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So we're down to just shouting back and forth about this one about now?

There are, and are going to be significant logistical and personnel issues with this. Anyone who believes otherwise is fooling themselves or woefully uneducated on the subject.

The argument isn't or at least shouldn't be whether or not this is true, because a simple perusal of basically all of the evidence so far gathered shows this.

The argument really ought to be on whether the juice is worth the squeeze. As I said waaay back when, from a purely egalitarian standpoint this is the only logical way to move forward. But people are going to die because of this that would have otherwise lived. Many people who would not have had career ending injuries, will. It is going to happen. All the equivocating and good feels in the world won't stop that.

 Crazy_Carnifex wrote:

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:

Oh another thing, in ancient scandinavia, Alot of the viking warriors where.....women.

Source on that?
I know that the women were trained to fight to protect their households, when the men were away on raids, and I know that they would accompany the men on an exploration or a colonization voyage, but this the first I've heard of them being actual warriors. Especially a lot of them.

I'll have to see if I can't dig up some of the recent articles... But basically, based on new archaeological digs, evidence is showing in mass warrior graves near known battle sites that "a lot" of the warriors were women. Some of the initial articles that I saw said around half, but after further examination and testing on the bones, the researchers have amended that to say "up to" half of the warriors were women.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Grey Templar wrote:
I think I would be very safe in saying the SoD knew more about the military than a weatherman, unless the weatherman had some additional qualifications.

While true, what we can safely assume, is that SecDef gets pressure from a number of sources to enact certain measures. If he/she is doing his/her job correctly, then SecDef will go to the Joint Chiefs and other GSO types to gather their feedback.

If the Viking article was the one I saw, I think half of all Viking Warriors were geriatrics...

If I recall correctly woman and children often worked the training end of the battle, finishing off the wounded. The skilled ones could kill a man with a single axe blow. Lief Eriksons wife also put down a mutiny with her axe after a dispute over who should be calling the shots after his death.

Back to the original topic. The very first army aircraft to cross into Iraq in Desert Storm had one or two female crew members. Shocked the army at the time, almost 25 years ago.

I don't know much about actual real world military or political stuff in general, nevermind things in another country but... Reading this I've got to ask the question of...

If you accept that, general things being equal, a female soldier is less capable than a male soldier in the typical 'front line combat' roles. - I'm not saying I'm agreeing with this or whatever, I am very clearly stating I have no opinion on it.

But anyhows... How is military recruitment in America? Is it in such a state where the country can consciously choose not to utilise a hypothetical 55 percent of the potential population in these roles?

 Bromsy wrote:
So we're down to just shouting back and forth about this one about now?

There are, and are going to be significant logistical and personnel issues with this. Anyone who believes otherwise is fooling themselves or woefully uneducated on the subject.

The argument isn't or at least shouldn't be whether or not this is true, because a simple perusal of basically all of the evidence so far gathered shows this.

The argument really ought to be on whether the juice is worth the squeeze. As I said waaay back when, from a purely egalitarian standpoint this is the only logical way to move forward. But people are going to die because of this that would have otherwise lived. Many people who would not have had career ending injuries, will. It is going to happen. All the equivocating and good feels in the world won't stop that.

Bullpucky
For all you know people may live who would otherwise have died. It is all supposition at this point. People believed the military would collapse every time an integration step has been taken.

 Compel wrote:

But anyhows... How is military recruitment in America? Is it in such a state where the country can consciously choose not to utilise a hypothetical 55 percent of the potential population in these roles?

If it came to a draft, yes.

However, the current recruitment situation is generally such that the Army always has enough tankers, scouts, artillery and infantry desiring men, that it doesn't really "need" to change approaches.


Also, as we've seen with both Iraq and Afghanistan, there are some fairly heroic women who earned high awards for their exploits, and there's Jessica Lynch. In between those two, you have everyday type women doing their jobs as medics, supply specialists and the like, many of whom were hit by IEDs and suffered many of the same type of permanently life-altering injuries that men in combat arms jobs did. Personally, for the direction that modern warfare is heading, it makes some sense to open things up to women, but it needs to be done the right way, and that's the problem I have with the announcement of this decision: it feels rushed and like the top brass is giving in to special interest groups without proper thought and planning for anything and everything that can happen when the makeup of a unit is significantly altered.

 Compel wrote:

But anyhows... How is military recruitment in America? Is it in such a state where the country can consciously choose not to utilise a hypothetical 55 percent of the potential population in these roles?

The US armed forces, including Reserves, currently number around 2.2 million people. The US has an estimated population of 322 million.

They account for only 0.7% of the total population. We would have to have exponential growth in the needed number of soldiers for an all male military to run into recruitment issues, assuming we were drafting people.

 Insurgency Walker wrote:

 Bromsy wrote:
So we're down to just shouting back and forth about this one about now?

There are, and are going to be significant logistical and personnel issues with this. Anyone who believes otherwise is fooling themselves or woefully uneducated on the subject.

The argument isn't or at least shouldn't be whether or not this is true, because a simple perusal of basically all of the evidence so far gathered shows this.

The argument really ought to be on whether the juice is worth the squeeze. As I said waaay back when, from a purely egalitarian standpoint this is the only logical way to move forward. But people are going to die because of this that would have otherwise lived. Many people who would not have had career ending injuries, will. It is going to happen. All the equivocating and good feels in the world won't stop that.

Bullpucky
For all you know people may live who would otherwise have died. It is all supposition at this point. People believed the military would collapse every time an integration step has been taken.

Just stop.

That is an idiotic comparison, because there were no studies done to prove that black guys are worse than white guys at soldiering. There are studies that show that women are worse at the majority of tasks required by an infantry soldier. This isn't up for debate by anyone who isn't deluding themselves.

Even if, in your theoretical world where more people somehow live because of the inclusion of elements that degrade overall efficiency somehow, is it worth having a woman injured to the point where she cannot continue serving in the military for every single woman who serves in a combat arms job (and that is probably being generous)?

I wasn't really referring to a draft as such.

I'm more referring to a pseudo-mathematical point of view.

If you were to go to a business and said, "hey, if I had an idea about you could more than double the size of you're potential hiring pool for very little effort, would you be interested?" They would probably bite the persons hand off.

 Compel wrote:
I wasn't really referring to a draft as such.

I'm more referring to a pseudo-mathematical point of view.

If you were to go to a business and said, "hey, if I had an idea about you could more than double the size of you're potential hiring pool for very little effort, would you be interested?" They would probably bite the persons hand off.

It won't be anything like a doubling. For a number of reasons women volunteer for the military in vastly smaller numbers. Women physically capable of passing male minimum pt standards - which I would hope would be the very lowest acceptable standard will be only a small percentage of those who already volunteered.

As I said, the military is currently only 0.7% of the total US population. Only 7 out of every 1000 people are in the armed forces.

Lets assume the US population is only 1000. 500 men and 500 women. Lets also assume the US military is exclusively men. We'll assume an even age distribution among the population. 5 blocks of 20% of the population each. 20% are under the age of 18 and are not eligible to serve(we'll ignore the being 17 with parental permission option). 20% are between the ages of 18 and 30. 20% are between the age of 30 and 50. 20% are between the ages of 50 and 70. 20% are 70+.

If the military only accepted people between the age of 18 and 20, that gives them 100 potential recruits. Now if we add some physical fitness requirements, if we assume even distributions of fitness and that the standards can be passed by 60% of individuals that gives us 60 potential recruits.

In this situation, the US military only numbers 7 people. Out of 60 who would meet all the requirements.

The military could grow 8.5 times larger before you ran out of men who met these requirements. If you aren't going to make your army larger there is no reason to have lax standards, you could actually increase your standards before you actually ran into issues.

That's why I said potential hiring pool.

I'll probably go into this more in the morning when I'm more coherent and sounding somewhat less like a blithering idiot.

I'm in the UK and I work in the STEM fields (Science/Technology/Engineering/Maths), which are having pretty majorly massive recruitment problems right now and I see some potential parallels between that and this topic.

 Compel wrote:
That's why I said potential hiring pool.

I'll probably go into this more in the morning when I'm more coherent and sounding somewhat less like a blithering idiot.

I'm in the UK and I work in the STEM fields (Science/Technology/Engineering/Maths), which are having pretty majorly massive recruitment problems right now and I see some potential parallels between that and this topic.

There is a fairly hard cap on how many new STEM majors an individual countries university system can crank out each year and it is lower than the demand for those individuals. Unlike the army where the potential recruit pool is very large and the demand relatively small and consistent.

Alright gents.

Not going to state an opinion one way or the other because I don't want to get involved.

I do wish to clarify some things. There aren't just physiological differences between men and women, there are huge ones. Testosterone production, VO2 Max differences. Women have patella tracking problems because of their bone structure. The list goes on and on.

To answer some of the recruiting questions, I was a recruiter in the Marine Corps for my B-Billet. Not sure how them nasty hooahs do it (relax guys I love you like the brother and sisters you are, it's a joke) but in the Marines the standards are adjusted per the needs of the Corps. When I recruited the qouta was one per recruiter. However the standards were high as heck, you had to find the needle in the haystack. If you were male you had better be in highschool. Females we would have taken grad or no grad. No waivers were allowed period. Now talking to some of the career recruiters they'll tell you that during the build up and height of the ol War on Terror you could have a felony and if it wasn't to bad you were in. Oh and if you could play an instrument and pass the test to make it into the Marine Corps band you'd have netted me a promotion male or female.

 CptJake wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
I again ask, SO? Other jobs have to deal with it, why not the military.

You're absolutely right. There is clearly zero difference between a deployed infantry unit and say a WalMart.

Just as long as folks admit there are differences in injury rates and deployability between male and female troops, if as a nation we say 'SO?' then so be it. feth it, who cares about silly things like those differences anyway, right?

I honestly would'nt want a woman fighting in my hole. War is no joke.

But most here hav'nt "seen the show", as we say. Stupid even talking about combat to a bunch of people who think war is like 40k.

This thread should be deleted.

bound for glory wrote:

 CptJake wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
I again ask, SO? Other jobs have to deal with it, why not the military.

You're absolutely right. There is clearly zero difference between a deployed infantry unit and say a WalMart.

Just as long as folks admit there are differences in injury rates and deployability between male and female troops, if as a nation we say 'SO?' then so be it. feth it, who cares about silly things like those differences anyway, right?

I honestly would'nt want a woman fighting in my hole. War is no joke.

But most here hav'nt "seen the show", as we say. Stupid even talking about combat to a bunch of people who think war is like 40k.

This thread should be deleted.

I am sure the women that are willing to go to war are not joking about it. Get out of here with that crap. You really think we think war is moving plastic toys across a board?

Please, be more condescending.

And what unit did YOU serve with?

bound for glory wrote:
And what unit did YOU serve with?

I didn't, I just worked in civilian healthcare for the better part of a decade and also treated veterans.

What was your rank? Anywhere near those who made this decision?

Nope. Just a humble First sergent with 16 months in country, much of which was spent in Zabul Province(said to be home of the "toughest" fighters in afghanistan, LOL).
Good enough?

bound for glory wrote:
Nope. Just a humble First sergent with 16 months in country, much of which was spent in Zabul Province(said to be home of the "toughest" fighters in afghanistan, LOL).
Good enough?

No.

Alright that is enough. Rule One on this site is Be Polite. Please both of you take a break from this thread.

 Bromsy wrote:
That is an idiotic comparison, because there were no studies done to prove that black guys are worse than white guys at soldiering.

Ah, to be so naive...

http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/education/resources/pdfs/tusk_doc_a.pdf

 Peregrine wrote:

 Bromsy wrote:
That is an idiotic comparison, because there were no studies done to prove that black guys are worse than white guys at soldiering.

Ah, to be so naive...

http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/education/resources/pdfs/tusk_doc_a.pdf

Reads like an opinion piece about their mental capacity, not a study about physical ability... It also mentions how they will be held to the same standards as their white counterparts something we do not see today. It seems as black men clearly passed the qualifications as written out in part 4 and as a result their continued allowance to fight etc.

 Swastakowey wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Bromsy wrote:
That is an idiotic comparison, because there were no studies done to prove that black guys are worse than white guys at soldiering.

Ah, to be so naive...

http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/education/resources/pdfs/tusk_doc_a.pdf

Reads like an opinion piece

Then you didn't actually read it because it sites numerous studies done on the effectiveness on blacks in combat. It even references it's self as a "study" numerous times (because it is).

 ScootyPuffJunior wrote:

 Swastakowey wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Bromsy wrote:
That is an idiotic comparison, because there were no studies done to prove that black guys are worse than white guys at soldiering.

Ah, to be so naive...

http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/education/resources/pdfs/tusk_doc_a.pdf

Reads like an opinion piece

Then you didn't actually read it because it sites numerous studies done on the effectiveness on blacks in combat. It even references it's self as a "study" numerous times (because it is).

Yea I just re read it a few times. Ignore my previous comment. My internet only loaded the first 3 pages, when I went back on it loaded all of them.

 Compel wrote:
I don't know much about actual real world military or political stuff in general, nevermind things in another country but... Reading this I've got to ask the question of...

If you accept that, general things being equal, a female soldier is less capable than a male soldier in the typical 'front line combat' roles. - I'm not saying I'm agreeing with this or whatever, I am very clearly stating I have no opinion on it.

But anyhows... How is military recruitment in America? Is it in such a state where the country can consciously choose not to utilise a hypothetical 55 percent of the potential population in these roles?

Military is downsizing. None of the services have any trouble meeting recruiting goals. Bonuses are down and waivers are VERY rare because they are not needed. There are actually waiting time for entry for many recruits because we've cut down on initial training because we need less folks.

So yes, we can consciously choose 'not to utilize a hypothetical 55 percent of the potential population in these roles' because there are (I guess now were) plenty of roles they COULD go into previously (actually the VAST majority of positions across all the services were open).

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Honor to be called a warrior?
That is the stupiedest gak I have ever heard, what is so special about the term "Warrior"

No mere woman or SJB will ever understand the true power of Destrucity, Hoak Hogan!

Nothing. There is no more 'honor' or 'glory' in being a soldier than working at McDonalds or being a street cleaner.

I will respect you based on your behaviour, and you could be John Rambo for all I care otherwise.

 Ashiraya wrote:
Nothing. There is no more 'honor' or 'glory' in being a soldier than working at McDonalds or being a street cleaner.

I will respect you based on your behaviour, and you could be John Rambo for all I care otherwise.

There's nothing wrong with working at McDonald's or being a street cleaner. That said, soldiers willingly put themselves into harms way for the benefit of others. If you believe in the concept of honor at all, claiming that there is no honor in service and claiming that there is no honor in risking life and limb so others don't have to is a pretty difficult one to make. And if you don't believe in honor then why even mention it?

Not all soldiers sign up for or serve in roles where they will ever even be deployed, let alone put themselves in harms way.

 SilverMK2 wrote:
Not all soldiers sign up for or serve in roles where they will ever even be deployed, let alone put themselves in harms way.

If you sign up at all you are making yourself a target for your enemies, and there is always a chance you will be deployed. Uncertainty is part of the sacrifice. Soldiers don't have the luxury of choosing the time or place of their service, or of what conflict they may end up taking part in.