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CptJake wrote:
Wrong, it prevents them from being assigned. And there IS a difference. They have been being attached regularly, and that isn't new.

Exactly. And when a piece of legalese is regularly used to bypass a law with little real world reasoning behind it... you change that rule.

The rule was put in place because people were uncomfortable with the idea of women in combat, but the reality of combat in the last decade has shown that that rule doesn't stop it happening. All it does it put an arbitrary restriction on commanding officers about how they might best deploy their troops.

Less stupid rules is good.


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 Seaward wrote:
No, it doesn't. Please stop lying.

Content. You need some in your posts.


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 KalashnikovMarine wrote:

sar·casm
/ˈsärˌkazəm/
Noun
The use of irony to mock or convey contempt.

In order for that to work, you'd have to be mocking a statement made by the other person. That is, if I had implied that I was dubious that there were this many soldiers posting on an internet forum because soldiers spend too much time training and patrolling, then your response that soldiers are just mouth breathing robots* with no outside hobbies would have made sense.

But I didn't, my comment was a response to d-usa's post about drunk patients who were ex-special forces, and was suggesting that it is likely that some of the people on internet forums claiming they're in the army probably are not.

Now, had you made some kind of a joke about how it was true, and no-one had become a soldier since 1982 and everyone on the internet was lying, then that would be sarcasm that made sense. Not saying it'd be funny, but it would have made some kind of sense.


*Seriously, what the hell kind of robots breathe?


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 Ratbarf wrote:
Hey, I'm a fat bearded nerd who, while I don't live in my parents basement, does not go outside if there isn't a direct reason to. The fact that many people would be proud of their military service and not proud of their manchild status would seem to be the reason for your perceptions.

It's possible. Or it's possible some people like to tell stories. Go read one of the threads about picking up women some time. Notice how many smooth talking pick up artists there are.

Seriously, some people on the internet don't tell the truth about everything in their lives. It happens.


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 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
And if you're actually applying number two to me, that you think I'd actually think something like that, you clearly don't read my posts very much. Or anyone on Dakka's for that matter because I can't think of a single poster who'd argue the position that the majority of civilians think the military is a bunch of unthinking murder machines. Thus why it's a joke, because in it's most basic form it's exaggerated to the point of lunacy.

It is a position that is unlikely to be held by anyone on the forum, but it is a position that several people on the board are likely to claim others believe.

That is, no-one the board is likely to say 'oh you soldiers are a bunch of mouth breathing robots who live to kill', but a few people are likely to say 'you only say that because you believe soldiers are just a bunch of mouth breathing robots who live to kill' or something very similar to that.


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 Seaward wrote:
It appears to be a bunch of dudes with absolutely no frame of reference attempting to tell current and prior service members about the military.

I mean, I like endless hilarity as much as the next guy, but c'mon.

Actually, it's a bunch of people attempting to explain the position and reasoning of Department of Defense to a bunch of people who seem to really hate reading.


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 Seaward wrote:
Sorry. I'm afraid I'm going to have to insist that most civilians do not understand the military better than members of the military.

And I'm going to go out on a limb and insist the Department of Defence understands the Department of Defence better than you do.

 sebster wrote:
Exactly. And when a piece of legalese is regularly used to bypass a law with little real world reasoning behind it... you change that rule.

The rule was put in place because people were uncomfortable with the idea of women in combat, but the reality of combat in the last decade has shown that that rule doesn't stop it happening. All it does it put an arbitrary restriction on commanding officers about how they might best deploy their troops.

No, it really doesn't. I'm not even sure how you could draw that conclusion aside from actively trying to be wrong. While the likelihood of non-combat arms MOSes seeing combat in Iraq and Afghanistan is pretty decent, it's still the combat arms guys who are going to see the bulk of it in the aggregate.

Furthermore, the rule was not put in place because people were uncomfortable with the idea of women in combat. The rule was put in place for a whole host of reasons, chief among them, to my mind, being pure capability.

 AustonT wrote:
There's a certain element that rings true in the concept tha civilians don't really understand military life.

Oh it is absolutely true. But that's where conversation and debate can be useful. So when I posted that I'd heard from the Department of Defence about the actual substance of the changes planned and the reasoning for them, then there was scope for posters with military knowledge to go and read what the Department of Defense has stated, then come back and explain why what they're saying did or didn't quite work.

We didn't get that, though, instead we just people who wanted to talk about why women can't match front line infantry standards (seemingly entirely ignorant that those standards aren't changing) and other such stuff.


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 Seaward wrote:
No, it really doesn't. I'm not even sure how you could draw that conclusion aside from actively trying to be wrong. While the likelihood of non-combat arms MOSes seeing combat in Iraq and Afghanistan is pretty decent, it's still the combat arms guys who are going to see the bulk of it in the aggregate.

Sure, and the front line combat guys will still be seeing the aggregate. That isn't changing.

Furthermore, the rule was not put in place because people were uncomfortable with the idea of women in combat. The rule was put in place for a whole host of reasons, chief among them, to my mind, being pure capability.

And the standards aren't changing, so that reply makes no fething sense.

 AustonT wrote:
@ KM
If this was how recruiters actually were I think there'd be more Marines.
http://www.military.com/video/forces/marine-corps/very-funny-usmc-recruiting-video/1227412559001/

This implies we want more Marines. If we really wanted more we'd place big signs in the windows of our recuriting offices detailing all the cash bonuses you can qualify for like the army

 sebster wrote:

 AustonT wrote:
There's a certain element that rings true in the concept tha civilians don't really understand military life.

Oh it is absolutely true. But that's where conversation and debate can be useful. So when I posted that I'd heard from the Department of Defence about the actual substance of the changes planned and the reasoning for them, then there was scope for posters with military knowledge to go and read what the Department of Defense has stated, then come back and explain why what they're saying did or didn't quite work.

We didn't get that, though, instead we just people who wanted to talk about why women can't match front line infantry standards (seemingly entirely ignorant that those standards aren't changing) and other such stuff.
.

We did give you that though. We explained readiness, unit cohesion, and multiple other factors and I brought in several testimonies from female Marines and soldiers agreeing with or making points similar to those points, along with some other equally valid positions. Just because you don't like what we're telling you you're handing waving it to talk about front line infantry standards which no one's really talking about except in a tone of warning, because in the United States, when ever we do something in the name of being PC it usually comes with percentages attached, and if they aren't there at the start they appear over time, about how many of a specific demographic should be in a certain position, and when you're not meeting standards... "We don't have enough female 11Bs/0311s, what can we do to fix that?" is when the sliding scale sets in. It's also where we start to get fething pissed over here. We are not your social lab rats or the demonstration of democracy and tolerance in action. As my friend Sgt J so eloquently put it and I quoted earlier in this thread:

We need to stop this worry of whether a female can "advance her career". Who gives a crap about the "career", we need mission accomplishment. THAT is the purpose of a military.

Her words. Not mine. Then again, I think that should extend to both genders, I find the careerism found presently amongst certain circles in all four branches disgusting, and it's actively driving away some of our best and brightest.

 sebster wrote:
And the standards aren't changing, so that reply makes no fething sense.

Inevitably, they will, sebster. Kalashnikov explained why quite well above.

We're not facing manpower shortages. Female infantrymen do not address a critical gap in capability. This is a political agenda, and when it doesn't pan out the way the people pushing it want it to, suddenly the flexed arm hang will be just fine for female 11Bs, or they'll start giving out enough food in Ranger School, or Hell Week will become Hell Day.

Aside from all the other arguments against it, of course.

 Seaward wrote:

 sebster wrote:
And the standards aren't changing, so that reply makes no fething sense.

Inevitably, they will, sebster. Kalashnikov explained why quite well above.

We're not facing manpower shortages. Female infantrymen do not address a critical gap in capability. This is a political agenda, and when it doesn't pan out the way the people pushing it want it to, suddenly the flexed arm hang will be just fine for female 11Bs, or they'll start giving out enough food in Ranger School, or Hell Week will become Hell Day.

Aside from all the other arguments against it, of course.

Dempsey already stated they are going to be relooking at all standards. I quoted him earlier.

GEN Dempsey, Chairman JCS wrote:

He added: “Importantly, though, if we do decide that a particular standard is so high that a woman couldn't make it, the burden is now on the service to come back and explain to the secretary, why is it that high? Does it really have to be that high? With the direct combat exclusion provision in place, we never had to have that conversation.”

There will be pressure to lower standards. Having spent more than a day in the Army there is no other way to translate that.

Recently Dempsey and others have made more comments of a similar nature.

Well, there you go.

An article I read yesterday had Dempsey or someone similar asking things like 'Do infantry men really need to be able to carry 120 pounds or do a 12 mile ruck march in a certain time period for the way we think we will be fighting?' 'An armor crew man needs to lift a 60 pound shell, but does it really need to be loaded in 5 seconds?'

That is obviously a paraphrase and not a quote, article is on my work computer not this one.

I think you won't see standards lowered, instead we'll find they were just too high to begin with and brought down to the correct level

CptJake wrote:
I think you won't see standards lowered, instead we'll find they were just too high to begin with and brought down to the correct level

Most women in their 30's go through the same thing before they finally get married

 Seaward wrote:

 sebster wrote:
And the standards aren't changing, so that reply makes no fething sense.

Inevitably, they will, sebster. Kalashnikov explained why quite well above.

We're not facing manpower shortages. Female infantrymen do not address a critical gap in capability. This is a political agenda, and when it doesn't pan out the way the people pushing it want it to, suddenly the flexed arm hang will be just fine for female 11Bs, or they'll start giving out enough food in Ranger School, or Hell Week will become Hell Day.

Aside from all the other arguments against it, of course.

Some general defending already noted they would be "revisiting all the standards to see if they make sense." Maybe they won't have different standards, but I bet they sure loosen the standards.

I don't have a dog in this hunt, other than to note, I look forward to seeing the females signing up for selective service at 18 too. Oh wait, are they?

 Frazzled wrote:
Some general defending already noted they would be "revisiting all the standards to see if they make sense." Maybe they won't have different standards, but I bet they sure loosen the standards.

I don't have a dog in this hunt, other than to note, I look forward to seeing the females signing up for selective service at 18 too. Oh wait, are they?

Yeah, CptJake pointed out Dempsey's comments a few posts ago. The confirmation that they'd be lowering standards to ensure the girls get to play happened even sooner than I thought it would, I guess.

A shame. I'd really hoped they'd do like Naval Special Warfare did when someone started bitching that the Teams aren't diverse enough; pay it lip service and otherwise ignore it.

CptJake wrote:
An article I read yesterday had Dempsey or someone similar asking things like 'Do infantry men really need to be able to carry 120 pounds or do a 12 mile ruck march in a certain time period for the way we think we will be fighting?' 'An armor crew man needs to lift a 60 pound shell, but does it really need to be loaded in 5 seconds?'

That is obviously a paraphrase and not a quote, article is on my work computer not this one.

I think you won't see standards lowered, instead we'll find they were just too high to begin with and brought down to the correct level

In the above it was Sergeant Major of the Army (SMA) Chandler. My quote earlier from Dempsey was indeed Dempsey, but I got this source wrong.

www.army.mil news wrote:Chandler then offered an example from the infantry occupational series.

"Their highest performance requirement is to carry 128 pounds," he said. "Now where does that number come from? Twelve pounds for uniform, about 60 pounds for body armor and the rest is in your assault pack. You've got to be able to carry that weight and conduct a road march a certain distance and be able to move directly into combat.

"Is that still accurate?" he asked rhetorically. "We're going to assess that. Do you need to be able to march 20 kilometers in six hours? Is that what we expect every infantryman to do?"

A 'letter to the editor' from the Washington Post made me chuckle too:

Female Veteran wrote:As an Army veteran, I had to have the correct eyesight to be accepted for training in one job, I had to have the right educational background for most of them, and I had to pass all the tests for every one.

Personal Post Frontline combat positions require certain standards as well, and not just brute physical strength. I may not have been able to hump a 120-pound pack, but I might have been able to tote a sniper rifle or a grenade launcher. Would I have wanted to? I never had the choice, but I can assure you that some of my fellow female veterans would have wanted to try.

For the record, the grenadier (guy with the M203 or replacement) has the 2nd heaviest load in an infantry squad*... When you don't know that you shouldn't use that weapon as the example. You don't get to carry it unless you carry the associated load out.

* Center for Army Lessons Learned study done in Afghanistan showed the M203 gunner avg fighting load was 71.44 pounds and the emergency approach load was 136.64 pounds which was from about 41% to 72% of the trooper's body weight. The SAW gunner was the only position in the squad where the trooper was under more of a load. Now, that 136 number was rare, it generally averaged about 105 pounds (avg approach load).