William S. Lind :collection (merged thread)

[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.

[AmericanPride]

why does the military need to be an instrument of societal change?

I think that's a loaded question. First, the miltiary is the easiest for the political leadership to change - executive orders do not require Congressional approval, the military is subject to the oversight of Congress, etc. So like with Obama's move on minimum wage increases for federal contractors or with Congressional bashing of federal employees, the military is a target of opportunity. Is it good policy? Not always - but change is rarely neat and tidy. But it is often good politics.

Second, society changes. And those changes are eventually manifest in the electorate and in Congress - and that will change the military. It's my opinion that the military should be an active partner in this in order to help control the process, rather than have it imposed indiscriminately.

EDIT: Additionally, the military is not independent or distinct from society. It is a part of it, no matter how distant, and what it does is shaped and shapes the rest of the country. We should not be content in a democratic society with a military that claims a special place or privilege that renders it immune from society's preferences.

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?

The better question is why are we excluding perfectly capable candidates from combat arms on the basis of their gender? It's already established that females can execute the same tasks; it's not relevant if more men than women can perform the tasks, or if the strongest man is stronger than strongest women. The fact is that many men cannot meet these same standards but they are not excluded on the basis of their gender. If women are not willining to join combat arms, that's a sociological problem, not a biological one.

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.

I agree that society has a long ways to go towards practicing full equality.

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?

There is somewhere a minimum of knowledge, skills, and abilities that an individual needs to be effective in combat. If someone meets or exceeds these knowledge, skills, and abilities, then they should be allowed to enlist in combat arms. This is not 'experimental' - it's already in practice on many levels, from education requirements, physical fitness and health requirements, and age requirements. (In some ways, I'd argue that current enlistment standards are more restrictive than this speculative standard). In any case, on what grounds can we justify the exclusion of women if they meet these standards?

[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.

[carl]

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

I don't figure so, not primarily. A dental tech gets education and if the dental tech goes to Germany to do some teching that can be viewed as plenty adventurous depending on the person. Infantry guys it seems to me, those who volunteer anyway, want to fight. There is a whopping difference.

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.

Asked and answered above.

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

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.

Boy talk about cherry picking stats!

But beyond that you lost me. Since women aren't in combat arms (infantry, armor, artillery) by which I assume you mean combat MOSs, does it mean when the thesis says "combat troop" people in any old MOS serving in say the 4th Infantry Division or does it mean in Combat Service troops or Combat Support Service troops or what?

[former_0302]

It's already established that females can execute the same tasks;

Patently false. So far, no woman has made it beyond day one of IOC.

Since by the speed of your response I take it you didn't read the Economist article I posted, I'll give you the cliff's notes. Just because a PhD publishes something, don't make it so.

[wm]

I am not. That was exactly my point. Grant was Grant because he had what it took. Excel had nothing to do with it. Written and verbal messages did the trick. He also didn't have a TOC with lots of individual monitors and some really big TV screens in the front. He had a horse, a camp stool, a tent, a table, paper, pens and that new fangled telegraph, which produced written messages.

:O geesh Carl--that's like saying the Captain of the Hunley was just as good a submariner s the captain of an Ohio class boomer (to paraphrase you) .

Had such technology been available to him, I suspect Grant would have had a much larger TOC. BTW, Grant also did not have UAVs, close air sport aircraft like A-10s and F-15Es, any kind of motorized or mechanized transport or armored fighting vehicles, machine guns, grenade launchers. wireless communications (unless you count carrier pigeons as such) or any technical surveillance means. When all you have to manage are men armed with muskets and early forms of carbines, His largest field artillery was smaller than the standard artillery used today with the 20 pound Parrot rifle being about Grant's largest field piece (I discount his siege train artillery.)

Never say never when it comes to ship fighting because you never know. At any rate ASW will probably involve ship to ship fighting.

But if you don't like the Slot, how about the picket destroyers north of Okinawa? In either case, men drowned, were rent limb from limb or were burned up or all three, over and over and over. The point was we haven't seen any serious naval fighting since WWII.

I didn't use "never" in my post--I wrote of likelihoods.

Modern ASW is not much about ship to ship fighting either, except in movies like the Hunt for Red October And, I submit we haven't seen serious naval fleet surface fighting since the WWI Battle of Jutland and with good reason. Those fleets cost way to much to put in harm's way any more than just a few ships in a raiding party (like Bismarck and Prinz Eugen and remember that Bismarck was basically turned into a sitting duck by a torpedo dropped by a between-the-wars-vintage biplane: a Fairey Swordfish, AKA Stringbag.) Go ahead and throw Coral Sea or Leyte Gulf at me as counter examples--then tell me just how many ships were sunk by surface gunfire. During the Leyte battles, Surigao Strait represented the closest thing to a stand up fight between surface ships as far as I know. The rest of the action was largely aircraft and submarines or destroyers using torpedoes. Sure Yamato sank a retreating escort carrier too, IIRC.
BTW, I'm not sure what the point about the horrors of dying at sea during WWII are meant to portray in the contact of this thread. Folks in a land forces Rear HQ that gets hit with napalm or VX will die just as terribly.

[Fuchs]

And, I submit we haven't seen serious naval fleet surface fighting since the WWI Battle of Jutland and with good reason.

You either have a strange idea of what's "serious" or there's a lot of naval history for you to catch up with.

The so far final engagement with more than one ship on either side was in 1973, and it was a very interesting one.

[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.

[former_0302]

Depends on the enemy.

Sorry it took me awhile to get back to you. Agree, but at the same time, I'd say you need to plan for the worst case, wouldn't you?

[AmericanPride]

Compost,

Your points were already addressed by an research paper I provided earlier in the thread and quoted extensively for carl.

So far, no woman has made it beyond day one of IOC.

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.

This is an interesting read from one of those female lieutenants who has failed IOC. She raises many of the points I've brought up earlier: insufficient training for females, different expectations of male and female performance, etc. The bottom line is that not all men are permitted to perform in combat roles if they cannot meet the standards - they are assessed individually; not assumed that they all will fail because some of them do fail. That same policy should hold true for women as well.

[former_0302]

This is an interesting read from one of those female lieutenants who has failed IOC. She raises many of the points I've brought up earlier: insufficient training for females, different expectations of male and female performance, etc. The bottom line is that not all men are permitted to perform in combat roles if they cannot meet the standards - they are assessed individually; not assumed that they all will fail because some of them do fail. That same policy should hold true for women as well.

Yep. Read it the day it was published. She quit. I don't care why she quit. She quit.

If you aspire to lead people in combat, you don't quit. Period. And since the article didn't say anything about how she had to go to the emergency room to get care for heat stroke (which is something I've seen Marines push themselves to, even in training), I can only assume that she did, in fact, have something left in her tank when she quit.

Lost in her article is the fact that the men don't get any special preparation for IOC while at TBS either. The differing standards for men and women are, in fact, irrelevant in terms of the first event at IOC. The standards are actually exactly the same for all Marines at TBS in the stuff that matters as prep for IOC--the forced marches are the same and have the same requirement. All Marines have to do the double obstacle course and the E-course; I believe that the time standards for those are different between the sexes, but that's irrelevant; there's nothing stopping the women from trying to achieve a time on par with the men in those events. The PFT score differences are, as I previously stated, not a metric which really means anything in terms of IOC.

If you want to do well at IOC, you need to walk into the school mentally prepared to do without an awful lot that you'd really like to have for 13 weeks. Nobody gets prep for that at TBS. Most nights, you sleep in the equivalent of a dorm room, can eat and sleep quite a bit most of the time, and are generally not screwed around with too much.

Bottom line, she wasn't prepared to do without. If her male peers were better prepared for it, it wasn't because of what the Marine Corps had asked them to do for the previous six months.

Edited to add: At least, that's what it was like when I went through the two schools several years ago. I doubt things have changed substantively, but they may have.

[Compost]

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.

Napolean’s statement and perfect PFT tests are straw targets in every sense of that term. Napolean may have stressed fortitude and courage as his most and 2nd most important criteria. He did not declare that physical attributes were of zero or little concern.

Similarly obtaining a perfect PFT score is not a prerequisite for recruiting or posting to most parts of the USMC. Passing at some level is - with the possible exception of ‘elites - good enough to indicate current and future acceptable performance in that particular criterion.

It is of course possible to obtain a different type of perfection. Totally discard a prerequisite and hence accept absolutely every applicant as suitably qualified. Less perfectly, reduce a current standard and accept a wider span of applicants.

[wm]

You either have a strange idea of what's "serious" or there's a lot of naval history for you to catch up with.

The so far final engagement with more than one ship on either side was in 1973, and it was a very interesting one.

I find the Battle of Latakia to be small potatoes in terms of naval conflict. The Israeli corvettes run about 1000 tons in displacement and are less than 300 feet long. By comparison, an Arleigh Burke class destroyer has ten times the displacement and is about twice as long. The USS Missouri displaced 45,000 tons at almost 900 ft of length, and a WWI Koenig class battleship was about 26,000 tons and 575 ft. So, I guess my use of serious irelates to a combination of the number of vessels involved and their size.

[Fuchs]

I guess my use of serious irelates to a combination of the number of vessels involved and their size.

Even then you should pay attention to the Battle of Surigao Strait.

[wm]

Even then you should pay attention to the Battle of Surigao Strait.

I did; you might recheck my post to Carl. Most of the surface fighting was destroyer torpedo runs by the US IIRC. Fuso was sunk that way. Yamashiro was sunk by battleship gunnery but that was combat of unequals as Yamashiro was a pre-WWI battleship fighting against 3 of the most modern battleships the US had.Of the 6 US BBs in action, one fired no rounds and another fired just one full salvo.

[Fuchs]

(...) but that was combat of unequals as (...)

Skagerrakschlacht/Battle of Jutland was a battle of unequal forces as well.
The German High Seas Fleet blew up some vulnerable battlecruisers, but it had no chance against the squadrons of new 15" armed QEs and Rs which came into action only at very long ranges.
The vastly weaker side slipped away after blunting the vulnerable vangaurd of the enemy.


In short; by not accepting Surigao as a serious naval ship/ship battle you discount almost every battle but Jutland, and possibly even Jutland as not serious. The same goes for the "size of ships" criterion. By today's standards the ships of the line at Trafalgar were corvettes or small frigates!


@carl
"they go and take the chance of getting killed or they don't go and definitely get hung or shot at dawn."

You understand this is bollocks, right?

[carl]

@carl
"they go and take the chance of getting killed or they don't go and definitely get hung or shot at dawn."

You understand this is bollocks, right?

Not at all. That is the ultimate step. Depending on the severity of the fight, armies will graduate the penalties they mete out but they can always take that ultimate step. Every army I've read about did that, kill their deserters, depending upon how hard the fight was.

That won't always keep things in line though since it really is prophylactic step. There are always more men than people in authority and if the men decide to act en-masse there is little those in authority can really do. The trick is to keep things from getting that bad and, to be cold blooded about, executions are one of the tools used if need be there.

[Fuchs]

Not at all. That is the ultimate step. Depending on the severity of the fight, armies will graduate the penalties they mete out but they can always take that ultimate step. Every army I've read about did that, kill their deserters, depending upon how hard the fight was.

Nonsense.
The quote was clearly in a context implying that such extreme punishments without due trial were commonplace. Now you're moving goalposts and talk about what some of the most extreme armies did at their worst times.

At best you used a hyperbole, now you're defending it as if it was a sensible statement.

Here's another piece of nonsense of yours

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.

See? "military". Not 'extreme dictatorship's military that's desperate because it's losing badly', no "ultimate step" stuff or anything like that. You contrasted civilian jobs with military jobs in general.


You do realize we can still read, copy&paste what you wrote? How could you possibly think you could get away with this incoherent counter-factual nonsense?


To serve in a military which readily shoots its own men because of whatever is clearly different from working in a non-military job in a Western democracy.
But so is working as a civilian in that military's country, too.


P.S.: Nobody in a military "can order you to die".

P.S.2: I've been in here for what? Six years? And there are still people who want to pull off the most simple rhetoric tricks like moving goalposts on me? Don't you guys make any notes?

[carl]

I did; you might recheck my post to Carl. Most of the surface fighting was destroyer torpedo runs by the US IIRC. Fuso was sunk that way. Yamashiro was sunk by battleship gunnery but that was combat of unequals as Yamashiro was a pre-WWI battleship fighting against 3 of the most modern battleships the US had.Of the 6 US BBs in action, one fired no rounds and another fired just one full salvo.

I think you have mixed up your battleships. The newest of ours in that fight was I think the West Virginia, launched in 1921. All had been considerably modified of course and the West Virginia was sunk on Dec 7 and brought back to life.