British Special Forces small arms 2017

[IronDuke99]

There is a multi part documentary on YouTube about training future RN officers at Dartmouth (that I watched because my son is going there). These days the Royal Navy has a fair number of female officers (and ratings). It is called something like 'making an RN officer'.

During some of their training they do some Army type stuff on land, assault courses, PT, cross country marching, solving set problems in the field, etc. (although nothing very difficult by even average British Army infantry standards) They also do simulated ship damage control in flooding chambers, etc.

Now this being a modern TV show it goes out of its way to show the women officer trainees in a good light, but even so it is very plain that the women are all struggling with the more physically demanding stuff (and as I said most of it is not all that demanding by infantry standards) some of them really badly, despite the fact that the training staff are really going out of their way to help them. In the damage control stuff, battling against high pressure water that just keeps getting deeper, they were all next to entirely useless, with tears, etc. Frankly any damaged warship they are aboard that relies on them to save her will bloody well sink...

[IronDuke99]

In theory woman can now join the British Infantry but I don't think any have, as actual fighting soldiers. They are not allowed to join the Paras (I believe) and they are excluded from the Royal Marine Commandos (I know).

Why? Because those two elite forces are the most likely to actually be sent to fight someone...

[DRG]

Originally Posted by IronDuke99

In theory woman can now join the British Infantry but I don't think any have, as actual fighting soldiers. They are not allowed to join the Paras (I believe) and they are excluded from the Royal Marine Commandos (I know).

Why? Because those two elite forces are the most likely to actually be sent to fight someone...

Yep......

[Suhiir]

I certainly don't expect to see any women in the SEALs (and while "GI Jane" was an amusing movie get real), Green Beenies, or Force Recon anytime soon.

But I was, and am, an oddball and exception. I'm 6'2" (yeah, a freak of nature) and grew up as the oldest child on a farm. At 18 I was in FAR better shape then 75%+ of males and 95%+ of females. While I'm hardly a FemiNazi I always remember a scene in the movie "GI Jane" ... where they're swimming and a black guy tells her she's just the first nigger on the block like his granpappy was during WW II.

[DRG]

There will always be exceptions and obviously, you are one of them but 6'2" farm girl's wanting to be Marines are ( from my comfy perspective.. ) few and far between and I think what it comes down to is how the bar standards are being lowered to be "inclusive". "Equality" is only achieved when EVERYONE is judged by the same standard and we move further from that every day it seems

Don

[IronDuke99]

Originally Posted by Suhiir

I certainly don't expect to see any women in the SEALs (and while "GI Jane" was an amusing movie get real), Green Beenies, or Force Recon anytime soon.

But I was, and am, an oddball and exception. I'm 6'2" (yeah, a freak of nature) and grew up as the oldest child on a farm. At 18 I was in FAR better shape then 75%+ of males and 95%+ of females. While I'm hardly a FemiNazi I always remember a scene in the movie "GI Jane" ... where they're swimming and a black guy tells her she's just the first nigger on the block like his granpappy was during WW II.

There are always occasional exceptions, but the fact you had a USMC career, starting, if you will forgive me for saying so, some years ago, surely shows that the system was already working well enough for the small number of women who were interested in a military career and able to meet the physical requirements.

I think women can do excellent, and vital, work in areas like intelligence, etc. I don't think they belong in close range hand to hand fighting, trying to lug 60lbs of kit around mountains and c...p in plastic bags in fire trenches, etc.

Men need to behave, and think, in a certain way to be effective warriors. A great many women tend to want to change that pattern and their presence tends to disrupt it. There is also the fact that men will do stupid things to try to save/shield women in combat, that they would not do for a male comrade. All that stuff is a result of millions of years of evolution and no amount of desire for equality is ever going to change it.

There also seems to me to be a huge disconnect between the feminists who constantly want women protected from men in civy street -often on highly dubious factual grounds- and then women being put deliberately in the way of people who will gladly kill them very dead indeed in the most vile and nasty manner they can think of.

I was just watching a video of a female UK Police officer being attacked by an Afghan in UK with a hammer and her terrified screaming was very upsetting to hear, her male oppo was also attacked but did not do any screaming and eventually rescued her...

[dmnt]

Originally Posted by IronDuke99

The trouble is that they do tend to drop the standards: Women in the British Army for example being allowed to do 'knee' pushups!

I used to coach female athletes and from what I learned during the courses in coaching and the experience is that the rule "Women athletes achieve 90% of the strength level of men except for shoulder and arm strength where they achieve 67%."

The big question is if pushups are a good measure of combat readiness or if it is just strength training. If the latter, then knee pushups are fine although I personally never let my athletes do them if they were able to do real pushups.

I'm all for equal requirements as long as they relate to capability in combat.

[IronDuke99]

Originally Posted by dmnt

I used to coach female athletes and from what I learned during the courses in coaching and the experience is that the rule "Women athletes achieve 90% of the strength level of men except for shoulder and arm strength where they achieve 67%."

The big question is if pushups are a good measure of combat readiness or if it is just strength training. If the latter, then knee pushups are fine although I personally never let my athletes do them if they were able to do real pushups.

I'm all for equal requirements as long as they relate to capability in combat.

My view is you set a high standard and then you stick to it, for everyone. Anyone who cannot make that standard does not get in.

Trouble is that if recruitment is low due to no combat (and yes recruitment, to the British forces at any rate, is always actually higher when there is actual fighting going on somewhere. Operation 'stay in barracks' not being very exciting to young men) and/or a pay freeze, etc, they tend to lower standards, especially where women are concerned.

There is a reason that the more elite the military force the harder the training, in every way, is a unbreakable rule.

It is not just, or even mainly, about the physical, it is about searching for the mental breaking point where someone cannot take any more and just gives up. Evolution has not really fitted women for that, they have a very different evolutionary survival strategy. Neither is better, they are just very different.

In Ancient society - and to a more limited extent even today - men who lost in war mostly died. Women might end up enslaved, but they did not normally die, providing they 'changed sides' at the right point. You can even find evidence of this in what happened in WWII in Europe. You cannot just change millions of years of evolutionary psychology.

[Suhiir]

From my experience the biggest problem most females face (ignoreing those that just don't have the right mental attitude and expect the military to conform to them rather then them conforming to the military) is hips.

Most women have issues with their biologically wider hips (compared to overall height) when it comes to running and walking distances with a load. Sheer physical strength is a fairly minor issue. Lots of smaller guys in the military aren't as physically strong as some women. Overall guys have the advantage, duh, but it needs to be looked at on a case-by-case basis under the exact same standards.

My "issue" is generalizations. Most females aren't suited to the military life, but to exclude all females based on that alone is what reasonable people, of both genders, object to. Again, I suggest we ignore the radical elements on both sides.

As to evolutionary psychology, I'm sorry, but that's an excuse not a reason. We're not governed by some inherent behavior pattern, we're influenced (strongly) by societal expectations. And those are what need to change. Just like the ones that for centuries dictated that the unwashed masses needed to be governed by the social elite (kings or priests) because they were incapable of doing so themselves.

[IronDuke99]

Originally Posted by Suhiir

From my experience the biggest problem most females face (ignoreing those that just don't have the right mental attitude and expect the military to conform to them rather then them conforming to the military) is hips.

Most women have issues with their biologically wider hips (compared to overall height) when it comes to running and walking distances with a load. Sheer physical strength is a fairly minor issue. Lots of smaller guys in the military aren't as physically strong as some women. Overall guys have the advantage, duh, but it needs to be looked at on a case-by-case basis under the exact same standards.

My "issue" is generalizations. Most females aren't suited to the military life, but to exclude all females based on that alone is what reasonable people, of both genders, object to. Again, I suggest we ignore the radical elements on both sides.

As to evolutionary psychology, I'm sorry, but that's an excuse not a reason. We're not governed by some inherent behavior pattern, we're influenced (strongly) by societal expectations. And those are what need to change. Just like the ones that for centuries dictated that the unwashed masses needed to be governed by the social elite (kings or priests) because they were incapable of doing so themselves.

I think we must just agree to disagree on this.