point earlier was that in the rush to accommodate women who don’t want to be in the infantry the “validation” of the standard will be an actual lessening of the standard and all the current male failures will be in combat units.
That will reduce combat effectiveness for no apparently good reason that can be ascertained by an intellectual assessment of the motivation for this initiative.
Ex-PH2 – I hear you.
Where is ANY data supporting these claims?
I read it in some news articlea a while back, before the end of 2012. I’ll have to see if I can find it.
that has been my biggest complain VOV, lowering the standards to let in women, doesnt just give us substandard women in the infantry, it gives us substandard men.
if we are to drop the standards on the SEALs or my beloved Rangers, it will create a divide amongst those units of the old school standards and the new guys with the lowered standards. even those who were capable of passing the original standards will still be viewed by the weaker class standards they were required to meet.
Jessica Lynch thinks its a great idea Smitty.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jan/24/former-pow-jessica-lynch-women-combat-good-news/
In other news D student thinks curving test scores is a great idea. A student …not so much.
damn it smoke-check, ya took the words right out of my mouth
as for that article, they say she was rescued after 9 days? if by rescued you mean dumped on the steps of a US controlled hospital after the hajis were done with her rescued, ok i can buy that.
Ex-PH2: female soliers receiving an involuntary assignment to a combat-arms MOS is eminently possible once the MOS has been opened to females.
If I recall correctly, the standard enlistment paperwork for MOS of choice formerly included words to the effect that the individual understands they may be reassigned another MOS based on “needs of the Army” if they failed out of their guaranteed MOS training. I’m virtually certain it still includes similar language.
Some of the combat arms MOSs have traditionally been recipients of those who washed out of other MOS training courses. In particular, 11B has traditionally been one such MOS.
How many times can these feckless politicinas and Senior Leaders state “We’re not lowering the standards” but…. “We really are”.
My Favorite:For the Marines, where women are 7 percent of the force, “it’s going to be a crawl-walk-run process, but we’re looking at that,” said Marine Corps Lieutenant General Robert Milstead, deputy commandant for manpower and reserve affairs. What the fu*k does that mean?
I’m wondering if Ms. Sanchez’s female constituents will be as “EXCITED” as she has when they have to register at age 18 with the Selective Service, like every male. As you may recall, the reason the Supreme Court struck down females registering before was because all career fields weren’t open to women.
Can’ wait to see Mylie Cyrus and Kim Kardashian at the Beverly Hills Post Office on thier way to FT Jackson!
Validate standard?? easy … “Will this amount of training will be not only enough, not only sufficient but the adequate for this military element to accomplish the mission and survive?” … watch them just ask for the “enough” part and our hearts break when we see body bags, I don’t care if they are women or men, but body bags because the training got dumbed down and was not good enough to keep this elements safe.
This has some hardcore psychological implications, am I crazy to think these people:
1. Care at all on the health and life of their men/women
2. Know WTF they are doing
3. Haven’t researched with someone that knows how bad psychologically and physically can it go wrong?
oh well 😛 back to “work”
They already lowered the standards in jump school when the 6 pullup rule was banished so women can be paratroopers. Now we have a very nice airborne corps! What a joke.
I understand your point, Hondo, and Smitty’s point, too, but in the beginning of this, it depends on volunteers rather than assigned troops, which was the point I was making. A volunteer should know beforehand what she is getting into — life or death, no quarter, and nothing else.
Smitty’s observation that women volunteered for the military and then got pregnant to get out of deployment doesn’t really apply here if the female combat infantry candidates are all volunteers. Volunteering for military service is a generalization. Volunteering for combat infantry is specialized training. Not the same thing.
I have talked to young women who were told they were being deployed and their opinion of those who got pregnant to get out of deployment was, in a word, ‘ridiculous’. They were in it for the long haul and knew what to expect, but they were in the Navy, coming out of the Service Schools command at Great Lakes and were looking forward to their next duty station, whether shipboard or shore duty or an overseas station.
Great, I’ll be able to walk my PT tests and still pass from now on.
Actually, Ex-PH2, I don’t think you got my point. Some enlistment contracts have guarantees to the person enlisting – specific training (usually for a specific MOS, but sometimes other training as well), or a specific location for first assignment. Some don’t. The same is true for males and females. Those that have no guarantees (or who have specific location for first assignment), often don’t select their MOS. Rather, it’s assigned by the Army based on “needs of the Army”. That’s usually been heavily weighted towards the combat arms; fewer people than are generally required enlist specifically asking to be infantry, artillery, armor, etc . . . . The same is true for those that fail out of guaranteed MOS training. They get assigned a new MOS involuntarily, often without any choice in what it will be. Again, “needs of the Army” dominates this MOS reassignment – and thus what new training and what MOS they are involuntarily reassigned. (I’m guessing that fear of involuntary reassignment to a less-desirable career field actually is a rather substantial motivating factor in getting some marginal students to take their MOS training seriously.) Previously, women were not subject to involuntary reassignment to certain specialties (MOS) and/or combat units by policy and/or by law – specifically, those in the combat arms. That’s out the window when this change takes effect. At that point, there will be no regulatory prohibition keeping a woman who fails out of, say, photography school from being involuntarily assigned MOS 11B (Rifleman) based on “needs of the Army” and sent to Fort Benning for Infantry training, then assigned to a rifle platoon in Korea. Or assigned the specialty of gun crewman or forward observer and sent to Fort Sill for training, then to an artillery unit. Or as a tank crewman, and sent to Armor training. Or whatever. Only common sense would prevent that – and I’m not willing to depend on seeing that kind of common sense from the current group running the 5-sided asylum. Or from personnel managers with shortfalls in some areas who need to fill them to save… Read more »
PH, just because someone volunteered for combat infantry duty, doesnt mean they will actually go through with it. ive seen many men try to find a way out of a deployment that volunteered to be infantry. the idea of combat is far different than the reality of it. so now we have women who have these same concerns when the deployment orders come down that have a way out and cant be told to suck it up.
forgive me if this gets a little vulgar, but what happens when ya are out in the field for a month and ya start your monthly stuff? now ya have these grunts all around ya and ya want to start PMSing. can you imagine how many Article 15s are going to be handed out to these women for disrespect to NCOs? or are we going to claim they are being picked on because they are women? do not think i am claiming that all women are going to unable to control themselves when their hormones are kicking in, but many wont. women, as a general rule, are more emotional then men. the infantry is not a place for emotions.
That’s a fair question, Smitty, and considering that some women have committed murder when they’re PMSing, they might take all that out on an enemy who is shooting at them.
I used to get cranky as hell once a month and would happily have gone after anyone trying to shoot me from a distance. Since I didn’t have that, I focused on doing things that took my attention away from it. It might become a useful tool to have in combat, something that can be directed at an appropriate target, and I’m not being sarcastic when I say that.
It’s different for each one of us, too, so I would not assume that it might end up as an episode of disrespect.
I’ve said before that one woman in a combat infantry unit is just plain dumb. It should always be half men and half women, or it won’t be balanced. However, I doubt seriously that there will be enough women volunteering to do that.
Hondo, I did get your point, but I meant to point out that if, somehow, the volunteer women in infantry training manage to make it through, even as the anchor grad, and are ordered to deploy to a combat zone, they know, or should know, what they are facing. Using pregnancy as an excuse to not go should not be tolerated.
You’re right about the complete lack of common sense. When something like infantry becomes a political agenda, then TPTB have lost sight of the real goal of the military, which is having a good defense.
im not saying all, im saying its gonna happen enough to be an issue. when ya are in the field training, you dont have someone to shoot, ya have an NCO busting your balls.
Barak Obama-Finishing the work of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton in destroying the American military. just fucking sad
@74 Question. Isn’t there a shot a woman can take which prevents pregnancy for a period of time? I mean why not put it in the contract that you MUST be on birth control in combat MOS’s. Birth control in one form or another since I know not all woman can tolerate the shot. Or, also in the contract, if you get pregnant in an infantry MOS it is a BCD. The same as a man who self inflicts a wound to avoid deployment. I think the whole idea is bad from the get go but it will get pushed down the military’s throat, like it or not. I don’t like body bags and draped coffins. Maybe I am a chauvinist but I would doubly hate it when it is a woman. A woman who has been training standards reduced into believing she is ready for full, go hunt and kill combat. By the way I feel the same about men who could not hack the training before this, now being told the same thing.
@77 BCDs or Dishonorable works for me, honor your contract or take the hit as a sh1tbag whether a male or female…shots to keep from getting pregnant though is a bit of a stretch, especially when some woman ends up sterile after her service. I’m sure there would be some lawyer only too happy to connect those dots….
@78 You are right about that. But I think simple wording in the contract spelling out that, thus and so will happen to you, DD or BCD if you get pregnant would suffice. I don’t think it will stop it altogether. I mean when men and women are willing to self inflict wounds to avoid deployment that type of person could probably care less about the status of their discharge. This program is just adding cost, upset, and a giant monkey wrench in the whole combat infantry (not to mention the SpecOps fields) gear box. It will, in my opinion, ultimately fail but not before a lot of dead troops and heartache. What happened to the backbone in the Joint Chiefs? I never expect any from the Administration but one of the main responsibilities of the Joint Chiefs is the health, welfare, READINESS and COMBAT EFFECTIVENESS of our military. Sad state of affairs and as the politically correct left get more and more involved I think we will see new policies that make this issue seem small.
If Dempsey wasn’t a total turd Sparks the Joint Chiefs might be a bit more effective….
that would be attacked as attempts to regulate a woman’s reproductive rights. it would be just as bad as telling them they cant have abortions on demand. liberals would be all over attempts to regulate women getting pregnant and there would be no end to it. back in the 40s-60s, liberals tried to implement eugenics to control the “black problem”. this was before susan coleman starting pushing abortion to do just that. if the military required women to go on birth control while in the service, it would be decried as a return to eugenics and an attempt to circumvent women’s rights. because of the past of eugenics, it would also be racist. never mind that the people that would be yelling about it are the same ones that tried to do it for the racial reasons.
@81 Good points Smitty. You are right, the libs would love to get their hands on something like mandatory birth control. So I guess we are left with what, commitment to the service contract you signed, honor, honesty, integrity and above all…self control. That should be the mantra of ALL who enlist, men and women.
yeah, good luck with that. with all the breana mannings and whats his ma fuck CO wanna bes, too many people already have forgotten the meaning of honor and integrity
I don’t have any issues with discussing these issues, but you have to remember that the people who are creating this mess have NOT thought through any of these same issues, and those who will have to deal with those issues are yet to come.
What I find most disagreeable is the waste of tax money on something that has no thought put into it beforehand, and that it is being implemented on the demands of self-involved people who will not suffer the consequences and who see it only as a means of advancement. And at what cost? That remains to be seen.
Ex-PH2, cost is irrelevant. these people spend money like its going out of style, we have a 16,000,000,000,000$ debt from it. lives dont matter, they announce our battle plans to our enemies on cable news sources. why would they care how many body bags this action fills? they still get to claim they “did something”
@84 I agree with you. The problem, as you said, is the self improved people will not be on the ground in the front lines. Because they are self improving their careers instead of the military they are charged to keep at the ready, for no matter who or where. I see that as a cowardice in front of the Administration to tell the truth in favor of improving their careers and feather nesting their after military, civil service positions. Recruits are self improved through the training they receive. If that self improvement becomes, do the best “yourself” can do and no more then there is the biggest of troubles. DIs, DSs and recruit trainers throughout the military are already being forced into, “kinder, gentler” models of their former roles. This is only going to get worse as gender norming, and different standards take effect.
@85, Smitty, I was not actually referring to the dollars and cents of it, although that will be extensive.
I was thinking more about the costs in manpower and rates of failure of a poorly-thought out program, never mind the cost to the public if we are attacked big time and are completely unprepared for it by this idiocy.
Like someone once said, “I got a bad feeling about this.”
“Fundamental transformation” continues apace. And apparently there are no senior military leaders willing to stand in the way. This will not end well for many brave warriors or for our country.
I’m trying to imagine average sized American females moving 155mm howitzer rounds in an FPF shoot. Much less emplacing a howitzer, or doing a speed shift. Grown men whom train for such contingencies have to work at it. And if its something like soft sand in Helmand province, everybody but the section chief is on the front end of the tube busting their ass to make things happen.
In training it’ll be hilarious to watch. In country, it will mean the death of good men who would’ve lived if they’d had proper fire support.
@89, Indeed, its not just grunts that have to have upper body strength, emplacing or displacing a M198, providing local security and humping rounds isn’t for weaker bodies, I imagine the same could be said for Tankers, Tracks and LAVs.
Combat arms as a whole is physically demanding, Throw in that they can be tossed in as a provisional rifle company and it’s ludicrous to put women in those ranks.
Ex-PH2: thought I’d already posted this, but yesterday was kinda crazy.
Women who are in the Army today already know that they’re expected to deploy with their unit when it deploys. Yet the anecdotal evidence is that often there is a “epidemic” of pregnancies between the time a unit with females is announced as scheduled for deployment and the time that unit actually deploys. (I haven’t seen the data myself, so I say “anecdotal” – but I’ve heard it too much to doubt seriously that it’s occurring.) I don’t see this changing if women are placed into combat arms units. It’s already happening today.
To be fair, the same thing happens among males – albeit perhaps to a somewhat lesser degree – with some number of questionable “Road to Damascus” discoveries of CO status, sudden occurrences or flare-ups of medical issues, and many otherwise plausible ways to attempt to avoid deployment or go home early (plus some that aren’t legitimate, like AWOL or outright refusals). Women simply happen to have a way to become legitimately non-deployable that men don’t: pregnancy. A few use it.
Some people just are cowards who put personal comfort and safety above doing their duty. That character defect exists in both genders.
Hondo, I think you did post it @71 above. I will always debate on behalf of us women folk, but this whole program isn’t even a program. It is a poorly presented idea with no thought to the consequences for readiness in the future, with no real plan other than ‘throw them together’ and ‘change the standards to the lowest commone denominator’.
This won’t work. The failure rate will outweigh the success rate, it will cost far more than it’s worth in morale and cash, and all so a few spoiled women can find themselves playing football with the big boys. I pity anyone, male or female, who ends up under their lack of leadership in a real crisis.
‘Rank is something you wear. Respect is something you earn.’ — heard that some place a long time ago. Those silly bitches just don’t get it.