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75 years ago.

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On Women In Combat 11: Fait Accompli

While you weren’t looking, the Obama administration made sure not to let a crisis go to waste and the SECDEF opened all combat positions in the military to women.

Washington (CNN)All U.S. military combat positions are being opened up to women, Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced Thursday.

The decision allows women to fill about 220,000 jobs that are now limited to men — including infantry, armor, reconnaissance and some special operations units.

“This means that as long as they qualify and meet the standards, women will now be able to contribute to our mission in ways they could not before. They’ll be able to drive tanks, give orders, lead infantry soldiers into combat,” Carter said at a news conference Thursday.

They won’t meet the standards because the current standards are “too high”.  Once the standards are lowered (or men not wanting to be accused of sexism let failures pass) they won’t contribute to the mission because they’ll be – by definition – substandard, and they won’t be able to drive tanks, give orders, or lead infantry soldiers into combat as well as the men currently in those jobs.  Also, the men who come in after the adjusted standards will also be substandard.  The entire military will suffer.

“There will be no exceptions,” Carter said.

Carter’s historic announcement comes after years-long reviews, and after public push-back from the Marine Corps, which had sought exceptions to keep positions such as infantry, machine gunner, fire support and reconnaissance to men. A Marine Corps study suggests all-male squads are more effective in combat and less likely to be injured than integrated groups.

Carter acknowledged the Marines’ resistance, but said he’d decided to set a policy that covers the full department.

“We are a joint force, and I’ve decided to make a decision that applies to the entire force,” Carter said.

He will never be laying in the street bleeding and needing someone to carry him to safety.

“Moving forward,” Dunford said, “my focus is to lead the full integration of women in a manner that maintains our joint warfighting capability, ensures the health and welfare of our people, and optimizes how we leverage talent across the Joint Force.”

Ah, moving forward – the relentless march of progressivism.  It will not maintain warfighting capability, will not ensure health and welfare, and will not “optimize leveraging talent”.

He acknowledged that “some service members, men and women, have a perception that integration would be pursued at a cost of combat effectiveness.”

And they’re correct.  Combat effectiveness is meaningless to a man who will never face combat and whose world consists of what’s best for the party.

However, Carter said: “The military has long prided itself on being a meritocracy.”

It’s only been a partial meritocracy recently, and now it’s not a meritocracy at all.

Standards will drop, combat effectiveness will fall, the hard scientific biological differences of men and women will be ignored in the name of progressively harming the US and all its institutions, and the military and the US will suffer.

Sgt Major Ruins Career By Having Integrity

It’s from the Duffelblog, a comedy/parody military news site, so it is a made up story, but it’s also pretty much true.  For those who missed the setup, read here about Sgt Maj LeHew discussing the failures of trying to put women into combat roles.  Basically they found out that water is wet, despite trying their damnedest to find the opposite under political pressure.

QUANTICO, Va. — Sgt. Maj. Justin LeHew was notified this week that he will receive an other than honorable discharge from the Marine Corps, sources report, after LeHew recently ruined his career by releasing negative study results instead of destroying them.

LeHew, the Sergeant Major of Marine Corps Training and Education Command, made the career ending move last month, by publicly releasing the methodology and results of a study that found gender-integrated infantry units performed worse than all male ones.

In his publicly-visible Facebook post, LeHew said Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus was “way off base” in his comments on women in the infantry, also adding that he was “unfair to women who participated in the study.” Since his remarks, LeHew has been “unavailable for comment,” reportedly chained in the basement of the Commandant’s home, sources say.

“His mistake was announcing facts,” Lt. Gen. Paul K. Van Riper (Ret.) said. “When faced with facts contrary to what the military and Congress wants, the facts must be changed. It’s standard procedure.”

Van Riper was speaking from experience. In 2002 he was the opposing general in the 2002 Millennium Challenge, where he led an inferior foe to victory against American forces. The exercise was started over with rule changes to ensure Van Riper could not win again.

The Millenium Challenge is worth reading about at their link.  While the quotes attributed to Van Riper are made up for humor purposes in the story… the story of the Millenium Challenge is not.

Not all negative results are supressed. A study found that despite an Army Optimism Program, 52 percent of soldiers had low morale. The Army took quick action to solve this problem by lowering the threshold of what it considered an unhappy soldier. Now only 9 percent of soldiers have low morale.

That would be funnier were it not for being basically what’s been done with (as one example) employment numbers by the Obama administration.  Redefine someone who’s unemployed as “no longer participating in the labor force” and then you don’t count them as unemployed.

USMC – 240 Years

For those unawares, the Marine Corps birthday is November 10.  Back in 1775 it was formed in a bar called the Tun Tavern in Philadelphia, where Samuel Nicholas was tasked with creating a Continental Marine force for the colonies.  There’s been a lot of history since then.

Happy Birthday, Marines.

On Women In Combat Part 10 – “Diversity Is Strength!”, The Reality of Failure, and Sgt Maj LeHew Points Out The Obvious

Today:

WASHINGTON — The Marine Corps is expected to ask that women not be allowed to compete for several front-line combat jobs, inflaming tensions between Navy and Marine leaders, U.S. officials say.

The tentative decision has ignited a debate over whether Navy Secretary Ray Mabus can veto any Marine Corps proposal to prohibit women from serving in certain infantry and reconnaissance positions. And it puts Gen. Joseph Dunford, the Marine Corps commandant who takes over soon as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at odds with the other three military services, who are expected to open all of their combat jobs to women.  …

Putting the social justice to the warrior.

Mabus on Monday made his position clear.

“I’m not going to ask for an exemption for the Marines, and it’s not going to make them any less fighting effective,” he said, adding that the Navy SEALs also will not seek any waivers. “I think they will be a stronger force because a more diverse force is a stronger force. And it will not make them any less lethal.“

It’s going to make the Marines less effective, and it’s going to make the Marine Corps a weaker force because diversity is not strength.  And it will make the Marine Corps less lethal to the enemy, but more lethal to itself.

In fact, the Marine Corps even did studies and found male units outperformed female units.  I hear next up they’re going to do a study in LeJeune to see if water is wet and then one in 29 Palms to see if the sun makes things hot in summer.

…the report also pointed to the 25-year-old report by a presidential commission on women in the armed forces that concluded: “Risking the lives of a military unit in combat to provide career opportunities or accommodate the personal desires or interests of an individual, or group of individuals, is more than bad military judgment. It is morally wrong.”

Mabus, however, told the City Club of Cleveland that while the Marines did a long study of the matter, it relied on averages — such as the average woman can’t carry as much or perform as quickly as a man.

“The other way to look at it is we’re not looking for average,” said Mabus. “There were women that met this standard, and a lot of the things there that women fell a little short in can be remedied by two things: training and leadership.”

I’ve said this for years now – this is about the cocktail party circuit and the DC circuit for these kinds of social justice progressives and their sycophants.  Mabus is not going to ever be in danger from harm because a BAM who can’t carry Fred is going to leave him bleeding in a street in Ramadi.

Training and leadership do not make up for millenia of biology.  The only leadership and training he’s going to put forth are either specialty programs to advance women at the expense of better qualified men (which is a waste of resources and ability) or that the leadership and training in question means the people who are allowing women to fail and that the standard will be adjusted by making sure more women pass.

The recent “grunt life” story also highlights a lot of the failures that it doesn’t take a psychic to forsee:

Lance Cpl. Chris Augello arrived at the integrated task force believing that women should get a shot at service in the infantry as long as they could meet existing standards. It was a perspective that made him different from most male Marines, he said, and he’d argued with his unit members for hours on the point.

When Augello checked out of the task force months later, however, he submitted a 13-page essay to unit officials explaining exactly why the experience had made him change his mind.

Another reservist from Delta Company, 4th LAR, Augello, 23, said he volunteered for the task force for personal reasons — namely, a chance to accrue the six consecutive months of active duty that would qualify him to take advantage of the post-9/11 GI Bill.

He was assigned to the light armored vehicle platoon once he got to Camp Lejeune. Over time, he said, discipline broke down because some noncommissioned officers were hesitant to hurt the feelings of more junior female Marines with orders or correction. Romantic relationships and friendships between male and female unit members also became a distraction, he said.

“The female variable in this social experiment has wrought a fundamental change in the way male NCOs think, act and lead,” Augello wrote in the 13-page paper he presented to Marine leaders, which he shared with Marine Corps Times. “A change that is sadly for the worse, not the better.”  …

… the lance corporal said he became frustrated during group assessments, such as an exercise in which platoon members had to work together to haul a dummy weighing nearly 200 pounds out of the vehicle turret and to a designated recovery spot dozens of yards away. When partnered with the platoon’s female Marines, he said he frequently had to compensate for their smaller frames and lack of upper body strength by hauling more of the load.

“I told myself, ‘I don’t know how much longer my back will have after doing this,'” he recalled.

During one assessment, Augello said he found himself paired with the smallest male Marine in the platoon — one who was physically shorter and slighter than a number of the unit’s female Marines. But the Marine’s build and musculature made a significant difference, he said.

“I didn’t feel a lot of stress on my back because he was able to actually help me,” he said. “His upper body strength made the difference at the end of the day.”

He’s carrying the extra weight.

Amazingly, they even include an image and caption of a female Marine who needs help lifting shells.

What’s funnier yet is she’s mentioned in a positive light in this story, despite being the slowest in the team.

I’ve said this about armor and artillery units before.  There’s a lot more moving of big, ugly, heavy objects and more manual labor than women are up to.  Yes, there may be a handful who can hack it (at least for a while), but the wear and tear and strain is not the same on women, and the effect of having someone incapable of the job who is in the job just means the capable male Marine has to haul more weight.

On top of that, in-theater, combat arms units are frequently thrown into other roles.  What springs to mind first is that my battalion in the mid-2000s ended up sending units to Afghanistan that promptly abandoned their AAVs and were simply “amgrunts” for the duration of their tours.  Not their specialty but it’s what they had to do anyway.  Infantry units don’t just march and shoot – they spend a lot of their time doing hard manual labor like constructing fortifications that last anywhere from overnight to months to years.  Arty guys and tankers get tasked with plenty of things outside their MOS as well.  Any line unit is no stranger to the phrase “working party up”.  The multitude of roles that can be assigned any combat unit are only limited by the vicissitudes of war.  Having people who are only marginally physically capable in their primary role engaged in an activity (war) that will probably put them in additional strenuous roles is a recipe for failure.

Brown, the lance corporal who was one of only two female Marines to complete the infantry assessment, said she is certain she has found her calling as a grunt. She loved the experience, she said, from grueling humps to sweaty field operations and rough-edged, coarse camaraderie with other infantrymen. She attributed her success in the physical challenges in part to her background in sports, including a competitive soccer career that began when she was 6 years old.

That sports background was probably helpful.  What’s not helpful is that in the field and outside of a controlled test environment, she’ll hold up every bit as well as Captain Katie Petronio did.  Biology doesn’t care.

And SgtMaj LeHew pointed out the obvious – though it’s probably best to just read his words on this:

Ok, been silent long enough on this. I have been a part of this process from the beginning and I am just going to put it out there. The Secretary of the Navy is way off base on this and to say the things he is saying is is flat out counter to the interests of national security and is unfair to the women who participated in this study.

We selected our best women for this test unit, selected our most mature female leaders as well. The men (me included) were the most progressive and open minded that you could get. The commander of this unit was a seasoned and successful infantryman. The XO of this unit was as good as they get, so good the USMC made her the CO of the Officer candidate school.

I just selected the SgtMaj of the unit to head up our senior enlisted academy at Camp Lejeune, NC. No one went in to this with the mentality that we did not want this to succeed. No Marine, regardless of gender would do that. With our limited manpower we cannot afford to not train eveyone to the best of their abilities.

This was as stacked as a unit could get with the best Marines to give it a 100 percent success rate as we possibly could. End result? The best women in The GCEITF as a group in regard to infantry operations were equal or below in most all cases to the lowest 5 percent of men as a group in this test study.

They are slower on all accounts in almost every technical and tactical aspect and physically weaker in every aspect across the range of military operations. SECNAV has stated that he has made his mind up even before the release of these results and that the USMC test unit will not change his mind on anything.

Listen up folks. Your senior leadership of this country does not want to see America overwhelmingly succeed on the battlefield, it wants to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to persue whatever they want regardless of the outcome on national security. The infantry is not Ranger School. That is just a school like any other school and is not a feeder specifically to the infantry.

Anyone can go to that school that meets the prereqs, just like airborne school. Kudos to the two women who graduated. They are badasses in their own right. In regards to the infantry….there is no trophy for second place. You perform or die.

Make no mistake. In this realm, you want your fastest, most fit, most physical and most lethal person you can possibly put on the battlefield to overwhelm the enemy’s ability to counter what you are throwing at them and in every test case, that person has turned out to be a man. There is nothing gender biased about this, it is what it is.

You will never see a female Quarterback in the NFL, there will never be a female center on any NHL team and you will never see a female batting in the number 4 spot for the New York Yankees. It is what it is. As a country we preach equality.

But to place these mandates on the military before thiscountry has even considered making females register, just like males, for the selective service is in all aspects out of touch with reality.Equality and equal opportunity start before you raise your right hand and swear and oath to this country.

Yes, we are an all volunteer force at the moment. Should this country however need to mobilize rapidly again to face the threats of the world like our grandfathers did, it will once again look to the military age males of this country to fill the ranks because last I checked, we did not require women to register for the selective service. Until that happens, we should not even be wasting our time even thinking about opening up the infantry to women.

To my female Marine friends out there, I love you to death, you are the best of the best and you have my continued admiration for what you do and to the Marines of the GCEITF….you are tops in my book for taking up the challenge…regardless what the SECNAV says about you not being the best that we could have put in that unit because you were….on all accounts.

And for those of you who don’t know Sgt Maj LeHew, his Navy Cross citation:

Citation: For extraordinary heroism as Amphibious Assault Platoon Sergeant, Company A, 1st Battalion, 2d Marines, Task Force Tarawa, I Marine Expeditionary Force in support of Operation IRAQI FREEDOM on 23 and 24 March 2003. As Regimental Combat Team 2 attacked north towards An Nasiriyah, Iraq, lead elements of the Battalion came under heavy enemy fire. When the beleaguered United States Army 507th Maintenance Company convoy was spotted in the distance, Gunnery Sergeant Lehew and his crew were dispatched to rescue the soldiers. Under constant enemy fire, he led the rescue team to the soldiers. With total disregard for his own welfare, he assisted the evacuation effort of four soldiers, two of whom were critically wounded. While still receiving enemy fire, he climbed back into his vehicle and immediately began suppressing enemy infantry. During the subsequent company attack on the eastern bridge over the Euphrates River, Gunnery Sergeant Lehew continuously exposed himself to withering enemy fire during the three-hour urban firefight. His courageous battlefield presence inspired his Marines to fight a determined foe and allowed him to position his platoon’s heavy machine guns to repel numerous waves of attackers. In the midst of the battle, an Amphibious Assault Vehicle was destroyed, killing or wounding all its occupants. Gunnery Sergeant Lehew immediately moved to recover the nine Marines. He again exposed himself to a barrage of fire as he worked for nearly an hour recovering casualties from the wreckage. By his outstanding display of decisive leadership, unlimited courage in the face of heavy enemy fire, and utmost devotion to duty, Gunnery Sergeant Lehew reflected great credit upon himself and upheld the highest traditions of the Marine Corps and the United States Naval Service.

Give ‘im one!

On Women In Combat Part 9 – Pressure Growing To Drop The Standard

From the Washington Times:

“The pressure is on the services from the White House’s politically correct crowd vis-a-vis Obama’s Pentagon appointees, who will force the services to accept degraded standards,” said Robert Maginnis, a retired Army officer and author of the book “Deadly Consequences: How Cowards Are Pushing Women Into Combat.”

In January 2013, then-Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and Gen. Dempsey, the Joint Chiefs chairman, appeared in the Pentagon press room to make a historic announcement. They had lifted the rule that prevented women from serving in direct ground combat, such as infantry, special operations, artillery and armor.

The cancellation began a far-reaching process by each military branch to evaluate female candidates and the standards they must meet. The giant study is scheduled to end in January, when Defense Secretary Ashton Carter will decide which, if not all, occupations will be opened. If a service — the Marine Corps, for example — decides infantry should remain closed, it must prove why its standards cannot be lowered.

Gen. Dempsey laid down the law this way: “If we do decide that a particular standard is so high that a woman couldn’t make it, the burden is now on the service to come back and explain to the secretary, why is it that high? Does it really have to be that high?”

If women can’t meet a selection or training standard, it couldn’t be because the training and selection associated with the job is supposed to weed out those incapable in the field, it must be that the training and selection is too difficult and doesn’t need to be that high.

A few weeks back, I was reading about some ODA SF guys talking about how the selection and training was the easy part of their jobs.

SOI is not the same as being a career infantryman and MCT and schools are not the same as being armor or artillerymen.

There are jobs that require strength and endurance that women, due to biology, do not have.  It’s not a measure of character of the individuals involved, it’s not a judgement on their worth as Americans, it’s just a matter of biology and whether or not they can do a job.

If they can’t, but some politician in DC tells them they can, they still can’t.  The mass of a roadwheel, 155 shell, or mortar baseplate do not change due to an edict from DC.  It only means that the men in the job who can hack it will have that much more load to bear because if they leave the poor girl to carry her own pack, she’ll collapse and then they’ll be heartless reactionary misogynists who only hate women in the army because politics or something.

As usual, nothing good will come of this.