Posted on 12/16/2015 6:19:34 AM PST by Kaslin
This month, President Barack Obama's defense secretary, Ashton Carter, decreed that there will be 220,000 combat military jobs offered to women -- including in Army special operations forces and the Navy SEALs. He said, "They'll be allowed to drive tanks, fire mortars and lead infantry soldiers into combat ... and everything else that was previously open only to men."
Technological changes since the time of the M60 Patton, embodied in the M1 Abrams tank, mean that a woman can probably drive a tank. But what if track pads or a tank track has to be repaired in the field and under enemy fire? Such repairs pose a significant physical challenge to men, who generally have far greater strength than women. Will our military leaders relieve women from such a task, claiming that demanding equal performance creates a "disparate," sexually discriminatory impact?
Then there's hand-to-hand combat training, which comes near the end of the Army's basic training. Recruits spend a few hours facing off against each other in pugil stick bouts. Pugil sticks are padded training weapons used since World War II by each branch of the military to train service members for hand-to-hand rifle and bayonet combat. The object of the training is to subdue your opponent. Women are at a severe disadvantage because upper-body strength really counts. Given the timidity and character of today's military leaders, I predict several possibilities: Training with pugil sticks will be banned, or servicewomen will train only against other servicewomen, or, if the training is integrated, servicemen will be court-martialed if they knock out or knock down a servicewoman. Even if our military leaders fudge this aspect of training, what happens in actual combat when hand-to-hand skills are called upon? I wouldn't be surprised if today's military leaders call for an amendment protocol to the Geneva Conventions to make the hand-to-hand killing of a female fighter a war crime.
What about other training standards? The Army's physical fitness test in basic training is a three-event physical performance test used to assess endurance. The minimum requirement for 17- to 21-year-old males is 35 pushups, 47 situps and a 2-mile run in 16 minutes, 36 seconds or less. For females of the same age, the minimum requirement is 13 pushups, 47 situps and a 19:42 2-mile run. Equal fitness standards would wash most women out. "USMC Women in the Service Restrictions Review" found that the average woman has 20 percent lower aerobic power, 40 percent lower muscle strength, 47 percent less lifting strength and 26 percent slower marching speed than the average man. Women are less likely to be able to march under load -- 12.4 miles in five hours with a 71-pound assault load -- and to be able to crawl, sprint and negotiate obstacles with that load and move a casualty weighing 165 pounds or more while carrying that load.
There are other differences between male and female troops. Women are twice as likely to suffer injuries and are three times more undeployable than men. Servicewomen are four times likelier to report being ill than servicemen. The percentage of servicewomen being medically unavailable at any time is twice that of servicemen. Then there's pregnancy. Each year, between 10 and 17 percent of servicewomen become pregnant.
Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of military social engineering is the cover-up of failure. Officers who criticize double standards or expose official lies and deception about servicewomen's performance risk their careers. Those official lies and deception will eventually reveal themselves with unnecessary loss of lives on the battlefield.
Finally, the Selective Service System's website (http://www.sss.gov) reads: "While there has been talk recently about women in combat, there has been NO decision to require females to register with Selective Service, or be subject to a future military draft. Selective Service continues to register only men, ages 18 through 25." How can that, coupled with reduced performance standards, possibly be consistent with the Defense Department's stated agenda "to provide a level, gender-neutral playing field"?
The mere fact that we had to invent the word undeployable saddens me.
Many soldiers are going to die due to the decisions of obama and democrats to show how progressive they are.
And their children won’t be the one’s fighting and dying...
obama’s efforts to destroy the US military are succeeding.
Too bad; Yeltsin and our ISIS enemies are laughing at us, not to mention the Chinese and... everybody else.
They just appointed a female Commandant for West Point. I always knew that was a school for “Whooshies”. Their football team proves it against Navy every year.
Because women have double standards to uphold...
PT requirements and standards should be broken down to three categories: Combat, Combat Support, and Support. Combat should be the most demanding with Support being the least demanding.
Combat requirements should also include a sprint, squats and pullups. The 2 mile run should be replaced with a 5 mile forced march. Combat Support should include a sprint and squats and keep the 2 mile. Support could keep the current male standards. There should not be a “break” for females.
Understand my bias is as a former Infantryman
We do?
Robotic infantry.
Robotic pilots.
Paint breasts, vaginas, and different skin colors on half of them.
Then, brag that diversity is the secret of our strength!
Reparations are due to women after centuries of discrimination and exclusion from the military. For a period of time, say 10 or 50 years only women should be allowed to enlist and only women should be accepted at the service academies.
Ones. I dont think you meant to make it possessive.
the average woman has 20 percent lower aerobic power, 40 percent lower muscle strength, 47 percent less lifting strength and 26 percent slower marching speed than the average man.
Easy solution! Just sew a penis on them! Then they will be men!
Yeltsin? Did you mean Putin? Yeltsin died in 2007.
Why is there no gender integration on the football teams?
If women can handle infantry combat, it is obvious they can successfully compete against men on the athletic field.
I didn't go to West Point, though I was accused of it when I was a young Captain...lol. I was a member of an active ROTC program at a Jesuit university...a volatile mix.
The 4th quarter against Navy was an absolute embarrassment. It was so bad, I was thrust about 35 years back in time, when I was forced to wear two hats during a tac eval: Maintenance Officer and XO.
My soldiers and I suffered through one platoon leader missing his morning mission time by 30 minutes, and the Battery Commander screwing up the coordinates on a mission so badly it was nearly the stuff of legend: he gave a platoon a 10 KM long route defense when their weapons systems had a max effective range of 1 KM.
IMHO, that's how badly Army gagged.
Don't give these people any ideas...
The article starts out discussing tanks.
There is one very common and critical task associated with tank warfare - loading the gun. And loading it fast - really fast. Everything done at gunnery is based on speed. And for obvious reasons. The entire crew’s lives depend on firing fast, fast, fast.
I’ve seen women attempt to load a tank...a parked tank, so not even moving. These women were cadets - most were very physically fit and would score near the top of the charts on the fitness test, using the men’s scale.
But they couldn’t load the gun fast :(
The heaviest rounds are around 40 pounds I think. Not tremendous. Most men, even smaller guys, can sling them around fairly easily. But something about the confined space making it hard to get the legs and hips involved makes it very difficult for women, even very fit women.
Its a small thing, but the first thing I thought of...well the first thing I thought of after contemplating the logistics of having 4 stinking bodies cohabitating for weeks in a steel can, and possible romance/relationship issues arising.
...and the perfumed princes, the Courtney Massengales of our officer corps, have smartly saluted and said, "Yes Sir!"
I wouldn’t be surprised if today’s military leaders call for an amendment protocol to the Geneva Conventions to make the hand-to-hand killing of a female fighter a war crime.
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ISIS says “sure, sign us up ..... oh wait, Geneva Conventions? What’s that?”. /sarc
Whoops!
Yes, my (very) bad.
Thanks for the correction.
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