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'Days Of Rambo Are Over': Pentagon Details Women's Move To Combat
npr.org ^ | June 18, 2013 | Bill Chappell

Posted on 06/23/2013 4:17:34 AM PDT by Tailgunner Joe

Women in America's armed services will have new options for what units they can join in coming years, the Pentagon says. The military said in January that it will end its combat exclusion that set a minimum size for units in which women could be deployed; the limit kept many women away from front-line combat units. The shift means women could join elite forces such as the Army Rangers and Navy SEALs.

Depending on the job, women could begin training to join combat units in the next one to three years, according to several military officers who spoke at a Pentagon briefing Tuesday afternoon. Integration into special forces units is expected to take the longest.

"The days of Rambo are over," said Maj. Gen. Sacolick, of the U.S. Special Operations Command Force Management Directorate. Noting that special operations groups are looking for people who can learn other languages and be deployed in a variety of situations, he added, "The defining characteristic of our operators is their intellect."

The change is expected to come slowly, with women not expected to begin training to join ground front-line combat units until at least 2014 or later. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has set a deadline of Jan. 1, 2016 for all positions to be open. Neither Hagel nor the top-ranking officers in military's branches attended Tuesday's media briefing.

Branches of the service are developing gender-neutral tests that will be tailored to their units, and they may request a special exception to the policy shift if they find that their female members can't perform the duties of a specific job.

For instance, Marine Lt. Col. Jon M. Aytes spoke of a scenario in which a woman in an armored unit would be expected to be able to reload a 55-pound shell into the gun's breach, with little opportunity for leverage.

When asked later if the military would develop separate standards for men and women, Aytes and the other officers said no. Aytes noted that tanks don't have one rack of shells for men, and another for women.

In the case of special operations, men who are already serving in those units will be given a survey that's designed to gauge how they feel about women joining their ranks. It will also analyze "the social science impacts... of integrating women into small, elite teams that operate in remote, austere environments," according to the submitted in March.

"At this point, no decisions have been made," Gen. Sacolick said, of how women might be integrated into the Rangers, SEALS, Marine Special Operators, and other units. "Let me make that clear: No decisions have been made."

Saying that he had spoken to colleagues at other services about the matter, Sacolick added, "I can assure you, we are not predisposed to any course of action."

The major challenge, Sacolick says, is not how the female service members might perform on physical tests — he said he had been impressed by the physical abilities of female recruits. Instead, the largest hurdle could be handling the social and cultural changes, he said.

The news comes months after the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines submitted their plans for including women in ground combat positions. As , the change could "open up more than 200,000 positions in the military" to women.

"I remain confident that we will retain the trust and confidence of the American people by opening positions to women, while ensuring that all members entering these newly opened positions can meet the standards required to maintain our warfighting capability," in May, after the branches of the service had submitted their plans. He told them, "I appreciate your efforts to methodically and deliberately remove gender-restrictive barriers."


TOPICS: Government
KEYWORDS: airforce; army; communism; communists; democrats; feminazy; feminism; military; navy; obama; seals

1 posted on 06/23/2013 4:17:34 AM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
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To: Tailgunner Joe

Foundational cracks are more apparent and are deliberately caused. Transgenders are next


2 posted on 06/23/2013 4:21:46 AM PDT by ronnie raygun (Yesterdays conspiracies are todays truths)
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To: Tailgunner Joe
Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall Proverbs 16:18
3 posted on 06/23/2013 4:22:06 AM PDT by Colonel Kangaroo
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To: Tailgunner Joe
Saying that he had spoken to colleagues at other services about the matter, Sacolick added, "I can assure you, we are not predisposed to any course of action." The major challenge, Sacolick says, is not how the female service members might perform on physical tests — he said he had been impressed by the physical abilities of female recruits. Instead, the largest hurdle could be handling the social and cultural changes, he said.

Starting from the assumption that that the major issue is social and cultural change strikes me as a major predisposition toward a particular course of action. I would not have made it in special forces, in part because I was not strong enough, even though 30 years ago I was stronger than 90% of the people I knew in the military. Today, decades later, I'm stronger than far more than 90% of military women who might be tracked for special forces. Do they really think that muscle mass and upper body strength are irrelevant?

4 posted on 06/23/2013 4:24:30 AM PDT by Pollster1 ("Shall not be infringed" is unambiguous.)
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To: Tailgunner Joe

The guy is full of crap.

Of course they will lower the Standard.

Women will not be in those units if they do not, and the screaming will not stop until they are in those units.

Any woman who wants to go into Combat should be locked up in an institution for the insane.


5 posted on 06/23/2013 4:29:14 AM PDT by Venturer
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To: Tailgunner Joe

I worked for an Army contractor. One of my fellow employees was a female former Army truck driver who had volunteered for hazardous duty in Iraq and gone back four times. (BTW, she was very butch and had a girlfriend. There wasn’t anything remotely feminine about her.) She had severe depression, which she blamed on the Army. According to her she’d been in numerous fire fights when convoys were attacked. Repeatedly, she blamed her psychological state on the Army. After another such explanation, I asked, how many times did you volunteer to go back? And she confirmed four. Yet it was the Army’s fault that she was suicidal. The Army doctors committed her to a mental institution. That was several years ago and I have no idea how she turned out.

It was apparent she thought she could put up with anything any other soldier could handle. But the reality of the situation, which appeared beyond her grasp, was different.


6 posted on 06/23/2013 4:31:24 AM PDT by Gen.Blather
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To: Tailgunner Joe

Ok. We’ll see how well this works out for the infantry. Our enemies will be all male troops. Theyll see that we have mixed male and female ground troops. What do you think their response will be? They will see this as a great weakness and it will boost their morale and our female soldiers will be raped when they are taken captive. And how many female soldiers really want to fight on the ground especially when things get real, not like the fantasyland that liberals envision? How many of our male soldiers will our female soldiers be able to pickup and get them out of harms way in the heat of battle? How many male soldiers will be killed trying to be a guardian for their female counterparts because its programmed into their very DNA by God?

Mind you im not saying females can’t be good at combat but the idds are stacked against them from the very start by their sex and the brutal elements in the battlefield. Can i see a female being a good leader, strategist, and manager in the fields as an officer or pilot? Absolutely. I’ve seen it in real life. But we dont need to put women in the combat zone or the sake of PC, equality, fairness, or whatever contrived madness the administration thinks will turn us into better Agenda 21 styled citizens of the future.


7 posted on 06/23/2013 4:34:07 AM PDT by jsanders2001
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To: Tailgunner Joe

When will girls have to sign-up for Selective Service?


8 posted on 06/23/2013 4:36:11 AM PDT by Tai_Chung
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To: ronnie raygun
There will be two different perceptions;


I dealt with the multiple rapes that occurred and groping complaints in 2003 as an MP during OIF I...there's a place for female soldiers -- and the SF ops or combat is not one of them!
9 posted on 06/23/2013 4:42:03 AM PDT by BCW (http://babylonscovertwar.com/index.html - A real life experience book about the war in Iraq)
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To: Tailgunner Joe

This is insane.


10 posted on 06/23/2013 4:44:13 AM PDT by Skooz (Gabba Gabba we accept you we accept you one of us Gabba Gabba we accept you we accept you one of us)
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To: Tailgunner Joe
The Obama Administration is going to finish the job that the Johnson Administration started in Viet Nam, destroy the US Armed Forces.

Something all of our other enemies failed to do. Obama is the true Manchurian Candidate.

11 posted on 06/23/2013 4:49:30 AM PDT by Redleg Duke ("Madison, Wisconsin is 30 square miles surrounded by reality.", L. S. Dryfus)
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To: Tailgunner Joe
"Maj. Gen. Sacolick, of the U.S. Special Operations Command Force Management Directorate. Noting that special operations groups are looking for people who can learn other languages and be deployed in a variety of situations, he added, "The defining characteristic of our operators is their intellect."

This politically correct and moronic statement I might add, indicates this General is looking for his 3rd star.

12 posted on 06/23/2013 4:50:25 AM PDT by mosaicwolf (Strength and Honor)
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To: Venturer

“The defining characteristic of our operators is their intellect.”

The above statement proves beyond any doubt, that you have it absolutely right.

The training scenario of the average special ops guys, has nothing to do with intellect IMHO.

Now, after training it might be a different story.


13 posted on 06/23/2013 4:51:25 AM PDT by wita
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To: Tailgunner Joe
When asked later if the military would develop separate standards for men and women, Aytes and the other officers said no.

Horse feces! The standards are the physical training test, not the MOS test which has no regulation required ability assessment. In fact, the MOS testing ends at the end of the MOS school now, so there is no physical requirement except the service wide one. So your wide ass personnel typist can be a SEAL if your smart enough.

14 posted on 06/23/2013 4:54:34 AM PDT by BerryDingle (I know how to deal with communists, I still wear their scars on my back from Hollywood-Ronald Reagan)
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To: Tailgunner Joe

Do we want a serious well trained standing Army in the hands of a socialist, heading for totalitarian, government? The smaller and more clown like it becomes the better. The opposite is when socialists go all militaristic like 1930’s Germany.


15 posted on 06/23/2013 4:56:29 AM PDT by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn.)
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To: Tailgunner Joe

A man who has his women do his fighting for him is not much of a man.


16 posted on 06/23/2013 4:57:09 AM PDT by Toaster tank
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To: Tailgunner Joe

What could go wrong?


17 posted on 06/23/2013 5:03:27 AM PDT by broken_arrow1 (I regret that I have but one life to give for my country - Nathan Hale "Patriot")
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To: Tailgunner Joe

“....The major challenge, Sacolick says, is not how the female service members might perform on physical tests ......”

No Mr Sacolick that is the bottom line.

If standards call for completing an obstacle course in 18 minutes - and when women go through their time is extended to 21 minutes then the standards were lowered for females.

If standards call for getting over a 6 foot wall - and when women go through they get their own 5 foot wall then the standards were lowered for females.

Do they want to be equal or do they want special rules to allow them to stand with those who passed the higher standards.

So when can we expect females on the Military Academy Football Teams? Oh, yeah, the football teams play to win.


18 posted on 06/23/2013 5:13:29 AM PDT by PeteB570 ( Islam is the sea in which the Terrorist Shark swims. The deeper the sea the larger the shark.)
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To: Tailgunner Joe

Stop it.
You would think that no women were killed in combat in the last 10 years! That none were wounded in action.
You don’t need to be a Seal to see combat.


19 posted on 06/23/2013 5:13:49 AM PDT by SECURE AMERICA (Where can I go to sign up for the American Revolution 2013 and the Crusades 2013?)
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To: BCW
that's Holly Peers in the background...

20 posted on 06/23/2013 5:25:14 AM PDT by Chode (Stand UP and Be Counted, or line up and be numbered - *DTOM* -ww- NO Pity for the LAZY)
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To: Tailgunner Joe

Yeah.
In the bad old days of “Rambo”—we actually tried to WIN wars.
Not any more, evidently.


21 posted on 06/23/2013 5:31:33 AM PDT by Flintlock ("The redcoats are coming" -- TO SEIZE OUR GUNS!!--Paul Revere)
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To: Tailgunner Joe

So much for the days when we actually won wars.


22 posted on 06/23/2013 5:38:12 AM PDT by onedoug
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To: jsanders2001

Enemy snipers will target women first with the intent to wound them and draw their would be rescuers out to save them.

As hard as it will be to watch a man bleed out in such a scenario, who will be able to sit still when a woman is screaming for help as her male counterparts watch her die?

Expect more American casualties.


23 posted on 06/23/2013 5:40:01 AM PDT by Stingray (Stand for the truth or you'll fall for anything.)
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To: Tailgunner Joe
If "the days of Rambo are over" why is it we need Special Forces?????

Idiots. sigh.

24 posted on 06/23/2013 5:42:54 AM PDT by Thom Pain (U.S. Constitution is a CONTRACT!)
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To: Tailgunner Joe

The only way this works is for a lowering of physical standards to accomodate women, which is something they “claim” they wont do. Stand by.


25 posted on 06/23/2013 5:44:00 AM PDT by Old Retired Army Guy
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To: Chode

The upper body strength is deceiving...if not plastic in nature...


26 posted on 06/23/2013 5:56:32 AM PDT by BCW (http://babylonscovertwar.com/index.html - A real life experience book about the war in Iraq)
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To: Tailgunner Joe

Rambettes, step up please. Amazons welcome.


27 posted on 06/23/2013 6:05:31 AM PDT by HiTech RedNeck (Whatever promise that God has made, in Jesus it is yes. See my page.)
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To: Tailgunner Joe

This is just so wrong every way. They will be compromising the effectiveness of every unit in the theater of operation.
I despise BO and his minions and what they are doing to this country.


28 posted on 06/23/2013 6:07:46 AM PDT by libertymaker
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To: Tailgunner Joe

Equality of the sexes in the military services is being achieved through court decisions and bureaucratic policy. Should there be another need for a large scale draft similar to past wars, women will be in the “lottery” on an equal basis as men. What needs to be determined is what to do with transgered individuals - drafted or medically excluded from the manpower pool? What a mess these ultra leftist policies will achieve at the altar of “equality.”


29 posted on 06/23/2013 6:08:10 AM PDT by mohresearcher
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To: BCW

wow....the Muslims, can stay here on earth and get their “virgins” on the battle-field....see the Lesbians on parade, the Lesbo army is on parade....all this tells me that we are running out of “manpower”


30 posted on 06/23/2013 6:10:02 AM PDT by B212
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To: Tailgunner Joe

Everyone knows women can’t fight and that they can’t live in the field but this has nothing to do with combat effectiveness or winning wars or anything like that. This is pure social engineering. This is about destroying the natural social roles of men and women. This is about creating genderless drones for the communistic New World Order.


31 posted on 06/23/2013 6:26:08 AM PDT by Count of Monte Fisto
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To: Gen.Blather

I find homosexuals to be very depressive. They are mentally deviant in many aspects.


32 posted on 06/23/2013 6:27:20 AM PDT by CodeToad (Liberals are bloodsucking ticks. We need to light the matchstick to burn them off. -786 +969)
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To: Tailgunner Joe

They won’t do the most obvious thing to find out if women in combat will work—simply form a number of all female combat units from women who meet their standards and see how they perform.

Freegards


33 posted on 06/23/2013 6:36:44 AM PDT by Ransomed
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To: jsanders2001

The IDF did this years ago and finally learned it was a mistake to do so. Let’s see how long this social experiment will last.


34 posted on 06/23/2013 6:36:44 AM PDT by Jack Hydrazine (I’m not a Republican, I'm a Conservative! Pubbies haven't been conservative since before T.R.)
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To: wita

And Einstein should have been in SF./s


35 posted on 06/23/2013 6:39:47 AM PDT by Jack Hydrazine (I’m not a Republican, I'm a Conservative! Pubbies haven't been conservative since before T.R.)
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To: Flintlock

You are correct. After WWII the Feds haven’t been that interested in winning any wars or conflicts.


36 posted on 06/23/2013 6:42:14 AM PDT by Jack Hydrazine (I’m not a Republican, I'm a Conservative! Pubbies haven't been conservative since before T.R.)
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To: BCW
no plastic there... Page-3 girls are all silicon free, it's in their application testament and a requirement for employment 8^)
37 posted on 06/23/2013 6:45:51 AM PDT by Chode (Stand UP and Be Counted, or line up and be numbered - *DTOM* -ww- NO Pity for the LAZY)
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To: broken_arrow1
What could go wrong?


38 posted on 06/23/2013 6:51:35 AM PDT by A.A. Cunningham (Electorate data confirms Resolute Conservative voted for Soetoro)
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To: Tailgunner Joe

The new military won’t be trained to kill foreign enemies and break things.

They will be trained to distribute birth control, set up Planned Parenthood centers, build and staff child care facilities, build mosques and do Muslim Outreach.

The only training they will recieve in the use of force and violence is how to combat and dominate Bitter Clingers here in the USA.


39 posted on 06/23/2013 6:59:49 AM PDT by Iron Munro (From nobody to senator, to Conservative savior,)
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To: Tailgunner Joe

This really needs to be stopped ASAP. Congress should have some say-so, no matter what the Regime thinks.


40 posted on 06/23/2013 7:01:38 AM PDT by PghBaldy (12/14 - 930am -rampage begins... 12/15 - 1030am - Obama's advance team scouts photo-op locations.)
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To: Pollster1

If this regime is getting that communist they have to learn from communist on the subject too.
Soviets evaluated women in every possible combat role during WWII and it proved to be a useless waste of human lives (even by communist standard!) to put them in infantry.
In fact they fond women as able warriors in air force only.
And up to this day women are banned from any Russian warship.


41 posted on 06/23/2013 7:47:28 AM PDT by cunning_fish
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To: cunning_fish

Funny how the Russians get it, and we don’t.


42 posted on 06/23/2013 7:49:29 AM PDT by dfwgator
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To: cunning_fish

If there’s one thing we learn from history, it’s that we don’t learn from history. In particular, communists never learn from the failures of communism. They don’t just believe they are smarter than us, which is why they think they deserve to run our lives for us for our own good, they believe they’re smarter than the commies who came before them.


43 posted on 06/23/2013 7:58:01 AM PDT by Pollster1 ("Shall not be infringed" is unambiguous.)
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To: Tailgunner Joe; SunkenCiv

Hey, I saw the movie but didn’t know it was one of those docuhistory thingees. The Days of Demi are in sight.

Many traditionalists will bemoan this development as the ruination of special ops forces—but consider this:

Science has shown that women in close contact somehow seem to synchronize their menstrual cycles.

Imagine if you will a special combat team made up entirely of female Seals, all of whom are experiencing PMS at the same time. It would almost be a war crime, against all norms of civilized warfare, to send them out to unleash mayhem on hapless opposing armies of males.

“Do I look fat to you, MF”


44 posted on 06/23/2013 8:12:33 AM PDT by wildbill (You're just jealous because the Voices talk only to me.)
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To: wildbill
Imagine if you will a special combat team made up entirely of female Seals, all of whom are experiencing PMS at the same time. It would almost be a war crime, against all norms of civilized warfare, to send them out to unleash mayhem on hapless opposing armies of males.

Rush Limbaugh's All-American First Cavalry Amazon Battalion.

45 posted on 06/23/2013 8:13:29 AM PDT by dfwgator
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To: Pollster1
A couple of last photos are actually about consequences of militant feminism vs trained male soldiers.
46 posted on 06/23/2013 9:06:36 AM PDT by cunning_fish
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To: Chode

Well - then someone has reallllllly gooooood genes!


47 posted on 06/23/2013 9:40:26 AM PDT by BCW (http://babylonscovertwar.com/index.html - A real life experience book about the war in Iraq)
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To: Tailgunner Joe

I have supported the military all my life. My family has served in the military in this country before it was the United States, and we have served in every war this country has ever been engaged. I, too, served in Vietnam and Gulf War 1. So what I am about to say is difficult. I would never serve in this country’s military today, nor would I encourage any of my family or friends to serve. I have mixed feelings when it comes to those now serving. I no longer feel a sense of pride, nor do I have the same level respect for those now serving that I used to have. I do not understand how they can still be a part of military.


48 posted on 06/23/2013 2:37:03 PM PDT by Nemoque
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To: Tailgunner Joe
How about trying an experiment first, All the Military academies have football teams so let us integrate the football teams with a percentage of woman that attend the school. After all it is said that Football is the closest thing to war without Death as the end result. Lets just see how many women can make it through a season. I know it will never happen because as in any sport the object is to win and any team with woman on it is at a serious disadvantage!You can't fool Mother Nature.
49 posted on 06/26/2013 10:44:41 AM PDT by ABN 505
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