Posted on 10/11/2017 6:21:44 PM PDT by markomalley
The Army will expand the number of installations where it assigns female soldiers serving in previously all-male, front-line combat jobs as more women enter the infantry and armor fields, a top general said Wednesday.
To date, more than 500 female soldiers have completed training to serve in infantry and armor jobs that only became opened to them in December 2015 when the Pentagon eliminated rules barring women from serving in certain military jobs, Lt. Gen. Thomas C. Seamands, the Army’s chief of personnel, said during the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual meeting in Washington.
“These are citizens who a few years ago would not have had the opportunity to be infantry or armor soldiers, and they are now doing it and doing it quite well [and] with distinction,” he said.
So far, the Army has assigned about 100 of those female soldiers to units at two posts — Fort Bragg in North Carolina and Fort Hood in Texas. Women are serving in infantry and armor units within Fort Bragg’s 2nd and 3rd Brigade Combat Teams in the 82nd Airborne Division and in Fort Hood’s 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division and 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment.
The other roughly 400 soldiers in those fields are now in various training programs while they await assignments to combat units.
But as more women enter the previously closed fields, the Army will need to expand the number of installations where it assigns female infantry and armor soldiers, said Lt. Col. Naomi Mercer, the Army’s chief of command policy who is helping develop the gender-integration process for the service.
The Army said last month that it had an additional 184 women attempting to join the infantry and another 125 attempting to serve in armor jobs.
The expansion of posts with female infantry and armor soldiers could come within the next year, Mercer said.
She declined to identify which Army installations were being considered, but she said female infantry and armor soldiers would likely begin their careers at larger posts with multiple combat units.
Fort Hood and Fort Bragg were chosen because they are large installations with extensive resources for soldiers serving in combat arms fields, Mercer said.
“The consideration is based on the opportunities for the [soldiers] who go there,” she said. “The reason that we picked Fort Bragg and Fort Hood in the first place is that those are armor and infantry hubs.”
Just as the Army has done at Fort Hood and Fort Bragg, it will place at least two female officers or noncommissioned officers in a unit before it moves junior enlisted soldiers —in the rank of specialist or below — into those units.
The Army calls that structure a leaders-first approach to integrating women into fields that were traditionally all male. Mercer said the structure has been effective so far and the leaders are paving the way for new soldiers just out of initial entrance training programs to move into the combat force.
“We’ve been preparing for this since 2012 and it has proven it works,” she said. “Everybody is filtering in. It just takes time.”
That I did not know, thank you for the explanation.
I learn something everyday here. I had always thought Israeli women served in combat along with the men.
I know personally that I could never serve in combat, I cannot kill and am a coward. I would run before fighting and would only fight if I absolutely had to.
I do know women I would trust my life to though.
No, the women cannot keep up with the men. And those who want this garbage to occur are intent on destroying the warrior culture
Those spoiled kids are picking their noses and trying to wipe their buggers on us. We’re so outraged and affected. We can’t stand it. We’ll simply give up.
[Little irony and sarcasm there. Deprive the feminazis and antifags of attention, and they’ll eventually bloat their ugly selves up enough to expire.]
Thank you for your insight.
And thank you for your service.
Exactly.
Well said!
Ground combat requires brutal ferocity in addition to exceptional physical strength and endurance. Many men cannot handle it, and women simply cannot fight with men, period. To pretend otherwise is either sadistic or suicidal, depending on your perspective.
“Ground combat requires brutal ferocity”
I have always believed that. And always knew I wasn’t cut out for it.
My experience is that the Army PR machine has for decades put out that the women in this or that Acme position “do everything that the men do”. The only problem is that it is demonstrably untrue.
Why can’t women compete with men in professional sports? Is combat less important?
Women who are infantry officers and proud of their crossed dummy sticks should be smart enough to realize they should hone their strong mind and weaker back someplace else.
Israel tried women in combat. It was a dismal failure. It was ended.
Women absolutely should not serve in any combat function, especially infantry and Special Forces. When a woman makes inside linebacker on the Seattle Seahawks she’ll be ready for close-quarters combat. Guess what. It ain’t happening. Political correctness is killing the military. A nation that sends its women to fight its wars is not is not worth defending.
On 20 November 1943, during the horrific fighting on Betio atoll during the battle of Tarawa, two Japanese tanks mounted a counterattack against the fragile Marine toehold on Red Beach 3. The Marines were huddled there at the base of a seawall in the face of withering fire from the rikusentai of Admiral Keiji Shibasaki fanatical Japanese Naval Landing Force defenders who were slaughtering hundreds of their 2nd Marine Division comrades in Betio Lagoon during 76 hours of some of the most savage fighting in the history not only of the Marines, but the US armed forces.
Marine anti-tank gun crews were trying to figure out how to get their 912 lb 37MM M3 antitank guns over the 7 foot plus seawall. The battery commander ordered his 5 man crews to LIFT them over. Being Marines who always obeyed even seemingly impossible orders, they did EXACTLY that and promptly knocked out the tanks. They then engaged several enemy bunkers whose dual purpose guns were repeatedly knocking out the approaching landing craft and put them out of action. Finally they routed a local counter attack of 200 or so Japanese against the south shore of Red Beach 3 with canister shot, all of this at a critical and precarious point in the landing.
Familiarize your self with the case of Merrils Marauders in WWII in the China Burma India Theatre. From Feb-May of 1944, the men of Galahad Force were subjected to the most grueling long term commitment probably of ANY US combat unit in history. They were tasked with a long range deep penetration operation behind Japanese lines. At the end of it, almost every man was wracked by dysentery, malaria, scrub typhus, cholera, and any number of debilitating diseases that sapped their strength to far below whatever it was when they began the operation. Their mission had been extended and lengthened several times, and their debilitated condition was not deemed sufficient to allow them relief.
I fear we are losing the institutional memory of having faced enemies that are capable of defeating us on the battlefield. We have not faced such an enemy since the summer/winter of 1950 on the Korean Peninsula. The names of Task Force Smith, the 1st Battles of Taejon and Seoul, the Pusan perimeter the ambush of the 2nd Infantry Division at Kunu-Ri and the 80 mile withdrawal from the Chosen Resovoir seem but distant memories. The cultural marxists now in charge of the Obama administration are indulging in the sort of social experimentation SURE to result in defeat or serious setback against an enemy capable of projecting the sort of battle field power that would lead to the battlefield reverses that the US Armed Forces suffered at Kasserine Pass, the Hurtegen Forest, the Rapido River the US Strategic Bombing Campaign, the 1st Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, (Savo Island) or the Rangers at Cisterna in Italy. Only a feckless nation that is oblivious about facing an enemy capable of inflicting these sorts of battle field defeats would contemplate such a disastrous notion.
I mean no disrespect to the female personnel of the US Armed Forces who have served and ARE serving their nation honorably and well. I respect them as fellow vets and comrades in arms. Policy decisions are above their level for the most part.
But as a matter of POLICY, I think that women should be excluded from the armed forces for the most part, with a few exceptions and COMPLETELY from combat and most combat support roles, particularly when the armed forces are a small percentage of the total population, as is the case now. The use of significant numbers of women should be reserved for large scale mobilization as was the case in WWII. The population base is more than twice as large now as then and there would be no problem securing a sufficient number of qualified men with appropriate incentives for such a relatively small armed forces.
The advantages for the armed forces, particularly the Army would be greater flexibility as to how personnel can be deployed in combat emergencies and other contingencies and a lesser logistical strain as involves clothing, barracks and housing, and innumerable other considerations that are exclusive to the maintenance of large numbers of women. I think morale and discipline would also be improved as well.
The courts have repeatedly ruled that the armed forces are exempted from many of the equal opportunity requirements of the civilian world, and for the very good and sufficient requirements that are unique to the armed forces. This contretemps is being propelled largely by the cultural marxist wing of gender equity feminism who wish for the placement of a leftist Chairwoman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The resultant detriment of the ability of the armed forces to fight plays no consideration in their calculus, other than as an peripheral side benefit.
I know that women have played a vital role during guerrilla, partisan warfare and sabotage/espionage activity. But to deliberately employ them in ground combat units whose primary task is to close with, engage and destroy similar enemy units is the height of lunacy and madness given the effort required to identify the relative few who could qualify even if we ignore the potential detriments to morale and discipline.
This is sheer and utter madness akin to allowing open homosexuals to serve in the armed forces. Oh has that happened too???
>I think a lot of things contributed to that, women in combat being the very least of it.
The fact that the media and the government refuses to talk about how female units did in combat screams that they were a major failure. If they’d done well or even OK thee media would never stop talking about it.
Bottom line is put women in combat and then even the Arabs can beat you.
No matter what they claim they ALWAYS lower or tweak the standards when it comes to getting more females in. Not to mention women entering a field is ALWAYS a prelude to an permanent ‘epidemic’ of sexual assault and harassment claims that the feminists will cry about and blame men for forever after.
Military traditionalists say women’s combat roles in the Israel Defense Forces are exaggerated by advocates in the U.S., noting as an example a recent IDF decision to keep Israeli women from serving on main battle tanks.
As the U.S. military prepares to open most, if not all, infantry, armor and special operations units to women, activists often point to the IDF as an illustration of a military in which women are thriving in ground combat units.
But a closer look shows Israeli women are not in direct combat special operations such as the Green Berets. Nor are they in front-line combat brigades mobilized to engage in direct heavy combat.
In the infantry, virtually all of Israel’s female combat soldiers are confined to two light battalions — the Caracal and the Lions of Jordan — which are assigned to guard the borders with Egypt and Jordan, the only Arab countries that have peace treaties with Israel.
“Uniformed Israeli women patrol the borders or help to train men for combat positions, but these important missions do not involve direct ground combat, meaning deliberate offensive action against the enemy,” said Elaine Donnelly, who heads the Center for Military Readiness. “None of America’s allies, much less potential adversaries, are treating women like men in the combat arms.”
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/may/25/womens-combat-roles-in-israel-defense-forces-exagg/
Have we not PURGED these Obama ass kissers out of the Army yet? Is there no one worthwhile to replace them?
I bow to you guys superior knowledge, I have obviously bought into exaggerations on this.
I have seen women serve with my husband in the MP’s in Europe and they did well, however, they were officer’s so more admin than anything.
And as I have said, I personally could not and would not unless every man I know was dead. I would be useless in a combat situation.
More bull chit. Marines, boy scouts, submarines, you name it. World turned upside down. No wonder families andvthe world in general are so screwed up.
Im happy to be closer to the end than beginning. It is too screwed up to try to fix or even worry with.
Effing fools!
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