Index
Home
About
Blog
Newsgroups: sci.military.naval
From: baldwin@netcom.com (J.D. Baldwin)
Subject: Re: Women In Combat
Date: Sun, 17 May 1998 14:22:12 GMT
In article <355c85e1.31710015@news.supernews.net>, Peter Skelton
<pgs@adan.kingston.net> wrote:
> >> OTOH CIC jobs on a warship do not require strength and risk-taking (or
> >> an orientation where personal risk comes into the evaluation) is not a
> >> virtue. In fact, a different profile is needed. They are combat jobs
> >> though.
> >
> >I would suggest that you discuss this novel idea with a survivor of
> >the STARK, or the SAMUEL ROBERTS. When your air-conditioned seat in
> >front of a radar console is a smoking hole in the deck, you grab some
> >shoring or a pump and apply some serious strength and stamina to the
> >problem at hand.
>
> With all respect, the need for strength and stamina on STARK
> definitely came from mental failures. The ability to avoid fuck-ups
> is primary, the ability to recover from them secondary.
If you have a way of ensuring that no warship is ever struck by
enemy ordnance again, regardless of the mental state of its captain
and crew, I beg you to divulge it. The U.S. Navy could make good
use of such a plan. Personally, I happen to believe that mixed-
gender crews are a pretty poor way of getting the CIC watchstanders
to focus *more* on their scopes, but that's not really the point
right now.
In the meantime, back here in the real world, casualties, fires and
battle damage are a fact of life at sea for which one must prepare.
The current state of the damage control art, now and for the
foreseeable future, involves the application of brute strength to
carry heavy stuff up and down decks and shove things into places they
don't want to go very easily.
The criteria for the CIC job, then, must include some level of
strength and physical stamina. It gets a bit complicated, I admit,
because even if you've got an all-male crew, some of them will still
be useless for serious DC tasks. It's only when a significant
proportion of them fit this description that you begin to have a
problem.
So of course if you make a significant proportion of your ship female,
you will dramatically increase the number of "useless" (for basic DC
tasks) personnel aboard. For STARK and SAMUEL B. ROBERTS (regardless
of the reasons for the original casualties), it wouldn't have taken
much of a difference at all and the endings of those stories would
have been a hell of a lot grimmer.
Now, if the goals of "fairness" and "equality" mean enough to us that
we're willing to sacrifice a ship and a few hundred lives now and then
to achieve them, fine. I happen to disagree, but I would at least
respect the proponent who divulged the full costs up front so we can
consider every angle before plowing ahead. Unfortunately, the way
this issue is being implemented, it would be career suicide for an
active duty officer even to *raise* the question.
--
From the catapult of J.D. Baldwin |+| "If anyone disagrees with anything I
_,_ Finger baldwin@netcom.com |+| say, I am quite prepared not only to
_|70|___:::)=}- for PGP public |+| retract it, but also to deny under
\ / key information. |+| oath that I ever said it." --T. Lehrer
***~~~~-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: sci.military.naval
From: baldwin@netcom.com (J.D. Baldwin)
Subject: Re: Women In Combat
Date: Tue, 19 May 1998 21:16:56 GMT
In article <6ji43i$ief$1@camel0.mindspring.com>, Coral Sea
<coral_sea@mindspring<dot> wrote:
> >Check out alt.law-enforcement sometime for True Stories [tm] of
> >male law enforcement officers who ended up at risk or even injured
> >because a 5'4" 100 lb. female partner didn't quite have the
> >physical presence to deter a 6'2" 240 lb. perp from proving himself.
>
> Any soldier (or Law Enforcement Personel) must meet a minimum physical
> standard, Male or female. 100 lbs does not meet the standard. I
> believe that 5'.3'' in the minimum for height.
When I arrived at the Naval Academy in 1980, there was no minimum
height/weight established for for female midshipmen. Some of my
classmates were certainly in the 100-110 lb. range, though I admit I
can't specifically recall any who were actually at or under 100 lbs.
I *do* recally one specifically who was 5'1" tall.
> This is a silly arguement, Everytime this is mentioned no one has
> mentioned that these lite weights would not even be in the armed
> forces, nor make iit through the physical training.
Maybe, maybe not. If the "physical training" is "dumbed down" enough,
anyone can meet the standard. That is, if you're still willing to
call it a standard.
> Typically the average female is around 5' 6" and weights in at 125
> lbs. Stop with the idiot non existant examples.
Speaking of "idiot" go educate yourself as to the difference between
"average" and "minimum."
--
From the catapult of J.D. Baldwin |+| "If anyone disagrees with anything I
_,_ Finger baldwin@netcom.com |+| say, I am quite prepared not only to
_|70|___:::)=}- for PGP public |+| retract it, but also to deny under
\ / key information. |+| oath that I ever said it." --T. Lehrer
***~~~~-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: sci.military.naval
From: baldwin@netcom.com (J.D. Baldwin)
Subject: Re: Women In Combat
Date: Tue, 19 May 1998 21:29:54 GMT
In article <355CA2A1.15E6@umail.umd.edu>, Prof. Vincent Brannigan
<vb15@umail.umd.edu> wrote:
> > This is not to say that women serving in law enforcement or the
> > military aren't deserving of respect and honor -- it's about
> > bottom-line overall effectiveness and whether the motivating factors
> > of "fairness" and equality" are worth the very real costs incurred
> > because of this sort of integration. I'm not even necessarily opposed
> > to the idea, I just wish we'd face these issues head-on and quite
> > pretending that everything is OK just because we don't want to hear
> > the negatives.
>
> OK bottom line. the only issue discussed is physical strength. lets
> add flexibility etc. you do a job analysis, both routine and
> emergency. for emergency you calculate the probability of the
> emergency and the consequences of inability to do the task. you look at
> what it cost you to get each unit of physical strength, both in dollars
> and resources.
>
> [...]
>
> What you don't do is say "well there is some real, although small chance
> that physical strenght just might be critical at some point in time so
> therfore it is the sine qua non of managment" This is neither clear
> thinking nor does it get the job done.
You have contradicted yourself, as the last paragraph fails to mention
the part about "consequences of inability to do the task." The full
quote should be, "well there is some real, although small chance that
physical strength just might be critical at some point in time and if
it's lacking, we might lose the ship and a hundred-odd lives." Kinda
adds a new perspective, eh?
> I'll agree that if we staffed the Stark with qualified fire fighter
> "types" they woudl do a great job of damage control. But that doesnt
> mean you get the mission accomplished. [Good analogy deleted.]
Sure, but if the alternatives are:
1. Staff [your favorite FFG here] with an all-male crew; or
2. Staff the FFG with a 20% female crew
Option #1 will, on average, give you a much more effective damage
control crew. How much more effective? Considering that 91% of males
in the USN and only 17% of USN females have the physical strength to
do basic DC tasks ("Navy Times," late 1994 or early 1995), assuming a
crew of 130, you lose 19 effective DC personnel -- 17% of the entire
crew -- with option #2. Do you think STARK would have remained afloat
under such circumstances? I don't. Nor the SAMUEL B. ROBERTS.
Now, it's possible that gender-integrating forward-deployed warships
enhances other aspects of the total warfighting picture to such a
degree that this sacrifice is justified. Personally, I'm rather
thoroughly unconvinced. And when you add in all of the sexual
politics, non-deployable rates, morale and discipline problems, you
have a long, long way to go to prove that this is a net good.
The only thing that gender-integrating warships has in favor of it is
that it's "fair." Fairness is good. I *like* fairness. I just wish
people would quit pretending it's cost-free in circumstances like
this.
--
From the catapult of J.D. Baldwin |+| "If anyone disagrees with anything I
_,_ Finger baldwin@netcom.com |+| say, I am quite prepared not only to
_|70|___:::)=}- for PGP public |+| retract it, but also to deny under
\ / key information. |+| oath that I ever said it." --T. Lehrer
***~~~~-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: sci.military.naval
From: baldwin@netcom.com (J.D. Baldwin)
Subject: Re: Women In Combat
Date: Tue, 19 May 1998 21:42:36 GMT
In article <x5I+jdAxOzX1Ewh3@jrwlynch.demon.co.uk>, Paul J. Adam
<news@jrwlynch.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> >In the meantime, back here in the real world, casualties, fires and
> >battle damage are a fact of life at sea for which one must prepare.
> >The current state of the damage control art, now and for the
> >foreseeable future, involves the application of brute strength to
> >carry heavy stuff up and down decks and shove things into places they
> >don't want to go very easily.
>
> Hence, the need for a minimum standard. Exempting would-be crewmembers
> from that standard because of their gender is a recipe for disaster.
Great idea, in theory. In practice, even if the U.S. Navy *tried* to
implement a realistic test for shipboard service (not that it ever
has), it wouldn't last past the first testing cycle. Once ten (or
so) times as many women as men failed the course, the word would
come down from on high that the test is "unsuitable" and it would be
"fixed."
> >So of course if you make a significant proportion of your ship female,
> >you will dramatically increase the number of "useless" (for basic DC
> >tasks) personnel aboard.
>
> Unless "successfully graduate DC school" becomes a requirement for
> service?
I am in a unique position to understand why, exactly, you would say
that, and why, exactly it's flatly wrong when talking about the U.S.
Navy.
I have attended DC and firefighting school with the Royal Navy, as I
served a short exchange tour with same. (HMS Aurora, summer of 1983,
if you're curious.) The RN takes these schools very seriously. Now,
I wouldn't say they realistically mirror the actual circumstances and
urgency of real-life battle damage, but they come a damn sight closer
than anything the USN ever dreamed up.
Don't get me wrong. USN DC and firefighting schools are good, but
they are very much instructional in nature, they are NOT intended as a
test of ability to perform realistically in a serious battle
situation. No one at USN DC school ever had to hump a fire pump up
six ladders, or apply 120 lbs. of force to a piece of shoring to wedge
it into place. What's taught at these schools is terminology,
equipment and technique.
> >Now, if the goals of "fairness" and "equality" mean enough to us that
> >we're willing to sacrifice a ship and a few hundred lives now and then
> >to achieve them, fine.
>
> Nope. Nohow, no way.
>
> I can, will and do wave the flag for women to serve in the Forces, but
> they meet the required standard or ship out. Bullets, fires, flooding,
> and all the other ways to die painfully don't care about gender.
I don't "wave the flag" for this, as I have some personal moral
problems with the idea of sending pregnant women to do my fighting for
me (and I have even bigger problems with the idea of pulling someone
out of a mission-critical billet in the middle of battle because she
got that way). But I'd accept it, at least, if the USN would at least
*address* the issues head-on instead of pretending that there aren't
any. You won't read about the ACADIA in any official history of the
Gulf War, for example -- down the memory hold it went.
And your point of setting and enforcing a "required standard" would at
least be a start. Believe me, it's not even contemplated in the
U.S. Navy. I hope we stick to beating up on pathetic little loser
Third World countries that couldn't defend themselves against a troop
of Boy Scouts -- God forbid we ever pick on someone who can give us an
actual fight for our money. Maybe that's why Clinton has chosen to
just get it over with and sell out to China now.
--
From the catapult of J.D. Baldwin |+| "If anyone disagrees with anything I
_,_ Finger baldwin@netcom.com |+| say, I am quite prepared not only to
_|70|___:::)=}- for PGP public |+| retract it, but also to deny under
\ / key information. |+| oath that I ever said it." --T. Lehrer
***~~~~-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: sci.military.naval
From: baldwin@netcom.com (J.D. Baldwin)
Subject: Re: Women In Combat
Date: Tue, 19 May 1998 21:53:47 GMT
In article <3560460D.35E8@usa.nobulkemail.net>, Brian Varine
<Witch*Dr@usa.nobulkemail.net> wrote:
> Could you show some facts on this? Just because we require more fit or
> stronger troops does not mean lower mental standards. In fact it may
> be the opposite. Smarter people tend to take care of themselves
> better.
Well, Vince is right if one assumes all other things are equal and
that one is manning a unit based on maximizing one characteristic or
the other. The only way it would *not* be true is if fitness
correlated extremely strongly with mental aptitude, which I don't
think anyone would try to maintain is the case.
> When the NCAA enacted scholastic standards I didn't notice a shortage
> of football players.
The supply of willing college players exceeds the demand, so of course
some will rush in. You didn't notice that some of the extremely
talented players who couldn't hack the academics went directly to the
pros, though? It became more common when the standards (even as weak
as they are) went into effect. Why do you think FSU's football team
can stomp the crap out of Brown's?
--
From the catapult of J.D. Baldwin |+| "If anyone disagrees with anything I
_,_ Finger baldwin@netcom.com |+| say, I am quite prepared not only to
_|70|___:::)=}- for PGP public |+| retract it, but also to deny under
\ / key information. |+| oath that I ever said it." --T. Lehrer
***~~~~-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: sci.military.naval
From: baldwin@netcom.com (J.D. Baldwin)
Subject: Re: Women In Combat
Date: Tue, 19 May 1998 21:48:18 GMT
In article <355F4F7E.44E8@umail.umd.edu>, Prof. Vincent Brannigan
<vb15@umail.umd.edu> wrote:
> > The current state of the damage control art, now and for the
> > foreseeable future, involves the application of brute strength to
> > carry heavy stuff up and down decks and shove things into places they
> > don't want to go very easily.
>
> It also calls for flexibility in getting in and out of small spaces, and
> the longest possible endurance on breathing apparatus, both of which
> benefit small people, espeically women. More importantly the question is
> how important such skills are to the overall job.
That *is* the important question. I don't regard "getting in and out of
small spaces" to be a particularly important DC skill. I honestly can't
think of
> As I have stated numerous times for every increased amount of one
> characteristic (independant variable) you have to give up something
> else. If you want math skills or leadership skills that are a
> standard deviation above the norm you you have to give up something
> somewhere else. similarly if you want physical strength one
> standard deviation above the norm you have to give up something
> else. There is no free lunch. To have a strong all male crew you
> probably have to accept lower mental aptitude and more disciplinary
> problems, since those are the groups primarily weeded out by the
> current recruitment strategies. We certainly find this to be the
> case when recruiting football players.
I don't know about "lower mental aptitude," but males certainly have
a higher rate of disciplinary problems than females -- no real
dispute about that. On the other hand, I've never met a SEAL who
didn't think a certain sort of "disciplinary problem" correlated
highly with the very characteristics that elite group seeks in its
junior enlisted men.
I can't claim direct experience on this, but based on what a great
many friends and acquaintances have told me over the years, I take
serious issue with the notion that an all male crew will have "more
disciplinary problems" than a mixed-gender crew. I can't think of a
single all-male ship in all of naval history that had to give up on
its mission because too many of her crew had self-inflicted disabling
injuries.
--
From the catapult of J.D. Baldwin |+| "If anyone disagrees with anything I
_,_ Finger baldwin@netcom.com |+| say, I am quite prepared not only to
_|70|___:::)=}- for PGP public |+| retract it, but also to deny under
\ / key information. |+| oath that I ever said it." --T. Lehrer
***~~~~-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: sci.military.naval
From: baldwin@netcom.com (J.D. Baldwin)
Subject: Re: Women In Combat
Date: Wed, 20 May 1998 16:06:20 GMT
In article <35620954.77E644E3@inlink.com>, loki <loki@inlink.com>
wrote:
> > I don't know about "lower mental aptitude," but males certainly have
> > a higher rate of disciplinary problems than females -- no real
> > dispute about that. On the other hand, I've never met a SEAL who
> > didn't think a certain sort of "disciplinary problem" correlated
> > highly with the very characteristics that elite group seeks in its
> > junior enlisted men.
>
> Uh, you're saying that women don't exhibit those same "disciplinary
> problems" that they're looking for? Just exactly what sort of thing
> are you talking about here? I think I know, but I want to be sure.
Taking the word of a former enlisted SEAL who I knew after he made
LT, there is a fairly high incidence of what, in days past, would
have been called "hijinks." Lots of hard drinking, and associated
trouble. Lots of fighting. Lots of pranks that get out of hand.
But once you're in the field with these very same guys, no one
is more professional or effective.
A cliche? Sure, but like most cliches, it didn't get that way by
accident. The point is that the "increased disciplinary problems"
thing is a coin with two sides. Not all that simple. Do you want
a force that will bend the rules now and then, but crush your
enemies without pity, hesitation or mercy when called upon to do
so, or do you want a force that behaves itself very nicely, keeps
its room clean, eats all its vegetables and never talks back,
and then gets annihilated in the first battle of the war?
> I'll skip the "self inflicted wound" bit. Takes two to get someone
> pregnant you know.
I will NOT get sucked^W drawn into a discussion over "whose
responsibility is it?" I think the answer to that is fairly obvious
and uncontroversial. What matters here is who it affects as far as
fitness for battle / deployment. If you don't like that particular
double standard, take it up with God -- *I* didn't design things that
way.
--
From the catapult of J.D. Baldwin |+| "If anyone disagrees with anything I
_,_ Finger baldwin@netcom.com |+| say, I am quite prepared not only to
_|70|___:::)=}- for PGP public |+| retract it, but also to deny under
\ / key information. |+| oath that I ever said it." --T. Lehrer
***~~~~-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: sci.military.naval
From: baldwin@netcom.com (J.D. Baldwin)
Subject: Re: Women In Combat
Date: Wed, 20 May 1998 15:59:54 GMT
In article <6juehb$8cu$1@bvadm.bv.tek.com>, Jim Yanik
<james.e.yanik@tek.com> wrote:
> >I'll skip the "self inflicted wound" bit. Takes two to get someone
> >pregnant you know.
>
> Excuse me,but a woman ALLOWS herself to become pregnant.She has the
> choice in first having sex(anything else is rape),the greatest choice
> in birth control methods,and finally the choice for an abortion.I'm
> sure you know what CYA means.
Considering the topic at hand, I think that acronym is a bit, shall we
say, misplaced.
--
From the catapult of J.D. Baldwin |+| "If anyone disagrees with anything I
_,_ Finger baldwin@netcom.com |+| say, I am quite prepared not only to
_|70|___:::)=}- for PGP public |+| retract it, but also to deny under
\ / key information. |+| oath that I ever said it." --T. Lehrer
***~~~~-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: sci.military.naval
From: baldwin@netcom.com (J.D. Baldwin)
Subject: Re: Women In Combat
Date: Wed, 20 May 1998 21:47:19 GMT
In article <3563379C.E4B@umail.umd.edu>, Prof. Vincent Brannigan
<vb15@umail.umd.edu> wrote:
> > Do you want
> > a force that will bend the rules now and then, but crush your
> > enemies without pity, hesitation or mercy when called upon to do
> > so, or do you want a force that behaves itself very nicely, keeps
> > its room clean, eats all its vegetables and never talks back,
> > and then gets annihilated in the first battle of the war?
>
> Who knows what is cause and effect?
> the Japanese and SS were very disciplined. did they get beat
> because of or in spite of the discipline?
Definitely in spite of it. If Japan had had a significant fraction
of the manpower and industrial capacity of the United States, and
the same per-man fighting effectiveness . . . well, let's just say
there'd be Godzilla movies in U.S. theaters right now.
Japanese culture is a whole different thing, and the stereotype of the
martinet who is really a wimp just plain doesn't apply over there.
--
From the catapult of J.D. Baldwin |+| "If anyone disagrees with anything I
_,_ Finger baldwin@netcom.com |+| say, I am quite prepared not only to
_|70|___:::)=}- for PGP public |+| retract it, but also to deny under
\ / key information. |+| oath that I ever said it." --T. Lehrer
***~~~~-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: sci.military.naval
From: baldwin@netcom.com (J.D. Baldwin)
Subject: Re: Women In Combat
Date: Thu, 21 May 1998 13:48:35 GMT
In article <35636CDC.41C6@columbia.edu>, Pierce Nichols
<pn30@columbia.edu> wrote:
> > Definitely in spite of it. If Japan had had a significant fraction
> > of the manpower and industrial capacity of the United States, and
> > the same per-man fighting effectiveness . . . well, let's just say
> > there'd be Godzilla movies in U.S. theaters right now.
>
> Not to quibble or anything, but there *IS* a Godzilla movie in US
> theatres right now.
I hear Geritol can help you with that irony deficiency.
> Whether it is a *REAL* Godzilla movie or a cheap-ass Hollyweird rip
> off I will leave to the experts.
Hmmm . . . a "cheap-ass ... rip off" of a *Godzilla* movie? The mind
boggles. Next, the entertainment industry will start producing
cheesy, staged versions of professional wrestling matches.
--
From the catapult of J.D. Baldwin |+| "If anyone disagrees with anything I
_,_ Finger baldwin@netcom.com |+| say, I am quite prepared not only to
_|70|___:::)=}- for PGP public |+| retract it, but also to deny under
\ / key information. |+| oath that I ever said it." --T. Lehrer
***~~~~-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: sci.military.naval
From: baldwin@netcom.com (J.D. Baldwin)
Subject: Re: Women In Combat
Date: Fri, 22 May 1998 13:02:34 GMT
In article <35625E5F.274D@umail.umd.edu>, Prof. Vincent Brannigan
<vb15@umail.umd.edu> wrote:
> > Option #1 will, on average, give you a much more effective damage
> > control crew. How much more effective? Considering that 91% of males
> > in the USN and only 17% of USN females have the physical strength to
> > do basic DC tasks ("Navy Times," late 1994 or early 1995), assuming a
> > crew of 130, you lose 19 effective DC personnel -- 17% of the entire
> > crew -- with option #2. Do you think STARK would have remained afloat
> > under such circumstances? I don't. Nor the SAMUEL B. ROBERTS.
>
> You are suggesting that strength per se is the only value for damage
> control. Gorillas are much stronger than sailors, but no one suggests
> that they make better DC.
Not a bit of it. Strength is a major asset during DC, but quick
thinking, well-trained leadership, good equipment and -- perhaps above
all -- organization are all critical too. Those are all independent
of whether you gender-mix your crews, though. Strength is not.
> further I would have to examine the study you mention. Many such
> studies are not properly taks validated. Whats a "basic damage
> control task? Handling a fire hose? or lifting 100 pounds
> unaided. I can easily create a test that excludes any percentage of
> either group you want. Often you find that they create a set of 20
> or thirty task and if they fail one taks they are rated
> unacceptable. Fire departments routinely do this to try to
> discourage women fire fighters. Normally no task are included that
> favor women or smaller men.
The basic DC tasks studied, I believe, involved carrying a man-sized
dummy some relatively short distance, carrying a piece of shoring some
distance, and so forth. I don't know whether the test was perfect or
whether it was "validated" by a bunch of operations analysis majors
back in Whiz Kid Central, but it was put together by the Navy's top DC
experts, and that's pretty well good enough for me. It has been my
experience that the people the U.S. Navy have teaching and developing
shipboard damage control doctrine tend to know what they're talking
about.
I promise that any "damage control" test you created to exclude a
significant percentage of the males while leaving all the females
there ("crawl into this small space" "now do the 'splits'") would be
laughed out of any DC school in the U.S. Navy.
As for firefighters, I recall that my town in Minnesota had to
(because of "discrimination" claims) eliminate a test that required
potential candidates to carry a 200-pound dummy in the "fireman's
carry" through a building. I don't know about you, but speaking
personally as a 200-pound dummy -- uh, 200-pound person -- I find
that rather relevant.
> > Now, it's possible that gender-integrating forward-deployed warships
> > enhances other aspects of the total warfighting picture to such a
> > degree that this sacrifice is justified. Personally, I'm rather
> > thoroughly unconvinced. And when you add in all of the sexual
> > politics, non-deployable rates, morale and discipline problems, you
> > have a long, long way to go to prove that this is a net good.
>
> lots of men have trouble with smart ambitious women. After a while
> the better ones get over iit. and the others keep bell;owing "im
> stronger so I better, I'm stronger so Im better, Im stronger so Im
> better" Its all they have
An individual's personal assessment of who is "better" is not what I'm
worried about. I'm worried about having enough sheer muscle in what I
regard as the ship's last line of survival defense to do the job. I'm
*especially* worried that the Navy's senior leadership appears to be
blissfully unconcerned about same.
--
From the catapult of J.D. Baldwin |+| "If anyone disagrees with anything I
_,_ Finger baldwin@netcom.com |+| say, I am quite prepared not only to
_|70|___:::)=}- for PGP public |+| retract it, but also to deny under
\ / key information. |+| oath that I ever said it." --T. Lehrer
***~~~~-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: sci.military.naval
From: baldwin@netcom.com (J.D. Baldwin)
Subject: Re: Women In Combat
Date: Fri, 22 May 1998 19:37:00 GMT
In article <35659D60.63C6@umail.umd.edu>, Prof. Vincent Brannigan
<vb15@umail.umd.edu> wrote:
> they are not independant in terms of recruitment. Forget equipment for
> a moment.
Recruitment doesn't seem to be much of an issue in the real world just
now, considering we've been slashing our forces and pushing people
out involuntarily for some years.
> you are going out into the population to recruit a damage control crew
> at $20 an hour. You need both quick thinking (brains) and strength on
> your crew. How much money do you put into each? I will accept that men
> are stonger. and that both men and women are equally quick witted. Even
> if your pool was all men you still have to balance the two variables.
> If strenght is far more important then brains your crew will tend
> towards 100% men. If Brains are far more important than strength your
> crew will be 50% men and 50 percent women.
?!? That's the distribution you'd get if you assigned a value of *zero*
to strength. I sure hope no one pays you good money to do this sort of
analysis.
> > The basic DC tasks studied, I believe, involved carrying a man-sized
> > dummy some relatively short distance, carrying a piece of shoring some
> > distance, and so forth. I don't know whether the test was perfect or
> > whether it was "validated" by a bunch of operations analysis majors
> > back in Whiz Kid Central, but it was put together by the Navy's top DC
> > experts, and that's pretty well good enough for me.
>
> Unfortunately experts on doing a task are not necessarily experts on
> testing for the task. It a different discipline. This is partcularly
> true when you want to exclude a group. There is also task design
> e.g. how important is it to be able to crawl through a 20 inch
> diameter pipe etc.
What's to know? They know how much a fire pump weighs. They know
how these pumps are distributed around the ship, and how far and up
or down how many ladders one might have to be carried. They know
what it's like to put shoring in place.
OK, maybe they aren't trained in some artificial and formal "testing"
discipline, but I find in my own business (computer systems
engineering) that when you turn the testing and validation tasks over
to people who are "experts" in those narrow tasks alone, without
understanding the system against which they are testing, the results
tend to be rather useless.
> > It has been my experience that the people the U.S. Navy have
> > teaching and developing shipboard damage control doctrine tend to
> > know what they're talking about.
>
> Not the same issue. Bobby Fisher certainly knows how to play chess.
> doesnt mean he knows how to test 1000 12 year olds for chess aptitude.
I'd trust him to pick out which ten showed the most promise, though,
rather than someone who didn't even know how to play the game.
> > I promise that any "damage control" test you created to exclude a
> > significant percentage of the males while leaving all the females
> > there ("crawl into this small space" "now do the 'splits'") would be
> > laughed out of any DC school in the U.S. Navy.
>
> Of course it would. White sailors laughed at the idea of negro sailors.
Oh, *please*.
> Soem sailors suggestedthat the slanty eyed japanese couldn't shoot
> straight. Women have it even worse Firemen laughed at the idea of
> women firefighters and Physicians laughed at the idea of women
> doctors. Judges laughed at women lawyers. each thought there was
> something fundamental about their job that meant it could not be done
> by women. Many or most have been decisevely proved wrong. Teh lsat
> bastionof this testoserone superiority crowd is any job that calls for
> strength.
Yes, yes, we all know that anyone who has concerns about the
effectiveness of a gender-integrated crew on a warship is motivated
only by the basest sort of personal bias, and we're probably all
racists, too. Blah blah blah.
Meanwhile, I note with interest that you haven't given us any hints as
to what a DC test that excluded a lot of males but not a lot of
females might look like. C'mon, let's hear a couple of your criteria.
Something that's going to exclude, say, 90% of men but less than 20%
of women. "Crawling through a 20 inch diameter pipe"? Oh, yeah,
they did that a lot while STARK was burning.
> > As for firefighters, I recall that my town in Minnesota had to
> > (because of "discrimination" claims) eliminate a test that required
> > potential candidates to carry a 200-pound dummy in the "fireman's
> > carry" through a building. I don't know about you, but speaking
> > personally as a 200-pound dummy -- uh, 200-pound person -- I find
> > that rather relevant.
>
> The reason its not relevant is that fire fighters don't do it. If the
> atmosphere is toxic you dont carry people that way because of the
> breathing apparatus. If the environemnt is not toxic you wait for a
> stretcher because you can aggravate the persons injuries.
What incredible bullshit.
Ooops, wait, let's ask Public Safety Officer [name redacted], who
lives down the street from me, how one evacuates someone from a
burning building when time is short and you have no reason to believe
he is injured other than smoke inhalation:
"If time is short -- and it usually is, when the building is on fire
-- you pick the person up any way you can and drag or carry him out
of there."
BTW, "Public Safety Officer" is, where I live, code for "a fireman who
also sometimes acts as a police officer."
> Its a very good example of where proper analysis of the task changed
> both training and doctrine.
"Proper analysis of the task," huh? Sounds a lot redefining the task
for political reasons, sort of like the USMC redefining the blast radius
of a practice grenade to a distance that women could throw one. Of
course, the *real* grenades have the same blast radius they've always
had, but, hey, what's a few American lives here and there when you're
in the pursuit of Equality At Any Cost?
> > An individual's personal assessment of who is "better" is not what I'm
> > worried about. I'm worried about having enough sheer muscle in what I
> > regard as the ship's last line of survival defense to do the job. I'm
> > *especially* worried that the Navy's senior leadership appears to be
> > blissfully unconcerned about same.
>
> I have no problem at all with establishing a laborer qualification and
> paying the muscle men extra. IIRC divers in the navy used to be
> provided in this way. Decide how much donkey labor you need, hire it
> and get on with the job. Sailing ships had able seamen, ordinary
> seamen and Landsmen. Marines were note expected to go aloft. All
> were important, but different jobs demand different qualifications.
Unfortunately, the military doesn't really work this way. "DC is an
all hands responsibility," and all that.
--
From the catapult of J.D. Baldwin |+| "If anyone disagrees with anything I
_,_ Finger baldwin@netcom.com |+| say, I am quite prepared not only to
_|70|___:::)=}- for PGP public |+| retract it, but also to deny under
\ / key information. |+| oath that I ever said it." --T. Lehrer
***~~~~-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: sci.military.naval
From: baldwin@netcom.com (J.D. Baldwin)
Subject: Re: Women In Combat
Date: Sat, 23 May 1998 13:31:16 GMT
In article <356319CC.D26A9D09@inlink.com>, loki <loki@inlink.com>
wrote:
> > I will NOT get sucked^W drawn into a discussion over "whose
> > responsibility is it?" I think the answer to that is fairly obvious
> > and uncontroversial. What matters here is who it affects as far as
> > fitness for battle / deployment. If you don't like that particular
> > double standard, take it up with God -- *I* didn't design things that
> > way.
>
> Oh please. My personal opinion is that *most* women have no business
> in combat. I've met a few who could do it though.
I have no doubt that there are "a few who could do it," and there's no
question whatsoever that some women would be better at it, overall,
than some men. But we're dealing with large numbers of people here
and gross statistical trends by group are quite important. If women
become undeployable at a rate four times that of men, that is an
extremely significant cost to gender-integration, which must be dealt
with. And of course there are other characteristics and consequences
of gender-integration.
Complicating the matter is the fact that, if you screen your crew for
physical strength, you'll eliminate nearly all of the women.
Eliminating "nearly all" of the women makes life much, much harder
than eliminating all of them. Picture a warship with 4,000 men and
1,000 women. Now picture a warship with 4,997 men and 3 women. Get
the idea?
If you want to make a conscious choice that "Fairness" or "Equality"
or some other noble goal is worth the cost in dollars, time and
possibly someday even human life, great. (Please note that I do not
aver that this is your own position.) I just wish the U.S. Navy would
be confronting the problems and issues frankly and straight-
forwardly. Instead, they deal with it in about the same way that
Stalin dealt with bad economic news -- anyone who brings it up gets a
one-way ticket to Gulag.
--
From the catapult of J.D. Baldwin |+| "If anyone disagrees with anything I
_,_ Finger baldwin@netcom.com |+| say, I am quite prepared not only to
_|70|___:::)=}- for PGP public |+| retract it, but also to deny under
\ / key information. |+| oath that I ever said it." --T. Lehrer
***~~~~-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: sci.military.naval
From: baldwin@netcom.com (J.D. Baldwin)
Subject: Re: Women In Combat
Date: Sun, 24 May 1998 15:34:37 GMT
In article <lsMrmkAYU2Z1EwCP@jrwlynch.demon.co.uk>, Paul J. Adam
<news@jrwlynch.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> >Great idea, in theory. In practice, even if the U.S. Navy *tried* to
> >implement a realistic test for shipboard service (not that it ever
> >has), it wouldn't last past the first testing cycle. Once ten (or
> >so) times as many women as men failed the course, the word would
> >come down from on high that the test is "unsuitable" and it would be
> >"fixed."
>
> I'm beginning to grasp the scale of the problem...
Don't get me wrong, I'm as proud and happy to have been born in the
United States as anyone you could think of. But never lose sight of
the fact that Americans are deeply, deeply screwed up in some ways.
If you think about it, how could we *not* be?
> >> Unless "successfully graduate DC school" becomes a requirement for
> >> service?
> >
> >I am in a unique position to understand why, exactly, you would say
> >that, and why, exactly it's flatly wrong when talking about the U.S.
> >Navy.
>
> Right. So, the US has no direct equivalent to HMS Phoenix? That
> explains a great deal, to be honest.
No direct equivalent, no -- at least nothing matching the scale and
realism of the mockup. I consider Navy DC training at the school
level to be pretty good, but its emphasis is very strongly
*instructional* -- "This is a fire extinguisher, use it like this,"
"This is how you apply a patch to a broken pipe," and so forth.
Most of the hard-core stuff is left to shipboard evolutions.
> Though I've read articles about 'DC Olympics' on USN ships (relay
> races in OBA using shoring as batons, IIRC) that gave a good
> impression of the standard.
Once one arrives in the fleet, DC training is very aggressive and
sometimes quite physical. But there is no objective standard to
determine just how ready the ship, overall, is to deal with a really
serious casualty. Thus, when a significant change is made (such as
the integration of a large number of women into the crew), there's
no way, really, to measure the impact with respect to overall
capability.
"DC Olympics" is cool, and very useful, but by its nature it depends
on the proficiency of a very few select individuals from each command.
In real life one doesn't have the luxury of hand-picking ten or
fifteen of the crew who will be your "designated DC-ers" -- *everyone*
gets in on the act. OK, everyone except the aviators on a carrier,
whose assigned station is to sit in the Ready Room and stay the hell
out of the way.
> >I have attended DC and firefighting school with the Royal Navy, as I
> >served a short exchange tour with same. (HMS Aurora, summer of 1983,
> >if you're curious.)
>
> Now you're making me feel young :) I was still in school back then.
Well, so was I! It was my first class midshipman cruise.
> > I didn't notice any of the women I served with dropping out due to
> > pregancy, but then (a) this was British Army vice US Navy, (b) my last
> > unit was company strength with maybe two dozen women.
>
> Nevertheless, the two preceding units were University Officer Training
> Corps, with about one-third female members, in late teens or early
> twenties, peak sexual activity... yet pregnancy was damn near unknown.
>
> Is that due to better contraception under a State-run health service?
Well, everyone in the USN is of course a victim^W client of the
ultimate "State-run health service" (in which one's very doctor has
the power of arrest and authority over one) and contraception is not
merely available but pushed somewhat aggressively.
> Personnel not motivated to use pregnancy as an "easy out" from a long
> and dull sea deployment? (we were weekend warriors, the longest
> 'deployment' we faced was an annual two-week camp) Higher personal
> cost? (Get pregnant, not only drop out of the Territorial Army but
> out of university...) Or just to a different political climate?
Probably all of the above and some things neither of us contemplate.
The last two -- higher consequences and different political climate --
are closely intertwined, of course. In the USN, pregnancy isn't a
quick ticket out of the service and onto the street, but rather a
quick ticket off a dirty, boring ship and into a cushy shore billet.
> >But I'd accept it, at least, if the USN would at least
> >*address* the issues head-on instead of pretending that there aren't
> >any. You won't read about the ACADIA in any official history of the
> >Gulf War, for example -- down the memory hold it went.
>
> Is the Acadia the "Love Boat" I've heard rumours about?
ACADIA is about the thirtieth ship I heard called "The Love Boat"
during my 16.5 years. Tenders and other auxiliaries with a large
female contingent had been undeployable due to a high pregnancy rate
before, but no one ever really heard about it. When a supply ship
had to leave her station right before commencement of hostilities
in the Gulf War, well, there's no keeping *that* under wraps.
> >And your point of setting and enforcing a "required standard" would at
> >least be a start. Believe me, it's not even contemplated in the
> >U.S. Navy.
>
> That is _bad_. I didn't realise things were so far gone.
>
> We've got problems, and we wash dirty laundry in public to salacious
> Press interest, but basically "women in combat" seems to work over
> here. I really didn't know how politicised the situation over in
> the US was.
This is the United States. EVERYTHING is politicized. Everything.
> Thanks for the reply, Jeff.
You're welcome, Pete.
--
From the catapult of J.D. Baldwin |+| "If anyone disagrees with anything I
_,_ Finger baldwin@netcom.com |+| say, I am quite prepared not only to
_|70|___:::)=}- for PGP public |+| retract it, but also to deny under
\ / key information. |+| oath that I ever said it." --T. Lehrer
***~~~~-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: sci.military.naval
From: baldwin@netcom.com (J.D. Baldwin)
Subject: Re: Women In Combat
Date: Tue, 26 May 1998 22:56:02 GMT
In article <3566CD7F.D8@umail.umd.edu>, Prof. Vincent Brannigan
<vb15@umail.umd.edu> wrote:
> > > you are going out into the population to recruit a damage control crew
> > > at $20 an hour. You need both quick thinking (brains) and strength on
> > > your crew. How much money do you put into each? I will accept that men
> > > are stonger. and that both men and women are equally quick witted. Even
> > > if your pool was all men you still have to balance the two variables.
> > > If strenght is far more important then brains your crew will tend
> > > towards 100% men. If Brains are far more important than strength your
> > > crew will be 50% men and 50 percent women.
> >
> > ?!? That's the distribution you'd get if you assigned a value of *zero*
> > to strength. I sure hope no one pays you good money to do this sort of
> > analysis.
>
> No one suggested that strength had a value of zero.
That's exactly the value required to get a 50-50 distribution using
your own assumptions and analysis. If you assign even a small
positive value to strength, and everything else is equal, you'll
get more men in your crew.
> Thats why the words "far more important" and "tend" are there.
> Whatever vlaues you assign to the relative importance of the two
> variables will determine who you recruit from the pool.
My point exactly. Of course, if there are more than enough people
who are "qualified enough" in all respects save strength, it
doesn't really make much sense to skew your recruiting deliberately
away from the stronger half of the manpower pool, does it?
> > What's to know? They know how much a fire pump weighs. They know
> > how these pumps are distributed around the ship, and how far and up
> > or down how many ladders one might have to be carried. They know
> > what it's like to put shoring in place.
>
> This is input to a test designer. Also the first step for a task
> designer. question, what other tasks are these people going to do?
> How important is this task relative to the other tasks? Is this group
> the pool from which you select people for other tasks? How important
> are those tasks? How many people are allowed to work together to do
> the task?
All reasonable questions, and probably a pretty good idea for
planning, but ultimately a pretty sterile approach. In my experience,
when the professional Whiz Kids get involved, you get the sort of
artificial "solution" you'd expect from a bunch of people whose main
credentials for the task are that they're incapable of distinguishing
the map from the territory.
> Good, you're closer to my own field, since I also work in regulation of
> software validation.
> Think of program quality as brains and Hardware availablity as strength
> and you get the same analysis.
"Software validation," eh? Let me guess: you work for the US
government, don't you? It would explain a few things . . .
> Over and over we hav bailed out less than competant programmers by
> massive applications of hardware. But that worked because hardware was
> cheap and brains were expensive. It the same analysis.
And it works fine for performance, which is but one of many important
metrics of software quality -- and the least important one, at that.
Thanks for making my very point, if unintentionally.
> BTW Whose "fault" is the Y2K problem? Why didnt the "experts"
> creating the system anticipate the problem?
The fault is almost universally with the software customers, who did
not specify robust or detailed enough requirements. (I refer to
large scale applications designed and implemented for a specific
site, not to purchasers of pre-packaged software applications, who
generally aren't going to suffer much from Y2K.)
> > > > It has been my experience that the people the U.S. Navy have
> > > > teaching and developing shipboard damage control doctrine tend to
> > > > know what they're talking about.
> > >
> > > Not the same issue. Bobby Fisher certainly knows how to play chess.
> > > doesnt mean he knows how to test 1000 12 year olds for chess aptitude.
> >
> > I'd trust him to pick out which ten showed the most promise, though,
> > rather than someone who didn't even know how to play the game.
>
> its not an 'either-or". I certianly agree that the more advanced the
> task the harder it is to pick the most qualified applicants. We have
> no real idea for example how to deciseively pick good computer
> programmers. But we were discussing a much simpler taks ssituation.
Indeed, a much simpler task situation, because it depends so heavily
on the application of brute strength to the problem. All the creative
problem-solving skills in the world won't help you stuff a mattress in
a hole and brace it into place if you can't lift the 4x4 from the deck
to do it.
> > > > > I promise that any "damage control" test you created to exclude a
> > > > significant percentage of the males while leaving all the females
> > > > there ("crawl into this small space" "now do the 'splits'") would be
> > > > laughed out of any DC school in the U.S. Navy.
> > >
> > > Of course it would. White sailors laughed at the idea of negro sailors.
> >
> > Oh, *please*.
>
> They did, I was there. Not to mention Tommy La Sorda and the
> possibilities of black managers?
I have no doubt about the factual basis of your claim. I scoff
derisively, however, at its relevance to the discussion at hand. In
fact, the roles are reversed here. In the racial bias cases of the
past, bigots would state that blacks (or whoever) just "couldn't"
accomplish the task under discussion. If asked why, they had no
alternative but to stonewall and doggedly maintain that "It just IS
that way." No matter what evidence they were presented with, they
would ignore it, pretend it didn't exist and go right on believing
what they wanted to believe.
These days, the roles are reversed. It's the hard-core advocates
of women in combat who are afraid of the facts and who stonewall
that, "They are TOO just as capable as the men in every respect,"
when common sense and objective measurements simply contradict
that claim. Occasionally, they'll even lie outright to try to
bolster their position. (See the Navy's handling of the Kara
Hultgreen case, for example.)
There are arguments to be made in favor of increased gender-
integration in these units, to be sure, but they depend on making
particular value judgments that, for some reason, no one really wants
to talk about openly.
> > Yes, yes, we all know that anyone who has concerns about the
> > effectiveness of a gender-integrated crew on a warship is motivated
> > only by the basest sort of personal bias, and we're probably all
> > racists, too. Blah blah blah.
>
> Now thats what I call a decisive rational response.
It's precisely the response that your point, as expressed, merited.
You shamefully attempted to insert the specter of racial bias into a
discussion over the *objective* merits of women in forward deployed
warships. It's not remotely the same thing.
Persons of different races are the same in all important respects.
Persons of different sexes are not. (Please note that I did not say
"equal.") There is no justification at all for making any sort of
policy distinction, berthing assignment or other segregation on the
basis of race, but the same is not true of sex.
People who have reservations about whether the true potential cost of
assigning women to combat vessels are not necessarily acting out of
the same motivation as Sheriff Clark or George Wallace, and you,
sirrah, can go straight to Hell for suggesting that we are.
> > Meanwhile, I note with interest that you haven't given us any hints
> > as to what a DC test that excluded a lot of males but not a lot of
> > females might look like. C'mon, let's hear a couple of your
> > criteria. Something that's going to exclude, say, 90% of men but
> > less than 20% of women. "Crawling through a 20 inch diameter pipe"?
> > Oh, yeah, they did that a lot while STARK was burning.
>
> How about breathe 1 hour on 30 cu ft. bottle in a poisonous
> environment?
How about it? 1 hour has been the spec for an OBA bottle for,
what, 30 years? 35 years? Big deal. Yeah, you're supposed to
*start* clearing out after 45 minutes, but the spec gives you
an hour to live on the bottle. And that spec was designed with
the largest, most O2-wasting male individuals in mind.
Now, if you wanted to figure out how the women in the 80th percentile
of O2 consumption compared to the men in the 10th percentile, and
point out that maybe we could squeeze an extra 10 minutes out of every
OBA bottle if they were all worn by women, you might have something.
It would be something so trivial as to be inconsequential, of course
-- since most OBA bottles are used for excursions that last less than
fifteen minutes in real-world firefighting scenarios, so the 60 minute
spec is massive overengineering -- but something is better than
nothing, right? Still and all, I doubt that line could be drawn so
that 90% of men and less than 20% of women would be excluded. O2
consumption (judging by my SCUBA experience) is a lot closer than
that.
And, 30 cubic feet? Good Lord, an OBA bottle that size -- a cube 37
inches in each dimension! -- ought to sustain anyone for at least
three or four days. I would hope that by that time one's relief would
have arrived. You might have a hard time getting it through those 20"
pipes DC crews are always climbing through, though . . .
[Firefighting example of marginal relevance deleted.]
> > "Proper analysis of the task," huh? Sounds a lot redefining the task
> > for political reasons, sort of like the USMC redefining the blast radius
> > of a practice grenade to a distance that women could throw one. Of
> > course, the *real* grenades have the same blast radius they've always
> > had, but, hey, what's a few American lives here and there when you're
> > in the pursuit of Equality At Any Cost?
>
> I havn't heard of a lot of casualties in grenade practice.
You're as likely to be hurt by a practice grenade as you are to be
hurt by throwing a frisbee (assuming you don't throw it into the wind
so that it comes back and breaks your nose). The practice grenades
don't explode. The real ones do.
> Is it possible that they didnt do it right the first time, and task
> analysis resulted in a redefinition?
Anything's "possible." It's *possible* that those donations from
Bernard Schwartz had nothing to do with Clinton's decision to let them
sell missile technology to China. It's *possible* that was really the
Tooth Fairy that left a dollar under my daughter's pillow a couple of
weeks ago. After all, I didn't actually SEE my wife put it there
. . .
--
From the catapult of J.D. Baldwin |+| "If anyone disagrees with anything I
_,_ Finger baldwin@netcom.com |+| say, I am quite prepared not only to
_|70|___:::)=}- for PGP public |+| retract it, but also to deny under
\ / key information. |+| oath that I ever said it." --T. Lehrer
***~~~~-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: sci.military.naval
From: baldwin@netcom.com (J.D. Baldwin)
Subject: Re: Women In Combat
Date: Tue, 2 Jun 1998 20:23:51 GMT
In article <dbnS$GBF30b1EwXx@jrwlynch.demon.co.uk>, Paul J. Adam
<news@jrwlynch.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> >We do actually have some pretty good mockups. The Buttercup is used
> >to train shoring teams. It fills rapidly and sinks if the teams don't
> >deal with the burst firemains, shotholes, gaping rents, and ruptured
> >hatches. The water gets about neck deep.
>
> Not too bad at all...
>
> >The firefighting simulators
> >are also pretty good although my best training was accomplished at the
> >Washington State Fire Fighting School. The firefighting training
> >involves entering furiously burning compartments and putting out Class
> >B fires. It has ladders, twisty passageways, pitch black smoke, heat
> >and flames. I don't know what else could done to improve the realism
> >of either type simulator.
>
> So, again... define "satisfactory performance" going through those
> trainers, and make that a requirement for Naval service? Is it really as
> bad as Jeff C. says, that a higher failure rate among female candidates
> would cause the test to be scrapped?
OK, the problem here is we're using two different definitions of
"satisfactory performance."
The USN mockups are pretty good for instructional devices, but when I
compared them unfavorably to what I experienced in the RN, I meant
that they were not difficult to complete. I never considered anything
I did in any USN DC school to be a physical challenge in any way.
(Unless you count the effort of staying awake during some of the
lecture portions.) In the RN, on the other hand, I WORKED. I think I
lost five pounds in a day.
That doesn't mean the USN training isn't "good" -- it fulfills its
purpose of giving trainees the basic knowledge and familiarity they
need to become effective DC assets. But it's not relevant to
determining who does and doesn't have the basic strength and stamina
to be really, really effective at these sorts of tasks.
I got involved in this thread when someone (I forget who at the
moment) suggested that physical strength and stamina are completely
irrelevant to selecting a CIC watchstander. I think we can all agree
that that statement is just plain idiotic. A CIC watchstander might
well be called upon to get rather physical in an effort to save his
ship. The fewer such personnel you have who are capable of exerting
a great deal of physical effort over a long time, the more likely you
are to lose the ship in that grimmest of battle damage scenarios, as
experienced by STARK and ROBERTS.
The point wrt women on ships is that it's not in serious question that
women are going to be, in general, less able to perform some of these
rather physical tasks. The USN says that about four out of five women
will fail such a test, compared with less than 10% of the men. I
think the implication for DC readiness in a mixed crew is pretty
obvious -- but, then, a lot of things I think are "obvious" seem to be
fairly controversial these days.
I already know that not every man is a hulking brute, capable of
humping a fire pump up three decks, or carrying a larger-than-average
shipmate to safety. But in an all male crew, the chances are good
that, if you can't finish a task, there will be someone close at hand
who can step up and do so. In a mixed crew, obviously, the chances
of this happening go down -- again, with obvious implications.
I am NOT saying that any of this "proves" that women don't belong on
warships. I am saying that unless you screen women very selectively
for physical strength and stamina (and no command in the Navy does
anything like this, believe me), you *will* decrease the overall
readiness of your ship in areas where overall crew strength and
stamina may be important. If that's a trade-off we're willing to make,
fine. I just wish the people in charge of this stuff would at least
have the guts and basic integrity to admit it.
Instead, we get "re-defining of tasks" and elimination of any test,
standard or tool that MIGHT prove detrimental to acceptance of women.
(Of course, sailors aren't nearly as stupid as some of the senior
leadership seem to believe, and the avoidance of these questions
itself acts as an impediment to acceptance.)
--
From the catapult of J.D. Baldwin |+| "If anyone disagrees with anything I
_,_ Finger baldwin@netcom.com |+| say, I am quite prepared not only to
_|70|___:::)=}- for PGP public |+| retract it, but also to deny under
\ / key information. |+| oath that I ever said it." --T. Lehrer
***~~~~-----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: ron@fc.hp.com (Ron Miller)
Newsgroups: sci.military.naval
Subject: Re: Is there room on submarines for women?: by Elaine M. Grossman
Date: 8 Feb 2000 20:13:10 GMT
Have been watching the topic with interest.
Some things to put into the mix for your consideration-
1. During my 5 years active duty as a nuclear submariner, we were subjected
to exactly ONE PFT. As might be expected when you run a bunch of
overweight, under-exercised, pasty-faced submarine sailors around a
track there were casualties. Had 2 outstanding nuclear-trained
sailors blow up their knees and receive medical discharge.
Real smart of the Navy. (NOT!)
2. I have no recollection of there being any kind of physical fitness
(strength or endurance) requirement. I'm supposing that a clear
sinus/ear canal check was a requirement and in any case was
checked during the run thru the submarine escape training tower
(now extinct). Snorkeling with the head valve going under would
give periodic checkups :-)
3. Given that there were exactly ZERO exercise facilities onboard even
those who arrived aboard ship with pretty good fitness deteriorated
due to their condition of captivity. (I was a marathon runner before
sub school. I ached for 5 continuous days after walking 2 miles
on land the day after returning from a 6 month deployment)
4. "The requirements of the job" not only include combat conditions
and routine maintenance but in co-existing peacefully during conditions
of abject boredom both at sea and on duty days in-port. In general,
sailors didn't get in trouble during battlestations and drills. It
was when they had time on their hands that mischief occurred. This
usually goes unnoted during the debate. But it's important. Soldiers
are in garrison more than they are in the field. Sailors are not
necessarily fighting the enemies of our country but are far more often
fighting boredom. Idle hands (and sex organs) are the devil's
playground :-)))
4.a. Illicit sex between crewmembers might be difficult at sea but the
ship must be partially manned in port and opportunities for these
activities would be much greater.
4.b. Relationships and the tensions of those relationships are already
a big factor in crew effectiveness. Sexual tensions and jealousies,
in my view, are absolutely standard homo-sapiens behaviors. These
additional tensions would be significant and potentially destructive.
Add in that the average age we're talking about is around 19 or
20 and we have some judgment and maturity issues as well.
5. I'm very glad that I'm not the one to be dealing with it since I expect
that the commands which implement co-ed boats will be spending a very
large amount of time and energy on these new, previously non-existent
tensions. Having fights break out over gambling debts will look like
the good old days compared to the fights over who is sleeping with whom
ashore. We naked monkeys aren't all that civilized when it comes down
to the basic instincts.
My opinion and not PC, but you're not valuing my diversity if you don't
listen. :-)
Ron Miller
former LT USN SSN-693
Index
Home
About
Blog