First Woman Completes Marines’ Urban Leader Course
BY Herschel Smith
5 years, 7 months ago
One of the Marine Corps’ female infantry riflemen hit another milestone when she became the first woman to graduate from the service’s Urban Leaders Course.
Lance Cpl. Autumn Taniguchi, with 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines, finished the three-week course that prepares leathernecks to lead troops in urban environments on May 3.
“This course is not easy,” Taniguchi said, according to a Marine Corps news release. “I didn’t expect it to be easy, but it also helps to show me that I can do more than I thought I could.”
The Urban Leaders Course, which is led by 1st Marine Division Schools at Camp Pendleton, California, covers room clearing, close-quarters battle and combat marksmanship. Students are taught to make challenging leadership decisions in an urban setting through realistic training scenarios and live-fire ranges.
None of the course standards has changed since women began serving in infantry roles, the release states, adding, “Every Marine who undergoes the training is expected to execute the mission regardless of gender.”
Seeing Taniguchi complete the course gives women in the Marine Corps another thing they can say they are able to accomplish, said Staff Sgt. Ken Rick, Urban Leaders Course chief instructor.
“Not necessarily begging for acceptance but proving to the males that they can do this,” Rick said in the release.
Well, that’s certainly reason for another celebratory glass of wine tonight, huh? After all, that’s what the Marine Corps is all about – making it where people can say they are able to accomplish certain things.
Speaking of which, I have a quick question for Ms. Taniguchi. Can you pick up a 220 lb Marine who has been shot and carry him over your shoulder for hundreds of yards to safety and medical assistance? Without fracturing your pelvis?
If you can’t, do your Marines really trust you in combat?
On May 23, 2019 at 12:01 am, Georgiaboy61 said:
Re: “First Woman Completes Marines’ Urban Leader Course”
President Donald Trump was elected in part because he promised to end the madness of things like women being forced into the ground combat arms over the objections of combat-experienced male soldiers and Marines, in the U.S. Army, U.S. Marine Corps, Navy SEALs, et al.
Another promise unfulfilled, another promise broken. This is getting old, very old. I have ceased caring about the clown-world which the U.S. military has increasingly become, but that’s only because I don’t want to elevate my BP or give my self a CVA (stroke). I used to get mad, now I just laugh.
Hey girls, you want to see the elephant (going into combat)? Be my guest – and don’t forget to duck. Also remember, ladies, that the complaint department is closed. You wanted this – in fact, you demanded this – and now you are going to get it, good and hard. Don’t say we didn’t try to warn you.
On May 23, 2019 at 4:04 am, Duke Norfolk said:
And have you seen this little nugget?
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/05/15/us/west-point-largest-graduating-class-of-black-women-trnd/index.html
Just think about all those sassy young black women leading the charge! You’ve got to go to that link and check out the picture, if nothing else. Clown world indeed.
On May 23, 2019 at 5:53 am, DAN III said:
ALCON,
The problem is simply:
STANDARDS
What WERE the standards to not only finish the course, but to gain entry into the course ?
IMO the standards for even ALLOWING females into the US Armed Forces were compromised long ago. So, giving a graduation certificate to female Taniguchi is just another step in the Social Justice ladder, doncha know ?
On May 23, 2019 at 7:10 am, ragman said:
The military has become a petri dish for the SJWs. Like many others, I simply don’t care anymore.
On May 23, 2019 at 7:17 am, Longbow said:
It is a sick, sick society which sends its WOMEN off to war.
Read Pressfield’s Tides of War, and Gates of Fire.
Let women in the ranks to go nut to nut, gut to gut in the phalanx against a professional and disciplined enemy. Yeah, that’ll work. You say standards haven’t changed?
All of human history isn’t “wrong”.
Clown World, indeed!
On May 23, 2019 at 7:40 am, Bram said:
I spent a little time in a “non-combat” unit in the Marines and thoroughly hated it.
Usually the women all found something else to do while the men did any type of field training. One time several of them did come along while we did the urban combat course. We were wearing typical combat gear (body armor, helmets, gas-masks, etc..) and carrying rifles. Every male Marine did the Spider-Drop with no problem. Then the biggest, toughest Woman Marine (about 6 feet tall and could outrun me in PT gear for whatever that’s worth) in our unit tries it and snaps her leg like a dry stick. I heard the snap from 30 yards away followed by screams.
Women aren’t built the same way and will break down in the Infantry. Either suddenly like my example or gradually as they destroy their knees, backs, and hips that were not designed for those kinds of stresses.
On May 23, 2019 at 12:53 pm, JoeFour said:
Here:
Here’s a link to the testimony of one combat-tested Marine circa 1992 concerning the ill-logic of placing women in military combat roles:
https://www.tfp.org/testimony-of-col-john-w-ripley-to-the-presidential-commission-on-the-assignment-of-women-in-the-armed-forces/
On May 23, 2019 at 12:59 pm, ExpatNJ said:
A female in the Marines – or in any live combat scenario – certainly represents many legitimate and logistical concerns. But, re-read this paragraph, slowly, and think – hard – about what it implies:
“URBAN … room clearing, close-quarters battle and combat marksmanship.
Students taught … decisions in an URBAN setting … live-fire …”
[abridged, EMPHASIS added]
Not “mud huts”. Not “desert”. Not “arctic”. Not “mountains”. But, “urban”. They are training to hit residential areas, and, ultimately, all of us. With live ammo, to boot. And, not just the male ‘graduates’, either. There are few creatures more vicious than a woman on a power-trip, with ‘roid-rage’, pi$$ed-off’, menstruating, etc.
Or, did the world suddenly become all “urban” while I had my back turned?
On May 23, 2019 at 1:09 pm, Georgiaboy61 said:
@ Longbow
Re: “It is a sick, sick society which sends its WOMEN off to war.”
Yes, precisely – only a sick, morally-confused society sends its women to war in the first place. It is especially sick when able-bodied men are available and the society isn’t under existential threat from an armed invader, i.e., as the USSR was during “The Great Patriotic War,” what the Russians call WWII.
When a soldier – a man – dies in combat, it is tragic, but it is the way of the world. Men have been fighting and dying in wars since we first became humans eons ago. When a woman dies in combat, however, it is an atrocity – an outrage – against everything our civilization once held dear.
Biologically, men are designed to be cheap and expendable. If you look around the natural world, that is usually the pattern. The multitudes of male worker bees sacrifice themselves so that the queen may live to reproduce, thereby perpetuating the colony. And so on.
Female humans are the only ones capable of bearing young. Men can’t do it. Therefore, they are the cornerstone of civilization – the keystone without which the whole edifice comes tumbling down. When men march off to war, that’s what they’re fighting to defend – family, home, hearth and their birthright.
Men are designers and builders, explorers, makers, doers of great deeds – and fighters of wars. Wars are men’s business. A woman’s greatest contribution to her society and civilization, not withstanding whatever other talents she may have, comes at the home and hearth. “The hand that rocks the cradle” truly rules the world.
By sending women into combat – particularly young and still-fertile women – we are literally killing the seed corn of our civilization.
On May 23, 2019 at 1:32 pm, Gryphon said:
ExpatNJ – The more the (((bolsheviks))) turn the Military into SJW Clown World, the Less Effective they will be when (not If) they are turned against the People.
However Remote the Scenario, I think that a few Container Ships of Chinamart Troops would be a Greater Danger to Fight than USSA/NATO/UN ‘Blue Helmets”.
On May 23, 2019 at 4:19 pm, John said:
Reality always settles these things. As Kipling wrote:
“But Iron – Cold Iron – is master of them all.”
On May 23, 2019 at 5:38 pm, Dov Sar said:
When I was young, a friend of mine’s sister worked at a steel plant. She was a little blonde about 5’6″ and skinny. A man of about 220 lb, big dude, had an accident and the air where he was was bad causing him to be unconscious, so she donned an oxygen mask and carried him out. She never lifted weights or anything; it was just an adrenaline thing I guess. I suspect if the Marines are smart (!?!) they might be testing such things for all their people.
On May 23, 2019 at 9:04 pm, Chris Mallory said:
“Or, did the world suddenly become all “urban” while I had my back turned?”
Fallujah, Baghdad, Mogadishu, and Basra are few urban combats just off the top of my head.
There are 47 megacities in the world today. (more than 8 million people and a density of more than 2000 per km) China has 15 of them. India has 5. Brazil and Pakistan each have two. Egypt, Nigeria, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo each have one. Throw in the Philippines, Mexico and Iran and I can see where “urban” training might be needed.
In the US, they already own the urban areas.
On May 24, 2019 at 11:23 am, Bram said:
ExpatNJ – You are probably right that the emphasis on urban warfare is a little bit of fighting the last war. When I was taught room-clearing / urban warfare at the height of the Cold War it all about killing everyone in the area – we prepped rooms with frags, not flash-bangs. Everyone knew urban warfare is a meat-grinder to be avoided whenever possible (well, Hitler didn’t get it). Just avoid the cities or burn them down.
Now that we train to be occupation troops fighting insurgencies, they have to emphasize those skills.
On May 24, 2019 at 12:38 pm, TheAlaskan said:
@ Georgiaboy61
Worker bees are not male. Only the drones are male, and they don’t ‘work.’
A better analogy in the entomological sense…um…don’t think there is one.
Female spiders mate, then kill the males.
Worker ants are female.
Worker bees are female.
Worker bumble bees are female.
Male bees cannot sting. Only females can sting.
Males in the insect world are almost always smaller.
Males in the mammal world are almost always larger.
Males in the mammal world are the ones that sting.
On May 25, 2019 at 5:21 pm, Unknownsailor said:
“Female humans are the only ones capable of bearing young.”
Human females are also the bottleneck of human reproduction. A man can sire as many children as he has the energy to impregnate. Any single female can have at most 48-50 in her lifetime, if she spends her entire reproductive life pregnant the whole time.
On May 25, 2019 at 5:37 pm, somedude said:
I agree and disagree. many female partisan thru out history proven very effective and caused a lot of havok. we did not see them humping a shit ton of gear, fight lite, GW, sniper/DM roles. to quote “Josey Wales, Die’n not hard, live’n is hard, when all have you has been rapped and butchered.”
On May 25, 2019 at 8:43 pm, X said:
I think there is a role for women in the military, but it is definitely not in combat and not in infantry.
In fairness, the “first” few women to make it through previously male-only training are usually pretty good and legitimately earned it. And in a volunteer force, the “first” women are going to be pretty motivated and squared away. But they are the exception, not the rule. The problem is that once you open previously male combat MOSs to women, you’re going to get a regression to the mean and the standards invariably get lowered in the future. In other words, there might be 1 or 2 women out of every ten thousand who can legitimately hack it, but you’re never going to field an entire division of women capable of storming Omaha Beach. Armies are by definition masses of people. It makes no sense to accommodate what is literally a handful of female exceptions.
Speaking of which, the only reason why the Joint Chiefs could even consider putting women into front-line infantry roles is because we’re never, ever going to fight another serious land war ever again (unless it’s a civil war). We’re never going to have direct combat against the Peoples’ Liberation Army like we did at Chosin in Korea. We’re never going to have another Normandy or Bastogne or Bulge — where we had 19,000 men KIA in one month of subzero fighting. If we’re dumb enough to try it, we’ll get our asses kicked unless we resort to nuclear weapons — and we haven’t done that in almost 75 years.
The military has become the global imperial police force of our post-peak empire. It’s the Post Office with guns. That’s why we let women into front-line positions — same reason we let women deliver the mail.
On May 25, 2019 at 9:08 pm, Jody Marvin said:
Men It will be a lonely world if your woman can’t fight along side you. And as far as a 130 lb woman of muscle when her adrenaline kicks in she LL leave no man, unless black, purple or yellow behind.
On May 25, 2019 at 9:50 pm, Ross said:
Col.David Hackworth said it best: “sure women can fight, but is that what we want as a nation. The Israelis already field tested the idea and it was an abysmal failure. In actual combat the Israeli soldiers bacame thoroughly demoralized when the females would would get blown apart. Combat is grotesque enough! Try having a disembodied female breast flop over your arm. It broke the men’s fihting spirit.”
Of course that was at a time when women were held in higher regard than they are today. How far we have fallen.
On May 26, 2019 at 6:19 am, robert orians said:
I’m sure this scares the crap out of the Russian spetsnaz .
On May 26, 2019 at 7:59 am, Gary said:
Time for a civilian pukes take: I grew up reading WWII history, especially 8th air force. I now realize that these were all (possibly by necessity) slanted but the one thing that seemed to be a common thread in any book that referenced it is that when soldiers talked among themselves about what they were fighting for it generally wasn’t freedom or the American way of life but when distilled down to the essence it was “the American woman”. That is being taken away, on purpose.
A recruiting poster for the state of Tennessee during the Southern war for independence (It was not a traditional civil war) explicitly mentions the Yankees coming for our women. Propaganda; absolutely, but very effective propaganda.
One other rant FWIW is that one component of the uniparty seems hell bent on using the military as a social laboratory. The CNN article referenced above illustrates the fruits of that. Meet your new CO.
On May 26, 2019 at 8:58 am, Sean Cory said:
Van Creveld wrote on this. Worth a reading.
https://www.amazon.com/Men-Women-War-Belong-Front/dp/0304359599/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=van+creveld+men+women+war&qid=1558879013&s=gateway&sr=8-3
On May 26, 2019 at 11:48 am, PJ said:
Any variable such as human strength follows the bell-shaped curve (maybe a Gaussian distribution, IIRC). If we imagine X amount of strength is needed to complete a course, than both curves, one of women and one of men, will have some individuals strong enough; it’s the tail of the distribution. It’s just that there will be a lot more men than women that will fit. The real question is, does it make sense to accommodate the odd female who will fit? It’s clear that the political answer to this question is “yes”. Political answers do not have to make sense in the real world.
On May 26, 2019 at 6:13 pm, George True said:
Words fail me.
Many years ago at Marine Corps OCS at Quantico, there was one platoon of women Officer candidates. The strongest and most physically fit among them were not as fit or physically tough as the weakest male candidates who were washed out halfway through the program. On six mile marches at 3 mph with light assault gear (rifle, helmet, web belt with canteens & ammo pouches, Alice pack, and boots) the female candidates were dropping like flies from heat, exhaustion, and injury, keeping our Navy corpsmen very busy. Nevertheless, even though they clearly could not meet the standards, most of them were commissioned anyway.
In those days the females were not allowed into combat MOS’s, so even though it was obvious for all to see that they simply could not measure up, it was reasoned that since they were headed for support roles and not the combat arms, all would be well. Today, 40 years later, women still do not and cannot measure up, and yet they are being given billets in ground combat units. I am appalled at the willful stupidity and irrationality of such a thing, and frightened for my country and my Marine Corps.
On May 26, 2019 at 6:40 pm, Lakeisha Clinton said:
Not a very professional photograph! Imagine what would happen if a photo of “white” graduates was published by the clinton news network? Good thing they are training with swords! Imagine if they wete all pointing M-4’s at each other? And…how long till we start seeing armed female gang bangers coming out of the Army? What a mess!
On May 26, 2019 at 8:08 pm, infantryjj said:
Hey JoeFour,
Notice that almost half the women do not meet height/weight standards?
How can that be? Especially at the LEADER level?
On May 26, 2019 at 9:35 pm, Georgiaboy61 said:
@ The Alaskan
Re: “Worker bees are not male. Only the drones are male, and they don’t ‘work.’ A better analogy in the entomological sense…um…don’t think there is one.”
Other than showing my basic zoology skills need brushing up – and that you enjoy being a pedant, what precisely is your point? I’ll admit that my entomological skills aren’t the best but that in no way negates the validity of my arguments concerning the idiocy of allowing women into the combat arms, in particular the ground combat arms.
Do you have anything to add to the conversation other than snark, or is that the sum of your contribution to the conversation?
By the way, considering that your post verges on being an ad-hominem attack, you might wish to keep in mind that the tactic is often the last resort of one who has no other arguments to make.
On May 26, 2019 at 10:38 pm, Georgiaboy61 said:
@ Jody Marvin
“Men It will be a lonely world if your woman can’t fight along side you. And as far as a 130 lb woman of muscle when her adrenaline kicks in she LL leave no man, unless black, purple or yellow behind.”
Get your facts straight – and while you’re at it, learn some military history.
A woman can pull a trigger as well as a man, which is why women made good OSS agents in WWII, for example. Under the right circumstances, they can function well in partisan and guerilla warfare roles as well, which was also seen in WWII and on other occasions. But these tasks, these roles, are not the same as being able to function in the role of combat infantryman, or in the other combat arms.
To be an infantryman is to be a beast of burden. The seventy-fifth anniversary of D-Day, the Invasion of Normandy, is coming up on June 6th. In the book, “Band of Brothers,” by the late historian Stephen E. Ambrose, the men of the now-famous E Company, 506th PIR, 101st Airborne Division, describe how overloaded they were for their drop.
A typical paratrooper in the 101st or 82nd Airborne boarded his C-47 loaded down with his individual weapon, typically an M-1 Garand, plus one or more bandoleers of 30-06 ammunition for it; possibly a sidearm (if he was authorized one or had managed to obtain one via atypical channels), such as a Colt M1911 .45 Automatic plus 2-3 loaded magazines; fragmentation and smoke grenades; virtually every man carried spare ammunition for the crew-served weapons – 60mm mortar rounds, 30-06 ammunition for the Browning .30-caliber MG, or bazooka rockets – or components of these weapons such as the 60mm mortar sight, base and tube, etc. – even if he wasn’t assigned duties with one of these weapons. An individual first aid kit; water and field rations; web gear; his pack; poncho and poncho liner; musette bag; gas mask and container; a few personal effects for hygiene; a map of Normandy; some French franc notes; cigarettes & lighter; compass. Bayonet/scabbard; fighting knife/scabbard; entrenching tool. Bed-roll. Demolitions (if relevant to the mission). A primary parachute, plus a reserve chute; Mae West life jacket. Leg bag for additional gear (suspended from a line beneath him as he parachuted in, or so went the theory).
There are probably a few items I missed, but that’s the scope of what those men carried. A typical paratrooper who weighed 160 lbs. might double in weight by the time all of his gear was loaded onto him.
Relatively few men can carry that kind of weight for any length of time, and the number of women who can is so small as to be statistically insignificant.
It isn’t simply carrying the weight for a short time, either. The troopers of the elite British SAS special operations force have been known to leave for long-range reconnaissance patrols with as much as 200 lbs. on their backs. If you don’t believe me, research the men of “Bravo Two Zero,” who did just such a long-range patrol/mission behind enemy lines in Gulf War One.
As for your contention, “And as far as a 130 lb woman of muscle when her adrenaline kicks in she LL leave no man, unless black, purple or yellow behind.”
This is simply pure fantasy. You’re seen “GI Jane” and “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider” a few too many times.
I am a black-belt level martial artist with more than thirty years of experience as a student, competitor and then teacher of martial arts ranging from Krav Maga to Karate to Judo to Hapkido and Brazilian Jujitsu. I am an assistant head instructor in the program to which I belong. I have seen, trained with and instructed hundreds of people – including dozens of female students ranging in age from 13 years to women in their fifties.
In all of my years of experience in the martial arts, whether empty-handed or with weapons, I have never seen a female – of any age – beat a teenaged or older male in a one-on-one match or fight. The only guys the women can beat are boys who haven’t yet hit puberty and their growth spurt. In fact, I’ve never even seen a close call.
Even our very best female students simply do not have the reserves of strength, stamina and raw aggressiveness that even typical, ordinary guys do. Even the advanced female students end up losing as soon as it goes to the ground. The guys are simply too big and too strong.
I am not claiming that there aren’t women capable of beating a man in a one-on-one physical confrontation. I’m sure there are, somewhere, a number of such women. But they are extremely rare, which is why I have never seen one in our program.
We do make effective martial artists out of our best female students, but we certainly don’t do it by telling them politically-correct lies about the realities of hand-to-hand combat with men.
Look, I’m not trying to be cruel. But the fact is that many of our teenaged girls can’t handle the thought of training with fake – FAKE, as in made of plastic and rubber – guns and knives. A few have actually burst into tears right there on the spot. We handle such situations in as sensitive a manner as possible; nothing is held against these students in any way. When we get to that portion of our curriculum, many quit. We don’t see them anymore.
Contrast that with the guys, who get amped up and excited to get weapons training. They eat it up – most love it, love the challenge.
The experiment of women in the ground combat arms has been tried by various nations during the 20th century, including Israel and the Soviet Union, under conditions of extreme crisis during which the survival of the nation hung in the balance. None of those nations kept women in the ground combat arms long-term, once the crisis had passed.
During the early years of that nation, the Israelis tried using women for a time in their paramilitary Haganah, a light infantry force. It was found that facing females in battle enraged the Arab soldiers facing them, and captured women were routinely raped repeatedly, otherwise tortured and then executed. It was standard Arab practice to mutilate the bodies. When word of these atrocities reached the Israeli public, an outcry ensued and placing women into combat positions of this kind was abandoned.
The Russians used women extensively during the Great Patriotic War (WWII), including in service/support roles, intelligence, medicine, and also as pilots. Some of their top-scoring snipers were women, as were some of their air aces (who flew primary night-fighters). Notwithstanding their contributions, as soon as the crisis passed, the Soviet Union resumed its policy of using women only in non-combatant roles. They had found that the additional burdens – the “friction” – women introduced into heretofore all-male units outweighed their benefits.
The day may come not too far in the future when advances in technology – practical exoskeletons for infantry, for example, or genetic engineering – make such arguments moot, but until then, it is the height of folly to use women in roles for which they are unsuited in comparison to men. It will only get good men – and more than a few women, too – needlessly killed or wounded. Such politically-correct foolishness will also likely cause us to lose battles and perhaps even wars.
On May 27, 2019 at 9:24 am, Dov Sar said:
There is an important thing to see here. One is, “can women fight,” and the other is “should they fight.” Everyone focuses on the first question, only a few here bring up the second question.
For example on the second question (should they fight), obviously can they fight is part of that, but there is so much more. Like:
1. What does having a woman in their unit do to the men? Men tend to be protective of women instinctually; does this mess up their ability to fight? Or worse, do they so get used to women fighting and dying that they cease to be men in the normal sense, and treat women like men, and society/the family breaks down?
2. What does fighting do to the woman…..is motherhood affected by PTSD and the trauma of war? Nature shows us that stressed females often do not bear children or want to nuture them.
3.What does having women in the unit do to the enemy? Some enemies will fight ferociously to the death not to be beaten by women, others believe they go to hell if they are killed by a woman and so they leave.
4. The most obvious question that is already answered by nature; what happens when you put young, hormone infested men and women together in a stressful situation, where they are even sleeping in close proximity? Nature would reply that you get little baby soldiers from this arrangement.
There are many more questions but you get my drift. National leadership needs to think closely and rationally about these questions. The answers are different for different units; the Air Force may have one set of answers, Army and Marine Corps infantry another, Navy and Marine Air yet another, etc. because of how they live and fight, but human nature is human nature and wishful thinking is not strategic thinking or even tactical thinking.
On May 27, 2019 at 7:29 pm, SgtLef said:
Is this a Biological Female? Or a Man with a Mental Illness in a dress?
On May 27, 2019 at 11:46 pm, DAN III said:
INFANTRYJJ @ 2008,
Oh, but they DO meet weight standards….FOR WOMEN ! Army allows females to literally be fat because of their biological structure. Yet, on the other hand that same structure invites stress fractures and lesser, upper body strength.
And as far as West Point is concerned….who cares ? For more than 50 years they ceased turning out warriors to win the nation’s wars. The “Point” is no longer relevant to the defense of the nation. It has become, and is, nothing more than another social justice program administered by the Left and funded by the ever decreasing number of taxpayers !
As we used to say:
FTA !
On May 28, 2019 at 1:31 am, Georgiaboy61 said:
@ Dov Sar
Re: “There is an important thing to see here. One is, “can women fight,” and the other is “should they fight.” Everyone focuses on the first question, only a few here bring up the second question.”
Since the advent of the AFV – “all-volunteer force” (the name is a misnomer, but that’s for another time) -nearly fifty years ago in the mid-1970s, there have been precisely zero – nada, none, zip – rigorous and unbiased studies of the effectiveness of the AFV force structure, by outside and independent analysts/observers. There have been plenty of studies presented as such by the Pentagon/DOD’s PR people, but none have actually been rigorous, unbiased or otherwise untainted by contamination of various sorts.
Moreover, the armed forces – which is to say the federal government – has ben lying to itself and the American public about the relative merits and drawbacks of the coed military force structure, virtually since the establishment of the AVF and the first large influx of women into uniform after the change-over.
The Pentagon/DOD knows where its proverbial (fiscal) bread is buttered, and draconian penalties have been established to prevent the raw (unflattering to women in uniform) data from seeing the light of day. How draconian? If you are in the military, either temporarily or as a profession, anyone who questions the received politically-correct dogma about women in uniform is shown the door. It is literally a career-ender, which is why virtually the only ones talking about the issue are former (retired) military and civilians.
It is routine practice within the armed forces to “pencil-whip” (edit/erase/change to bring into line with official thinking) test results, fitness reports, or other data which tends to show women in uniform in a bad light. Conversely, anything which tends to show female military personnel in a good light is boosted to the max, exaggerated, played-up – as “proof” that the all-new military is as good as all of the talking heads say it is. This PR campaign is no new thing, either – this has been going on since Gulf War One more than twenty-five years ago.
Whatever skills, talents, drive, etc. individual female uniformed personnel offer are almost always offset by the opposite side of the ledger. Women have a valid and valuable contribution to make to the nation’s defense in the traditional areas they have always done so – rear-area service/support jobs and in medicine and nursing. However, when women move into – are forced into- non-traditional roles, they invariably degrade readiness, manning levels, and other performance metrics. However damaging these outcomes are – and they are very damaging – the worst is yet to come.
By their very presence on/near the battlefield and in heretofore all-male combat units, women subtly (or not-so-subtly) alter and sharply degrade morale, unit cohesion and the all-important espirit de corps which form so much of the psychological and psychic fuel of an effective combat unit.
By their very presence, women in the ranks degrade and damage these things. It doesn’t matter how “good a soldier” GI Jane might be; her presence alone is destructive to the fighting power of the men around her.
Proponents of the AVF like to claim that it is the finest fighting force ever fielded by the U.S. That’s rubbish. That’s known as an unsupported assertion. If one takes a dispassionate look at the data, the AVF in fact has a very mixed record in combat and in the winning of wars.
Perhaps my age and biases are showing, but many of the best military forces we’ve ever sent to war were fielded in the era of conscription during the late 19th and 20th centuries. The guys who protected and defended this nation right up to the end of the Vietnam War.
These men neither needed nor wanted women in the ranks, but they got them anyway, courtesy of the social engineers on the ‘Hill, and the perfumed princes in the Pentagon/DOD.
Skeptics will claim that the “hollow army” of the late Vietnam Era is “proof” that the AVF was necessary, but that’s bunk. That syndrome was real, but it certainly didn’t come about because the army wasn’t coed.
The old-school pre-AVF military had a superb record in battle, and you don’t fix what isn’t – what wasn’t – broken.
On May 28, 2019 at 1:33 am, TheAlaskan said:
@ Georgiaboy61
“Other than showing my basic zoology skills need brushing up – and that you enjoy being a pedant, what precisely is your point? I’ll admit that my entomological skills aren’t the best but that in no way negates the validity of my arguments concerning the idiocy of allowing women into the combat arms, in particular the ground combat arms.”
I often use natural history metaphors. Nature often teaches. Read the last two sentences. Nature agrees with you.
“Do you have anything to add to the conversation other than snark…”
Snark is correcting you? Chill.
So my “contribution to the conversation” is:
https://thebrokenelbow.com/2016/04/08/the-experience-of-women-in-the-ira-and-uvf/
Being a black belt doesn’t mean you’re out of range. And that’s truly gender neutral.
On May 28, 2019 at 4:40 am, Georgiaboy61 said:
@ TheAlaskan
Your reading comprehension needs work.
The subject of the discussion is the suitability of women for roles in the conventional military, specifically the ground combat arms, and not their relative merits (or lack of same) as paramilitaries, guerillas and the like. A point I made clear in the following paragraph:
“A woman can pull a trigger as well as a man, which is why women made good OSS agents in WWII, for example. Under the right circumstances, they can function well in partisan and guerilla warfare roles as well, which was also seen in WWII and on other occasions. But these tasks, these roles, are not the same as being able to function in the role of combat infantryman, or in the other combat arms.”
Your “contribution to the discussion,” as you put it, “The Experience Of Women In The IRA And UVF” isn’t really relevant to the discussion, since the original article had nothing to do with the IRA or anything like them. I certainly didn’t mention them.
A young woman, a civilian clad in a leather jacket and dress, firing an Armalite rifle – does not a soldier make. If wearing a dress and pulling a trigger on a gun was all there was to being a professional soldier, your grandma could do it. But you and I both know that’s not how it works. In fact, your whole point is a non-sequitur and makes no sense in the context of the original discussion. Why bring up the IRA in the first place? I certainly didn’t.
Re: “Being a black belt doesn’t mean you’re out of range. And that’s truly gender neutral.”
Never claimed anything of the sort – and you are engaging in the straw-man fallacy.
By the way, there’s no such word as “gender” in the science of biology; that is a neologism invented by the Cultural Marxists so they could play games redefining human sexuality according to their ideology. Biological scientists – at least the ones worth anything – speak of sex, not gender. Sex is genetically-determined at the chromosomal level and immutable.
Humans are a sexually-dimorphic species, one in which the adult male is almost always stronger, tougher, faster and more-aggressive – all of which matter in combat, especially ground combat.
Your assertion that “having a black belt doesn’t mean you’re out of range” may be true, but what of it? Being able to pull a trigger doesn’t make one a soldier, let alone a proficient infantryman. And combat is also fought at close range, sometimes hand-to-hand range, and when it is, size, strength and aggressiveness matter even more.
Little Suzie Snowflake is going to be at a fatal disadvantage when it comes time to clear houses, room by room, just as our Marines – male Marines – had to do in the Battle of Fallujah during the mid-2000s. Observers called it the most intense urban combat since Stalingrad. I wasn’t there, so don’t know if that claim is correct or not, but if it is even partially-true, it was no place for a woman, Marine or not.
Forcing female personnel into heretofore all-male ground combat units will – and already has – severely damage moral, unit cohesion and espirit de corps – all of which are vital to the success of the soldier or Marine in combat.
Moreover, every female taking up a billet that could have been given to a male, deprives her team of that warrior. Even the women who try hard to perform generally can’t hack it with the real heavy-duty work of being in the ground combat arms.
When it comes time to unload six-by-sixes, break track, dig fighting positions or fill and stack sandbags, many of the gals all of a sudden come down with menstrual cramps or some such. Even the ones who try to help are at such a strength disadvantage, they are all-but-worthless. Guess who has to take up the slack of the non-hacker females? The men in her unit.
Don’t take my word for it; ask around – I’ve lost count of how many times I have heard these stories from men who were there.
Effective all-male combat infantry units neither need nor want women’s presence out on the line. Placing them there only endangers the men and women themselves, and places us at risk for losing engagements, battles and thereby wars.
On May 28, 2019 at 6:44 am, Matt Bracken said:
Terrific comments thread!
I agree 100% with The Alaskan, BTW.
On May 28, 2019 at 9:17 am, 3green said:
My two centavos….
Served with 2nd MAR Div in the mid 1980’s during that short period of relative calm that that lasted a few quick years before the current full hot training cycle that seems to have remained on broil since the “sandbox wars that never end” became the SOP.
Bn held a monthly all available hands nature walk hump that consisted only of 782 gear, and weapon. New CO was outraged, and demanded full combat load out. The dozen or BAMs that couldn’t weasel out of the real world hump got a stark lesson in biology. I remember the Bn SGT Major shaking his head in open disgust. The route was a cake walk 8 miles. Not ONE of the WMs made it past the 4 mile point. As I recall, if you didn’t get tagged with
a baseplate, T/E for “Ma”, or a spare mort round, the loadout was about 80
pounds. Most of the women had “helium” filled ALICE packs and were probably at half that weight on actual payload. I saw this roundy-round happen 2 times, and from then on, all of the Bn WMs were quietly excused from further full gear humps. This “failed experiment” was conducted 34 years ago. Is anyone paying
attention ?
On May 28, 2019 at 10:09 am, Desert Pundit said:
“None of the course standards has changed since women began serving in infantry roles, …”
I am not a lawyer, but if I were, I would parse this to mean that the standards changed right before women began serving in infantry roles. So, as another commenter noted, what are the standards? Are they different for men and women? Were standards reduced from previous standards?
As to black female military academy graduates, I had (support MOS) male and female officers of many races and all were top officers. As long as these women are not whiny self-indulgent victims of society I support them in their non-combat careers.
On May 28, 2019 at 5:49 pm, Dindoo said:
From 86 to 00, I met 1 female who pulled her own weight.
1
from 86 to 00.
The rest were princesses and posers. Bitter and vindictive to boot.
On May 29, 2019 at 12:34 pm, TheAlaskan said:
@ Georgiaboy61
“A young woman, a civilian clad in a leather jacket and dress, firing an Armalite rifle – does not a soldier make.”
That 1970 photo has been cropped. The full frame shows another women behind her, facing to the rear, moving during the snap, thereby causing blurred arms with an object in her hands, holding what seems to be a SMG, covering her rear and right flank. The unknown women with the AR-18, judging by the bullet marked wall, is engaging a sandbagged British post in Belfast. Both women are engaged in combat against a world class conventional force manned by men that are ruck-trained, stronger and perhaps, combat veterans.
They didn’t have to stack sandbags, unload 6x6s , or ruck 20 miles with an 80# load on their backs. But there they are, engaging in combat arms. “Little Suzie Snowflake,” is fully aware of the consequences of her actions.
Being indignant about the US Military’s attempt to pound a square peg into a round hole is laughable. That’s been going on for decades, the F-35 being another example. Reality, which always wins, will eventually sort that out.
” If wearing a dress and pulling a trigger on a gun was all there was to being a professional soldier, your grandma could do it.”
She’s not wearing a dress. She’s in full military dress, no pun intended. She is in full camo. When I look at that powerful photo, I see two soldiers, who happen to be women, engaging a far superior force, in combat.
And yet, there’s even more…
And that is…They. Won. Their. War.
It’s a mind set, not a sex set.
On November 18, 2019 at 4:41 pm, Georgiaboy61 said:
@The Alaskan
Re: “She’s not wearing a dress. She’s in full military dress, no pun intended. She is in full camo. When I look at that powerful photo, I see two soldiers, who happen to be women, engaging a far superior force, in combat.”
Nice try, Alaskan, but being a partisan or member of an underground or resistance movement isn’t the same as intentionally placing women in the ground combat arms.
I am fully-prepared to admit that women have distinguished themselves in irregular warfare, during the Second World War as members of the SOE, OSS, and in various European resistance movements, to name one example. Or the young woman fighting the British in Northern Ireland.
The above roles are not the same as being an Army Ranger or a Force Recon Marine and being expected to shoulder an eighty-pound pack and ruck all-night prior to setting up an ambush before dawn at the conclusion of the fifteen mile road march. If you need someone to draw you a roadmap to illustrate such a simple truth, to explain that to you – then obviously you don’t really understand the stakes involved.
It isn’t an issue of bravery or commitment or patriotism. Women have those things every bit as much as many men do. It’s an issue of biological capability. Like it or not, size, strength, and aggression matter in ground combat – and most women fall short of men in those respects.
Reality always gets the last vote, and it doesn’t care what apologists such as yourself think. Putting women into the Army Rangers, SEALs, SOF-Delta, and Marine infantry will get good men killed and will cost battles and unnecessary bloodshed in the future – count on it.
In fact, the ongoing slow-motion trainwreck that is our co-ed military has already done just that – and not just in the areas above, but across all branches of the armed forces. Women degrade combat readiness and operational performance wherever they are found amongst heretofore all-male combat units.
Well, if we can’t beat the Chinese military in combat, I suppose we can always hope they laugh themselves to death at the stupidity of political-correctness.
On January 16, 2020 at 1:09 pm, Montana Guy said:
Let’s bring them into the NFL. We’ll at least have some entertainment while Rome burns.