In real life, the guys who ride the bombs in wear chaps. :D

Doesn't matter to me...because I am retired! So there.:p

As tempting as it was to ride the Bomb, the thought of getting my Clearance pulled was enough to deter me.

Plus our CO said chaps were for horses and the bedroom.. :D

***In thinking about it, I remember on a training mission where we unloaded 45 750lb. GBU's on a inert range while the ACC Commander was in an F-16 on the same range and felt quite a violent amount of turbulence.. And of course there is the well known incident of being on the receiving end of a B-52 carrying Live Nuclear Cruise Missiles across the CONUS when they were supposed to be Dummy Cruise Missiles. Thankfully I wasn't on the starting side of that as the end result was not favorable for those who were.

51 % of American voters are going to be begging for someone to fix things as soon as they are treated to the full dose of what they have voted for...

...the trick is for the administration to figure out how to credit the republicans for everything that the democrats are trying to do

Oh heck Billy, the current crop of GOP will probably fight over the credit. :rolleyes:

Because it isn't rank normed.

A 45 y/o Bn CO or CSM isn't going to be doing the same job as a 25 y/o team guy.

Supervisory positions require more experience and less brute strength, if done properly.

Lots of wear and tear comes with those years and experience, and hopefully, some understanding.



I can hardly wait to see what incredibly stupid idea the Dims come up with next.

They must be pretty far down the list by now. :rolleyes:

TR

True that. But, aren't there some "40-something" team guys? Don't "we" set ourselves up for a male-female debate with a young-old debate - if the standard is being able to do the job or not?

For awhile there, I found the PT standards getting tougher faster than I could get older... :rolleyes:

FWIW...
 

KTLA, L.A.'s Tribune affiliate, ran an interesting story on the SecDef's announcement yesterday evening. After the reporter framed the debate, the story aired three sound bites from interviews.

The first was a man who had served with the 82nd who said he think women could do the job. Next was a retired Marine--who, from her comments, was an aviator. She thought women would find it much tougher than they thought.

Finally a young-ish very, ahem, athletic civilian got the last word. She said that as long as the standards are the same and women are allowed to try, then they could succeed or fail and the outcome would be fair.

HERESY! :eek:



:D

LINK


Two Cheers for Lifting the Ban on Women in Combat

Ronald Bailey|Jan. 24, 2013 5:02 pm

Real gun controlWomen and men are entitled to the same rights, period. Discriminating against an individual solely based on his or her sex is wrong and if you do that you are not my friend. So my initial reaction yesterday to reports that the Pentagon was lifting restrictions on women in combat was: It's about time. I was confident that I could find data that would show that women and men would perform equally well in combat, so I went looking for it. To my surprise, I could uncover very little data comparing the physical capacities of female and male recruits.

The most comprehensive analysis of the issue that I could find is a 2011 paper by social scientist William Gregor in the School of Advanced Military Studies at the US Army Command and General Staff College located at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Gregor's study, "Why Can’t Anything Be Done? Measuring Physical Readiness of Women for Military Occupations," [PDF] looks at what data is available and finds significant differences in ability of female and male recruits to meet the military's physical performance standards.

Take, for example, Gregor's analysis of how well ROTC cadets have done on the Army Physical Fitness Test (APFT) that looks at about 75,000 recruits who were commissioned by the U.S. Army through ROTC between 1992 and 2009. The performance of all cadets is evaluated based on how fast they can run two miles and how many push ups they can do. Gregor shows ...
Gregor then looks at a comparison of the aerobic capacity of the ROTC cadets and reports...

According to NPR, qualifying for combat positions will be based on gender-neutral criteria:

If both male and female soldiers are expected to meet the same criteria, then this change will be good for our military. In any case, it's high time that the Pentagon become more transparent with its training data.

Didn't stop the Ranger Reg from self imposing the 17 y/o standard on everyone regardless of age or position. I think we had the most in shape pac clerks and cooks in the Army. Admittedly, the 75th is not typical.

Is going to be exciting to watch how this shakes out. All the chest pounding, sabre rattling, political jockeying, some senior leaders are going to fall on their sword, etc.

Anyone remember the shooting at Louiges restaurant in the mid 90s? The shooter claimed it was over Clinton's new don't ask don't tell policy

I feel bad for the current crop of 11B skill level ones. The guys from this group that reenlist are going to be the team and squad leaders when all this happens.

We had a discussion in my office regarding issues outside of maintaining the standards. What about the administrative and command requirements that are currently regarded as necessary?

When women when first assigned to Navy combat ships, the first assigned were officers then senior enlisted before the junior enlisted. With the Marine Infantry Officer School they tried to send female officers first and they failed.

What will happen if or when an enlisted female qualifies. Will they insist on assigning unqualified females as part of the command structure or will be able to scrap the requirement to have women represented in the command structure?

IMO, the correct answer would have to be that if they are to be completely equal, they take the command as it exists. But will the administrators and generals actually let this fly? Will they be allowed to be truly equal?

Here's a good article that seems to put some rational thought into the discussion of should women be allowed in combat roles, and if so, what are the broad implications. Gen. Boykin explains why this was done for the wrong reasons at the wrong time.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinio...oykin/1863049/

Have females gone to Ranger School and failed?

5-Year Army Pilot Alice On Women In Combat

5-Year Army Vet and Blackhawk Pilot Alice called in today to weigh in on the Pentagon announcing women can now serve in combat roles. She is against it and laid out this argument:

7 min. audio interview/opinion.

Written from a woman's POV on women in combat roles.

http://www.westernjournalism.com/the...le-combat-vet/

Excellent article!

TR

Good article, but I have one issue with it; when she talks about moms deploying. I didn't deploy for career advancement, I deployed because it was my J-O-B. When my husband and I were both deployed at the same time and had to leave our daughter with my parents. It wasn't for career advancement, it was because it was our J-O-B. We had a plan in place should something happen to both of us while we were gone. That is part of being a responsible parent in the military.

I get sick and tired of people saying how awful it is if a mom dies while deployed, leaving behind her child. I am sorry, but if my kids lost their father instead of me, they have still lost a parent, and regardless of which one, it would be a huge loss in their life.

I agree completely with you on this. It's the one part of the article I felt didn't make a valid argument.

It wasn't "according to NPR" - it was according to "Pentagon officials."

Richard :munchin

I thought they had but seem to be incorrect. I will retract. Though they did quit marine Infantry Officer school....I will remove the Ranger school reference unless I find any account of a woman attending.

Thanks for point that out.

Army Leadership's Statement.

And so it goes...

Richard :munchin

Here is a copy of a letter to the editor that I sent the New York Times. I doubt they will publish it but I had to get my say in.

"Dear New York Times,
I read with some interest your article “For 3 Women Combat Option Came a Bit Late” published on January 26th. As a graduate of the Army’s Infantry Officer Basic and Advanced Course, Ranger School, the Special Forces Qualification Course and veteran of over 20 years in the U.S. Army Special Forces (The Green Berets) part of which time I was involved in training, assessing and selecting future Green Berets I know something about this matter. Your article makes it sound like these women would all have succeeded in the combat arms branch of their choice if the ban was absent. In reality all that it would have done, and all the current removal of the ban has done, is given women the right to try out. This is much like Title IX gave women the right to try out for their high school football team. Try out yes, make it, not necessarily. After 40 years of title IX seeing a girl on a High School football team is still a novelty.

One only has to look north to Canada to see how this will probably play out. The Canadian’s, who possess a very modern and capable military, removed all gender barriers in the 1989. In their Army, after 20 plus years of integration, the percentage of women in the combat arms is only 1.6%. In the infantry, the most physically demanding branch, it is less than .5%.

The same statistics have played out here in the U.S. The United States Marine Corps had hoped to get 90 women officers to volunteer to attend the Infantry Officer’s Course. To date they have managed to attract 4. Two of these attended late last year and washed out early in the course. The other two will attend in March. Remember, this is the entry level course for Marine Officers. The standards and physical prowess demanded for the Marine Special Operations Command or the Force Recon units are significantly greater.

This plays to the greater theme that if the standards are maintained and not “gender normed” or reduced for females there will be a disappointingly low success rate. Additionally, the number of women who truly want to do this is also very small.

Women have now been given the right to try out for these combat rolls. The 3 women identified in your article all stated that they had wished to try. However, the odds of them making it would have been remote."

Nice letter Mike, it's good because it contains alot of facts....can't refute those. Ignore...maybe...refute...no...:lifter

Thanks! There were a lot of other things I wanted to say but couldn't because of brevity. I also figured if I stated that in my opinion the standards will be dropped because of the demand from up high to make this work that it would not get published.:D

Shucks, I never knew unit deployments were optional, either.

TR