[MasterGunner01]

If the women want to compete for combat slots (notice that only women officers want this — as a fast track to promotion), then they should do so by doing exactly the same things as their male counter parts. There should be no dumbed-down set of expectations and performance for the women while the men bear the full requirements. This is hypocrisy of the rankest sort. If the women candidates are so good, they need to compete on a level playing field. Let the best candidate win.

Unfortunately the PC Brigade won't hear of this because getting marginally qualified women in these slots is paramount for their agenda. I would wonder how these PC women soldiers would have borne the Siege of Bastogne in the winter of 1944-1945? More to the point, could America have won the Battle of the Bulge with women fighting with the 101st Airborne or 4th Armored Division? I don't think so.

[rlmorel]

I hear what you say in this respect, but I disagree, and here's why.

I base my disagreement on this graph I created to show the point on which my belief that females are unsuited for combat primarily hinges, and the fact that what this graph displays has effects on everything from unit morale to logistics and unit readiness/capability:

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. So I believe the distribution of average strength in females is narrower due to natural physiology.