US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has previously expressed opposition to women serving in combat, has ordered the military to develop gender-neutral physical fitness standards for frontline troops, a memo released Monday said.
This is one of those things that really depends on how it’s implemented. If they just abolish the female scoring column and force everyone to use the male scoring column then there are so many more questions. Will women be judged 1 to 1 against men? or will promotion boards develop an idea of where women should score on the male column? Are they going to get rid of age too and just score everyone as if they were 18 still? Is this going to be a new test for all services?
PT tests have already been undergoing a lot of changes recently. And the one thing that combat arms troops have asked for is simply a score one must meet to be in a combat unit that isn’t age or gender scaled. The minimum we would ask of someone in such a unit, such as marching 12 miles in 3 hours with a standard rucksack. This would be separate from the general test which is scaled and meant to make sure we maintain a physically healthy force.
I don’t think that’s what fuckhead and company have planned though.
All entry-level and sustained physical fitness requirements within combat arms positions must be sex-neutral, based solely on the operational demands of the occupation and the readiness needed to confront any adversary
This tells me they want to change the general physical fitness test in combat units, the same test used to promote people, decide who goes to schools, and can lead to being discharged if you continually fail it. This is not what we asked for. For those unaware the military has been working on overhauling physical fitness tests to more closely resemble combat tasks for nearly a decade now. This has been a measured and science based project until now. And the part that tells me it isn’t going to be that anymore is when the Secretary of Defense believes he knows what the operational demands of any specific combat unit are. And says this like it hasn’t been what the military has been doing.
And before some keyboard warrior comes through here talking about upper body strength to carry wounded people under fire you should know that 20 plus years ago in Infantry Basic Training we were told you don’t do that. You make the area safe and then you roll their ass onto a stretcher, you tie them down and literally drag them out. And since then we’ve gotten much better drag stretchers because that is by far the preferred method to get casualties to a vehicle. We’ve also had women in frontline units for over a decade now. Even in 2003 while they were officially banned, we brought their units to the frontline because we needed them. Even in a peer to peer combat posture. As a combat infantry veteran I would far far rather have a woman in my patrol that has been trained to work with us because we’ve recognized it’s something we need; than I would have a woman that I need but also have to train under fire because we put our heads in the ground to satisfy some stupid fucking civilian idea of machismo.
This is already a fucking thing. Female soldiers in combat roles meet the same standards as their male counterparts. Most of these women would whoop your ass.
We obviously needs a test that is biased toward males so we can clearly see and point toward female deficiencies.
For combat MOSs, they should all be expected to pass the same physical fitness standard. You either raise the female standard to the same level as males, and have fit females. Or you can lower male standards and have less fit male and female service members in combat. Or you can meet somewhere in the middle and still have less fit male and female service members in combat. Personally, I say raise the female standard for combat MOSs to that of males.
Combat is not about equality. It is about lethality and that is it.
We already have a gender neutral standard. Walk 12 miles in under 3 hours with gear and shoot at least 30/40 targets on the rifle range. If you can carry your load, shoot, and communicate, then you’re going to be an effective combat soldier. Everything after that is promotion points and being healthy.
He should go hand to hand with a female soldier. I’d pay to see her give him a beating.
Knowing these fucks, they’d still try and claim that she was really a secret trans woman when she beat them, just like with Imane Khelif
I think this is reasonable. I met and exceeded the male standards and I’m not particularly big. There’s lots of jobs in the military fitness should be determined by job. I don’t think a file clerk needs to have infrantry levels of fitness. I’m pro gender neutral in military fitness standards but then again I also think women should be drafted.
I agree that any soldier must meet the demands of “war”. And in any field unit I was ever in (Norwegian Army) you did not share equally in squad/unit tasks. I was above average strong and could carry the MG3 or the Carl Gustav for a longer period than a less strong solider on long marches.
Then again some units like special forces who have a high demand on physical skills might benefit from also having female operators attached for missions that demand a female. Let’s say when operating in cultures where male-female interactions are very socially regulated.
I agree that weapon system technicians on F35 might not need the same level of physical prowess of foot recon soldiers operating deep behind enemy lines.
The Infantry already has a soft standard of scoring higher than minimum. You meet that or you get extra PT, no school slots, no promotions, and may even get transferred out of combat units. But also we’ve seen guys that did 180 (the minimum in 2003) operate perfectly fine in combat. This canard that combat arms needs more than a file clerk is just being used to exclude women. The minimum is actually high enough to operate in combat. Units are doing the higher soft standard because it’s a way to operate at a higher level. But they will deploy someone doing a 180 on their test and put them in a squad that’s fighting in a city after an 8km foot movement. Heck we would rather someone who scored the minimum but can walk with their gear than someone who scored higher but didn’t have that walking endurance.
Lot of good points
So just for the record, a trans woman is too strong for “women’s” sports teams, but if she exceeds the new physical standards she still can’t enlist? Sounds like DEI for cis people to me.
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There are things besides fitness that are relevant to combat situations. In the movie Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, which takes place in a war zone in Afghanistan, we see the female news reporter is able to talk to the female residents in a combat zone and gain information about who was sabotaging a US-built well. The male soldiers weren’t allowed to speak to the women of the village, and had no way of getting this info.
Women make up 50% of the world population and sometimes you just need a female soldier to properly work with the locals. If men cannot get information from some populations because of their gender, then it makes sense that rules might be slightly bent to allow women to take part in combat roles. As a soldier, I wouldn’t want to be miss relevant info just because no one in my troop could talk to half the local population- that ignorance of knowledge puts my life at risk too.
It’s not even bending the rules. Unless you make gender a specific disqualifying thing. The standard for combat is not and never has been to be an Olympic athlete. Some women routinely score higher than some men on the Army Physical Fitness Test. What Hegseth’s quotes tell me is they’re going to go on a quixotic quest to find a minimum score that no woman can meet. However that’s going to disqualify a large group of men as well, and require the men that remain to work out multiple times per day instead of train necessary combat tasks.
In short, this administration has no clue what constitutes fighting shape in the military.
Personally, fitness tests is a fitness test and has nothing to do with combat. I’ll always remember our company high PFT in SOI dropping out of the 25k hump. The guy who literally “set the standard” by being the fastest and doing the most pullups was on the ground saying he couldn’t walk. Nice kid, but toughness doesn’t necessarily equate with fitness.
And once I got to my unit I decided there were plenty of Marines who didn’t belong there, and that there were women who could probably outdo them. Of course, this warred with my desire to walk around in my silkies and make homoerotic jokes with my buddies, but perhaps that’s not the whole point.
Haha yeah I’ve always said the real test is the 12 mile march in 3 hours. If you can’t walk, you ain’t infantry. But the Army, (my ex), in all it’s wisdom wants to measure all this other stuff. I could get on board with a weighted drag and a sprint too but it’s really not necessary.
Yeah, I joined the Marines in 2009 and we were the first class at PI to do the Combat Fitness Test. But there’s that word again, and it ends up being another PFT. Even I could 300 the CFT and I was never a PFT stud, just pretty good. But neither tested my mettle like walking really far with a bunch of shit on my back or not sleeping.
They could be using this to boot women who get pregnant out.
The intent is to make military service even less appealing to women.
Than it already is, the SA that get swept under the rug, because it might hurt a officers chance of staying in the service is already a detterant
Military service is already pretty unappealing to any empathetic human being imo
OK…what exactly does that have to do with gender based fitness tests?
You don’t see how a comment about military service being generally unappealing relates to your comment about something making military service less appealing to women specifically?
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Ok, so this guy is a known misogynist, and is likely to twist this into something that gives women an objective disadvantage. With that said, I want to ask what makes people opposed to the idea of actually gender-neutral physical requirements for military positions.
Personally, I served in the Norwegian army alongside a bunch of very capable women. I think women in the army bring a big positive contribution. There’s even research suggesting that women are better suited than men for certain combat roles. With that established, is it not fair to require that a woman in the infantry is capable of carrying the same kit, or wounded partner, as her male counterparts? I’ve done my fair share of ammo runs, and the women in my platoon carried just as heavy shells as the men. If they hadn’t been capable of that, I would say they simply weren’t qualified for the job.
I don’t know what current requirements are in the US military. What I’m questioning is why so many people here seem opposed to the idea that anyone in a physically demanding role meets the same base criteria?
Mostly because there are many different roles that apply to “front line troops.” The traits that work great for running ammo boxes all day are different from the traits to carry a 200 pound dude a few hundred feet. The traits to shoot accurately are different from the traits to assemble and deploy explosives. The traits to drive a tank are different from the traits to work the comms.
More importantly, though, is that this isn’t JUST choosing one set of standards. This will absolutely be “choosing one set of standards with very high bars in certain categories.” There are things women just do not do as well as men, and we all know those will be areas that are emphasized and with difficult to reach goals. There are things women do better than men, and we all know those areas will be de-emphasized with very easy to reach goals.
I agree with the sentiment that different roles have different specific requirements- a tank driver doesn’t need to be as strong or fast as an infantryman. However, there are some base requirements that apply to all front-line troops. No matter your role, if you are expected to see combat, you need to be at a certain level with regards to weapons handling, but also physical strength and endurance. Even a tank driver, medic or radio operator may need to fire a gun, carry wounded, or help push a jeep upright.
Still, I agree that there are different requirements for different specialities, and definitely think it is a good idea to have different requirements for these in the selection process. However, I can’t see a compelling argument saying that the base requirements for male and female tank drivers, medics, infantry, etc. should be different. I think the tank crew is an especially good example here, because research on Norwegian soldiers has indicated that women are (on average) better suited to this role, because they are often better at handling high cognitive load while exhausted. Putting the same requirements for everyone, with requirements tuned to the specialisation, could very well lead to more women in certain roles.
Of course, for your second point, I think that falls under the category of “everything is bad if poorly implemented”. I definitely agree that it’s a bad idea to place very hard baseline physical requirements for all roles. That means the military will lose out on highly capable medics, tank crews, radio operators, etc. both male and female. But as you say, more of the capable people lost will be women, simply because of biology. However, I think that’s more a question about how requirements for the military should be implemented, and not really a question of “should we place the same requirements on men and women in the same role?” to which I think, on general grounds, the answer should be yes.
To be clear - I have no doubts that the people pushing this in the current administration intend to leverage it to push highly capable women out of roles they are more than capable of filling, and that’s an unambiguously bad thing.
Oh the current standards in the US military are absolutely enough to make sure women can carry their load. Hegseth is a massive misogynist who believes women shouldn’t be in combat for all kinds of unscientific reasons.
