Thursday, September 10, 2015

This is my Shocked Face

Headline news for the day from the Daily Caller: 
Marine Corps Study Shows That Men Are Better In Ground Combat Than Women

An experimental Marine Corps study looking at female integration into ground combat units has determined that women perform far worse than men.
Not only that, but they reported that experimental mixed units of men and women didn't perform as well as the all-male units.

I sure hope they didn't spend too much money on that.  But it's not just the Fed.gov, its the .Mil, and they're not known for extreme frugality.

Skepticism aside, there are interested snippets in the study.  To list a few:
  • All-male squads were faster and had greater accuracy in firing weapons, by a margin of 44 percent to 28 percent (hits on target).  In my mind, I'd thought that women would work well in several roles in the modern military, including as snipers.  Maybe not?  I can think of a half dozen women who would be terrifying snipers right off the top of my head.   
  • All-male crews “had a noticeable difference in their performance of the basic combat tasks of negotiating obstacles and evacuating casualties.”  Probably because
  • “females possessed 15 percent less power than males,” and that “the female top 25th percentile overlaps with the bottom 25th percentile for males.” 
  • “Male Marines threw their packs to the top of the wall, whereas female Marines required regular assistance in getting their packs to the top.”
  • Women also were more likely to be injured, according to the study.  The British Ministry of Defence, found that because of physiological differences, women are burdened with musculoskeletal injuries at a rate 10 times higher than men. If a woman has to carry a pack more than 25 percent of her body weight, her risk of injury skyrockets by five. 
Look, I have nothing against women in the military, but there are places where raw strength and "brass knuckles brutality" offer a distinct advantage and it seems those places should be left to the men.  Ground combat sure seems to be one.  No, I was never in the military, never claimed to be, but it has always been my understanding that despite the great advances in weapons, logistics, air support and everything else, there come times when fights are just that: fights, just like they've been for thousands of years.  The Marines report cites:
“the brutal and extremely physical nature of direct ground combat, often marked by close, interpersonal violence.”

It further argues that the nature of battle “remains largely unchanged throughout centuries of warfare, despite technological advancements.”
Probably the most famous photo of a Marine with the after-combat, thousand yard stare, from Fallujah Iraq, in 2004, James Blake Miller


6 comments:

  1. The problem is as simple as this: Women cannot be effective in combat because of the physical and environmental difficulties. But years ago it was decided to allow women to serve in non-combat positions. Given political correctness and activism it is/was inevitable that sooner or later there would be a push toput women into all the here to fore restricted fields. it is obvious that they cannot meet the minimum standards so standards will be lowered. Military effectiveness will suffer and we may well lose the next war where we don't fight it from 20,000 feet.

    The solution is even simplier: Women in medical and administrative only, period.

    I predict we will choose the worst possible compromise.

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  2. GI Jane wasn't even good theater. The two women who, in real life, supposedly just "earned" their Ranger tabs is a farce. Yes, the military claimed they met the same rigorous demands as the men, that the standards were not lowered, but that is either a lie (to save some general's career who would have been relieved of duty if he had been truthful), or was only technically true, because standards were lowered just prior to the entrance of the women into that training cycle, so they could claim they met the same standards as the men.

    I am not a misogynist. When I worked the streets of San Diego as a peace officer, there were two female officers who - upper body strength notwithstanding - I preferred to have back me up over a number of the male officers working nearby. They had the intelligence, the skills, the attention to training, and the toughness to stand fast when things got messy that some of the guys just did not possess.

    BUT - our job did not demand the strength and stamina, endurance that people in combat require. And if you think the smaller guys couldn't possibly be any stronger than women of taller height and heavier build, you'd be wrong. We had a short, wiry little guy in our company in boot camp who was directed to do push-ups by our asshole of a company commander (long story, also a little guy, but with a "short man's" attitude, who liked to abuse some of the more timid kids who were afraid of him). The CC got pissed because the kid was doing them too easily, so he sat on the kid's back. The kid kept doing them like the little shit wasn't even there. The CC got up and walked out, too embarrassed to say anything to the bunch of us who were standing their, grinning and laughing.

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  3. My dear mother was tough. She was born in 1916, had polio which made one leg shorter than the other, got married in the depths of the great depression. She worked on a carnival (as did my dad), worked as a waitress in bars, she even ran numbers for a bookie. She stopped many a fight stepping in between two or more men (she was 5'2". She was a tough cookie and she was smart as well. Two of her brothers and numerous cousins and uncles served in WW II. She wrote to them and cried for them. If she were alive today she would agree that putting women into combat with the men is a stupid idea that cannot end well.
    My father was a big stong man who worked as a laborer after he stopped working on the carnival. One of his carnival jobs was a boxer; you paid $.50 to go three rounds with him if you made it you walked away with $5. That was a tough gig. I was not afraid of my father even when I did something wrong. My mother was different, beng my primary care giver she was the one who punished us children. Instant justice is how I refer to it. She didn't argue or negotiate if you did something wrong she spanked, slapped or otherwise "corrected" you in a split second. I loved and feared my mother. (my grand mother too, damn our family had strong women!) But their toughness did not equate to being able to serve effectively in combat. What my mother excelled at was nursing us when we were sick and injured and feeding the family. No disrespect intended but women do indeed excel at this.

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  4. How much money spent to re-learn the lessons the Israeli's learned years and years ago.

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  5. I know a woman who, with her husband was trying to kill a wood rat in their attic. She'd chase it his way with a SCUBA flashlight, and he'd shoot at it with a pellet gun. Her husband couldn't seem to hit it. so one time when it went her way, she just beat it to death with the flashlight. I need her on my crew! But she(and her husband) needs some firearms training and better prep awareness. She can tie up a good suture too.
    The military? In WWII they seemed to do just fine as nurses and building airplanes.

    My two cents. Fire away...

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  6. Son started in a Cavalry unit. The basic kit you always wore when you went outside the wire- not counting rifle and helmet- was about 85 pounds. Infantry on patrols had heavier loads. Don't care how much it pisses off the leftists, very few women have the strength and endurance to carry those loads in bad terrain, day after day.

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