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Posted
I wasn't necessarily addressing you for what I said, but the average reader coming across this thread. Most non-combat arms people, even those in the military, are astoundingly ignorant of what the actual requirements are, yet are more than willing to pontificate about what is and isn't required.
Yup, on average we're terribly ignorant on military reality on this here grate sight, and in desperate need of expansive revelations to be educated about it. Thanks for that.
Remember, when discussing anything with thekirk anectdotal evidence is the strongest evidence and only his has any weight. :lol:

 

When experience refutes theory, what do you propose? You and Jason continually snipe from the sidelines, saying "anecdote, anecdote...", as if that refutes everything someone else has actually experienced. The fact is, however, that your theories and ideals do not magically create the reality you want. And, what do you do, when someone tells you the Emperor isn't wearing any clothes? You mock, and attack the messenger. That still doesn't square the circle, or turn the average woman into the Hollywood fantasy of GI Jane.

 

Frederick the Great once stated, "If experience were key, mules would be generals." I regret that I lack the German version [or perhaps French in his case].

 

In any event, I am looking forward to theKirk's 'head exploding' over this durge in which he persists. When will he give T19 another lesson in AFV crew training? I can't wait!

 

Given his self-classification in combat arms, I await tales of his herding women into sapper tasks and following his lead in the Sturmpionere. The examples he gives have been quite tame, so far.

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Posted

Women don't measure up, period. In darn near every sport the men are far ahead of the women. Also, in this type of thread you usually have many non-infantry guys saying women are ok. In reality, they can't even begin to hold their own in the infantry. I have also been a Police Officer, women are TERRIBLE at any confrontation with men. Men constantly help them out. It would be a good discussion if the women were even close to the performance of men. They are not even in the same ballpark most of the time. Yes, there is always some exceptional woman, but generally it is a miserable FAIL when compared to men. I read these discussions and wonder what planet most people are on. In my experience they are not even close, but they are covered by their male coworkers.

 

I can't stress enough how miserably they fail when it comes to hands on time as a Police Officer. They don't have the strength and get whipped around like rag dolls. Again, there are always the few exceptions, but generally putting men into competition with women is a total failure for the women. I have NEVER seen a women hold her own that was actually doing the job and not just an armchair discussion. I could go on but it's as if most people posting here have no real experience and are not going to be swayed by those that do. Oh well.......

Posted

Women physically cannot be the few inches of the point of the spear. Or it's half-inches of socket. They can be a part of the several feet of the shaft.

Posted

What, pray tell, do you then see as the topic under discussion here?

 

I've seen nobody here demanding that "because some women can do these things, or analogues to the requirements for Infantry, then we ought to allow and enable all women in general to be assigned a job where they will be required to do so". I've seen lots of people demanding that women should fulfill the same physical requirements as men to serve in the same jobs, and complaining that in reality, standards will be lowered to fulfill political demands. So I remain puzzled that you keep beating this strawman.

Posted

There are no shortage of dead shit blokes in the army either - I've known guys I wouldn't trust to carry a bucket of water, nevermind carry me out of a burning vehicle under hostile fire, if a woman can do that, I don't think the simple presence of a front-bum should disqualify,

It comes down to standards, if they meet them, all power to them.

 

Personally I feel women in infantry units are a non-starter, as is women in most western militaries make up less than a fifth of total manpower, usually 10-15%, in combat arms units I would say it would beless than 1% even in 20 years time.

It isn't a job many men are cut out for, and extremely few women.

Posted

So, because we have had to incorporate women into the forces at around 11-15% in order to properly fill the forces in a peacetime recruiting market, the only Q is, in what way shall we deny [and justify] equal opportunity of career, which is also a given in the western society? Shall women have access to the complete career progression, or just be nurses, private to general. In the USN, blacks were just messmen in pre-WWII. The US forces of over a half decade ago were reeling under the notion that blacks could not fight, yet had to be accepted under presidential order. Now it is homosexuals [always in armies], but some heteros of today can't take the pressure, their heads will explode?

 

I can't see very many women seeking infantry jobs, or arty. A few may try tanks, and they were tank instructors first in Israeli and Canadian forces, if I recall correctly.

 

So, like the conversion to taking blacks, homosexuals into the forces, we may well open up all to women.

 

I say the leadership will have to spell out the details, but not too many heads will explode. If some do, perhaps they won't be needed in the future, and were not so reliable anyway.

Posted

Women add no value, and bring additional burdens, to the infantry MOS's. We don't lack for numbers.

 

The fact of the matter is that regardless of objective standards, the politicians(both civil and .mil) would demand equality of outcome, as they have repeated done with everything else. S/F....Ken M

Posted

Can I ask a question, has anyone got a specific incident in mind where a womans lack of physical capablity lead to loss in a small unit action? Because Im damned If I can think of one.

 

By contrast, can anyone think of a woman performing an act that saved many lifes in a small unit action? From Iraq and Afghanistan I could probably find a half dozen of the latter if I had a mind to check. Probably more.

 

Incidentally, there has been at least one woman AAC Apache pilot in Afghanistan. Did wonders for morale when her voice came over the radio apparently. :P

 

+1 with this

 

And, females are often more fierce fighters than males.

Posted

More so if they are PMS Lesbian Cheerleaders

Posted

[...]

 

I'm pretty positive you just completely missed the point, or didn't really bother reading my post, which says quite clearly (with bolded bits just to be clear):

 

Incidentally, the whole strength thing is somewhat bunk, since men and women can exert similar strength after military specific training commiserate with their frames.

 

You're right, I translated "commiserate with sort of "independent of". Thats why I got quite agitated. I still don't know exactly what it does mean, but after your further explanation I believe "relative to" would fit. Mea culpa.

 

[..] The difference is that you discriminate against the males for sucking while you are trying to discriminate against the females for merely being female. [...]

 

I don't discriminate against females any more than I discriminate against ants for moving tree trunks. Yes, there are a few females who are as heavy and strong as males, but they are few and far between.

I have no experience with the military, but I've made some kayak tours with students, most of them sport students. Well, while male students were presumed to be capable of carrying the boat, and pull it up on the river bank and empty it by themselves (and they did), it was an equally standard procedure to help the female ones. Not because they wouldn't eventually manage to do so themselves (usually two or three together), but because it was much faster to have a male leave the boat, empty the other one (this includes some heavy lifting), and get back into his own afterwards. During that time however there was a guide less to cope with accidents and to provide security for the rest of the students afloat...

Yet I wouldn't even have tried to best the majority of the females in any "standard" fitness test, with the possible exception of push-ups, but even then I wouldn't have bet on myself.

 

The only real problem is watered down standards, which has utterly nothing to do with the individual capabilities of females.

 

Ack. Standards should however be linked to the tasks to be done, for example an evaluation after basic training which lasts several days, after which the recruits are evaluated based on the demands of the job they applied to and - if need be - rejected or reallocated.

But they aren't: it's much easier to some fast irrelevant testing now and reject later claims (and pay for the few which can't be rejected) for physical damages, than to make a detailed test. Much cheaper as well, as you can see on about any electronic product at the market today.

However, I guess theres another issue as well: "Equal opportunity" is too often thought of/claimed as "equal number of" instead of "equal opportunity to apply". But thats the usual political decision made by people who aren't personally effected by the results

 

The paper you cited is pretty much irrelevant since it doesn't compared physically trained individuals anyway.

 

1) How many conscripts/volunteers are "physically trained" (however that might be defined) before they enter the army?

2) Shouldn't "trained" individuals even get a malus at the physical test? After all you (I, at least) would want people who can pass the test easily and still have room for growth, instead of someone who passes at the peak of his physical abilities.

3) Physical training doesn't change the gap by any significant amount[The influence of U.S. Army Basic Initial Entry Training on the muscular strength of men and women,http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7469950a]. While females close the gap a bit even the paper itself links the effect to "their lower initial strength levels and the consequently greater relative training stimulus" (So, either the males already met the criteria, or their training didn't do that). There is another paper with a longer (two-years) supervision period which indicate that this might be a short-term effect [The effect of two years' training on aerobic power and muscle strength in male and female cadets, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7059326] Even trained at least the gap in upper body strength persists, it is only shifted to a higher level [Contrasts in muscle and myofibers of elite male and female bodybuilders, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2759948].

4) The higher your level of training, the more taxed are your ligaments, joints, bone structure etc, which will lead to failure or excessive wear. Show me a soccer player pro or semi-pro who hasn't got troubles with his knees in later life.

 

Your ant vs elephant example is also wrong. If you could somehow magically organize ants into forming structures suitable for carrying trees (they already self organize into structures) they would be perfectly capable of lifting trees and far more efficienctly than elephants at that. [...] The problem isn't that you can't scale carried weight to carrier weight, it's that you can't achieve the required organisational complexity to aggregate strength.

 

No. The problem is that while strength is linked to the area of the muscle, the weight is linked of the volume, so relative power is related to the inverse height, length or width of the species. An ant the size of a human would be able to carry a weight in the same order of magnitude as a human, and thats without allowance for bad design to transport energy,oxygen and heat over greater lengths of tissue. An ant the size of an elephant would get severe problems with its exosceleton, let alone it's respiratory system, and would probably be glad to be left alone once/if it managed to get up. An elephant is (ok, make that two elephants are) a pretty much optimized self-reproductive system for animals the size of elephants.

Posted (edited)

Funnily enough, some time ago I overheard one of my relatives (who works at the hospital) complaining how many male nurses tend to be bit lazy, prone to finding ways to slack off from their duties. "But of course, you can't generalize, not all of them all like that..." :P

Edited by Yama
Posted

As someone who less than 36 hours ago just got fireman carried up a slippery jungle mountain by a 5'2" 19 year old blonde who would be lucky if she weighed fifty kilos soaking wet, after I was 'hit' in a close country ambush on an ex run by SAS and Commandos I'm somewhat of a convert - I'm a six foot tall 85kg guy, with another thirty odd kilos of crap and a weapon hanging off me.

 

She was also one of three of us that got a shot off in the sniper stalk (she got caught after the shot though - she got too close)

 

She managed to lead her team in a KC mission as successfully as could be (it was a push to failure exercise) where as my stellar leadership ended in a village massacre Ken would be proud of (we did kill the target bomb maker... and woman with a weapon...and a dude with a phone...and a dude with a stick...all but the woman shot in the back... :unsure: ) but thats another story...

 

Am I to assume this is aimed at me? S/F....Ken M

Guest Jason L
Posted
You're right, I translated "commiserate with sort of "independent of". Thats why I got quite agitated. I still don't know exactly what it does mean, but after your further explanation I believe "relative to" would fit. Mea culpa.

 

I was trying to be poetic there, not very successfully.

 

I don't discriminate against females any more than I discriminate against ants for moving tree trunks. Yes, there are a few females who are as heavy and strong as males, but they are few and far between.

I have no experience with the military, but I've made some kayak tours with students, most of them sport students. Well, while male students were presumed to be capable of carrying the boat, and pull it up on the river bank and empty it by themselves (and they did), it was an equally standard procedure to help the female ones. Not because they wouldn't eventually manage to do so themselves (usually two or three together), but because it was much faster to have a male leave the boat, empty the other one (this includes some heavy lifting), and get back into his own afterwards. During that time however there was a guide less to cope with accidents and to provide security for the rest of the students afloat...

Yet I wouldn't even have tried to best the majority of the females in any "standard" fitness test, with the possible exception of push-ups, but even then I wouldn't have bet on myself.

 

Sure, but that ignores the whole issue of training.

 

Ack. Standards should however be linked to the tasks to be done, for example an evaluation after basic training which lasts several days, after which the recruits are evaluated based on the demands of the job they applied to and - if need be - rejected or reallocated.

But they aren't: it's much easier to some fast irrelevant testing now and reject later claims (and pay for the few which can't be rejected) for physical damages, than to make a detailed test. Much cheaper as well, as you can see on about any electronic product at the market today.

However, I guess theres another issue as well: "Equal opportunity" is too often thought of/claimed as "equal number of" instead of "equal opportunity to apply". But thats the usual political decision made by people who aren't personally effected by the results

 

Agreed. But that has nothing to do with women. Men are put into situations over their heads on a regular basis in every field imaginable.

 

1) How many conscripts/volunteers are "physically trained" (however that might be defined) before they enter the army?

2) Shouldn't "trained" individuals even get a malus at the physical test? After all you (I, at least) would want people who can pass the test easily and still have room for growth, instead of someone who passes at the peak of his physical abilities.

3) Physical training doesn't change the gap by any significant amount[The influence of U.S. Army Basic Initial Entry Training on the muscular strength of men and women,http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7469950a]. While females close the gap a bit even the paper itself links the effect to "their lower initial strength levels and the consequently greater relative training stimulus" (So, either the males already met the criteria, or their training didn't do that). There is another paper with a longer (two-years) supervision period which indicate that this might be a short-term effect [The effect of two years' training on aerobic power and muscle strength in male and female cadets, "]http://www.ncbi.nlm....pubmed/7059326] Even trained at least the gap in upper body strength persists, it is only shifted to a higher level [Contrasts in muscle and myofibers of elite male and female bodybuilders, ."]http://www.ncbi.nlm....ubmed/2759948].

4) The higher your level of training, the more taxed are your ligaments, joints, bone structure etc, which will lead to failure or excessive wear. Show me a soccer player pro or semi-pro who hasn't got troubles with his knees in later life.

 

Lots of people train to maximize their scores on PT tests prior to entry. I would sincerely hope it's the norm right now given how unfit society is at large, but I bet it isn't. I think whatever strength gap remains is irrelevant with the introduction of better standards anyway, it's not like every man accepted is a pinnacle example of human physical prowess anyway. Also in the face of critical manpower needs in war that forces you to mobilize huge segments of society the "not quite as strong" argument holds less and less weight, especially when you need more bodies long after you've skimmed off the creme of physical prowess.

 

Farm work is pretty physically devastating and women were never really exempt from a lot of back breaking work either so it seems strange to worry about their knees now ;)

 

No. The problem is that while strength is linked to the area of the muscle, the weight is linked of the volume, so relative power is related to the inverse height, length or width of the species. An ant the size of a human would be able to carry a weight in the same order of magnitude as a human, and thats without allowance for bad design to transport energy,oxygen and heat over greater lengths of tissue. An ant the size of an elephant would get severe problems with its exosceleton, let alone it's respiratory system, and would probably be glad to be left alone once/if it managed to get up. An elephant is (ok, make that two elephants are) a pretty much optimized self-reproductive system for animals the size of elephants.

 

You're assuming the solution to getting sufficient total force/power output is to make a giant ant. What I'm talking about is coordinating many, many, many regular sized ants to form structures to lift heavy objects. The technology required to control that many ants (or equivallently efficient microbots or whatever) is pure fantasy right now, but one of the selling points for distributed, coordinated systems over very large machinery is that being able to organize structure at a very small scale confers huge advatages not only in efficiency but total output.

Posted

But when it comes time to load the 800lb bariatric sow onto the stretcher, who typically does it? S/F....Ken M

 

Don't know, I doubt my hometown has any of those...

Posted

The male nurse, who winds up with a messed up back and fighting to stay off the prescription pain killers. I know one poor SOB that is that person.

Posted

Somebody piss in your corn flakes? Who said I was replying to you? Stay loose!

 

Yes, I did think you were lampooning my choice of the word "warrior" in the thread title. If no malice was intended, my apologies are extended.

Posted

It seems shoddy journalism caused this to be reported as "the first all-female submarine crew" in some sources.

 

First Lady to Sponsor USS Illinois

 

Mrs. Obama follows ship-sponsoring tradition

 

Monday, May 28, 2012 | Updated 4:02 PM CDT

First Lady Michelle Obama will sponsor the first U.S. Submarine to allow female submariners.

 

The U.S.S. Illinois Twenty is expected to enter service in 2015.

 

"It's an honor and a privilege," Mrs. Obama said. "To serve as sponsor of the USS Illinois...This submarine is a tribute to the strength, courage, and determination that our Navy families exhibit every day."

 

The USS Illinois is one of the newest class of Navy submarines being built in Groton, Connecticut and Newport News, Virgina, Naval officials said.

 

Mrs. Obama joins other first ladies in a tradition of sponsoring U.S. Navy submarines. Former First Lady Laura Bush is the sponsor of USS Texas; Former First Lady Hillary Clinton is USS' Columbia's sponsor.

 

"Naval tradition holds that a sponsor's spirit and presence guide the ship and her crew throughout the life of the ship," Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said. "Illinois and her crew are blessed to have such a wonderful sponsor."

 

http://www.nbcchicag...-155106585.html

Posted

I cannot comment directly on Filipinas serving at the front line since I know nothing. However, I can provide these links on Filipinas in the armed forces:

 

http://www.pma.ph/?pageid=FemaleCadet

 

The selection and admission of female cadets into the Academy is similar to that required of their male counterparts. The only difference is in the height requirement where females must be at least 5 feet 2 inches in height as compared to males who are required to be at least 2 inches taller.

 

When applicants pass the written entrance examination, they are selected after thorough physical and neuro-psychiatric examinations and pre-cadet qualification interviews conducted at the Armed Forces of the Philippines Medical Center. Female appointees are not given any special treatment during these examinations.

 

One reason for accepting only a few female cadets is the limited availability of adequate facilities for women. The Philippine Military Academy all through these years has primarily been a school for men and it is understandable that changes could not be effected overnight.

 

<snip>

 

The female cadets also underwent basically the same training as their male counterparts. Whatever adjustments had to done were minimal. Trained to become future officers of the Armed Forces, they undergo the same physical fitness tests, made to walk the same rugged mountain trails and dusty roads during footmarches and attend the same academic classes as their classmates. No distinction is made between sexes in terms of punishments and demerits as well as rewards and merits.

 

 

http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?articleId=786369&publicationSubCategoryId=63

 

http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/nation/04/07/11/philippine-army-has-first-female-general

 

"She [Go] is the first lady general of the Philippine Army who is a regular officer," said Parlade.

 

He added that the promotion of Go to the star rank means that the AFP “is empowering women, giving more active role for women in the Armed Forces and in the Philippine Army."

 

Go was previously given combat assignments, including leading the Aviation Battalion of the Army’s Light Armor Division.

 

 

ISTR a Filipina soldier KIA sometime ago down south, but a google search brings up nothing....

Posted

For your information, Mr. Amateur Mindreader, I named the topic "Female Warriors" so as to include female soldiers, sailors, Marines, and Air Force. This is not just an Army deal, and as I have already seen, those not of the Army ilk can and will use the occasion to throw darts at US Army Soldiers, while turning a blind eye to those of other service branches that are in the same situation regarding females. I'm not looking for a US Army-only topic. This topic goes far beyond that in scope. That way, people can keep their petty "We're better than the Army" penis-pulling comments to themselves.

 

Perhaps "women in the service" would be better?...

 

I actually always thought "soldier" could be used as a broader term for any military occupation, but then, ESL here...

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