combat roles to women?

If someone can't do pullups, or anything that would make you stronger, one will wonder if they will be able to drag a 180 pound person with an additional 75 pounds of gear to safety if they go down. Let's hope they would be able to pull themselves up a ledge or out of an overturned vehicle or whatever with their own 75 pounds of gear.

 

...as for the penis..you may be right...but having one makes me more likely to qualify for any military position on any level, whereas having a uterus makes me less likely..that's just the facts

i'd rather go into the military as a dude than a woman because biology is on my side to succeed and be a fucking stud

pretty much.....it's bad enough the women standards are lower than the men, just to get more of them into the branches.....now we got them questioning the validity of physical fitness standards altogether

this shit is fucking comedy

if they lower infantry, ranger and SF standards so women can place in higher numbers, i'm starting a group to petition congress i swear

 

Making them feel better is far more important than keepinv others alive.

 

"Today Gen. Dempsey and I are pleased to announce that we are eliminating the ground combat exclusion rule for women and moving forward with a plan to eliminate all gender-based barriers to service," Panetta said in the official announcement of the policy change at the Pentagon. "Our purpose is to ensure the mission is carried out by the best qualified and most capable service members, regardless of gender and regardless of creed and beliefs."

"If members of our military can meet the qualifications for a job -- and let me be clear, we are not reducing qualifications -- then they should have the right to serve."

Defense officials said Thursday that the services have until May 15 to submit specific plans for lifting all remaining job restrictions for women, and until January 2016 for all exemptions to be sought and changes to be put in place. The changes do not require the approval of Congress, which will have 30 days to weigh in on the decision.

 

even without barriers, women won't become infantry or operate in tank platoons unless they start some serious hormonal therapy

deal with it:smt074

gj to panetta tho...he's going to shut up the equal gender gang, while letting women shoot themselves in the foot when they fail to 'man up' and pass the courses

 

ya dig!!!!

What I don't get is women have no problem trying to assert their "natural abilities" like being better students, better at budgeting, better at compromising etc, but how dare men say one peep about what is obvious to everyone else

 

BTW, they have explicitly said that the limits and expectations will NOT be lowered for women to qualify for combat positions. Not sure how that works practically, do men who go to combat positions do special tests?

 

yeah, it's called infantry school for infantry, armor school for armor, etc

not sure if u were trying to be a smartass tho



you can expect lots of tests and tough training for obvious reasons

you'll probably see women completing armor school and other combat specialties before other stuff tho

when it comes to operating vehicles, i think female helicopter pilots and jet fighter pilots have proven its no big deal

shit i think there might even be females in Attack helo squadrons already

 

This is somewhat ambiguous - not reducing what qualifications exactly? Is there a specific front-line test soldiers must pass to qualify? I was under the impression they just removed the female ban. Thus, if there is no specific test and since men and women have separate requirements for graduating, the different standards for women shall continue to apply. Hopefully not with potentially more serious consequences.

 

Ah, missed FG's similar post...Ok, so there is a special training just for that? How bout that. Well then there is no reason if a woman can pass it, not to be there. Will be interesting to see how many make it. Imagine an all women attack team, lol. Alqueda will probably run for the hills. They don't want a bunch of pissed-off women with guns 'n pliers taking them hostage now :smt036

 

And on the same cycle. Lol.:smt047

 

Tears and rage, how easily they'd be able to kill

 

Aww shit :smt037....Now that makes me wonder....if The Prez was sitting there getting a pms earful from Michelle one night and was like, 'hold up, I'm making a phone-call to Pannetta RIGHT NOW!'

 

That would actually make Alqueda more dangerous since they hate women wouldn't you think.

 

:smt023

Hahaha you know she runs that house!

 

Each different position has certain requirements. All Panetta has done is said that the decision whether or not a job is open to women will be based not on gender, but on meeting the requirements for the job.

Job requirements are different. For instance, the loader on a tank, who works from a stool in a cramped space, must be able to seize a 50-pound shell from its rack, swing around and ram the shell up into the main gun breech. That action, repeated again and again in a tank battle, requires significant arm, chest and shoulder strength. Such requirements are not likely to change. But there is no reason a woman couldn't compete for that job, said one official in a Thursday briefing on the details of the policy shift.

 

Love how child birth or raising kids is always compared to the toughest thing men do, like passing sf training

 

Hey getting shot or losing a limb has nothing on 15 hr labor get it straight dammit

 

Interesting piece
By Maggie Fox, Senior Writer, NBC News
Women don’t have enough upper-body strength. They can’t run as fast. Their monthly cycle will interfere with being on the front lines. All the arguments against letting women serve in the military are being made again as Defense Secretary Leon Panetta lifted restrictions on women serving in direct combat roles.
But experts on fitness and on women in the military say the past two decades have shown that being female is not the biggest barrier to serving on the front lines. Being fat is.
“I don’t think gender is a factor at all,” says retired Navy rear admiral Jamie Barnett, who is now at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies. “I do think there are physical requirements and not all men or women will be able to meet those physical requirements. Those physical requirements should be tied specifically to making sure the job gets done."

Just as with men, women selected to combat roles will be “a select few”, says Edward Archer, an exercise physiologist at the University of South Carolina. “When it comes to physical capacity, I think without any question there will be females who will be able to exceed and excel and to perform as well as the average male, in that setting.”
The various branches -- Air Force, Navy, Army and Marines -- already have differing requirements for physical fitness, by branch and by gender. All have a minimum standard, calculated using three exercises that include running, either pull-ups or push-ups, and sit-ups. Women's requirements are lower in some cases, but the Marines doesn’t give females a break at all when it comes to minimum physical fitness.

Barnett notes that these are general fitness measures that may mean little when it comes to completing a specific task or mission. “You can be a football player and if you go out with your mom on a half marathon and you haven’t trained for it (and she has), she’ll kick your butt,” Barnett said.
There is a problem with fitness that affects the military, but it doesn’t reflect on women alone. It reflects on Americans in general, says Barnett, who as a member of a group called "Mission: Readiness" signed a report on the dangers posed by obesity to U.S. security.
“We are too unfit to fight, is the term. We are definitely an unfit society,” Archer added in a telephone interview. “They need basic training to get ready for basic training. This is true of both males and females,” Archer said.
“Already we see only one in four Americans between ages of 17 and 24 who can join the military,” Barnett said in a telephone interview. “The single biggest reason is that they are overweight.”
More than two-thirds of American adults are overweight or obese, and experts agree that both poor diet and a lack of exercise is to blame. The military needs men and women alike who are in the best possible shape, argues Barnett.
“Once you establish objective criteria for what the requirements are for a military job, then I say let women compete for those and let the best man or woman get the position,” says Barnett, who served in Iraq and who was deputy commander of the Navy Expeditionary Combat Command, with sailors serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“I think what we’ll find is there will be a lot of women who will be able to meet even the hardest positions.”
Experience shows this happens, says Lorry Fenner, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who is now at the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University.

“Example after example can be found of women exceeding the expectations of their physical capabilities, finding work-arounds for heavy tasks, or teaming with their co-workers to complete their assignments to best effect,” Fenner writes in her book, “Women in Combat”.
“Obviously, not all women are strong enough for all jobs -- just as not all men are,” Fenner adds -- then describes how women recruits mastered tests to show whether they could scale walls and carry heavy equipment.
“When we study history, we find that women have coped with every aspect of war. Women have demonstrated the emotional courage to withstand the brutality of war, including during lengthy imprisonment as POWs under very harsh conditions in the Pacific and in European work and death camps; in very dangerous and stressful resistance fighting; in the face of rape and mutilation; and at the moments of their deaths,” Fenner writes.
The average woman is indeed weaker and has less heart, lung and blood oxygen capacity than the average man, says Archer. “But an elite female athlete can outperform the average male soldier easily in many ways,” he adds.
Fenner and Barnett say the U.S. military needs to be able to pull from a pool of the best recruits for all jobs, including front-line combat.
“My view is you can get the job done better if you can draw on the best talents that America has to offer, regardless of gender,” Barnett said. “If you have to be able to swim 3 miles in a certain amount of time, then it doesn’t matter what gender you are.”
Critics of the new policy also raise the issue of feminine hygiene -- something women in the military will hoot at. Women worried about monthly cycles can use oral or injected hormonal contraceptives to suppress ovulation and bleeding and studies show there is no additional danger to health from using birth control in this way.http://vitals.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/24/16682864-shell-kick-your-butt-experts-say-women-fit-to-fight?lite