Women aren’t “automatically out of commission for 1/4 of combat service.” Some might be at less than optimum performance for a day or two, but that’s not the point. Even at optimum performance, they’re not physically up to some jobs. Shoot, most men couldn’t qualify for some jobs.
Even if some small number of women were capable of qualifying, they would be more prone to injury and they would disrupt their units. A woman might not care about stripping, bathing, or sleeping alongside male comrades, but the men would certainly be distracted by her.
The current military leadership thinks they can just order men to not notice women, just like they think they can billet open homosexuals with heterosexual men. General order: no sexual relations in the field. It makes far more sense to me NOT to create such situations in the first place.
The support brigade stationed the same place I was in Iraq was sending home and average of seven per month pregnant. That won’t happen in combat arms though.
We’ll place males and females, at the peak of their biological drive years, in close proximity under stress, but nothing will happen because we will tell them not to.
I’ve spent 26 years in combat arms, but no one’s interested in experience or logic today.