Women in U.S. infantry (USMC, Rangers, etc. - merged)

[cupper]

Again when the White House wants something they generally get it.No one likes it but they salute and try to make it work.I think the next occupant of the White House will reverse some of this.

You really think Hillary would do that?  >

 

[cld617]

Again when the White House wants something they generally get it.No one likes it but they salute and try to make it work.I think the next occupant of the White House will reverse some of this.

I'm not sure a reversal of anything is necessary, rather cessation any special treatment if the whistle blowers are being truthful.

I think all trades should be open to women, and I'm glad that in the CF it works that way. The spot should be held by the very best available candidate, regardless of gender.

 

[Humphrey Bogart]

I'm not sure a reversal of anything is necessary, rather cessation any special treatment if the whistle blowers are being truthful.

I think all trades should be open to women, and I'm glad that in the CF it works that way. The spot should be held by the very best available candidate, regardless of gender.

Absolutely!  The problem I have with special treatment in this instance is that the Ranger tab isn't just another course.  It represents excellence in soldiering and anything that potentially devalues that undermines the whole purpose of the tab.

 

[FJAG]

It's been some time since I weighed in on this topic but for me the issue is quite clear; Is the Ranger course there to provide special skills training to make better soldiers or is it there to be as a symbol that gives "bragging rights" that you're a more macho guy than the next guy?

You can tell by my tone what side I stand on.

For me the issue is that, yes, females are generally smaller and, accordingly, less muscular/powerful than their male counterparts but they make up half of our population and they should have equal opportunities to access and succeed at all aspects of military service.

The sooner that we stop setting up barriers to training and career opportunities that use physiological diversity as their prime criteria, the better.

It is not hard to set up selection and training courses that allow both men and women to participate on an equal footing, if one desires to do so--as an example one can emphasize endurance challenges that aren't tied to carrying disproportionate loads. The haters will call this "lowering standards" while others would call it a "levelling of the playing field".

There was a time when it was part of our various cultures where we considered anyone not of the anglo-saxon, heterosexual culture as being incapable of meeting the rigours of military service. Times have changed in those fields. It's now time to stop legitimizing the lingering prejudices against women in the military hidden under thinly disguised veneers of pseudo-physical standards. It's way past time for leaders to actually take the lead on this issue.

:slapfight:

:cheers:

 

[cld617]

It is not hard to set up selection and training courses that allow both men and women to participate on an equal footing, if one desires to do so--as an example one can emphasize endurance challenges that aren't tied to carrying disproportionate loads. The haters will call this "lowering standards" while others would call it a "levelling of the playing field".

We're not a bunch of a teenage girls, so you can lose the haters phrase. This is unequivocally lowering the standards if you're dropping certain tasks to allow for more success for females/smaller males.

What's disproportionate about 200lb stretcher carries over an obscene distance, that IS a very realistic weight that a candidate could likely experience. Do you know what the 150lb men do? They put on size, because they know being expected to ruck with 2/3rd's their body weight is begging for failure or injury. You're suggesting we lower that in favor of who we want to see at the finish line, that is simply asinine. The best candidates should be at the end, period.

You call them "disguised veneers of pseudo-physical standards", what is pseudo about the reality of potentially needing to carry wounded or the certainty of needing to ruck with an obscene amount of weight? The Ranger course above all as a leadership school should be producing fully capable soldiers, how much confidence is a leader going to give to their troops when they're seen capable of doing less than those under them? That's not leadership, that's a boss.

 

[ballz]

pseudo-physical standards

There is really nothing "pseudo" about the vigorous physical challenges of combat.

While I agree that women should have the same opportunities, I disagree that we should "even the playing field" by making loads "proportionate" to the individual, and I take issue with your suggestion people are only advocating for "one standard" because they don't want women to be included. While there are some that certainly, clearly, just don't want women to be included, they are the minority.

Most just genuinely want the machine to remain capable and efficient at destroying the enemy, and believe that capability is more important than equal representation on any day that ends with a "y."

 

[FJAG]

We're not a bunch of a teenage girls, so you can lose the haters phrase. This is unequivocally lowering the standards if you're dropping certain tasks to allow for more success for females/smaller males.

What's disproportionate about 200lb stretcher carries over an obscene distance, that IS a very realistic weight that a candidate could likely experience. Do you know what the 150lb men do? They put on size, because they know being expected to ruck with 2/3rd's their body weight is begging for failure or injury. You're suggesting we lower that in favor of who we want to see at the finish line, that is simply asinine. The best candidates should be at the end, period.

You call them "disguised veneers of pseudo-physical standards", what is pseudo about the reality of potentially needing to carry wounded or the certainty of needing to ruck with an obscene amount of weight? The Ranger course above all as a leadership school should be producing fully capable soldiers, how much confidence is a leader going to give to their troops when they're seen capable of doing less than those under them? That's not leadership, that's a boss.

You're knee-jerk reacting, as I knew a number of you would. (As an aside, the word "hater" doesn't make you a teenage girl; it describe a state of emotional response).

The issue isn't whether or not combat situations put heavy physical demands on an individual; they clearly do. The real question is does a "skilld and leadership course"--such as the Ranger course professes to be--need to simulate extreme conditions (or obscene amounts of weight, as you call it)--to achieve it's aim of teaching "skills and leadership"?

This is the point where views differ.

The modern ranger concept goes back to the second world war and formalized ranger training to 1950. At the time, men were leaner and more wiry then now and soldiers didn't have to hump obscene loads--stamina and mental toughness under periods of mental, sleep deprived stress were the conditions under which leadership abilities were tested.

Chapter 5 of FM 21-18 deals with load management and training for foot marches. Admittedly this is an older publication (I'm not aware of any substantial update to the 1990 version) but the principles haven't changed that much. Section 5-3 states: "The fighting load for a conditioned soldier should not exceed 48 pounds and the approach march load should not exceed 72 pounds. These load weights include all clothing and equipment that are worn and carried." The section has an excellent discussion on why this should be so with the bottom line being that exhausted troops with limited mobility have limited effectiveness. In fact in an assessment done by the 2-504 PIR soldiers in Afghanistan were typically loaded with 104 lbs of gear; truly obscene loads. While every pound was undoubtedly operationally necessary the law of physics basically say that a person of a given weight can generally only carry a load of a given proportion of their own weight; a fit 145 lb soldier can't carry the same load as an equally fit 190 lb soldier without experiencing a disproportionate amount of fatigue.

I'm not arguing that we shouldn't train our people to meet their maximum fitness potential. We should even though I firmly believe that we should stop using them as pack mules.

What I'm saying is that training persons to their maximum fitness potential doesn't mean that they will all achieve the same load bearing capability, regardless as to whether or not they're male or female. Even more important, with courses that are designed to teach skills and/or leadership, we should not impose "physical standards" that are unachievable by a large percentage of the potential candidates. In the legal world that's called systemic discrimination.

I know talking law in a forum such as this rankles some of the folks here but there is a human rights concept call "bona fide occupational requirement" which basically says that imposing a standard that is honestly and truly necessary for the job is okay but imposing one that has no real need to be there except, for example, to weed out "undesireables" is not acceptable.

If, the course was solely there for the purpose of training rangers for the 75th Ranger Rgt one might be able to make an argument but it isn't. To become a Ranger, one doesn't go to Ranger School but instead one needs to finish all ones basic and MOS training and successfully complete the four week Ranger Indoctrination Program after which one is assigned to a Ranger Battalion.

The two month Ranger Course comes after the individual is already with a battalion and is designated for further skills and leadership training. A large number of other candidates (including newly minted army officers, foreigners, air force or marines) are also loaded on this course and, rightly or wrongly, being "ranger qualified" has become a status symbol that impacts on career progression/promotability in general outside the Ranger Regt. My point simply is that the course doesn't need to train people to be packmules and having people carry standard heavy loads for long periods of time does not assess the individuals stamina or mental toughness in an equitable way. (One more aside just for the fun of it. I was on a brief exchange with an Italian mountain artillery regiment once that used mules as their basic transportation. It takes nine months to train a mule and its handler--that's seven months more than a ranger  ;D)

Anyway, that's a lot more than my  :2c: worth.

Have a good one and for God's sake don't even bother hitting me up for the mule training joke.

:cheers:

 

[Oldgateboatdriver]

:goodpost:

+1  And I will comment on the mule training thing: I think it is a wonderful anecdote. 

I will only add this regarding cld617 final paragraphs:

You're suggesting we lower that in favor of who we want to see at the finish line, that is simply asinine. The best candidates should be at the end, period.

The Ranger course above all as a leadership school should be producing fully capable soldiers, how much confidence is a leader going to give to their troops when they're seen capable of doing less than those under them? That's not leadership, that's a boss.

Military training has never been about creating the "best" soldiers/airmen/seamen. Its about creating, a the end of each given course, soldiers/airmen/seamen that have met the course standard. Some will pass on the first try with little requirement to study, others will pass but have to spend their night up studying, and some will only pass on a recourse, but at the end, if they pass, they have met the standard. And when they are returned to their units, are they "fully capable soldiers" (whatever that means?)? Again, no. They are better qualified soldiers now that they have acquired new skills.

And by the way, by its very definition, all who graduate from a given course are the "best" on that course as compared to those who didn't graduate. But if you want to produce only "the best", doesn't that means that only the single top person should graduate from any course? I mean, the last person who just ekes a pass is obviously not better or even close to as good than the top one.

If Ranger course is as you say a leadership course, then its aim should be to return to units soldiers that are better leaders that they were before they took the course. And here, I take grave exception to your view of what a leader should be able to do: Leaders don't have to be as capable as the people they lead insofar as skill level at any task are concerned. Would you expect your platoon warrant officer or captain to be as skilled a shooter as your platoons qualified sharpshooter; as strong as your platoon strongest member; as competent at shooting the machine gun as your machine gunner; all of that simultaneously? Of course not. You expect them to lead you properly, and for that, they don't need to be the best at everything (no one in the platoon is).

That's where FJAG point comes in: The standard you set on a course to obtain a pass is a decision made (or which ought to be made) by the training organization and the standards ought to be related to the objective of the course, i.e. what do I want the soldiers/airmen/seamen I seek to produce be capable of after the course is over. Then you set the various standards so the result is achieved, and those standards must be related to achieving that aim, not at eliminating people for unrelated reasons*.

If the Ranger's course aim is to produce leaders, the capacity to carry 150 pounds for a twenty miles march has nothing to do with leadership. If the march is used as tool to induce stress in the candidate just before testing a leadership aspect, then that is different, but failing to complete the march still induces the required stress and should not be standard in and of itself.

BTW, your closing statement (that's not a leader, that's a boss) is extremely insulting to all seamen.

I have commanded many crew in the Navy, and have been highly noted for my leadership at sea. However, I never knew as much engineering as my engineers, as much about communication as my yeoman, as much seamanship as my buffer, as much about food safety as my chef, as much about logistics as my Supply Officer, etc. Somehow, I was still viewed as a leader, not just a "boss".

*: An example here would be a course with a loading of twenty students where the "standard" would be "on this course, only the top five candidates will be passed". While the five graduates of any such course would be amongst the five best of that group, for all we know, they might not even have made the lower half had they been in another group that took the course just before them, and that previous group might have had sixteen candidates that would have been amongst the top five had they been on the later course. Passing such a course then proves nothing about any qualification you would have achieved. 

 

[tomahawk6]

While I do not favor relaxing standards just to qualify females because the headshed dictates the end result,I have seen standards relaxed to acheive the end result.As a young officer the battalion CO wanted a good showing for EIB testing.To that end NCO's assigned to score marksmanship passed everyone as Expert Marksmen.This went on throughout testing and guess what the battalion that year saw near 100% success rate.A win win for everyone right ?

 

[Old Sweat]

As an aside, I was on the Italian exchange with FJAG. As I recall it the basic mule course was the same length as their basic officer course, which surely is a coincidence.

I think the "make the training hard" bit can be overdone and in could even be counter-productive. By all means build confidence and fitness in stages and make things progressively more difficult. However the aim is not to break most of the students; that sometimes gets forgotten. To my mind the basic parachute course I did in 1968 seemed to get things pretty well right.

 

[cld617]

If Ranger course is as you say a leadership course, then its aim should be to return to units soldiers that are better leaders that they were before they took the course. And here, I take grave exception to your view of what a leader should be able to do: Leaders don't have to be as capable as the people they lead insofar as skill level at any task are concerned. Would you expect your platoon warrant officer or captain to be as skilled a shooter as your platoons qualified sharpshooter; as strong as your platoon strongest member; as competent at shooting the machine gun as your machine gunner; all of that simultaneously? Of course not. You expect them to lead you properly, and for that, they don't need to be the best at everything (no one in the platoon is).

As a leadership course, I can entirely concede that in this instance it would make sense to have the standards reflective of the individual. However, that was not the case when these women were put on the course. The standards were known, and the preparation was modified to provide them favorable odds. We can have a back and forth all day of what might be, however in the present it has been shared that they did not enter this on the same footing as their male classmates.

Lets also be realistic here, this was a method by which to test the performance capability of women in physically demanding environments. The Marines are presently doing similar testing, along with the Navy who are being pressed to allow women into their combat equivalents. I don't think anyone here is naive enough to believe that their "successes" will not be used to push for females being allowed in trades currently closed to them, this was chapter one of a book which is just beginning. To know that the first few pages were written dishonestly does not set a very good tone.

BTW, your closing statement (that's not a leader, that's a boss) is extremely insulting to all seamen.

I have commanded many crew in the Navy, and have been highly noted for my leadership at sea. However, I never knew as much engineering as my engineers, as much about communication as my yeoman, as much seamanship as my buffer, as much about food safety as my chef, as much about logistics as my Supply Officer, etc. Somehow, I was still viewed as a leader, not just a "boss".

[/quote]

You're reading into this too far, this is a discussion purely of physical prowess, not their mental fortitude or technical know how as I don't think you'll find anyone who'll dispute they can be equals there. The topic at hand in this forum is whether or not females are capable of meeting the physical rigors set out in extremely demanding courses and selections. Currently, they have yet to prove conclusively that they can.

 

[dapaterson]

And the military has yet to prove that its selection standards in this instance reflect any sort of bona fide operational requirement.

 

[Oldgateboatdriver]

And the military has yet to prove that its selection standards in this instance reflect any sort of bona fide operational requirement.

Other than the American incomprehensible fixated view that somehow, a six-foot-three soldier weighing 210 pounds and able to bench press 450 pounds is a better tank driver than a five-foot-nothing one weighing 135 and only able to push 200 pounds.  ;D

 

[Oldgateboatdriver]

The Marines are presently doing similar testing, along with the Navy who are being pressed to allow women into their combat equivalents.

Unless you mean the Seal teams, which are an insignificant portion of the US Navy in terms of number of members (about 1300 Navy personnel out of 326000), I don't know what you mean. Women already serve on combat vessels from the lowliest LCS to the mighty aircraft carriers in every capacity (including at least one ship's CO at this point), with the exception of submarines, but even that is being looked at right now (its a matter of environment, not the women's capacity to carry out the duties) at least starting with the boomers.

 

[cld617]

Other than the American incomprehensible fixated view that somehow, a six-foot-three soldier weighing 210 pounds and able to bench press 450 pounds is a better tank driver than a five-foot-nothing one weighing 135 and only able to push 200 pounds.  ;D

We're not talking about Armored soldiers here, we're talking about those which require a mbr to pass a physically grueling course are we not? Stop trying to move the goalposts.

 

[Fishbone Jones]

Other than the American incomprehensible fixated view that somehow, a six-foot-three soldier weighing 210 pounds and able to bench press 450 pounds is a better tank driver than a five-foot-nothing one weighing 135 and only able to push 200 pounds. ;D

The little guy will smoke the big guy every time in that scenario.

You can't shoehorn people into specific jobs.

You take a requirement, establish a medium and recruit from that. Once employed, attempt to bring them to the level above that medium. That medium remains the standard, whether Infantry, Bosun, or Aircrew. You excel, you get rewarded.

Every unit, no matter the trade, element, whatever, still needs Corporals.

And there's lots of Cpls out there that are SO versed in their trades that there is nothing a supervisor can teach them.

 

[tomahawk6]

Big news 5 female soldiers failed the Ranger course that began 1 Nov.Some 199 male class mates also failed.Ranger school is daunting and it has a very high attrition rate.

http://www.armytimes.com/story/news/nation/2015/11/06/army-ranger-women/75305480/

WASHINGTON — The five women soldiers in the Army's latest class of Ranger School have failed to qualify for the next phase of training, a Defense official said Friday.

The women were part of a class of 417 soldiers who began the physical assessment phase of training on Nov. 1. Of that number, 199 soldiers — all men — have passed on to the next portion of training.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Continuing the  :highjack:

    First, my qualification, and lack of same ~

          I was both a junior and senior leader, as a junior NCO, junior officer and senior officer;

          I commanded small teams (two or three soldiers) and larger teams (15 soldiers), as a NCO, and platoon sized units, company sized units and my own regiment as an officer;

          I served in a series of staff appointments, with ever increasing levels of responsibility, in the field and in HQs, from and beyond the rank of captain; but

    Second: I did that between 55 and 20 years ago, so the "age" of my experience must make it suspect.

I grew up in an army that took leadership training very, very seriously but which restricted it, too. There were only two levels of leadership training for NCOs:

    Junior NCO course, which was a mix of a "weed out" course (persistently high failure rates) and a "teaching course;"

    Senior NCO course which still had some "weed out" attributes but was more heavily focused on "development."

Both courses were physically and psychologically challenging. I topped my Junior NCO course (out of about 100 candidates) run by the Canadian Guards; I learned a HUGE amount about myself, my physical and mental stress limits, how to teach, how to plan, how to motivate and how to accept responsibility for both failure (more often) and success. (One of my senior NCOs, who had topped the US Army's Ranger course and done the UK SAS Selection, said, in a report, that anyone who had passed a Canadian infantry senior NCO course (or, he reckoned the Engineer's one) and, maybe, even the "old" pre-1966, Junior NCO course, could, easily (for senior NCOs), pass the Ranger course ~ he recommended to our chain of command that we not bother sending Canadian senior NCOs there but, rather, try to get more vacancies on the UK selection courses. (That didn't (couldn't) happen because the Brits had too many applicants, of their own, for SAS (etc) selection and there was, simply, never enough room for the candidates the Australians and Canadians wanted to send and for which we were willing to pay, handsomely. The US, on the other hand, are, as a matter of policy, usually willing to accept many allied students.))

Officer training had only one level of leadership training: at the junior level. The army in which I served believed that leadership above junior (platoon) level was best taught by example (good and bad examples were always readily available) and mentoring. The notion of staff training, for example, was that it was a Staff College, which aimed to teach already acceptable leaders how to do staff work ~ it was not a Command and Staff College, since most senior officers thought teaching "command" in a classroom was a nonsense notion.

Was the system perfect? No. But it worked and it had the advantage of clearly identifying a (relatively small) leadership cadre based on the notion that not everyone can, should or needs to be a leader.

Are the American British or (current) Canadian systems perfect? I am 99.99% sure no one would suggest they are.

Are the current systems better than the old one I described?  :dunno:

 

[Humphrey Bogart]

Continuing the  :highjack:

    First, my qualification, and lack of same ~

          I was both a junior and senior leader, as a junior NCO, junior officer and senior officer;

          I commanded small teams (two or three soldiers) and larger teams (15 soldiers), as a NCO, and platoon sized units, company sized units and my own regiment as an officer;

          I served in a series of staff appointments, with ever increasing levels of responsibility, in the field and in HQs, from and beyond the rank of captain; but

    Second: I did that between 55 and 20 years ago, so the "age" of my experience must make it suspect.

I grew up in an army that took leadership training very, very seriously but which restricted it, too. There were only two levels of leadership training for NCOs:

    Junior NCO course, which was a mix of a "weed out" course (persistently high failure rates) and a "teaching course;"

    Senior NCO course which still had some "weed out" attributes but was more heavily focused on "development."

Both courses were physically and psychologically challenging. I topped my Junior NCO course (out of about 100 candidates) run by the Canadian Guards; I learned a HUGE amount about myself, my physical and mental stress limits, how to teach, how to plan, how to motivate and how to accept responsibility for both failure (more often) and success. (One of my senior NCOs, who had topped the US Army's Ranger course and done the UK SAS Selection, said, in a report, that anyone who had passed a Canadian infantry senior NCO course (or, he reckoned the Engineer's one) and, maybe, even the "old" pre-1966, Junior NCO course, could, easily (for senior NCOs), pass the Ranger course ~ he recommended to our chain of command that we not bother sending Canadian senior NCOs there but, rather, try to get more vacancies on the UK selection courses. (That didn't (couldn't) happen because the Brits had too many applicants, of their own, for SAS (etc) selection and there was, simply, never enough room for the candidates the Australians and Canadians wanted to send and for which we were willing to pay, handsomely. The US, on the other hand, are, as a matter of policy, usually willing to accept many allied students.))

Officer training had only one level of leadership training: at the junior level. The army in which I served believed that leadership above junior (platoon) level was best taught by example (good and bad examples were always readily available) and mentoring. The notion of staff training, for example, was that it was a Staff College, which aimed to teach already acceptable leaders how to do staff work ~ it was not a Command and Staff College, since most senior officers thought teaching "command" in a classroom was a nonsense notion.

Was the system perfect? No. But it worked and it had the advantage of clearly identifying a (relatively small) leadership cadre based on the notion that not everyone can, should or needs to be a leader.

Are the American British or (current) Canadian systems perfect? I am 99.99% sure no one would suggest they are.

Are the current systems better than the old one I described?  :dunno:

An excellent post E.R.

The US Army Ranger School isn't just a leadership course, it's also a combat course in that it's there to simulate, as close as possible, combat. 

How do you place a standard on what you see, hear and do in combat?  Can you even place a standard on it?  In any case, the only standard that really matters is being better than the other guy which means training needs to be as hard as humanly possible. 

We've gotten away from this sort of training in the kinder, gentler, 21st Century Canadian Army but I don't agree that it's made us better.  Some of our leadership courses have pretty much become coffee courses for all intents and purposes. 

I never did Ranger School but I have my US Army Air Assault Wings, the Air Assault course was relatively short but intense.  We sent 46 Canadians down on the course and only 19 completed it.  Included in the 27 failures were our Coy Sgt Major and Three Officers as well as a number of NCOs.  I trained for the course prior to going down and also studied, did anyone else though?  No, they were content to show up, get sent home and waste 10s of thousands of dollars in the process.  Massive failure in leadership and a bit of a diplomatic embarrassment.

I've seen this sort of lackadaisical attitude carry over elsewhere in the Canadian Forces.  Our "everyone shows up, everyone gets a badge mentality" is affecting our combat capability, it's also eroding discipline.  I'll bite and say that this training style has merits for some of the highly technical trades in the CAF.  Fixing vehicles and airplanes?  Be as relaxed as you want.  Taking a course to improve your ability to manage inventories, etc?  No reason it can't be eight to four.  This sort of mentality has no place in the Combat Arms though. 

I find this whole discussion to be very rich considering the same folk attacking Cld617 will, in another thread, bemoan how unprofessional our military has become or how bush league we are because of XXX. 

Thankfully we've still got a few units in the CAF that vigorously enforce standards with an iron fist, none of them belong to the Army though. 

 

[Old Sweat]

Edward, what he said about your post.

At that time the Canadian Army was considering its own ranger/commando course, but I think an austerity program got in the way. A couple of officers (Charlie Belzile who later commanded FMC was one of them) did the RM Commando Course in the UK.

There was some fiddling with exercises to develop/test leadership. Three CIBG in Gagetown ran Ex Les Voyageurs in the fall of 1962 (a write up is on line in an old Canadian Army Journal) which was successful. Unfortunately the brigade tried to repeat it the following autumn with some extra wrinkles like no route recce allowed. Of the 15 teams that started, two finished, one from 3 Sigs Sqn and mine from 1 RCHA. My impression was that most of the other teams had not trained properly, which is a leadership failure in itself. No write up was submitted to the journal and there was an absence of press releases.

Toot, Toot. That's my own horn as I was singled out in the post-exercise report for leadership and the team was lauded for high morale throughout the exercise.