Panetta Opens Combat Roles To Women

comedy writing doesn't suit ya, buddy

 

Feelings are irrelevant. Being a "professional", loving your country and willing to give it all does not mean you are capable or talented or better than the opponent.

 

Very poor example.

Cops are not soldiers.

Police are trained in "people skills" so they can de-escalate a situation, they are often part counselor, part psychiatrist, part authority figure. Cops almost always encounter people who got caught up in the moment and did something stupid or thoughtless, people who don't want to go to jail and are not looking for a violent encounter and back down once the police arrive. Most of the time the problem can be resolved without anyone getting hurt or being arrested.

Its the opposite for soldiers. Soldiers don't encounter people who got carried away, soldiers encounter enemy soldiers who are not only trained to fight but are looking for a fight. A soldiers job is too seek out, engage, and kill those enemy soldiers. There is no "talking down the enemy", its kill or be killed. Entirely different from cops.

 

If you can prove to me these gals (many of whom are 5'10", weigh 170 lbs, can run marathons, and leg press over 350 lbs) are any less capable than are men who are 5'5" and weigh 125 lbs then I shall gladly believe you.

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If you can prove to me these gals (many of whom are 5'10", weigh 170 lbs, can run marathons, and leg press over 350 lbs) are any less capable than are men who are 5'5" and weigh 125 lbs then I shall gladly believe you.

 

Given combat support often operates in forward areas, it is important to instill combat skills in EVERYONE, from cooks to snipers. Know your way around a rifle and have a basic familiarity with small unit tactics.

Anyone remember Jessica Lynch?

She was assigned as a supply specialist with the 507th Maintenance Company when her convoy was ambushed by Iraqi forces during the Battle of Nasiriyah. Her and her unit were woefully unprepared to react.

I don't blame her or her unit for this, it's the U.S. Army's job to prepare their soldiers for deployment, and they failed her. After basic military training, and on to AIT, I would doubt Private Lynch and her fellow soldiers serving in the 507th ever received much combat training after that.

Certainly some type of combat training prior to deploying to a forward area for EVERY single soldier, male and female is in order.

The Marine Corps already does this, it's instilled into EVERY Marine, they are a rifleman first...and to always be prepared for combat.

Females were getting killed and wounded in support roles in Iraq and Afghanistan while serving in forward areas, and they were for all intents and purposes, combat troops. It's about time they received proper training before they are deployed.

The Air Force requires every member of an aircrew to attend SERE school, in the event their aircraft is forced down in a hostile area...it's 17 days of training, which may not seem like much, but at least graduates of SERE have a basic set of skills to fall back on should they need it.

Sending someone off with a hope and a prayer to a war zone, even though their primary job may not be in the combat arms...is irresponsible. This idea of clearly delineated frontlines of battle separating combat from non-combat are increasingly obsolete. Everyone who deploys should be trained for combat in some regard, if only as a reactive force.

 

First, out of curiosity, you mention "these gals" can leg press over 350 lbs and run marathons. Where do you come to that claim? How do you know? Prove it.

Second, you seem to think comparing a short light weight man to the rare woman is some sort of qualification. That's not how the world works. You can either meet the challenge, or you cannot. You can either carry that 80 lbs on your back, plus other gear, and go the 20 miles, do the mission, and then get back, or you cannot. Nobody gets a break because they are short, or light, or a woman.

You either can or you cannot. Experience shows that women cannot.

Third, going back to your made-up "gal". How much are you going to invest in finding these rare women who can meet the challenge? Using the Ranger School example, are you going to push through 200 women in every class just to possibly find 1 women who passes? Are you going to try 200 women to get 1 female Ranger when you could put men in those slots and get 150 male Rangers? Is that a smart use of limited resources?

 

The U.S. Marine Corps already has.

It really pissed off Obama and Valerie Jarrett's blood started flowing. How dare the Marine Corps conduct studies that would prove that social engineering would cause Marines to bleed and die on the Battlefield. Time for some more purging of the officers corps.

 

just go ahead and read accounts of female marathoners and others who are profiled during athletic contests - they are portrayed on tv all the time

again, if these women scare you go to a psychiatrist



"nobody gets a break"

exactly - like I said before, my uncle was 5'5" and 125 lbs when he did all that so you cannot convince me that any of these young women in the armed forces (almost all of whom are bigger than he was) cannot do the same

''Experience shows that women cannot.''

A google search might reveal for you videos of women carrying heavy loads of 50 or 60 pounds of wood, water or whatever on their heads for long hauls.


Women can get the job done and it's now the law. Deal with it.

 

Being able to run in a marathon has nothing to do with being in the infantry unless you're running away from the enemy.

 

When it's all said and done and the hoopla settles down. We'll see only a handful of women wanting to be in the ground combat arms. Even after the DoD opened up combat flying jobs to women in the 1990s they remain less than 5% of all combat pilots 20 + years later. I can't imagine many women wanting to get into the infantry to make any sort of appreciable difference in the final analysis.

This looks good on paper for the CinC and the feminist voting bloc, it's a paper victory.

The Armed Forces exist to kill people and break their stuff, this is their primary job. Yes, they do humanitarian things, but they exist primarily as destroyers, not builders.

It's important to never lose sight of their ulitimate purpose. They don't exist as testing grounds for social engineering.

I fail to see how allowing females into say, the infantry will make said infantry, better and more efficient at killing people and breaking their stuff.

I have no problem with women as CEOs, as airline pilots, as doctors, as lawyers, as police officers..but really, we must ask ourselves why does the Armed Forces exist. It exists to destroy. Hopefully, the mere existence of the Armed Forces will deter others from seeking to destroy...certainly there is no joy in destruction in taking human lives, but when it's necessary, it's necessary. Anything else, like making sure we've got enough females in ground combat jobs to fill a government quota, is incidental to the very purpose of our military.

 

I see, when challenged to show your source for our claim you have nothing.

 

Watch National Geographic and see some Third World women carry 60 lb loads of water for miles to water their herds and feed their families. As for women in combat, if you still don't like it, too damn bad. It's the law.

 

You know I remember, and have mentioned this before. The 507th Maintenance Company is now Echo Company, 5-52 Missile Defense Battalion.

Now everybody has basic "combat skills", but that does not make them Grunts. And most of the time the skills are very basic. Over and over I have found myself instructing other soldiers in how to respond to a near ambush, because they have never been taught that. They are only taught how to respond to a far ambush (50 meters or so away) because that is a harder skill to learn so all they are generally taught in training.

And you really can not spend the time to give them the proper skills. It takes months and years to make a squad or platoon into an effective combat unit. They have to operate together, like 5 fingers on the same hand. You can not do that, and your regular job at the same time.

Heck, in training the only small unit formations (fire team - squad) taught are column, wedge, and on-line. When I was going through my Army Transition training, I about gave the instructors a fit when they named me a Squad Leader during the combat training section. Instead of 3 Fire Team Wedge formations in a Squad Wedge, I put them into a single Fire Team Wedge and 2 Fire Team Echelon formations (in essence one like an inverted V, the other 2 at angles from the V). I got called out and chewed out, because they were not teaching that kind of formation.

The instructor did call me aside later on and tell me that tactically I made the right choice, and that the way I formed them up is how it would be done in the Infantry. However, we were not training "Infantry Tactics", simply basic tactics. This also came up when we had to cross a road. I automatically had my unit do it the way I had always done it in the past, and not the "basic way" that they were trying to teach.

If it was up to me, all branches would have a course like the Marines do, 3 weeks of in-depth combat skills training in field conditions. I learned more about Infantry tactics in Marine Boot Camp then most non-infantry soldiers ever learn.

Very true. Let's see how they do with 100 pounds of weight strapped to their bodies.

How many of them carry that water for 20+ miles?

Look, nobody here has denied that females can do the job, we question the effects, effectiveness, and the toll on their bodies.

If women want to kick in doors and shoot guns, they have been able to do that already for decades. Simply look at how MPs have been used for the last 15 years. They have been much more working as "Ultra-Light Infantry" then they have in the past, driving around jeeps and directing traffic. In an active combat zone during the initial phases of an operation, they really are operating much more like Infantry then as cops.

However, they are also not doing much of the more demanding things required of Infantry. They are not doing the endless ruck marches, with the crushing amount of weight that grunts have to do as part of their day to day training in garrison conditions, let alone in a combat zone. An MP takes their HMMWV convoy into a hot zone, dismounts, then hits their position and secures it. They then get back into their HMMWVs and returns to camp. The Infantry quite often marches into the hot zone with all of their equipment on their back, then drops it and hits the target. Then when it is done they pick it up and march back to their camp.

This is what you keep missing, over and over again. It is not the actual "combat" that is so destructive, it is the endless training. If a Battalion is going to be doing a graded 25 mile ruck march as part of a unit evaluation, they expect to spend the 2 months prior doing 200+ miles of ruck marches. All under full combat load. They are going to some training site for a range, or NBC training, or some other class, they expect to march there. Under full combat load. When I was a grunt, I expected to do about 300 miles or so of combat marches during a 6 month training period.

That is one of the main reasons today I have messed up knees. And because women are built differently (lower bone density and muscle mass, placement of hip joints), their injuries are often more common and more severe. It is not sexism, just basic biology.

And earlier, you mentioned marathons. Well, currently the world record for marathon running is by a man, at 2:02:57. The top speed for women is 2:17:42. A time difference of almost 15 minutes. You keep missing the point that the question is not if they can do it, but the effectiveness and if that effectiveness makes the unit better. But by looking at your very own claim about marathons, it becomes obvious there are differences. The differences are not as effective. And the differences are not better.

Tell you what, let's run a test program. Internationally, all team sports have to have at least 50% of the teams made up of 20% females. Football, Baseball, Soccer, Hockey, Rugby, Basketball, all of them. Half of the teams much now have at least 1 female playing at all times, and 1 in 5 players must be female. Then let's see how that goes after 3 years.

Now are you going to tell me that those teams will suffer no loss in playing ability? Their scores and stats will not decrease?

Because remember, what I am talking about there is only a game. In the Infantry, such losses mean more people returning in body bags.

 

The women in the army today can do all that a lot better than men who weigh 125 lbs and are conscripts and who have no desire to be in the military. Better to have these women in the service in those positions than those who are there through no fault of their own.

 

They can?



Then tell me, why in the last 8 years have I not been able to find a single female that can keep up with me in even a 5 mile ruck march, with only 20 pound packs? Heck, I have yet to even find a female that can keep up with me on a 2.5 mile walk.

So please give us something to prove this. Give us some documentation of any kind to show that you are right, and all the rest of us are wrong.

Or tell you what, let's go out and find a random Battalion in the Army. Just pick a Quartermaster, or Air Defense, or Maintenance Battalion at random, and let's get all of the females in it to go on a 10 mile ruck march. Let's call it 65 degrees and overcase, so heat and sin can not be used to inflict a bias in the results. And give each of them a pack with 35 pounds in it. on a flat roadway with no hills or other obsticles.

We can then have a "ruck off". Every single female in that Battalion, against me. A 51 year old guy who has not been a grunt in almost a quarter of a century, with bad knees (and the permanent profile to prove it). And let's see how many of these females will finish the 10 miles before I do. Me, borderline overweight, 210 pounds and 23% body fat.

The problem here is that you apparently have never done any of the things we have been talking about, so give nothing but hot air. Then you have me, who has been and is still living this type of lifestyle. Find this randomly selected Battalion and have even a small percentage of females beat me. Then, I might believe you.

Because I have never seen that. Even in Company sized marches (around 100 people), I have yet to find a female that can beat me. Of course, I am talking about a random sample, not hand picking those that are the absolute best like graduates of Air Assault and Jump school (although I have beaten them also).

And come on, "conscripts"? You are aware, are you not, that the last draft in the US ended over 40 years ago, are you not? And what on earth would make a conscript soldier any less capable as one that volunteered, I have no idea. Other then once again you are simply throwing out more random crap that has absolutely nothing to do with the topic at hand.

Stay on target Mr. Truth, stay on target.

 

you are 5'5" and 125 lbs???

when competing against women in marathons and iron man events how do your success records stack up against some of those tall muscular women ?

 

Robert H. Robert H. Barrow
U.S.. Marine Corps From testimony before The Senate Armed Services Committee, Subcommittee on Manpower and Personnel, June 18, 1991.

The issue of women in combat is not about women's rights, equal opportunity or career assignments for enhancement purposes for selection to higher rank. It is most assuredly about combat effectiveness, combat readiness, winning the next conflict, and so we are talking about national security.

Those who advocate change have some strange arguments, one of which is that there is a de facto women-in-combat situation already, that women have been shot at, that they have heard gunfire, that they have been in areas where they could have been hit with missiles. But exposure to danger is not combat; combat is a lot more than that. It is a lot more than getting shot at or even getting killed by being shot at. Combat is finding and closing with and killing or capturing the enemy. It is killing, that is what it is.

And it is done in an environment that is often as difficult as you can possibly imagine -- extremes of climate, brutality, deaths, dying. It is uncivilized, and women cannot do it. Nor should they be even thought of as doing it. The requirements for strength and endurance renders them unable to do it. And I may be old-fashioned, but I think the very nature of women disqualifies them for doing it. Women give life, sustain life, nurture life, they do not take it.

I just cannot imagine why we are engaged in this debate about even the possibility of pushing women into the combat part of our profession. The most harm that could come would probably come to what it would do to the men in that kind of situation. I know in some circles it is very popular to ridicule something called male bonding, but it is real, and one has to have experienced it to understand it.... It is cohesiveness. It is mutual respect and admiration. It is one for all and all for one....

The other attendant problems to being in a combat situation -- sexual harassment, fraternization, favoritism, resentment, male backlash -- would be insurmountable for anyone to deal with. Who would deal with it? Not some faceless political appointee over there in the Pentagon, but the corporals and the sergeants and the lieutenants and the captains would have to maintain good order and discipline and also fight the war....

If you want to make a combat unit ineffective, assign some women to it. It is a destructive proposition, and the thing that puzzles me about this, there is no military requirement for it.... We have all the men we need for those requirements....