The problem is twofold, in that few women, but some, can meet the physical requirements. However, the flip side of this is that the *best* male warriors often have a very strong instinct to protect females in danger.
You get some unstoppable warrior type, a real Rambo, and put a female near him in real, or just perceived danger, and Rambo might turn to Jello.
And no number of female soldiers will make up for losing even a few Rambo-types.
Importantly, there are a lot of men who would be more than willing to send female soldiers “out to draw fire”, but the vast majority of such men are pencil pushers and glass jaws not worth their salt in combat.
And this goes to an even deeper false paradigm in the military: that *any* guy can be trained to be a warrior.
In truth, you are lucky if 1 in 100 *combat* soldiers are “real warriors”. The rest are just along to hold their coat. And the ratio of combat soldiers to combat support and combat service support soldiers is something like 1:20.
The idea of “every man a soldier” only really goes back to the age of Napoleon, and the creation of mass armies. And even then, all the way through to Vietnam, on average hundreds of thousands, or even millions of bullets had to be expended for each enemy bullet casualty.
Except when fired from the gun of a real warrior, in which case, many or most of his bullets would cause an enemy casualty.
So, the bottom line is that putting women in combat roles will just end up getting more women and men killed, and many fewer missions accomplished. But those obsessed with putting women in combat roles don’t give a shiat about that.
There was a time when fighting wars was for men, and there were certain combat specialties that the vast majority of men couldn’t do. And guess what nothing has changed in these elite combat fields except political correctness run amok. Men die in war, and now more men will die.
“These are men, America’s best
One hundred men we’ll test today
But only three win the Green Beret”
~ SSgt Barry Sadler, 1965
I’m not sure what you mean by “jello” - undependable? That’s how I view the problem.
If “our” unit is strung thin in defense and I’m in love with the woman at the left flank, I’m not dependable: my unit’s in danger from a circumstance my commander doesn’t know about. There’s a very real chance of me abandoning my position and going to her aid if it gets heavy over there. Likewise, if she’s killed I’m going to be worse than worthless, I’ll be emotionally explosive and a “revenge at any cost” danger to my unit.
I don’t see how this policy could end up with anything other than needless deaths. It’s truly “murder by misrule.”