Assessment Of Female Marines Kept Secret As Critics Blast Methods - National Public Radio
Defense Secretary Ash Carter faces a big decision. It's whether to bar women from many ground combat jobs in the Marines. Marine General Joseph Dunford recommended that shortly before becoming the nation's top military officer. He based his view on a report that found female Marines to be slower and weaker and less lethal than their male counterparts - at least that's what we've heard. The Pentagon is keeping the full text of that report secret. NPR's Tom Bowman reports on what is known…
Comments
It always seems to be the female officers who push the women in combat issue. Careerists, one and all. You don't see many junior enlisted women clamoring for the "right" to be there, in the mud and the blood and the body parts.
Most unintentionally funny remark:
Haring: "It (the USMC study) wasn't looking to establish minimum qualification standards and then see who could meet them. Instead it was a competition."
Imagine that: a competition! Similar, perhaps, to what happens when in contact with the enemy.
DM- are you at all concerned with the potential impact on team cohesion of integrating small combat arms units? For the infantry- 17-20 year olds? Sort of like the dorm rooms at college campuses, only with more testosterone, political incorrectness, and wild, in-the-field bonding and out-on-the-town (relative) debauchery? Do you really think 8 guys and a gal can bond in that type of environment?
And for SF- if a woman had been on your team or had served as team leader- do you really think your team would have had the same dynamic? Do you think the current generation is that much different? Do you think there will be lots of issues with SHARP incidents, he-said/she-said, and lots of other things that will be obstacles to training for combat/conducting combat?
- TP
Caveat: I remain a proponent of the "just do it" school. Open combat arms jobs to women who can meet the standard and then let's move on to real national security issues. Women in combat arms will not destroy the institution and the few who are the "really super outlier rock star women" might make a significant contribution.
Two different viewpoints in the excerpts below. We should remember that war is the ultimate competition. I think we should keep in mind Sun Tzu here:
"Sun Tzu said: The art of war is of vital importance to the State.
It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. Hence it is a subject of inquiry which can on no account be neglected."
I am not sure if the really super outlier rock star women is the right argument to be making.
Excerpts:
QUOTE ELLE HARING LESLIE: It was a flawed design from the get-go.
BOWMAN: That's retired Army Colonel Ellen Haring Leslie who has leaked several hundred pages of the report and wrote an analysis.
HARING: It wasn't looking to establish minimum qualification standards and then see who could meet them. Instead it was a competition.
BOWMAN: Haring complained that the study showed that some women performed on par or better than men, but that was not mentioned in the Marine report.
HARING: But you've got some really super outlier women in there that consistently performed at the top level of the top men.
BOWMAN: So the bottom line is there are some rock star women in this study that should be able to serve in Marine ground combat.
HARING: Absolutely.
...
ANDREW LOERCH: I think I would give them an A for effort. It's probably a solid B-plus in execution.
BOWMAN: Andrew Loerch is a professor in the department of systems engineering and operations research at George Mason University. He peer-reviewed the study for the Marine Corps, watching several dozen training events.
LOERCH: I thought that this was as objective an exercise as it could be.
BOWMAN: Congressman Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, a Marine combat veteran, liked what he heard about the study. He was among the lawmakers on the House Armed Services Committee who were briefed by Marine leaders last month on the report's methodology.
SETH MOULTON: I was impressed by the approach that they have taken, but we really need to see the results of the study so we can examine this in the most transparent way possible.
BOWMAN: There may be some movement in that direction. Pentagon sources say some lawmakers have threatened Secretary Carter with a subpoena unless he turns over that Marine report. Tom Bowman, NPR News, Washington. END QUOTE