Do Women Make Better Soldiers Than Men?

USMCPrice
I agree with you completely today, but in the future.... ? Yes infantry is a special branch, today as it was 50 years ago. Yes you had (have) to be fit and tough.
But look at a picture of a Viet vet in '68 and an Iraqi vet of today; I don't even recognize some of their gear. The 'pot' looks different also. My point is that 50 years in the future strenght may not be a requirement any longer. There are some ideas that envision a near future fought with small tracked robots. I know this sounds like scifi stuff (like killer lasers and railguns), but jets and radar were the same to the people of 1930. Mental toughness will always be needed, but physical strenght in the future, I'm not so sure. But for now, we agree.

 

Here's a current New York Times article on the Marine Corps plan to allow female officers to attend the Infantry Officers Course for evaluation purposes.

An Experiment That Could Put Women in More Combat Jobs
July 8, 2012, 10:00 pm
By C.J. CHIVERS

Last week, the Marine Corps began what may prove to be the last male-only iteration of its Infantry Officer Course. The course, which screens and prepares young officers to lead infantry platoons, is generally regarded as the corps’ most physically and mentally demanding. It has never been a secret, but it has always been secluded, largely kept from public view — even from the view of officers who are assigned to the Marine Corps’ many noninfantry jobs. It graduates roughly 300 students each year, all of them men.
The New York Times was allowed to observe the latest course’s first screening test on the condition that the test’s standards and chronology not be disclosed, and that one particular event in the test’s many sequences not be photographed. The resulting report, with photographs, is here.
A few further explanatory notes can help understand that article and bring context to the images.
The Infantry Officer Course is not entry-level training and does not have entry-level standards. What is required of lieutenants at the course would not be required of other relatively new Marines. This is in part because its students are lieutenants who have had a long time to prepare. They typically have completed roughly nine months of Marine training at Quantico, the base in Virginia where all Marine officers train before being assigned to their primary jobs – artillery, aviation, supply and the others. Each has graduated from either the Naval Academy or the Marine Corps Officer Candidates School, a process that can take years from application to completion, and then finished a six-month course that teaches all Marine officers the weapons, tactics and field skills required to lead a provisional infantry platoon. And each has volunteered for the infantry, a job available to relatively few officers, knowing that the Infantry Officer Course awaited them and would be harder than all of the previous tests. Most are eager for it and in exemplary physical condition. All have to undergo special medical screening to be admitted.
But all have always fit one profile: they are all men. This is soon to change. In September, young female officers, all volunteers, will be admitted to the course and observed throughout — part of a trial intended to provide the Marine Corps with data to help it decide whether to open more combat jobs to women.
How will the experiment fare? No one can say. No one knows how many women will turn up. The Marine Corps insists that the standards for coed Infantry Officer Course classes will be exactly the same as the standards for male Infantry Officer Course classes, and that things will fall where they may. Because there are so many unknowns, no one can say much beyond that. Female and male students will be told to do the same things, and required to pass the same tests. The backpacks will weigh the same, the distances moved will be the same, the hand-to-hand combat training will be the same. There will be no changes to the curriculum, no dispensations, no separate grading systems and scoring charts, the course’s supervisors say.
The standards have been based, the Marine Corps says, not only on the known perils of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the skills required to fight in those wars. They reach back further, to fights in which entire Marine rifle companies were nearly wiped out, in battles they eventually won. These battles — Peleliu, Iwo Jima and Okinawa among them — powerfully inform the baseline of how the Marine Corps sees itself, and what it expects of its grunts. And the Marine Corps is blunt about how it seeks to choose the lieutenants who could lead its next infantry fights. Talk of counterinsurgency doctrine, which for several recent years dominated conversations about American conventional units and could make rifle company commanders sound like social service providers, was noticeably absent throughout the first test. What the corps regards as its infantry’s original, basic and recurring job was in full view, without euphemism or apology.
“Infantry officers are supposed to close with the enemy and kill them, as a primary mission,” said Col. Todd S. Desgrosseilliers, commanding officer of the Basic School, which oversees the course. To do this, he said, they need to be beyond fit, beyond doubting themselves and trained in a spectrum of skills.
The mere fact that the experiment will take place underscores the enduring distinction between combat service by women in many dangerous jobs who work alongside the infantry — sometimes fleetingly, and sometimes for months — and service in the infantry itself.
No one who has worked within the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan seriously doubts whether women can fight, kill or share the risks, pains and sacrifices with men. Those questions were settled long ago, and are evident in casualty data and in the visible performance of female medics, helicopter and strike fighter pilots, truck drivers and many other jobs that have put women at the front of many fights, bleeding and struggling alongside men.
Service members, contractors and journalists alike have all seen women perform bravely, calmly and competently under fire or in the face of hidden bombs, putting to rest many old arguments against women on the battlefield. Blast waves and flying bullets and shrapnel know no gender, just as they are blind to the color of skin.
But no reliable infantry-specific data about women in combat has been gleaned from the wars, at least not any that At War knows of. No one knows what continuous, full-bore service as a female grunt would look like. No one knows how women as an aggregate will fare in a job in which living in the field and training to kill, and killing, are not just things that might happen, but, stripped of all sweet talk, are the primary role, no matter the doctrine or public affairs position of the moment.
The Marine Corps, for the indefinite future, will be using one of its most difficult challenges, and asking for female volunteers, to try to move one step closer to a thoughtful answer to one of the last questions left about women at war.
One final note about the Infantry Officer Course, for those who follow the Marine Corps only from afar. For all of the intensity on open display, the course had none of the ambiance of boot camp, and aligned with none of the pop-culture clichés about the corps. There were no drill instructors, and there was no marching or close-order drill. The training bore no resemblance to any scenes from “Full Metal Jacket” or any of the other cultural markers that inform many people’s sense — often mistaken — of what the Marine Corps is. These students were all well past that.
The test was long and grueling, the more so in the sequences during daylight, with the mercury hovering around 100 degrees all week. But the students were mostly silent, and the instructors, while stern, were calm and mostly polite, at least by the norms of grunts in the field. They told the students the standards at each leg of the course, and then stood aside to see which of the students could push through, rack up the right scores and pass, earning a place in line for the next round of training, and the next set of tests. There was a climate of harsh collegiality and respect.
The climate might be summarized like this: If you can really do this, and want to do this, then you are welcome to keep trying. If you cannot do this, or do not want to do this, then it is best to find out now. There are good jobs for you elsewhere in the corps, and we will help you find one.
Students were allowed to quit at any time. Seven of them did.
The next time the same opening test will be administered, female officers will be in the mix, trying something no woman has been allowed to try before. At War plans to be there, too.


A Grueling Course for Training Marine Officers Will Open Its Doors to Women
By C. J. CHIVERS
Published: July 8, 2012

QUANTICO, Va. — Under the searing sun of one of the worst heat waves in decades, a sweat-drenched Marine second lieutenant stepped from the woods on the base here and reported to an infantry captain standing on a dirt road.The captain handed the lieutenant a sheet of paper. “Write your name and the time on this card,” the captain said. “You have five minutes to take this portion of the test. Do not use any reference materials. When you are done, return this card to that captain” — he nodded to a huge, tattooed man a few yards away — “and he will tell you what to do next. Begin.”

The lieutenant dropped to the dirt beside other sweaty young officers and removed a pen from his soggy uniform. Another officer, his time up, approached the second captain, who took the card, expressed disgust that the lieutenant had not written his name at its top and pointed him to a laminated sheet of paper displaying a grid coordinate.
That coordinate was where the lieutenant was expected for the test’s next stage. When the lieutenant plotted it on his map, he saw that like many of the preceding stations, it was miles away. He shouldered his pack, slung his rifle and began to jog. The temperature hovered near 100 degrees.
This was one sequence in the Combat Endurance Test, the opening exercise in the Marine Corps’ Infantry Officer Course — one of the most redoubtable male-only domains in the American military. And this session of the course could be the last male-only class. Beginning in September, the corps says, female officer volunteers will participate here, part of a study to gauge the feasibility of allowing female Marines to serve in more extensive combat roles.
Col. Todd S. Desgrosseilliers, the commander of the Basic School, which oversees the course, said he had no special concerns as the course prepares to accept women. “Nothing more so with women than with men,” he said.
“We expect them to be fit enough to go through the course when they get here, just like the men are.”
The 86-day course, which meets four times a year, is called the corps’ most grueling school by its instructors and is intended to screen and train potential infantry officers. Its students are volunteers selected from lieutenants who have completed Officer Candidates School and the six-month Basic Officer Course, which trains all Marine lieutenants to lead provisional infantry platoons and in leadership, tactics, fitness and weapons. That school has been coed for decades.
The experiment at I.O.C. could take a year or more; to obtain a statistically meaningful sample, the corps hopes to observe 92 female lieutenants in coming iterations and then, with information gathered from other studies and surveys, make recommendations about women’s service in so-called combat arms.
The Marine Corps does not expect a flood of women to volunteer for the course, though more than one has for the next round. Women make up only 6 percent of the Marine ranks, and the school’s nature deters many Marines, no matter their gender.
(This reporter graduated from the course in 1988; on the first day, a lieutenant regarded by instructors and peers as one of the most fit students suffered a heart attack and died.)
The current course begins with the Combat Endurance Test, which was added in the 1990s. Last week’s test began in a classroom after midnight. A captain addressed 96 students, each sitting beside a mock M-16A2 rifle (real rifles are not issued until after the first test) and a backpack loaded with food and equipment.
“Notebooks away,” the captain said. “No notes.”
From this moment on, the captain said, for an amount of time unknown to the students, they would be continuously evaluated. Students who failed would be assigned a noninfantry job.
After a lieutenant completed each leg of the test, the captain said, there would be another instructor who would explain the next task. The test was timed, but the lieutenants would not know how much time was allowed for many events, or over all. This uncertainty was intended to force every student to go as fast as he could, never knowing how much energy and food to conserve.
No one was to help anyone else, the captain said. Speaking was forbidden, except when addressing instructors, with one exception. “If you are injured at any time, it is the only time you will talk to another Marine,” he said. “Legitimately injured,” he added, “As in, ‘I have a bone sticking out of my leg.’ ”
Students are asked not to share details of this test and other exercises at the course outside the Marine infantry officer ranks. The officers who supervise the course allowed this reporter to move alongside the lieutenants and observe the test in its entirety on the condition that the test not be described in full, and that specific standards, durations and distances and the chronology not be disclosed.
Maj. Scott A. Cuomo, the course director, also requested that one portion not be photographed, as, he said, photographs would unveil an essential surprise. (This was one of the most mentally disorienting and physical sequences, during which three students quit.)
Throughout the course, the students carried rifles and packs, which visibly took a toll on them, stage after stage. Colonel Desgrosseilliers said their exhaustion was by design.
“We’re primarily a foot-mobile organization,” he added. “So you have to be able to carry the equipment you need in the fight. And you have to be able to fight when you get there, and, if you are an officer, you have to be able to think and make decisions in that fight that will influence it in a way that you will win.”
Throughout the course, students were stopped and given written or practical exams, testing their knowledge of fire support, land navigation, weaponry, tactics, communications equipment and more.
Outside, Major Cuomo walked the trails in the heat, watching the lieutenants and occasionally offering encouragement. He explained what the course’s role meant to him: providing enlisted infantry Marines, who bear the brunt of war’s risks and privations, with officers they deserve.
He pointed at a lieutenant ahead, his uniform blackened by sweat and dirt, headed uphill. He appeared to have entered a slow-motion mental zone. He was weaving on shaky legs, but progressing.
“There could come a time when the Marines in a platoon will look at that man, and say, ‘I don’t know where he came from, and I don’t know what he knows, but we are in a big mess and he is going to do the right thing right now and make this right,’ ” the major said. “That man needs to be up to that task.”
At one point, the students arrived at a swimming pool. They were ordered into the deep end with equipment, and told to swim a certain number of lengths and then to tread water for a certain amount of time.
Already exhausted, the officers swam slowly, trying to complete the laps.
At another station, each student encountered a pile of intermingled weapons’ parts — a jumble of bolts, springs, barrels, firing pins, stocks, hand-guards and other components. The lieutenants were told that the pile contained disassembled American and foreign infantry arms and that they were expected to reassemble them all and perform function checks. There was a time limit, which the students were not told.
At another point, the lieutenants found themselves at an obstacle course, which they had to complete multiple times. One officer lagged, staggering. He stopped, continued, stopped. It did not look as if he would climb the last lap’s last rope. But he did. He shuffled past Major Cuomo, fell to a knee and vomited repeatedly. At one point he dropped to all fours. Medical staff watched him. It looked as if he might pass out, but a few minutes later he was standing. A captain pointed to another card.
Major Cuomo was expressionless until the man had found his stride and headed into the woods toward the next task.
“There are not a lot of places in the military where you can push a guy to that point, and not help him, and let a guy dig down and find himself,” the major said. “Fortunately this is one of the places where you can.”
Shortly after the test ended, Major Cuomo shared the results. Of 96 officers who had started the endurance test, 76 passed, 7 quit, 7 were injured and 6 failed.
Those who had succeeded were back in the classroom. A few applied dressings to bloody feet. Permitted now to talk, several admitted that they were not sure the test was over, and expected a captain to appear with more cards.
More than 80 days remained. Soon after that, a new class would begin, coed.

Sounds like they are trying to do it right, but will they? Will certain Congress people pressure Col. Desgrosseilliers to make sure the experiment is a success? Will they let him know that if he ever wants to see his General's star he will make sure the experiment is a success? If so, will the good Colonel have the integrity to fall on his sword and see his career ended? It happened to the man that was favored to be the Marine Corps Commandant during the Clinton administration. He didn't answer a related question in the "politically correct manner" to a civilian DoD under secretary. When given a chance to change his opinion he refused and stood his ground. His nomination was canked and another officer was put forward as the nominee and that General was retired.
They run four classes a year of approximately 96 students per class=384 candidates a year and they graduate approximately 300 so they have an approximately 22% attrition rate. Will the Marine Corps fudge on the standards if the female attrition rate exceeds this? If they don't fudge will they be accused of being excessively hard on the female candidates and attempting to fail them in order to keep the infnatry an all male domain? They really can't win either way it goes.
92 female candidates are desired. This will be about 24% of the class. Women make up only 6% of the Marine Corps so they will be significantly over represented. This is however a good thing from the perspective of gathering data, the larger the sample the more accurate the data gathered.

 

And this is a sad thing.

 

Absolutely correct USMC and often overlooked. Five soldiers in my father's battalion were under 112 pounds (8 stone) and had to report every day to drink an extra pint of milk. My father says he was never fed better in 1930s than in the British Army. As he told me - "we were terribly unfit and the initial training was absolutely useless. We needed to build upper body strength as machine gunners and all we got was rout marches". It is a terrible indictment of British Society that 25% of children received more calories under wartime rationing than in peacetime.

Always amazed at how well fed the yanks were.

Sorry nothing to do with women soldiers but a fact that is often not considered when examining early WW2 battles.

 

If you could see what I have seen locally, you would not be surprised.........lots of alcoholics buy groceries that have no nutritional value for their children......however across the country children's nutrition may be as short as it was many many years ago....we are not in a good place in this recession for children or locally because of other problems. Children seem to catch the worst of it all. The yanks may have been fed well in comparison but my dad remembers a lot of troops that went into the army in need of healthy foods. It was explained according to him by the depression that only ended as we went to war. He had been eating government food at WPA camps so he considered himself to be fortunate to be healthy before getting drafted. Sorry I am off thread with this....or maybe not.

 

No prob for the little OT! Its interesting to read.

 

USMC or Pricey...I'll call you Pricey from now on mate..its more British...

I'll respond to some of the other responses when I have time...Busy...Living at mo..

The USA and this fits in with Victor and others statements and my own earlier one...has a problem as much as the UK and dilution is and has happened. Having looked at just a sample of USA Dod sites and training changes over the years some are glaringly obviouss in as to the reasons for the changes. To say there has been no changes and not becuause of downgrading of our societies is not really on. I'll point you to just one group of folk I have come to respect since they were formed, as their ideas and conclusions carry across the pond.
Mission: Readiness
As to training...my own force I see now conducts most of its basic in training shoes and pumps.There is a reason I know..Not one I or those before me would sanction though..as to pull ups and ending of situps again on both sides of the pond...well I suppose we don't want any one injuring themselves in the forces do we.

One interesting site of old I have had saved for a while although not relevant to females as such but general service of all Nato nations and indeed dated is included here...It goes back at least one generationial group of servicefolk but is interesting in that even I two or 3 generational recruitments before that time would have passed those requirements with ease and still have time to run a marathon at 18. Times have indeed changed. Dilution is occuring and will continue. And if our societies carry on in the way they are then thank god for the robots of tomorrow...Incidentally both your DOD and my MOD spending and future budgets in that area are revealing in themselves as too are the words that go along with the reasoning from the planners of tomorrow. Infantry in general..yes needed...but not in the significant numbers of yesterday and even today...Expiditionary forces will be much smaller..the girls will be making as many decisions on cap and target aquisition and ordering the kill from afar in numbers equal to the menfolk. The infantry is in danger of becoming a rare object in the planning of tomorrow. Necessary but overtaken by their commercial friends with the same guns as is becoming obvious today. Air power..always a wish list and never quite getting there...will in future get there. and the chances of a girly on the other end in her cabin in Waddington in UK or Creech in Nevada is the way of the future. So girls in the infantry is probably more of a moot point than folk realise. Why even bother. The infantry is fast becoming the poor cousin in future planning roles..Necessary but not war winning as is being displayed today as we speak

I have not read your responses yet cviw but will and get back to you matey.


http://www.cism-milsport.org/eng/00...pdfs/018-NATO-HFM-080_Final_Report_Jan_09.pdf
Old but interesting...See relevant nation fitness testing section.

Meanwhile I'm going to train the grandkids on tour of duty and get the bbq on to give em a coke and urqh cheese special with extra everything.

 

Just a suggestion but perhaps this should be moved to military planning doctrine etc threads...as although not political and wouldn't want it to be in stump the general thread header has given rise to other associated and interesting topics in planning and doctrine etc. Keeps it away from politics as its a thing that affects all nations and not a political thing but a military of the future thing.

 

Pricey works for me...

Crunches were substituted for sit-ups because they provide the same strengthening benefit without placing undue strain on the lower back. They are just as hard to do. They have taken to running in athletic shoes, "go fasters" in Marine Corps lingo, during organized PT vs the old boots and Utes, because they had data on stress fractures and lower extremity injuries that shows this simple change eliminated the vast majority of injuries. Say your unit goes out and runs three miles a day twice a week and has an 8-10 mile death run on Wednesdays. You place half in "go fasters" the other half in boots. The half in boots has 45% of it's people on light duty due to stress fractures or other lower extremity injuries by the end of the second week and doesn't PT anymore until healed. The half in go fasters will probably have less than 5% on light duty due to injuries so the majority of the unit is still PT'ing and is still benefiting from the cardio, strength and endurance improvements of the program. The injured soldiers are not improving and in fact will have to train even harder to regain the loss in conditioning they sustained while on light duty.
I fully agree that the overall civilian population is more sedentary and less fit than in the past. Fitness is however a correctable deficiency with proper training. The US Army has lowered it's fitness standards for serving personnel. It has to do with them needing to recruit and retain more personnel during war time. The Marine Corps being small never had to resort to this. However, even years ago the US Army had lesser physical standards than the Marine Corps. Now with the large force reductions that the Marine Corps and Army are experiencing due to the drawdown from the GWOT, I would predict you will see the Army stiffen it standards again somewhat because of the lesser numbers required.

That is the wave of the future but much of todays robotics advancements are in areas of infantry support, because planners see the logistics chain as the Achilles heel. As for ground combat they are looking towards dispersed operations, where small units of widely scattered, but MORE CAPABLE infantry will be required. The overall number of infantry will probably not be less, the area they can effect will be greater.

They already are. I never contested that point.

Actually in the current wars it has been the infantry, as always that has done the heavy lifting. The close air and drones, etc. have been crucial in a support role, but have in many cases done more harm than good. In most of the cases where they have done good it is generally attributable to men on the ground, whether conventional infantry or Special Operations Forces, providing the targeting data, illumination etc. This is and has always been airpowers biggest weakness, even though now more precise than ever, it's inability to consistently detect, identify, differentiate and kill the correct targets on the ground. As for Private Military Contractors (PMC's), which I assume is what you were referring to when you stated, "overtaken by their commercial friends with the same guns" they do not and never have (in the current wars) been utilized in the role of infantry forces. They are used for less dangerous security and protection roles, but not to go in and go toe to toe with the bad guys. They have also been a mixed blessing and their numbers have actually declined instead of increasing. You would expect them to increase as military personnel were withdrawn. They have suffered from lack of discipline, low quality or badly equipped/supported personnel. There have been many instances where their presence or mistakes have actually caused deterioration of the situation. They have run off and left their own and relied upon the military to go in and rescue them on numerous occasions. Marines actually took a bunch of them captive for a while in a city in Anbar Iraq, because their actions were causing problems in their AO.

Actually it was primarily the work of the infantry that allowed us to win in Iraq. (Anyone notice that currently with most of the middle east having huge internal problems, Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Iran, etc. the most stable country besides Israel is Iraq?)

 

USMC
Ah come on. I was only a grunt, but we ran ever day for at least 5 miles once (on rare occasions more) wearing the old boots. And every army base in the states seems to have been built on sand, everywhere you'd run. (This was during AIT). During basic we often rode, but we even ran to the ranges with the M-60's in AIT. Few dropped out (loss of a pass) and outside of a case of heat dehydration I don't remember any injuries (danger of re-cycle).
BTY- At the induction center where I went in they were drafting a few into the marines. Some joined the Army on the spot, but some were drafted.1968.


On the Off-Thread
Even in the US the depression affected the young. But it had another aspect that can't be neglected. One uncle joined up early to have a job, and was set to Africa (infantry) in decent shape and already partly trained. An older cousin (toughest guy I 'd ever met), after some hard years, he went off to the South Pacific and the Japanese just were not ready for him. Alot of Depression-era soldiers were extremely tough mentally, where it really counts. Todays youth seem much 'nicer' (for lack of a better word) and that's where the hard PT is needed. What was the 'old saying?'...'The Army will make a man of you'?

 

On the boot comments, i can back up USMCPrice on injuries gained whilst PTing with army boots...Australia had/has the same problem...we were getting to a mini crisis point at one stage with the amount of people with foot/ankle injuries...our deployable list was dwindling...sandshoes/runners were introduced into most activities (plus DSTO designed and redesigned trying to get the "perfect army boot") and the injuries dropped...

 

I bow to general opinion. We had the old GI leather boots, not the fancy nylon 'jungle' issue... but I must be wrong.

 

Or GIs are tougher....?? : )
Man am i brave...

 

You must be wrong knight, I well remember most of our runs being done in boots without any injury old dms..and I was not infantry. Full kit for all..fail and your in trouble...DMS Though was not very waterproof as proved in Falklands. Sorry I don't see the BFT of old over here being done today..I see a run being done and many attempts to pass...even a bonus bounty if you are in the TA for passing it.

 

Pricey....Are you really not seeing the bombs going off in Iraq or do they just not get reported in your news..Its far from stable...Not stable at all..unless by stable you mean not threatening the USA.

 

Pricey, time itself will prove the infantry role reduction. Over here we have just destroyed our own infantry. They will never come back from last months cuts. The reasoning is not just financial The money is being spent...we still spend big compared to the list of other nations. We however no longer intend to spend that money on infantry. Your own corps is being cut but you will be getting more and more UAV kit.

Time will prove me right I'm afraid. I'm not a supporter just have delved deepley into the planning aspects publicly made by both our planners. Its there to see. Being loyal to one branch or other is admirable. But like battleships of the navy, doomed to history. Air and girl power is on the rise air power does not have to necessarily have a man behind the cockpit either. I'm arguing against both. But fighting a losing battle especially on UAV's. I have fought my own battle on UAV and find some strange allies..The Raf her is in great danger..and not from an enemy abroad. The infantry like the RAF will always exist. As a war winning option. Definately not. And I know time and the planners will prove me right.

 

Sorry, I removed myself after realizing I was off topic.

 

No, you still have violence, you always will. It is however at a greatly decreased level. It is the type of violence that you need to look at. Where is it directed and by whom? The vast majority is not directed at the government, an attempt to seize power or undermine it. The government itself while often gridlocked is functional and stable. Most of the violence is religious fanatic driven. The whole Sunni/Shia thing, that's been going on for centuries. It is however at the local, homegrown level and while problematic, is not a threat to the countries stability. This would be closely akin to gang violence in the US or organized crime violence in many countries, but with added twist of the religious hatred, akin to the protestant/catholic violence that plagued Ireland for so long. The local big dog, uses it to gain control over and intimidate the local populace. By any measure though the violence is way down. Currently, you're probably safer in Baghdad than in Detroit.

As small tidbit from today's news to support my point:
"BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraq's government called Tuesday for all its citizens living in Syria to return home immediately to escape the escalating civil war after the recent killing of two Iraqi journalists covering the conflict.
Thousands of Iraqis fled to Syria to escape widespread sectarian fighting during the worst of violence in their homeland between 2005 and 2007. Now, the traffic is heading the other way, with Iraqis and Syrian refugees heading east, and out of the conflict that the International Red Cross just days ago deemed a civil war."

 

Urqh wrote:

I've been there done that also, but think about it Lost Knight, where has the technology progressed to since 1968. In WWII athletic shoes were little different from street shoes, they just had lighter more flexible soles. Not much advantage over the leather boot. By 1968 you had Keds and Converse All-Stars, canvas shoes with rubber soles. Still not much advantage over boots except for weight. Modern running shoes provide lateral support to protect knees and ankles. Advanced foot support built into the insoles protects the foot. Shock absorbing materials incorporated into the construction protects from stress fractures and even protects the knees, hips and back from injury due to repeated jarring. Troops still do formation runs in boots, but they are more infrequent than in times past. All our formation runs in Jump School were in boots and utes, but the majority of the conditioning leading up to the actual school was done in PT gear and running shoes. You still wear boots on conditioning marches, "humps", road marches, where you're laden down with all your battle rattle, flak and a 80-100lb rucksack. I'm still exposed to the military because of friends and my sons that are still serving and the PT is pretty brutal. The new (well within the last decade) Combat Fitness test is run in boots and uniform, but that's what it's trying to measure. It may sound strange, but nutrition and conditioning were part of the SF Medics Course when I attended, we learned that in addition to setting bones, suturing wounds, surgery, preventive medicine, NBC Warfare, veterinary medicine, dentistry, pharmacology, Advanced Trauma Life support and 100 other specialties. (that's also where I learned about goats, horrid creatures) Part of your job is to set up a conditioning program for your team and your indigenous troops. We saw and studied all the data that they've been gathering for over half a century. They have the scientific proof. It is not speculation. One additional side note, concerning women. Did you know they have a greatly increased incidence of lower extremity injuries than men? Something like 80%. Why? Body mechanics and nature. It has to do with their physical adaptations to make them more efficient for childbirth. Their hips are wider. This causes their femurs to have a more acute angle to their knee than in a male. The problem is further exacerbated by boots, (I don't remember why this is) but, you see the majority of women early in their military careers with profiles that allow them to wear their athletic shoes.

Surviving the Cut - US Marine Recon - Part 1 - YouTube

Surviving the Cut - US Marine Recon - Part 2 - YouTube

Surviving The Cut Ranger School Pt 1 - YouTube

Surviving the Cut - US Marine Scout Sniper - Part 1 - YouTube

These folks appear to be pretty physically fit. Not the weak, pathetic individuals that the comments on the thread are tending to paint current service members as being.