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 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 mitch_rifle wrote:
7.5 on the beep test

What the hell is that? I want to know if I can do that!

Sounds complicated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-stage_fitness_test

Running? I am terrible at running. Probably not Army Strong then :(.

 trexmeyer wrote:
I'm still trying to figure out how pullups are relevant to combat needs at all.

Back strength is definitely relevant, and pullups are the best indicator of back strength using bodyweight. Jumping to grab walls and hop over, climbing rope (usually using your legs, but upper body strength is important), pulling things (doors, people, etc.)...back strength is very important.



When we're talking hopping a wall with a weapon and fully loaded vest, a lot of guys have trouble doing it especially if they're short.


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 Tannhauser42 wrote:
Hypothetical answer: without the five women, then all you've got now is five men. Remember, you go to war with the army you have, not the army you want.

While this could be true, it is not for the US. All branches meet recruiting standards year after year without having to recruit women into combat units.

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:
Jumping to grab walls and hop over, climbing rope (usually using your legs, but upper body strength is important), pulling things (doors, people, etc.)...back strength is very important.

I get the first and last examples, but I am surprised by the second one. How often do you climb ropes in combat situations?

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:
Jumping to grab walls and hop over, climbing rope (usually using your legs, but upper body strength is important), pulling things (doors, people, etc.)...back strength is very important.

I get the first and last examples, but I am surprised by the second one. How often do you climb ropes in combat situations?

I guess it depends on the unit...some naval units do a lot of climbing on nets which is sort of similar. While we didn't *climb* ropes, fast roping was always on the table. It definitely requires a lot of grip strength for security. A weaker person could fast rope, but it's more secure if you have better grip strength.

I am not sure what fast roping is. If those people are going *down* on the rope, there are simple and efficient stuff to do that without requiring any kind of physical strength that are used in sport climbing, so I am a bit surprised. I am confident if those were suited for the task the army would use them, but cannot guess why are they unsuited?

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
I am not sure what fast roping is. If those people are going *down* on the rope, there are simple and efficient stuff to do that without requiring any kind of physical strength that are used in sport climbing, so I am a bit surprised. I am confident if those were suited for the task the army would use them, but cannot guess why are they unsuited?

Definitely we could get a woman to fast rope easily enough. The question is, are there enough women capable of handling the other physical duties (not related to ropes at all) to make opening combat units up to women worth the investment? After all, having soldiers wash out of training is very expensive for the military.

The IDF employs women in combat units where it is advantageous to have women: a unit that operates on the Egyptian border called Karkal, and a K9 unit called Oketz. In both of these cases, women serve in the units because they often deal with body searches and a male soldier shouldn't do that on a woman.



So maybe in that type of role, where it's actually advantageous, I could see incorporating women. Merely caving to social pressures to incorporate women on the basis of faux equality is a very dangerous thing for an organization that routinely places people in life and death situations.

I'm all for women in the infantry if they could do it. Everyone wants to see Vasquez from Aliens running around with a 240G or something, followed by a female Dietrich as a corpsman (with a flamethrower?)

The reality is, however.. as many of you might believe as well, that the 03 MOS is hardly the place for a social experiment!

My wife tells me all the time "you're out, why the heck do you care?" I guess I care because my blood will always grunt.

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:
Definitely we could get a woman to fast rope easily enough.

Well, you gave other examples of stuff requiring physical strength, so my question was completely unrelated to that. I was just genuinely interested in how military forces have to do stuff with ropes.

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:
The IDF employs women in combat units where it is advantageous to have women: a unit that operates on the Egyptian border called Karkal, and a K9 unit called Oketz. In both of these cases, women serve in the units because they often deal with body searches and a male soldier shouldn't do that on a woman.

The PKK also have a lot of female fighters.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:
Definitely we could get a woman to fast rope easily enough.

Well, you gave other examples of stuff requiring physical strength, so my question was completely unrelated to that. I was just genuinely interested in how military forces have to do stuff with ropes.

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:
The IDF employs women in combat units where it is advantageous to have women: a unit that operates on the Egyptian border called Karkal, and a K9 unit called Oketz. In both of these cases, women serve in the units because they often deal with body searches and a male soldier shouldn't do that on a woman.

The PKK also have a lot of female fighters.

Sorry, not sure if I answered your question well.

Your comment made me curious - we hear about women in the Peshmerga all the time (badass women of Kurdistan, etc.), so I decided to look up their actual numbers. Wiki says this,

Although almost entirely made up of men, peshmerga forces have been known to include small numbers of women since its formation, and currently have 600 women in their ranks.[48] These female peshmerga have so far been refused access to the frontline, and are mostly used in logistics and management positions.[49]

I don't know how accurate this is, as I know that in Kobani females were participating in the fighting. The situation may have shifted since the fighting relocated closer to home.

Peace time the PFT was used to ensure everyone was physically fit to handle the rigors of combat. Promotion points to and a enforced standards along with height and weight standards.
Going on the Chub Scout program does not get one out of a combat deployment (overweight)
Failing the PT test does not get you out of a combat deployment (on purpose or one just weak physically)

Actually we're going back to peace time standards now

I would feel it is agreed that the male and female body have physical differences that can lend an inherent advantage or disadvantage.
In most cases these would only be noticed in the more extreme examples of say physical fitness or challenges.

So, if some "minimum" physical capabilities are required: do they properly represent the specific challenges of that "job"?.
The requirements should be relatively blind to gender or physical capabilities: can you do it or not?
It should not vary depending on who or what you are.
Unless there are actual physical limitations, anyone should be able to "train-up" to the level required.

My concern as a true limitation is getting everyone fit enough so that hauling a 200+lb combat wounded buddy out of a bad place is doable.
Never mind making sure that weight is not "excess baggage".

Okay, this is my own opinion but I feel women feel things in more extremes than men, I think facing an enemy combat female would be a truly scary prospect.
Mixed men and women in a unit would give enough diversity of perspective I can only feel it would operate better.
This would be ideal for multiple role units, more specialized units would probably benefit from more uniformity: all men or all women.

On the idea of cleanliness, considering the configuration between genders: if a woman goes some 30 odd days unwashed with men, they would be so much more tougher than their male counterparts. Body functions are what they are, not much use arguing about them, just grit your teeth and get the job done.

Just about every serviceman I know is all for women in combat roles, provided they can meet the male standards. I agree with this 100%. However, there is a question as to whether the standards are accurate measures of ones ability to perform the job, and there is a rather considerable amount of scientific evidence that indicates that the PFTs of all 4 branches of service don't really measure anything at all (in terms of ones overall physical health). There was an effort some years ago to update the PFT standards, I dont remember the specifics, but the events were very different (IIRC, pushups/situps/pullups were eliminated entirely, military press was added, run was replaced with timed sprints, etc.). Unfortunately it never really caught on with brass.

Also, I dont know any (male) Marines who have ever done less than 15 pullups on a PFT. Most hit at least 18, 20 is more common, and *some* of them usually keeping going after 20 to show off/a point of pride - just to put it into perspective for people unfamiliar with 'real' standards, women only doing 3-8 is looked down upon by most males, and isn't really even comparable outside of the scientific explanation of muscoskeletal differences.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Just about every serveman I know is all for women in combat roles, provided they can meet the male standards.

This pretty much sums the entire discussion up.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
Hypothetical answer: without the five women, then all you've got now is five men. Remember, you go to war with the army you have, not the army you want.

If you can't get enough men, that's when you introduce conscription. Plus with modern populations as large as they are now, only very small despots may encounter problems rallying enough males. Even small nations such as Britain or Germany won't encounter enlistee issues, let alone the superpowers such as America or China or upcoming powers like India. Hell with China and India, they're practically the Imperial Guard. Crunch all you want. We'll make more.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
Hypothetical answer: without the five women, then all you've got now is five men. Remember, you go to war with the army you have, not the army you want.

"Take what you got, even if less capable" doesn't quite fit to my idea of a well-working army.

Hugging increases back strength...

 Ahtman wrote:
Hugging increases back strength...

So does strapping on body armor and assault pack with 3ltr camelback

ruck marches....mainly twelve milers....occasional 50 milers....Ranger Candy helps

 Jihadin wrote:

 Ahtman wrote:
Hugging increases back strength...

So does strapping on body armor and assault pack with 3ltr camelback

ruck marches....mainly twelve milers....occasional 50 milers....Ranger Candy helps

Our marching loads weighed more than most of the women I've dated

As I stated earlier, the USMC now has both a PFT and a CFT, the CFT is a Combat Fitness test, and is more in line with what you would be doing in a combat theater. one of the things in the CFT is you sprint, low crawl, high crawl and then you buddy carry a wounded marine and then you fire man carry the same marine back to friendly lines (I want to say 80 meters) and then you run the course a second time but you have to run it carrying 2 30lbs Ammo cans, chuck a grenade at a target (hit is -5 seconds a miss is +5 seconds) and then sprint those ammo cans back to the starting point.

Unfortunately the units usually want Marines carrying someone their own weight for these tests. Even still most females were given over 1/3rd more time to finish the event in even though the weights they were carrying (except the ammo cans) was around 1/3rd less then the average male marine.

With that said I distinctly remember having to run 2 CFT's (one practice one real) on back to back weeks where my platoon sergeant thought it would be hilarious to give me ol tubby Mcgee as my Buddy. Bastard weighed somewhere around 240-250lbs was about 6'9 (At the time I was 5'10 and about 190lbs). I still managed to carry his fat ass all the way back and beat the perfect score time by 5 seconds.

 Jihadin wrote:

 Ahtman wrote:
Hugging increases back strength...

So does strapping on body armor and assault pack with 3ltr camelback

ruck marches....mainly twelve milers....occasional 50 milers....Ranger Candy helps

You won't need all that once we have evolved to a ping pong related warfare.

 Ahtman wrote:

 Jihadin wrote:

 Ahtman wrote:
Hugging increases back strength...

So does strapping on body armor and assault pack with 3ltr camelback

ruck marches....mainly twelve milers....occasional 50 milers....Ranger Candy helps

You won't need all that once we have evolved to a ping pong related warfare.

Please stop trolling, either add to the discussion or leave.

Sooner or later it won't really matter how strong your back is. We'll have Heinlein style power armor to do all the lifting for us

 LordofHats wrote:
Sooner or later it won't really matter how strong your back is. We'll have Heinlein style power armor to do all the lifting for us

You're crazy if you think that means people are going to carry less weight. They'll just have soldiers carrying around the maximum load of ammunition, rations, and general supplies as per usual.

"You've got power armor? GREAT, now carry this artillery piece."

Such is the burden of the infantryman.

 Ghazkuul wrote:
As I stated earlier, the USMC now has both a PFT and a CFT, the CFT is a Combat Fitness test, and is more in line with what you would be doing in a combat theater.

I know the army had been toying with the idea of a "combat fitness test" for at least the last couple years that I was in.

The problem with a "PFT" or "APFT" (because, you know... Army) is that you definitely do get the guys who can "fake" being in shape. You know the guys/gals... the ones who can rip through pushups for 2 minutes, situps for 2 minutes, and can do well on a 2 mile run........ Ask them to run 2.5 miles or 3 miles, and they are dying and falling out at 2.1 miles. Ask them to do dips or 8 count pushups, or orhter exercises than "pushups and situps" and they are done.

Our next war will probably be fought primarily with drones and mercenaries, so who gives a gak?

 Psienesis wrote:
Our next war will probably be fought primarily with drones and mercenaries, so who gives a gak?

drones...no, they will definitely be there though, Mercenaries? yeah private contracting is always there but nobody wins a war without putting Boots on the ground. And those boots will always have USMC and USARMY on them.

 Ghazkuul wrote:
And those boots will always have USMC and USARMY on them.

Mine never said that... mine always said things like "Oakley" or "Nike" or "Bellevue" or "Rocky"

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

 Ghazkuul wrote:
And those boots will always have USMC and USARMY on them.

Mine never said that... mine always said things like "Oakley" or "Nike" or "Bellevue" or "Rocky"

LOL well Marines being Marines ours had the Eagle Globe and Anchor stenciled on the side. We also had US Marines and our last names sewn onto the fronts of our uniform to remind us who we were and what branch of service we were in, because sometimes we forget.....

 Ghazkuul wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
Our next war will probably be fought primarily with drones and mercenaries, so who gives a gak?

drones...no, they will definitely be there though, Mercenaries? yeah private contracting is always there but nobody wins a war without putting Boots on the ground. And those boots will always have USMC and USARMY on them.

Nah, probably not. Even when I was in, the face of warfare was changing as the technology was advancing, and this was before the new millennium. We basically just wasted thirteen years and a few thousand of our lives, and several hundred thousand civilian lives, meanwhile driving the country into bankruptcy, for a job that a black ops team took care of. Worse? We fethed ourselves right well and good by forgetting what it was we were supposed to be defending, what it was we were fighting for. Add to that we gave rise to what is now being described as a Death Cult that we will, no doubt, need to return to the region to combat within 20 years (barring some other state going first). Just wait for ISIS/IS/ISIL or whatever-the-feth they're calling themselves this week start making inroads against the oil fields we want.