View Full Version : Australian women destined for frontline combat
SouthernDZ
04-12-2011, 04:50
Australian women destined for frontline combat
AFP - Australian women could soon be given the right to fight and die for their country by serving in frontline combat positions, Defence Minister Stephen Smith said Tuesday.
While women are allowed to fill many military roles, they are currently excluded from the most dangerous and demanding, including in the special forces and rifle companies.
Smith said this could change after the defence force announced a series of reviews into the treatment of women sparked by a sex scandal involving a young female cadet at Australia's elite military academy.
"It's very realistic (that women will serve on the front-line)," Smith told reporters, saying positions should be determined on physical and mental capacity, not sex, in a bid to change the male-dominated military culture.
"What you do in the forces should be determined by your physical and intellectual capability or capacity, not simply on the basis of sex or gender.
"It opens up all of the leadership roles for women in defence -- and that's an unambiguously good thing."
Currently, a woman cannot be appointed chief of defence as the role is only open to people who have served in combat.
Several countries, including New Zealand and Canada, already allow women in some front-line positions and Julia Gillard, Australia's first female prime minister, made clear no job should be denied on the basis of gender.
"A few years ago I heard (former defence chief General) Peter Cosgrove say that men and women should have an equal right to fight and die for their country," she said.
"I think he's right about that and I think it's a good turn of phrase. It puts the choice very starkly."
Sex Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick, who has been tasked with reviewing how women are treated in the forces, said women fighting alongside men would be "very symbolic".
"It will send a strong message that men and women will have equality in terms of opportunity for jobs," she said.
But not everyone wants to see women putting their lives on the line, with the Australia Defence Association think-tank saying it was not realistic.
"The nature of war doesn't change just because some feminists kick up a fuss," spokesman Neil James told ABC radio.
"Simple commonsense tells you that if you put women in some jobs where you directly fight men, enemy men, one-on-one in a physical confrontation for a continuous period, then we are likely to suffer more female casualties than male casualties."
A number of investigations into the military have been launched after a male student filmed himself having sex with a female colleague at the Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA) and allegedly secretly broadcast it to his friends online.
The woman went to the media last week, triggering a series of fresh complaints about sexual misconduct within the military stretching back decades.
According to the Sydney Daily Telegraph Tuesday, at least four military officers who allegedly raped and assaulted fellow students at the ADFA remain in uniform.
Smith said his office and the Department of Defence had received numerous new complaints since the video sex incident. "There have been suggestions, allegations, complaints made of incidents of abuses in the past or failure to properly handle allegations or suggestions of abuse, vilification, bullying or intimidation," he said.
http://www.france24.com/en/20110412-australian-women-destined-frontline-combat
Australian women destined for frontline combat
AFP - Australian women could soon be given the right to fight and die for their country by serving in frontline combat positions, Defence Minister Stephen Smith said Tuesday.
Smith said this could change after the defence force announced a series of reviews into the treatment of women sparked by a sex scandal involving a young female cadet at Australia's elite military academy.
There is no segway between women in combat and sex scandals??
Women in combat will be debated for the next 10 generations or until Lt Ripley in commissioned.
Sex scandals should receive ZERO tolerance.
One does not mitigate nor facilitate the other...
A very poorly written article by the MSM to inflame two different & independent discussions..
:munchin
My $00.0002
This was the French AP story.
I read the original story from an Australian paper yesterday but that version included the part that they would have to meet the same standards the men did.
DaveMatteson
04-12-2011, 08:33
The story is about Norwegian Tone Gunnes, an appropriate name :) who is/was the gunner on a CV90 and took out about 25 insurgents with her 30mm cannon.
Here is the story
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=no&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aftenposten.no%2Fnyheter%2Furik s%2Farticle3252398.ece
This is the op she was was on:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Harekate_Yolo
As long as they can do the job I have no issues with it. As a former P.O. I have worked with women who could do the job and women who left everything but writing a ticket to the guys on the shift.
frostfire
04-13-2011, 21:24
Norwegian? I thought there's a general consensus in this board that them Vikings can get away with anything :D
Most of my coworkers are women. Purdy ones, too. As I shared with a coworker: I don't care what's within the legs, I care what's between the ears. I don't care what's hanging off the chest, but what's beneath it. Heart and mind. Intellect and character. Thankfully the baggy ACU's help mask those curves to maintain "visual camouflage." ;) Then again there are those that just have to wear one or two size smaller, and when the talks about getting pregnant to avoid or to get certain assignments start... :rolleyes:
Agree on the special operations application vs. frontline combat. Speaking of special ops, I wish the female engagement team pipelines includes SERE to help the applicants to count the cost. Based on first hand account from a CA personnel involved in the selection, with the exception of some, I wish we could recruit those female gurkhas instead. I sincerely hope the US public can stomach what's shown on CNN in 1993 but with female service members.
mojaveman
04-13-2011, 23:00
I guess it depends somewhat on what exactly the females are going to be doing. During WWII the Russians were so short of fighter pilots that they let women fill that role, and a handful of them eventually becme Aces. They also used women as snipers and a number of them ended the war with some pretty impressive scores. What they did wasn't exactly like fighting hand to hand with men in trenchlines but their contributions to the overall effort were admirable.
My German sponsor at the German General Staff College told me about his company's top tank gunner, a female, who outshot the rest of the company significantly. I agree that hand to hand combat is of major concern but I'm not sure why it's an issue since we've been placing females on the front lines since 2003 routinely.
They're serving as medics, medical corpsmen, interpreters, and in the Marine's female engagement teams in Afghanistan. We have female Apache, Kiowa, Blackhawk and Chinook pilots. The Air Force had a flight with fully female crews a few weeks ago that was highly publicized. While it's true the nature of this war as opposed to Korea and World War II is devoid of a FLOT or FEBA, we have regularly placed females with combat soldiers to do "non-combat" related jobs. My best interpreter in OIF III was a female American Soldier who could scare the holy hell out of just about anyone we detained.
Bob Dylan talked about the times a-changin.' The dormant social revolutions that have taken place - notably equal rights for genders, orientations, and persuasions - will eventually catch up in the military. We led the way with racial desegregation and we will soon catch up with Britain, France, Germany, Australia, and Canada in our social integration. For reasons good, bad, or indifferent, that's just the way things are headed.
It then becomes leader's business to enforce the standards and hold people accountable to those standards, as we should be doing.
The Reaper
04-14-2011, 06:39
We could start by getting rid of the double standards on the PT Test then.
Since women can do everything men can now. :munchin
TR
I took the article to read that, after a forthcoming review of women's roles in the Oz armed forces which was brought about by an investigation of male bahaviors towards female soldiers, there may be some women allowed to train for certain combat roles which have been closed to them up to now...as long as they fully qualify for them.
I think the article's headline causes one to have a pretty strong emotional response before it is even read by omitting a needed question mark and, thus, making it a declarative statement whch would indicate a decision has already been made.
"Australian women destined for frontline combat" vs "Australian women destined for frontline combat?" offer two very different meanings and responses to how one approaches the article...but I guess question marks for headlines don't sell papers.
And so it goes...
Richard :munchin
We could start by getting rid of the double standards on the PT Test then.
Since women can do everything men can now. :munchin
TR
Sir,
I can't disagree with you on the PT point. I can tell you I've seen 2 females in my time who scored over 300 on the old scale back when you had to run a sub-11:54 to max the two mile. Their pushups and situps were impecable and they ran like deer. They could also change a roadwheel and move track around easier than some of our thinner male soldiers.
I just don't see hundreds or thousands of women lining up to become infantrywomen. i think the number will be in the 10s. Some of them will meet the institutional requirements and some will not. Those that do will serve, and those that don't will be directed elsewhere - just like we do with our male soldiers who can't meet the standards.
Also, this is the same subject as this week's Army Times cover story.
The Reaper
04-14-2011, 08:57
Sir,
I can't disagree with you on the PT point. I can tell you I've seen 2 females in my time who scored over 300 on the old scale back when you had to run a sub-11:54 to max the two mile. Their pushups and situps were impecable and they ran like deer. They could also change a roadwheel and move track around easier than some of our thinner male soldiers.
I just don't see hundreds or thousands of women lining up to become infantrywomen. i think the number will be in the 10s. Some of them will meet the institutional requirements and some will not. Those that do will serve, and those that don't will be directed elsewhere - just like we do with our male soldiers who can't meet the standards.
Also, this is the same subject as this week's Army Times cover story.
Based on my time in an elite unit with a selection and assessment program, I would say that there will be pressure to lower standards and take applicants regardless of performance in order to meet mandated goals.
Then the inevitable issues will arise with deployments, pregnancy, single parents, sexual harassment and assault allegations, fraternization, and physical disability as years of wear and tear under near bodyweight equivalent loads take their inevitable physical toll on fellow humans who have genetically been endowed with lesser upper body strength, aerobic capacity, bone density, and endurance. There is a reason that testosterone is a performance enhancer.
You take your Amazons, and jock them up with 135 pounds of combat load and send them out on a 30 day combat foot patrol. Keep them out there for the better part of 20 years, if you can, and keep track of what their physical injuries are. I do not think they will be in the same shape as their male counterparts then.
I love women and have a daughter. I do not want to see them in a ground combat force. I think we are trying to rationalize a decision based on emotion rather than physical evidence and genetics.
Tell you what, make everyone meet the same physical fitness and bodyfat standards, register everyone for the draft, eliminate women's sports programs and merge them into the men's sports programs in a meritocracy, and we can talk about this. Till then, IMHO, it is social engineering.
This might make sense if the enemy were at the gates, or we had difficulty filling our units with sufficient numbers of qualified male candidates. Currently, recruiters are being selective and we are looking at a future where we have to eliminate a portion of our force structure. This begs the question why we (or the Aussies) NEED to try this experiment.
In my opinion, based on 25 years plus in the military, this is a political decision, and one that will prove to be a bad one. YMMV.
TR
Based on my time in an elite unit with a selection and assessment program, I would say that there will be pressure to lower standards and take applicants regardless of performance in order to meet mandated goals.
Then the inevitable issues will arise with deployments, pregnancy, single parents, sexual harrassment and assault allegations, fraternization, and physical disability as years of wear and tear under near bodyweight equivalent loads take their inevitable physical toll on fellow humans who have genetically lesser upper body strength, aerobic capacity, bone density, and endurance. There is a reason that testosterone is a performance enhancer.
You take your Amazons, and jock them up with 135 pounds of combat load and send them out on a 30 day combat foot patrol. Keep them out there for the better part of 20 years, if you can, and keep track of what their physical injuries are. I do not think they will be in the same shape as their male counterparts then.
I love women and have a daughter. I do not want to see them in a ground combat force. I think we are trying to rationalize a decision based on emotion rather than physical evidence and genetics.
Tell you what, make everyone meet the same physical fitness and bodyfat standards, eliminate women's sports programs and merge them into the men's sports programs in a meritocracy, and we can talk about this. Till then, IMHO, it is social engineering.
This might make sense if the enemy were at the gates, or we had difficulty filling our units with sufficient numbers of qualified male candidates. Currently, recruiters are being selective and we are looking at a future where we have to eliminate a portion of our force structure. This begs the question why we (or the Aussies) NEED to try this experiment.
In my opinion, based on 25 years plus in the military, this is a political decision, and one that will prove to be a bad one. YMMV.
TR
I don't fundamentally disagree with anything you've written.
I don't fundamentally disagree with anything you've written.
Just curious....isn't that a form of passive aggressive disagreement if you can't just say "I agree"? ;)
Just curious....isn't that a form of passive aggressive disagreement if you can't just say "I agree"? ;)
It wasn't meant to come across that way.
For the record, TR, I agree with you. :)
While engaged in pitted battle, I hear the cry for a Medic, moments later, another plea for help. Looking about the battle scene, (while changing a magazine on my M4), to see our Sr. Medical NCO waving for me to join him as he has just moved our fallen team member out of harms way. Upon arriving, he says, "Help me get a chest tube started".
I loosen the web gear waist buckle, rolling my team member to one side, I pull the gear off. Back on their back, I open the shirt, one button at a time, and tear the T-shirt, starting at the bullet hole, ripping the cloth away exposing a perfect set of 36 C cup breats.
With the back of my left hand I raise the breast tissue while with right hand wiping a clean cloth over what appears to be a bullet hole just under and to the outside of her nipple line at the 5th rib.
----------BT-----------
Now while this story in fictional, we do have injuries where women are hurt, injured or killed and modesty is simply thrown out the window.
This example has no merit in adding any significant dialogue to this thread, but it could be the beginning of a new Chapter in a Wolfgang Hammersmith novel.
I'll let a 18D continue the story line, since my only medical experience is in saying, "Hey, that looks like a bullet hole."
frostfire
04-15-2011, 11:58
Then the inevitable issues will arise with deployments, pregnancy, single parents, sexual harassment and assault allegations, fraternization, and physical disability as years of wear and tear under near bodyweight equivalent loads take their inevitable physical toll on fellow humans who have genetically been endowed with lesser upper body strength, aerobic capacity, bone density, and endurance. There is a reason that testosterone is a performance enhancer.
I deal with the underline above from time to time. IMHOO, it's sucking up army resources unnecessarily. Heck, I wish soldiers need their commander approval to marry, have kids, and so on, and candidate screening should include their spouses, or anyone else that the army will pay for healthcare. Throw in psyc eval in there, too.
RTK, the cases you mentioned are few and far between and among the exceptions. I've met my share of them. I shook their hands and openly expressed my admiration and respect for them, especially those who willingly acknowledged their limitation despite superior performance in some areas. I wished them all the best no matter what.
TR is correct: The second, third order effects, risk vs. benefit have not been thoroughly and objectively evaluated enough. In the era where common sense is as good as a relic of days gone by, who would listen though?
I deal with the underline above from time to time. IMHOO, it's sucking up army resources unnecessarily. Heck, I wish soldiers need their commander approval to marry, have kids, and so on, and candidate screening should include their spouses, or anyone else that the army will pay for healthcare. Throw in psyc eval in there, too.
RTK, the cases you mentioned are few and far between and among the exceptions. I've met my share of them. I shook their hands and openly expressed my admiration and respect for them, especially those who willingly acknowledged their limitation despite superior performance in some areas. I wished them all the best no matter what.
TR is correct: The second, third order effects, risk vs. benefit have not been thoroughly and objectively evaluated enough. In the era where common sense is as good as a relic of days gone by, who would listen though?
You're both right. I agree wholeheartedly that all the reprocussions have not yet been considered nor have sufficient answers been given to hard questions that have been asked.
Women in combat will be debated for the next 10 generations or until Lt Ripley in commissioned.
This is the best quote I've ever seen on the issue.
I hope the Australians have fully thought/planned it out.