US to allow women into combat arms roles.

[TopHatter]

Who's the new guy? Bit of a douche... ;)

Dead and buried.

[Albany Rifles]

combat role ? I think it's the males and females physical contact ,friction on the bed.
Is it that mean?:pop:

Really?

Your brand new and you bring that kind of crap in here?

Wake the eff up and post seriously about serious matters....until such time you have been here long enough to make light of a very serious topic.

Clean it up or you will be banished, period.

[gunnut]

I'm all for equality. Women should be allowed in combat arms, if they can qualify. There shouldn't be any special accommodations or lowering of standards for them.

Now that we have that out of the way, should we register all girls for the draft when they hit 18?

[Doktor]

Do you enlist all the boys?

[gunnut]

Do you enlist all the boys?

They are all registered with the Select Service System.

Selective Service System: Welcome

Interestingly...

Even though the Secretary of Defense has decided to allow women in combat jobs, the law has not been changed to include this. Consequently, only men are currently required to register by law with Selective Service during ages 18 thru 25. Women still do not register. (January 24, 2013)

It appears we have a double standard here. And you all know how much I hate double standards.

[Doktor]

You egalist you...

Anyway, you guys still have that volunteer military and SSS is only a backup plan.

[Albany Rifles]

Gun nut...in a word, yes.

[sourkraut115]

I think the best route to take in this is to organize a unit somewhat like Caracal for the US Army; a semi-segregated (3 males to 7 females)battalion or brigade (depending on the number of recruits that can actually be found to volunteer), which will become deployable with 25 months of its formation, and will become operational at that time. This will take the pressure off to allow women in combat arms, because they will absolutely be there, and will leave the rest of the Army with a proven system while the experiment is conducted over a period of, say, 10-15 years. Possibly this could be done with additional experimental or "control" sub-units (company or battalion depending on the actual size of the unit) made up entirely of female recruits in order to document the differences between the "mixed" and control elements. The unit would have appropriate "slices" of the supporting arms in order to validate women in artillery, engineer, armor, and close-support sub-units, with appropriate all-female control slices. Since the rest of the combat arms are already all-male, a male control element would seem unnecessary, but I suppose one could be added. Women with appropriate training and experience would serve in leadership roles in proportion to their membership in the unit, with the goal of a female commander within the first five years. In my view, this is the best way to find out what really works, without potentially devastating the combat abilities of the rest of the Army and the security of the nation based on theories. While I have always been generally opposed to women in combat arms, and I remain convinced that it will not work in the long haul, I would be willing to prove myself wrong and serve in such a unit, because I am fully convinced that if such an experiment should in fact fail, it will not be due to any lack of motivation, dedication to duty, or willingness to serve on the part of any of the many highly professional female soldiers that I have been honored to work with during my career.

[Officer of Engineers]

3 males to 7 females? You'll be lucky to get one woman in a platoon.

[sourkraut115]

I strongly suspect that you're right, but the troops might surprise us. If we can't generate the sort of numbers to create a Yankee Caracal, then the whole experiment (and the concept behind it) will be revealed as flawed to begin with. But maybe we should give it a chance. Anyway, nobody asked me, so I don't think my little thought is going anyplace beyond fiction...

[Minskaya]

3 males to 7 females? You'll be lucky to get one woman in a platoon.

IDF Caracal Battalion females must agree to a 3 year military hitch, same as the men. A good friend of mine served in the mostly female sniper platoon.

[Doktor]

Cool insignia.

[Officer of Engineers]

IDF Caracal Battalion females must agree to a 3 year military hitch, same as the men. A good friend of mine served in the mostly female sniper platoon.

A all volunteer force does not have such luxury. There are way more people than slots and that means taking the best of the best. Women rarely gets into such combat echelons in good numbers.

[Minskaya]

A all volunteer force does not have such luxury.

No female is conscripted into the Caracal. It is a choice.

[bigross86]

I'm not buying it. I don't see women succeeding in armor today, especially not in a mixed crew. Granted, it's not 25 per vehicle, but a 4 person crew in a small tank is still quite cramped, and we frequently DO spend over 24 hours buttoned up. We frequently piss in plastic bottles and shite in plastic bags inside a spare helmet. Moreover, there is way too much physical work to be done in a tank. Loaders need to be able to load 4 ~45-50Kg shells in 20 seconds. Drivers need to be able to maintain the vehicle's track and suspension system. Gunners need to be able to perform any and all physical labor maintaining the tank requires, which includes helping the loader haul a new stretch of track into place, while under fire. Any tank commander needs to be able to do all of those things, learning all 3 positions perfectly before they even begin the TC part of the course. Hell, a grown man will tire quickly when whacking away with a 5Kg hammer at tank track pins, just replacing the pins, not even the entire link. I've yet to see one woman (even the butch ones that tried) last more than 2-3 minutes with a hammer. One time I helped my friend's crew with their track, we worked on it for over 3 hours.

You want to put 4 women in a tank, that's fine by me, but in my opinion, they won't perform as well as a standard, all-men tank crew. Even if they trained up to our standards (which weren't all that hard, true, but were tough enough), I still think they wouldn't match the performance of a regular crew, simply because a woman's body usually tires out before a man's' body.

Take for instance the girls that took tank instructor's course at the same time we took basic training, both on the Armor School. They learned how to do everything we did (so they could teach us), but they did it on a much lighter level. The loaders loaded maybe 2-3 shells the entire course, the gunner fired maybe 2-3 shells, and the drivers took the tanks out for a coupla km, at best. Our "war week" was a full training week, from Sunday-Friday morning. Their "war week" was 3 days and 2 nights. And their dropout rate was higher than ours, something near 50% IIRC. Our graduating hike was somewhere in the range of 30Km + 5Km with an open stretcher. Theirs wasn't even 10Km.

Yes, the Caracal battalion seems to be working, but like I said, I don't see it working in armor.