The Marine Corps opened up Infantry training to "WMs" or Women Marines. As I understand it the training is open but the job field is still closed. The training is to help improve the level of training and readiness of female Marines who necessarily augment line Infantry units in executing the "Security, Stability and Support, and Civil Support" portions of Full Spectrum Ops.
Wait you, say, Full Spectrum Ops is all about kicking in doors! Not so. A military operation is broken up into four areas, "Offense/Defense, Security, Stability, and Civil Support" that is very familiar to veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. Notice that we do not need women to conduct Direct Action.
Let me say that again, WE DO NOT NEED WOMEN TO CONDUCT DIRECT ACTION. So why is there a push to get women into the Infantry? What exact problem is this going to solve?
We need women for all the "other stuff" such as community engagement, medical relief, female interrogation, all the stuff that comes after direct action. SOCOM has been very successful with their "Female Engagement Team" (FET) program. The difference between a FET and a random female who goes through Infantry training is one of focus. Infantry training focuses on Direct Action, and as I stated before, we don't need females to conduct that mission. We need women trained in Civil Affairs and community engagement, not Ranger qualified door kickers.
Right now my Brigade is one of the 9 brigades shuffling women out of the Special Troops Battalion and Brigade Support Battalion and into Infantry and Cavalry formations. So far this is just letting women serve in their MOS in a maneuver battalion, not providing Infantry positions to females.
Thus sayeth GEN Odierno:
"This revision will result in the opening of six military occupational specialties and 80 units, more than 13,000 positions, to women -- opening up new opportunities to our female soldiers, which make up about 16 percent of our force and allows us to leverage the tremendous talent resident in our ranks."So there isn't a need for women in the Infantry from an operational standpoint. What we've always needed is female Soldiers with Civil Affairs or FET training. So why is there this big push after more than a decade at war to get women into the Infantry? Lets see what a Pentagon Talking head had to say about this:
Odierno said the Army is now "collecting information" and "setting a course forward" on how to move women into additional military occupational specialties (MOS) in the infantry and armor branches.
"There's been no decisions made. What we want to do is bring information up to the (Army) Secretary and I, so we'll take a look at it and decide the way forward on how we want to progress in potentially opening up these positions."
"We believe that it's very important to explore ways to offer more opportunities to women in the military," Pentagon spokesman George Little said in February.So once again this all boils down to "the senior leaders of the military are too white and too male!" And instead of looking at why that it they are blaming service in the combat arms branches.
To be clear, this drive is not based on an actual or perceived operational requirement. This is all about someone's idea of "fairness" and how the world "should be" and not how it is. Now, the real question is, "has anyone asked the mid career female population if they want a crack at Ranger school?" Because as idealistic as the hippy chick majoring in gender studies is when she requires "true equality" she isn't the population that is going to bear the brunt of Infantry training. Has anyone sat down and asked our female Officer and NCO population if they want a shot at joining the Infantry? I don't care what someone outside the military thinks about this, it isn't their ass on the line.
To me "it's not fair!" isn't much of a problem.
19 comments:
I personally do not think females belong in combat arms mos. When fighting against an enemy that practices total war women who are captured can expect unrelenting brutality. My 2 cents.
The left has transformed the media into a conspiring cartel dedicated to a wall of silence.
The left has transformed the scientific community into a pseudo-scientific collective of pseudo-scientists (why else do the vast majority of them believe humans are destroying the earth and parrot the disastrous 'solutions' that involve at best global carbon taxes and at worst genocide?)
The left has transformed the justice system into a kangaroo court that rewards bad behavior (why else is no one being punished for black on white hate crimes?)
The military is the only thing the left does not control, but they are getting closer every day.
If you are a civilian in a war zone; both sides are the enemy. CA teams are there to make you belive that CBU,s, napalm, j-dams,DU, theft, child killing, homelessnes , torture, gunshot wounds,are for your own good. It matters not WHO fights or WHY, the children are the ones who pay.the gender of the tigger puller is meaningless. WAR SUCKS.
Anonymous, your opinion is based on what again? The .mil hasn't used napalm since Vietnam. Methinks you don't really understand the role of CA in the fight (which isn't to convince people that bad stuff is good for them).
I am of two minds.
My knuckle-dragging lower brain says simply get the women out of the military or restrict them to service stateside. Putting them in everything BUT combat arms is using 19th century battlefield niceties that don't exist as a way to either get the whole camel(toe?) Into the tent, or merely get a lot of female support personnel killed or raped. Or a cynical attempt to do both.
My more evolved frontal lobe says that since we probably can't get the toothpaste back in the tube, adopt the Canadian system: any woman who can qualify at the immutable male standards of performance, is in.
But in fairness, no one gets to try from either sex who doesn't volunteer, and combat arms service gets a 10% bump on all NCO and Ofcr promotion boards, in perpetuity.
Then whatever gender and race the top brass are, is a no-BS reflection of their purpose.
Which isn't social engineering (except where performed by high explosives).
-Aesop
Your mileage as USMC may vary from mine, and indeed my knowledge of female soldiers is very dated so take this with a grain of salt.
This move has nothing to do with women filling the individual grunt positions but is a set up to rotate them into upper NCO and Officer slots for the reasons Aesop mentioned.
The downside will be the increased danger and increased individual workload on the men in those infantry units. The femi-nazi liberals don't give a damn if you have to die (either from a bullet or over work) as long as the women get to fill those slots and gain the advantage to go on to true command level ranks.
For the units forced to accept women in the ranks (keep in mind those are not the women this move is meant to help anyway) they will constantly rotate out or unexpectedly get pregnant when that units rotation is coming up. They will cause emotional strife within the male ranks and prostitute themselves out during training exercises. They will whine constantly and play their little games to decrease their workload and thereby increase the male soldiers.
My first posting when I joined the Army was with the 7th ATC despite my being combat arms and I saw it all in it's horrid reality destroy every support unit we had. Thankfully after my first tour was up I went to an actual combat unit and didn't have to deal with it anymore.
Perhaps things have gotten better but from what I witnessed women do not belong in the military outside of an office posting or the hospital units.
Let me boil it down for you: Social(istic) engineering!
After all, femiNaziism, multiculturalism & political correctness have worked so well everywhere they've been implemented (Detroit, Michigan, Fallujah, NASA) & produced such wonderful results (9-11), why not inflict them on the military!?
Lyudmila Pavlichenko just called to say "Hi".
She's the exception that proves the rule, but she was quite the combat soldier.
Jimmy the Saint,
Let's dig a little deeper into your throw away comment.
We currently have plenty of female "snipers" in the US Military. They are trained as Police Snipers by the Military Police School at Fort Leonard Wood.
Israel also has a large cadre of female snipers, but not with male infantry units.
And lastly, during the "Great Patriotic War" there was a pressing need for bodies to stop the Nazi invasion. After that need was satisfied and the war over, you didn't find women in the Infantry ranks of the Soviet Army.
So once again, I ask you what is the tactical need to place women into the Infantry? There isn't one.
Pioneer Preppy reminded me of one other point:
Pregnancy to get out of deployment/the military entirely.
Any single woman should be given the choice between Norplant, or a court-martial for desertion for getting pregnant during or pre-deployment. Last I looked, adultery was still a UCMJ party foul.
Married women have Norplant as an option, and "convenient" pre-deployment baby-making should be reflected in proficiency and conduct marks.
That should be current policy for all MOSs. This "I don't wanna go on deployment so I'll get knocked up" BS could be settled with a handful of 10 year deployments to Fort Leavenworth.
Ideally followed by a thoughtful re-evaluation of the need for women anywhere outside CONUS.
-Aesop
@AM: "And lastly, during the "Great Patriotic War" there was a pressing need for bodies to stop the Nazi invasion. After that need was satisfied and the war over, you didn't find women in the Infantry ranks of the Soviet Army."
Yes, once the war was over, women were not needed in the infantry. In large part, men were also not needed in the infantry. Once the war was over, the numbers of infantry were reduced in all armies.
"So once again, I ask you what is the tactical need to place women into the Infantry? There isn't one."
In peacetime, no there isn't much of a need. There still could be some value in training women as infantry, however, if/when it comes to a war of national survival.
Jimmy the Saint,
Once again, as I have already stated (that you can easily verify), we have women in the Army. We even have female Snipers in the Army. They are all trained in conducting perimeter/base defense operations in Basic Combat Training, along with all the men.
So saying women need Infantry training for national defense is a non-starter. If we didn't need it during the height of the Cold War what has changed since then? What has made the world so incredibly dangerous that we need to place women in the Infantry?
So what exactly is this pressing need to put women in the Infantry? Hint, once again, there isn't one.
The same feminazi's pushing this agenda don't care about the female soldiers...after all it WILL not be their daughters filling this slot but rather the children of the people in flyover country. I was in for 6 years from 1985 until 1991 and served in the first gulf war. If females want to play at combat arms then they need to meet the same standards as the male soldiers. I saw many instances of pregnancy, and other actions by the female soldier pushing off the heavy workload because of their gender. Don't get me wrong, I have seen some awesome female soldier, but they are the exception not the rule.
The same feminazi's pushing this agenda don't care about the female soldiers...after all it WILL not be their daughters filling this slot but rather the children of the people in flyover country. I was in for 6 years from 1985 until 1991 and served in the first gulf war. If females want to play at combat arms then they need to meet the same standards as the male soldiers. I saw many instances of pregnancy, and other actions by the female soldier pushing off the heavy workload because of their gender. Don't get me wrong, I have seen some awesome female soldier, but they are the exception not the rule.
@AM: I mostly agree with you. Hence my initial statement that the Russian sniper was the exception that proved the rule.
However, the fact still stands that in times of pressing need (which we don't have right now) women have been utilized as infantry, with some degree of success, in both regular (primarily the Soviet Army) and irregular (Viet Cong, Russian/Yugoslav/Greek partisans) forces.
Children generally don't make good infantry, either, but they can be useful in a pinch - witness the HJ Division in Normandy.
You are missing the origin of the phrase, "The Exception proofs the rule." When a rifle or armor is tested it is "proofed." This is a reminder that not all women will be exceptions to the rule and some will break in the testing.
And if the exception doesn't "prove" the rule, the exception tests the rule. I like to quote "There is an exception to every rule, including this one."
Even in Israel where women are allowed into light infantry, there is only 1 Battalion that is "coed" and of that BN only 30% are female. Israel got to that point through legal machinations and court challenges, but even as part of a small country surrounded by enemies female Infantry are not a significant part of national defense.
So of the approximately 23 active IDF Infantry BN's, only one has female Infantry. If the US Army did the same ratio, we would have 4 mixed gender BN's. That is enough for two traditional Brigade Combat Teams.
Now, service is compulsory in Israel so they have a much higher percentage of women in the IDF than we do in the US military. Over 50% of their forces, around 16% of ours. The math doesn't add up to making it cost effective or tactically sound to make the Infantry "coed."
As far as children being soldiers, that is one of the more horrible aspects of war. And for every example you care to toss out there is a Children's Crusade or child soldier in Africa to tell you how utterly wrong it is to burden children with martial duties.
Actually, the IDF found that the best use of women was as instructor cadre for things like marksmanship, tank gunnery, etc., because
A) Young healthy males pay better attention when the message is coming from a young healthy female. Witness 75 years of Madison Avenue advertising for reference.
B) When a female instructor sharpshoots (literally) a class full of males, and then says in effect "Let's see how you cand do...", said males respond with gusto because their manliness is on the line as well as their actual task performance.
The WORST use is putting women in combatant positions, as squads/platoons and larger units were devastated and inneffective when they took female casualties.
And in looking at using children in combat, let's not forget the late great Ayatollah Khomeini's brilliant use of the Iranian Grade School Human Mine Detector Hopscotch EOD Regiment, then Battalion, then Company, Platoon and ultimately fire team.
Yes, the learning curve was steep, but all they needed for equipment was pogo sticks and a compass heading.
Kind of why people like Henry Kissinger said that in the Iran-Iraq War, he was rooting for both sides to lose.
-Aesop
Putting women into combat units solves a simple issue, shortage of men. It is also an economic solution, perhaps more so. Shift some women from non-combat roles to replace losses. Saves recruiting and training costs.
A large number of US men were casualties that are not being replaced at a rate to satisfy present and future needs.
Mike Raymond - Author,
Your argument completely falls apart when you look at the actual numbers involved and the numbers of casualties sustained.
And if you tell me that taking a company supply clerk and putting her in a foxhole is a recipe for success you need to get reacquainted with reality.
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