Worth noting that what you’ve written above is not what you’ve “maintained all along”, and you’re subtly shifting your argument here.
What you’ve been arguing along is that perhaps there may be other factors which would make for effective ranger missions (and which women might tend to excel at) which have been overlooked in ranger testing, which were designed with men in mind. The notion that ranger missions themselves should be changed in favor of other missions that use other skills is not an argument that you’ve raised in this thread prior to this post.
ISTM that you’ve inserted “… and missions … what ranger missions have traditionally been …” as a subtle change in argument, in response to getting tangled up in your flawed “moving the goalposts” accusation.
While I don’t have a lot of experience around Ranger units, much less in one, what I saw in general was enough. The training is (or was) extremely debilitating for weeks on end, with little to no sleep or food. The regular or “leg” infantry units as well, and especially airborne, at times carry absolutely ridiculous loads in their rucksacks, plus ammo and water. They have difficulty walking, period. Very few men can meet the requirements, the pool of women who are both capable and willing must be vanishingly small. The physiology is that much different, it’s not even close. For much the same reason, women don’t fare well as NFL linebackers. That’s not to say there aren’t women who can’t meet the Ranger School standards, but it’s hardly worth upending the whole thing to try and make it happen.
I know there are good people who mean well and wish reality would go away, but the real danger is of lowering standards and very likely getting bunches of people killed unnecessarily.
That’s lovely that it seems to you. You’re incorrect, and the only question is whether you’ll accept the correction, or whether you’ll hang your hat on insisting you understand my argument better than me. Either is A-OK by me.
First of all, I didn’t say working as courtroom lawyers. I said practicing law full stop.
But regardless, your “turning it around” is ludicrous. If we follow your thinking we wouldn’t have a commando school. We’d have a school that people can put on their resume as a commando school. If there are a bunch of skills we would like our soldiers to aquire that don’t require incredible physical strength, tenacity and endurance then go make another school.
Makes no difference what I accept. Your words are out there. In the event that anyone happens to be interested in the subject they can review your prior posts to this thread and search in vain for any hint that you were advocating changing the type of missions that rangers engage in.
But possibly no one is interested. “Either is A-OK by me.” I’ve made my point.
Oh, I thought your response was going to be links or quotes to all those times you mentioned changing the Ranger missions was central to your argument. That being impossible, I guess you had to go with “groovy”.
What’s happening here seems pretty obvious to me. You are just replaying the same argument you’ve had a million times about female police/lawyers/whatever. So I’m sure in all those other arguments “rethinking the mission” made sense. But not much has changed in the commando job in the last 70 years.
I know. I picked “courtroom lawyers” as a subset of the law with a set of skills sufficiently specialized to be easily distinguished from “lawyers” as a superset. You could substitute “patent lawyers” or “criminal defense lawyers” or the subset of your choice and the analogy would hold. (Given the differences between the duties and attributes of, e.g., criminal defense lawyers and trust/estate-planning lawyers, I’m not sure I could make a firm case that “lawyer” skills/attributes are sufficiently distinguishable from those of “non-lawyers,” but if you think you can, go for it.)
Given the numbers I came up with earlier (and despite repeated requests, nobody has come up with better numbers), it appears that RIGHT NOW we may not actually have a commando school but instead a school for people with the appropriate testosterone levels to put on their resume.
That’s kinda the point here: DOES Ranger School right now exist primarily to provide commandos to the 75th Rangers and similar units, yes or no? (Data and cites would be appreciated.)
Or does it exist primarily as a “Boyz Only – No Gurlz Allowed” bastion to provide men who will never serve as commandos a resume-enhancing male-bonding experience that gives them an edge in leadership roles that have nothing whatsoever to do with real special ops missions, and that don’t have the kinds of physical demands that we agree exist in traditional commando operations?
If most of its graduates don’t ever serve in ranger-type roles, then I would argue that it is the latter. If it’s not really a commando school currently (regardless of what it may have been historically), maybe we really do need a separate school just for those people who will go on “ranger missions.” [Does perhaps the Ranger Assessment and Selection Program fill that role, at least in part?] Or perhaps we need to limit Ranger School just to those who are going to be commandos, and establish a second school with a different set of requirements more appropriate to the kinds of roles most graduates are expected to perform.
Now, if you’ve got data that shows my basic premise is wrong and most Ranger School graduates really do serve in the Ranger Regiment or similar types of units, I would be very interested to see it. However, I don’t think “well, they call it Ranger School so they must all be commandos” is a valid argument.
No we have a commando school. Some people just don’t choose to become commandos after graduating. And sorry I can’t look up better numbers for you but yours just prove what I said in the previous sentence, nothing else.
Whether or not ranger tab holders serve as actual commandos, or they are seeking the tab to prove to themselves that they are good enough to be commandos, or they want their OERs in the future to mention that they meet the standard to fight as a commando, the school is the same.
The school’s purpose is to winnow out wanna be commandos from people who meet the minimum standards to be commandos. Reducing it’s standards to let more people pass does not serve that purpose. It’s not just gender specific - you need to be a man of the right size, with the right athletic genes, and you need a brain that is heavily resistant to stress. You need to be able to operate on little sleep and not give up no matter how harsh the conditions. You have to be the right age as well.
For those who aren’t born with The Right Stuff - and I will freely admit I don’t feel I have what it takes - too bad. They aren’t cut out to be commandos. If no women can possibly meet the standard, too bad. We’re talking about a job that involves possibly wrestling with another big man, hand to hand, no holds barred, in a fight to the death with knives. Or fighting an armored personal carrier when all you’ve got are AT-4s, and then the same night ruck marching 50 miles.
Go read Bravo Two Zero for a first hand account of what being a Commando actually is. It’s not pretty, and probably all woman alive and nearly all men are incapable of doing what those SAS soldiers had to do.
Probably both. Don’t see why you think that proves something. Actual commandos go through the course. Are you saying they aren’t really getting trained and tested?
…firstly: I have my doubts over the veracity of the cite used in the OP. The claim is made that ““multiple sites” claim that the Rangers were pressured by top brass to pass at least one woman”: I’d like to see some of those “multiple sites” (that weren’t sourced from this People article.)
Secondly: this subject was discussed at length over on the International Skeptics forum (Formerly the Randi forums.) The point repeatedly made by those who have either served or are currently serving was:
The testing tests fitness. “Fitness” is scaled based on age and gender. People that score the same score are equally fit: even if they do more or less push-ups to get that score. A link to the discussion for those that are interested.
So I’m not seeing the special treatment based on this article alone. But the OP claims alternative citations exist: so please, by all means, cite away.
The way I understand it is that Ranger School is really only important for Infantry, 90% of the senior Infantry officers have a Ranger Tab. Infantry accounts for 10% of the army but they do 90% of the dying. This is one of the reasons why infantry has been closed to women until very recently. Now that women are allowed in Infantry, the promotions will come very slowly unless they run combat missions and they are not likely to get very many combat missions without their Ranger Tab.
So something like 75%-80% of newly-commissioned Second Lieutenants are promoted to First Lieutenant (around age 25), perhaps 75%-80% of First Lieutenants are promoted to Captain (ages 28-29), and 75%-80% of Captains are promoted to Major (around ages 31-33). There are a crap ton of majors and they populate the military bureaucracy. This is where a lot of people cap their career, half of the ones that don’t make Lt Colonel and about half the majors that don’t get promoted by the time they are 40 take their retirement and go open a Chick Fil A or something.
Half of Lt Colonels are promoted to Colonel. I don’t know how it goes after that. But you probably won’t get past major without that ranger tab in Infantry. The promotions come so slowly that you age out.
About half of all ranger candidates fail the physical assessment. Most of these on the push up portion (50 good form push-ups). This is a TOUGH ask for a lot of women.
How important is upper body strength in leading a combat mission. Is physique an important element of leading combat troops. Will enlisted men be more likely to follow a physically strong and imposing leader like Pvt. Vasquez from Aliens? Is there some other metric that could achieve this same effect?
If the primary reason most people attend the school (and I will defer to good numbers, but we still don’t have any) is to enhance their careers outside the commandos, then the primary purpose of the school is career-enhancement of non-commandos. That may not be what the brass want the school to be, but that is what it will have become, and what the Army brass will have allowed it to become.
If indeed that is what the school has become, then the entrance and graduation requirements should be those that best demonstrate the characteristics needed to succeed in careers outside the commandos. I’m not sure why this is controversial.
If real commandos are trained and tested primarily through the RASP program above cited, then what happens in Ranger School is of lesser or perhaps no relevance, and therefore the Ranger School standards relating primarily to commando-type missions are likewise of little or no relevance.
If the standards are of little or no relevance to the actual job duties, and those same standards disproportionately affect members of one gender (or ethnic group, or religion, etc.), then I think it pretty clear that the standards are maintained mostly to keep members of that group out.
If the standards are maintained primarily to select commandos, and are directly relevant to what makes a good commando, fine. If the standards are maintained primarily to keep women out of leadership roles in the army, not fine. What does the evidence show is true in the U.S. Army TODAY?
Neither is sourced from the People article and in fact the first link, from the Washington Times reporting an officer blasting the rumors of special treatment, predates it by a month. I agree many other articles use People as their source, those were not the ones to which I referred in the OP.
Because it’s ass backwards. It enhances your career because it is a crazy balls to the wall course. There’s other courses to take if you just want a focus on leadership and strategy.
