USMC Study: All-Male Squads Outperformed Mixed Squads

[Balrog]

Bit of old news but saw it hadn't been discussed yet: Link.

Apparently, out of the 143 tasks the study looked at, the all-male units outperformed the mixed-sex units nearly two-thirds of the time. The only test where the mixed units outperformed the male units was accuracy with the M2 machine gun. On the whole it found that mixed units were slower, suffered more injuries, and weren't as accurate.

None of the other US services conducted a similar study, but it will be interesting to see how this plays out against the political desire to make the military more 'equal' between men and women.

[Grumman]

This link?

[Joun_Lord]

I read about this awhile ago. Yeah the women performed more poorly compared to the dudes however the test wasn't exactly fair. Many of the dudes had been infantrymen for awhile and had even served in combat. The chicks on account of them just now being allowed to serve as infantrywomen don't have any prior soldiering experience.

The test is pretty much a test of green soldiers against seasoned vets.

Link to the article I read .

[Jub]

I read about this awhile ago. Yeah the women performed more poorly compared to the dudes however the test wasn't exactly fair. Many of the dudes had been infantrymen for awhile and had even served in combat. The chicks on account of them just now being allowed to serve as infantrywomen don't have any prior soldiering experience.

The test is pretty much a test of green soldiers against seasoned vets.

Link to the article I read .

Even if the women were green how does that change the fact that the women were, on average 36 lb. light with 4% more body fat than their male counterparts? Does it change the fact that they had 15% less anaerobic power than males, or that the top 25% of women were still only on par with the bottom 25% of men? Would extra training change the fact that women have 15% less anaerobic capacity and that the top 10% of women are on par with the bottom 50% of men in that category? How about VO2 capacity where women are 10% worse off again and the best 10% of women are once again mixed in with the bottom 50% of men? How about the six times increased in injuries and great risk of musculoskeletal injuries?

Hell, we can take training out of it, the best women in the world at a given sport wouldn't qualify for the Olympics period if held to the same qualification standards as men. Both groups have the same training time but the best female athletes in the world are worse than exceptional, but not top percentile teenage males. For hockey the Canadian women's team, the best team in the world, plays against Midget AAA teams and loses.

Link

It happens to the American team as well.

Link

This isn't even to mention that the teenage boys have to hold back on hits to avoid injuring the best female hockey players on the planet. This isn't even a top tier league if these midget AAA kids were any good they'd be in the CHL or the US national team.

Frankly when it comes to anything physical, such as sports or warfare, women just don't belong on the same field as men.

[Grumman]

One of the issues mentioned - injuries suffered while moving under load - is something that I'd like to see addressed for both men and women. Women suffer more injuries from the extremely heavy loads modern infantry are made to carry, but that does not mean men would not also benefit if doctrine or technology could lower that amount.

[Zwinmar]

One problem I see with this is as follows:
We, meaning my unit, would go out just to mess with the guys going through S.O.I. (which is nominally where half these ladies are as far as training). It was a game to us because they did not remotely have the skills necessary to even know what was going on. Those essential skills only come after training in the Fleet for roughly a year or more. Anyone in S.O.I. has around four months of training competing against guys with years of experience in addition to said training, also, training is continuous.

So of course they can not compete. They will make rookie mistakes that assure this.

On the subject of carrying heavy loads: We routinely humped with 130+ pounds of gear. Many have injuries that simply are not talked about much because of idiocy like this, such as blown out knees or being unable to hold your arms over your head for more than about 10 seconds before they go numb. It is one reason why I laugh when they go for a lighter rifle...some knuckle head is going to take those ounces saved and have you carry something else that usually weighs more.

[Joun_Lord]

stuff and junk

Women are going to have more fat what with having tits and all no matter what unless you start shooting them full of steroids. Modern soldiers are physically fit but not He-Man Hulk beefcakes and there is no reason women can't be the same taking in account the differences in bodies (boobies). The difference in male and female strength is not insurmountable considering women can still do the job even if less efficiently, though considering females troops in Israelistan fight just as well as their male counterparts their might be other factors involved beyond "girls can't hack it because vaginas and fat deposits". Plus it don't take a ton of strength to pull a trigger.

While women might be more prone to muscular and skeletal fuck-ups then men its not like men are immune to that either. Modern infantry carries way too much gear. Combat loads will weigh in at around a 100 pounds or more when the recommended weight is 50. Soldiers with atleast one or more musculoskeletal conditions increased nearly tenfold from 2003 to 2009. Nearly one-third of all medical evacuations from Iraqistan and Afghanistan from 2004 through 2007 resulted from musculoskeletal, connective-tissue or spinal injuries and was double the evac rate of combat injuries....in freaking warzones.

On the sports stuff, according to article the Canuck and Murica ladies teams and the kids have different play styles, the kids have longer reaches, and the kids tend to be more physical while the women tend to rely on speed. Also while the women can hurt by the boys its not like boys don't get horrifically injured in no gurlz allowed games.

And of course the boys would hold back on hots to avoid injuring the female players. Not because they are girls but because they are professional players and getting fucked up while playing against teens means they can't play the Olympics. And the girls held back too considering they could have injured the boys or themselves if they got physical but whats the point of injuring yourself or giving it your all in what is just training.

And and women being bad at sports doesn't mean they are bad at putting some 5.56 round in some fools head like some IRL Counter Strike or sitting around waiting and doing stupid stuff because they are bored like 90% of soldiering is. I'm sure a female soldier can film themselves setting their pubes on fire and trying to get their buddies to eat some inedible MRE based concoction just as well as any man can.

[Simon_Jester]

It is a sobering moment when you realize that in Iraqistan, the enemy fire is only half as dangerous to our soldiers as their own backpacks.

[I am naively measuring in terms of numbers of injuries; granted a bullet or a roadside bomb can do far more harm than blowing out a kneecap from excessive weight, but still, the numbers are scary]

[Lagmonster]

Here's something you should not do: You should not use data from the analysis of Olympic athletes when you compare averages. Olympians are the top of the top of the 1%. They are basically mutants, abnormally strong or fast or coordinated, and often given wildly different opportunities in life to enhance themselves. They make a shitty baseline if your goal is to compare averages. The problem is, generally, that the hugest bulk of data comes from athletics, because they test the ever-loving shit out of people to make determinations of performance and capability, so there's more data to choose from and it becomes a juicy target for people staging these kinds of debates.

The important thing TO ME is that in soldiering, the only fuck I probably need to give as a civilian is whether the candidate will shoot someone so that I can continue to sit on my ass and eat pizza. As long as someone needs to be shot in the face so that I can stay here and eat pizza, you can be anything you want. Man, woman, gay, straight. You can paint yourself yellow and call yourself trans-pacman, and the only thing I'm going to care about is whether you will shoot the guy that intends on stopping me from sitting on my ass and eating pizza.

[Darmalus]

Sounds like combat loads have gotten even more insane than the last time I heard about it. You have trucks, make the trucks carry it!

Women may be more prone to joint injuries but it sounds like the real priority is dumping two-thirds of your gear. That or getting those military exoskeletons deployed ASAP and render the sex of the operator moot.

[Block]

Sounds like combat loads have gotten even more insane than the last time I heard about it. You have trucks, make the trucks carry it!

Women may be more prone to joint injuries but it sounds like the real priority is dumping two-thirds of your gear. That or getting those military exoskeletons deployed ASAP and render the sex of the operator moot.

The armor alone is 45ish pounds with the ceramic inserts. It's hard to cut back on weight without cutting mission essential gear. Batteries, spare mags, 8-10 pounds of water, helmet, med kit, etc.

[Civil War Man]

Another article on this study

The Marine Corps and its civilian leadership at the Pentagon are squaring off in an unusually public dispute over whether integrating women into the corps’s all-male combat units will undermine the units’ effectiveness, or whether the male-dominated Marine leadership is cherry-picking justifications to keep women out.

The military is facing a deadline set by the Obama administration to integrate women into all combat jobs by 2016 or ask for specific exemptions. The Marines, with a 93 percent male force dominated by infantry, are widely seen as the branch with the hardest integration task. The Marine Corps has the most units closed to women and still trains male and female recruits separately.

The tension began last week when the Marine Corps released a summary of a nine-month, $36 million study that found that integrated combat units were slower, had more injuries and were less accurate when firing weapons.

The commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., submitted the corps’s recommendation on gender integration to the secretary of the Navy, Ray Mabus, on Thursday. Pentagon officials said the corps was expected to request an exemption for at least some front-line combat units.

Mr. Mabus, the civilian head of the Marine Corps, has steadfastly said in public statements that the Marine Corps study is flawed and that its summary findings were picked from a much larger study in a manner that was biased toward keeping women out of combat roles.

In an interview Thursday, Mr. Mabus said he planned to push ahead with integration despite the study. “My belief is you set gender-neutral standards related to the job Marines have to do, and you adhere to them,” he said. “It doesn’t matter whether the Marines who meet those standards are male or female.”

Further complicating the dispute is the fact that General Dunford, who will take over next week as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will be responsible for submitting recommendations to the secretary of defense for all the armed services, including the United States Special Operations Command. Officials in the Army, Navy and Air Force have suggested they are not likely to seek exemptions on integration.

On the surface, the debate within the Marine Corps has centered on the physical abilities of men and women. But critics say the dispute is also driven by a male-dominated culture that encourages Marines to believe that their esprit de corps will be undermined by the presence of women.

“The Marines have a climate of non-inclusivity and justify it by talking about combat effectiveness, but a lot of it is based on emotion and not fact,” said Lt. Col. Kate Germano, who was removed as the commander of female Marine recruits this summer after she pushed for integration and clashed with male superiors. “A lot of them, especially the older generation, believe integrating women will be disastrous in war.”

A recent op-ed by retired Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold of the Marines laid out the concerns about integration, saying women posed a threat to the “alchemy that produces an effective infantry unit.”

“The characteristics that produce uncommon valor as a common virtue are not physical at all,” Mr. Newbold wrote in the piece, published in the online magazine War on the Rocks, “but are derived from the mysterious chemistry that forms in an infantry unit that revels in the most crude and profane existence so that they may be more effective killers than their foe.”

He asked rhetorically how mixing men and women of “the most libido-laden age cohort in humans, in the basest of environs, will not degrade the nearly spiritual glue that enables the infantry to achieve the illogical and endure the unendurable.”

Mr. Newbold could not be reached for comment.

Mr. Mabus dismissed the idea that women would erode unit cohesion and lower morale.

“That is almost exactly the same argument made against ending racial segregation in the military, and the ban on gays — that it will ruin morale,” he said in the interview. “And it just isn’t true. We’ve seen that.”

A senior Pentagon official briefed on the Marine Corps study, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said a separate, unreleased study on the same group of Marines, by the Naval Health Research Center, showed that while women scored lower in many physical tasks and had higher injury rates, they scored higher in mental resilience and had fewer mental health problems. The study also found that integrated units rated their unit cohesion at the same levels as all-male units and outperformed male units at making complex decisions, the official said.

The disagreement between the Marine Corps and the Pentagon is a rare public display of tension in a culture that generally values silent professionals.

“I’m struck by how much they aired their dirty laundry in public,” said Michael E. O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution specializing in defense issues. “The Marine leadership is definitely dubious and reluctant about this. I think they know they will have to integrate, but they have real concerns about what it will mean to the force.”

Mr. Mabus will make his recommendation to Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter by January. Mr. Carter recently echoed Mr. Mabus’s belief that women should be able to enter all military careers if they can meet standards set for their tasks.

Some Marines familiar with the corps’s integration study are concerned that changes to current operations could threaten lives. Sgt. Maj. Justin D. LeHew, a decorated Iraq war veteran who oversaw the integration tests, said in a post on his personal Facebook page this week that lowering standards to allow women into combat teams would endanger other Marines. The post was soon taken down, but was published by Marine Corps Times.

“In regards to the infantry... there is no trophy for second place. You perform or die,” Sergeant LeHew wrote. “Make no mistake. In this realm, you want your fastest, most fit, most physical and most lethal person you can possibly put on the battlefield to overwhelm the enemy’s ability to counter what you are throwing at them, and in every test case, that person has turned out to be a man. There is nothing gender biased about this; it is what it is.”

The Pentagon will announce final decisions on integrating the remaining closed positions and occupations and on any approved exceptions around Jan. 1, Capt. Jeff Davis, a spokesman, said.

Captain Davis said that since 2013, some 111,000 jobs that women were previously excluded from had opened up to them, with 220,000 still closed. Presumably, the bulk of those will open come January.

One paragraph I'd like to emphasize from this article:

A senior Pentagon official briefed on the Marine Corps study, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said a separate, unreleased study on the same group of Marines, by the Naval Health Research Center, showed that while women scored lower in many physical tasks and had higher injury rates, they scored higher in mental resilience and had fewer mental health problems. The study also found that integrated units rated their unit cohesion at the same levels as all-male units and outperformed male units at making complex decisions, the official said.

In short, being successful as a soldier is more than just being able to run fast, shoot straight, and not get injured, and while the men, on average, scored higher in those physical tests, the women, on average, scored higher in a lot of non-physical tests that were conducted in a simultaneous study.

[Me2005]

One of the issues mentioned - injuries suffered while moving under load - is something that I'd like to see addressed for both men and women. Women suffer more injuries from the extremely heavy loads modern infantry are made to carry, but that does not mean men would not also benefit if doctrine or technology could lower that amount.

While women might be more prone to muscular and skeletal fuck-ups then men its not like men are immune to that either. Modern infantry carries way too much gear. Combat loads will weigh in at around a 100 pounds or more when the recommended weight is 50. Soldiers with atleast one or more musculoskeletal conditions increased nearly tenfold from 2003 to 2009. Nearly one-third of all medical evacuations from Iraqistan and Afghanistan from 2004 through 2007 resulted from musculoskeletal, connective-tissue or spinal injuries and was double the evac rate of combat injuries....in freaking warzones.

Now, I don't have any source for this, but I'd expect that even if we managed to make miracle breakthroughs in every field and reduced the load an infantry-person wound need to carry to 10#, they'd just load up (or be loaded by higher-ups) with more ammunition/water/food/armor such that they carry 80-100#+ again. That's about the limit men can carry on long marches, so improving tech just means they can march longer unsupported.

The important thing TO ME is that in soldiering, the only fuck I probably need to give as a civilian is whether the candidate will shoot someone so that I can continue to sit on my ass and eat pizza. As long as someone needs to be shot in the face so that I can stay here and eat pizza, you can be anything you want. Man, woman, gay, straight. You can paint yourself yellow and call yourself trans-pacman, and the only thing I'm going to care about is whether you will shoot the guy that intends on stopping me from sitting on my ass and eating pizza.

I would agree with this, if we were in need of people to do the shooting. If not, I'd only want the best-of-the-best getting involved, so there is less risk involved for our forces. A quick google search for "military recruitment needs" shows that we might be down 14% this year, but that last year we were also turning away 80% of applicants. If the top 25% of women are only as good as the bottom 25% of men at combat roles, I'd expect them to be turned away unless we're in desperate need.

On the other hand, I know there are loads of non-combat roles for every combat one, and those don't need to have the same physical requirements as soldiers in the field. Women can fill those all day long if they're up to them as far as I'm concerned.

...though considering females troops in Israelistan fight just as well as their male counterparts their might be other factors involved...

Everyone in Israel is enlisted in the military out of necessity. And according to The Washington Times, they aren't in direct combat units. They're in (largely peaceful) boarder patrol and training.

Plus it don't take a ton of strength to pull a trigger.

The amount of strength it takes to pull a trigger has nothing to do with soldiering. Endurance, resistance to fatigue, ability to cope with the environment, speed, ability to pull your weight, carry your injured, etc. etc. - basically everything that the Marines tested - matters infinitely more. A group of soldiers that can get from A to B faster and with fewer injuries is more effective than one that is slower and injured when it gets there. It is also less likely to be ambushed or outmaneuvered by an opposing force. And since the group in combat can only move as fast as its slowest members, any slow-movers endanger the whole group.

What trigger pull does mean is that women can be used for patrols and defense duties just as well as men, assuming they're just as accurate after pulling that trigger. But the Marine's study also showed that wasn't the case.

One paragraph I'd like to emphasize from this article:

A senior Pentagon official briefed on the Marine Corps study, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said a separate, unreleased study on the same group of Marines, by the Naval Health Research Center, showed that while women scored lower in many physical tasks and had higher injury rates, they scored higher in mental resilience and had fewer mental health problems. The study also found that integrated units rated their unit cohesion at the same levels as all-male units and outperformed male units at making complex decisions, the official said.

In short, being successful as a soldier is more than just being able to run fast, shoot straight, and not get injured, and while the men, on average, scored higher in those physical tests, the women, on average, scored higher in a lot of non-physical tests that were conducted in a simultaneous study.

I'd need further analysis for this. The best part of that mental study I'm seeing in your post is the "making complex decisions," and I'd want to see the numbers for how great that discrepancy was. I'd want to know that simply assigning female-support units to male combat units couldn't emulate it and that the improvement was so great that it merited the loss of mobility and accuracy. Mental health improvements are only good if you don't get killed in the field, so again, if it's worth the trade of mobility it may be worth doing.

Really, my opinion is that we do not prevent women from joining and serving in combat units, but only if they can meet the minimum standards that were originally set for the male role (before all this political involvement) and if they are subject to the exact same treatment as men. Then, if they all wash out, we need to accept that women aren't fit for the level of combat we expect our troops to face. If they all go through and start outperforming the men in every area, we need to accept that too. And if they start dying in the field by more-capable enemy units, we need to raise our standards even if it means forcing women out.

[Civil War Man]

Really, my opinion is that we do not prevent women from joining and serving in combat units, but only if they can meet the minimum standards that were originally set for the male role (before all this political involvement) and if they are subject to the exact same treatment as men. Then, if they all wash out, we need to accept that women aren't fit for the level of combat we expect our troops to face. If they all go through and start outperforming the men in every area, we need to accept that too. And if they start dying in the field by more-capable enemy units, we need to raise our standards even if it means forcing women out.

The thing is, women are already fit for that level of combat, because women are already seeing that level of combat. Honestly, all this stuff about women in combat is mostly a formality, along with integrating the few remaining holdouts.

Another article about the report, which suggests that the discrepancies in performance between male-only and integrated units were not quite as clear-cut as initially reported.

The Marine Corps general in charge of implementing a Pentagon plan to open ground combat jobs to women concluded there are benefits as well as significant risks to the proposal, and he outlined ways to eliminate most of an anticipated weakening of combat effectiveness during the transition, according to a document leaked Wednesday to The San Diego Union-Tribune.

The 14-page memorandum and 19 pages of enclosures by Brig. Gen. George Smith Jr., director of the Marine Corps Force Innovation Office, were submitted to the commandant to help the Marine leader decide how far gender integration should go.

The assessment states that integrating female troops into the ground combat arms will add some risk of reduced performance in combat, as well as cost. “While this risk can be mitigated by various methods to address failure rates, injuries, and ability to perform the mission, the bottom line is that the physiological differences between males and females will likely always be evident to some extent,” it says.

Although it does not make a specific recommendation which units to keep closed to women, the risk is highest for infantry units, especially crew-served heavy weapons, and “significantly lower for the non-infantry combat arms,” it says.

Among potential benefits that women could bring to ground combat units that are cited in the Marine Corps assessment are enhanced decision-making in the field and fewer disciplinary problems.

The document signed and dated Aug. 18 has not been released by the Marine Corps, which did not dispute its authenticity but declined to comment on its contents. A senior Pentagon official who followed the Marine Corps research from the beginning said it accurately reflects the thinking of the Marine brass and previously undisclosed research findings.

Marine officials also declined to share details of Gen. Joseph Dunford’s recommendation last week to Navy Secretary Ray Mabus asking to keep some front-line combat units closed to women, a decision that was informed by the Force Innovation Office assessment.

Mabus had questioned the premise and methodology of the Corps’ yearlong experiment on women in ground combat, saying the performance and physiological characteristics of female troops on average is not cause to bar all women from ground combat jobs.

According to a 4-page selection of results released by the Marine Corps on Sept. 10, researchers found that all-male units were faster and more lethal than mixed-gender units on most combat tasks.

The Corps has not released actual data from the experiment, only summaries. Mabus and other critics say it was not designed or executed in a way that would predict the effect on unit performance if women are allowed to compete against men for combat jobs. Outside of the task force experiment, the Corps’ highest-performing women theoretically would replace its lowest-performing men, potentially increasing overall combat effectiveness.

The Marine Corps is following guidelines from the office of the Secretary of Defense regarding the release of its gender integration research, said Capt. Philip Kulczewski, a Marine spokesman at the Pentagon.

Furthermore, the commandant “provided his recommendation to the Secretary of the Navy in private and believes that his best military advice should remain private during the deliberation process until the Secretary of Defense has reviewed all inputs and made a decision,” Kulczewski said.

The services are scheduled to brief Congress next Wednesday regarding prospects for eliminating all restrictions on women in combat by year’s end. The Marine Corps is expected to make an additional presentation afterward in a closed-door session.

Marine conclusions

Smith’s assessment is much more comprehensive than information previously disclosed by the Marine Corps.

Much of his report focuses on the risk of reduced combat effectiveness if physically demanding ground combat jobs are opened to women, especially in the infantry, reconnaissance and special operations units. However, it also mentions areas where women excel.

“Our female Marines very likely have more actual combat experience than any servicewomen in the world,” the report says, pointing to the 422 combat action ribbons they earned for service in Iraq and Afghanistan since the award was established.

Those Marine women were responding to ambushes and IED attacks, and their mission was not to “locate, close with and destroy the enemy” as infantry must, it notes. (The report does not mention the female Marines who hunt and destroy enemy forces from near and far in air combat, who are subject to a different category of awards.)

The Marine Corps conducted its research to “understand the unique physical requirements and associated performance standards within these occupations and units, while recognizing the unchanging nature of ground combat and the physiological differences between men and women.”

Some would dispute those characterizations, pointing to technological advancements on the battlefield such as the use of surveillance drones and long-range weapons that have resulted in less frequent close-quarters combat and fewer Medal of Honor awards. The physical capabilities of women have also increased as activities such as weight-lifting have become more popular and socially acceptable.

All but 21 of the Corps’ 336 primary occupational specialties are open to women, the report notes. Those jobs represent a quarter of the positions in the Marine Corps, which has the highest proportion of male-only slots in the conventional armed forces, according to a July report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

The assessment states that its research methodology for the Ground Combat Element Integrated Task Force experiment was peer-reviewed by George Mason University and the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Not all recommendations by those organizations were incorporated, however. For instance, the suggestion that the task force needed to compare the performance of women and mixed-gender combat groups against a set occupational standard was dismissed, the Union-Tribune previously reported.

A shortcoming cited by outside observers that is noted in the Marine report is the bias in height and weight standards for female troops that would exclude larger women who are more likely to succeed in the infantry. The body mass index standard for women is 25, stricter than the male standard of 27.5, “which appears to be counterproductive,” the report states.

In an apparent argument for an exemption to the new open-door policy even if the Army does not seek one, the assessment claims that Marine infantry is “very different” than Army infantry since the Army organizes its units around platforms such as Stryker light-armored vehicles. “Marine infantry is of uniform organization … (and) must be fully capable of regularly moving dismounted for extended distances with heavy loads,” it says.

However, both Marine and Army infantry include riflemen mounted on light-armored vehicles, Army soldiers march long distances under load like Marines, and both services spent more than a decade fighting largely from fixed patrol bases in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Findings

“Female Marines demonstrated that they were capable of performing the physically demanding tasks, but not necessarily at the same level as their male counterparts,” the report says, citing results of the experimental task force.

The internal assessment and its enclosures include a slightly different tally of performance than the one released by the Marine Corps. All-male groups performed “statistically better” than mixed-gender ones on 88 of 134 combat tasks, or less than 66 percent. Mixed-gender groups bested the men on five tasks, including a 30 percent better performance on two trials involving the M2 machine gun.

Among the 30 combat tasks with “operationally relevant” differences in performance, most fell in the infantry and provisional infantry platoons, with “all-male teams typically performing better.” The report does not state that the sample size of female troops for the entire infantry company was 29, as Marine officials previously told the Union-Tribune.

The only mention of a performance standard against which women in the task force were measured is a hiking standard of 4 kilometers per hour. Mixed-gender squads of infantry riflemen and women met the standard, while coed heavy weapons units did not.

The Marine Corps found that integrating women produced “very little” data differentiating performance within artillery, combat engineers, tanks, and amphibious assault vehicles.

It focuses on findings from the infantry company and especially the weapons company indicating a “greater risk” if women are allowed into crew-served weapons fields such as machine gunning.

Physiological differences between men and women are directly linked to the risk of reduced combat effectiveness, the Marine report says, because “size matters when executing a dismounted movement under load.”

Male advantages in average body mass, aerobic capacity and other factors are cited. “These realities are clearly not insurmountable,” but the strain on female troops would be cumulative during extended combat operations.

An enclosure from the University of Pittsburgh reports that men in the task force had better strength, power and agility on average, whereas women bested them on most flexibility, balance and biomechanical variables.

Females and mixed-gender groups excelled in terms of lactate threshold, flexibility and .50 caliber marksmanship, “however, none of these formed strong predictors of overall improved mission performance or reduced injuries,” the Marine assessment states.

Looking at physical performance in the ground combat task force, “it is unknown how much a stricter (higher) physical screen would have improved the physical performance of female volunteers.” The female task force participants were above average to well-above average among their peers in the Corps, whereas the men were simply average, the report says.

Among other findings:

At the entry-level schools, “a stricter physical screening tool would have eliminated all the female Marines who sustained injury and were dropped during ITB (the Infantry Training Battalion course.)"
"When fitness is considered, female injury rates are similar/the same as male injury rates."
"Studies show that strength training, fitness, and calcium/vitamin D supplements decreases risk of injury to women.”

On the plus side for the women, “further integration of females into the combat arms brings with it many of the general benefits of diversity that we experience … both within the military as well as the private sector,” the report says.

It cites a decision-making study the Marine Corps ran that compared all-male groups to mixed-gender groups that had to solve challenging field problems. Including women resulted in equal or better performance on cognitively challenging problems, the Corps found.

Other benefits cited include the likelihood of lower disciplinary problems after women join the unit, as seen previously in aviation and logistics fields.

Another argument in the public debate over adding women to all-male units is a potential loss of camaraderie, or unit cohesion. However, the experimental task force Marines reported medium to good unit cohesion after training together at Camp Lejeune, N.C., including nearly a third of men and women who said it was “very good.”

After the lengthy combat trials at Twentynine Palms and other California bases, cohesion dropped to medium and perceptions of combat effectiveness became less positive, which “could be attributed to general fatigue over the course of the (task force) assessment.”

Finally, the number of women entering the ground combat arms will likely be very small, less than the 7 percent of the Corps that is female. “Thus the overall impact on unit readiness will be buffered by the dominant numbers of male Marines, and should not show a significant difference.”

Canada is cited as evidence of the “token” number of women likely to be interested and qualify for ground combat jobs. More than 25 years after the Canadian armed forces were fully integrated, only about four in a thousand enlisted infantry are female.

Standards

The long-held assumption in the Marine Corps that being a man is sufficient qualification for serving in the infantry has led to a certain amount of “wastage,” or men who are not fit enough to fight in the units they serve in, the report says.

It concludes that the effort to identify what an individual Marine must do to be a fully contributing member of a combat unit is perhaps the most important result of its three years of research since the Pentagon scrapped the ground combat exclusion policy on women in 2013. “More clearly defined individual performance standards … will ensure that Marines are assigned to (occupations) for which they are best and more fully suited,” regardless of the outcome of the gender integration push.

“Bolstered physical performance standards at different points in the accessions and entry-level training continuum will likely mitigate much of that risk (of wastage) in the future within newly opened MOSs (occupations.) This includes potential risks associated with the physiological differences between male and female Marines related to the physical demands of a particular ground combat occupational specialty.”

For instance, the graduation rate for women in the Infantry Training Battalion, including research volunteers who dropped on request, was about 36 percent compared to the male rate of 98 percent. Better screening for entry into infantry training could potentially improve the female graduation rate to about 64 percent, the Corps estimates. “Screening has also been shown to reduce the number of injuries in these schools,” and it would help cull the lower-performing men in the combat arms.

However some level of risk for reduced combat effectiveness will remain in the infantry and special operations, the assessment concludes, because the physical demands of patrolling with a heavy combat load of gear cannot be fully accounted for, in the Marine Corps view, by stricter screening.

Implementation

The assessment includes a detailed plan for successful integration of women into Marine ground combat units, seemingly anticipating that the Corps may be forced to accept women in their ranks. The Corps was also forced to comply with the end of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell restrictions on the open service of gays. It was the only military service to protest the change, but experienced relatively few problems afterward.

An “unwavering adherence” to high standards will be “the primary driver in overcoming gender bias through clearly demonstrated performance standards, which is fundamental to a cohesive unit with high morale.”

“Leadership will be the most critical component to successful gender integration into ground combat arms occupational specialties and units. Fully invested and unwavering demonstrations of support by commanders and leaders must set the example for Marines of all levels.”

If leaders don’t fully embrace the change, “the integration effort will very likely be fraught with friction and unduly protracted – potentially a greater drain on combat effectiveness and unit readiness.”

Based on the experiences of other countries as well as Marine integration of air and logistics fields, “Some of the initial negative impacts are likely to diminish over time.” The very small number of women who join will eventually increase, the higher female rate of attrition from service will go down, and “any initial detrimental effects on cohesion can eventually be mitigated with good training and solid leadership.”

Tailoring physical training regimens is easier if recruits are segregated by gender, as they are today in the Marine Corps and the United Kingdom, but “the Marine Corps should look for integrated training opportunities in order to prepare these young men and women to serve together in the near future.”

With skillful implementation, “the integration of female Marines into ground combat arms occupations to the fullest extent possible will expand the Marine Corps’ talent base… and enhance our ability to place the best and most fully qualified Marines in the right occupations and increase the overall combat effectiveness and readiness of our MAGTFs (Marine Air-Ground Task Forces),” the Marine Force Innovation Office concluded.

Moreover, “many of the mitigation efforts identified in this report would serve the Marine Corps well and would help strengthen performance and reduce risks for both male and female Marines, regardless of the recommendation pertaining to integration.”

TL,DR version: Much of the difference in performance between all-male and co-ed units can be addressed with better standards and more training, and the most likely outcome to integrating the remaining combat roles is that the most qualified women will start replacing the least qualified men.

[The Romulan Republic]

Bit of old news but saw it hadn't been discussed yet: Link.

Apparently, out of the 143 tasks the study looked at, the all-male units outperformed the mixed-sex units nearly two-thirds of the time. The only test where the mixed units outperformed the male units was accuracy with the M2 machine gun. On the whole it found that mixed units were slower, suffered more injuries, and weren't as accurate.

None of the other US services conducted a similar study, but it will be interesting to see how this plays out against the political desire to make the military more 'equal' between men and women.

I just love how you put the word equal in quotes.

No doubt some assholes will latch on to this study and use it as "proof" that women are inferior soldiers or are unable to work effectively with male soldiers.

However, I would note that the study did not examine how an all-female unit would perform, so the performance decrease could be due to difficulties/conflict between male and female soldiers (the military, same as everywhere else, is known to have problems with sexism) rather than inferiority on the part of female soldiers.

I would also note that while I have no expertise in statistics, one study done by one branch of the military examining only one fairly small group of people seems hardly conclusive to me.

And that even if most female soldiers are not as capable, their are undoubtably some who are.

[Jub]

The difference in male and female strength is not insurmountable considering women can still do the job even if less efficiently...

When the US military is already turning away 80% of applicants why should they be forced to accept less efficient female soldiers?

though considering females troops in Israelistan fight just as well as their male counterparts their might be other factors involved beyond "girls can't hack it because vaginas and fat deposits".

Israel drafts damn near everybody they can get their hands on and places a massive premium on retaining soldiers. This can be observed in the design of their armored fighting vehicles which often use an engine front design to give the crew extra protection.

I'd also like you to tell me which units and which combat operations these female Israeli soldiers are commonly involved in, seeing as you seem to be implying that Israel deploys women the same way they deploy men.

Plus it don't take a ton of strength to pull a trigger.

Soldiering is about a lot more than simply discharging a weapon. Even combat roles place a large premium on overcoming obstacles, marching long distances, loading and unloading supplies, plus the other tasks that can come up such as combating flooding by building sandbag walls or removing a wounded soldier from an area under fire. If women are worse than average at these taks they will bring down the effectiveness of their unit.

While women might be more prone to muscular and skeletal fuck-ups then men its not like men are immune to that either. Modern infantry carries way too much gear. Combat loads will weigh in at around a 100 pounds or more when the recommended weight is 50. Soldiers with atleast one or more musculoskeletal conditions increased nearly tenfold from 2003 to 2009. Nearly one-third of all medical evacuations from Iraqistan and Afghanistan from 2004 through 2007 resulted from musculoskeletal, connective-tissue or spinal injuries and was double the evac rate of combat injuries....in freaking warzones.

Please explain how bringing in women who fare even worse with these types of injuries will help the situation? Also, please tell me which bits of gear you'd cut from a soldiers combat load? Would you cut the armor, how about rations and water, would you cut back on ammunition?

On the sports stuff, according to article the Canuck and Murica ladies teams and the kids have different play styles, the kids have longer reaches, and the kids tend to be more physical while the women tend to rely on speed. Also while the women can hurt by the boys its not like boys don't get horrifically injured in no gurlz allowed games.

And of course the boys would hold back on hots to avoid injuring the female players. Not because they are girls but because they are professional players and getting fucked up while playing against teens means they can't play the Olympics. And the girls held back too considering they could have injured the boys or themselves if they got physical but whats the point of injuring yourself or giving it your all in what is just training.

On speed and skill, these are high school boys versus the best women in the world, many of whom have a decade or more of playing experience over the boys. Plus these boys, if any will make the NHL, will typically have Major Junior leagues or college between them and even being drafted by an NHL team. More of them will wash out during these steps and yet more will wash out when the make the jump to the ECHL and AHL which are the NHL's development leagues. Then only the very best NHL players will be of the right quality to play on the top level Olympic teams.

These women are playing against mainly D-list kids, in games where the boys aren't playing to their strengths by hitting at full strength and on open ice, and losing. To recap, the best women in the world, lose to boys while restricting the types of hits the boys are allowed to throw thus eliminating some of the advantages the boys have while placing increased value on speed and skill.

Also large men, hitting large men cause injuries, large men hitting tiny women will cause far more and worse injuries for the women getting hit. Not to mention that they will be hit in the head more often leading to life changing concussions.

Based on this analysis of NHL players the average NHLer is 73.33" (6' 1 1/3") tall and weighs 204.42 lbs. If we compare this to the Canadian and American women's hockey teams, the only two teams to compete at a high level over multiple years, we find that the best women's players are 67.67" (5' 7 2/3") tall and weigh 154.43 lbs. This means that the average best female hockey player is giving up 5.67" and 50 lbs. to their male opponents.

Looking at outliers for height and weight the tallest NHL player is Zdeno Chara at 81" (6' 9") tall, the heaviest player is a tie between John Scott and Dustin Byfuglien both of which weight 260 lbs. the shortest player is Nathan Gerbe at 65" (5' 5") tall the lightest player is Johnny Gaudreau at 150 lbs. If we do the same for the women we find that the tallest player is Lee Stecklein at 72" (6' 0") tall and the heaviest is Natalie Spooner who weighs 180 lbs. the shortest player is Kendall Coyne 62" (5' 2") tall and the lightest is Brianne McLaughlin at 130 lbs. she however, is a goalie, the smallest skater is a tie between Kelli Stack and Jayna Hefford at 136 lbs.

This just goes to show that none of the women meet the height or weight of the average NHL player let alone the largest outliers.

And and women being bad at sports doesn't mean they are bad at putting some 5.56 round in some fools head like some IRL Counter Strike or sitting around waiting and doing stupid stuff because they are bored like 90% of soldiering is. I'm sure a female soldier can film themselves setting their pubes on fire and trying to get their buddies to eat some inedible MRE based concoction just as well as any man can.

In saying this, you show that you have no clue as to what soldiering is actually about. As mentioned above there are plenty of non-shooting tasks that combat soldiers are expected to perform and women, by being weaker, slower, smaller, fatter, frailer, etc. will simply be worse at them.

Here's something you should not do: You should not use data from the analysis of Olympic athletes when you compare averages. Olympians are the top of the top of the 1%. They are basically mutants, abnormally strong or fast or coordinated, and often given wildly different opportunities in life to enhance themselves. They make a shitty baseline if your goal is to compare averages. The problem is, generally, that the hugest bulk of data comes from athletics, because they test the ever-loving shit out of people to make determinations of performance and capability, so there's more data to choose from and it becomes a juicy target for people staging these kinds of debates.

Okay, how about we compare grown ass women with an extra decade of training to teenage boys, many of whom due to skill, physical deficiencies, lack of drive, or any other reason won't make it to even the least of the men's professional leagues. These top female Olympians women are still, at best, on par with these boys. I should mention that they are on par in games where hitting and the kinds of hits thrown are more limited than they would be if the boys played with other boys, thus denying the boys some of their advantage.

The important thing TO ME is that in soldiering, the only fuck I probably need to give as a civilian is whether the candidate will shoot someone so that I can continue to sit on my ass and eat pizza. As long as someone needs to be shot in the face so that I can stay here and eat pizza, you can be anything you want. Man, woman, gay, straight. You can paint yourself yellow and call yourself trans-pacman, and the only thing I'm going to care about is whether you will shoot the guy that intends on stopping me from sitting on my ass and eating pizza.

I'd say that disaster relief and search and rescue, both roles where the military is often involved, are also very important. There's also the issue of if the female soldier can stay in the fight long enough to actually engage the enemy.

Sounds like combat loads have gotten even more insane than the last time I heard about it. You have trucks, make the trucks carry it!

Women may be more prone to joint injuries but it sounds like the real priority is dumping two-thirds of your gear. That or getting those military exoskeletons deployed ASAP and render the sex of the operator moot.

Please show what combat gear could be reasonably cut or left in a truck, which you may not have access to in a firefight, to save weight without hurting effectiveness.

I just love how you put the word equal in quotes.

No doubt some assholes will latch on to this study and use it as "proof" that women are inferior soldiers or are unable to work effectively with male soldiers.

However, I would note that the study did not examine how an all-female unit would perform, so the performance decrease could be due to difficulties/conflict between male and female soldiers (the military, same as everywhere else, is known to have problems with sexism) rather than inferiority on the part of female soldiers.

I would also note that while I have no expertise in statistics, one study done by one branch of the military examining only one fairly small group of people seems hardly conclusive to me.

And that even if most female soldiers are not as capable, their are undoubtably some who are.

Is it worth the added time and costs for the military to sift through female applicants to ensure that they will be equal to at least the top 50% of male soldiers? It seems to me that it wouldn't be.

[The Romulan Republic]

Is treating half the human race equally worth a budget increase and some beurocratic hassle? Because it seems that's what you're seriously saying.

When I read this shit, I can't help but feel that its starting from the premise that women have no right to equality and then trying to find any paper-thin excuse to justify that prejudice.

I'm also reminded of the US military's troop shortages that were reported during Iraq/Afghanistan. If we fight a major ground war in the future, given a choice between inadequate numbers, unwilling conscripts, and slightly less capable but willing female soldiers, I damn well know which one I'd pick.

[Jub]

Is treating half the human race equally worth a budget increase and some beurocratic hassle? Because it seems that's what you're seriously saying.

When I read this shit, I can't help but feel that its starting from the premise that women have no right to equality and then trying to find any paper-thin excuse to justify that prejudice.

The fact of the matter is that 90% or more of women simply will never be fit enough for the military means that at best we're excluding some fraction of 5% of the population. This doesn't factor in the greater risk of injury or the fact that women aren't as likely to want to be in a combat role, so we're looking at far less that 5% that are both will and able to get through the training program for their selected branch of the service.

Is it worth spending money, in a time where recruiting budgets are already under scrutiny, when spending that money is unlikely to produce any greater results on the battlefield? Looking at this another way, should the top professional sports leagues also be required to have a token female presence among their players in the name of equality?

I'm also reminded of the US military's troop shortages that were reported during Iraq/Afghanistan. If we fight a major ground war in the future, given a choice between inadequate numbers, unwilling conscripts, and slightly less capable but willing female soldiers, I damn well know which one I'd pick.

You'll notice that from 2003 to 2013 there was only a single time where the US military couldn't meet requirements for any service. So that doesn't seem like a massive issue worth worrying about.

[Simon_Jester]

Is treating half the human race equally worth a budget increase and some beurocratic hassle? Because it seems that's what you're seriously saying.

When I read this shit, I can't help but feel that its starting from the premise that women have no right to equality and then trying to find any paper-thin excuse to justify that prejudice.

The fact of the matter is that 90% or more of women simply will never be fit enough for the military means that at best we're excluding some fraction of 5% of the population.

The same physical fitness standards also exclude much of the male population in developed societies, so the minority of interested female soldiers isn't the 1-in-20 thing you make it out to be compared to the actual pool of potential recruits.

I would agree with this, if we were in need of people to do the shooting. If not, I'd only want the best-of-the-best getting involved, so there is less risk involved for our forces. A quick google search for "military recruitment needs" shows that we might be down 14% this year, but that last year we were also turning away 80% of applicants. If the top 25% of women are only as good as the bottom 25% of men at combat roles, I'd expect them to be turned away unless we're in desperate need.

We don't know why a lot of those applicants are being turned away.

For instance, they might be turned away because they are too uneducated to be useful- a soldier who can't read an instruction manual and follow the directions isn't very useful in a military that uses tons and tons of complicated machines and tools.

Or they might be turned away because of personality defects.

I had this kid in one of my classes who proudly proclaimed to anyone who listened that he didn't need an education because he was joining the military, and when I noted to him that the military likes educated soldiers he said "whatever, I'm going to war, man!"

Thing is... this kid is not just undereducated, he's grossly irresponsible, actively and willfully insubordinate, chronically tardy to basically everything he's ever told to do, and incapable of focusing on a task for more than two minutes before he wanders off to amuse himself. He habitually lashes out at everyone around him both physically and verbally, whenever it strikes his fancy.

I can't imagine any army, from the dawn of time to the modern era, that would actually want him joining their ranks. He'd be significantly worse than useless- a military unit that included him would in all likelihood be weaker than one that left him at home.

If there are a lot of basically psychologically stable women joining the military, while a considerable number of crack-brained lunatic men join the army because of violence fantasies and get thrown out because they're useless lunatics... it'd easily explain why an army would recruit women while turning away huge numbers of men.

Plus it don't take a ton of strength to pull a trigger.

The amount of strength it takes to pull a trigger has nothing to do with soldiering. Endurance, resistance to fatigue, ability to cope with the environment, speed, ability to pull your weight, carry your injured, etc. etc. - basically everything that the Marines tested - matters infinitely more. A group of soldiers that can get from A to B faster and with fewer injuries is more effective than one that is slower and injured when it gets there. It is also less likely to be ambushed or outmaneuvered by an opposing force. And since the group in combat can only move as fast as its slowest members, any slow-movers endanger the whole group.

What trigger pull does mean is that women can be used for patrols and defense duties just as well as men, assuming they're just as accurate after pulling that trigger. But the Marine's study also showed that wasn't the case.

The Marines' study also pitted untrained or incompletely trained mixed-sex units against highly trained all-male units, exactly as discussed earlier. How do things look when we control for training and readiness?

I'd need further analysis for this. The best part of that mental study I'm seeing in your post is the "making complex decisions," and I'd want to see the numbers for how great that discrepancy was. I'd want to know that simply assigning female-support units to male combat units couldn't emulate it and that the improvement was so great that it merited the loss of mobility and accuracy. Mental health improvements are only good if you don't get killed in the field, so again, if it's worth the trade of mobility it may be worth doing.

Thing is, there's a balance point in warfare where you are more likely to die by making a stupid decision than you are to die because you were insufficiently athletic. War isn't all about MANLY ARM WRESTLING or even (more credibly) MANLY FOOT RACES. It's also about tactics, spotting ambushes, remembering to duck, keeping track of your surroundings in a stressful situation, and keeping your equipment and supplies in good shape. All these things ensure that you have the best chance of resisting enemy attacks and of laying down irresistible attacks of your own.

So if women turn out to handle the psychological pressures of a combat zone better on average than men, it may well be that the women are saving the men with mental fitness more often than the men save the women with physical fitness.

[Jub]

The same physical fitness standards also exclude much of the male population in developed societies, so the minority of interested female soldiers isn't the 1-in-20 thing you make it out to be compared to the actual pool of potential recruits.

Yes, but the military machine is already geared towards selecting for males to fill these roles. Most males will have an easier time meeting the physical requirements so that means the induction phase is geared towards looking at the mental side of things with aptitude testing and psychological exams. It would be very different to have to do that as well as looking at things like expected muscle mass gain, joint strength, and the like when evaluating for women who may be able to pass boot.

We don't know why a lot of those applicants are being turned away. <snip>

It's unlikely that, beyond the very obviously unfit, that they're being turned away because the military thinks they can't or won't be able to perform the physical tasks required of them. Most men with a little fitness training will be able to perform physical tasks that only the top percentile of women will be able to match. It means that you can take a reasonably, but not remarkably fit man with good aptitude testing and expect him to turn into an effective and well-rounded soldier.

With women they not only need to be physically in the top 5-10% to be as physically capable as the average male but also need to show the same aptitude for the role. This considerably lowers the candidate pool for combat roles and would mean that if the military got an equal number of male and female applicants that they would be wasting far more time looking over female candidates than they would males.

The Marines' study also pitted untrained or incompletely trained mixed-sex units against highly trained all-male units, exactly as discussed earlier. How do things look when we control for training and readiness?

Training will only ever improve so much. As an example, it's unlikely that these women show much improvement in areas involving physical fitness after they've already been through marine corps training. We could possibly see injury rates drop as these women get used to their roles, but they'll always be under more strain carrying the same kit, so we may not see a decrease in the type of injuries found in the study. This fatigue rate is probably the single largest factor, because if women are under more strain just doing day to day tasks, it's likely to mean that they're not going to be as ready when combat does happen. This can be due to injury or just due to being more winded than men after hiking up to a position and then immediately engaging the enemy.

Thing is, there's a balance point in warfare where you are more likely to die by making a stupid decision than you are to die because you were insufficiently athletic. War isn't all about MANLY ARM WRESTLING or even (more credibly) MANLY FOOT RACES. It's also about tactics, spotting ambushes, remembering to duck, keeping track of your surroundings in a stressful situation, and keeping your equipment and supplies in good shape. All these things ensure that you have the best chance of resisting enemy attacks and of laying down irresistible attacks of your own.

So if women turn out to handle the psychological pressures of a combat zone better on average than men, it may well be that the women are saving the men with mental fitness more often than the men save the women with physical fitness.

Given that these women fought hard to get to the military at all it could also be that these are just the peak of what we can expect of female soldiers and that these sorts of mental strengths are due to sample sizes. If we start letting all physically fit women into combat roles it's entirely possible that these advantages fade under weight of numbers.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Training will only ever improve so much. As an example, it's unlikely that these women show much improvement in areas involving physical fitness after they've already been through marine corps training.

Bullshit. A few months vs a few years. That makes a difference. Yeah, the load bearing equipment might need to be redesigned. The horror. Yes, maybe combat loads need to be adjusted (All our soldiers are overloaded. If men have to carry 130 lbs, of course they will do better than someone who might only weight 130 lbs. But the fact is, they dont need to be carrying 130 lbs). Either way, the fitness level of someone who has only just gotten out of training for three months is not going to be the same as someone who has been in a constant training and even combat regime for 3 years.

We could possibly see injury rates drop as these women get used to their roles, but they'll always be under more strain carrying the same kit, so we may not see a decrease in the type of injuries found in the study. This fatigue rate is probably the single largest factor, because if women are under more strain just doing day to day tasks, it's likely to mean that they're not going to be as ready when combat does happen.

Except for this little problem. Women have been in combat, and they have been ready. You misogynist fuckstick. In Iraq, they were not supposed to be in frontline rolls. They fought anyway. In WWII, the soviets had women in both their army and air forces. They were fine. Kicked Nazi Ass. In the medieval period, women wore full armor and went into battle. Viking women raided the coast of england alongside their husbands.

This can be due to injury or just due to being more winded than men after hiking up to a position and then immediately engaging the enemy.

[Jub]

Bullshit. A few months vs a few years. That makes a difference.

You expect that they will continue to gain strength and endurance, the key areas where women are much weaker than men, long after they have finished with their training? That seems optimistic. The women of the Canadian and American Olympic hockey teams are still smaller and weaker than high school boys and full male adult strength doesn't really develop until your mid-twenties. So some of the toughest women in the world can't beat fit, but not world class, teenagers and you still expect female soldiers to somehow make up for the strength and endurance gap with a couple of years training.

Yes, maybe combat loads need to be adjusted (All our soldiers are overloaded. If men have to carry 130 lbs, of course they will do better than someone who might only weight 130 lbs. But the fact is, they dont need to be carrying 130 lbs). Either way, the fitness level of someone who has only just gotten out of training for three months is not going to be the same as someone who has been in a constant training and even combat regime for 3 years.

Please explain which bits of gear you would cut from a combat load, why, and how it would affect combat situations. You claim cuts can be made, now show your work and show where we can lose enough weight to allow women to catch up to men.

Except for this little problem. Women have been in combat, and they have been ready. You misogynist fuckstick. In Iraq, they were not supposed to be in frontline rolls. They fought anyway. In WWII, the soviets had women in both their army and air forces. They were fine. Kicked Nazi Ass. In the medieval period, women wore full armor and went into battle. Viking women raided the coast of england alongside their husbands.

That's wonderful, I'm not claiming that women haven't or even that they cannot fight. I'm saying that they are worse at important aspects of it than men of the same age, fitness level, and training and I've yet to be shown any concrete evidence that they have enough unique strengths to compensate for these deficiencies. Sure women can fight, they can even fight better than some percentage of men can more so now with firearms. My objection's center around asking if they can they carry the load expected of the modern soldier day in day out, lift their larger male companions out of a ditch and run them to a medevac, fight effectively under greater fatigue levels, and show that they can contribute unique strengths to a unit without slowing it down.

Based on what we have seen thus far they can't match men. In a total war scenario or a last ditch defense of a position they can stay cool and point a weapon as well as anybody, it's the rest of the job that makes me think women shouldn't be in combat roles.

[Balrog]

This link?

Yeah, not sure why it didn't work in my OP.

I just love how you put the word equal in quotes.

Because, ironically, not all concepts of "equality" really are equal. If actual evidence indicates someone is unsuited for a certain task or profession, then they shouldn't being doing it, regardless of our feels.

However, I would note that the study did not examine how an all-female unit would perform, so the performance decrease could be due to difficulties/conflict between male and female soldiers (the military, same as everywhere else, is known to have problems with sexism) rather than inferiority on the part of female soldiers.

If women are not suited for this role because of physiological reasons, having an all-female group isn't going to somehow change that. If anything it would accentuate the difference.

I would also note that while I have no expertise in statistics, one study done by one branch of the military examining only one fairly small group of people seems hardly conclusive to me.

Until and unless similar studies are done, this is the only evidence we have to go off of instead of anecdotal idiocy like "But there were Amazons in the past!"

The thing is, women are already fit for that level of combat, because women are already seeing that level of combat. Honestly, all this stuff about women in combat is mostly a formality, along with integrating the few remaining holdouts.

No, they already are not, at least according to the article you posted:

“Our female Marines very likely have more actual combat experience than any servicewomen in the world,” the report says, pointing to the 422 combat action ribbons they earned for service in Iraq and Afghanistan since the award was established.

Those Marine women were responding to ambushes and IED attacks, and their mission was not to “locate, close with and destroy the enemy” as infantry must, it notes.

There's a difference between riding around in a convoy and fighting off a brief ambush or being attached to a combat unit for specific missions versus regularly schlepping up and down mountains carrying your weight in weapons and equipment. It's a job few men can do and even fewer women, and if those same women end up getting injured more often because of it, with all the associated costs those injuries will accrue, then that requires a serious question of whether they should be doing that job. And the women in this study were already better than average in terms of physical fitness, again your article:

Looking at physical performance in the ground combat task force, “it is unknown how much a stricter (higher) physical screen would have improved the physical performance of female volunteers.” The female task force participants were above average to well-above average among their peers in the Corps, whereas the men were simply average, the report says.

[Zwinmar]

One thing I do not see, it may well be there, is that the average infantryman is typically only around 5'8" and are very lean. To use actors as an example: Arnold or Stallone would make shitty infantry as they are way too big for it.

Anecdotally: one of the guys in my fireteam was a body builder, at only around 5'6" (yes he got made fun of for being short) he routinely lost around 30 lbs when we went out in the field for three weeks. Toss in the fact that MRE suck ass and stimulants are constantly being sucked down (from coffee, to tobacco, to rip-fuel) just to stay awake and that leaves the infantryman looking more akin to a meth-head than the pogues who can stay in the barracks, eat well and lift.

All this said, it is usually the staff NCO's and officers who require all the additional gear

Part of the problem is the machismo pounded into the heads of new Marines, from such questions 'are you hurt or injured?,' to going to sick call being a disgrace, to the regular proscription for anything of 'take two Motrin and drink some water' it provides a condition where the only place a Marine is allowed to get hurt is on the battlefield and even then you must 'man up.'

Joe Toye rant about gear to give you a slight idea.

[Simon_Jester]

Yes, but the military machine is already geared towards selecting for males to fill these roles. Most males will have an easier time meeting the physical requirements so that means the induction phase is geared towards looking at the mental side of things with aptitude testing and psychological exams. It would be very different to have to do that as well as looking at things like expected muscle mass gain, joint strength, and the like when evaluating for women who may be able to pass boot.

Given time we could actually do this and there's no obvious reason why we shouldn't. Sex-segregated boot camps might be a good idea anyway even if sex-integrated combat units aren't.

With women they not only need to be physically in the top 5-10% to be as physically capable as the average male but also need to show the same aptitude for the role. This considerably lowers the candidate pool for combat roles and would mean that if the military got an equal number of male and female applicants that they would be wasting far more time looking over female candidates than they would males.

Based on my admittedly finite experience with low-income communities, which make up a large fraction of the military's recruitment base, almost all the female applicants are likely to be mentally fit for the role, while only a large fraction of the male applicants are. I wouldn't be surprised of the 'best' way to vet recruits makes it much easier with women than with men. With men you have to give a battery of personality tests and get references to make sure they're not a sociopathic loony or an insubordinate clown, which is hard... by contrast, telling the women to do X pushups and run five miles to see how fit they are is easy.

The Marines' study also pitted untrained or incompletely trained mixed-sex units against highly trained all-male units, exactly as discussed earlier. How do things look when we control for training and readiness?

Training will only ever improve so much. As an example, it's unlikely that these women show much improvement in areas involving physical fitness after they've already been through marine corps training. We could possibly see injury rates drop as these women get used to their roles, but they'll always be under more strain carrying the same kit, so we may not see a decrease in the type of injuries found in the study. This fatigue rate is probably the single largest factor, because if women are under more strain just doing day to day tasks, it's likely to mean that they're not going to be as ready when combat does happen. This can be due to injury or just due to being more winded than men after hiking up to a position and then immediately engaging the enemy.

Thing is, task performance is invariably a function of experience. Fatigue isn't the only thing that determines how well soldiers perform- it plays a huge role, but tired veterans routinely beat fresh newbies, or at least inflict very heavy losses on them.

One thing I do not see, it may well be there, is that the average infantryman is typically only around 5'8" and are very lean. To use actors as an example: Arnold or Stallone would make shitty infantry as they are way too big for it.

Yeah, the archetype for infantry should be "wiry little bastard" not "big strapping ubermensch fellow." It was even more exaggerated in World War One (when the infantry's packs were damn near as heavy as today, minus the weight of body armor, and the soldiers were invariably fighting in mud). Part of the reason the Western Front never went anywhere is that tiny men with huge backpacks in literally the worst terrain anyone had ever seen for infantry advances just... couldn't move.

All this said, it is usually the staff NCO's and officers who require all the additional gear

I don't quite get this, could you restate it using more words?

Part of the problem is the machismo pounded into the heads of new Marines, from such questions 'are you hurt or injured?,' to going to sick call being a disgrace, to the regular proscription for anything of 'take two Motrin and drink some water' it provides a condition where the only place a Marine is allowed to get hurt is on the battlefield and even then you must 'man up.'

Yeah. The problem is that it's easy to emphasize being physically tough to the point where it gets in the way of being physically fit. There's a certain toughness involved in (for example) functioning when you're dehydrated, but it's stupid to do so because you're not operating at your best and taking a freaking drink of water will be better all around.

Likewise when it comes to soldiers who are routinely carrying anvils in their knapsacks just in case they have to fight a terrorist Looney Tunes character or whatever.