Women not interested in combat jobs
USAToday reports that few women have shown an interest in working in the combat arms that Ashton Carter and Ray Maybus worked so hard to open to them.
As part of an experimental program, 233 women who completed Marine Corps infantry and other ground combat schools are eligible for those jobs, but none has requested a formal transfer.
[…]
Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said opening the jobs would improve combat effectiveness because the military would draw from a larger pool of applicants for the infantry and other specialties.
“To succeed in our mission of national defense, we cannot afford to cut ourselves off from half the country’s talents and skills,” Carter said.
The military hopes that women will be more interested as time goes by. Yeah, i wouldn’t count on it – most men don’t want to be in combat arms jobs. I expect that the social justice warriors won’t sit still for the low participation by women and start riding the Pentagon to force women into those jobs.
The Marine Corps said it will move women into positions within infantry battalions to help mentor female Marines who may eventually enter the units.
The service said it is sending training teams to bases around the world to begin an initiative to help with the transition. The initiative will address issues such as “unconscious bias,” Marine Col. Anne Weinberg said.
I have an unconscious bias about people who can’t tell me how this helps us kill more the enemy, and why they’re trying so damn hard to shove a round peg into a square hole.
Thanks to Chief Tango for the link.
Category: Big Pentagon
Can I say, “I told you so!” ?
Can I add, ‘OOOPSSIE!’ to that?
As long as that pathetic piece of crap is in the white house and his “appointed” puppy dogs keep kissing his muslim queer ass, nothing is going to get straightened out! Trump will fix a whole lot of this crap…!! At least thats what the powers that wannabee are scared to death of!!
Nobody is going to force women into these jobs. Nobody forces anyone into these jobs except under the draft. And I expect that women will be subject to the draft at some point in the future as well.
I do not see how it is relevant that most women do not want these jobs, as you said most men do not either. Yet the percentage of men who want combat jobs has no relevance on whether men should be allowed to compete for them.
It’s obvious Larsy, like, DUH, they have square holes.
/Shuh, as if.
Which is why opening up the jobs to woman was a stupid idea from the get go. There was no clamoring from within the ranks for this, it came from outside. It came from the social justice warrior crowd, who saw an opportunity to make some noise, and did so. End result is what?
^^^WORD^^^
The end result is that there is more choice for service members, allowing those who desire and qualify for combat MOSs to pursue those jobs. Not every woman will want or be able to do this. But at least those few who are, will be able to now and won’t have to spend their careers behind desks just because they lack a dick and two nuts. The end result will be a better qualified and more motivated force, because you won’t have to fill your numbers with tards who didn’t qualify for a “higher” MOS. Instead, you can now draw from women who actually want to be in the shit.
I know a few lady cable dawgs that would take serious exception to your inference that lacking a dick and nuts, they’re only suited for desk work. In fact, I know a few ladies right here that are probably gonna use you like a chew toy.
Vaya con Dios
You called, SFC?
Looks like some guy wants his crotch rocket handed to him, or something.
If females WANTED to be in the shit with the guys, then explain to us all, Aw-Some-Guy, just how it is that so many of those WOMEN who trained with their units before deployment to the sandbox suddenly turned up as pregnant as a broodmare and couldn’t go????
When you come up with a coherent answer for that question, I’ll be waiting over here in the corner, breathless with anticipation of your answer!!!!
Had that same shit happen with women in squadrons and on ships. Soon as it was time to do Navy shit, they end up pregnant and moving to shore duty.
Some women do become pregnant to avoid deployment, but how is that worse than the men that fake injury or illness or simply go AWOL to avoid deployment? Hell, at least one man fled while in combat and tried to join the enemy…
Of course, literally thousands of women actually have deployed to the shit and participated in ground combat next to men and have performed with distinction and valor.
Reading comprehension much? I’m not saying ALL females want to go to combat and no one’s disputing the duty shirkers who get themselves knocked up. (Btw, this is not exclusive to females. I have heard of privates doing coke in their rooms as the PSG walks by to get out of a deployment. Didn’t work.) What I am saying is that it is beneficial that those who WANT to go are now ABLE to go. I’m sure those elite few are probably aware how a condom works and won’t let themselves be taken out of the fight for stupid reasons like that. Is that clear enough for you? I hope so, wouldn’t want you dying of asphyxiation from holding your breath for so long, would we now? 😉
Arguing in circles must give you a headache, Awesomesauce. You must have missed that part that says nobody really wants to go to combat, which several people have made quite clear.
Some find ways to avoid it, as everyone else, including me, has already stated. Others go because they agreed to go when they signed up. What point were you trying to make?
Auntie Ex, once again, your reading comprehension leaves something to be desired. I’ll let you have the last word, since I’ve got better things to do than argue semantics all day long. Thank you for speaking for everyone who has ever served and knowing what they stand for and actually want. Have an outstanding Army day!
Ummm, I THINK “Some Guy” is FOR the women getting the chance to do something BESIDES sit behind a desk.
“I am so fucking bored! I need to get back to the Shit….”
I see what you did there.
Payback thinks the big bad bush is between an old mamasan’s thighs.
I’m glad someone got it.
Is this you John Wayne? Is this me?
If I’m dying for a word, my word is poon tang…
But, but, I thought that was the primary mission of the military medical services, to perform addadictomies and hang a swingin’ pair on any soldiers who desired them.
Is ol’ Poe missing something?
Yeah, PT: reality. Or what used to be reality, anyway.
Nowadays, hell – you might be right.
You don’t know me, Commissar.
He soesn’t know me either.
“He DOESN’T know me either.” sometimes I can’t proofread worth my name.
Lars’ doesn’t know me… but I know you, Jack!
Doesn’t know his own, either.
Hur Hur Dur, this joke just keeps getting funnier the more you post it!
To bad you don’t.
Bah Dum Tsh!
It is relevant, Oh Obtuse One, for the very obvious reason that it is evidence that DoD resources are being wasted. Specifically, it shows we are training those who have no interest or intent to ever use the skills they’re being taught.
Perhaps in your make-believe academic ivory tower world resources are infinite. Unfortunately, DoD lives not there – but instead, lives in the real world. In the real world, every dollar wasted is a dollar less to support existing missions. Similarly, every training slot wasted is one less available to train those who will, you know, actually use the training.
Oh, now, Hondo, you’re forgetting that the Poodle doesn’t know much about the military at all, in the first place. In his perfect world, people only go where they want to go, even in the military.
He’s forgotten about that ‘sent where you’re needed, like it or not’ part, and those training slots you have to take if there’s a deficit in that particular area. If it’s a matter of bodies needed, and you’re a warm body, you go there, period.
He doesn’t think that ever happens. But it does. I saw it happen. In fact, it happened to me.
So as usual, not only does the poodle not know any shit, the Shits above, his narrow view compounds his ineptitude.
Kind of like the way many treat a Ranger tab…. high percentage of officers go to school to get the tab, then wear it proudly as they serve in any ohter career field. Hooah all day long…just don’t make them actually USE that training.
If no women want or show up for the training, are we really wasting the slot?
I’m more concerned with women (and men) wanting the training, and then choosing to get out at unacceptable rates. I point you to the first cohort of female submarine officers who are exiting the force at a rate double that of their male counterparts. (I find the male rate of 30% retention as unacceptable as well, and indicative of other problems.)
If no women want or show up for the slot, and the available slots are not backfilled by willing men, then yes the slots are wasted.
Bingo. That’s especially true since there must be female-only lodging/other facilities at the training location. The housing “crunch” and the need to keep part of it female-only will pretty much guarantee some number of slots in some courses that are vacant, but which can’t be filled by men. (Trivial example: consider a course that can train 120 per class and houses its students in 2-story 40-man barracks buildings. If one floor is reserved for females, that’s 20 training slots that CANNOT be filled by men due to billeting restrictions.)
However, that’s not the primary point I’m making. If we’re sending troops to training just to “check a box” – knowing a priori they’ll never use the training – well, we’re likely wasting resources. And the DoD budget is truly a “zero sum game”. These days, it’s also a decreasing zero sum game.
Yes, we do that today with many schools, including Ranger and Airborne. We might want to re-look that and require voluntarily requesting and being approved for reassignment to a billet utilizing the new skill in a follow-on assignment as part of the application process for schools such as Airborne, Ranger, Pathfinder, Diver, and/or SFQC.
We shouldn’t be sending groups of people to a school just to “check a box” – and that includes combat arms IET/AIT. Rather, that should be done because the service in question needs the trained bodies.
DingDingDing! I agree, too many people are going to schools for training that they’ll never use, especially on the officer side. On the other hand, an argument could be made that you never know what your next assignment could be, so the more diverse training you get, the better rounded you’ll be. Kind of a toss up, if you ask me.
Well at least Officer Education hasn’t been cut up as badly as NCO Education.
The solution to the “you don’t know your next assignment” issue is called “TDY en route in conjunction with PCS”. Simple to manage, and for most schools only requires departing 1-2 months earlier than without the school en route.
I can see no good reason why a soldier of any grade can’t be sent to, say, Airborne school immediately before their first assignment requiring same. We don’t always do that now – but maybe we should.
It does happen still, but not as much as it “could” happen. There is plenty of opportunity, but then the “High Royalty Command” (Army HRC) would have to do a bit more work to do it.
Well, first off, there really won’t be an issue with female only slots, in the Army at least. Between Benning and Recruiting command they will figure out how many to send to a given course to make maximum use of the facilities- they’ve been doing it with other OSUTs for years now, to include 12B.
That said, now that the MOS is open, anyone going to the course will serve in the MOS, so no slots are ‘wasted’
WRT airborne and Ranger, technically anyone going to those courses was volunteering for service in an airborne or ranger unit. If an airborne qualified Soldier refused orders for an airborne assignment they could have their jump wings revoked. The only exception was soldiers with 36th months on jump status, rated parachutists (Senior or Master Wings), or the easy way (at least one combat jump)
That said, the Army will scale back on airborne slots over the next few years to be more commensurate with actual parachutist positions. Ranger is not as big a problem because there are way more slots than people trying to fill them, and it is a relatively inexpensive course (basically the cost of 2 MREs a day and a Costco sized jar of Motrin per student)
Well, if you ignore the cost of the instructor salaries/bennies, logistical support, support personnel salaries, transportation, fuel, meals in garrison, student salaries (they’re not doing “Army work” per se while attending Ranger School) and the expense of maintaining 3 dedicated installations/sub-installations/training ranges, and lost productivity during preschool train-up . . . I guess you’re right.
And yes – unless and until the Army starts giving everyone a private room w/private bath, you will have an issue with slots reserved for females. It will be driven by the need for a female-only billeting area. Call the number of female-only billeting area spaces at a combat arms IET k; call the total number of billeting spaces for all genders n. That means the maximum number of males that can attend a combat arms IET is (n-k) – unless you’re willing to go with mixed-gender billeting (e.g., mixing males and females on the same floor) during IET.
Here’s an article about coed training in the USMC from January this year.
Mind you, the directive comes from Mabus, but it’s only been – what? three months? I wonder how things are progressing.
http://www.military.com/daily-news/2016/01/07/marine-corps-ordered-make-boot-camp-coed-remove-man-from-titles.html
I think the Navy tried coed barracks down at Orlando after I left there and it didn’t work out very well. But that was a while back. Everyone is a Great Lakes now.
well, at my last unit overseas in Germany in the mid ’80s, the barracks were mostly co-ed – showers and crappers had high walls in between, and tall doors making it impossible to see who was doing what in there. Not much for high-volume; open 8-at-a-time showers could let a LOT more people clean up quickly, but we ran a 24/7 operation and the distribution of folks using them was spread out more.
Having dealt with ATRRS, being an instructor, and being a training developer, I can tell you have no clue what is required in regards to even a 1 hour block of training being conducted.
Hondo gives a lot of examples of all the requirements of the course. The same goes for any course.
Courses are conducted with a quota system and so does their budget from Mother Army. If a course continuously has “40” students, for example, when they indicate the “optimal” is 60 students, the ATRRS “Counsel of Colonels” goes to work and determines they don’t really NEED the course to be 60 seats.
If that same course gets reduced to 40 seats, they will end up losing instructors (student to instructor ratio), funding for all the stuff Hondo listed below (less students = less logistical requirements!), and even have a reduction in classes taught in a Training Year. (Even less funding!) (BTDT too)
Its kind of the same as hearing a Platoon Leader whine like a school girl because he doesn’t get all the ammo and get to do all the training he wants to do when he wants to do it. Once he gets to a staff position and understands all the requirements to get 5 companies and their 4 platoons each training, school seats, range time, training areas, etc., we can only hope they finally realize they were talking out of their ass.
…Except that these two MOSs happen to be the largest in the Army (11B is easily the largest MOS in al of the services combined).
The Army will still have ‘Separate and Secure’ requirements by law (as a side note, we have that because a bunch of Drills abused trainees, but today we have it mainly because trainees like to abuse each other, sexually and otherwise)
I do deal with ATTRS, and I have been an instructor, a training developer, and managed training for a brigade.
The fact is that by the the Benning School for Boys will be all set to train whatever numbers we need. If the numbers of women going infantry are high (doubtful), it is actually easier because they can dedicate an entire bay in a starship to them. If it is low, they have other options- they have already split bays and have rooms dedicated for ‘onesies and twosies’…
Starship? Is that what they now call the brick mansion barracks I used to know as “Sand Hilton”? (such as A-6-1)
Not that we were in them all that much…. Easier to keep them neat and polished, by living out of tents elsewhere. -good- training….
Of course, it could be that these women are either established in their primary MOS or are getting out after their first tour. They know that if they reclassify they will basically be starting over in a new MOS and will be at a disadvantage because they won’t have any practical experience.
That’s why very, very few men reclassify into the combat arms after initially entering in a support MOS. Those that are almost always in an over strength MOS where they can’t get promoted and are facing QMP. They almost always fail because the only real way to learn to be an infantry NCO is to be an infantry private first…
The Marines were the only service that did this type experiment- in the Army, any woman that goes to Infantry training will serve in the infantry.
” … for the very obvious reason that it is evidence that DoD resources are being wasted.”
Bingo. On the other hand, by my observation, there never was a bureaucrat too concerned with wasting taxpayer money.
Lars you are forgetting that one mans forcing is another mans Recruiting Pitch.
Sir I would like a job, what do you have?
Infantry Son.
Anything else?
FUCK NO now get out of my office!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
OK infantry it is.
It will happen to Susie RC as well.
I enlisted specifically for Combat Arms. The Marine Corps has no shortage of men who want to be Combat Arms.
The fallacy that the Corps is just another branch of the military is always obvious during these discussions.
If Gruntlets would make us more lethal…I would be all for it.
It does not, it will not, it can not.
I may not be as smart as you (didn’t go to UCB), but I think that you contradicted yourself in your first paragraph.
I’ve lost count of the amount of times I went where I was told by the Army. Why? Needs of the Army. Duty positions, PCS, Deployment duty positions, etc.
Multiple Artillery Batteries were sent to Iraq and told “guess what, you’re infantry now!” Why? Because they didn’t need arty, they needed infantrymen on the streets.
Needs of the Army overrules what you “want” to do all the time. Granted, in the Reserves it is so much easier. Not the case on Active Duty.
Though, in the Reserves you have troops who are proud of the 9 MOSs they have. Why? “Well, I could be promoted into any position for any of those MOSs!” Yeah, so they could be promoted into a job as an E-7 they’ve not ever done before. (Realistically they might do 2, maybe 3 of those MOSs in their career.) Even officers can go to one BOLC, then do a different Advanced Course if they want to.
At the end of the day, if those school quotas aren’t being filled at Infantry BOLC or at OSUT, troops can be reclassed to fill positions.
Lars,
I didn’t want to be a recruiter either but that didn’t stop Big Army from trying to reclass me into that MOS a few years back.
If there is a need and they feel enough pressure from Social Agenda Nazi’s they will cave as they have always done.
You’re not familiar with how the officer corps works, are you, Lars? Ever hear of branch details?
The lad doesn’t even know how his wee wee works.
He should. God knows he plays with the thing like he never had any toys as a child.
Obviously he’s also never heard of a guy not making it through, say, MP school and getting shipped to Benning for Infantry AIT, either.
Or Cook AIT. Or whatever the hell the Army happened to need the most at that particular time.
Fail out of an Army MOS school, and unless things have changed dramatically it’s “reclassification based on the needs of the Army”.
Still the same. That’s if you’re worthwhile enough to be reclassified though. It all depends on what the AIT they went to determine really.
Yep, I work in Initial Military Training. When Cruits flunk out of AIT we reclass them based on needs of the Army. If that need be say Combat Arms, it sucks to be them.
This is what Iv’e been saying all along. If you open up combat arms to women and try to make it volunteer only you are creating a double standard.
If the SJW want to force the Services to accept females into combat arms then restrict the numbers to volunteers only they are being two-faced cock-mongers.
“Women can do any job males can..except those 95% of women who don’t want to do it, we don’t them.”.
So? Since when has the Pentagon ever balked at double standards, JAOD?
We’ve had disparate male/female fitness test standards for at least the last 30+ years – and probably much longer than that. The last 30+ years is all I can attest to personally, but I’m reasonably certain that the practice (different male/female fitness test standards) is far older than that.
Yeah, like the fact that a 55 year old male still has to do more push-ups to pass than an 18 year old female….
That’s the bitch with the Infantry.
Make it through IOBC (Ranger train-up) and then go to Ranger School.
If they fail, their timeline(s) gets altered. Promotion becomes tough. If they get sent to their units without the tab, then they are going to have to back eventually. That’s if they want to make it past CPT. Its their career, after all.
So will Ranger School lower the standards?
I get branch-detail but who wants a brand new branch-qualified IN Officer without a tab? That is why they send them back. More slots being lost.
Or they can just do like they did before: find a few tough ones, year train-up, pass them after 9 recycles and have them serve in a non-Ranger Qualified slot?
Need I continue?
Whatever.
To echo many others here: “Told you so”.
Ashton Carter needs to go. And I mean now.
Most IBCTs and SBCTs have an unofficial policy that non tabbed Infantry LTs do not get platoons, and non tabbed captains only command AT companies or HHC.
Therefore, quite a few infantry officers never get key development jobs, which makes it unlikely that they will make it to or past captain.
I beg to disagree. My son(1st LT IN)just got back from Korea, where he commanded an infantry plt in the 1-5 CAV. He’s now the XO of a Company. No Tab. Whether he makes it past Capt. remains to be seen.
BlueCord Dad.
Its basic supply and demand. The IBCTs and SBCTs and Infantry organization and generally have more Ranger qualified LTs to begin with (they also are able spend money on sending those without tabs back to school with unit funds.
The 1st Cavalry Division, which is a armored unit, generally had fewer Tab’ed Infantry LTs and less money devoted to sending guys back to Ranger school. As a result, they have no other choice than putting folks into platoon leader positions.
When your son is a captain, he will likely be sent to an IBCT or SBCT where the issue will be more acute if he doesn’t have his tab.
L4C:
Thanks for your insight. Not sure what’s going to happen. When he was at Benning he got hit by a support pickup during a night ruck run and was then a heat casualty during Ranger School. I guess we’ll see
It’s an unofficial policy- some brigade commanders do this, others do not. Army policy is that an Infantry officer is an Infantry officer, unless the position is coded 5S (Ranger).
I was in three different Infantry battalions on active duty- one in the 101st and two in the 82nd. In both we had non Ranger LTs leading platoons, but I never saw a non tabbed captain command a rifle company in either division.
That said, easily the best Infantry leader I have ever known was not tabbed.
I am not tabbed, by the way.
Jonn, he thinks it’s a group of senior officer throwing darts at a world map that make officer assignments. Or, it’s a shaman with a Ouija board doing a shitload of peyote that cuts orders for officers.
Well, its that way for some of us poor Enlisted.
Army HRC has their own Ouija Dart Board Room for determining Enlisted Assignments….
What the fuck did you just say? That you wish you were born a woman and then subsequently forced via the draft into a combat role you do not want even more so than a man does not want it? Good grief what a fucking tool.
http://wane.com/2016/03/25/internal-documents-show-va-offered-to-protect-employee-amid-email-scandal/
I don’t know if you saw this “news”. It is about the Manager at Indy VA that sent out the pics of the Veteran “Xmas elf” committing suicide.
Love your site
I like that. It will “move” women into these positions. Why say “force” when you can use a neutral term like “move?”
Reminds me of my WW2 history when we heard about Japanese-Americans being “relocated” to camps far from the coast.
I would imagine that the military will eventually be provided with a quota of women in combat arms units and that quota will be met by telling women that if they want a promotion or the ability to reenlist, they’ll need to go to a CA unit or else (similar to what the Army, at least, does for recruiting and drill sergeant duty: You want to re-up, this is where you have to go.)
But it’s still their “choice” so they’re not, technically, being “forced” to do it.
But But But, Lars said flat out no woman will be FORCED into combat arms positions! So, it must be true….
The Marines are talking about non infantry positions within infantry battalions- supply, NBC, common, etc.
Women in support MOSs are now subject to assignment in these jobs just like their male counterparts.
What Reddevi said, the S shops are already open to females, at the Bn level for all combat arms units and have been since 2011-12. females will be assigned to these positions just like any other assignment.
Funny how no one saw that coming…./sarc
BTW the reason this whole thing is so irksome to those of us who have served is that this push is where it is coming from.
This is not like the gays-in-the-military debate. Whether you agree with the policy of allowing open gays to serve or not, there’s no question that there have always been gays and lesbians who wanted to serve but either were not allowed to do so, or had their careers cut short because of their orientation. IOW, that was a movement that came at least partially from people WITHIN the military who wanted to continue serving
The issue of women-in-combat-arms units, on the other hand, is almost entirely coming from OUTSIDE the military, by people who have never served and who never will serve. In 23 years of service I never heard a female soldier complaining that she wasn’t allowed to serve in a combat arms unit. Now there may have been some officers who complained about being denied some of the promotion opportunities that go to combat arms officers, but on the enlisted side the women’s demand for combat arms positions was so small as to be statistically insignificant.
And the sadly ironic thing is that as with so many other SJW ideas, this is one that’s going to hurt the very group (female military personnel) that it was designed to “help.”
I will say it till I die. Any leader willing to sacrifice you to get a promotion is a POS and should not be in the position that they so dearly covet.
Those ladies are going to make General even if kills YOU.
And if Obama had a few more years as imPOTUS, he’d be proclaiming how great it was to promote the first woman to General in combat arms, blah blah blah.
That had already been done. Engineers and Aviation are combat arms. There are not many, but there are a few.
I would be far more concerned about pushing incompetent officers, male and female alike, into positions that will result in more people getting killed, just to fill slots that no one volunteers to fill. That almost seems to be where this is heading.
Its a tough one. Back in 2007 I had to teach a Civil Affairs course to a bunch of troops who were just pulled from anywhere and everywhere in the Army Reserves. I had Combat Arms, Mechanics, MPs, etc. (Even had a bunch of Navy E-6s and E-7s)
Most of the class didn’t meet the requirements to receive the MOS. But, we were told “train them, they are going to Iraq.”
I didn’t agree with it because they’d probably do more harm than good, but all I could do was train them as best as possible to do the job they were being sent to perform. They did enough to sustain the mission until the next deployment of troops got there.
And it really comes down to that. Personally I’d rather have 1 guy who busts his ass, works hard and learns from his mistakes than 10 who are pompous and think they’re better than everyone and can do the job, but do it halfass because the task is “beneath them”. However, in some cases you need to take some of those pricks with you for a task or mission because you need to have personnel.
“Now there may have been some officers who complained about being denied some of the promotion opportunities that go to combat arms officers”
You hit the nail on the head.
Lets hand out some more tabs and all will be golden.
MORE BERETS as well, look at how swell Shinseki made the US Army with his “Everybody gets a Beret” policy! /SARC
I always laugh when I hear that, because the females in non-combat CMFs that have male officers running around with a Ranger tab,and complain they don’t have the same chance to get promoted as them are forgeting, it’s because those guys got shafted after commissioning and found themselves branch detail to the Infantry. I can’t wait until that first OCS class graduates and some female finds herself being sent off branch detail to the Inf, or Armor, or Eng, and she starts crying to her congressman.
Oh it won’t just be one female, it’ll be dozens…
Now that it’s no big deal, not “forbidden fruit” worthy of attention, the droves of females demanding equality have suddenly gone home.
Oh well….
Really? Did Col whatshername drop her lawsuit?
You mean retired COL Harring who was in Civil Affairs and didn’t deploy when we were sending 25% of Army CA personnel a year to Iraq/Afghanistan?
I think someone asked her opinion and she was all “Oh hey, that’s great. But….”
Marine Corps has been taking a nose dive the past few years. It breaks my heart the world’s greatest fighting force is being destroyed from within, by domestic enemies.
It fascinates me that you said, almost word for word, what one of my uncles said when the Army integrated blacks.
It appears that the more things change, the more they remain the same.
Oddly enough, Fortune had an article in the paper/internet the other day classifying the first two female graduates (they seemingly forgot the third) as the 34th “greatest leaders” in the modern world. Leaders they are, but the 34th greatest?
No shit.
On top of that, I have seen a few articles about how the ranks are filling up with women jumping at the opportunity. Liberal media at its best.
And I love the “advisors”. Some women just need a female face to voice their concerns, too. Not my words, those of a female USMC COL and the journalist.
Glad I am out.
Glad I Am Out
Yes, as a dinosaur I’m not certain I’d mold as easily into the pliable forms that seem to be required to be successful at everything that has absolutely nothing to do with being an infantryman….
The problem will be when that position becomes the “Female Issues Advisor” to the commander and becomes feared by everyone because their word is law, even above the commander’s. Why? Well, the commander didn’t listen so I went to the Brigade FIA Officer and she got the brigade commander to back me….
I can’t wait until they start reserving X number of seats in each Infantry OSUT class for females, like I am led to understand is done with the non-combat MOS schools. When that computer up at DA sees that a OSUT class is forecast to start short with those reserved seats unfilled, you had better believe some females at MEPS will find themselves faced with a 11X contract or a choice of 92S, and that’s it. We WILL have equality at all costs people!
Or, as I mention above, they’ll start getting reclassed to CMF 11 from other MOSs because “Needs of the Army”.
Here’s my halfdrunken opinion: plenty of men want to be combat arms–especially Infantry–until they serve in the job for a while. Women are more refined and I’ve met very few who want to be anywhere near the enemy at any point in their career. I held out until I got Infantry–after seven years I became a detailed Recruiter and realized that I’d gladly change MOS’ to continue serving. Now, as a new Drill Sergeant on orders to Infantry OSUT, I’m glad I didn’t reclass, but I’ve known countless others who have without regret.
Females who want “combat” flock to the MP Corps and content themselves with showing their superiority while pulling over drunken Infantrymen. Men who want combat flock to combat arms and realize that true glory only exists in movies and songs.
See? It wasn’t our idea. All politics, all from the top.
Every survey I ever got on AKO from Big Army about it, I turned off my filter and gave my completely honest opinion, that it’s stupid idea and they should do their social experiments elsewhere.
Who listens to the enlisted anyway?
Would you like to know more?
damn, clicked on the wrong post!
This is gonnna be just like Starship Troopers the movie but not the book.
Would you like to know more?
Starship Troopers the movie was nothing – and I mean absolutely nothing – like the book. Even the characterizations were different.
I’ve always said the credit for Mr. Heinlein should have read: “Based very, very, VERY loosely on the novel by Robert A. Heinlein.”
Thanks captain obvious. Now tell us how soccer is called football outside of the United States.
Other than the coed shower scene the best part of that movie was when the assignment sergeant, on hearing that Rico had opted for Mobile Infantry, clasped Rico’s hand and said “Good Man! Mobile Infantry made me the man I am today!” – as Rico looked at the sergeant’s prosthetic hand and two missing legs.
Unlike the coed shower scene, that one came straight out of the book too. 😉
That was my favorite scene in the whole film!
I like the “unconscious bias” part. The training will go something like this: “Please comrade political officer, please tell me again how I am a misogynist again deep down inside. You tell the story so well”.
Am I unconsciously biased or biased into unconsciousness? I forget sometimes.
I bet you’re not far off on that one. Instead of political officer they’ll be equality officer’s.
Ja. Alles klar, Herr Kommissar?
It’s not like Powerpoint classes have ever stopped Marines from doing what they wanted in the past, I have no reason to believe this one is going to change anything either. Just one more BS annual training requirement that will take time away from the important stuff, like I don’t know, getting another roster for 1stSgt.
I can see it now, some unfortunate infantry battalion will be saddled with a group of highly talented professional Female officers and Staff NCOs in Shadow billets.
They will probably all be picked because they are PT Studs, top performers.
The Infantry Officers and Staff NCOS will be read the riot act before the females even report in.
The experiment WILL work because it is coming from the SJW masters in DC.
Don’t count on that happening, Old Dog. When the fit hits the shan, things will change.
Unfortunately, Ex-PH2 – if it goes that far, it means a fair number of unnecessary body bags will be coming home in place of living troops.
Like IDF, ground combat doesn’t give a damn about your gender, gender orientation, or whatever. It’s truly “survival of the fittest” – which means many of those less fit won’t survive.
Said it before, will say it again:
This experiment will take a very bad turn when a dead female being dragged through the streets of some Third World shit hole ends up on the front page/cover of every major publication worldwide.
But then again, the SJW types won’t be anywhere near the scene when that goes down. It’s not like they’ll have to live (or not) with the consequences of their actions.
I’ve seen this argument before, and it doesn’t make sense to me. First, female Soldiers have been dying in combat since WWII, and they have been fighting and dying in direct ground combat since the beginning of this war.
Second, is the life of the male Soldier somehow less important? Is it fitting for his body to be dragged through the street?
Well when it does happen, Democrats bring the troops home….
Reddevil-whether you like it or not, believe it or not or think it ought to be or not-yes the loss of the life of the male is more readily borne by the larger society than the loss of the female. Look at the on the job deaths for males versus females and you will see a clear pattern where males are much more likely to die and the jobs that have the highest risk of death are overwhelmingly male dominated. Now, there are any number of reasons why this might be so (I tend to think that the field of evolutionary biology has a good explanation: “sperm is cheap, eggs are expensive”), but I think there is ample evidence to support the idea that males are generally considered more expendable than females.
Apparently, you’re both either choosing to ignore the fact that women have been injured and killed in combat since WWII and onward up to now, or you’re simply forgetful.
Must I dredge up the statistics on that for you? Or are you able to do it yourself?
How many women were killed/injured during WWII? Some of them were stationed in London when it was being bombed back then, not just in the Pacific.
How many women were killed/injured in/during the Korean War?
How many women were killed/injured in/during the Vietnam War? That should be easy to find out. The dead are listed on the Wall. Some of them were civilians, you know.
How many women were killed/injured in/during GWOT/OIF/OEF?
If it hasn’t been in the so-called press, you should remember that they only report what fits their needs and counting the dead and wounded on our side is not one of those needs.
That argument – dragged through the streets of a third world shithole – hasn’t happened yet, has it? I frankly do not think that those ragheads give a shit. Since the press doesn’t think it was important enough to report the number of women being raped, tortured, and murdered in Bosnia, a combat zone, I do not think they give a crap about any such thing now, nor will they in the future.
The point you and devil neglected to consider was DIRECT combat. Many civilians were killed in London as well. Most (not all) of the DS/DS casualties were the result of SCUD attacks.
We’re talking trigger pullers, not support troops. Typically, the casualty rates in front line units are MUCH higher than those of support units.
Once and for all, a combat zone is a combat zone. If you’re in a combat zone and you get killed while you’re there, it’s a combat-related death, whether you were shooting or not.
The means of killing you do not matter. Whether they are bullets or homemade mines or booby-trapped facilities, they are still combat-related, period. Is that simple enough for you?
Or do the women who were killed in Afghanistan as the result of IEDs, among other things, not count in your perfect world, SAE? If it’s a man who’s killed that way, it counts, but if it’s a woman, it doesn’t — RIGHT??? — because you have a penis and women don’t.
Not true. There can be, and are, many non-combat related deaths, even in a combat zone.
About 25-30%, historically.
Bingo. A total of 58,282 names appear on the Vietnam Memorial Wall. Only 47,378 of those died due to enemy action. The remainder were lost to noncombat incidents or illness.
I’m reasonably sure that only military personnel are listed on the Vietnam Memorial Wall. I’ve written before about that here:
http://valorguardians.com/blog/?p=43182
The number listed for total US military deaths in Vietnam in that earlier article is lower, as names continue to be added as veterans succumb to injuries received in Vietnam.
Of the 58,282 US military dead in Vietnam, a total of 8 were women. One was KIA; the rest were lost in noncombat incidents.
And, as long as I”m on this subject, and American women have been killed in combat zones since the Revolutionary War, here’s a list of women who were killed IN Vietnam, a combat zone.
http://www.virtualwall.org/women.htm
And for the record, during WWII, 201 Army nurses died during the war, 16 as a direct result of enemy action. If you want to argue this subject further, I can certainly dig up more.
16 out of 58000?
That’s beyond cherry picking.
And were those nurses actually pulling the trigger, or were their deaths the result of, say, sappers or others directly attacking? Slight difference.
So even if they WERE in a combat zone, but weren’t shooting anyone, their deaths count for nothing.
At least I know what you really think of women in general, SAE.
In case, you can’t read, those statistics were about NURSES, not military women overall.
It was NOT cherry picking. It was ONE set of statistics out of many, , you illiterate swine.
Considering there were virtually no women in country other than nurses, you’d have a difficult time showing me communities other than nursing that had 1–significant female manning, 2–any sort of statistically significant casualites.
And illiterate swine? You wound me.
Happy to tell you that YOUR knowledge of women in the military during PREGWOTEM days, deployed OUT of the USA, is sadly lacking, sport.
http://www.veteranshour.com/vietnam_war_statistics.htm
Sounds like you need better stats.
Interesting comment. Does it really matter? As far as I can tell, you are still alive. These women are dead, and died making the ultimate sacrifice for their country. In fact, they died while providing aid and comfort to troops at great (by definition) personal risk to themselves.
So, are you implying that the death of a nurse, medic, litter bearer, ambulance driver, truck driver, radio operator, bridging engineer, cook, etc., is somehow unworthy of our esteem and is somewhere down the totem pole or on the wrong side of a line in the sands of cool in your estimation?
Just wondering.
Sigh…again with the histrionics.
I have never, and will never, belittle the contribution of women in uniform. What I have said, and will continue to say, is that unless and until women are PHYSICALLY overall on part with men, we should not, cannot put them in the same category as male infantry/combat arms.
Thus endeth the sermon, thus endeth the lesson.
Oh, and if you think it hasn’t happened already, Google the name Jessica Lynch.
No, she wasn’t killed, but look at the reaction to the whole situation. And look at the overall reaction to the people who were, and the disparities between the women (Piestra) versus the men who were killed that day.
Jessica Lynch was a blue-eyed blonde white woman. Shoshana Johnson, the unit cook, was a black woman.
Who got more attention from the media? The blonde woman or the black woman?
None of the other women killed or injured in the Middle East got even a nod for their time in a war zone from the media unless it was forced on the newsies. More attention has been paid by the media to men than to women overall. Tammy Duckworth only gets attention from the media for her military service because she’s running for office.
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