1st women in Ranger School given extra help, sources say

[LittleLebowski]

This is my surprised face. Meanwhile, the Secretary of the Navy is ignoring the Marines' honest findings on women in the infantry.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...ces-claim.html

Sources now allege they were given help not on offer to the men:

• Female candidates were reportedly given three months of extra coaching before the men started the same course

• 'Pressure was put on trainers' to make sure at least one woman graduated

• The Army denies the existence of a special training unit that allowed the women to prepare for Fort Benning before the school started

[peterb]

I don't have a problem with extra training/coaching IF it was open to everyone.
Lowering standards and/or pressuring trainers to pass certain students is not acceptable.
It'd be interesting to hear the women tell their version, but I suspect they won't be allowed to. They're probably not enjoying the politics either.

One thing I liked about the Marine report was that it highlighted how much infantry work involves moving heavy stuff and the physical stress that imposes. They had women with all the grit and attitude you could want whose bodies just broke down under the required loads. That's not sexist, it's physiology. There's no policy that'll change that.

One good outcome might(should?)be an increased emphsis on reducing the loads for ALL infantry.

[LittleLebowski]

I keep repeating this because ol' Frank Herbert was prescient.

Once, long ago, a tyrannical majority captured the government. They said they would make all individuals equal. They meant they would not let any individual be better than another at doing anything. Excellence was to be suppressed or concealed. The tyrants made their government act at great speed 'in the name of the people.' They removed delays and red tape wherever found. There was little deliberation. Unaware that they acted out of an unconscious compulsion to prevent all change, the tyrants tried to enforce a gray sameness upon the population.

Then the powerful governmental machine blundered along at increasingly reckless speed. It took commerce and all the important elements of society with it. Laws were thought of and passed in hours. Society came to be twisted in a suicidal pattern. People became unprepared for those changes which the universe demands. They were unable to change.

It was the time of brittle money, 'appropriated in the morning and gone by nightfall.' In their passion for sameness, the tyrants made themselves more and more powerful. All others grew correspondingly weaker and weaker. New bureaus and directorates, odd departments, leaped into existence for the most improbable purposes. These became the citadel of a new aristocracy, rulers who kept the giant wheel of government careening along, spreading destruction, violence, and chaos wherever they touched.

[NETim]

http://wordfight.org/bnw/bnw-unit_packet.pdf

[GardoneVT]

This is my surprised face. Meanwhile, the Secretary of the Navy is ignoring the Marines' honest findings on women in the infantry.

Not the first time the Navy ignored reality for the sake of political appearances. Here's what happened on the first go-around;(skip to 2:07)

[Tamara]

http://weaponsman.com/?p=25745

[BehindBlueI's]

When I was in basic, the fat kids got extra training. The slow kids got extra training. The dumb kids got extra training. The goal was to bring everyone up to standards. I have zero issues with extra training. Reduced standards, I have a problem with. If you think this is new to the military, though, I'd suggest you look at a PT chart. The issue is they measure things that are irrelevant to the job, they measure things that are easy to measure. Man or woman, I don't care how many pushups you can do. If soldier A is 250 lb and does 30 push ups and Soldier B is 125 lbs and does 45, then "B" passes the PT test but "A" fails it. Now have them both hump two 40 lb cratering charges and see who quits first. Have both off them try to lift a guy out of a tank hatch when he's dead weight. I had medics who couldn't lift me, but did great on the APFT. Easy to measure, not a measure of who can do the job.

So, if I were king for a day, I'd redesign the whole test for task demonstrations and make it per MOS. Medics, can you lift a 200 lb guy out of a tank hatch by the straps on the CCV uniform made for that? Engineers, can you hump 80 lbs of demo 10k? Bridge layers, can you sling X number of Bailey sections in X minutes? Set a base level general fitness test and then MOS specific tasks, and male or female, 20 or 40, if you can do them you can do that job. If you can't, you can't.

[LittleLebowski]

http://weaponsman.com/?p=25745

Inbound PM. Mods here are shit.

[LOKNLOD]

The issue is they measure things that are irrelevant to the job, they measure things that are easy to measure.

"Managers who don't know how to measure what they want settle for wanting what they can measure."
Russell L. Ackoff

[peterb]

?...So, if I were king for a day, I'd redesign the whole test for task demonstrations and make it per MOS. Medics, can you lift a 200 lb guy out of a tank hatch by the straps on the CCV uniform made for that? Engineers, can you hump 80 lbs of demo 10k? Bridge layers, can you sling X number of Bailey sections in X minutes? Set a base level general fitness test and then MOS specific tasks, and male or female, 20 or 40, if you can do them you can do that job. If you can't, you can't.

Which is what happened in the fire service. Physical fitness tests went from isolated strength tests like bench presses to more task-specific things like hose or mannequin drags.
http://breakingmuscle.com/military-f...l-ability-test