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To: pboyington

Ranger School is a leadership course. The course uses small unit operations and patrolling as the context for the challenges presented to students. Physical exertion, stamina, lack of sleep and food are all designed to push students beyond their limits. Ranger students discover their personal limits and they learn how to keep going when they exceed those limits. Some quit, others graduate. Very skilled NCO’s are there to push those limits without causing injury or death. If those NCO’s decide that someone should not graduate, they seldom do so. The purpose of the training is to prepare leaders for the stresses of leadership under duress. If females are pushed beyond their limits and still continue, so be it.

The problem is when senior officers are controlling the process for political purposes, they are subverting the design of the training which has served the Army very well over the years. Women soldiers and women officers who cannot stand up to the physical requirements of infantry combat will fail in combat where the enemy can control the environment, not senior officers. A female helicopter pilot will probably benefit from Ranger School training and will probably never encounter the physical and mental challenges that they faced in Ranger School. She will just be a pilot with a Ranger Tab, and a better one to boot. A female infantry or Ranger leader is a different matter. Failure in combat will get other soldiers killed and the mission will be at risk.

Female infantry soldiers and leaders in Afghanistan will be placed in positions that do not push them beyond their limits. There are such positions in all infantry battalions, and good infantry battalion commanders will take that into account when making decisions. It won’t become an issue until an infantry unit is overrun by a superior force and every soldier on the ground is killed or captured. That will be followed by navel gazing and second guessing that will bring this silly idea to an end.


17 posted on 09/10/2018 11:14:10 AM PDT by centurion316 (Back from exile from 4/2016 until 4/2018.)
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To: centurion316
Thank you for your very balanced view of the situation. I completely agree...there a just some things us women aren't physically able to do. And if doing those things are a requirement of Ranger school and a woman can't do them, then she should be out.

But, if as you say, a woman helicopter pilot takes a portion of Ranger school that applies to her MOS, that's the perfect blend of acknowledging the shortcomings and augmenting the woman's talents.

Maybe there should be a special division and rank or whatever you call that. Some people could be Ranger Specialists, meaning they passed a section of Ranger school that's directly applicable to their MOS. Their ranger tab could be a different color for those that put a lot of emphasis on what salad a soldier is wearing.

I like that you granted that females have some skills and didn't just dismiss them because they're girls.

34 posted on 09/10/2018 12:27:31 PM PDT by blu (WWG1WGA)
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