But it is things like this that fill me with dread at the idea of our military forces getting into a battle with an ostensible military peer who will actively attempt to wrest air control from us and interdict our supply chain...like China.
I created this graph to make the point...it isn't about disrespect. It is about simple ability to perform physical tasks, and how that ability to perform physical tasks can make or break success of a mission:
The graph above compares average male physical capability and body structure as compared to average women. The red hatched area is the the physical area where the negatives from a PHYSICAL perspective (This ignores and does not include logistical and morale based issues completely) the DISADVANTAGES of allowing females into combat units outweighs the positives. (Note, the only positives in my mind in any case no matter what are Politically Correct based positives, there are no operational positives of any kind. This only displays the physical negatives.)
All the assumptions above the graph after the word "NOTE:" are medically studied and accepted from mainstream medical sources. It starts with the basic premise that the strongest woman is 25% weaker than the strongest man (at best, some say the difference is closer to 30-35%) and goes from there. There are two other assumptions I have made: the curve with the average male strength is broader than the overlapping curve with the average female strength, because I believe that across the male gender, physical strength is innately more broadly distributed by nature than it is withe females, simply due to the production of testosterone in our bodies.
With all that said, there is always going to be some woman at some level who can best a man at some level, but when you get to the top of the physical strength and prowess pyramid that special forces operate at, there is no woman at the top of the female pyramid who can best them. It won't happen.
Even if an individual woman can train to get close to the standards (Unless they were lowered, which I have no doubt is the case here) due to her lesser bone mass and muscle mass, she is going to be far more susceptible to injury. In the linked article below which shows indisputable military studies on this exact subject, women suffer disproportionately.
See this passage from the article
font size=5>Women in Combat: The Question of Standards, by Jude Eden
Note: I cannot recommend this article highly enough. The author, who knows of what she speaks, has no illusion. She obviously did not fall for the Hollywood portrayals.
"...In other words, a platoon of the top female CrossFitters is still no match for a platoon of the top male CrossFitters. It does not matter that one individual female CrossFitter may be stronger and faster than one particular male. The idea that one woman somewhere might someday be able to make the infantry standard is totally inadequate to justify putting women in combat units. Women have to be able to consistently and predictably make and maintain the men’s standards in order to demonstrate equal ability and be useful in combat.
Even on a lower general standard, women break at far higher rates than men, with longer-term injuries. More women leave the military, when or before their contracts are up. Women are regularly unavailable for duty for female issues. Chicago Tribune correspondent Kirsten Scharnberg reports in a 2005 article that women suffer post-traumatic stress disorder more acutely than men do.
In his 2013 book Deadly Consequences: How Cowards Are Pushing Women Into Combat, retired Army col. Robert Maginnis describes several studies showing the physical suffering of women in combat:
A U.S. Navy study found the risk of anterior cruciate ligament injury associated with military training is almost ten times higher for women than for men.
A sex-blind study by the British military found that women were injured 7.5 times more often than men while training to the same standards. …
Women suffer twice as many lower-extremity injuries as men, an Army study found, and they fatigue much more quickly because of the difference in ‘size of muscle,’ which makes them more vulnerable to non-battle injury.
Marine Cpt. Katie Petronio writes of Officer Candidate School, “of candidates who were dropped from training because they were injured or not physically qualified, females were breaking at a much higher rate than males, 14 percent versus 4 percent. The same trends were seen at TBS [the Basic School] in 2011; the attrition rate for females was 13 percent versus 5 percent for males, and 5 percent of females were found not physically qualified compared with 1 percent of males.”
Another thing to consider-because women do not have a naturally occurring source of steroids (testosterone) that men have, they have to train far, far harder to reach any level of physical strength and proficiency that even approaches what men can obtain naturally, and if they do get injured (or pregnant) and cannot train, it takes far, far longer to even approach their own previous physical high-water fitness mark. And that has significant implications on injuries, even those incurred while training, never mind combat.
For a really good reality-based assessment of this situation, written by a female Marine, check this link below by Jude Eden, USMC on women in combat and training that is linked above.
Here, from that article I linked to above, is the passage that says it all:
"...Meanwhile, the argument to maintain the combat exclusion makes itself easily in every aspect. Including women in combat units is bad for combat, bad for women, bad for men, bad for children, and bad for the country.
The argument for the combat exclusion is provable all the time, every time.
Political correctness has no chance against Nature. Her victories are staring us in the face at all times.
The men just keep being able to lift more and to run faster, harder, and longer with more weight on their backs while suffering fewer injuries. They just keep never getting pregnant.
The combat units have needs that women cannot meet. Women have needs that life in a combat unit cannot accommodate without accepting significant disadvantage and much greater expense. Where 99 percent of men can do the heavy-lifting tasks typical of gunners, but 85 percent of women cannot, there is no gap women need to fill..."
In the excerpt above, she is referring to the test for physical ability that artillery personnel have to pass. I watched a video a while back of a USMC artillery unit, and they were humping 155mm artillery shells off the back of a truck. They were pulling them off at chest height, duckwalking them over 15 yards, putting them on the ground, then going back and getting another one.
I think they are somewhere around 100 lbs per round.
Sure, there are women somewhere who could do that. But the average woman could not. Especially not repeatedly.
When in a combat situation, I can certainly imagine times where that nice loader and transporter thingie is not going to be available, or you are simply in a situation where you gotta move the rounds fast using muscles and a bunch of people.