Marine Corps to open infantry training to enlisted women

I admit, I thought they would hold out alot longer.

Marine Corps to open infantry training to enlisted women

The Marine Corps will allow enlisted women to participate in basic infantry training beginning this fall as part of ongoing research to determine what additional ground combat jobs may open to female personnel.

New female enlisted Marines will volunteer for spots in the service’s Infantry Training Battalion, mirroring a related effort allowing new female lieutenants to enroll in the Corps’ Infantry Officer Course, according to an official planning document obtained by Marine Corps Times. Titled “Assignment of Women in Combat Units,” the document is dated Aug. 16.

“Female Marines will have the opportunity to go through the same infantry training course as their male counterparts,” the document states. However, as with the research involving female officers, “female enlisted Marines who successfully complete infantry training as part of this research process will not be assigned infantry as a military occupational specialty and will not be assigned to infantry units.”

It’s unclear whether any enlisted women have volunteered yet. Marine Corps officials were not immediately available to discuss the plan.

Infantry Training Battalion is part of the Marine Corps’ School of Infantry, the first stop for all new Marines once they’ve graduated from boot camp. The service operates two such schools, one at Camp Geiger along the North Carolina coast and one at Camp Pendleton in southern California.

Enlisted infantry school lasts eight weeks and includes a mix of physical training, classroom work and overnight field exercises that involve live-fire events, according to the Marine Corps’ website. Future grunts learn a host of skills while there, including weapons handling and marksmanship, patrolling and land navigation, and how to spot and react to improvised explosives. They live in tents through some of the program and at times sleep outside in fighting positions.

The inclusion of women in infantry training is part of the Marine Corps’ extensive research process stemming from the Defense Department’s historic decision earlier this year to repeal its Direct Combat Exclusion Rule, enacted in 1994. The move opened about 237,000 jobs to women across all of the services, including nearly 54,000 jobs in the Marine Corps. While some troops see it as a step toward equal rights, others contend it will weaken the military’s combat units.

The Corps’ research is expected to last years, and Marine officials have said no women will join infantry units before 2015. Even then, the services will be allowed to ask for exceptions that, if granted by the Pentagon, could keep some jobs closed to women.

 

They can't hold out. They do whatever the DoD tells them too. It sounds like its just research at this point as they say that women will still not be assigned any actual infantry jobs. This isn't new, the army did this back in the late 80s with disasterous results. This is clearly nothing more than a cynical grab for votes and they don't care if they have to water down the military and expose their own soldiers to additional risks or not. The Marine Corp infantry training is arguably even harder than the Armies and the Army even gave the women in their study extra weeks of physical prep time and they still couldn't come close. I don't know what they expect to be different this time around.

Of course the Marines might just be trying to head this off at the river. Their study will inevitably conclude that women fall way short and then they can just show the DoD their research. If women want to become pilots or support roles fine. But, do not risk the lives of the infantry by trying to play politically correct games and watering down the effectiveness of units.

 

This is just a waste of time and money. Sure, there are probably some tough and athletic females like Captain Katie Petronio who could make it through SOI, but the real hardship takes place in the fleet Marine forces and combat zones, the latter of which basically ruined Captain Petronio's body.

 

This is a bad idea, for several reasons.

I hope they keep the women segregated from the males, otherwise there is going to be many unwed pregnancies.

Racial integration and Gender Integration together is a terrible combination, just asking for trouble. I just hope feminists don't complain when these poor women get sexually assaulted and harassed. Too bad America cannot go back to the old days when they had separate infantry divisions for different groups of people: a German regiment, a Scandinavian regiment, a French regiment, etc. When fighting together in close quarters under strenuous situations, people generally feel more comfortable working with those who are similar to themselves.

 

What the hell does race have anything to do with it? There is zero impact on a unit if they are mixed or happen to all be the same color. The US has among the best special forces in the world. And how does separating them based on nationality do anything good at all. Groups are picked because of their skill sets and who is needed for a mission. In the Navy SEALS the person in charge is the one with the best training for that particular operation regardless of whether or not he is the "new" guy or been around for years. Picking teams because they came from Eastern Europe or Western Europe is just asinine.

 

People said the exact same thing in '93 when combat flying jobs opened up to women, and that worked out ok. I would suspect not many women are going to want to be in the infantry anyway, all this does is open up the training to them. In an all volunteer military the services aren't forcing women to apply for infantry. A few may choose to give the training a try and as long as the standards remain the same, I don't see a problem with this. I would suspect most female applicants would drop on request or wash out, but at least give them to opportunity to try. It's a highly technical military now, and considering males are more likely to be high school drop-outs, opening up training to women means the pool of qualified volunteer candidates expands. Soldiers should at minimum have a high school diploma and have no prison records. Potential male recruits are less likely to have diplomas and more likely to have prison records. Dont' forget also, the most decorated soldier in WW2 was 5' 4" 120 lbs. Audie Murphy.

 

That's actually a good point. Go ahead and start collecting the data now; particularly the data on the type of long term damage done to the female body and the cost estimates for all of the new medical discharges and disability payments.

 

Heck, 10 years as a Grunt (only 5 years in "The Fleet") has left my knees a complete mess. And I remember hearing that when they tried the pilot program in the 1980's to bring women into Artillery units and they had to do forced marches, the largest complaints were an increase in hip injuries among women.

 

PTSD treatment will cost taxpayers $6.2 Billion as 1 in 5 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan are making claims of depresson, and another 20% claiming traumatic brain injury.

All told the past 11 years of dubious conflicts will cost taxpayers approaching $2.5 Trillion dollars in personnel, and equipment expenditures when it is all said and done..and as I type this more casualties are being inflicted in Afghanistan translating to more taxpayer expense to treat the injured, bury the dead and handle the survivor benefits. Even after the wars end, the costs remain...treating PTSD is an example.

and you're worried about the maybe...100 - 150 females who may try out for the Marine Corps infantry?

Ludicrous.

How about writing your Congress person and tell them to avoid placing boots in harm's way in needless wars rather than worry about a female Marine spraining her ankle and tax payers being on the hook for an Ace bandage and ibuprofen.

Do people honestly think there's going to be a huge influx of females wanting to be in the infantry? They deserve the chance to try, I've heard the same arguments against them being eligible for combat flying jobs and some two decades later, there's been no catastrophic effect on combat readiness nor unit cohesion. We've got gang affiliated soldiers in the ranks and folks are worried a few females in a combat platoon is going to be ruin the Army and Marine Corps....

Let's get real here please....y'all act like the infantry are a bunch of angels and Super Men...typically it's the bottom of the barrel goes infantry...only in more modern conflicts has the technology increased to the extent the infantry requires half a brain now a days and not just a pulse. In my Dad's era in WW2...as a draftee, plenty in his outfit were functionally illiterate...and in the infantry.

 

This is where I generally stand fast.

Yes, I do believe they have the right to try, as long as there is no lowering of standards to try and accommodate them.

I also have no problem with women in in the Special operations community, as long as the same standards apply. No "Affirmative Action", no sliding scales, try or fail on their own merit and abilities.

 

She looks like she could hack it.

 

I do not envision a whole heck of a lot of women trying out for 11 Bravo...
Easily within the triple digits even applying for it....95% of those will wash out or DOR...which leaves about
40 - 50 women able to meet the physical challenges without sacrificing standards as a result...in the entire ground combat arms.

Even in opening up combat flying, women comprise less than 5% of all military pilots...it's still male dominated and even with allowing women in ground combat roles...it will remain male dominated...

What gets my goat are those claiming the entire system will crash n' burn because women will mess it all up....
this is where I call foul...some people just don't like women...they think they have no place at all in the military...they are just one big distraction.....and history has shown us, they are vital in an all volunteer military...because not enough males meet the standards in other ways....moral and intellectual for example. It's a high tech military now..brains matter more than ever.

 

As you are Air Force, I realize that most of the force is rather isolated from the idea of a combat unit. For the Air Force, a combat zone is any area in which they don't get per diem and a rental car. However the issue isn't women actually being in combat (at least not yet). I'm worried that the demands of actual Infantry training both in schooling and assigned to a unit will result in a great deal of injuries that will end in medical discharges and disabilities of varying percentages. So, rather than making an unrelated political point like you did, I was commenting that I think collecting the data is a good idea.

So if after years of study we determine that 50% of women serving as infantry end up medically discharged as a result of training injuries, would you still think "it's their choice" or should we stop a senseless experiment?

 

Bite your tongue you chairbound airplane driver, bite your tongue!

0311, not 11B! We are not talking about the frigging Army after all!

*laugh*

And no, I do not envision a lot either. But my fear is that the high washout rate will be seen as some that the standards are unfair, and need to be "adjusted". But as long as they remain the same I have absolutely no problem with it. But just as with the men, if they can't hack it out they go.

This is why I got out of the Marines after all, could not be a grunt with bad knees. But I was able to rejoin the military years later, in a capability that this did not seriously impact my abilities.

 

Let it be said I would not last more than a few days in the boots of an infantryman...it's not something I desire to do...there are snake eater types who like to make fun of people like me who find the whole notion of sleeping in a hole in the ground unpleasant...POGs, Fobbits...etc.

The combat arms has it's own motivation, as irrational as it may be, they embrace the suck...and use it as a motivator...
there are a few women who have that mindset...mindset mind you...maybe not the physicality...but there are a few women who want to sleep in the mud and hike for miles. They deserve the chance to try...if only handful are actually capable of it...they deserve a shot...the combat arms will remain male dominated, there's no real threat to the system by this injection of estrogen. The idea is to open it up and I agree with the idea...on it's surface there's no real reason they don't deserve the chance, given the assumption the standards remain the same regardless of male or female.

 

Let's see how she looks after her first MCCRES, shall we?



After 26 miles, I don't think she would be looking so chipper.

 

1 in 6 washes out of some part of basic military training....
guys get hurt...pull muscles, break arms...twist knees, get black eyes....

Is basic training therefore senseless?

We avoid training someone based upon the statistical probability of injuring themselves?

The OP is about opening up the infantry training to women...the training...

which means pass / fail.....either you make muster or you wash out...

You're putting the cart before the horse...what the Marines are doing are allowing women in to the infantry schools..they are not combat yet. Males are going to get injured in far greater numbers than what few females actually apply...you seem to be ignoring that and discriminating women because of a higher probability to sustain injury..on paper you are washing them out without even giving them the chance....

Sorry, women's bones break easier, you can't apply. That's essentially your argument...because I do not envision a drastic increase in costs for what few females apply for the infantry schools, given males are getting injured also even if the entire military was all male...people get injured in training. So we might as well just stop training them.

 

That depends on the statistical probability. I think 1 in 6 is a little high. It wasn't nearly that high in my basic training (in fact we only lost one person from our company due to injury), although maybe it's higher in the Air Force. Moving desks around maybe?

But there is a law of diminishing returns the higher the percentage of medical washouts. Actually it doesn't matter though. It could be 90% female washout and these programs will still probably remain intact.

 

I am sure you are aware that I said that entirely in jest, no insult intended.

Myself, I specifically took the Infantry for the challenge. I am probably a borderline Type A, who lives most of his life as a Type B. I love pushing the limits, within reason. I love adventure, new things, and challenging myself, mentally and physically. Spend weeks trudging through the jungles of Panama, loved it. 26 mile forced march with full combat load, sucks but that is the job, do it. I get a kind of a rush when I am able to do things that others say I could not do.

When I joined the Marines and went Infantry, a lot of my friends thought I was insane. 5'6", 150 lbs, glasses, I knew more about programming then I did about fighting (I was a pacifist even then). Then they were rather shocked to see me a year later, 5'9", 175 lbs, but still with a strange sense of humor and banging away on computers or reading instead of chasing girls and drinking all night long (I did chase one gal, caught her in 1985, still married to her).

And even at 48, I find the idea of sleeping on the ground not a lot of fun, maybe that is now why I am no longer a grunt. But I would also do it if it was required. One thing I have long believed, is that the military is not for those who are not adaptable.

However, I am also sure you have done something I have not done, that is SERE training.

 

SERE is more a test of the ability to function on very little sleep in a high stress environment....in that way it has something in common with Spec Ops training. It is less a test of physicality and more a test of endurance...they want you to break. They want to you to "spill the beans"...to the bad guys, and become a wimpering crushed soul in the fetal position waving the white flag. "I'll tell you everything you want to know, just let me get some sleep." The idea behind it is to give a basic understanding that an aircrew could potentially get shot down and captured by the enemy.. It's not to make ground pounders out of us, or to make us more relate to what the grunts do...it's to prepare us for a possibility.

Evade capture and if you are captured, return with honor. It certainly does not make anyone into an infantryman.

 

Latest Available Attrition Rates (2006)
Army 13.6%
Air Force 7.1%
Navy 14.0%
Marines 11.7%

These are BMT failure rates for all the services...not all are due to injuries of course.


1 in 6 = 17% so that's a little high...on average about 1 in 8 will fail BMT or recycle...or about 12% on average.

That's just basic military training, I'm certain the advanced infantry schools have similar rates...
do we look at someone and say to them, because of the higher probability of you getting hurt, say we run genetic tests....we're not going to let you even go through the training, you're just too delicate. This is the basic argument as I see it presented on the thread anyway.

Women are too delicate.

 

When I went through ITS (Infantry Training School - forerunner of SOI), my platoon lost 3 people out of around 45. 1 was legal (busted in a hotel room with a 16 year old girl), the other 2 were medical (1 broke his leg, other got a bad case of flu).

 

In my era, about 30% washed out of UPT, which is the equivalent of basic pilot training. It was all male back then, though women could fly in support roles, my particular class was all males. Out of 20, 4 washed out....they hook rides, meaning in some aspect of the training, usually on check rides, they get a U...Unsatisfactory. It's about 90% mental, and remembering procedure under pressure is the way to survive and those that can't get washed out. Very few drop on request, because this isn't officer candidate school...no one is pushed to their physical limits. It's assumed you're already officer material, what is tested is can you fly under pressure and maintain the pace of the learning curve. Just about anyone can handle the physicality of basic flight training, there isn't any radical g loading going on, it's not knowing procedure that thins the herd. So yes, my background probably doesn't prepare me for what an infantryman goes through in training, that's foreign to me being pushed to one's physical limits...where I excelled was memory retention under pressure..and this is not solely a male trait, therefore there was no reason to keep women off the flight deck if they could handle the g loads of combat aircraft...yet still many resisted. It's why I'm a bit sensitive to seeing so much resistance now, to the notion of women in the direct ground combat arms because some...not all... of the arguments are a re-hash of what I've heard in the 90's applying to women as combat aircraft commanders.

Physical differences are real, and I'm not denying this, if nothing else maybe opening up these infantry schools will prove you all right, but I certainly believe women are capable of killing and breaking stuff equal to any man, and this is what combat is all about afterall, whether you're using an M-16 or a JDAM. Dead is dead, am I right? and women are already killing bad guys and facing the possibility of being killed themselves. They've earned the right to give direct ground combat a chance.

 

You start allowing even the training and you end up with this. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jul/25/military-mulls-separate-combat-training-for-men-an/

The military is looking at ways to modify its training for women to help them qualify for direct ground combat roles in the infantry, tank units and special operations.

Senior officers revealed the new effort this week at a hearing of the House Armed Services subcommittee on personnel.

The armed services have pledged that their standards for ground combat and commando operations will be the same for men and women.

But now commanders are raising the possibility of a two-tiered training system.

The idea was presented by Rep. Niki Tsongas, Massachusetts Democrat, at a hearing of the House Armed Services military personnel subcommittee, who told of a conversation she had with a woman working on combat standards.

“Her comment was that, yes, you want the standards to be gender-neutral,” Ms. Tsongas said. “But you may need to train to these standards in different ways in order for women to have success.

“To put in place a training regimen that is ill-suited to maximizing the success of women is not really the outcome any of us want to see,” she said.

Army Lt. Gen. Howard B. Bromberg, deputy chief of staff for personnel, agreed.

“We are looking at that, and we’re not looking at it just for the integration of women,” Gen. Bromberg testified. “We’re looking at it for the total soldier, because just as you have a 110-pound male who may lack some type of physiological capability or physical capability, he or she may both need to be trained differently. We’re trying to expand our understanding of how we train.”

Lt. Gen. Robert E. Milstead Jr., deputy Marine Corps commandant for manpower, put forward a pitch for gender-segregated boot camps. The corps is the only service that has maintained gender-segregated initial training.

“I think an excellent example of what you’re talking about is our gender-separated boot camp,” Gen. Milstead testified. “We don’t start teaching the [occupations] there. Our boot camp is about the transformation of individuals, men and women, from being a civilian to being a United States Marine. We have it separated for that reason, because we feel that this transformation, it goes on a separate track. It needs to be handled different.

“They need to be nurtured different. They just need different steps as they go. They end up in the same place, the United States Marines.”

The Marine Corps has charged to the front of the women in combat issue by asking female officer volunteers to try to complete the officer combat qualification course at the base in Quantico, Va.

Women are expected to perform the same tasks as men. All six women who have entered the course have dropped out due to injury or failure to complete the course.

The Pentagon lifted the ban on women in direct combat roles in January. The services and U.S. Special Operations Command are studying combat standards to validate or change them before a decision is made to move women into those roles in January 2016.

So basically they want to spend millions of dollars on separate facilities for handful of "potential" candidates who almost all of them will drop out.

http://webarchive.nationalarchives....47E0-B376-AED4B09FB3B3/0/women_af_summary.pdf

The
Women in the Armed Forcesreport examined the differences in thephysical abilities of men and women which are relevant to military performance andobserved, unsurprisingly, that they differ significantly. Differences between women and men in their capacity to develop muscle strength and aerobic fitness are such thatonly approximately 1% of women can equal the performance of the average man. Inlifting, carrying and similar tasks performed routinely by the British Army, this meansthat, on average, women have a lower work capacity than men and, when exposed tothe same physical workload as men, have to work 50-80% harder to achieve the same
results. This puts them at greater risk of injury. In load marching, anotherfundamental military task, and in all other simulated combat tasks, women were foundto perform worse than men, and the greater the load, the greater the discrepancy. The study concluded that about 0.1% of female applicants and 1 % of trained female soldiers would reach the required standards to meet the demands of these roles.

This site lists a whole bunch of studies on the subject. http://www.cmrlink.org/content/essential-resources/34584/

So basically a bunch of PC morons would have us spend millions more to train women separately, assuming that they don't wash down the standards which would be a stupid idea in and of itself, only 1% of them will make it. There is no shortage of volunteers. This isn't Russia in WW2 looking for every person that could fight young and old alike. This is the premiere military on the planet and they have more people that sign up than they know what to do with. To force women into the infantry units which are arguably the most physically demanding units under some stupid pretense of diversity, where even if they do manage to pass will have a significantly higher rate of injury than their male counterparts.

http://cmrlink.org/content/article/34424

A British Army doctor has confirmed that female soldiers are paying for "equal opportunities" with a much higher risk of injury than men during basic training. Writing in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, Lt. Col. Ian Gemmell noted that women’s rates of injury doubled when co-ed basic training was introduced, due to differences in strength, bone mass, and stride length. For men, the proportion of discharges caused by stress fractures and back pain remained below 1.5%. For women, however, discharges rose from 4.6% to 11.1% under the co-ed training regime. As previously reported in CMR Notes (Feb. 1999), The Commander of Britain’s largest basic training base at Pirbright, near Surrey, restored single-gender training after a one-year test. Lt. Col. Simon Vandeleur told the London Sunday Times (Feb. 8, 1999), that restoration of all-female platoons reduced women’s injury rates by 50%, and first-time pass rates increased from 50% to 70%.

So if women need separate training and their rates of injury under the coed system are substantially higher, what they (*)(*)(*)(*) are they going to do when they start actually performing their MOS? Are they going to have an "Amazon Platoon", will there be a "Xena Warrior Princess" brigade?

Conflating combat pilots with infantry is just silly. There is nothing physically preventing women from being combat pilots while there are plenty of issues with carrying around a 90lbs of gear on long treks.

And for those people here who want a woman's point of view who actually did serve in combat zones over long periods of time with her male colleagues. http://www.mca-marines.org/gazette/article/get-over-it-we-are-not-all-created-equal

She was at the top of her class in physical fitness and her tour in Iraq literally destroyed her body and she talks about the big differences between herself and her male counterparts.

Knock it off with the PC bull(*)(*)(*)(*). Quit forcing gender diversity in areas of the military what WILL suffer because of it.

 

and you're speaking from experience, regarding combat aircraft?

I hear a lot of anecdotal evidence..."I was infantry and so and so, (female) couldn't hack it basic training. They fell behind on marches, etc."
Fine...but don't pretend, any of you know what it's like to fly combat aircraft either or sustaining a 7.5g maneuver.. I could take the biggest, the most badass Marine on the planet and knock him out ...(G-LOC) G-induced Loss of Consciousness...because they haven't been trained on the proper technique to prevent blacking out.

Y'all are washing women out without even giving them the tricks of the trade, you're assuming they are simply physically incapable of handling the rigors of direct ground combat...and not all direct ground combat is infantry...this isn't just infantry they are locked out of solely on the basis of being female.

I cannot tell you how many "badass" ground pounder types vomited druing corkscrew tactical landing procedures...this isn't an indictment on their "manliness," they simply lacked the experience in avoiding vertigo...and of course females vomited too...it comes down to training and experience...I believe with proper training and experience a female would make a fine ground combat troop in some capacity provided they have the motivation and desire to do so.