Females in Ranger School
- Thread starter goon175
- Start date
When I was on active duty I weighed between 125 and 135lbs, and I was NEVER the smallest guy in my unit. How many 135lb guys did you see get drafted into the NFL last month? That argument is a strawman. There may be very good reasons to not allow women in the infantry (such as lowering standards to ensure an "acceptable" percentage of women pass) but that one is not one of them.
Reed
I don't think there should be any gender-based or aged-based norming on the PT test. A can of 7.62 weighs the same no matter what age or gender you are... 2 miles is the same length no matter how many years you have on you or what you have between your legs.
I think we should have the same points standards across the board, but if any norming is necessary we could have a sliding values scale, something like: fail, pass, average, excellent, elite, based on age-normed standards. So points system the same across the board, but with a rating based on age. I think that would give commanders, NCOs, and individual Soliders a truer look at the fitness level of every individual while not punishing people for longevity in the service.
My old unit , all of the leadership positions were coded "G". I think that all the females should go to PRC prior to going to RS.
When I went to RS, it was combat arms only so I didn't have issues like when I went to the SFQC with dealing with non combat arms guys (cooks, clerks, riggers, supply clerks) in SUT phase. I was pretty frustrated with dealing with non combat arm guys in phase 2 (SUT) of the SFQC so I can imagine what RS is like now with non combat arms guys and now females going through RS. Not knowing basic skill level 10 tasks and tactics means that someone will have to carry that person and that's not going to go well when it comes to peers.
The road march from the DZ to Camp Rogers on those sandy trails was a gut check especially with no slings on your weapons. Plenty of dudes fell out on that and if a guy who got on the truck has SII, that items had to be cross loaded with the remaining squad members. I would like to see a female with a 240/249 (without a sling) or a tripod with ammo try to hang with that.
IMO the pass/fail standard should be the same for everyone, regardless of age or gender. As you say, a can of 7.62 ammo...
If the services want to add a score standard on top of that (for fitness report/evaluation purposes) that's fine, but the bottom line should be the same for everyone.
And there in lays the problem with regard to the PC establishment that possesses no military experience. The SEC DEF is in my opinion worthless and out of touch completely with the military, their needs or requirements. I think the issue of openly serving homosexuals in the military is but a perfect example. Whether for or against is another issue in itself and not relative to this discussion. Those choices were in general taken away from the organization and driven from the top down through the political party in power currently. I further don't believe the top commanders fought with the level of motivation required to stop this from happening as well as concerns of their personal careers. Hence it is my feeling if the same happens and this becomes politicized then in fact Women will be in combat arms and every facet of the military with reduced standards or gender neutral standards. At some point whether now or in the near term the political winds are blowing. It will effect many other areas of national defense since in my opinion that is a secondary concern of the Defense department, political parties and the American public that is largely detached from the US Military.
The current and most recently former SECDEF each served in the military.
You might be surprised to learn how many senior military leaders supported the repeal of DADT not because of PC-ness or career-mindedness, but because they thought it was the right thing to do. I don't think DADT should have ever been in place to begin with; either something is illegal or it isn't, don't tell me something is contrary to good order and discipline and incompatible with military values, and then tell me to ignore it if I suspect it in a unit I command. It was a worthless, cowardly "compromise" from the very beginning, and I'm glad it is gone. I'm not certain that allowing homosexuals to serve openly is going to be good for our military, but at least we're not half-assing it anymore.
I'm more pissed off that we conducted a "responsible drawdown" in Iraq and now we're looking to conduct a "responsible withdraw" from Afghanistan. Seriously? That's our endstate for those wars? If so, then we could have easily accomplished that by never going to war with those countries in the first place. If we're going to talk about "responsible" anything, how about a plan for "responsible" victory, or how about "responsibly ensuring that we won't be threatened by attacks originating from those countries ever again?" "Responsible withdrawal" and "responsible drawdown" smack of face-saving defeatism and are an insult to the men and women who have served in those conflicts.
Marauder06 please see
http://flagandgeneralofficersforthemilitary.com/default.asp
This is a letter signed by 1,164 retired officers asking that DADT not be repealed.
With the troops levels being cut wouldn't it make sense to require everyone to meet the same high standards? Granted this is simplistic but those that remain will have the confidence that everyone deserves to be there.
Here is a quote from the SGT. MAJ of the Army
Service is a privilege … it’s not a right. You’ve got to continuously work hard to truly posture yourself as someone who is among the best.
— SGT. MAJ. OF THE ARMY RAYMOND F. CHANDLER III
My take from that is raise and enforce the standards.
Reed,
Who said anything about weight? Its physical ability. In boxing and or the UFC you have different weight classes but you won't see a woman fighting a man. Interestingly when I was at the police academy they never paired the females against any males during "survival" training.
Please see http://cmrlink.org/coedTraining.asp?docID=206 for further.
http://flagandgeneralofficersforthemilitary.com/default.asp
This is a letter signed by 1,164 retired officers asking that DADT not be repealed.
With the troops levels being cut wouldn't it make sense to require everyone to meet the same high standards? Granted this is simplistic but those that remain will have the confidence that everyone deserves to be there.
Here is a quote from the SGT. MAJ of the Army
Service is a privilege … it’s not a right. You’ve got to continuously work hard to truly posture yourself as someone who is among the best.
— SGT. MAJ. OF THE ARMY RAYMOND F. CHANDLER III
My take from that is raise and enforce the standards.
Reed,
Who said anything about weight? Its physical ability. In boxing and or the UFC you have different weight classes but you won't see a woman fighting a man. Interestingly when I was at the police academy they never paired the females against any males during "survival" training.
Please see http://cmrlink.org/coedTraining.asp?docID=206 for further.
B
Boon
Guest
There are a lot of angry people out there. This is all over FB:
Yep; I remember that. Google a couple of those guys though and see when they served, and ask yourself if maybe their views might be different from the current crop of generals/flag officers we have in the military (i.e. the ones who are making the decisions on DADT, etc.). Also, there is this:
http://www.washingtonblade.com/2010...ines-officers’-letter-supporting-‘don’t-ask’/
There are also a number of general/flag officers, with more recent service, who supported the repeal:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27774058/page/2/#.T7rmgtxtq8A
Taking into consideration what I have seen on here, FB, AR.com, and other sites, I think the general concern is more towards the lowering of standards, and not as much the fact that chicks would be attending. This whole thing would be much more pallatable if nothing was compromised, but unfortunately, it doesn't look like it will turn out that way.
But they DO in wrestling and in my correctional restraint and self defense training they certainly did pair men and women up to show that the training worked against individuals with size differences. You chose an example of a sport that requires the absolute top physical athletes to show that women are not as capable as men. I pointed that many many men in the infantry would never come close to your choice of example either, including many that are physically fit and very capable of doing there infantry jobs.
I've got quite a bit to say about it, but I'm tapping on my Android, so it will be a summarized post. I speak from experience on this. When I left AIT for my first duty station, I was the anecdotal female. In other words, when a guy was in a different unit five or ten years down the road talking about the one female who could do 70/85/15:25, and loved a good ruck march, he was talking about me (I was never a great runner). In my entire career, I've only met two other women who could post numbers like mine, especially posting faster run times. That did not include the track stars who ran in high school, but couldn't do push-ups for shit, or cried at even a 35lb ruck. What did it get me? Chronic bursitis in one hip by the time I was 34, chronic tendonitis in one shoulder, and VA still trying to figure out what's wrong with the other. Bear in mind I got a late start, enlisting just shy of my 25th birthday. Perhaps I'm of slightly inferior breeding stock for physically breaking down so fast, but I highly suspect that to not be the case...
Also, just because a woman can hang in the run, bust out the ruck, shoot with an eagle eye, and curse to make Chesty Puller flinch, does NOT mean that she will ever really be "one of the boys." She'll be close, but never really as close as the brotherhood. Estrogen being the bitch that it is, very few women will actually be able to cope with that. She's not one of the girls, either. What I see becoming a possibility, if this goes through, will be in-fighting amongst the women between the more accepted and the less accepted by their male peers. Several women who will sign up will be doing it to make a point, those usually are the ones who get very catty towards the females who integrate better without flat-backing it. You want to talk about a break-down in good order and discipline? Let the catty victors of today's cutthroat army start duking it out for a new piece of prestige bling. There's a reason I hated having lots of females in my unit.
I could write a great deal more just from my personal experience alone that could support why this is a bad idea, but I'll let that wait until I've finally gotten some sleep.
Also, just because a woman can hang in the run, bust out the ruck, shoot with an eagle eye, and curse to make Chesty Puller flinch, does NOT mean that she will ever really be "one of the boys." She'll be close, but never really as close as the brotherhood. Estrogen being the bitch that it is, very few women will actually be able to cope with that. She's not one of the girls, either. What I see becoming a possibility, if this goes through, will be in-fighting amongst the women between the more accepted and the less accepted by their male peers. Several women who will sign up will be doing it to make a point, those usually are the ones who get very catty towards the females who integrate better without flat-backing it. You want to talk about a break-down in good order and discipline? Let the catty victors of today's cutthroat army start duking it out for a new piece of prestige bling. There's a reason I hated having lots of females in my unit.
I could write a great deal more just from my personal experience alone that could support why this is a bad idea, but I'll let that wait until I've finally gotten some sleep.
Reed,
I have read and reread your last post. What are you talking about man? The point Crip and I were trying to make is that women do not compete against men. Please go to the link provided and you will find some medical reasons why.
What wrestling are you watching? I would like to revisit this after the Olympics and we can confirm or deny if we saw any men wrestling women.
I found the article below after digging around on PS.
Should Women Go Into Combat? By Catherine L. Aspy
Inside my boots my feet had turned to hamburger. My uniform, even my belt, was soaking with sweat, and my back and shoulders were numb from the 40 pounds of gear in my rucksack. The climax of Army basic training at Fort Jackson, S.C., a 12-mile march, was almost over.
Determined to keep up, I forced my muscles to move. But few of the other women in the company remained with me near the front. Many were straggling, and some rode the truck that followed to retrieve discarded rucksacks. The men, meanwhile, were swinging along, calling cadence. They seemed to relish the whole thing.
That march confirmed something which had struck me often during the previous eight weeks: with rare exceptions, the women in my unit could not physically compete with the men. Many were unable to lift heavy weights, scale barriers or pull themselves along a rope suspended above a safety net. Mixed running groups had inevitably sorted themselves out by sex; in final tests on two-mile runs, the average woman took 18 minutes, the average man about 14. It was apparent that too many of the men weren't challenged enough by the training regimen.
There certainly were good soldiers among the women in my company; later on, during regular duty at a military-intelligence installation, I saw women of all the service branches perform as well as or better than men in a variety of capacities. Nevertheless, the huge physical performance gap, so obvious in basic training, forced me to consider the implications of placing women in ground combat units.
Today the nearly 200,000 women in the nation's armed forces (14 percent of all active-duty personnel) serve as everything from Air Force fighter pilots to military police officers to captains of Navy ships. But the direct combat arms of the Army and Marines—including infantry, armor and field artillery—are closed to them.
Should women be allowed into these units as well? Many believe they should. After all, we Americans resent being barred from anything; it's part of our instinct for freedom. Former Rep. Patricia Schroeder (D, Colo.) declared, "Combat-exclusion laws have outlived their usefulness and are now nothing more than institutionalized discrimination."
It's not an issue I thought about much when I enlisted. I'm sure if I had been asked at the time whether women should be allowed in combat, I would have at least said, "maybe."
Now I say "no." Everything I observed during my hitch in the Army, and later, as I studied the issue and talked to others inside and outside the military, has convinced me this would be a mistake.
Combat is not primarily about brains, or patriotism, or dedication to duty. There is no question women soldiers have those in abundance. Combat is about war-fighting capacity and the morale of the unit. Here physical strength can be a life-and-death issue. And that is why the physical disparities between men and women cannot be ignored.
Unequal Load. For years, Sgt. Kelly Logan* believed that women should be allowed into combat units, that "it didn't matter if you were a man or a woman—there is one standard, we all meet it, bond, and drive on with the mission." Then came her 1997 tour of duty with peacekeeping forces in Bosnia. "I had a complete change in attitude," she says. "When we had to do things like digging and reinforcing bunkers, the guys ended up doing most of the physical work. The women tended to move themselves to the sidelines." Logan watched resentment build until it undermined the unit's morale.
She also observed that many women were "so unprepared for heavy-duty soldiering that they would have endangered the unit in a crisis." Patrolling in Bosnia required soldiers to remain on high alert and in full battle gear, including flak vests and ammo. Says Logan: "The equipment prevented many of the women from moving as quickly as men, let alone being combat-effective."
While some women may be up to the rigors of combat, she says, "they are the rare exception. And for some individuals, it was only a matter of time before the platonic bonds progressed to sex, and then all kinds of disruptions ensued."
Logan has reluctantly concluded that "women cannot bond with men in a unit the same way men do." But she cannot say so openly, and insisted that her real name not be used. "It can definitely hurt your career to speak your mind publicly about these things."
The expectation in military units has always been that you pull your own load. But an Apache helicopter pilot told me that his female crew chief simply refused to carry her tools, which weighted 60 to 80 pounds.
"The Army is supposed to be about not showing favoritism," says Desert Storm veteran Sam Ryskind, who was a mechanic in the famed 82nd Airborne Division. "But the females I trained with were de facto exempted from any heavy-lifting jobs."
Whether it was changing truck tires, loading cargo, or even moving heavy cooking pots into position on the chow line, Ryskind says men "always pulled the hard work. Pretty soon this made it an us-and-them situation."
While these experiences do not reflect actual combat conditions, they point to the kinds of intractable problems that would arise if women were in combat units.
In 1994 an Army rule barring women from hundreds of "combat support" positions was eliminated. Meanwhile the Army tried to institute tests to match a soldier's physical strength to a specific "military occupation specialty," or MOS. Then it was discovered that the tests would have disqualified most Army women from 65 percent of the more than 200 MOSs. The tests were scrapped.
The Strength Factor. To deal with the male-female performance gap, the Army has increased emphasis on "teamwork." No one is against teamwork—that's the essence of the military. But in some cases it has become a euphemism for defining down military tasks, as when three or four soldiers are needed to carry an injured comrade instead of two.
"From a combat stand point this is just ludicrous," notes William Gregor, a veteran of combat in Vietnam who is now associate professor of social sciences at the Army's School of Advanced Military Studies in Fort Leavenworth, Kan. "You may not have extra people around. And battle wears you down. A unit where one person can't pull his or her weight becomes a weaker unit."
I'm five feet, six inches tall, and I arrived at basic training weighing 135 pounds. I was taller than many women in my unit. But the average female soldier is 4.7 inches shorter and 33.9 pounds lighter than her male counterpart. She has 37.8 pounds less lean body mass. This is critical because greater lean body mass is closely related to physical strength.
A U.S. Navy study of dynamic upper-torso strength in 38 men and women found that the women possessed about half the lifting power of the men. In another Navy study, the top seven percent of 239 women scored in the same range as the bottom seven percent of men in upper-body strength.
Even though I had been athletic in high school and had been toughened by two months' training, that final 12-mile march was a killer. One reason: cardio respiratory capacity—the rate at which the heart, lungs and blood vessels deliver oxygen to working muscles. Trainers know that this capacity is key to sustained physical performance. And numerous studies have revealed differences by sex. "In general," summarized the 1992 Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces, "women have a smaller heart mass, heart volume and cardiac output than men."
Some who want women in combat units acknowledge these differences, but claim they're based on stereotyping and can be minimized by extra training. It isn't that simple.
In a 1997 Army study, for example, 46 women were given a specially designed 24-week physical-training program to see if they could improve their ability to do "very heavy" lifting. During the training, the number of women who qualified for these jobs increased from 24 percent to 78 percent. Still, on average they were unable to match the lifting performance of men who did not undergo the program.
But what about those few women who might qualify for combat units? Gregor, who has done extensive research on male-female physical performance, questions how realistic it is to train 100 women for combat on the chance of finding a handful who will meet—or in exceptional cases exceed—the minimum requirements.
Tougher Standards? The interchangeability of every soldier in a combat emergency is an enduring principle of an army's effectiveness as a fighting force. It assumes that each has received the same training and can perform to the same basic standard. That's still true for men who sign up to go directly into the Army's combat arms. They train "the old way," in a harsh, demanding environment.
It's no longer true elsewhere. Under mixed-gender basic training instituted in 1994, men and women are held to different standards. The regimen became less challenging, to hide the difference in physical performance between men and women (although the Army denies this).
Eventually, the softness of basic training became an object of such widespread public ridicule that "tougher" rules were drawn up. Even with these new standards, scheduled to take effect this month, women can score as well as men who are being tested against a tougher standard. In the 17-to-21 age group, for example, to get a minimum score of 50 points, a male recruit must do 35 push-ups, a female, 13. If women were allowed into combat units and these double standards were made universal, the result would be to put physically weaker forces into the field.
An Army publicity release defended these "tougher" standards on the ground that they "promote gender equity" and "level the playing field."
I don't know about the "playing" field. But somehow I think the field of actual combat will not be very level.
I have read and reread your last post. What are you talking about man? The point Crip and I were trying to make is that women do not compete against men. Please go to the link provided and you will find some medical reasons why.
What wrestling are you watching? I would like to revisit this after the Olympics and we can confirm or deny if we saw any men wrestling women.
I found the article below after digging around on PS.
Should Women Go Into Combat? By Catherine L. Aspy
Inside my boots my feet had turned to hamburger. My uniform, even my belt, was soaking with sweat, and my back and shoulders were numb from the 40 pounds of gear in my rucksack. The climax of Army basic training at Fort Jackson, S.C., a 12-mile march, was almost over.
Determined to keep up, I forced my muscles to move. But few of the other women in the company remained with me near the front. Many were straggling, and some rode the truck that followed to retrieve discarded rucksacks. The men, meanwhile, were swinging along, calling cadence. They seemed to relish the whole thing.
That march confirmed something which had struck me often during the previous eight weeks: with rare exceptions, the women in my unit could not physically compete with the men. Many were unable to lift heavy weights, scale barriers or pull themselves along a rope suspended above a safety net. Mixed running groups had inevitably sorted themselves out by sex; in final tests on two-mile runs, the average woman took 18 minutes, the average man about 14. It was apparent that too many of the men weren't challenged enough by the training regimen.
There certainly were good soldiers among the women in my company; later on, during regular duty at a military-intelligence installation, I saw women of all the service branches perform as well as or better than men in a variety of capacities. Nevertheless, the huge physical performance gap, so obvious in basic training, forced me to consider the implications of placing women in ground combat units.
Today the nearly 200,000 women in the nation's armed forces (14 percent of all active-duty personnel) serve as everything from Air Force fighter pilots to military police officers to captains of Navy ships. But the direct combat arms of the Army and Marines—including infantry, armor and field artillery—are closed to them.
Should women be allowed into these units as well? Many believe they should. After all, we Americans resent being barred from anything; it's part of our instinct for freedom. Former Rep. Patricia Schroeder (D, Colo.) declared, "Combat-exclusion laws have outlived their usefulness and are now nothing more than institutionalized discrimination."
It's not an issue I thought about much when I enlisted. I'm sure if I had been asked at the time whether women should be allowed in combat, I would have at least said, "maybe."
Now I say "no." Everything I observed during my hitch in the Army, and later, as I studied the issue and talked to others inside and outside the military, has convinced me this would be a mistake.
Combat is not primarily about brains, or patriotism, or dedication to duty. There is no question women soldiers have those in abundance. Combat is about war-fighting capacity and the morale of the unit. Here physical strength can be a life-and-death issue. And that is why the physical disparities between men and women cannot be ignored.
Unequal Load. For years, Sgt. Kelly Logan* believed that women should be allowed into combat units, that "it didn't matter if you were a man or a woman—there is one standard, we all meet it, bond, and drive on with the mission." Then came her 1997 tour of duty with peacekeeping forces in Bosnia. "I had a complete change in attitude," she says. "When we had to do things like digging and reinforcing bunkers, the guys ended up doing most of the physical work. The women tended to move themselves to the sidelines." Logan watched resentment build until it undermined the unit's morale.
She also observed that many women were "so unprepared for heavy-duty soldiering that they would have endangered the unit in a crisis." Patrolling in Bosnia required soldiers to remain on high alert and in full battle gear, including flak vests and ammo. Says Logan: "The equipment prevented many of the women from moving as quickly as men, let alone being combat-effective."
While some women may be up to the rigors of combat, she says, "they are the rare exception. And for some individuals, it was only a matter of time before the platonic bonds progressed to sex, and then all kinds of disruptions ensued."
Logan has reluctantly concluded that "women cannot bond with men in a unit the same way men do." But she cannot say so openly, and insisted that her real name not be used. "It can definitely hurt your career to speak your mind publicly about these things."
The expectation in military units has always been that you pull your own load. But an Apache helicopter pilot told me that his female crew chief simply refused to carry her tools, which weighted 60 to 80 pounds.
"The Army is supposed to be about not showing favoritism," says Desert Storm veteran Sam Ryskind, who was a mechanic in the famed 82nd Airborne Division. "But the females I trained with were de facto exempted from any heavy-lifting jobs."
Whether it was changing truck tires, loading cargo, or even moving heavy cooking pots into position on the chow line, Ryskind says men "always pulled the hard work. Pretty soon this made it an us-and-them situation."
While these experiences do not reflect actual combat conditions, they point to the kinds of intractable problems that would arise if women were in combat units.
In 1994 an Army rule barring women from hundreds of "combat support" positions was eliminated. Meanwhile the Army tried to institute tests to match a soldier's physical strength to a specific "military occupation specialty," or MOS. Then it was discovered that the tests would have disqualified most Army women from 65 percent of the more than 200 MOSs. The tests were scrapped.
The Strength Factor. To deal with the male-female performance gap, the Army has increased emphasis on "teamwork." No one is against teamwork—that's the essence of the military. But in some cases it has become a euphemism for defining down military tasks, as when three or four soldiers are needed to carry an injured comrade instead of two.
"From a combat stand point this is just ludicrous," notes William Gregor, a veteran of combat in Vietnam who is now associate professor of social sciences at the Army's School of Advanced Military Studies in Fort Leavenworth, Kan. "You may not have extra people around. And battle wears you down. A unit where one person can't pull his or her weight becomes a weaker unit."
I'm five feet, six inches tall, and I arrived at basic training weighing 135 pounds. I was taller than many women in my unit. But the average female soldier is 4.7 inches shorter and 33.9 pounds lighter than her male counterpart. She has 37.8 pounds less lean body mass. This is critical because greater lean body mass is closely related to physical strength.
A U.S. Navy study of dynamic upper-torso strength in 38 men and women found that the women possessed about half the lifting power of the men. In another Navy study, the top seven percent of 239 women scored in the same range as the bottom seven percent of men in upper-body strength.
Even though I had been athletic in high school and had been toughened by two months' training, that final 12-mile march was a killer. One reason: cardio respiratory capacity—the rate at which the heart, lungs and blood vessels deliver oxygen to working muscles. Trainers know that this capacity is key to sustained physical performance. And numerous studies have revealed differences by sex. "In general," summarized the 1992 Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces, "women have a smaller heart mass, heart volume and cardiac output than men."
Some who want women in combat units acknowledge these differences, but claim they're based on stereotyping and can be minimized by extra training. It isn't that simple.
In a 1997 Army study, for example, 46 women were given a specially designed 24-week physical-training program to see if they could improve their ability to do "very heavy" lifting. During the training, the number of women who qualified for these jobs increased from 24 percent to 78 percent. Still, on average they were unable to match the lifting performance of men who did not undergo the program.
But what about those few women who might qualify for combat units? Gregor, who has done extensive research on male-female physical performance, questions how realistic it is to train 100 women for combat on the chance of finding a handful who will meet—or in exceptional cases exceed—the minimum requirements.
Tougher Standards? The interchangeability of every soldier in a combat emergency is an enduring principle of an army's effectiveness as a fighting force. It assumes that each has received the same training and can perform to the same basic standard. That's still true for men who sign up to go directly into the Army's combat arms. They train "the old way," in a harsh, demanding environment.
It's no longer true elsewhere. Under mixed-gender basic training instituted in 1994, men and women are held to different standards. The regimen became less challenging, to hide the difference in physical performance between men and women (although the Army denies this).
Eventually, the softness of basic training became an object of such widespread public ridicule that "tougher" rules were drawn up. Even with these new standards, scheduled to take effect this month, women can score as well as men who are being tested against a tougher standard. In the 17-to-21 age group, for example, to get a minimum score of 50 points, a male recruit must do 35 push-ups, a female, 13. If women were allowed into combat units and these double standards were made universal, the result would be to put physically weaker forces into the field.
An Army publicity release defended these "tougher" standards on the ground that they "promote gender equity" and "level the playing field."
I don't know about the "playing" field. But somehow I think the field of actual combat will not be very level.
While I agree with most of what you write, I cannot agree with this.
I would go to war with you any day.
High School and college. i.e were our recruit pool is coming from, not Olympic level athletes. Yes you are right, women even on a pound for pound basis will not equal men's upper-body strength. Your choice examples just had very little to do with the athletic levels required to excel in the infantry, and I called you out on it, for it did not add to the discussion.
Reed
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1032333,00.html
Well allow me to retort.........I have played football in college and guess what a lot of guys in my old LRS Company did....powerlift and run intervals.....powerlifting is one of the best overall workouts you can do! I remember pushups, situps, intervals and the gym when I was playing football.....we had to run 2-3 miles on the track after practice.......then I went to basic training.
I have been in the Infantry for 19 years. Got my Ranger Tab in class 5-98.
I have reported your post.
I have been in the Infantry for 19 years. Got my Ranger Tab in class 5-98.
I have reported your post.
pardus
Verified Military
- Joined
- Sep 7, 2006
- Messages
- 10,534
OK, first of all, relax.
If you have a disagreement discuss it until you both come to a conclusion. Whether thats agreement or not is meaningless, that you do it in a reasonable manner and bearing in mind who/what you are and who/what the person you are talking to is/was etc...
Spider, please keep your posts together, Ive had to merge several consecutive posts of yours now in this thread. Thank you.
If you have a disagreement discuss it until you both come to a conclusion. Whether thats agreement or not is meaningless, that you do it in a reasonable manner and bearing in mind who/what you are and who/what the person you are talking to is/was etc...
Spider, please keep your posts together, Ive had to merge several consecutive posts of yours now in this thread. Thank you.
Did you report it as AWESOME!?!
The point is not that college and profesional level athletes don't make great soldiers, the point is it is not required for the infantry or to pass a tough school. My last LRSC had one former college level football player in it (he was an 18X who did not get selected) and due to a back injury he was no longer at the same level physicaly. Heck, I may not have as many years as you or been to Ranger school, but I have been an airborne 60mm mortarman, 81mm mortarman, RTO, 240B AG and gunner, and LRS RTO/SO, so minus AT weapons I have had every stupid large ruck in the infantry. I would never have been a profesional athlete, and never a college level athlete for strength and speed based sports, though I know that if I had not played HS football, I probably would have done much more poorly in the Army.
I am not stating that women should be in the infantry or that you are stupid, I am stating that the level of fitness you are using to support your stance is an unrealistic expectation for the infantry as a whole.
Reed
It wasnt so much the level of fitness thats the issue; its different standards with respect to "equality." Equality in the physical arena is a joke at whatever level: HS, collegiate, olympic, pro, etc...
