Posted on 05/13/2022 12:21:23 PM PDT by Kaslin
Only 52 percent of active-duty enlisted women, compared to 92 percent of the men, were able to pass the Army Combat Fitness Test.
It was gratifying to watch Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton questioning Christine Wormuth, the first female Secretary of the Army, at a recent Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.
Sen. Cotton, a Ranger-qualified infantry veteran, respectfully chastised Wormuth for the “fiasco” that the new Army Combat Fitness Test (ACFT) has become. For the past three years, the Army has tried but failed to implement “gender-neutral” standards in the new Combat Fitness Test — mainly because of high failure rates among female trainees.
After women in combat rules changed in 2015, the Army designed the ACFT to be sex-neutral, with identical requirements and scoring tables for men and women. The new ACFT would replace the long-standing Army Physical Fitness Test, which was sex-normed with different requirements and scores to allow for male/female physical differences.
At that time, women were not eligible for direct ground combat (infantry) assignments. Now that they are, sex-normed training standards are untenable. There is no sex-norming on the battlefield.
Cotton read back to Wormuth her own 2021 testimony promising that the new ACFT would have sex-neutral standards. When former Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter ordered all combat positions to be opened for women in 2015, he and the Army’s official Implementation Plan promised that concerns about combat effectiveness would be addressed by “effective leadership” and “gender-neutral standards.”
Nevertheless, after several versions of the ACFT failed, this year the Army dropped sex neutrality and reinstated sex-norming. Secretary Wormuth acknowledged the Army’s stunning reversal, suggesting that the new ACFT was “more challenging.” Cotton responded bluntly: “The new standards are pathetic — They are absolutely pathetic.”
Cotton noted that soldiers qualifying for the infantry will have to do only 10 push-ups instead of 35. He also quoted the Army’s Frequently Asked Questions webpage stating that commanders may not set higher standards for acceptance or retention in a combat unit. “This,” said Cotton, “is going to get people killed.”
The ACFT project, initiated by then-Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley and Defense Secretary Mark Esper, always was controversial. The previous physical fitness test involved sex-normed sit-ups, push-ups, and a two-mile run that could be done anywhere. The new six-event Combat Fitness Test required expensive equipment, sex- and age-neutral standards, and considerable time to prepare for and administer the test.
Requirements included the leg tuck (pulling the knees up while suspended on a high bar); a 25-meter sprint, drag, and carry of a 90 lb. sled and two 40 lb. kettlebells; throwing a 10-lb. medicine ball backward over the head; hand-release push-ups (lifting hands and arms at the bottom of the push-up); and a two-mile run.
Women struggled with the leg-tuck exercise, and the “age-neutral” standards raised questions. Why should an infantry team leader, a Pentagon-based three-star, and a 125 lb. X-ray technician have to meet identical physical fitness standards?
The original ACFT also tried to match individuals to various occupations with different requirements for heavy, significant, or moderate physical demands. An infantry-bound soldier, for example, had to perform 30 hand-release push-ups to earn a minimum score on that event, compared to 10 push-ups for others headed for less strenuous occupations.
The experiment started to fall apart in 2019, when 85 percent of female soldiers failed to pass. In response to congressional pressure, ACFT 2.0 allowed the choice of a two-minute plank exercise instead of the leg-tuck, and an optional 2.5 mile walk instead of the 2-mile run.
Version 3.0 of the ACFT contrived a system to evaluate women’s scores in “performance bands” or “tiers” comparing women’s performance to men’s. The top 1 percent of both men and women, for example, would be rated in the Platinum group, even though their performance levels were dramatically different.
This color-coded “gender-neutral” tiered illusion fooled no one, and failure rates for female and older soldiers remained high. In 2021, a congressionally ordered study of the ACFT was done by RAND, a Defense Department contractor that has long supported leftist policies. RAND gathered data from 630,000 tests, and the results were dismal.
Only 52 percent of active-duty enlisted women, compared to 92 percent of the men, were able to pass the ACFT. Women’s pass rates were higher among officers — 72 percent compared to 96 percent of male officers — but pass rates were lower in the National Guard and Reserves.
RAND also reported that for Regular Army enlisted women, pass rates in the bottom ten military occupational specialties (MOSs), ranged from 31 to 44 percent, and in the top ten, from 65 to 89 percent. In comparison, success rates for enlisted men in the bottom ten MOSs ranged from 83 to 86 percent, and they scored 98 to 100 percent in the top ten MOSs.
Even with several caveats, the empirical data clearly showed that theories about physical gender equality in military combat training were inconsistent with physical realities. RAND cautioned that gender-norming the ACFT would “ensure parity in pass rates between groups, but it would also require the Army to accept differences in potential combat readiness among soldiers who are held to different testing standards.”
Cotton faults Army officials for accepting that tradeoff. Shortly after release of the RAND report in March, the Army announced ACFT 4.0, which reneged on previous promises to implement sex-neutral standards.
The new sex-normed test adjusted requirements and scoring tables, dropped the leg-tuck event, and abandoned attempts to match individuals to heavier jobs with tougher requirements. Like the old Army test, ACFT 4.0 measures basic physical fitness, not readiness for advanced combat training.
Gender-neutral standards did not work in the ACFT, and as we have already seen in the Special Operations Forces Command, “diversity and inclusion” mandates encourage minimal standards, not meritocratic excellence.
A recent Rasmussen poll found that 59 percent of respondents favored women in combat, but even more, 66 percent, said that women should pass the same physical fitness requirements as male soldiers. What if women don’t meet equal standards?
Cotton said he was “disappointed and borderline appalled” by the situation, and he would not allow it to stand. He and Secretary Wormuth were talking about two different things — combat effectiveness on his side and “fairness” to certain “subgroups” on hers. Congress should re-evaluate female combat assignment policies, putting meritocracy and military readiness first.
Going to?
This can’t be right - wherever you go and there is an action movie, there is always at least one woman fighting and slaying men twice her size with apparent ease and skill.
_____________________________________________________
I know! I am a female, and I cannot imagine trying to fight those guys and living to tell the tale.
The right pronouns to use. Safe space intimate conversations. How to drum out of service Ukrainians wo are too 'patritic. All the WOKE BS...
Why won't Democrats do this?
Because they know it'll undermine their ability to fight? Rather than sending their women to safety, we'll show them the NEW UNIFORMS FOR PREGNANT SOLDIERS? It's time to drum out WOKE idiots in the US military OR they can explain why they won't train Ukrainians in 'our' ways...
Ping
I can still remember my old Drill Instructor screaming at everybody JUST OFF THE BUS “DROP AND GIVE ME FIFTY”.
The Marine Corps weeded out the weak and lazy pretty damn quick.
Once in your recruit platoon the order became so regular you just expected it, any butts to high in the air got the whole platoon another 50.
Platoon 2036 OORAH. 1968
I can still remember my old Drill Instructor screaming at everybody JUST OFF THE BUS “DROP AND GIVE ME FIFTY”.
The Marine Corps weeded out the weak and lazy pretty damn quick.
Once in your recruit platoon the order became so regular you just expected it, any butts to high in the air got the whole platoon another 50.
Platoon 2036 OORAH. 1968
there is absolutely NO reason not to have separate standards other than it makes them look weak...
We need to realize that sexes are different. That's what we did back in WW2. Combat units should be male only. Navy? We should find ways to segregate by units so we can limit fraternization between the sexes.
Of course everyone is equal.
That’s why women have to register for Selective Service, just like men.
Oh, wait.
Well, the only way this woke nonsense gets stopped is with the blood of a lot of women.
Israel had to learn this the hard way and so will we.
“The Marine Corps weeded out the weak and lazy pretty damn quick.”
They were just doing their part to help staff the Air Force!
(ducks for incoming!)
He’s not seen GI Jane.
Would they shoot your family if ordered?
The way I understand is that some of the women joined the fight.
I’ve seen a few of those photos and some IDF ladies with their rifles in Jerusalem shops. The Russians had squadrons of women pilots during WWII, too.
Clearly there are a things women can do in war and in combat, if need puts them there. But I agree that men and women are different and can make all the difference between life and death in some situations. But I do wonder where the Ukrainians—and the Russians, too, for that matter—draw their lines with women in their armed forces and what standards they use.
That is a completely realistic and there for sexist conclusion.
During WWII the Japanese used women extensively in combat.
They were usually from Korea. /s
“It’s time to drum out WOKE idiots in the US military...”
It isn’t the military that determines the training requirements or the actual operations of who, what, and most important, where we are to do the first two.
The egomaniac attitude of politicians and their elevated swaggering tough guy/gal attitude about the US military capacity without their logical reasoning of the entire picture, or not caring, of the consequences of their judgement in a game they aren’t playing, is sadly short sided.
But I have to admit, these idiots keep getting elected and are ordering cannon fodder into the path of the pain of someone else’s war again and adding that pain now to people that aren’t, or don’t want to, wish it to happen but are too lost in their little cave to realize how much it is going to hurt from the backlash.
Wait until it gets cold and our citizens can’t warm their house, or put gas into the car to go by food, or lose their property because they can’t get parts to repair it and still get whatever medicine they can afford. And all the while they are subsidizing the voting booths with people they are literally taking life support away from the US citizens and creating space for them with jobs, food, medical, and funds.
You don’t win that war by complaining, you vote them out of office, on both sides, and get rid of what used to be called the swamp. Then replace it with solid ground. We were going that way with Trump. But his own party was guilty of destroying him and with him, us!
wy69
Yeah, I and alot of others noticed that as well. Usually they have have the one sided shaved head look too.
Damn right bump!
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