Posted on 07/13/2015 11:00:03 AM PDT by Citizen Zed
Three women will join 158 men for intensive Ranger training in the mountains of Georgia next month, making them the first to qualify for the second phase of one of the military's toughest special-operations courses, Army officials said Friday. The announcement came just hours after Defense Secretary Ashton Carter signaled his support for women to serve in elite combat jobs.
The 161 students began the first portion of Ranger School, called the Darby phase, on June 21 at Fort Benning, along with 201 others who did not successfully complete the course. They won't get much of a breather to celebrate: they'll enter the mountain phase on Monday.Then, after eight days of training in military mountaineering and techniques and 10 days of leading patrols in Georgia's Chattahoochee National Forest, they'll be assessed on their performance. Success means advancing again, to the Florida phase that starts Aug. 1. The 161 students began the first portion of Ranger School, called the Darby phase, on June 21 at Fort Benning, along with 201 others who did not successfully complete the course. They won't get much of a breather to celebrate: They'll enter the mountain phase on Monday.
Then, after eight days of training in military mountaineering and techniques and 10 days of leading patrols in Georgia's Chattahoochee National Forest, they'll be assessed on their performance. Success means advancing again, to the Florida phase that starts August 1.
“The students of this class, just as all other Ranger classes, have shown strength and determination to persevere and complete the first phase of this rigorous course in the heat of the Georgia summer,” said Col. David Fivecoat, who leads the Airborne and Ranger Training Brigade. “I’m confident that they are trained and ready.”
Most of the 201 dropped from the course struggled to lead patrols, Army officials said, a challenge that has persisted throughout the last several classes. That was the reason given for dropping several of the 19 women who began the first gender-integrated Ranger course on April 2.
Of that initial group of women, eight had done well enough in the first phase to try again. The second time through, five were dropped, but three excelled at enough aspects of the course to earn the right to start the whole thing over. These three at last cleared the major hurdle of the Darby phase on Friday.
More women will likely follow, Army Chief of Staff Ray Odierno said at the end of May. The mixed-gender course was initially intended as a onetime test case as part of a military-wide assessment of the barriers that remain to full gender-integration across the branches. Odierno told reporters, “We’ll probably run a couple more pilots. It’s been a real success for us, and we’ll see how it goes from there.”
All military occupations will be opened to women by next January unless a service requests and is granted an exemption for a particular set of jobs—a decision that Marine Corps Commandant Joseph Dunford may have to face twice, as both the current commandant and also President Obama’s nominee for Joint Chiefs chairman, according to The Marine Corps Times. Dunford received a relatively easy hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Friday, and Committee Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., told Politico the full Senate could confirm him as early as next week.
Earlier Friday, Secretary Carter talked about opening to women the remainder of the military’s occupational specialties. “I’m really committed to seeing this through,” he told troops at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. “Where I can have another half of our population be in that recruiting and retention pool, that’s a pretty good deal for the department,” he said. “It’s like doubling the population of the country.”
Carter said he expects to “close this chapter” of looking at which jobs should exclude women “by year-end or so.”
Stop the presses!
So what was the woman version of the first phase? 5 push ups?
Translated: "We'll probably run a couple more pilots, reducing the standards. Until we get the results we want."
Women are still treated unequal and given special privileges male enlisted are not. To wit, the option to leave service honorably if they are going to have a child. Or be spared from a dangerous posting if they don’t want it.
Women don’t want equal. They want equal when it works for them, and they want special exemptions and considerations when it works for them.
I thought they all washed out ...
Is this another class ???
To wit, the option to leave service honorably if they are going to have a child
If they ever allowed that it was stopped years ago..
Now getting pregnant will get a female off a ship or submarine and probably off the front lines for 6 months but not out of the military...
Seriously? I thought it was still a choice they could leave if they wanted to.
The article sounds like they were not required to meet the same standards as men; i.e. extra chances, “assessments,” etc.
Yes, this is another class but I understand these 3 were recycles from the previous class who scored well enough to get recycled but couldn’t advance to the mountain phase. As recycles, they would already know the material, the challenges, and where they didn’t measure up previously so it’s not surprising they could advance.
I mentioned this before, so I’ll be brief.
At the US Army Airborne School, there are pull-up bars outside of the mess halls...and the students have to do a certain number before they eat.
The reason - the older style parachutes, which are used in training, require strength and a pull up like movement to steer - keeps everybody in the sky safer if everybody can steer.
The women - they have their own bar a few feet off the ground, and do a pull up/sit up type thing. For reasons that escape me, it is not important that the women students be strong enough to steer.
Yes there are some women physically capable of going to Ranger School - but the vast majority are not. I’m actually more alarmed about opening up all MOS to women.
According to military sites, they were held to the same standards as the men during the actual course. There have been questions raised about whether men would have been allowed three chances to pass. Two is the usual limit, from what I’ve read.
This is insanity. War is hell and women do not belong in a foxhole.
So with deep cuts coming due will this affirmative action give preference to women and degenerates over able bodied males.
“Sorry son, we know you qualified, but we haven’t met the Pentagon required quotas for the other 56 genders. Damn shame.”
Army Proposing Major Cuts At Fort Benning
July 10, 2015
http://www.times-herald.com/Local/20150710-Ft—Benning-cuts-23-inch
Says the non- Ranger qualified CSA who is pushing this gender bending crap. Thanks for degrading the Army, Uncle Fester.
Who will be the first?
This is crazy. SOCOM is where we put our baddest assess. That’s the damn POINT of it. Physical strength is OBVIOUSLY a core element. WTF!
Imagine two SOCOM fighters gearing up, both men. One is foreign - say Russian. The other is US. They’re about to go at it. Neither is smiling, both are top trained, the best of the best, and you know this is going to be one helluva fight and only one will survive - and they both know it.
Now change the scenario so that the American is female.
Do you see the other change that goes with that?
The Russian is smiling.
Even if a woman passes Ranger School, she will not be a Ranger, only Ranger-qualified, just like most of the men who complete it.
One of the men taking it should declare herself to be a woman so she can be the first Ranger-qualified woman.
“To wit, the option to leave service honorably if they are going to have a child.”
Which is basically a “get out of hazardous duty free” card, since it can’t be hard finding a man willing to impregnate you in the service.
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