I served in an infantry unit in both Afghanistan (2002) and Iraq (2003) and I think this is a terrible idea that will surely ruin the effectiveness of our infantry, special forces, armor, and artillery units. Here is the link and what are your thoughts?
Its like a liberal parade of degenerates right through the gates of Ft. Bragg.
Wait til you see a dude in a woman’s uniform because he got his tid bits chopped off.
Edit: And no I dont think women should be in combat arms. Just medical, clerical, staff type positions.
As a civilian, I have questions about whether this will measure make our fighting force more effective. Yes, we know women have fought. But I don’t know how well they fought. Do they bring some new capability to combat arms units? Can they carry/drag someone however many meters? Pull someone up over a half-wall? Can they carry the required loadout the required distance?
-B
Women in combat is a bad idea and everyone knows it.
Just like in law enforcement and fire departments, the physical standards for entry will have to be lowered for women to even get to the selection phase let alone get through the training.
When will women, within 3 months of their 18th birthday be required to register for the selective service? When Jimmy Carter re-established the Selective Service program, there was a recommendation that it be extended to include women but of course it failed. There was a subsequent challenge to the law as unconstitutional that went to SCOTUS. The court held that since women couldn’t serve in combat roles, they couldn’t be drafted. Guess its time to take a new look at selective service.
Yet the standards won’t be the same, bunch of hypocritical pc bullshit is all.
Most people have a very short attention span and lack the ability to put anything in historical context. Whenever this subject comes up, I try to point to movies and shows that I think illustrate the life and times of your typical dog faced Earth Pig.
A lot of people look at this current war and the average life of the fobbit (which is 80% of the force) and assume that is what it must be like in Combat Arms.
Check out the movie Hamburger Hill. How would women fit in that sort of combat environment.
Look at the Band of Brothers series or The Pacific. Same question.
Or, look no further than Restrepo to see how different life is at one of these COPs over a nice FOB like BAF, KAF, or Salerno.
Women are intelligent and have their place per se in the military. But they lack the requisite all around strength and endurance to undertake the arduous task of prolonged combat. Combat is tough on men for Christ’s sake. Many men have difficulty at times adapting and performing duties in a trigger puller capacity. Adding women would just put a greater strain on those men already in that unit. Not to mention the whole psychological bullshit that men will run around stupid to protect a woman. It has been seen and proven. Female gets hit, men will continue to get killed and wounded in their attempt to save her. Granted we do it for our brothers, but we lose our heads and throw caution to the wind when it comes to a female.
This is a really bad idea. I’m not say woman can’t defend themselves when in certain combat conditions, but all this will result in, is “gender norming” or lowering the standards of performance to make a political statement, just like allowing Gays in the military. It will be a tremendous challenge to men who were raised to protect women and children at all cost, which is instinctively embedded in most men, to not coddling/protect them and compromising the mission or endangering themselves unnecessarily. Until they can perform to the same standard, it will not truly be same same, Keif Keif. Besides, it will never attract the hot women anyway. 
The only way this might be a good idea is if they had the same physical standards for both men and women. Even then it would be uber iffy. Sure there are some dynamic butch women out there who could hack it, but they are a huge minority.
I agree, but this will never happen. Females have no place in Combat Arms MOS’s for the reasons stated above.
Additionally, how many females actually WANT to serve in the Infantry?
I spent 2 years as an 0331 before I lost my hearing in my right ear. Grunt life is hard and extremely physical. A 30 mile forced hump with a 240 IS NOT SOMETHING THAT 99.99% OF WOMEN IN THE WORLD COULD DO.
Having had two lioness’ attached to us when I was with 1/1 in MWTC, I can tell you that patrols slowed down by at least an hour or more, we had to carry their gear, men constantly tried to fuck them, and bitched moaned and groaned all the time.
There is a difference between performing well in an ambush or a random attack, and performing well in a line unit. Lioness teams were just fine, but this is outrageous and just another liberal attempt to turn a killing machine into a tolerance machine.
Surprisingly, many. They dont understand just how hard their life will be, they think about being a grunt the same way a prospective recruit thinks. Id say give every female that wants to be a grunt 3 months to do it: 1 month at MWTC Cold, 1 month at Viper, and 1 Month doing the day to day activities of a Combat Arms MOS aka police calls and field days and constant denegrating hazing.
Problem solved.
The number of women who could meet a realistic physical standard for combat arms is so low, it isn’t worth considering the logistical overhead necessary to accomidate the miniscule number who could squeak by the minimum standard.
Someone at that MSNBC article mentioned that women can pul the trigger as well as a man. Combat isn’t a shooting match where you pull up to the firing line in a golf cart on a sunny spring day.
Firing a weapon is but the end event in a long chain of individual and common tasks that brings one to that point. Being able to take the fight to the enemy on his home turf is a world different than defending a fighting position in a fixed installation somewhere. Shooting is the only thing these two events have in common.
First, one must be able to carry a hundred pounds of shit over many miles of irregular terrain in extreme climatic conditions, live like an animal in the mud for weeks at a time and them still be physically and mentally cognizant enough to effectively pull the trigger at the end of the chain. Not to mention the ability to extract your wounded 200lbs teammate while under fire.
The number of women who can do that is infinitesmial.
I would be shocked if there were 10 women in the entire CONUS who could pass an SF Q-course or Ranger School.
The only way to accomidate women in combat would be to dumb down the standards and put more of the burden on the men.
To hell with that. That will mean dead soldiers where none needed to die and mabey even lost battles and wars. Time to put and end to this PC fantasy. It is not worth the lives of one American fighting man.
They sure as hell coudn’t make it in Arty, 155 anyways. Everyone must be able to hump those rounds. Firing off a 15 round fire mission isn’t hard for a 200 pound man until you start getting into the larger illum rounds, 150ish pounds IIRC. Loading 36ish rounds by hand into the Paladin is harder. Loading 96ish dummy rounds into the FAASV when resupplying is grueling. Picture clean and jerk, 96 times inside a phone booth in under 5 minutes, then you have a few specialty rounds as well that ride in their own area, Copperheads are upwards of 200 pounds, those take 2 for loading though for special reasons with it. You better be done when the fuel is done. Hell there’s 150 pound men that have trouble even opening the breech let alone the above.
Big +1 with Arty. I was an PL/XO in a M198 battery and the longer fire missions are definitely alot of work along with firing out of azimuth missions or high angle missions as well as emplacing.
Serving as an FSO is also demanding especially when your fire support team is under manned which is quite often and alot of the FOs are carrying their own radios as well as your standard infantry equipment.
I’d take a female battle buddy, treat her with the same respect I would treat a male battle buddy, and would back her up 100%.
I think there are many women that would make fine combat Soldiers.
However, everyone needs to put their army values first and keep them there if woman are in combat arms.
Last I checked, fucking, flirting, sucking, infidelity, pregnancy and rape don’t appear in LDRSHIP.
There are already women out there doing their thing. Give them a little more room to show what they can do and we might all be surprised.
I train my sons to be godly men with a warrior’s spirit. However, my wife and I train our daughter to be a godly woman that will be a great wife and mother. My boys may see the battlefield one day, but not my daughter.
I don’t care how many motivating pictures of females in spotlessly clean uniforms there AR on line, for the overwhelming vast majority, females cannot fucking hack it. I’ve been in charge of female Marines and physically, my best female was equivalent to my worst males.