Dempsey to combat arms: Prove it!
Our buddy, Rowan Scarborough, in the Washington Times writes today that Chariman of the Joint Chiefs, Marty Dempsey, has moved past the point from which women will have to prove themselves equal to men in regards to assigning females to combat arms specialties;
ArmyGen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said that if a service wants to keep a job as a male-only occupation because of its high physical demands, the service will have to show why those tests should not be lowered to accommodate women.
Tests of strength are particularly important to special operations. About 15,000 combat positions, a fraction of the 1.4 million active force, are subject to integration.
“The only option now is to offer reasons why they can’t do it,” said an Army special operations veteran who believes U.S. Special Operations Command will cave to White House demands to include women. “I haven’t heard that anyone has the courage to say they can’t do it, either. Maybe the new [military occupational specialty] can be 18P — Special Forces camp follower. Is that PC enough?”
An ArmySpecial Forces soldier said the qualification course at Fort Bragg, N.C., to earn the Green Beret is so demanding that the Army will have to lower standards for some tasks in able for women to succeed.
So, there you go. I’ve said since the beginning of this most recent series of discussions that the generals are going to do whatever it takes to please their political masters and it looks as if none of them have the courage to speak up.
So where are these all-important veterans in Congress? Other than Duncan Hunter, I haven’t heard a peep out of them. You’d think that Miss Lindsay Graham who drags out his commission at every opportunity would stand up for future warriors who will have to fight the next war after substandard training. And where the Hell is John McCain, who understands the rigors of war more than most?
Category: Military issues
Findip, I’m not arguing against anything you say. I agree with what you are saying. But infantry combat and SpecOps groups are viewed as faster routes to advancement and awards, not as threats to the well-being of those who operate in them. This is not about actually gaining combat experience and you know it. It’s about getting that ‘special treatment’ to advance faster.
It is ridiculous that it is seen this way, as the history of women in Navy diver units, which I posted, shows. There are women USAF pilots flying Warthogs in combat. Why are those not considered sufficient for advancement? Women flew planes to combat zones during World War II.
None of this nonsense went on then. And frankly, in regard to PT quals, I doubt that what is required today existed in training troops in the buildup to World War II.
All I’m saying is that this is being forced down the throats of the military to meet the agenda of a small and whiny percentage of people who feel slighted by exclusion and not because it makes for a better military. But since it IS an agenda, it means that there are quotas to be filled and they WILL be filled, regardless. If you don’t volunteer, you will ‘be’ volunteered.
“It is ridiculous that it is seen this way, as the history of women in Navy diver units, which I posted, shows. There are women USAF pilots flying Warthogs in combat. Why are those not considered sufficient for advancement? Women flew planes to combat zones during World War II.”
You may want to clarify this paragraph. Are you saying that why aren’t women as pilots or divers or whatever potentially hazardous jobs not equivalent to combat infantry for promotions? Are you saying why not promote women in those jobs to senior positions? I don’t disagree with you that point. Personally, I think(especially) in the army there are too many senior officers to begin with.
But whatever. I have no problems with a women running regional commands or the joint chiefs of staff. Those are largely political positions anyways. Its certain tactical positions where this stuff doesn’t work very well.
or
Is that paragraph saying that because women have operated as pilots or navy divers that they should be infantry. I don’t see the correlation between any of those jobs. Even though, I am fine with women trying out for combat arms positions as long as we don’t social engineer or meet quotas.
OK, a Warthog is a combat aircraft built around a Gatling gun. A Blackhawk is also a combat aircraft. They are used in hazardous duty zones. They are targets. Anything in the sky is a target. Women pilots fly both kinds of aircraft. Women work in hazardous roles in dive salvage and other underwater positions. They also achieve senior rank and responsibilities. Women nurses and doctors serve in combat medical groups and come under fire. (That was clearly demonstrated in WWII, Korea and Vietnam.)
So my question, which you seem to not understand is this: why is this kind of duty seen as less important than boots on the ground duty with a weapon in your hands?
@153-
You know the answer, because of the physical grind, stress, and expectations of an infantry soldier vs a pilot. A pilot will never have to deal with the same things a grunt has to go through. Their combat is technical in nature and often sterile. They aren’t expected to carry massive combat loads in austere places for long deployments. Its a totally different job.
Their life can be threatened in equal measure. But its the equivalent of saying because I’m really good at playing volleyball, I guess I am equally good at being linebacker in football. Both are sports, both can be physically draining. But they are both asking VERY different things.
Also, being a nurse in a combat that may or may not take indirect mortal/rocket fire is VASTLY different than being in an infanty unit on movement to contact.
Thats like saying a MASH unit has the same exact risk as the guys who died at the chosen reservoir.
Also, I don’t view any job in the military as “less important.” I view them as different jobs. But that doesn’t mean that everyone can do every single job.
A female pilot may far better technical savy and brains than a grunt. But that doesn’t mean we can slap 100 lbs on her back for a forced march for 8 months.
Now if your asking me whether those other jobs are not used as equivalency for promotions at the most senior levels. I am not arguing with you.
The sad effect women have already been started to be groomed to be the head of the joint chiefs of staff even before this whole issue was being brought up.
Surface warfare in the Navy and flghter wingers in the airforce already have senior women gaining traction. It was only a matter of time.
Why was this women in combat issue even made relevant then? IMO, its to deflect the whole sexual assault nonsense from our senior leadership, Ya know the Colonel’s and generals who can’t keep in their pants but blame their subordinates.
I do not know where you get the idea that flying a plane in combat is either sterile or technical, or that pilots do not have to deal with the same things that ground troops deal with, but that is a complete fallacy on your part. I don’t know what makes you thank that combat flying is no more difficult than a ride in a passenger jet, but you are so wrong you can’t take that back. You have no idea what you’re talking about, at all. The Gulf War was broadcast almost daily on the spot, and the broadcasts included everything: the landings, refuelings, rearming and takeoffs of fighter planes with pilots who flew multiple nonstop bombing missions to Baghdad under antiaircraft fire, sometimes lasting for as long as 18 hours without a break from the cockpit. One of the pilots made his last run to Baghdad, got hit and flew back and landed his plane with two broken legs. This link is to info about a Warthog flown by MAJ Kim Campbell, an Air Force A-10 pilot, who flew many missions into Baghdad and flew her badly damaged plane by wire — no hydraulics — back to the base after it was hit by antiaircraft fire. Scroll down to see the damage to her plane. http://forums.military.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/37919558/m/1060089571001 The wires that are visible in some of those photos are what she used to fly it. In regard to helicopters: Tammi Duckworth was working towards a PhD in political science at Northern Illinois University with research interests in the political economy and public health in southeast Asia when she was deployed to Iraq in 2004. Duckworth lost her right leg near the hip and her left leg below the knee from injuries sustained on November 12, 2004, when the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter she was co-piloting was hit by a rocket propelled grenade fired by Iraqi insurgents. She is the first female double amputee from the Iraq war. The explosion “almost completely destroyed her right arm, breaking it in three places and tearing tissue from the back side of it.” Oh,… Read more »
And for your information, it’d the Chosin Reservoir, not the chosen reservoir. The men who fought up there and survived the fighting and the cold were called “the Frozen Chosen” of Chosin Reservoir.
@158
Alright, did you not read the line in my post 154 that said “their life can be threatened in equal measure” that does not equal correlation to ground infantry combat.
Because Tammy Duckworth’s aircraft crashed and had her limbs were severed does not mean she would qualify as an infantry soldier. Thats like saying a women driving a truck who gets blown up by an IED can do the job of a grunt. For the mere fact that she can get blown up.
Saying that pilots job is more sterile and more technical is not a bang on pilots its a fact. Especially when discussing this stuff in a modern context. Our pilots don’t fly with even a fraction of the same risks as it was in WW2. There were 375 aviation deaths in both of these wars. About 75 of those are due to direct fire combat deaths.
PH2 your trying to draw equality combat risk with job requirement. Which has to be one of the dumbest correlations I have ever heard.
It doesn’t even apply anymore to modern aviation even in that context.
@159-
Excuse the typo. It happens..
Oh, yeah, a foot soldier marching along a road, carrying a pack and weapon, able to move about in relative freedom is a whole lot more stressful than being strapped into an extremely confined space, in an extremely small seat, with barely enough room to move your legs and arms, with no opportunity to stop and piss on a wall, or find some shade, or even just sack out for a bit when things are not quite so active. Bearing in mind, of course, that moving about is good for your circulation and your lungs even if you’re under the stress of a possible ambush , whereas being in a tightly confined space, unable to move anything except legs and arms a very minimal amount for multiple nonstop missions is just nothing, because you aren’t carrying a pack on your back, even though it’s extremely bad in every possible way, including its impact on your kidneys. Yeah, I get that.
But I also get that the confinement of a fighter plane’s cockpit and the restriction of movement for the pilot have a high impact on the pulmonary and respiratory systems and the amount of adrenaline generated during those missions is a continuous flow, not just sudden spurts of it. And you don’t, ’cause there’s no pack or gun involved. And then there’s that uncertainty about whether or not you’re going to get hit by a SAM or a heat-seeker, too, but that’s nothing because you aren’t carrying a pack and a gun, right?
Okay. Sure. Whatever you say.
And FYI, Chosin is pronounced choh-seen, not cho-zin.
I meant to ask, are you intentionally being obnoxious and rude, or do you simply dislike women so much that you have to belittle everything we say?
Hey, ask any grunt if they want to be unloading ammo &water, loading your KIAs and WIAs with beverybody shooting at the big helo sitting in a hot LZ. Almost all of HMM-362 and other have more than share PHs.I am beginning to think that you did not see heavy action hence your distain of air support. Help, somebody Please find that article from the female Marine Captain that sertile from stress from blkiuding COBs over a prolong period. this is where the ref to reproduction came from.
Another two things. All males turning 18 required by law to regrister with selective service. Ladies as of now do not. Change the PFT or CFT where the broads see is pass or fail. Joe
@163
Ok, so basically saying general discomfort in a cockpit is the same as carrying 100 lbs packs up a steep mountain incline in the Korangal Valley for days at a time.
Flying around at 10,000 feet in an air conditioned air craft while occasional having to deal with SAMs(which rarely even apply to these past two wars) is similar to a infantry squad being surrounded and having to fight for hours to the death. Meanwhile, suffering massive casualties: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Wanat
But i guess thats all the same because a pilot’s kidneys might be effected by being crammed into a cockpit.
What the fuck ever….
@165
I have absolutely zero animosity towards helo drivers or fighter pilot. That isn’t the point I am trying to make. I am saying its a false correlation between those two jobs.
@165-
Here you go btw http://www.mca-marines.org/gazette/article/get-over-it-we-are-not-all-created-equal
!64- I was never rude to you in any way until you started being snarky. That has nothing to do with you being a women.
Joe Williams, I’m beginning to think that findip never saw anything at all.
I’ve flown gliders and even when I was 2 dress sizes smaller than I am now, having to maneuver a stick in a space as tight as a glider cockpit was not a joy at all, but the silence made up for it. And a fighter jet’s cockpit is a hell of a lot tighter than a glider cockpit, not because the fighter jet is smaller than a glider, but because it is so jammed with instruments and respirator equipment and the G-seat itself, which is designed to absorb the shock of tight turns at extreme speeds, and everything else, that the pilots are crammed in like sardines in can. There is no room to move in there.
Hardly a comfortable environment. And being locked into that with no opportunity to move or scratch that itch in your crotch or even dare to sneeze because you can literally lose control, and for extremely long hours with no breaks, is hellishly stressful. Oh, yeah, and those Navy pilots who have to make carrier landings in the dark — that’s even worse.
@171-
What does this have anything to do with being an infantry soldier? I am not even quite sure what the argument is any more…
Dip, google the Poem “Man In The Door”. This was written by a Marfine grunt. I read you as saying and beliveing that the Int is superior to all other MOSs.
@173
That isn’t what I am saying at all or at least not my intention. I am saying being a pilot and being infantry soldier are two very different things.
They have very different requirements, very different physical tolls. Not all grunts can be pilots and not all pilots can be grunts. I am saying its a false equivalency. My post in 156 I thought illustrated that point.
I did a little digging and turned up some interesting stuff. It seems the Navy and Air Force have more stringent PT requirements for their personnel than the Army does. Navy PT Requirements MALES: AGE 25 TO 29 YEARS PERFORMANCE PTS CURL PUSH 1.5-MILE SWIM CATEGORY UPS UPS RUN 500-YD 450-M “Maximum” 100 101 84 8:55 6:38 6:28 Outstanding 90 95 77 9:38 7:38 7:28 Excellent 75 84 67 10:52 8:53 8:43 Good 60 54 44 12:53 11:38 11:28 Satisfactory 45 43 34 14:00 13:08 12:58 FEMALES: AGE 25 to 29 YEARS PERFORMANCE PTS CURL PUSH 1.5-MILE SWIM CATEGORY UPS UPS RUN 500-YD 450-M Maximum 100 101 46 10:17 7:23 7:13 Outstanding 90 95 43 11:45 9:00 8:50 Excellent 75 84 37 13:23 10:15 10:05 Good 60 54 19 14:53 13:30 13:20 Satisfactory 45 43 13 16:08 14:45 14:35 The Air Force requires specific muscle mass tests for pilots: Air Force Pilot PT Requirements The Fighter Aircrew Conditioning Test (FACT) will determine an individual’s muscle fitness as it applies to operating high-G aircraft and identify anaerobic weakness that can be improved through specific physical conditioning. The FACT contains eight exercise events divided into two categories: Strength Test and Muscular Endurance Test. To pass this test, individuals must complete a minimum of 50 total repetitions of the five events in the Strength Category and the minimum required repetition in all three events in the Endurance Category. Repetitions above the maximum are not counted. The individual’s total FACT score is calculated by adding together the strength and endurance scores. The Strength Test Category requires 10-15 repetitions. Exercise and weight requirements include: your body weight multiplied by .35 for arm curls, .8 for bench press, .7 for lat pulls, 1.6 for leg press and .5 for leg curls. The Muscular Endurance Test includes: push-ups, abdominal crunches and leg presses at a minimum of 20 reps to a maximum of 50 reps. (remember: no extra points for over the max amount). Whereas the Army for men the same age group: 2-MILE RUN – ARMY 27-31 Time Score Time Score Time Score Time Score 12:54… Read more »
Well, it didn’t space properly. Oh, well. It’s there.
PH, look at what you just posted, you just compared a 1.5 mile run to a 2 mile? yeah, same standards. the navy and airforce are jokes when it comes to PT tests, because while they have more events, the standards are lower and the distance is lessened. as for your 30 second difference, that is the 500 yard time. 30 second difference over less than a third of a mile, yeah real close in times. push ups and near half! satisfactory requires only 13 pushups! no special treatment there. you also selected 2 different age groups, 25 years for navy and 27 for army. the 25 year age group for the army is higher standards than 27. compare the entry age group pt tests (18 year olds) and see the stark differences. I never had a PT test under 300 and demanded the same from my team. Infantry require those in leadership to lead from the front, how is a woman going to lead from the front if she cant keep up with her team? there are no women’s standards for combat. when ya are running down the road in full combat load, there isnt an extra 2 min for women. to compare a pilot to a grunt is so far in left field that i have no idea where you could have gone to draw such a coorlation. i take nothing against pilots, ive had my ass saved by them a few times, but a pilot doesnt face near the threat that grunts do nor the physical demands. they are two totally different jobs. anyone can be shot at or receive indirect, but that isnt the same as an actual fire fight. pilots are not required to be near as physically fit as infantry, they sit in their cockpit and fly, we ruck! there are strains and hazards of any job in the military, from the pac clerk getting a paper cut, to infantry getting blown up, but not all threats are equal nor as prevalent. flying isnt a hard job, ive known many pilots civilian and military,… Read more »
Smitty, those didn’t line up here they way they should have, but I did point out that I calculated the 2 mile run time for Navy women to be 39 seconds slower than the 2 mile run for Army men, that’s all. I found interesting to see the differences. And those are median age ranges, covering 25-29 for Navy personnel and 27-31 for Army, which is statiscally the same. The Navy requires a swim test, the Army doesn’t. The Marines have higher standards for women than the Navy does. I couldn’t find anything on like-to-like for the Air Force, but their test requirements for pilots are based on how much G-force they have to overcome on a tight, banked turn. I completely agree with you that putting women into combat infantry is a poorly-thought out idea and will have serious consequences. It is NOT the same thing as assigning women to a Combat Camera Group, for example. But to imply that infantry is more demanding than other MOSs or military occupations like air support or tanks or artillery comes off as kind of snobbish and precious about YOUR job. Who will get you out of a hot zone if the EVAC helos don’t show up? Who is going to soften up or take out an entrenched position if you can’t and the artillery people or tanks don’t? If you know what fire from an A-10 Warthog can do to an enemy position, do you have any idea who is flying that plane? I think if you told the air support people, the artillery people or the tankers or EOD people that their jobs aren’t demanding, you’d get an unpleasant response from them. And for that matter, the logistics people whose job is to bring in supplies of all kinds are people you infantry depend on, so is their job any less important or demanding than yours? You imply that infantry is the only physically demanding MOS in the military, and you know perfectly well that’s not true. I do not argue the point that REQUIRING women to be put into… Read more »
TLDR, personally I don’t care. If they meet the current standards then let Female Special Forces go crazy with it.
I for one would love to have a FSF team. I have met a few ladies that I am willing to bet could actually make it.
And I feel very very sorry for those poor ladies that do.
Actually, Ex-PH2: for these purposes they are not statistically the same.
The comparison here is innate physical capacity. Physical capacity to perform strength and endurance tasks is linked to age. A sample aged 25-29 does NOT have the same physical capabilities as one aged 27-31 drawn from the same underlying population. They’ll be fairly close (due to the overlap of the 27-29 age group), but there will be differences.
In general, the younger age group will have slightly more physical capabilities on some tasks, and slightly less physical capacity on others. But since physical capacity varies with age and the samples are not drawn from the same age ranges, they won’t have the same performance characteristics.
OK, Hondo, I was using the two median age ranges which both have age 28 in them. So if you compare them age-for-age by chronological year 28, won’t those statistics bear up?
I am running out of ways to say that all combat-related positions are as demanding of strength and endurance as infantry, including those nonstop multiple bombing runs between Riyadh and Baghdad during the Gulf War, never mind the requirements of the air crews to keep the planes armed and in the air.
I got the impression that a small degree of possessive territoriality crept into it (my infantry is better than your whatever group) from Smitty, who seems to think, as an example, that sport aviation represents all aviation.
I did what I could to defend the other parts of the military, but like I said, I’m running out of ideas.
This women-in-combat infantry is going to happen and all the grumbling on the part of ex-infantry will not stop it. I don’t envy the women who will be TOLD they have to go into it if there are not enough volunteers to fill the quotas underlying the agenda Dempsey laid out. I can see that coming, too.
@181 I agree with you. The point is woman in infantry combat will happen. It is a political pleasure point that will get massaged, good or bad. The women who are told they will go combat, will suffer in my opinion. I personally wish this issue had never come out of DOD but it has. Now that it has it will the the white elephant in the living room for a long time. DOD will set guidelines, right or wrong, tell Commanders to get in line or get out and then, they will say we never want to hear about this again. It is done, instituted and now let’s move on, nothing to see here. We won’t hear more until, God forbid a woman is killed or worse captured in combat. The enemy will get far more mileage out of a female Bowe Bergdahl, than America is ready for. But it will be too late by then. I did not say this very well. But I hope I made some valid point.
i never said that other jobs are not as demanding, but NO JOB IN COMBAT is as demanding as infantry. who flys the helos? when the call over the radio for evac came back “thats a negative, you need to self extract” no one was. i never said anything in the military was easy, i said that infantry (and combat arms) are held to a higher standard and are more physically demanding. bomber runs in the gulf? they push a button and the bomb falls. the crews are rushed for a short time to refuel and reload, but thats like comparing a sprint to a marathon ran at a sprint pace. the little pog jobs are not the same nor near as physically demanding as infantry. that is why infantry, and no other MOS, requires a 25 mile ruck and a 5 mile run before you graduate AIT. i have never heard anything in my life as retarded as claiming non-combat arms jobs are as physically demanding as infantry. i feel like im talking to a brick wall here.
you are condescending in your posts, assinine in your points, and for lack of a better term, wrong. this isnt a matter of oppinion, infantry is more physically demanding that other MOSs. to argue against that simply makes you look like an idiot.
every job in the military has a place and purpose. i never said anything was better than anyone else, i just said that infantry is more physically demanding. i have never spoken ill of any other job, ive only pointed out the strengths of mine. i am done with this argument, there is no point is trying to argue with you, you couldnt understand anything that doesnt agree with your warped perception if it knocked you on the head.
edit that first line, i never said other jobs are not demanding, but they are not as physically demanding
You said what I said, Sparks. If the next place of combat is North Korea, I really pity any woman deployed there.
Ex-PH2: If you’re trying to prove that all “combat-related” positions are equally as physically demanding, you are tilting at windmills. They are not. The demands of different military jobs are different. Some are indeed more physically demanding than others. Light infantry has the dirtiest job on the battlefield, and is by far the most physically demanding of any military specialty I’ve seen outside of the special operations community. That is debated by no one who has actually seen what the various military specialties require in an operational environment. Other specialties indeed have harsh physical demands. Some of them can be as intense for relatively brief periods of time. However, IMO none of them have as demanding a set of physical requirements over time as light infantry. Pilots and aircrew indeed have stressful and somewhat physically demanding jobs – during missions. Then they RTB and go to the club/hooch/whatever and rest up for the next day’s mission. “Crew rest” requirements and all that. Artillerymen, tankers, and combat engineers hump when things get busy. But tankers ride. Gun crews get some down time between fire missions. Engineers use powered equipment as well as muscle. Light infantry doesn’t, except if they’re inserted via air or mechanized means. After they begin their mission, they hump everything they have for a period of days. They sleep in the open, using whatever they can find or brought with them for shelter. Often, they have to dig in – manually. And there’s also that pesky little combat thing, where someone is trying to kill you. For a rough comparison, think a 30-day backpacking trip, with periodic stops to work your ass off like a lumberjack every few hours. You might or might not have a place to sleep, regardless of the weather. The food sucks, if you get any at all that you don’t have to scrounge or didn’t bring with you. A bed? Unless you brought one, fuggeddaboutit. You don’t get to bring only what you want, either. You’re told what to carry – including anywhere from 20 to 50 lbs of stuff you’d likely never… Read more »
Hondo, Smitty seems to think I was referring to the B52s that followed after the initial bombing runs between Riyadh and Baghdad, and I wasn’t.
The initial bombing runs were done by F16s, fighter-bombers, which carry full loads of missiles, and their bombing runs were nonstop multiple runs betwen Riyadh and Baghdad, for up to 18 hours. The pilots frequently did not leave the cockpits and the aircrews were at it 24 hours a day.
The bigger bombers, the B52s came later AFTER those intial runs.
If I wasn’t being clear about that, I should have been more definitive.
ON the other hand, Smitty has a personal dislike of me and wants to smack me till my teeth fall out. Right, Smitty? Like you think I’m saying your job didn’t count for anything or something, which I didn’t do. And if you think you were the only guy left to your own devices in a hot zone, you weren’t, and you have my sympathy for that.
ALL jobs in the military are demanding except the desk jobs. Even the filling body bags in the morgue is demanding. That’s no reason to be so obnoxious. And I DO have a right to an opinion, whether you like it or not. There’s no need to be rude.
oh no! sitting in a cockpit for 18 hours! how physically demanding! there is no way i could sit in a padded chair for 18 hours!
i have no dislike of you at all, if ya scroll up, i defended you against whats his ma face that called you a troll and i stated you had every right to express your assinine oppinions. i am just tired of hearing your assinine oppinions.
i never said i was the only guy (or squad in this case)left out in a hot zone with out back up, im saying there was no one in those choppers then. how many of those bomber pilots or surgical nurses do you think would have come back from that situation? thank the good lord that the infantry has the high standards that it does that allowed all 15 of us that were out there to “self extract”. but i guess in your oppinion, that was no more physically demanding than sitting in a cock pit for 18 hours
Ok, then can we call a truce on this, Smitty? I do thank you for defending me against the Dip, and if you find my opinions asinine, that’s a shame because I’m really quite nice. If you thought I was impugning your combat experience, forgive me, but I was not. I do not do that. I have zero patience with people who do.
I only meant to point out the obvious, that this agenda which Dempsey announced on June 17 is going through, regardless of PT quals pass or fail on the part of women. If there are not enough volunteers for combat infantry then they will be assigned, willy-nilly, to fill those quotas, just like the days of the draft. And if you’re one of the team leaders who gets these ‘conscripts’ or volunteer trainees, you’ll have to deal with it. And you’ll get them, whether they can pass the PT requirements or not. You get that burden and you have my sympathy.
No, I do NOT think self-extraction from a hot zone is less physically demanding than being strapped into a cramped cockpit with little or no room to move for up to 18 hours. If I implied that, I did not mean to.
So let’s just call it a truce, shall we?
i dont think all your oppinions are asinine, just equating the physical demands of diferent military jobs to infantry. usually i agree with most of what you say around here. for some politcal reason, women are going to be allowed into the infantry and the physical standards will be dropped to accomidate them. may God help us when the next war comes. The Rangers will be but a shell of what they once were, and we wont know which women in ranger PTs are in bat or just Ranger tagged. there really is nothing we can do about it now, the PC groupies have already won.
@189
I guarantee you that they will NOT conscript women, in any capacity, to serve in the infantry when this goes down. If they open infantry to women(I’m not even exactly sure they will open all infantry jobs to them-ie light infantry); they will probably initially incentivize the job to get some baseline amount into a pipeline. If they apply quotas, they will probably apply it to ALL combat arms(just like Canada does).
So, what may end up happening is your probably going to get 10-20(mostly officers) women pushed through infantry pipelines who then will get tossed around every staff and garrison position for their careers. Women probably won’t be seriously utilized at the tactical level for infantry.
Canada, I believe, had ONE female senior infantry NCO. She then got a job running around Canada doing Q/A pressers. They will be used, like many female firefighters, for PR/staff. purposes. Occasionally, you will get a female who can do the job; but she probably won’t have much longevity anyways. Its probably going to be a serious annoyance, but it probably ain’t going to be the nuclear bomb that others are saying.
or
They could take the Israeli approach where they could designate a single battalion as Co-ed and try to justify some sort of secondary infantry job for that battalion. I doubt they do this because we don’t have a conscription military. Not to mention, that its going to be pretty obvious that the battalion has its own specific standards to them. They will look like a laughing stock “B-team.”
190- I think they will handle the Ranger battalion stuff by changing the pipeline. I think will have two pipelines for Ranger battalion based on combat and support.
Combat jobs in the Ranger battalion will probably stay the same, but support jobs will now be open to women.
It certainly will change the culture of the battalion. But I don’t think the “door kicking” jobs will be much effected.
Smitty, I just hope it doesn’t come to that.
the purpose of this is to open all combat arms positions towomen. you can not do that and designate women to support positions at Bat.
im going to have to get so many Ranger PT shirts back from women so they dont accidentally show up on here as posers.
PH2–I’ve been up for 48-60 hours at a stretch doing ORSE workups, and by no means would I EVER claim that my job was as physically demanding as that of an Infantryman.
Mentally challenging, absolutely. Draining, no doubt. And while being a submariner is basically a young man’s (or woman’s, if you’re on a T-hull) game, I’d certainly be able to pull my weight even 25 years after showing up on my first boat. Ask a guy in his mid- to late-40’s how they’d like to hump with a 100-lb pack all day, every day. No thanks.
(Christ, has it really been that long?)
[…] in combat arms. I cannot see how he can make some of the statements that I have read given the statements made by Big Army. But I guess that he managed to overcome that […]
I am speaking on a lot of generalizations/observervations/ guesses, etc. etc. America is running out of men! The birthrate for children have declined over the last 20 years.
Soon there won’t be enough adult males to go into special ops., so somebody figures we better try to integrate them now.
Nobody in the U.S. want the life of Ozzie and Harriet anymore. There are schools to climb, careers to be made,
reality shows to star in.