I don’t think you’re gonna get the best seal on a modern mask with a beard. What you CAN do is shave before you deploy to an area with a higher risk of chemical warfare.
Like Portland?
Unless you’re completely bald, the top edge of a gas mask is on hair. I don’t see why head hair can create a seal while beard hair can’t.
The gas masks I used in the service sealed around the face. The straps went over your head but that wasn’t part of the seal.
Y’know, if the YouTube algorithm is any sort of sample, a whole damn lot of the 2A Bros and “alphamales” and “protector warrior poet” and “sigma” macho types out there ARE a bunch of “beardos”.
Right, the hood over the top of the head was to protect from contact contamination but the air seal was around the exposed forehead.
As others have said, modern protective gear can handle a certain level of neatly trimmed facial hair. (But TBF knowing people I am not hopeful a large part of the formation will be wearing it right anyway .)
Try wearing a gas mask with a beard.
You know what? I have one in the back of my closet. I’ll check when I get home.
Yes, if the National Guard starts using tear gas on protesters.
The physical fitness test isn’t designed for that. It’s not a job suitability test. It’s designed to test whether people are keeping themselves in generally good physical shape.
Passing the physical test in itself isn’t a guarantee that you’ll get to stay in the military. If you can’t actually perform the job, you end up not getting promoted, and eventually separated from the military. And people are constantly being evaluated in realistic training scenarios. It’s not like someone suddenly parachutes into a combat zone and suddenly needs to load a crate of ammo for the first time ever. Readiness is constantly assessed and evaluated, and people who aren’t ready get separated. it’s that simple.
Actual high performance in military positions most often boils down to understanding your job very well, communicating very well, paying close attention to detail, and being able to stay awake for a really long time while still making good decisions. That’s only partially a function of physical fitness. And it’s general physical fitness, not the specific ability to deadlift 40 pounds or hold a plank position for 2 minutes.
IIRC from the shaving waivers readily available in my era (USAF '80-'88), it was not allowed to grow impressive 1860s style whiskers.
What was allowed was to shave sorta close with an electric trimmer rather than clean with a blade. So the equivalent of the Miami Vice demi-beard.
The whole physiological point is to keep the hair long enough that black folks’ typical very tight curls don’t result in it growing back into the skin causing irritation and damage.
I suppose DoD could solve this “problem” at a stroke by authorizing all males servicemembers to have a beard of not more than e.g. 1/8" length. Modern electric beard trimmers are cheap enough they could issue one to every male servicemember with the instruction that it will be used thoroughly on all facial hair every day.
Of course, that assumes any of this current nonsense is rooted in anything other than simple racism.
It’s very easy to figure out.
If you hope to someday use DoD as a force to round up and intern (or worse) all the brown people, one of the prerequisites is to have very few, ideally zero, brown people in your force.
The Project 2025 people are playing a long game, despite the toddler-level attention spans of their hapless spokesmen. And audience.
I’ve never been in the military, but my understanding is that many roles even in combat are not particularly physical. Flying a helicopter. driving a tank, piloting a drone, etc are all things that aren’t really physical combat roles. So it really doesn’t matter if you’re a big strong guy or a small woman.
For the Navy, depends: Day to Day jobs are as you said, but for General Quarters and Damage Control, strength can make a big difference. Fire hoses require some strength and weight as an example, on the other hand, a small petite woman, which would be more common than a small petite man, could be really helpful for some emergency repairs.
Moving the injured, especially up or down stairs (called laders as they are very steep on a ship) might be tougher with weaker women, but that isn’t all that common thankfully.
Damage Control is an all important function on Navy Ships. It keeps ships in the fights, saves lives and allows crippled ships to crawl home to fight another day.
I’m fine with what was the current standards until last week, but don’t dismiss that your day to day job doesn’t have the same requirements as your emergency/battle stations job. I was in when women serving on combat ships was just starting. But both they and our pencil pushers were expected to be able to serve a damage control function and train up.
as I mentioned in my post I also mentioned firefighting, which is extremely physical; as for fighting forces, if there’s nothing “physical” about combat, why the vigorish training for Seals, Rangers, Marines, et al–because there’s STILL ‘boots on the ground’
Thanks to you and to @What_Exit for the replies, but what percentage of military roles are these? I thought that many, even in the military, spend their time in offices, behind desks.
If you are on a ship, Damage Control stations are a big part of your job. You have to be ready. That is pretty much all hands. Medical being a major exception, but pretty much everyone else. I went from DC lockers to manning Engineering stations like the Steering Gear or an electrical Switchboard, but like everyone I had to learn Damage Control and Firefighting first.
My ship had a horrific main space fire before I got their. It was far worse than it should have been as Damage Control and Fire Fighting training had really slipped in the 60s and 70s.
The 80s Navy, I think starting in the late 70s under Carter (a formal Navy Officer) and pushed hard by Reagan’s SecNav John Lehman, really stressed Damage Control and Fire Fighting training and had the fleet in fighting trim again.
As I recall, even the big USS Forrestal fire in the late 60s was aggravated by poor training.
Those groups have their own physical standards that can’t be met by a large part of the military.
The general fitness tests are just to assess whether you’re the kind of person who keeps themselves in generally good shape. Nobody’s being put in roles where they can’t meet the demands of that role. If they do allow their fitness to slip to where they can’t perform, they’ll be cut loose.
Yes, the key is to have fitness standards that are tied to the actual job, and how it’s actually carried out. If you want to be a machine gunner, you have to be able to carry that gun, and a normal ammunition load-out. If you want to load shells in a tank, you have to be able to lift and move those shells, fast enough and long enough for typical tank combat.
And those standards have to be based on how the job is actually done. I recall a case in the 80s, where women wanted to break into railroad jobs. One job required lifting and moving a piece of heavy equipment, that weighed about 100 pounds. None of the women applicants could do that, so they weren’t hired. Great, right? A clearly neutral standard based on the requirements of the job. Except. When someone looked into how the men who had this job actually did the job, they never lifted this thing by themselves, they always worked in pairs. Turns out, when you let the women try it the same way, some of them passed that test.
Exactly. That’s why the general fitness standards are different. They basically test whether someone keeps themselves in shape, and that’s why historically it’s been based on a percentile of one’s demographic.
A woman who tests out in the 99th percentile of fitness for women likely isn’t as strong or fast as a man in the 79th percentile, but she definitely does more fitness training than the man, which is a measure of professionalism and dedication to readiness. I’d rather hire the woman who keeps herself at 99% of maximum than a guy who is satisfied with 79% of his maximum.
Yes, this. It’s a bit silly to pretend that we don’t know perfectly well that the motive of Hegseth, Trump and company is racism and sexism, not military effectiveness. It wouldn’t matter if women and black people were objective superior soldiers to white men; they’d still be targets for the purge of the military because they aren’t looking for good soldiers. They are looking for white male soldiers. Bigoted ones, by preference.
Indeed, the pretense that any of this is not about sexism or racism is transparent bullshit.