Combat Fitness Standards
BY Herschel Smith
3 days, 11 hours ago
I largely agree with his perspectives, especially when he says that a country that would send its women off to war isn’t worth defending.
However, I would point out (based on my son’s experience) that a physical fitness test isn’t the be-all of proof of anything. His perspective is that you don’t lift a weight for ten minutes, or even a few hours. You may have to lift sand bags for a full day (he did in Fallujah). Or you may have to move tank artillery shells for a full day (he did in Fallujah). Or you may have to do it with no sleep for four days (he did in Fallujah). Or you may have to carry 125 pounds of kit plus a weapon system all days while you are sick (he did in Fallujah). A PT can neither test you for that nor prepare you for that.
Which again, is why we shouldn’t send women off to war.
On April 13, 2025 at 10:05 pm, Georgiaboy61 said:
Re: “However, I would point out (based on my son’s experience) that a physical fitness test isn’t the be-all of proof of anything. His perspective is that you don’t lift a weight for ten minutes, or even a few hours. You may have to lift sand bags for a full day (he did in Fallujah). Or you may have to move tank artillery shells for a full day (he did in Fallujah).”
Very well-said, including your your concluding sentences about the suitability of women for combat roles.
Years back, maybe 2007 or so – I ran into a a young woman at a diner – something like that. I was reading a military-themed book, maybe a Tom Clancy or W.E.B. Griffin novel or something. She piped up that she was going to join the military, and said that she wanted to be a Marine and be a “platoon leader” and lead men into combat.
Maybe I wasn’t very wise to say so, but I replied, something like “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” and it went downhill from there. At that time, the Corps still had not opened up its combat-arms slots to women, and I told this young woman that, whereupon she got irate and upset. “I can do that as well as any man!” and “I should be allowed to do it!” and so on.
I tried using reason and evidence – telling her some of things you noted about the brutally physical nature of the life of a combat soldier or Marine, but I might as well have been speaking a strange language or been from Mars for all of the good it did with this petite young woman. She replied that her PT scores were “as good as any man” and that she could “outrun them.” Yeah, what? In gym shoes wearing sweats?
Some of your readers may recall that I am a long-time martial artist, and that I taught/studied martial arts of various kinds for more than twenty years, rising to black belt rank and beyond. During that time, I have never once seen a female of any age, size of skill beat a teenaged or older man in hand-to-hand combat. Many of our female martial artists work very hard, are highly-skilled and some are quite brave – but they get overwhelmed by the raw strength speed, and aggressiveness of the guys.
We ran into “I am woman, hear me roar!” types all the time, usually teenaged female students who had been conditioned by years of Hollywood, video games and cable TV to believe that women weighing 100 lbs. soaking wet can pick up men twice their size and weight and hurl them across the room, or take on and defeat dozens of men at a time in individual combat.
The “GI Jane” Effect or maybe “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider”…. something like that.
But that’s the sort of brain-washing and ignorance of reality that reformers like Secretary Hegseth are up against. And there’s been decades of it….
It isn’t simply strength or its lack which makes women unsuited to being in heretofore male combat arms units. Their very presence is detrimental to unit cohesion, morale, and fighting power. As noted by author Kingsley Browne in his excellent book, “Coed Combat,” the “strength of the wolf is the pack, and sometimes that pack has to remain male…”
Thee are roles for which women are well-suited, including some which are considered high-risk and dangerous. Women can make very good spies and espionage operatives, and they can also perform well and make a contribution in certain kinds of paramilitary work and irregular warfare; the evidence for that being the contributions made by female members of the resistance and underground movements in Occupied Europe during WW2, for example.
But in general, women who wish to serve their nation and civilization can do it best in those roles which women have always occupied. The defense of motherhood, the home, hearth and family are the very reasons men go off to fight wars in the first place; civilization was created in a very real sense to foster those things. Putting women in the front lines, in particular young women of child-bearing age, is literally “killing the seed corn” of civilization.
On April 13, 2025 at 10:41 pm, Dan said:
A PT/Fitness test will not tell for sure whether a soldier CAN do hard labor all day for days on end. But failing a PT/Fitness test is a pretty good indicator that they would NOT be able to do so.
On April 14, 2025 at 12:17 am, Georgiaboy61 said:
@Dan
Re: ” But failing a PT/Fitness test is a pretty good indicator that they would NOT be able to do so.”
Yes, by all means, standard physical fitness tests are a great screening tool, and have a lot of utility… which is why everyone relies on them so much. No disagreement there. But they don’t tell the complete story, and nor are they accurate surrogates or substitutes for certain activities or jobs.
The picture gets more complex when it comes to the military, because the military – as an institution, I mean – has been lying to itself, Congress, and the electorate for a very long time, decades really, since women first entered the armed forces in large numbers in the 1980s.
When it was discovered that women and men did not perform to the standard standards on physical fitness tests, the army was faced with a dilemma: The policy-makers said that “you will” accept these women and use them in jobs for which they are eligible.
Rather than do the honest-but-hard thing and tell Congress that inter-mixing women and men in this manner was not possible and something else ought to be tried – Big Green and the Pentagon instead came up with a work-around they called “gender norming.”
The armed forces do their best to pretend – by which I mean that it was/is official policy – that gender-norming is fair-and-equitable to all members of the service, and that standards remain high and have not been diluted, that is so much hogwash.
“Gender norming” is nothing more than a handicapping system, not unlike the kind used by golfers to level the playing field between pros and duffers who can break a hundred for eighteen holes.
That system is what has gotten us to the absurd position of having a twenty-something female taking the same PFT that a male soldier in his fifties has to do. Actually, the guy’s test is still harder – even though he is three decades ahead of her in age.
Via gender-norming, a fit female recruit can finish at the top of her class in PT scores, when in reality she falls behind most/all of the men in objective terms. What’s worse is that these scores go into OERs – officer efficiency reports – and become a permanent part of the soldier’s record. Promotions, assignments, awards, pay, rank and more come into play – and all based upon the lie which is gender-norming.
It is also this system which says that a female recruit who passed basic training and AIT yet who cannot cock a machine gun or lift a tool box without (male) help, is fit to be a soldier. Hey, I’m an old man in my sixties – but I can still do both of those things better than Suzie Soldier. Wanna sign me up? I’m kidding, of course, but with the intent of making a point: The system is seriously screwed up. And has been for many years.
I am by training a biochemist and life scientist; I won’t bore you with all of the physiological data which separate male and female performance athletic and other performance, i.e., differing tidal volumes for respiration, differences in oxygen saturation of hemoglobin, per stroke volume differences in the heart, etc. Books have been written about that stuff, but it seems that no one in the DOD-Pentagon has read them.
On April 14, 2025 at 4:16 am, IA Brooks said:
That is, of course, why many women would, physically, be fully capable of performing combat tasks: many of them are very tough under real working conditions, though very few are stronger than men, or capable of besting them in hand-to-hand combat. But the physical side is not the point. We do not send women to war because our honour forbids it. That is why only two nations have ever done so: Bolshevik Russia and atheist Israel, because they hate God, and have no honour. Russia thankfully has recovered, to some extent. Israel never will.
On April 14, 2025 at 8:49 am, Herschel Smith said:
“That is, of course, why many women would, physically, be fully capable of performing combat tasks”
I disagree as I’ve said in the post.
On April 14, 2025 at 1:04 pm, scott s. said:
OK, but in my experience physical fitness tests were always normed to the general population so there were always different requirements for score for men and women and also by age. The tests were never directly tied to specific job requirements. I guess the army was trying to change that; last I heard it was experimental.
I don’t have a problem with rigorous testing for specialized schools like Ranger or jump school or SEALs (though to get through BUDS it has become so hard it can’t be done without pharmaceutical help).
The real problem is you can’t enough young people of either sex who can pass the current test. Meanwhile I just heard yesterday that Navy is going to start using the Marine PFT. I hope they have enough medical officers on standby for the old chiefs trying to complete the 3 mile run.
On April 14, 2025 at 1:10 pm, IA Brooks said:
If you’re thinking of 20 mile humps, day after day, with patrols in between, perhaps not. But most soldiers don’t do that. Not even the infantry, nowadays. It’s irrelevant however. Female capacity or incapacity is not why we forbid them combat.
On April 14, 2025 at 1:15 pm, Georgiaboy61 said:
@IA Brooks
Re: “That is, of course, why many women would, physically, be fully capable of performing combat tasks: many of them are very tough under real working conditions, though very few are stronger than men, or capable of besting them in hand-to-hand combat.”
Your argument is logically inconsistent and a non-sequitur. Combat makes demands upon the human body unlike anything else, and that goes double for the ground combat arms. Even male Olympic-caliber athletes have said that compared to combat, sports were a walk in the park.
Even the fittest young men can/are broken by the stresses of combat – and right now at least, they’re the best we have.
As our host has pointed out, it may mean not just lifting a 75-lb. artillery round once, but hundreds of times over a sustained period. Sure, many women can lift a 35-40-lb.sandbag once or a few times, but how about doing it all day and after filling them by hand? Can you carry mortar rounds from an ammo bunker to a firing position which may be hundreds of yards away, all day without much rest, food or water?
Hollywood makes infantry combat look glamorous, but in reality it is to be a beast of burden.
Fred Reed, the author/journalist/former Marine who was in combat in Vietnam, has had a standing offer for many years that no one – no woman or group of women – has yet taken up: It is something along the lines of forming two identical units, let’s say two companies of infantry – identically equipped and armed, carrying precisely the same loads in their rucks and on their backs – i.e.,including crew-served weapons, comms gear, medical supplies, ammo, water, food, etc. Total load per soldier/Marine ~ sixty pounds basic load, plus extras (ammo for the MGs, mortars, etc.).
The only difference is that one company would be all male, the other all female. The test would be a forced march at night of ten miles, following which the participants would – without pausing for sleep or rest/recuperation – dig-in/construct fighting positions to interdict an approaching enemy force. Ready to ambush the opposing force before dawn, they would then be on full alert. And once contact was made, engage the enemy for however long it takes to prevail in the engagement.
Thus hypothetical was based upon Reed’s experiences in Vietnam, it isn’t something he pulled out of the air: He and his fellow Marines really did this, on a more-or-less routine basis.
No one – no feminist, no group of female military members or aspirants – has taken up Reed on his offer. And with good reason: They know, as well as Reed does, what the outcome would be.
Women are neither needed nor wanted by male combat arms personnel in this most-Darwinian of environments. The only reason this ground truth is not spoken more-openly and frequently is because the brass will hammer anyone who dissents from the politically-correct line that women belong anywhere they want to be.
It is literally a career-ending move to speak so plainly…. which ought to tell you something all by itself concerning how Stalinist the U.S. military has become in recent years.
On April 14, 2025 at 1:27 pm, Georgiaboy61 said:
@IA Brooks
Re: “If you’re thinking of 20 mile humps, day after day, with patrols in between, perhaps not. But most soldiers don’t do that. Not even the infantry, nowadays.”
That’s utterly false and complete nonsense. I don’t know what rock you’ve been living under for the last twenty years, but that sort of action is precisely what our ground forces – a substantial portion of them, at any rate – have been doing in the Hindu Kush, a.k.a. Afghanistan.
10th Mountain Division? Ever heard of them? Yeah,sure they ride to the AO – area of operations – if there are roads to travel. Or maybe they insert by chopper, if there are enough available and the mission can be done by rotary winged aviation. But guess what? Most of the time, especially when they are operating in rugged terrain, they walk into action – just like their forbearers from a thousand years ago.
That doesn’t even get into the contingencies. What if you ride into action in vehicles, but the enemy knocks them out? Guess what? You’re probably gonna be using boot-leather to get home. Or what if the weather closes in and the choppers can come to pick you up, or the LZ is too hot? Same result: If you want to get anywhere,you going to be moving on foot.
Re: “It’s irrelevant however. Female capacity or incapacity is not why we forbid them combat.”
Female incapacity has a great deal to do with it. Combat is the most-Darwinian environment on earth, at least where humans are concerned. There’s no medals for second place or participation trophies. No “timeouts” or “stress cards” so Suzie Snowflake can fix her make-up. Get real…
On April 14, 2025 at 5:11 pm, Georgiaboy61 said:
@ IA
Re: “It’s irrelevant however. Female capacity or incapacity is not why we forbid them combat.”
One further point or two…
Despite what the opposition on the political left/communists, et al. claim, the exclusion of certain people from the armed forces isn’t about hurting anyone or denying them their rights. Nor is it about being “hateful”or “cruel.” Look at the big picture…
It is simply that this subject is of such utmost seriousness and gravity that no games can be played. We’re talking about the difference between surviving and not, the difference between being free and enslaved, the difference between winning battles and wars and losing them. That’s how high the stakes are – how existential.
Thus, I submit to you that focusing on the individual’s “right” to serve, or other self-centered, selfish reasons – does not serve the needs of the country, nor does it serve the basic mission of the armed forces. If someone genuinely wants to serve the nation, the very first words out of that person’s mouth ought to be “Where can I make a contribution, where can I best-serve the mission and the country?”
Because that is the foremost priority here.
The question of whether anyone has the “right” to join the military has been taken up by the Supreme Court on a number of occasions, and the justices have consistently ruled that the armed forces must have unqualified discretion and decision-making power about who gets in and who doesn’t – if they are to perform their mission (the defense of the nation) properly. Individual desires, wants and preferences are not supposed to have anything to do with it.
There is also something else: If you are a young woman of child-bearing age, the last place you belong is on the front lines and in battle. Why? Because only young women of child-bearing age can perpetuate our civilization. They and they alone can bear children. Placing young women in danger on the front line is literally to risk to future of our society and our people as a race.
If a young woman genuinely wants to do something truly special and great for her country, she can best-serve it by marrying and starting a family, having children and making a home for them.
Why? Because that is the corner-stone of civilization. Without those things, nothing else matters – nothing else gets preserved or perpetuated for the future.
This is why placing young women in danger on the front lines is literally “killing the seed corn” of our society and civilization. Literally, killing the future.
On April 14, 2025 at 5:19 pm, IA Brooks said:
@Georgia boy. Watching you perform hula hoops through your own navel, as you so frequently do on these pages, is always highly amusing. As I know that any attempt to correct you would be like wrestling with the proverbial pig, I will confine myself to a contemptuous smile, and pass on.
On April 14, 2025 at 7:04 pm, Georgiaboy61 said:
@IA Brooks
The ad-hominem attack, of course! The last resort of the loser of an argument…
Well-played, congratulations!
On April 15, 2025 at 8:27 am, IA Brooks said:
I’m delighted that you recognize your own tactics… Pity you indulged in it, but, as you say, you had no argument…
On April 15, 2025 at 8:31 am, IA Brooks said:
I’ll take your rubbish point by point. Point number one: all your contentions were in your own head. You failed to comprehend anything I wrote, so you made a strawman, and beat it to death. That’s it. There are no more points, fortunately for you; even you might be able to comprehend just one point.
On April 15, 2025 at 3:25 pm, Lori G said:
The video starts out silly, so I didn’t finish it. I don’t watch TV, and I don’t have a problem with large guns backfiring when I shoot them. In fact, I got the outstanding achievement in air to ground strafing for my A-4 class, and was an air-to-air gunnery instructor pilot in the 1980’s. I shot down an F-4 during a missile test launch in the 1990’s. Women can do some things, but mostly not other things.
As for the comments about Russia and Israel: Russia didn’t ‘send their women into combat’ as we think of it. Russia was overrun, and the Germans had no mercy on Slavic women. There were many Soviet women snipers and combat pilots, not for women’s lib, but because if they did not repulse the Germans there would be no future for Slavs, period. Their husbands and fathers were at war, and it is better to die with a weapon in your hand than to die helpless and humiliated at the hand of the invading army. Israel is not much different, as their enemies also have no mercy to women (see October 7 video). Neither country sent their women somewhere else to fight. Most Israeli women are not frontline combat troops; they watch security cameras, etc., which frees up men to do other things.
You might notice now that Russia, a few years ago, started reopening some combat aviation to women; mostly logistical aircraft and nuclear bombers. This might be a signpost that they are again expecting big war, as they only call for women volunteers in dire times.
America may have to use women in the next world war. Not as frontline ground combat operators, obviously, but in all sorts of other fields like medical, aviation, electronics, etc. Women have been in Naval Aviation for over 50 years. We are thinking that life will go on as normal, but World War will change many things, and if combat comes to our nation’s turf, we will have to be practical.
As for motherhood, this is best, but you might notice that many women are having their children ripped from their arms for things like refusing to get them vaccinated, or for not letting them gender transition, or for no reason at all. Motherhood is now a war zone.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/04/massachusetts-couple-accused-kidnapping-five-children-state-custody/
On April 15, 2025 at 3:28 pm, Lori G said:
The other link for motherhood as war zone:
https://www.wnd.com/2025/04/watch-officials-snatch-1-month-old-breastfeeding-baby-from-her-mom-and-navy-veteran-dad-at-gunpoint-without-charges-a-crime-or-due-process/
On April 15, 2025 at 3:46 pm, Georgiaboy61 said:
@ IA Brooks
More ad-hominem attacks. My you are a rather hateful little thing, aren’t you? Got under your skin, did I? Well, too bad. If you can’t handle an adult discussion on a serious topic without losing your temper, then perhaps that is a sign you ought to seek a less-challenging activity. Or try the decaf. next time….
Cheers!
On April 15, 2025 at 4:39 pm, IA Brooks said:
Drop the strawman, Georgieporgie: it wasn’t useful to begin with, and you’ve worn it out with your lascivious attentions…
On April 15, 2025 at 4:56 pm, IA Brooks said:
I can see that my talk of honour, not to mention the two hideous nations mentioned (Bolshevik Russia, and Israel) seem to have been the occasion for these personalities… The fact remains that conscripting women has never been a result of necessity, but always arises from ideology, whether that be godless Bolshevism, godless Zionism, or the savage tribes of West Africa. Where women have taken up arms spontaneously (as in the killing of Abimelech or Pyrrhus) it was noted as exceptional. Christendom, and the classical world before it, withheld women from combat for religious reasons, not because of some innate disability. Anybody who has watch Indian or Latin America farm labourers at their work will soon be disabused as to female weakness… Nor is their valour in dispute. No, it is purely a matter of religion, or lack of it. And America is very, very far from God.
On April 15, 2025 at 6:45 pm, Georgiaboy61 said:
@ IA Brooks
At no time did I impugn the the courage, competency or bravery of women generally, or American women in particular.
“Women taking up arms” is a horse of a different color than being in the combat arms. Anyone – male or female – who wears the uniform can find themselves in a gunfight. And members of both sexes have proven their ability to respond ably and well, even courageously at times. Just as there have been individuals who failed the test and didn’t bear up under fire.
An Army National Guard soldier, Leigh Ann Hester, was award the Silver Star for bravery for her conduct under fire when on March 20, 2011, her supply convoy was ambushed. She and other members of the Kentucky 617th Military Police Company, were instrumental in breaking up the attack.
With due respects to her bravery, being “caught in a gunfight” is not the same as looking for one, which is what combat arms soldiers do. being in the combat arms. The job of the infantry is the close with the enemy and destroy him or compel him to surrender. In other words, they are looking for a fight – that’s what they do. And these are the units which work best as all-male.
The communist/leftist regimes of Clinton, Obama, and Biden have arguably done irreparable or nearly irreparable damage to our best and most-lethal ground fighting forces, i.e., U.S. Army and Marine Corps, with an emphasis on the elite, such as the Rangers, Army Special Force and SOF-D, Navy SEALS, Marine Recon/Raiders, etc. How? By watering down standards so that otherwise-unqualified female personnel could get in.
We finally agree about something – that the communist ideology is evil, but you believe that the Cultural Marxists in this country are any better, you are dead wrong.
Even the Stalinist-era Red Army only utilized women because the UUSR’s back was against the wall and it was a matter of national survival. Soon as WW2 ended, all of those female-only combat arms units, i.e., female fighter pilots, snipers, etc. – got discharged and the Red Army reverted to being male, just as before the war.
The Israelis, being a socialist nation at their founding, in the late 1940s and early 1950s briefly tried women in the Haganah , the paramilitary ground force which fought against the Arabs.
However, it enraged the Arabs to fight women, and when Israeli female fighters were captured, they were typically gang-raped, tortured and killed – and then their bodies mutilated. When this became public knowledge, the government withdrew women from direct ground combat – a stance which it has not changed since. Female personnel can learn combat arms in training, but they function as trainers of others, and are not sent into battle as a matter of routine.
Don’t speak of honor when you wish to place women in harm’s way. Only a moral sick, confused and dishonorable nation sends women into danger in the first place when men are available.
On April 15, 2025 at 8:27 pm, Herschel Smith said:
I don’t understand the disagreement.
For me it isn’t either-or, it’s both-and.
We shouldn’t send women off to war because it’s obscene. It’s obscene because God forbids it. God forbids it because he calls them the “weaker sex.” He has given men the station in life to protect and defend, not women.
All of that is true, not some of that, not a little of that, not most of that. It’s all true.
On April 15, 2025 at 11:58 pm, Georgiaboy61 said:
@ H.S.
Re: “We shouldn’t send women off to war because it’s obscene. It’s obscene because God forbids it. God forbids it because he calls them the “weaker sex.” He has given men the station in life to protect and defend, not women.”
I couldn’t agree more. Good luck selling that as policy in this day-and-age, but I agree completely.
I have said for years – and published articles say so more than a decade ago – that only a morally confused and sick society sends women into harm’s way in the first place. In particular when there are men to do the job instead.
On April 16, 2025 at 12:00 am, Georgiaboy61 said:
@Lori G.
Re: “As for motherhood, this is best, but you might notice that many women are having their children ripped from their arms for things like refusing to get them vaccinated, or for not letting them gender transition, or for no reason at all. Motherhood is now a war zone.”
If that is true, then shouldn’t women fight all the harder to protect their birthright as mothers and protectors of children? A woman who turns her back on motherhood for those reasons you listed was not, IMHO, very committed to the idea in the first place.