Women In Combat, fueling the debate in the US

[CmdrWilkens]

And you're correct, Supes; that's also nothing about what I was referring to, which was minor injuries which have a cumulative degrading effect on performance, like cuts and scrapes and bruises and so on and the general soreness of sustained movement. That's where women are more resilience than men. We're certainly more vulnerable to major exercise-related injuries, but I specifically meant minor ones.

Well, an infantryman is more likely to run around with a rifle on hand, jump around up and around and put wear and tear on joints. Exercise related injuries will bound to happen. People do get injured running obstacle courses and that's part of training.

The real test of soldiers is marching, and soldiers in the US Army simply are not trained to do the kind of forced marches that they could in WW2, whereas to much emphasis is placed on other forms of physical training, IMO. I'll try to drag this one article on the subject by some former army specialists up if possible for the thread.

Not so sure about that because I know with the Marines it is still at around a monthly minimum to go out and do a 25 mile forced march followed by a firefight at the end. Its a regular part of the training and most infantry units participate in 10 and 15 mile forced marches followed by combat training on a regular basis. Hell my combat engineer reserve unit was doing 6-8 mile forced marches and we only had 1 training period a month. Our goal was to hit 10 miles at the required pace but we hadn't yet got up to that when I got out.

So I can't speak for the Army but I can say with certainty that the INfantry and support elements of the USMC and USMCR do train for forced marches.

[Enforcer Talen]

OTOH, I did very little marching in Iraq. School of Infantry, we did a 20k, but no marching in Fallujah.

[Coyote]

The modern American Army, and I'd suspect all our NATO allies, is heavily mechanized. We have little or no light-infantry oriented forces anymore, except for those that are inserted into action via aircraft.

For short-term physical endurance, we did march briefly on neighborhood patrols in Baghdad, but most of the time we were mounted. Women could handle that, since we didn't take our huge packs with us, only our body armor, CamalBaks, ammo, etc-- the immediate-need stuff. The vehicles carried our more extensive gear.

Like I mentioned, I don't have a problem with women in combat, just don't lower the standards to accommodate a social statement and all will be well.

[Knife]

The real test of soldiers is marching,

You declare this as fact because?

and soldiers in the US Army simply are not trained to do the kind of forced marches that they could in WW2, whereas to much emphasis is placed on other forms of physical training, IMO. I'll try to drag this one article on the subject by some former army specialists up if possible for the thread.

Don't know about the Army, but Marines train up to 28 mile combat marches in full kit before deployments. That's a marathon with ~70 lbs of shit on their backs and still be combat ready on the other side.

A fully trained Marine infantry company can travel in excess of 20 miles a day easy and have plenty of time to set up defensive positions and run active patroling to boot. That's been doctrine for decades.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

You declare this as fact because?

stinet.dtic.mil/dticrev/a397657.pdf (won't link properly). The influence of an argument about the lack of mobility training in the US Army in this Command and General Staff College graduate's thesis, which was what I was referencing earlier.

[Enforcer Talen]

I would like to mention that the USMC is working on developing a Combat Fitness Test, which includes (in order), a 400 yard sprint, an ammo lift, low crawl, buddy drag, fireman's carry, ammo carry, and another sprint.

They are still working out the point system on it though.