In particular they mention a British study that just came out late last year, which you can read here. In terms of combat effectivness -- which one would think ought to be the only consideration -- the British identified 21 factors they thought could plausibly be said to contribute to combat effectiveness. Women studied had negative results in 11 of these 21 areas.
"In three of the 11 negative factors, mitigation would be a significant challenge," the report says. "These are survivability, morbidity and deployability, much of which are predicated by physiology."
Those are some pretty important areas. Will they survive in combat? Will they suffer injuries that will hamper their teams? Can they be deployed at all?
The problems turn out to be related. Women suffer combat stress injuries much quicker than men, which reduces their ability to maneuver -- and also makes them less dangerous to their enemies, not just less likely to survive.
These studies suggest that the relative strength of women, compared to men, when carrying the combat load are likely to result in the early onset of fatigue. This is likely to result in a distinct cohort with lower survivability in combat. Similar research points to a reduced lethality rate; in that combat marksmanship degrades as a result of fatigue when the combat load increases in proportion to body weight and strength. The risks regarding survivability are therefore relative; these are about biology rather than character.UPDATE: I think this concerns me for two basic reasons.
1. We're doing all these assessments on what amount to closed courses. The whole reason to establish a closed course is to limit the risks: you can drive at speeds that would be ridiculously unsafe in traffic, or practice combat-driving maneuvers in a relatively safe environment before you have to go out and do them for real. The problem is that the armed forces will have to go out and do this for real at some point. If we discover in a three-month survey on a closed course that we're encountering morbidity and survivability problems that also impact the ability to effectively kill the enemy, we need to understand that the effect of this on a unit deployed at war for a year or more is going to be magnified substantially. For want of a nail, the shoe... the horse... the troop... the regiment... the battle.. the war.
2. That Congress and the military are glad-handing their way through this suggests that we're not listening to negative findings if they conflict with the great goal of 'gender equality.' Will negative findings from the battlefield be enough to correct us here? Or will we refuse to see it even then? 'Their command should have trained them harder'; 'their leadership didn't provide adequate support'; 'the environment is toxic for women'; 'who dares question that she got pregnant at deployment time?'
The danger is accepting a permanently higher number of American dead and injured to further our chase for this will-o'-wisp.
[T]he British identified 21 factors they thought could plausibly be said to contribute to combat effectiveness. Women studied had negative results in 11 of these 21 areas.
ReplyDeleteWell, obviously those areas were carefully chosen to deselect women. [/snark]
That Congress and the military are glad-handing their way through this suggests that we're not listening to negative findings if they conflict with the great goal of 'gender equality.'
There's plenty of gender equality in being dead.
My argument for women in combat centers on the premise that anyone, regardless of gender, who can operate the equipment and send accurate fire down range has an obligation to be in combat doing that. Of course, the flip side applies, too: if you can't operate the equipment and send accurate fire down range, you don't belong in combat, regardless of gender. You're more dangerous to your teammates than you are to the enemy, and the whole purpose of combat is "to make that other poor bastard die for his country."
These studies, though, all center on ground combat. There's a crying need for similar studies in the air and naval forces (and the developing drone forces and coming space forces). In the air forces, for instance, the operate-and-fire-accurately business centers on flying the aircraft to a weapons release point (often in a high-g environment, but not otherwise particularly stressful, and not chronically so, in any event) and squeezing a trigger or pushing a button. Poor eyesight, weak middle ears, and strong gag reflexes are the primary (and gender neutral) negative discriminants in that environment. Two of those can be trained out. The third of those is device correctable in a combat support environment, like aerial refueling or trash hauling--er, cargo and troop hauling--the heavies don't pull the g's that would threaten glasses.
Eric Hines
My argument for women in combat centers on the premise that anyone, regardless of gender, who can operate the equipment and send accurate fire down range has an obligation to be in combat doing that.
ReplyDeleteThat's an unusual argument. Even during the days of the draft, we didn't recognize an obligation to actually send fire down range: conscientious objectors were always permitted to take other roles.
What's the old saying? Ligistics is 80-90% of combat power. An army travels on its stomach.
ReplyDeleteThat said, you know how I feel about this. Lord knows I wrote about it often enough.
*sigh*
A society that places individual rights over the security of the group is committing suicide.
LOgistics.
ReplyDeleteThis could be mitigated by identifying women who are crazed, conscienceless killers in the 19th C European men's style and giving them duties that require less lifting and more sociopathy.
ReplyDeleteI'd be okay with that, but I don't think that's what the gender-equity people have in mind.
Even during the days of the draft....
ReplyDeleteI rarely worry about corner cases or other outliers. They can't be allowed to make policy; they're better handled case by case.
Eric Hines
Well, Cass is right, though: these aren't outliers. Logistics are a core competency. There's a lot of stuff that needs to get done, even if we were in a hard enough situation to resort to total mobilization (which has never happened, not even during WWII).
ReplyDeleteIndeed, surely Tex would say that -- were we in a hard enough situation to require total mobilization -- we should avoid total mobilization at all costs, as the market would be more efficient than much of what the government's mobilization could do. So there will always be room for plenty of people not to be on the front lines sending ordinance downrange, or even under military orders at all.
ReplyDeleteEven during the days of the draft....
ReplyDeleteYou weren't worried about logistics, you were worried about conscientious objectors. Corner cases.
Taking logistics separately: if they can't be supported efficiently, they can't operate the equipment and send accurate fire down range....
Regarding supplying bodies for general mobilization, war isn't a market matter.
Eric Hines
That depends on whether the market is really -- as its advocates claim -- the best way to organize for economic efficiency. If it is, then war ought to be a market matter, at least insofar as you're trying to get steel in the right form where you want it to be so that people can put it on target.
ReplyDeleteGrim, Grim, Grim you ignorant slut :p
ReplyDeleteAs we all know, liberals believe in Science and Facts and conservatives are Science Deniers.
Except when it comes to Science that contradicts the prevailing narrative that women are exactly the same as men (just ignore that whole childbearing thing), except when it suits activists to view women as fragile flowers who must be protected from you big, mean man-bullies.
*sigh*
The single most compelling argument against integrating women into the combat arms is long term injury and disease rates. That's why DoD mostly doesn't collect this data anymore - it's very convincing. If only a small proportion of women can even get through basic training, AND even those women experience non-battle injuries at far higher rates than men...
Well, you do the math. The unit cohesion piece is less convincing to me, mostly because it's so subjective and hard to demonstrate. I buy into men having more confidence in bigger/stronger leaders, but that argument won't fly with the "Well that pesky human nature is just going to have to CHANGE" crowd.
The pregnancy rates thing is huge too - larger numbers of women are non-deployable over a long career due to pregnancy/childbirth.
That hurts even the logistics piece, and ultimately means a higher percentage of men deploy more often to make up for the women who can't.
But the single most devastating idea here is that individual fairness should trump group effectiveness/welfare.
Except when it comes to Science that contradicts the prevailing narrative that women are exactly the same as men (just ignore that whole childbearing thing), except when it suits activists to view women as fragile flowers who must be protected from you big, mean man-bullies.
ReplyDeleteExcept in combat, of course, when they don't need any protection at all.
The logic is indisputable, and the Science is settled.
...the best way to organize for economic efficiency. If it is, then war ought to be a market matter....
ReplyDeleteDefine "efficiency." War is, everywhere and always, a matter of national survival. In that emergency, the nation needs to do whatever it takes to survive, and then hope it can restore the prior condition (adjusted so as to better recognize in advance the emergency's entry conditions). A free market is best for sustaining and enhancing the war effort in terms of materiel; it may not be best for supplying the bodies that will use the materiel.
Eric Hines
Define "efficiency."
ReplyDeleteDefine "define," please. :)
The point is just that we shouldn't assert a universal obligation to be on the front range, or under military orders. If the market really is better -- even in the limited but crucial matter of providing materiel, but probably also in terms of providing other goods needed by a nation at war (such as food) -- then we should actually argue for a much more limited military service obligation. Only those who are really needed for military duties should be put under orders.
Only those who are really needed for military duties should be put under orders.
ReplyDeleteIt's entirely appropriate that only those needed should be called--that's part of supportability. But it is my submission that every citizen who's capable has the obligation. That is a universal obligation, subject to the odd corner case, like conscientious objectors, which cases should be handled individually.
Yes, exceptions technically violate a philosopher's universality (in the particular case, I'm fine with an argument that conscientious objectors aren't, at bottom, capable). I'm not concerned with corner cases.
Eric Hines
In any case I find nothing especially to dispute in what you, Cass, have to say about it. I think cohesion is hard to study, but a valid concern; we've all seen what adultery (and even fears of adultery) do to a unit deployed. It is hard to get firm data on that, but the shipwrecks lie plain to the eye.
ReplyDeleteBut it is my submission that every citizen who's capable has the obligation.
ReplyDeleteExcepting the ones who want to be excepted, as 'corner cases.' I wonder if they are that, though. The Millennials have produced some ace warfighters, but only among that very small subset (four percent? five?) that has self-selected by volunteering. I wonder if 'conscientious objection' isn't more normal than not these days.
I've no doubt that I conscientiously object to taking personal risks and I conscientiously object to defending the country that's made it possible for me to dissent in this way are far more normal in today's physically and morally soft society than in times past. But actual conscientious objection remains rare. And most conscientious objectors I've encountered objected to the violence itself, not to supporting the violence by doing things like serving in the medical or supply corps.
ReplyDeleteAnd a proper handling of many corner cases is to make them go fight.
Eric Hines