William S. Lind :collection (merged thread)

[AmericanPride]

"Superficial" != "wrong." Apologies if I came across as harsh yesterday, but the reason your point is not relevant is because you aren't going to fix it in your lifetime, and probably not in your grandkid's. What you are speaking of is the result of thousands of years of natural selection. You're not going to change the cumulative effect of that in a generation, unless you start playing God with people's DNA.

Any examples? No, remember I said this may have been long before the long time before. But I think if you look at all the accounts we have of preliterate fighting groups from the Commaches to the Mongols to the Zulus men have done the fighting. The women stayed home with the kids. I think the whole of human history militates against the belief that men fighting and women not is a "socio-political construction". Except for one or two exceptions the women stayed home and the men fought. It strains credulity, mine anyway, to think that way back when in the time before the time before people decided to create a "socio-political construction" that didn't have a pragmatic basis.

It's superficial because it is a reading of history without any factual basis. It has no more evidence than any modern day conspiracy theory.

I imagine that there are some women out there who can do it... but I doubt they meet USMC height/weight standards for females. I think the build necessitated by those standards is too slight to be able to make it. Lost in all of this is the simple fact that not a single female Marine I know would choose to go into a combat arms field if given the choice. Admittedly, I don't know all of them, but the fact that the ones I do aren't clamoring for this change to be made leads me to believe that the drive behind doing this isn't coming from what I'd consider a "pure" source.

And those are excellent examples of the normative barriers that I have been speaking about. Here is a good research paper addressing these normative obstacles. Some excerpts:

The Article examines four problems with the physical strength rationale: (1) stereotyping – the assumption that no woman can do the job without testing the abilities of the individual woman; (2) differential training – the failure to account for the potential for improvement for women who often have less prior physical activity; (3) trait selection – measuring only tasks that are perceived to be difficult for women, while ignoring equally mission critical tasks that women may be better at performing; and (4) task definition – not considering if there are other ways to get the job done. Each of these problems reveals a distortion based on an underlying normative belief that the military should be a male realm. It is this belief, not the reality of physical strength, that motivates the de jure exclusion, the very type of justification forbidden by law, and detrimental to women, men, and the military mission.

A pattern emerges from these four problems. What appears to be a biological truth is actually better understood as a normative belief that the military’s job is in some way peculiarly suited to men. It is not that
women’s bodies do not measure up against an objective standard, but
that the standard is defined so women do not fit it. This Part examines
the normative claims exposed as underlying the physical-strength arguments.

It goes beyond stereotyping, however, because in believing men are stronger, we both train them to be stronger, and we create a military designed around their abilities—in other words, we make the belief real. Epistemologist Sally Haslanger has termed this cognitive mechanism
“assumed objectivity.”207 Members of a powerful group ascribe characteristics to a weak group in a way that makes the differences real, and in a vicious cycle, the ascribed characteristics help make the weak group
weak.208 For example, slave owners might ascribe a lack of intelligence
to slaves, claim that this characteristic is innate, use this professed belief
to justify a lack of education, and in this way make real a difference that
keeps the slave owners in power.

I'll go with using the old noodle to solve military problems

Where did I suggest otherwise?

[carl]

It's superficial because it is a reading of history without any factual basis. It has no more evidence than any modern day conspiracy theory.

I think differently. Is there any evidence extant about how man developed fire? Not that I'm aware of. I am guessing there is only evidence that at point our ancestors didn't have it and at some other point they did. Same thing probably for cooking, spears, spears tipped with shaped stone heads, the wheel and on. What we know is those people found the implement or the practice useful and kept it. All we can do is speculate as to the details of how those things came to be. It is speculation because there is no evidence at all, that is why it is called speculation. There is no youtube video of Kronk getting a good idea and then trying it out.

And those are excellent examples of the normative barriers that I have been speaking about. Here is a good research paper addressing these normative obstacles. Some excerpts:

Now let us take Ms. Goodell's, the lawyer, points 1 through 4.

1. "(1) stereotyping – the assumption that no woman can do the job without testing the abilities of the individual woman;"

This is great in theory but military organizations have to deal with people in the tens of thousands and in times of big wars, in the millions. Assumptions have to be made especially ones based on past experience and history. For example, it may not be fair but it is practical to assume that it wouldn't be worthwhile to take people into pilot training who only have one eye.

2. "(2) differential training – the failure to account for the potential for improvement for women who often have less prior physical activity;"

This is special pleading. It is acknowledging that women are weaker but they might be able to get stronger if they get special training. If they had less prior physical activity and can't make the standard that's their fault. As far as I know the standards aren't a secret and the streets are free to walk and run in.

3. "(3) trait selection – measuring only tasks that are perceived to be difficult for women, while ignoring equally mission critical tasks that women may be better at performing;"

This is asking that war be redefined because it isn't fair. The loader in an M-1 has to sling those rounds and do it fast or people die. The rounds weigh so much. To go back a little further, a Legionary had to throw that pilum with force a certain distance or else. He had to be strong enough to wield that 20 pound shield and punch it forward with enough force to throw the opponent off balance or else. He had to push that sword hard enough to perhaps penetrate chain mail, or else. And he had to be able to pull it out. Things like that need to be done, or else. Those things, those particular things.

4. "task definition – not considering if there are other ways to get the job done."

This is a development of #2 and #3, asking that war be redefined in response to special pleading. There may indeed be other ways to get the job done, or not. We could, I suppose, make it our No.1 research priority to develop and field a Tantulus Device so we can field flocks of woman warriors as lethal as anybody. But Tantulus Devices may be impossible to make and besides, we have to deal with the right here and the right now, or else.

[AmericanPride]

Carl,

Had you read the entire article, first you would know that "the lawyer" is also a former Surface Warfare Officer, and this is what the author has to say about your claims:

This is great in theory but military organizations have to deal with people in the tens of thousands and in times of big wars, in the millions. Assumptions have to be made especially ones based on past experience and history. For example, it may not be fair but it is practical to assume that it wouldn't be worthwhile to take people into pilot training who only have one eye.

Even if this study shows some differences in men’s and women’s abilities to accomplish particular tasks, it does not explain a decision to use de jure exclusions for women alone rather than individual evaluations for the exclusion of both men and women.123 Both women and men qualified, and both men and women failed to qualify in most tests⎯what purpose is served in excluding all and only women? For example, in the P250 carry, 90% of the women failed, but 10% passed. Moreover, 36% of the men failed. Certain physical tests, such as an arm pull, were relatively well-correlated to the ability to do static muscularly demanding tasks.124 The military has the advantage of a basic-training period in which to evaluate potential recruits; it could administer tests like those validated in this study and avoid de jure discrimination...

For now, the cost rebuttal to the stereotyping analysis tells us something about the contours of the strength argument. The claim must be that the differences are large enough that it is possible to measure strength traits with a single cutoff that will include most men and exclude almost all women. The claim must further be that this cutoff exactly corresponds with the military’s needs. As a “statutory scheme which draws a sharp line between the sexes,” this argument seems suspicious. Drawing such a line “solely for the purpose of achieving administrative convenience,” is arguably a purpose
“forbidden by the Constitution.”

Your second point:

This is special pleading. It is acknowledging that women are weaker but they might be able to get stronger if they get special training. If they had less prior physical activity and can't make the standard that's their fault. As far as I know the standards aren't a secret and the streets are free to walk and run in.

Such a conclusion is not supported by research; to the contrary, a substantial body of research shows that women are systematically discouraged from physical activities and sports from the day they are born.130 Therefore, it is not surprising if women show less physical prowess when they arrive at the military as young adults...

Differences in physical training are profound and go well beyond a few hours on a sports field or at a gym...Reversing a lifetime of training is no small task, but there is evidence that training women intensively can close the gap. A four-month, three-times-a-week training program for female civilian firefighting candidates produced 25% of approximately thirty-six participants in the program who passed a physical test to compete for the job as New York City firefighters.136 This result was still worse than men’s 57% passage rate,but substantially better than the overall women’s passage rate of 9.5% for the 105 women who took the test.

Your third point:

This is asking that war be redefined because it isn't fair. The loader in an M-1 has to sling those rounds and do it fast or people die. The rounds weigh so much. To go back a little further, a Legionary had to throw that pilum with force a certain distance or else. He had to be strong enough to wield that 20 pound shield and punch it forward with enough force to throw the opponent off balance or else. He had to push that sword hard enough to perhaps penetrate chain mail, or else. Things like that need to be done, or else. Those things, those particular things.

Critics often invoke women’s lower scores on the general physicalfitness tests as proof of women’s lower ability to perform in particular military positions. The military disagrees; it does not hold the general physical-fitness requirements to map onto job-specific requirements.157 In fact, the military has different requirements based on age group and sex. For example, as of 2000, in the Navy’s general Physical Readiness Test, men over 50 needed to complete 42% fewer curl-ups and had 12% more time to complete a 1.5 mile run than women 17−19 years old; the push-up requirements were the same.158 Standards were set similarly for the Army and Marine Corps fitness assessments.159 Older men are likely to be less physically capable by these measures than the women the critics claim are an intolerable liability, yet the critics do not argue that the test results should be used to exclude those men...

That study and others show that physical ability is a complex phenomenon and that men and women may have very divergent scores on some tests, but substantially overlap on others. There is not a uniform distance across men’s and women’s scores, so the scores do not justify a static line drawn precisely where it will include most men and exclude most women. For example, women were significantly closer to men in a task that involved carrying the P250 fire pump both up and down ladders in a longer time frame; 38% of women and 14% of men failed.163 Similarly, the larger rating-specific study analyzes the difference in women’s and men’s scores and finds statistical overlaps vary enormously.164 For example, the overlap between men’s and women’s scores was 90% in a task that simulated carrying molten metal between 99 and 168 pounds and moving sideways and pouring it into molds; it was 7% in a task that simulated pulling an airplane tow bar, bearing about 62 pounds of weight, for 300 feet.

And your last point:

This is a development of #2 and #3, asking that war be redefined in response to special pleading. There may indeed be other ways to get the job done, or not. We could, I suppose, make it our No.1 research priority to develop and field a Tantulus Device so we can field flocks of woman warriors as lethal as anybody. But Tantulus Devices may be impossible to make and besides, we have to deal with the right here and the right now.

Technological advancement is one of the major ways that the United States remains a world military leader.190 For example, the P250 fire pump used in the Navy study has since been redesigned to run on jet fuel instead of gasoline, to eliminate the need to store highly flammable gasoline on ships; the new model is also smaller.191 As Martha Minow has noted, redesigning the status quo for those who have been left out can result in advantages for everyone.192 “[L]ighter firefighters’ helmets” 193 would probably benefit not only women but also men who must wear them for long hours during disasters in Navy ships...

The military evidently does not turn away the men who do not meet the physical requirements that the critics advocate, because men as well as women failed each one of the tests in the studies discussed above.201 It is more likely to be cost effective to use a second alternative, based on a less partial view of the job: Select the best people for the other 99% of the job description.

It seems as if you have not done your homework. You are welcome to rely on your speculations, but I only ask that you don't expect the rest of us to do the same.

[AmericanPride]

Carl,

Furthermore, if it as Fuchs claims that the only distinguishing factor in military labor from civilian labor is the "combat discipline", then you will have to establish that women are not capable of achieving "combat discipline". It is clear that all of the physical requirements in the military can be completed by women, and it's irrelevant if the strongest man is stronger than the strongest woman. Can you establish that the weakest man is stronger than strongest woman? If not, then there is no factual basis on which to exclude women by using physical strength as criterea.

[AmericanPride]

I have sympathy with the police, fireservices and first responders in general as their sacrifice is is essentially on behalf of others. This is like the soldier who dies in combat for his friends, his unit and the country (however misguided the particular war may be).

So it is a normative valuation, not a factual one.

Quite frankly I see no comparison between a driver dying in a motor accident and a soldier KIA.

What if both joined their respective jobs to pay for college or for the healthcare benefits for their families? There has been extensive discussions about values here, and you have made clear that it's based upon the assumption that people join "on behalf of others" and implicitly that culture and norms surrounding that act makes service-members in some way socially or even materially privileged compared to the public. But here the top 5 reasons people enlist:

1. Education
2. Stability
3. Respect (from community, family)
4. Sense of community
5. Adventure and challenge

Seeing how people join for self-gain, and that's how the military actively recruits and retains, on what basis can you argue that there's a special military culture and that this culture ought to be preserved?

[JMA]

This is why I asked you if you were a reservist.

You really need to sit and listen to good Americans who joined the military to be professional soldiers over a career rather than as a hobby.

I put it to you that this is the source of problem in the military which Lind has highlighted.

The system attracts those with real potential to be professional soldiers less and less as the Congress continues to offer an easy and often cheap way to get a degree or as an option for a place of employment of last reort.

What gets lost in all the waffle is the aim of a military. What is the aim of the military of the US or any other state?

In my day the first principle (of war) was - the Selection and Maintenance of the Aim. It is against the aim that all this waffle about women, gays, intersex and demographics must be measured. It any of these aspects when measured against the impact on the military being able to meet its aim - its reason for existence - then it gets thrown out.

As a civilian you would understand that in commerce and industry any practice or procedure which reduces the bottom line gets tossed. The military's bottom line is the defense of the nation - any aspect which reduces its ability to achieve that aim should likewise also be tossed.

So it is a normative valuation, not a factual one.



What if both joined their respective jobs to pay for college or for the healthcare benefits for their families? There has been extensive discussions about values here, and you have made clear that it's based upon the assumption that people join "on behalf of others" and implicitly that culture and norms surrounding that act makes service-members in some way socially or even materially privileged compared to the public. But here the top 5 reasons people enlist:

1. Education
2. Stability
3. Respect (from community, family)
4. Sense of community
5. Adventure and challenge

Seeing how people join for self-gain, and that's how the military actively recruits and retains, on what basis can you argue that there's a special military culture and that this culture ought to be preserved?

[AmericanPride]

You really need to sit and listen to good Americans who joined the military to be professional soldiers over a career rather than as a hobby.

That does not change the factual reasons for why people joined the military in the first place. I was one of those "who joined the military to be [a] professional soldier over a career" and then decided against a full-time military career after several years, including one in Afghanistan. And the question also has to be asked: is it desirable for the US to maximize the number of "professional soldiers" or full-time careerists in the ranks?

The system attracts those with real potential to be professional soldiers less and less as the Congress continues to offer an easy and often cheap way to get a degree or as an option for a place of employment of last reort.

The inverse is true. The less that material benefits are offered, the less people are likely to join. As I pointed out in an earlier post, there is a relationship between a state's education spending and the quality of recruits from that state. There's also a relationship between education spending and declining enlistment rates - and that tells me that the military is offering insufficient incentive for quality enlistments (assuming the aim is to maximize quality enlistments). The more education people receive, the less likely they are to join the military (and this applies through all levels of education). That means they are finding opportunities perceived to be better than a full time military career. Recruitment achievements and practices since 2001 provide a good case study on incentives - and it has nothing to do with any special character of those enlisting.

What gets lost in all the waffle is the aim of a military. What is the aim of the military of the US or any other state?

That's a good question, and one I raised earlier when I discussed the military's mission(s) and functions with Carl.

It is against the aim that all this waffle about women, gays, intersex and demographics must be measured. It any of these aspects when measured against the impact on the military being able to meet its aim - its reason for existence - then it gets thrown out.

I agree - which is why it's important to establish that all of the policies of exclusion are in fact detrimental to the "Selection and Maintenance of the Aim".

[carl]

What if both joined their respective jobs to pay for college or for the healthcare benefits for their families? There has been extensive discussions about values here, and you have made clear that it's based upon the assumption that people join "on behalf of others" and implicitly that culture and norms surrounding that act makes service-members in some way socially or even materially privileged compared to the public. But here the top 5 reasons people enlist:

1. Education
2. Stability
3. Respect (from community, family)
4. Sense of community
5. Adventure and challenge

Seeing how people join for self-gain, and that's how the military actively recruits and retains, on what basis can you argue that there's a special military culture and that this culture ought to be preserved?

None of that applies to people who join an go into a combat arm like the infantry, one where you are definitely going to be shooting at people and where they are going to shoot at you personally if there is a war. It is eminently possible to get all 5 of your reasons without going into a real combat arm. And even if you go into one in peacetime for the macho factor and change your mind when a war comes, getting out of it is easy. So any of those who go to the sharp end voluntarily, at least now, are doing for something other than the GI bill and health care.

So it seems to me that since the purpose of the military is to fight and win, the motivations of people who do that most directly are most important.

[former_0302]

AP, you have an awful lot of faith in statistics and biomedical research in light of this:

http://www.economist.com/news/briefi...it-not-trouble

In any event, even if one were to stipulate that your various research/numbers are true... why does the military need to be an instrument of societal change? To be specific, why impose women into combat arms fields as adults, when instead, you could impose them into coed sports from an early age?

Again stipulating that your research is true, choosing coed sports as your entry vehicle for change would a) bring a generation of women up from an early age raised in the environment that you seem to be perturbed that they have missed out on, b) physically prepare them for more rigorous activities as adults, and c) impose the cost of change on society in general, rather than on the military exclusively.

Would that not be better than imposing this on the military as an experiment, in which the lives of people may well be on the line?

[AmericanPride]

None of that applies to people who join an go into a combat arm like the infantry

So people who enlist into the infantry don't do so for the education benefits or the adventure?

So any of those who go to the sharp end voluntarily, at least now, are doing for something other than the GI bill and health care.

Not according to the enlistment data. Sure, I bet some do, and if you were to ask any servicemember if patriotism was important, they would answer in the affirmative; but on the whole, people enlist primarily for the 5 reasons I listed above. It is MOS immaterial.

So it seems to me that since the purpose of the military is to fight and win, the motivations of people who do that most directly are most important.

According to this thesis, that would be a soldier that fits this profile:

...a serviceman who is female, married, serving in the reserve forces, serving in a combat troop, between pay grades E1–E3, serving in Iraq, serving the first deployment is the serviceman with most potential to get injured or killed in the U.S. Army.

For the purposes of the linked thesis, "combat troop" includes infantry, armor, field artillery, combat engineers, and air defense artillery. Seeing how women cannot join combat arms (infantry, armor, artillery), it renders your point false.

[carl]

Carl,

Furthermore, if it as Fuchs claims that the only distinguishing factor in military labor from civilian labor is the "combat discipline", then you will have to establish that women are not capable of achieving "combat discipline". It is clear that all of the physical requirements in the military can be completed by women, and it's irrelevant if the strongest man is stronger than the strongest woman. Can you establish that the weakest man is stronger than strongest woman? If not, then there is no factual basis on which to exclude women by using physical strength as criterea.

I don't know what Fuchs claims. I do know the difference between Southwest Airlines and the military is nobody at Southwest can order you to die and you can quit anytime you want and they won't put you against the wall and shoot you for desertion. So much for that.

It may be clear to you that all of the physical requirements in the military can be completed by the average woman (note "average", you gotta plan for the average squadron pilot) but not to me. I would agree if you added the stipulation that they can be if much special training is given and you lowered them enough, but as of now, no.

Doesn't matter if you can establish the weakest women or the strongest man or whatever. What matters is winning because losing really sucks. And if winning wars means some individuals are excluded who might be able to make it because it is just to complicated to accomadate (sic) each individual and if that ain't perfectly fair, that's tough. Ya gotta win.

But physical strength isn't the most important reasons that women should not be in combat units. The most important reasons are social.

The first is, to me, the civilian, that the ability of units to fight effectively rests very heavily upon the social dynamics of men in groups. If you have a lot of women in there, you don't have men in a group you have a mobile small town and small towns throughout history have sent the men out to do the fighting. If you put a lot of women in there you know longer have the social dynamics of men in groups, which armies know a lot about, you have the social dynamics of a small town which armies know nothing about since nobody ever did it before. I'd prefer some other country conduct that experiment in combat.

There are even more important reasons, three that I can think of, that will result in the society or nation being rent asunder if woman in combat roles is taken fully forward.

First, if women are fully involved in combat roles there will be women who don't want to go. There are always people for whom patriotism, sense of duty, unit loyalty and the rest isn't enough and don't want to go where somebody will shoot a machine gun at their soft little pink body. The solution for this with men has been, essentially, they go and take the chance of getting killed or they don't go and definitely get hung or shot at dawn. Now if a women in a combat unit doesn't want to go the easiest thing in the world for her to do is to get pregnant. She isn't going to get hung or shot at dawn. If you do decide to do that to pregnant women there will be hell to pay in the society. You could force her to have an abortion and there will another kind of hell to pay in the society. Or you could shoot her after she delivers in which case you would be shooting a mother who just gave birth which mean more hell to pay. The upshot is there is no way around that problem if you don't want to tear the society apart. Women will always have an effective option to avoid combat that men don't have, which may tear the army apart.

Next, I was taught and teach people to the extent I can that it wrong to pick on girls. You don't hit women, you hold doors open for them, you get them out of the burning building or into the lifeboat first etc. They are in general smaller and weaker and it is wrong for the bigger and stronger to pick on the smaller and weaker. If you put women fully into combat roles because they are seen as 100% as capable as the men that deferential treatment of women no longer makes any sense. There is no reason to maintain it if women are as good at warring and participate in it as fully as men. That would not be a good thing for the average women out there. It would be tearing apart the social relationship between men and women that keeps a lot of women from getting hurt.

Related to that is this. It is hard enough for leaders to order men into a battle where they know a lot of them are going to die. Unless you completely remake the deferential treatment women are afforded it will make that leader's job even harder than it is now, so hard I think it would affect combat decision making. Would Adm Callaghan have been as likely to send the ships in against the IJN battleships? Maybe, but maybe not and the maybe not is a big thing.

Finally if women fully participate in combat roles and nothing is excluded there is no justification for excluding them from a draft and placing them into combat units. None. I was listening to the radio the other day and Mark Helprin was on. The subject of females being drafted came up and he said if that happened as far as he was concerned the social contract regarding military service was null and void and he would take his girls into the mountains and fight anybody who tried to take them. I believe he isn't the only one who thinks that. Considering the social turmoil drafts have caused in the past when only sons were taken, I can't image how bad society would be torn apart if they came after daughters.

As far as I'm concerned, none of this is worth giving the articulate and ambitious the opportunity to have their cards punched with the combat command punch.

[Compost]

It is clear that all of the physical requirements in the military can be completed by women, and it's irrelevant if the strongest man is stronger than the strongest woman. Can you establish that the weakest man is stronger than strongest woman? If not, then there is no factual basis on which to exclude women by using physical strength as criterea.

The above is nonsense in assessing suitability for military labour because strength criteria are already - and necessarily - used to exclude men at about the 95% percentile.

It may be clear to you that all of the physical requirements in the military can be completed by the average woman (note "average", you gotta plan for the average squadron pilot) but not to me.

Average possibly but the underlying qualification is that an average squadron pilot may be ‘special’ to a particular type of squadron. A military pilot has to wear a helmet laden with life support, comms and sensor gear. The weight and inertia of that gear produces transverse loads during head turning and even small movement within seat restraints. One result is that fast jet pilots are especially liable to develop neck and back strains. Some pilots become disabled by the strains. Basic neck strength may not be formally measured but is nonetheless a criterion for determing suitability to become a pilot. Have heard it suggested that on the grounds of cost – for ab-initio test and for medical compensation – women be accepted only for training as pilots of ‘slow’ fixed-wing aircraft.

So just how different is female musculature ? The classic example is that of African women who carry heavy and bulky loads on top of the head directly above the spinal column. That might be described as upper body strength but does not indicate any capability to rapidly handle two 20-litre jerrycans, or even a single 25kg artillery shell.

A fast way for anyone to become a social outcast in a work environment is – other attractions notwithstanding – showing that he or she is not able to do the job.

[former_0302]

The above is nonsense in assessing suitability for military labour because strength criteria are already - and necessarily - used to exclude men at about the 95% percentile.

I'm going to pile onto Compost's point here a little bit. Our physical standards are misleading in several ways. Let's take the USMC's PFT as a benchmark, since it's what I'm most familiar with. The perfect score for a male Marine is achieved by doing 20 pullups, 100 crunches, and running three miles in 18 minutes or less. The perfect score for female Marines is currently achieved by doing a flexed-arm hang for 70 or more seconds, 100 crunches and running three miles in 21 minutes or less. They're trying to change the female standard to pullups, and when they do, the perfect score for them will be eight pullups.

What, however, does this test exactly quantify? I said upthread somewhere that performance on the PFT has little in common with being a good infantry Marine. As to why, Napoleon said it best:

“The most important qualification of a soldier is fortitude under fatigue and privation. Courage is only second; hardship, poverty and want are the best school for a soldier.”

The PFT does absolutely nothing to measure this. NOTHING.

So let's bring this back to IOC. Without giving anything about the curriculum of the school (it's not exactly fight club, but...), it is absolutely designed to make you deal with privation of several different kinds. I don't know whether or not IOC has specific standards for the sort of privation they expect graduates to be able to endure, but I do know that whatever those standards are, are the sort of thing we should be talking about when we speak of standards as related to combat units.