US Marines Test All-Male Squads Against Mixed-Gender Ones

In 2013, the US military lifted its ban on women serving in combat. Shortly after, the Marine Corps began what it calls an “unprecedented research effort” to understand the impact of gender integration on its combat forces.

That took the form of a year-long experiment called the Ground Combat Element Integrated Task Force, in which 400 Marines — 100 of them female — trained for combat together and then undertook a simulated deployment, with every aspect of their experience measured and scrutinized.

All branches of the military faced a January 1, 2016 deadline to open all combat roles to women, and the Marine Corps used this experiment to decide whether to request exceptions to that mandate. The Corps’ summary of the experiment concludes that combat teams were less effective when they included women.

Overall, the report says, all-male teams and crews outperformed mixed-gender ones on 69% of tasks evaluated (93 out of 134). All-male teams were universally faster “in each tactical movement.” On “lethality,” the report says:

All-male 0311 (rifleman) infantry squads had better accuracy compared to gender-integrated squads. There was a notable difference between genders for every individual weapons system (i.e. M4, M27, and M203) within the 0311 squads, except for the probability of hit & near miss with the M4.

All-male infantry crew-served weapons teams engaged targets quicker and registered more hits on target as compared to gender-integrated infantry crew-served weapons teams, with the exception of M2 accuracy.

All-male squads, teams and crews and gender-integrated squads, teams, and crews had a noticeable difference in their performance of the basic combat tasks of negotiating obstacles and evacuating casualties. For example, when negotiating the wall obstacle, male Marines threw their packs to the top of the wall, whereas female Marines required regular assistance in getting their packs to the top. During casualty evacuation assessments, there were notable differences in execution times between all-male and gender-integrated groups, except in the case where teams conducted a casualty evacuation as a one-Marine fireman’s carry of another (in which case it was most often a male Marine who “evacuated” the casualty)

The report also says that female Marines had higher rates of injury throughout the experiment.

While the conclusions make it look like having women in combat isn’t a good idea, one important caveat of the tests is that many of of the male study participants had previously served in combat units, whereas female participants, by necessity, came directly from infantry schools or from noncombat jobs.

Hopefully, with more training in combat, women will be a strength for the military, but the most important thing to remember is that risking the lives of a military unit in combat to provide career opportunities or accommodate the personal desires of an individual is not only bad, but very dangerous military judgment.

I understand your viewpoint, but my Caveat before I continue: I have never been in the infantry, never commanded or given orders in that environment, never participated in planning, etc. This is all just what I form my opinions on from a lifetime of reading on military literature of all stripes. So I could be completely off base here. Also, I apologize if I am preaching to the choir on this./end caveat!

I look at this (as I think it should be looked at) from an “averages” perspective. That is why the curves I posted deal from an averages perspective...when in a combat situation, that (averages) is what the movers and shakers have to go on from a mission perspective, because they have to make assumptions about things, IMO.

They have to be able to assume that in a given unit, if it hasn’t been burnt to a crisp in high intensity or duration operations, that it is going to be able to react a given way, and that if there is a unit with X amount of casualties, people will be able to perform certain tasks and duties without consideration as to the makeup of a unit. (assuming it is an infantry unit and not a support unit, for example)

If a male in an all male artillery unit is a casualty, out of 99 men left, they can assume that one of those men can step forward and do many of the jobs another man can do. Granted, they may not have the specialized knowledge of the man who is the casualty, but they should be able to do (on average) the physical job other men do. Carrying litters or doing a fireman carry on an injured comrade, transporting ammo, digging fighting holes, engaging in hand to hand combat, etc.

It is obvious to me that that is an impossibility in mixed gender units. You couldn’t take five random people in a mixed unit to transport ammo, for example, because if three out of those five people were women, there are some women who simply couldn’t throw that 50 lb thing over their shoulder or hump litters over mountainous terrain for any length of time, whereas most men probably, on the average, could, at least for a longer period of time. Plus, women do not have as much bone mass, and are weaker, as they get fatigued, they can become casualties themselves by falling or misstepping...fractures, sprains, etc. (This has been well documented that it is an issue in a study by the USMC back in the nineties that looked at training casualties among women compared to men, and the difference is quite stark.)

But just as bad, IMO, is thhat puts unit leaders into a position of saying “I need John, Rich, Steve, Dave, Harold, to hump this ammo.” (A pretty scutty job, can’t imagine anyone likes that.)

But the unit leader doesn’t even look at Sue, Cathy, Betty, Ethel, and Grace, because...they can’t carry as much, and...you gotta get the ammo there.

So the guys do it. I can’t imagine it wouldn’t foster resentment. Plus, if it is combat, that would leave proportionally more females manning the perimeter. If it gets into a situation where the enemy pours into the holes, and there is a higher proportion of females defending...that is going to be an unequal fight.

And so on. Sigh. This is insanity. And it is going to cost us.

I agree 100%. I was using “us” as all of us, citizens and the military.

As I have said repeatedly over the years, it is going to cost blood in battle, and we are going to lose engagements, battles, and wars.

And when people are called to account, the people responsible for this insanity are going to be long gone, living fat and happy.

And I also guarantee the people supporting this stupidity will be the same people screaming the loudest about policies that cost lives.

Boy, it does make me steaming mad, and I HATE being right on this, because I know I will be.

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