Military training standards.

So i've been wondering, at this time (2015), some nations are hesitantly opening up their militaries for women, including combat arms.

Off course before they get there, they need to pass certain tests, which because of biology (as they explain it, don't bite my head off) are not quite as difficult as male tests.
(less push ups, pull ups, shorter distances)

Which leads to comments such as; "If a woman can't hump 60kgs for 300 km, they don't belong on the front line."

Which makes me wonder when the last time was a man humped 60kg for 300 km, on purpose in actual combat, (the american civil war?).

But now the point, would they still have different standards for male and females in the manticoran military. Where women in the military is as normal as being a nurse is today. (for example)

Would say, Alice Truman (love her,..platonically) or Susan Hibson (Marine) have been subject to different physical testing. Honor off course would blast through any test put before her, but what of the none genie women.

(oh, and naturally, i'm talking all natural, nothing powered during those tests)

As one SOCOM guy said (I paraphrase), "I don't care what percent of YOUR body weight you can pick up and carry, I care about what percentage of MY body weight you can pick up and carry. Because if you can't pick up and carry anyone on your team out of the kill zone if they get shot I don't want to be on your team."

Spitfire80 wrote:Would say, Alice Truman (love her,..platonically) or Susan Hibson (Marine) have been subject to different physical testing.

Based on the books i would have to say a very strong NO on that.

And in part, the reason for that:

Spitfire80 wrote:Off course before they get there, they need to pass certain tests, which because of biology (as they explain it, don't bite my head off) are not quite as difficult as male tests.
(less push ups, pull ups, shorter distances)

Because that´s not true on a generalised basis.

Here the tests are the same, if you want a specific position, you make sure you´re good enough for it or you don´t get it, end of story.

Not to mention that it´s bloody stupid to do it that way. Because seriously, a weak male is definitely weaker than a strong woman.

Also, based on statistics i can get from here:
http://www.rekryteringsmyndigheten.se
for 1991 to 2008 (statistics before that exists, but not online), well lets see...

Males failed due to not enough strength or stamina, varying between 0.3% and 1% depending on year.
Females failed for the same reason, 0.8% to 4%.
So, females had a higher failrate due to bodystrength, who cares when the rate isn´t even 1 in 20?

Musclestrength results in Newton, for 2008:
Males, lowest 302, average 725, highest 1247.
Females, lowest 324, average 519, highest 753.
Worktest in wattage:
Males, lowest 125, average 291, highest 488.
Females, lowest 125, average 230, highest 334.
Wattage/kg bodyweight
Male average 3.9
Female average 3.6

And no, i´m not kidding, the male lowest was lower than the female lowest. The above was all that did the testing, those accepted had slightly higher values, with a somewhat larger increase for women. Also note that the above numbers are for thousands of males but merely hundreds of females so of course there´s some amount of skew.

However, then comes the interesting little twist, the numbers for mental testing is uniformly stronger for women. And that´s actually after having to change those tests somewhat because they were even more advantageous for women originally.

1991 test, command suitability value:
Males, 5.33
Females, 6.88
Mental ability overall:
Males 5.01
Females 6.77

2 or 3 revamps of the testing to get as objective results as possible, 2008 results ( results here and above are rated from 1 to 9 ):
Mental ability:
Males 5.0
Females 5.5

Service suitability:
Males 5.1
Females 5.7

Command suitability:
Males 5.0
Females 5.7

Identical tests, no gender excuses or consideration. Just some attempts at improving the testing over time to avoid accidentally slanting the test due to gender, and get more truly objective results.

Real world results. Less than 1/20 of women are too weak for the military, and that´s just 3-4 times more than males, so who cares about that.

Spitfire80 wrote:Which leads to comments such as; "If a woman can't hump 60kgs for 300 km, they don't belong on the front line."

Which makes me wonder when the last time was a man humped 60kg for 300 km, on purpose in actual combat, (the american civil war?).

Well unfortunately with the craze about gadgets and all, as well as giving everyone personal protection gear means that yes we do reach those 60kg far too quickly. But the reality is that this is almost as much of a problem for males.
It´s just brought up and highlighted more in regards to women.

It´s not that women are unable to be frontline soldiers, it´s that frontline soldiers are too often overloaded no matter what gender.
(far beyond the point where it affects their ability to be effective soldiers)

Also, rarely as much as 300km, but still 100km is bad enough for most when carrying 40-70kg.
Still, at least here they have been bright enough to rationalise quite a bit, cutting weights by maybe 5-10kg on average without dropping combat ability.

kzt wrote:As one SOCOM guy said (I paraphrase), "I don't care what percent of YOUR body weight you can pick up and carry, I care about what percentage of MY body weight you can pick up and carry. Because if you can't pick up and carry anyone on your team out of the kill zone if they get shot I don't want to be on your team."

Well that´s pretty stupid. The most dangerous soldier i know is, as he describes himself a "small little shit", he´s actually well shorter than the average for women in the statistics i cited above. Oh he´s decently strong, but he´s not going to carry off with let´s say someone like my friend, 1.85 and 110kg.

No, instead he´s smart enough to either drag you out of the fire, or cooperate with someone to carry you off much faster than a single person could.

Anyone who thinks soldiering is all about being the big strong guy needs some serious reality adjustment. The military is based on getting things done, not on who does them, and nearly always, you can get things done better by cooperating.

An example is from when my friend did his "final marsch" in the military, it´s basically a competition, full gear, navigate between various checkpoints, perform tasks at various points, and reach the finish the quickest, penalties for messing up or damaging equipment, being too easily seen, not getting caught unawares by any ambush enroute, etc... Depending on type of soldier, 50-200km.
Usually as much as possible at nighttime.

My friend´s squad had less than great luck, one guy sprained an ankle, they still came in among the top 10, thanks to good cooperation, with squadleader and my friend quickly organising how to have two others carry the injured guy and a third carrying his backpack, and rotating that through the squad in a suitable manner to minimize slowdowns and still maintain awareness and combat readiness.

A squad unlucky enough to have someone break a leg, managed similarly and still got into the top 50s thanks to good teamwork.


Needing to be able to carry ANYONE on their own is something not even all firefighters can be required to live up to, it´s just unrealistic.
And in the military, if you don´t have your squad nearby, you´re in so much trouble already that whether you´re strong enough to carry someone really doesn´t even make the top 10 of "things that would be nice right now".

You don't need to be big and strong. You do need to be strong. You need to be able to move people on your team with all their first and second line gear if they go down and you are the person who is close to them when you need to unass the area. It's all nice to plan to organize a team to do this, but they will be hopefully busy trying to kill the people shooting at you while they maneuver out of the area themselves, they can't stop shooting back while you organize a stretcher team.

And have you ever tried to drag someone geared up a decent distance fast? It's not very easy. It's a bit easier with drag straps on 2nd line or with dedicated rescue rigs, but it is really damn hard and exhausting.

There is an old NASA study that found that the 5% man is stronger than the 95% woman in upper body strength. It's not so true with lower body strength, but there is still a huge gap.

I know a girl who was the US Weightlifting national champion and record holder for 16-17y/o 62kg girls last year. She is amazingly strong and fast, but even there boys the same age and weight are stronger, and the differences increase into adulthood. She would have placed 8th if she was competing with boys the same size and age, and most boys that age are also bigger than she is.

My experience with women in the military is they start out weak and finish strong. All of them. I had a few who pretended they couldn't but one of our female Master Chiefs fixed that real quick. Despite the differences in testing physical fitness, the weakest ones are still physically fit to complete the work even if they cannot compare to men in total maxed out strength. The rarity of the need for he-man strength is often overlooked in comparing women and mens strengths for military service. Its not the he-man strength that we need (its nice to have and comes in handy when you can't open a pickle jar without tricks), but the regular mens strength which the majority of women who serve can build up to in short order. Just an old salts opinion of serving with women for twenty years.

My experience with females in the military is that they can't handle normal everyday jobs much less combat.
Can't change a tire on a 2.5/5 Ton truck.
Can't replace track on a 113 or a 577.


BTW that's 22 years US ARMY experience. Don't give a crap about Navy feel good stories or Air Farce BS.

As for Sweden, when they fight a war, much less win one I'll listen to them. Until then sit down and shut up. Let the adults talk.

Yow wrote:My experience with women in the military is they start out weak and finish strong. All of them. I had a few who pretended they couldn't but one of our female Master Chiefs fixed that real quick. Despite the differences in testing physical fitness, the weakest ones are still physically fit to complete the work even if they cannot compare to men in total maxed out strength. The rarity of the need for he-man strength is often overlooked in comparing women and mens strengths for military service. Its not the he-man strength that we need (its nice to have and comes in handy when you can't open a pickle jar without tricks), but the regular mens strength which the majority of women who serve can build up to in short order. Just an old salts opinion of serving with women for twenty years.

exiledtoIA wrote:My experience with females in the military is that they can't handle normal everyday jobs much less combat.
Can't change a tire on a 2.5/5 Ton truck.
Can't replace track on a 113 or a 577.


BTW that's 22 years US ARMY experience. Don't give a crap about Navy feel good stories or Air Farce BS.

As for Sweden, when they fight a war, much less win one I'll listen to them. Until then sit down and shut up. Let the adults talk.

Coming from the folks who can´t even handle standard training here, not to forget get your asses thoroughly kicked in nearly every joint exercise, unable to win battles or wars without massive advantages in numbers or tech, you really should run home and cry to someone who might care about your blustering idiocy.

Please try again after your toy soldiers have faced 10 to 1 odds at equal tech, and won anyway.

Otherwise you´re just showing off what an arrogant bigot you are.


Not surprisingly, you are reinforcing my lack of respect for the US army.

And your type is the reason why the US army is such a joke.

Seriously, your "professional" soldiers with several years of experience getting whipped even by our conscripts HALFWAY through their training? Way pathetic.

At least the marines and your special forces are not equally bad.

But since you´re so frickin uber, you should have plenty of time to spare? Why don´t you use that to come up with better excuses for loosing?
I always find it amusing hearing about those when there´s been another joint exercise.

And of course, if you had actually bothered to check any hotspots where Swedish military have been deployed in the last 5, 10, 30 or 50 years, you will find that real combat showed it to be quite effective. And never once less so than the US army.

Considering that the last war Sweden fought was in 1814 I find this level of arrogance pretty amusing.

exiledtoIA wrote:My experience with females in the military is that they can't handle normal everyday jobs much less combat.
Can't change a tire on a 2.5/5 Ton truck.
Can't replace track on a 113 or a 577.


BTW that's 22 years US ARMY experience. Don't give a crap about Navy feel good stories or Air Farce BS.

As for Sweden, when they fight a war, much less win one I'll listen to them. Until then sit down and shut up. Let the adults talk.

Wow. Somebody forgot to take their Metamucil this morning. How's it going old timer. Usually when I hear those kind of excuses and they are just that: excuses. It's your lack of leadership and your lack mentorship and most likely your own prejudice and reinforcement of societies undeserved and caveman expectations of women that enabled the very poor performance of your female soldiers. Go ahead and get angry with me. My female sailors did too when I called them out on their bullshit. At least they stopped and took stock of themselves and got on board with the program. Were they the Wondermans and McBrides of the navy? Hell no! Still they were no less than my men and we get the work done and done right. I've no regrets or shame working and serving with women. Damn proud in fact.