Surprise! A study released by the Marine Corps shows that all male units greatly outperformed mixed gender units in just about every capacity. The women performed their tasks more slowly, fired weapons with less accuracy, and sustained far more injuries during training than their male counterparts. Male Marines with no formal infantry training outperformed infantry-trained women on each weapons system! Nevertheless, unless Congress intervenes the military must start integrating women into combat units in January.
That’s great if your goal is to feminize the military. But let’s say that the goal is combat mission accomplishment with minimal casualties. Now you have to start taking into account all sorts of pesky factors that two women graduating from a physically tough course doesn’t address. As a former paratrooper who’s been in combat, I can address some of those a bit better than some policy wonks.
Even more so than with sports teams, the military must be a meritocracy. We’re not talking about balls and pucks, after all. How do sports teams determine eligibility? The best person for the slots available: Gender is irrelevant, as is race. Else we’d see a lot more whites playing basketball; a lot more blacks playing hockey. To the extent possible, the military must do the same.
Yet outgoing Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Martin Dempsey put an impossible burden on the military to show that if physical training standards are so high that they’re keeping women out, “Does it really have to be that high?” That would be like forcing a sports team to
prove what it required to beat another team, rather than simply hiring the best people for the job – than hiring to
win.
THE BURDEN OF BODY ARMOR
There’s one aspect of modern warfare that will almost certainly surprise you if you haven’t actually been in combat. It’s called body armor.
While Obama seems to believe that wars can be won from the air, folks like ISIS beg to differ. Other than perhaps in set-piece conflicts like the Gulf War, air power remains a supplement. Wars are won by those wearing boots – and nowadays all those in boots are also in body armor. That wasn’t true in Vietnam or any previous U.S. war.
Body armor saves lives, but is heavy as hell, with the newest armor 30-35 pounds depending on the size, plus helmet adding another 3-4 pounds. Counting all equipment, the Marine Corps puts the average combat load at 83 pounds. Armor slows down and wears out
everybody.
But of course, it’s hardest on the smallest and weakest. That’s women.
A 1992 Presidential Commission report found, “The average female Army recruit is 4.8 inches shorter, 31.7 pounds lighter, has 37.4 fewer pounds of muscle, and 5.7 more pounds of fat than the average male recruit. She has only 55 percent of the upper-body strength and 72 percent of the lower-body strength.” Further, “The average 20-to-30 year-old woman has the same aerobic capacity as a 50 year-old man."
According to the Surgeon General’s office in 2011, “Army women are more likely to be disabled than men and are approximately 67 percent more likely than Army men to receive a physical disability discharge for a musculoskeletal disorder.” They’re more than five times as likely to suffer stress fractures.
Now consider dragging to safety a 200-pound soldier with his 83-pound load while wearing your own? Snipers will love you; a good sniper tries to just wound the first target in order to acquire more targets – exactly what happened to one of my photojournalist predecessors in Ramadi.
Body armor also exacerbates exhaustion, reducing the ability to shoot well or to make good decisions – with consequences for lives and limbs.
But what if even only a few women are able to perform as well men? Or even just one? Can’t we let those handful into combat slots?
No. See above. Politics will ensure the bar
will be lowered. Dempsey is already pushing the idea of women SEALs.
Only a very bright line can prevent this. No women in combat units. Period. End of story.
Women have long been vital to the U.S. military, but somehow we (and the militaries of virtually every other country) have gotten by without putting them in combat slots. With those slots actually being drastically reduced because of budget cuts, if anything the armed forces should be considering
raising physical standards. As much as it would delight our enemies, we cannot afford an equal-opportunity military.
