Female Warriors: Safely Changing the Standard

I am not a vet but I am a martial arts instructor. Not the same thing, but I do have to deal with pairing women and men up and how to hold them each accountable.

Lowering the standards for the elite troops is a bad idea. As has been said, they are elite for a reason, if you can't pass the test you can't be one of them. That's just the way it has to be when your teammates lives are on the line.

I hold similar views on educations standards. We shouldn't lower standards to accommodate more people, we should figure out why more people aren't meeting the standards and address that issue. There are times when standards are too high (a few of my friends dating lives come to mind :lol: ) but for the most part when I see standards dropped it's not because they were too high, people just didn't want to meet them.

I was very excited to see that there were women applying and getting into the more elite teams recently. I have no problem with a woman Seal or Ranger or whatnot, so long as she can do all the same things the others do. Heck, they might discover that having a female on the team could be useful in ways that we didn't expect. Wouldn't that be cool.

steamboat28 wrote: I'm not a vet, but I feel like lowering standards is exactly the worst possible way of any conceivable way to solve this problem. Don't lower standards for female combatants. Challenge them to rise to the standards already set.

*edit*
After seeing Kit's post, I wanted to ask a question: isn't the reason for PT standards that, at any unpredictable point of time, any single individual member of the armed forces might be in a physical combat situation, regardless of what they trained for? Because, if I were training a military, that's what I'd want. I'd want a military full of potential combatants that do other things, not specialists that had some combat training.

Just to reiterate, I don't want to see Spec Forces' standards lowered for females, or any other combat type job. I don't think the female standards now should be lowered just to get more females on duty.

In a perfect world Steam, yeah. But (speaking from my experience in the Air Force rather than the military as a whole, because that's my only solid view) we are the smallest Air Force we've been in ages. I've been in for 11 years, I've done firearms training....five times? That's including the M9 and M4 training back-to-back I had before my last deployment. We simply don't have enough people to do the job we have now. Combat Training is secondary to that. Outside of Basic, the only non computer-based training I've done in regards to anything combat related was twice in my career. One was to train as a Security Forces Augmentee so I could guard the gate when they were short manned. The other was just before my last deployment to Djibouti (Horn of Africa). No training before I went to Iraq beyond weapons qual. We simply don't have the manning to dedicate time to combat training. It's either "Planes in the Air, Bombs on Target", OR personnel who can rough it with the Army. I promise that we're more useful to the war effort by getting those planes in the air.

Which goes back to all females training at the level of males despite the job. I would have to stop doing half my job in order to train to get to the male standards where I've known males who've not done PT in six months and still pass. I've been getting off late from work for months solid because there's not enough manning to get my job done otherwise. I haven't done PT in two weeks because I haven't had the time after I get off work.

As a friend of mine once said, "If I'm running from the enemy, someone dun fucked up". This isn't an excuse to be less fit than the standards. It's simply that the standards don't need to be raised for my kind of job. I am fit to do my job and to fight in a pinch, but I'm not fit for or needed on the front lines. My skills are far better focused maintaining the networks that keep our planes flying.

Very simply put, this should not even be a gender issue in my opinion.

If the requirement for a particular field of work is X and you do not meet that requirement, then you are simply not qualified or capable of doing that job. Full stop.

There are many many positions available in the military that do not include active front line service with the physical and mental demands currently required. And if a woman's desire IS to be on the front line, then she had better work her ass off to be able to meet the requirements for the job she wants.

Standards should not be lowered for combat related jobs by any means. However I think they should reevaluate the fitness standards in general in a way that makes sense. I mean as Kit stated some rates (MOS for non Navy types) simply do not need to be as strong in some areas and some branches have different requirements. For example the Marine Crops does a fitness test which in part tests peoples ability to drag a man out of combat, get ammo across the field, etc. Id love to see the other branches do such a thing. I mean sure a base line is needed but lets be real not everyone is as strong as some of the bigger guys out there. I mean I am 5'2" tall there is no way I am lifting some 200 plus pound dude and moving him as easily as someone who is of nonhobbit height. So these things should be accounted for. I mean the Navy really needs an agility based course that simulates getting around a damaged ship fast outside of battle stations at boot.
So to stop rambling we need to get things fit for the jobs that we do but by no means should we lower the baseline standard that is needed to do them

steamboat28 wrote: .

*edit*
I'd want a military full of potential combatants that do other things, not specialists that had some combat training.

Unfortunately, a lot of members of every branch (even us hard charging Marines) don't behave that way. Way too many people that are good at politics have been promoted in both officer and enlisted career fields. That's why there's this push to fix tattoos, and mess around with fitness standards vice pushing people to excel in a combat environment. Combat white space training has been replaced with useless PME that you should already know, and make people look fancy and "professional." In my opinion, if you're covered in muck, your cammies are torn, and you're good at your actual job, you are professional. Haha

Though some of the 'allies' in parts of the world have vastly different views on gender and that could interfere with the effectiveness in joint operations, I guess more specopy types of things like foreign internal defense.

MadHatter wrote: I mean the Navy really needs an agility based course that simulates getting around a damaged ship fast outside of battle stations at boot.

they don't have that anymore?....when i was in the navy we had to run through an obstacle course that had parts simulating the narrow corridors of a ship, that we had to run through while wearing a fully loaded seabag....on my first attempt through it i stood up too tall and my seabag caught the top of the hatch, i wound up on my back looking like a turtle wedged in a 2 1/2 foot wide corridor....not enough room to roll over to get up....my solution was to slip out of the bag, and put it back on once i was on my feet...it only cost me a few seconds luckily...

RyuJin wrote:

MadHatter wrote: I mean the Navy really needs an agility based course that simulates getting around a damaged ship fast outside of battle stations at boot.

they don't have that anymore?....when i was in the navy we had to run through an obstacle course that had parts simulating the narrow corridors of a ship, that we had to run through while wearing a fully loaded seabag....on my first attempt through it i stood up too tall and my seabag caught the top of the hatch, i wound up on my back looking like a turtle wedged in a 2 1/2 foot wide corridor....not enough room to roll over to get up....my solution was to slip out of the bag, and put it back on once i was on my feet...it only cost me a few seconds luckily...

Ok just I make sure I didnt garble what I mean with rambling let me clarify. In boot we have a simulated situations such as you described but not once we get out. After we get out the only fitness testing we did while I was in was push up, sit up, toe touch and mile and a half run thats it.

ah, true...

that's why i trained with my friend that was medically washed out from bud/s....he was just a couple of weeks from graduating and blew his knee out, he couldn't reapply for 1 year after surgery so i spent the time training with him...i was a beast by the end and was running circles around him on the fit tests...then i got in trouble and sent to a max security brig before discharge :blush: (i don't recommend that part)

i spent a year of my enlistment as my department's fitness coordinator and still have all my records....funny how so much of that info is still valid nearly 20 years later

They did the same with the police didn't they?