USMC Study: All-Male Squads Outperformed Mixed Squads

[Starglider]

but what about womens' higher pain tolerance

What higher pain tolerance would that be? Please quote a relevant study, while noting that pregancy is not a common combat situation.

[Simon_Jester]

...So there we have it, all that bitching about upwards of a hundred items and you came up with a valid critisism for a fraction of one. THROW THE STUDY OUT!

Patroklos, people FAR more familiar with and aware of the details of the infantryman's life than I am have criticized the modern Army and Marine Corps for overloading their soldiers. People who have that familiarity on this very website have done so. And this isn't the only place I've seen it.

I don't have to be a rocket scientist to tell you that a moon rocket with thirty engines is going to be more prone to engine failures than one with five. I don't have to be a neurosurgeon to tell you that having brain surgeons staying awake thirty hours straight is a bad idea. I don't have to be a lawyer to tell you that coercing confessions from defendants is wrong.

Some things are in fact, obvious. Other things, once testified to by authorities, can reasonably be taken as 'truth.'

So you can mock my lack of infantry experience if you like- but the point remains, if soldiers are in twice as much danger of being injured by their own backpacks as they are by enemy fire, then the weight of the backpacks is a serious threat that bears consideration.

[Jub]

What I'm saying is that we probably shouldn't use any professional athletes at all when searching for an analysis of the average human. Professional athletes are outliers, skilled at specific physical routines. Comparing pro athletes of any kind against each other as a means of determining if the average healthy young woman can perform soldiering duties, is probably a mistake. Like using a thoroughbred race horse's track performance to determine how good your average farm horse will be at pulling plows.

How about teenaged boys that are at least one more step away from trying out for a professional team, many of whom won't even be good enough to make it into a college or major junior league? Can we compare the best women in the world to top 30% teenage males?

-----

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.

Why spend the added effort when we haven't had a significant shortage of manpower since Vietnam?

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.

So you have annecdotes that you can't actually back up. Concession noted.

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.

Yeah, but when you add in that in addition to being tired the women started weaker and slower you get a compounding effect. Then add in the higher likelihood that the female soldier has a nagging injury and that degrades things even further. So these women, even if they start equal won't end up equal once these factors hit them repeatedly after a hard deployment.

Patroklos, people FAR more familiar with and aware of the details of the infantryman's life than I am have criticized the modern Army and Marine Corps for overloading their soldiers. People who have that familiarity on this very website have done so. And this isn't the only place I've seen it.

I don't have to be a rocket scientist to tell you that a moon rocket with thirty engines is going to be more prone to engine failures than one with five. I don't have to be a neurosurgeon to tell you that having brain surgeons staying awake thirty hours straight is a bad idea. I don't have to be a lawyer to tell you that coercing confessions from defendants is wrong.

Some things are in fact, obvious. Other things, once testified to by authorities, can reasonably be taken as 'truth.'

So you can mock my lack of infantry experience if you like- but the point remains, if soldiers are in twice as much danger of being injured by their own backpacks as they are by enemy fire, then the weight of the backpacks is a serious threat that bears consideration.

Are you going to quote any of these studies and discuss them based on their merits, or are you just going to keep backpedaling while insisting that cuts should be made?

There's also the fact that while the gear does cause more injuries, some serious, it could be that these injuries are less severe than the injuries caused by lacking the kit. Would you rather an injury rate of x, where some of those x's are dead or horribly maimed, or 2x where the injuries are still significant but don't usually result in death or maiming?

[Patroklos]

...So there we have it, all that bitching about upwards of a hundred items and you came up with a valid critisism for a fraction of one. THROW THE STUDY OUT!

Patroklos, people FAR more familiar with and aware of the details of the infantryman's life than I am have criticized the modern Army and Marine Corps for overloading their soldiers. People who have that familiarity on this very website have done so. And this isn't the only place I've seen it.

Thats nice. Thats juxtaposed against the entire Marine Corps...

Its simple, if you want to make claims to debunk a scientific report from a respectable institution (and I am not talking about the USMC here, but them too) you need to be specific and support your contrary position.

I don't have to be a rocket scientist to tell you that a moon rocket with thirty engines is going to be more prone to engine failures than one with five. I don't have to be a neurosurgeon to tell you that having brain surgeons staying awake thirty hours straight is a bad idea. I don't have to be a lawyer to tell you that coercing confessions from defendants is wrong.

Some things are in fact, obvious. Other things, once testified to by authorities, can reasonably be taken as 'truth.'

Blah Blah.

BLUF: "You don't want to put the work in so just accept what I say as both obvious and true". Nothing said by you are anyone else remotely in the realm of common knowledge which more accurately describes what you are saying. Common knowledge is also often times wrong. And now you have been challenged, so put up or sit down. Nobody asked you to provide any data. Nobody asked you to do any testing yourself. You were simply asked to 1.) actually know the things that were in the pack before you decide if they are unnecessary and 2.) tell us specifically why they are unnecessary.

You and nobody else who is harping on the same thing, military veteran or not, bothered to provide any of the above. Oh there were plenty of "HAR JARHEADS ARE STOOOPID" and "DUMB ALPHAMALES CARRY TONS OF DIP!!! HAHAH" stupidity, but not a single fact to back up this whole "they are carrying too much stuff" rant. And this is again in response to a scientific study/article.

So you can mock my lack of infantry experience if you like- but the point remains, if soldiers are in twice as much danger of being injured by their own backpacks as they are by enemy fire, then the weight of the backpacks is a serious threat that bears consideration.

Seriously, I let this slide the first time but apparently you think you are onto something here. If we take actions to mitigate some factors, their metrics relative to any unchanging factor will obviously vary. Packs don't hurt more Marines because packs became more dangerous (or dangerous at all), we just got that much better at mitigating bullets. Along these lines combat loads are "more dangerous" than enemy nuclear warheads, close air support, chemical weapons, main battle tanks and not unsurprisingly to anyone not using your ridiculous reasoning bows and arrows, hot tar/pitch and catapults. Also mass drivers, gauss cannons and gray goo. Dangers from bullets is zero in peace time, I guess there is no utility in practicing between wars then?

Similarly you are more likely to die from a car accident than murder. That must be because cars are especially dangerous these days right?

If you really, REALLY want to make some point about combat loads I suggest you one 1.) see if they have significantly changed inside the last couple decades 2.) If they injuries from them have increased in that time period and 3.) do changes in warfare over that time period justify either. That's the starting point, not "well if women can't carry it then obviously its too heavy" and then back filling.

[Simon_Jester]

I don't think "if women can't carry it then obviously it's too heavy."

I think this:

See this article (about the Army, not the Marines, but the same damn thing applies)
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ ... 5_ch11.htm

Now, here we have an extended study (airborne infantry, not Marines), which disagrees with the first study- but which still identifies the same underlying conclusion: the kit weighs too much and it's a major disadvantage. They're more optimistic about what soldiers can carry (note that this was a study from early in the fighting in Afghanistan)... but the basic conclusion is there- weight reduction was needed then. Also, the long report does specifically confirm one point made in the article above- that the heavy loads are impairing light infantry operations, because our light infantry weigh like 250-300 pounds and are floundering about while more lightly equipped enemies run rings around them.
http://thedonovan.com/archives/modernwa ... Report.pdf

Meanwhile the news recounts studies from Iraq indicating that 95-135 pound loads are typical... Note the statistic in the article that says medical retirements for musculoskeletal injuries increased tenfold between 2003 and 2009.
http://www.seattletimes.com/nation-worl ... ures-them/

So clearly, combat is physically strenuous (duh). But by all evidence the soldiers who went into Iraq should have been in pretty much top physical condition. This suggests that no realistic amount of physical training will prepare soldiers, male or female, for the stresses of trying to fight in a desert country while wearing 100-pound backpacks. Realistically it cannot be done. You cannot 'toughen' anyone to the point where they handle that well. It doesn't matter whether they're male, female, or neuter- they're going to hurt themselves trying to fight, they're going to be slow-moving on foot and ponderous. Mechanization and overwhelming firepower may allow them to win a firefight, but they won't be able to advance or retreat quickly, reposition to meet new threats, or even spread out to secure or search an area efficiently once away from their vehicles.

In short, we have an army of heavy infantry- so very, very heavy. And so long as our combat loads remain what they are, no amount of physical training or selecting for the strongest candidates will solve this. Not unless we figure out super-soldier serum or power armor or something else which is, realistically, the province of science fiction.

So the weight is not only crippling our troops- our men and our women- it's impairing combat effectiveness. There are tactical options which are just plain not available to soldiers who are carrying 90 pounds of equipment, against soldiers who are carrying twenty-five or thirty.
_____________________

Now, as to the matter of risks- you're still one step behind my reasoning. Yes, enemy bullets and bombs remain dangerous even when the risk of being killed by them declines. Sure, a soldier with a blown kneecap from a torn tendon is preferable to a soldier with a bullet through his lungs.

But at the same time, to be effective an army has to maintain its soldiers in a physically functional condition. From a purely tactical point of view, there is little difference between a man who can never fight again because his spine is a mass of arthritis at 25, and a man who can never fight again because he is dead. Either way, a replacement must be trained and shipped out, benefits must be paid, and the fighting unit will operate at reduced strength until a replacement is available.

We saw this in a different form in the 19th century- the last time armies were more likely to succumb to medical casualties than to enemy action. Back then the medical issues were lethal infectious diseases, not crippling musculoskeletal injuries, but the effect was the same- the army that dealt with its disease problems the most effectively could fight harder, win more often, and dominate the war zone. There were entire categories of operations that were simply not possible until militaries learned how to keep their personnel physically fit for action- it was almost impossible for European troops to fight in jungles until tropical diseases were countered, it was virtually impossible for Age of Sail expeditionary forces to operate out of their bases for any length of time until people worked out how to combat scurvy.

Because there are things that your soldiers simply cannot do if they are on their sickbeds from malaria, or too weak to climb because of scurvy... or physically too exhausted to move fast enough to counter enemy infantry that are less heavily burdened. Since one thing guerillas do excel at is traveling light.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

but what about womens' higher pain tolerance

What higher pain tolerance would that be? Please quote a relevant study, while noting that pregancy is not a common combat situation.

I was mistaken on that point. The other ones stand, however.

[Lagmonster]

How about teenaged boys that are at least one more step away from trying out for a professional team, many of whom won't even be good enough to make it into a college or major junior league? Can we compare the best women in the world to top 30% teenage males?

Yes, every single time you're talking about sports, or peak performance in specialized tasks.

Look, I'm the first guy to start smacking faces when they say that there are no significant differences in physical ability between human males and females, but those differences aren't relevant to many, many tasks, where simply being above average is sufficient. Don't forget that we're not talking about whether group A or group B are superior soldiers. We're just talking about whether or not it makes sense to exclude group B from being soldiers at all.

[Adam Reynolds]

Look, I'm the first guy to start smacking faces when they say that there are no significant differences in physical ability between human males and females, but those differences aren't relevant to many, many tasks, where simply being above average is sufficient. Don't forget that we're not talking about whether group A or group B are superior soldiers. We're just talking about whether or not it makes sense to exclude group B from being soldiers at all.

The point is that above average males are largely superior to the best females in the world at hockey. It is another point that shows just how far off the two fields are statistically. Alone it shows nothing, but combined with solid data it is a reasonable indication.

[Jub]

Yes, every single time you're talking about sports, or peak performance in specialized tasks.

In this case I disagree, I understand what you're saying, but don't agree.

Look, I'm the first guy to start smacking faces when they say that there are no significant differences in physical ability between human males and females, but those differences aren't relevant to many, many tasks, where simply being above average is sufficient. Don't forget that we're not talking about whether group A or group B are superior soldiers. We're just talking about whether or not it makes sense to exclude group B from being soldiers at all.

As found by the study in the OP, the best women are equal to the bottom third of males in strength and endurance and are more easily injured. If this is the best women can do, they're no better than filler, and at worst are actively eating more resources when it comes to training and recruitment. These women are hanging around the level where the military already wishes they could start cutting people from combat roles and it doesn't make sense to build on that in the name of equality.

[Simon_Jester]

Except they aren't- this is your opponents' entire point, that there are female soldiers who pass tests that some number of male soldiers are failing.

[Patroklos]

I don't think "if women can't carry it then obviously it's too heavy."

I think this:

See this article (about the Army, not the Marines, but the same damn thing applies)
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ ... 5_ch11.htm

Your opinion piece from a SFC holds no weight against the academic articles I posted. It points out what they carry and how much that is, but in no way makes a case for why that is too much other than he says so. Granted his word is better than yours, but it is still just a dude.

Now, here we have an extended study (airborne infantry, not Marines), which disagrees with the first study- but which still identifies the same underlying conclusion: the kit weighs too much and it's a major disadvantage. They're more optimistic about what soldiers can carry (note that this was a study from early in the fighting in Afghanistan)... but the basic conclusion is there- weight reduction was needed then. Also, the long report does specifically confirm one point made in the article above- that the heavy loads are impairing light infantry operations, because our light infantry weigh like 250-300 pounds and are floundering about while more lightly equipped enemies run rings around them.
http://thedonovan.com/archives/modernwa ... Report.pdf

1.) Airborne infantry AKA light infantry is a completely different beast. Their equipment has to be air drop capable and they have to operate with the assumption that the gear they have is all they will have for extended periods behind enemy lines.

2.) A 1lb pack is a disavantage if your only metric for disadvantage is higher weight over lower weight. Obviously the less weight you have to carry the better off you are, but as was already told to you several times that is one variable of many. Is it a good trade to lower the weight three pounds but have no night fighting capability (axe the NVGs)? Is it a good trade to lower the weight ten pounds but have no ability to rest/sleep comfortably and/or shelter from bad weather (axe the tent)? Is it a good trade to lower the weight fifteen pounds but be completely unprotected from bullets and shrapnel (body armor)?

Once again nobody is going to contest, especially those who are humping it, that weight carried is a disadvantage to weight not carried if evaluated in a vacuum. Soldiers and the combat situations they find themselves in are not a vacuum.

So we return to the basic question. What exactly should they not be carrying and why, and prove to me the advantage of that lack of weight in their pack is greater than the advantage of having the capabilities of whatever that item provides.

3.) Which enemies exactly are running rings around our infantry? Specifically. The ones with casualty rates thousands of times higher than our infantry? The ones with zero ballistic protection? The ones with zero standardization? The ones with zero heath and welfare relative?

NEWS FLASH. Light infantry move faster than heavy infantry. Shall we now catalog all the things those imaginary "enemies running rings around us" can't do that our infantry can?

Once again, specifically tell us what to leave behind, and provide the cost benefit analysis that justifies it.

Meanwhile the news recounts studies from Iraq indicating that 95-135 pound loads are typical... Note the statistic in the article that says medical retirements for musculoskeletal injuries increased tenfold between 2003 and 2009.
http://www.seattletimes.com/nation-worl ... ures-them/

Shocking development, if you do something more often the problems associated with it increase. In related news tanks used more often break down more often, ships that steam more often need spare parts more often, and aircraft with more flying hours require more maintenance. Truly a bang up analysis there.

Would you care to guess what the increase in foot distance traveled per infantry man per year was in 2003-2009 vice 2002?

So clearly, combat is physically strenuous (duh). But by all evidence the soldiers who went into Iraq should have been in pretty much top physical condition. This suggests that no realistic amount of physical training will prepare soldiers, male or female, for the stresses of trying to fight in a desert country while wearing 100-pound backpacks.

It suggests no such thing. What it suggests is that combat and all the things associated with it from actually engaging to getting there has dangers that can't be mitigated to zero. What it shows is that you need physical conditioning and indeed to some degree an innate aptitude for the associated physical activity to mitigate it as much as possible.

Realistically it cannot be done. You cannot 'toughen' anyone to the point where they handle that well.

Interesting, I wasn't aware that injuries due to load bearing reached 100% simultaneously. What exactly is the metric you are using to come to this conclusion. It appears you are claiming that because 100% of the force can't avoid injury something is wrong. Which is bizarre, since you are arguing in support of a group that has an injury rate many times above the baseline...

Before you continue I want you to think of all the activities/jobs that pretty much guarantee a physical injury of some sort due to participating in it which are common and certainly have people we consider do them well. Professional sports (from the NFL to tennis). Miners. Construction workers. etc.

The point is its a continuum, and you have to show us why the current rate is abnormal or avoidable given ALL the variables involved.

It doesn't matter whether they're male, female, or neuter- they're going to hurt themselves trying to fight, they're going to be slow-moving on foot and ponderous. Mechanization and overwhelming firepower may allow them to win a firefight, but they won't be able to advance or retreat quickly, reposition to meet new threats, or even spread out to secure or search an area efficiently once away from their vehicles.

Do you know where that overwhelming firepower and other capabilities of our modern infantry come from compared to other foot infantry like say a Taliban fighter or a Roman Legionnaire assuming each is equally competent at their job? It isn't their bare hands.

And where exactly is this abject failure of our infantry at winning tactical engagements with enemy infantry to justify your position?

In short, we have an army of heavy infantry- so very, very heavy. And so long as our combat loads remain what they are, no amount of physical training or selecting for the strongest candidates will solve this. Not unless we figure out super-soldier serum or power armor or something else which is, realistically, the province of science fiction.

What exactly is the problem to be solved? So we have heavy infantry (we also have plenty of light infantry: Rangers, Force Recon, Air Assault, Airborne, Green Berets, SEALS, a dozen other SOF outfits). So what?

You are basically arguing that your average suburban family is better served by a Ferrari than a mini-van because that Ferrari does a few specific things better in very limited and contrived circumstances. This is your argument, do you want to continue it?

More seriously, an Army should not be made up of all heavy infantry. Such a force would indeed miss out on the opportunities to use some tactics in some situations. This is why the various military infantry forces of the US are NOT all heavy infantry. The fact is, however, that due to our role in anticipated conflicts our need for light infantry are few and far between and can and are served by the forces I mentioned above just fine. Spectacularly well actually at a tactical level. At the same time these light infantry roles are merely a side show compared to what these forces are really designed to do which is to be deplorable to defend against peer enemies (Russia, China, etc) on short notice.

If you want to argue that we should have more light units that's one thing, but no matter what we are always going to have heavy infantry and it will always be more heavy units than light. The load issues for that heavy infantry will not change.

And lets assume, just for the sake of argument, that all other things were equal and we go just as light as the Taliban or ISIS. Well guess what, we have different battlefield goals and objectives than a Taliban or ISIS. We have to hold and defend territory, they can pick and choose targets and engage at will. We can't disappear on a whim thus we need endurance, they can just abandon any position or operation as soon as things get tough. We have to protect innocents and infrastructure, they can just spray and pray with the most primitive of weapons. We are tied down to specific high priority locations meaning no matter how light we are we still are limited in maneuver, they have few similar locations.

In short they don't need heavy infantry thus they don't have it. And if they did need it and couldn't produce it the war would be over. Our requirements are not the same.

So the weight is not only crippling our troops- our men and our women- it's impairing combat effectiveness. There are tactical options which are just plain not available to soldiers who are carrying 90 pounds of equipment, against soldiers who are carrying twenty-five or thirty.

Thats nice. There are far more tactical options available to a a soldier carrying 90lbs of equipment one carrying 25lbs even if they may be different options. So far the modern record for the first is FAR superior to the second when fighting each other.

Now, as to the matter of risks- you're still one step behind my reasoning. Yes, enemy bullets and bombs remain dangerous even when the risk of being killed by them declines. Sure, a soldier with a blown kneecap from a torn tendon is preferable to a soldier with a bullet through his lungs.

But at the same time, to be effective an army has to maintain its soldiers in a physically functional condition. From a purely tactical point of view, there is little difference between a man who can never fight again because his spine is a mass of arthritis at 25, and a man who can never fight again because he is dead. Either way, a replacement must be trained and shipped out, benefits must be paid, and the fighting unit will operate at reduced strength until a replacement is available.

1.) You don't understand the critisism of your logic. Go back and reread.

2.) Show me an Army, and individual soldiers in that army, that don't make a tactical distinction between injured comrades who make it home to their wife and kids versus one dead at their feet. Armies that operate under your logic generally fair poorly, especially from the soldier's perspective.

3.) Again, that is all nice, but unless you are claiming we can reduce pack weight and associated load bearing injuries to zero you have no choice but to admit load bearing injuries at some threshold are both acceptable and inevitable. Furthermore if you accept that you also accept there is some benefit to accepting that the trade off of incurring those injures.

That once again reduces you to telling us what this optimal load for a combat infantrymen is. Specifically. And why.

We saw this in a different form in the 19th century- the last time armies were more likely to succumb to medical casualties than to enemy action. Back then the medical issues were lethal infectious diseases, not crippling musculoskeletal injuries, but the effect was the same- the army that dealt with its disease problems the most effectively could fight harder, win more often, and dominate the war zone. There were entire categories of operations that were simply not possible until militaries learned how to keep their personnel physically fit for action- it was almost impossible for European troops to fight in jungles until tropical diseases were countered, it was virtually impossible for Age of Sail expeditionary forces to operate out of their bases for any length of time until people worked out how to combat scurvy.

Exactly what portion of the force do you imagine is incapacitated by load bearing injuries at any given time? Do you think it even approaches a colonial army in Africa fighting malaria? Or the bloddy flux racing through some Japanese warlords conscript? And unlike humping in a few extra magazines and enough water to survive if the supply convoy gets delayed, was there any benefit from carrying cholera in your system? Your comparison is ridiculously bad and inappropriate.

Because there are things that your soldiers simply cannot do if they are on their sickbeds from malaria, or too weak to climb because of scurvy... or physically too exhausted to move fast enough to counter enemy infantry that are less heavily burdened. Since one thing guerillas do excel at is traveling light.

1.) Once again, SPECIFICALLY tell us what equipment is inappropriate and why the disadvantage of not having it is worth it to travel light. Tell us why a Marine would be happy to be equal in equipment capability of his likely Talibanesque fighter as long as he can carry the same weight. Until you can provide a cost benefit analysis there is no way to make your logic work.

2.) Guerrillas travel light, that is true. They also die. A lot. Like sometimes 1000 to 1. And while you may want to point out guerrilla armies have won overall before right about now I suggest you think about what the casualty threshold of the US public or any Western public is for that matter. There are other reasons not to say that, but lets limit ourselves to that one for right now.

[Jub]

Except they aren't- this is your opponents' entire point, that there are female soldiers who pass tests that some number of male soldiers are failing.

And these female soldiers were shown to be in the bottom of their class and more likely to be injured doing routine tasks than their male counterparts. Do try to keep up Simon.