Four females left in Marine enlisted infantry training

Twelve females began Marine Corps infantry training and after their 20 kilometer (12 miles) march, four are left. Seven began the march, of the three who didn’t complete it, two will retry, and the third elected to train for another specialty. 10% of the men who began didn’t complete it either. From USAToday;

The Marines said 26 men out of the 246 who started also did not complete the hike.

In order to satisfy the requirements for the hike, the Marines must keep up with a brisk pace carrying equipment weighing more than 80 pounds on their backs.

So the social engineers aren’t going to be happy about this. The Navy Times reports that the Pentagon is already in the process of rewriting the standards;

[Jessica Wright, acting undersecretary of defense for personnel] is overseeing the process of opening up all military jobs to women by 2016, including more than 200,000 billets that make up the core of the ground-level combat forces in the Army and Marine Corps. The four services are developing a new set of job-specific physical standards.

She said military officials are consulting with fitness experts, occupational therapists and other medical and health professionals to ensure that the emerging physical standard will be based on “science” rather than “opinion.”

“The standard” as it currently exists has served this country and it’s warriors in combat for more than two hundred years, but I don’t see on Jessica Wright’s list of experts any combat experienced men. “Opinion”, in this case, is based on the crucible of combat.

Compare Ms. Wright’s answer to the article from USAToday about ten months ago when the Pentagon assured us that “The military will not need to lower its physical standards as it opens direct combat jobs to women”.

We can probably rest assured that we won’t see Ms. Wright anywhere near the sound of weapons fired in anger.

Category: Military issues