Category: Current Affairs Page 1 of 2

Marine Force Design 2030

On March 31, 2020

In Current Affairs, Military Theory, Modern, Tanks

A few days ago, the Marine Corps released a progress report on their Force Design 2030 effort. The report describes itself as being “Phase II” of a four-phase plan, with Phase I being problem framing. This phase produced a number of recommendations which will be analyzed (Phase III) and then refined and implemented (Phase IV). Force Design 2030 describes how the USMC will organize and equip itself based on the US National Defense Strategy (NDS). The Commandant’s specific guidance is given on Page 3 of the linked document, but the general thrust of the redesign is de-prioritizing maneuver warfare and occupation (the defense establishment prefers the term “wide area security” for the latter, FYI) in favor of a littoral operations in support of maritime operations, especially in the “Indo-Pacific” i.e. against China.

The proposals in the document, while not final, are very sensible conclusions given the prioritization of littoral operations and the fact that

“We must acknowledge the impacts of proliferated precision long-range fires, mines, and other smart weapons, and seek innovative ways to overcome these threat capabilities.”
General David h. berger, commandant usmc

The overall major changes are a reduction in the number of infantry units with a concomitant reduction in support assets, the elimination of tanks and law enforcement battalions, and a drastic reduction of tube in favor of rocket artillery with anti-shipping missile apparently an important capability of the latter.

Infantry Reductions

The document calls for the elimination (“divestment”) of one regiment of three battalions of active duty infantry and the elimination of two battalions of reserve infantry (presumably one from each reserve regiment, and even more presumably the “24th Regiment” battalions). This resulted from removal of the requirement to field two Marine Expeditionary Units (MEUs) for joint forced entry i.e. a major conflict with a peer country. Infantry is, obviously, the core capability of the USMC and such reduction could not have been done lightly. Further, the size of current battalions might be shrunk somewhat.

If any of the proposed force reductions don’t stick through the analysis in Phase III, I would expect it to be this one. However, with focus moving away from maneuver warfare and occupation, and given the removal of the 2x MEU — the restoration of which would probably require an unforeseen budget increase — the most likely reason for needing more infantry that the Phase III analysis reveals higher than anticipated losses in likely scenarios. The document (correctly and appropriately) considers “attrition” inevitable in any serious conflict, so the planners have this problem in mind:

There is no avoiding attrition. In contingency operations against peer adversaries, we will lose aircraft, ships, ground tactical vehicles, and personnel. Force resilience – the ability of a force to absorb loss and continue to operate decisively – is critical.

This would probably affect the size rather than number of battalions, however. The current number of battalions is based on the 2x MEU requirement and won’t be kept without it.

Likewise, Force Design 2030 proposes a reduction in both lift aviation and assault amphibious units. Again, the current structure derives from the 2x MEU requirement, and eliminating it reduces the need for these assets.

Combat Aviation

Puzzling out the thinking behind FD2030 proposals regarding combat aviation is a little more difficult, which perhaps indicates that these proposals are more tentative. On the elimination of several attack helicopter squadrons it says that

While this capability has a certain amount of relevance
to crisis and contingency missions which we must still be
prepared to execute, it is operationally unsuitable for our
highest-priority maritime challenges and excess to our
needs with the divestment of three infantry battalions.

The AH-1Z’s limited range and station time, and vulnerability to low-altitude air defenses account for this “unsuitability”. Perhaps the USMC intends to replace its strike capability with more persistent (and expendable) UAS — FD2030 will double the number of Marine UAS squadrons — and less vulnerable surface fires, provided both by the Navy and by the greatly expanded rocket artillery capability.

And then there is the F-35. FD2030 proposes reducing the number of aircraft in each VMFA (fighter/attack squadron) to 10 without reducing the number of squadrons.

USMC F-35B lands vertically on USS America

Currently VMFAs operate either the F/A-18C, the F-35B, or the F-35C with 12, 16, or 10 aircraft each, respectively. FD2030 proposes that all of these squadrons operate 10 aircraft each. Why? The easy answer is money. But two other difficulties are mentioned. First,

I am not convinced that we have a clear understanding
yet of F-35 capacity requirements for the future
force. As a result, the Service will seek at least one external assessment of our Aviation Plan relative to NDS objectives and evolving naval and joint warfighting concepts.
usmc commandant

The F-35B is the most advanced STOVL aircraft in existence by a long shot, and has far greater capability than the AV-8 Harrier it replaces. The fleet carrier-based F-35C is probably a more incremental upgrade over the Super Hornet. Both aircraft are the expensive high-tech results of a lengthy development process, and the Marines are to some extent stuck with them whether they want them or not. Their capabilities and limitations compared to previous airframes are the most arcane input factors into FD2030, and the quoted section strongly suggests that the USMC planners simply could not determine (or at least agree) on how to use them without outside input.

The other problem, noted immediately afterward, is a shortage of pilots. This problem is not limited to the Marines. My understanding is that it is more an issue of retention than of recruitment (“FLY FIGHTER JETS” is not a hard sell to prospects, but reality of the lifestyle is apparently less attractive). Regardless, if the limiting factor is pilots rather than airframes — and, maybe, if the F-35 has a lower operational readiness rate than previous aircraft — it might make sense to lower the pilot:airframe ratio. This is assuming the USMC takes delivery of the same number of F-35Bs as currently planned, which I believe it will (must). On the other hand, is pilot retention really something that can’t be fixed in ten years?

Tanks & Howitzers (and cops)

FD2030 recommends a drastic reduction in Marine tube artillery, from 21 batteries to only five. The Marines use towed 155mm howitzers (M777 as far as I know). Increases in rocket artillery will compensate for this, as discussed below. I see this as a logical course of action for a service no longer concerned with maneuver warfare and occupation (no suppressing fires in support of maneuver, no “firebases”). The current structure of, more or less, one howitzer battery per infantry battalion is obviously being completely scrapped.

The complete elimination of Marine tanks is significant but unsurprising, and the right decision. The heavy, fuel-guzzling Abrams tank is frankly something the Marines were saddled with by Army requirements. The Abrams’ inability to swim probably accounts in no small part for the existence of the USMC’s bridging assets (which FD2030 proposes to eliminate). For an amphibious force which needs to carefully consider every ton of materiel moved ashore, the weight to capability ratio of the Abrams was always dubious.

Marine M1A1 in Helmand Province, 2011. Only the Marines have ever sent Abrams to Afghanistan. Photo by Sgt. Jesse Johnson

In the littoral/maritime environment emphasized by the Commandant, the Abrams would be an extremely niche capability. There’s a certain economy of scale to running tanks, like with most other things: if you have even one tank, you need an M88, specially trained mechanics, crew training programs, replacement parts, etc. (The USMC have also run their own independent Abrams development program rather than piggybacking on the Army, for budget reasons.) In the Marines, this has been done in the tank battalions, which don’t fight independently as the Army’s armored battalions have in the past but instead parcel out their tanks to expeditionary units, usually at the platoon level. If the USMC needs tanks for some particular mission in the future, they can do the same thing that JSOC does and borrow them from the regular Army.

FD2030 also proposes getting rid of the Law Enforcement Battalions. Sure.

Rocket Artillery and Anti-Ship Missiles

FD2030 recommends adding 14 additional rocket artillery batteries. The document mentions the “finders and hiders” problem in the context of proliferated long-range precision munitions (roughly the same thing as what I think of as the “sensors and dispensers” mode of warfare). The maxim of this problem is: if it can be seen it can be hit; if it can be hit, it can be killed. So: don’t be seen. Rocket artillery, presumably using mostly guided munitions, offer superior range and single-munition payload to howitzers. However, there is another, more intriguing aspect to the USMC’s bet on rocket artillery: shore-launcher anti-ship missiles (ASM). Whatever the relative merits of cannon cockers vs rocket jockeys, it is the anti-ship capability that appears to drive this proposal:

This investment [rocket artillery] provides the basis, over time, for generating one of the fundamental requirements for deterrence, and ultimately successful naval campaigns – long-range, precision expeditionary anti-ship missile
fires. This requirement is based on one of the more well-supported conclusions from wargaming analysis conducted to date.

This is a very new direction for both the Marines and the US in general. The Navy, for instance, has resolutely held on to the aging Harpoon ASM even as competitors developed several iterations of more capable missiles. As far as I know, the US has never fielded shore-based anti-ship missiles outside of test ranges, although they have provided them to other countries.

AGM-158C LRASM next to an F/A-18E at a Navy test facility.

Clearly the Marines & Navy want shore-based missiles to defend forward bases without having to completely rely on seagoing vessels. Development of the AGM-158C LRASM and some other capabilities has made this clear for some time. More interesting is the idea of Marine detachments being quickly deployed onto coastlines and islands in order to contribute land-based ASM launches to naval surface warfare plans. FD2030 also recommends expanding air-defense capabilities, which would support both of these activities. I would expect to see future fleet exercise incorporate these tactics for evaluation, since FD2030 sounds very confident about the simulation/wargame results. Indeed there have already been some rapid deployment exercises of Marine HIMARS in the Pacific.

Army HIMARS firing during an exercise in Poland.

Unmanned Systems

As mentioned above, the FD2030 recommends doubling the number of UAS squadrons in the USMC. The document refers to these as being either for “collection” or “lethal” activities — intelligence and attack. However, Gen. Berger also wrote that

I am not confident that we have identified the additional structure required to provide the tactical maneuver and logistical sustainment needed to execute [operations] in contested littoral environments against our pacing threat [i.e. China]. While not an afterthought by any means, I do not believe our Phase I and II efforts gave logistics sufficient attention. Resolving these two areas must be a priority for Phase III.

I suspect, but it is only a suspicion, that the Marines may be looking into the possibility of using unmanned or at least heavily automated systems for at least some ship-to-shore logistics. This would be an even bigger innovation than developing a coastal ASM capability (which plenty of other militaries have already done). I do not think that land logistics will prove particularly amenable to this sort of automation (basically, there is a trend of lines of communication requiring more and more security) but this may not apply to amphibious movement.

Conclusions

Force Design 2030 indicates that the Marines have a coherent general vision of what sort of conflict they want to prepare for (Pacific, maritime/littoral) and are taking reasonable steps to restructure their force to fight for this conflict. They are eliminating redundant capacity with the Army, adding new capability suited to the intended fight, and modestly reducing the overall size of their force in expectation of only having to fight one major conflict at a time.

“The Right Stuff”, and the Nigerien Ambush

By sfoil

On November 16, 2018

In Current Affairs, Military Theory

Last week, the commanding general of SOCOM Africa was reprimanded over an October 2017 skirmish/ambush in Niger that left four special forces soldiers dead. In all likelihood the actual issue is that the incident brought unwanted attention on the American presence in Niger. Nevertheless, Army’s attitude toward this incident reminds me of Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff:

Barely a week had gone by before another member of the Group was coming in for a landing in the same type of aircraft, the A3J, making a ninety-degree turn to his final approach, and something went wrong with the controls, and he ended up with one rear stabilizer wing up and the other one down, and his ship rolled in like a corkscrew from 800 feet up and crashed…after dinner one night they mentioned that the departed had been a good man but was inexperienced, and when the malfunction in the controls put him in that bad corner, he didn’t know how to get out of it.

[…]

Not long after that, another good friend of theirs went up in an F-4, the Navy’s newest and hottest fighter plane, known as the Phantom. He reached twenty thousand feet and then nosed over and dove straight into Chesapeake Bay. It turned out that a hose connection was missing in his oxygen system and he had suffered hypoxia and passed out at the high altitude…How could anybody fail to check his hose connections? And how could anybody be in such poor condition as to pass out that quickly from hypoxia?

[…]

When Bud Jennings crashed and burned in the swamps at Jacksonville, the other pilots in Pete Conrad’s squadron said: How could he have been so stupid? It turned out that Jennings had gone up in the SNJ with his cockpit canopy opened in a way that was expressly forbidden in the manual, and carbon monoxide had been sucked in from the exhaust, and he passed out and crashed. All agreed that Bud Jennings was a good guy and a good pilot, but his epitaph on the ziggurat was: How could he have been so stupid? This seemed shocking at first, but by the time Conrad had reached the end of that bad string at Pax River, he was capable of his own corollary to the theorem: viz., no single factor ever killed a pilot; there was always a chain of mistakes. But what about Ted Whelan, who fell like a rock from 8,100 feet when his parachute failed? Well, the parachute was merely part of the chain: first, someone should have caught the structural defect that resulted in the hydraulic leak that triggered the emergency; second, Whelan did not check out his seat-parachute rig, and the drogue failed to separate the main parachute from the seat; but even after those two mistakes, Whelan had fifteen or twenty seconds, as he fell, to disengage himself from the seat and open the parachute manually. Why just stare at the scenery coming up to smack you in the face! And everyone nodded. (He failed—but I wouldn’t have!)

–Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff

Feel free to read the whole thing, it’s worth it. Anyway, contemporary “flight test”, and later NASA, were organizations with no tolerance for human error. If cultivating such an attitude required occasionally blaming someone for something that was not, objectively speaking, their fault, well the payoff in effort and vigilance were worth it. Better to reprimand one innocent man than let two others make avoidable mistakes.

Small UAS & Supply Constraints

By sfoil

On September 22, 2018

In Current Affairs, Military Theory, Robots, Tactics

Just as firearms require ammunition and vehicles require fuel, small unmanned systems (SUAS, even if the “A” does stand for “air”) require electrical power. This allows us to make some predictions about the capabilities and tactics of small units with SUAS.

Tradeoffs & Alertness

SUAS and their power supplies have weight and volume. Since the capacity of any transport (including soldiers’ own two feet) is limited, either future SUAS will take up currently “extra” capacity, or they will replace something currently carried.

Soldiers can eat their boots, but tanks need gas.

General George S. Patton

Like fuel and ammunition, unit leaders must recognize SUAS operating time as a finite commodity to be expended for tactical effect. A unit equipped with multiple SUAS platforms will not have them all on at the same time for the same reason they don’t keep their soldiers awake, run vehicles, or fire machine guns 24 hours a day. Generally, a unit’s SUAS will either be “inert”, “alert”, or “engaged” — offline while the unit is either not threatened or covered by another unit, minimally operating to maintain awareness and detect threats, or at maximum capacity to neutralize a threat. This is exactly analogous to existing tactics and not difficult to understand.

The default “alert” SUAS will most likely be a fixed-wing flier, since these provide the most efficient power to operating time ratio. Ground vehicles (SUGS?) could have an even higher ratio since they wouldn’t need motor power when not moving, and might be an option for static units or to absolutely minimize aerial/EM footprints. However, they’ll be slower and easier to hide from. Note that the RQ-11 Raven is probably too large for a true light infantry platoon and certainly too large for a squad.

Get used to this thing.

Limitations

The tradeoff problem is most pronounced for light infantry. In general, these men carry as much as they can and not a pound less. Any “excess” load capacity ends up filled by extra ammunition. How much and what sort of ammunition a light infantry company, platoon, or squad ought to give up in favor of SUAS is an empirical question, but I highly doubt the answer is zero. Most likely, the lightest units will mostly use SUAS for detection and rely on external assets to kill, as they do now with artillery. Since the detection capability of SUAS-equipped units will increase, the ratio of infantry to “artillery” will likewise increase.

dismount_ew

The future is so bright for carrying heavy shit, you don’t need eyes to see it.

Armored units also have a problem. First, the effective movement and weapon ranges of armored fighting vehicles are higher than light infantry, so their “small” unmanned systems will generally be larger. A SUAS with a 5-km range is of limited use to a tank that can already see and shoot nearly that far, and is more likely located in unrestrictive terrain.

The more critical problem is that of crew load. Fighting a tank requires all of the crew’s attention; they don’t have any to spare for SUAS. While automation and control might allow this in the future, the problem is nontrivial. These two issues have frustrated attempts to integrate SUAS into mechanized and especially tank formations so far. In the short term, any integration of unmanned systems into armored units will probably require the use of a separate, dedicated control vehicle. In the long term, designers will have to start paying as much attention to crew load and systems integration inside fighting vehicles as in aircraft.

Motor-rifle type units (such as “Stryker” brigades) are best suited to take advantage of SUAS. They have ready access to electrical power and transport. Designers clearly anticipated something like this requirement in developing modern troop carriers, which can readily serve as mobile control stations.

Tactical Electronic Warfare

EM emissions discipline will become both more important and more complex. The likelihood of initial enemy contact being made on either or both side via identification of SUAS will be high. Small-unit commanders and soldiers should know the significance of enemy small unmanned platforms just as they now know the significance of other types of enemy equipment.

antenna_truck

A stopgap solution, gluing lots of antennas to a completely roadbound vehicle.

Mature SUAS will be well camouflaged and probably most easily identified through detecting their control and communication links. The ability to detect EM emissions across a broad spectrum will become as important even at the platoon if not the squad level as image intensifiers and near-infrared are now. Tactical electronic warfare units that specialize in detecting, spoofing, and obstructing these emissions beyond the capability of line combat units will return. The resulting arms race between tactical unmanned systems and electronic warfare will contribute to the unsuitability of amateur/civilian UAVs in combat.

Conclusion

Motorized infantry stand to gain the most from small unmanned systems because of their manpower and transport capability. Light infantry have limited payload, and current armored units are too specialized.

Officers should get used to viewing SUAS operating time as a supply constraint, and establish standard readiness postures for stand-down, baseline, and stand-to use of these devices.

Electronic warfare will become more important at all tactical levels.

The ATGM Threat Part 3: Solutions

By sfoil

On August 9, 2018

In Current Affairs, Military Theory, Tactics

I’ve previously posted about the history of antiarmor weapons and the current state-of-the-art. The takeaway: tanks have never been invulnerable, and they don’t need to be. Also, Anti-Tank Guided Missiles have become and are becoming longer-ranged, more accurate, and more lethal. Despite improvements in ATGM technology over first-generation weapons like the AT-3 Sagger, American tactics have remained essentially unchanged for decades, although armor protection has improved.

The ATGM threat profile is a combination of standoff and high kill probability (per launch). Remember, these don’t have to make ATGMs completely worthless, just make them less useful. I’ll look at standoff first.

Are Paratroopers Good For Anything?

By sfoil

On July 30, 2018

In Current Affairs, Military History, Military Theory

Against an army sailing through the clouds neither walls, mountains, nor seas could afford security.

– From Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia by Samuel Johnson

Inspired by a recent discussion at Naval Gazing.

“When Failure Thrives”

Airborne operations have not, historically, proven very successful. The current size of airborne forces in Russia (VDV) and the United States is purely the result of institutional inertia and parochialism. Read this and weep.

To briefly recapitulate the linked article: The most successful airborne assaults, launched by the Germans in 1940 (e.g. Eben Emael) in hindsight relied on the total novelty of parachute infantry. Even by later in WW2, airborne operations became less likely to succeed and more costly when successful than the Happy Time of the early war. At any rate, advances in air defenses and increases in the numbers of light armored vehicles (which lightly armed paratroopers have difficulty fighting) in rear areas made a repetition of operations like Neptune (Normandy jump) suicidal after WW2. Airborne operations, being useless against serious militaries, were increasingly confined to “interventions” against weak or non-state forces.

fallschirmjager

The 82nd Airborne owes more of its existence to the Nazis than NASA does.

Women in Combat: Conclusions

By sfoil

On July 24, 2018

In Current Affairs

This is the fifth post in a row I’ve written about integrating women into combat units; I originally intended three. So what do I think?

Review

Women are definitely too physically different from men, and combat too demanding, to make suitable combat soldiers. The disparity is enormous. Also, the social dynamics of mixed-gender organizations make them even less effective as combat outfits.

Feminism and careerism, the primary motives behind the push for integration, will pressure military organizations to lower physical fitness standards for entry, retention, and promotion.

The services can fight this by having their public affairs organs manufacture glowing puff pieces about token women. They could also consider raising the organizational prestige of career fields where barriers to female entry are lower by appointing members of those fields to strategic positions traditionally held by maneuver officers. The Air Force and Navy aviation have managed to avoid lowering standards, but this is fundamentally more difficult for ground forces.

Women in Combat Pt 4: Concentration vs Dispersion

By sfoil

On July 23, 2018

In Current Affairs

I intended to include this in the last post but I seemed like a slightly different topic. If a small number of women are allowed into combat arms units, should they be concentrated into specific units or dispersed thinly across the entire service?

The Thin Film

Women soldiers in combat arms units will either be spread in a thin film throughout the entire service branch or concentrated into specific units. The latter can be done either with the goal of having all-female units, or not.

If spread out evenly, each combat arms company will have 1-5% women members. The biggest concern the services currently have with this is making sure a given woman has at least one other female “buddy” so she’s not left completely to the mercy of the men around her in various ways. The low concentration does mean that not every sub-unit will have a female member e.g. only one platoon or even squad in a company might have a woman in it. If this woman turns out to be unfit for “line” duty, which is quite likely, their low density means the company or battalion commander can squirrel them away in their headquarters without serious loss. This already happens on a routine basis as things stand now in all-male units. The chain of command must avoid, or at least avoid publicizing, “disparate impact”-style analysis of such assignments in the integrated force, since they will reveal that such “relegation” occurs far more often to women.

Women in Combat Pt 3: Muddling Through

By sfoil

On July 19, 2018

In Current Affairs

Integrating women into combat units is a bad idea, but it’s going to happen anyway, because integration has nothing to do with increasing (or maintaining) unit effectiveness.

Women are fine for sedentary and rear area activities. Many of these duties — what go generally under the moniker of “combat service support” — have a very long history of being done by women. They were gradually professionalized and put into uniform beginning in the early 19th century. This trend isn’t going to be, and shouldn’t be, reversed; think of it as imposing certain duties and expectations on what would previously be “camp followers” in return for increasing their prestige. Even then, the 6th Century Byzantine Strategikon contains a reference to these camp followers having some role in defending what would now be called a forward operating base from attack.

Women in Combat Pt 2: The Nose in the Tent

By sfoil

On July 16, 2018

In Current Affairs

Women are generally incapable of reaching the level of fitness required of male soldiers, and cause social problems when integrated into previously all-male units anyway. This doesn’t matter, because effectiveness doesn’t motivate military gender integration. Ideology and careerism do. These same factors virtually guarantee that the military won’t be able to hold the line on a single, high standard that only a vanishingly small number of women have any hope of achieving.

What is “Combat” Anyway?

Advocates of gender integration are quick to point out that women have already been in combat (Gen. Neller’s predecessor openly opposed integration). The problem is that “combat” is a broad category. The Army, for instance, considers “close combat” to be the use of direct-fire weapons (engaging with or being engaged by anything pointed directly at a target, as opposed to standoff weapons like artillery). The following activities are all (rightly) considered to be “combat”:

A truck driver being blown up or ambushed while on the road. On top of the truck sits a gunner who’s responsible for shooting anyone who’s a threat. This is dangerous, but does not require a great deal of technical skill or physical fitness, and rarely or never involves sleeping rough.
A tanker or other combat vehicle crew securing the above convoy. This appears similar to the truck driver, but operation and maintenance of these vehicles requires substantially more physical strength and endurance than noncombat vehicles. Also, the crew are expected to endure worse conditions as a matter of course.
An artillery battery that often fires directly at enemy on the mountains surrounding their firebase. Living conditions are the firebase are austere but reasonably comfortable.
An infantry unit that guards the perimeter of the firebase. Occasionally they shoot or get shot at. Patrols over a single night occur but are rare and even more rarely result in fighting.
A special forces team that lives in a foreign village for several months at a time. Shooting is rare, but when it does occur, the team may be on its own for several hours at least. Living conditions are extremely and deliberately primitive.
A direct-action task force. They attack at least one objective (possibly several) every night but live on a major base where living standards approximate an American town.

All of these tasks have differing physical demands and living conditions. Note that while a woman should have little problem with being a truck gunner, she will have a much harder time being a tank gunner. Likewise, while she can man a guard tower, she won’t be suitable for an extended patrol. The specific conditions of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan mean that these roles have suffered some degree of conflation, usually biased towards becoming physically easier. Many infantrymen spend an entire tour guarding a wall, and many (most, actually) tankers never spend 24 hours outside of a base. This creates an opening for claims about units like military police or truck drivers to say they do “the same job”, which is true, but what’s different are expectations, that combat units be required to do things they may not actually have had to do in a specific conflict.

Likewise, something about the elite direct-action teams. They spend most of their time hanging out on large bases. This allows for female support personnel to “work with the Rangers” or whoever, outside the wire even, while living in extremely comfortable conditions and, of course, not having to actually meet the incredibly high standards for the operators of these teams.

By the way, anyone claiming that “modern combat” isn’t physically demanding because you just press a button or whatever is either clueless (most likely) or deliberately and outrageously mendacious, and anytime someone emits such a statement I invite the hearer to scrutinize the background of the speaker carefully; the result is often illuminating. Yes, such roles do exist, but it’s not what we’re talking about. And they’re not enough to win wars on their own, anyway.

The point of all this is that just because women have “been in combat” and even generated photogenic casualties, it doesn’t follow that they ought to be integrated into combat units.

The “Fine-Toothed Comb”

The military services will never lower standards, but they will change them. For instance, recruiting standards were changed around 2005-2008 in order to support the “Surge” in Iraq. Qualitatively inferior soldiers were admitted to the Army. Externally, the Army claimed that it was simply examining the records of prospective recruits more closely. For instance, instead of automatically rejecting anyone diagnosed with a felony conviction or diagnosed psychiatric condition. After all, just because someone was prescribed Ritalin for ADHD or got busted for a bag of pot a few years ago shouldn’t preclude someone from being able to Serve Their Country, right? Lies, of course — standards were lowered. The quality of these soldiers was immediately obvious to unit leadership, as it had been with McNamara’s Morons two generations before (the Surge recruits weren’t that bad, but it was noticeable). Internally, a colonel in the Army’s training command went on a tour of major installations and gave a presentation where he blamed the problem on Millennials. Eventually, the “suicide epidemic” (in active service, not among veterans) turned out to be an artifact of admitting recruits with psychiatric conditions.

This sort of history is probably the number one reason that service members are suspicious of any changes made to physical fitness requirements. The current standards aren’t as relevant to task performance as they need to be, but at least they were developed before pro-integration meddling was a problem.

The “Standard” isn’t the Norm

One thing I’m suspicious of personally are canards along the lines of “Only Those Who Meet The Standard” will be permitted into combat units, because as things are now The Standard doesn’t reflect actual expectations. Anyone who barely clears the bar to graduate initial entry training is borderline if not outright inadequate for performance in an actual unit, and absolutely unacceptable for a leadership position. I’m extremely concerned that women meeting the “you’re allowed to wear the uniform” but not meeting the customary standards of their unit will lead to such customary standards being declared “toxic” even though they are a direct result of the tactical tasks required of such units.

Efforts to quantify combat tasks remind me of McNamara’s failed Vietnam-era policies; that they’re openly motivated by gender integration efforts doesn’t inspire confidence.

What Will Be Enough?

Any reasonable standard will mean that only very small numbers of women will be permitted into combat units, and those women will be markedly substandard in their physical capabilities, especially compared to unit leadership. Because of the twin motives of egalitarian/feminist ideology and careerism, I don’t think that a 1-5% proportion of female combat troops with below-average promotion rates will mollify calls for gender integration. Once it’s “proven” that (some) women can “meet the standard”, that standard will then be lowered, both formally and informally, in order to increase the proportion of female combat troops. Emphasis on physical fitness and even tactical performance, being a barrier to the advancement of female soldiers, will become toxic. Careerist female soldiers will happily go along with this, probably with the usual resentments resulting from a correct perception of contempt from the men around them.

Slanted media/propaganda coverage, along with simple institutional repression, will ensure that dissenting voices are unheard while misleading the public about the demands of service and the capabilities of soldierettes. I have personally witnessed unexceptional or downright incompetent women made the subject of glowing public-affairs releases, as has most anyone who has served for any length of time.

Women in Combat Pt 1: A Bad Idea

By sfoil

On July 7, 2018

In Current Affairs, Military Theory

Physical differences between the sexes are so great that any reasonable definition of fitness for combat will exclude the overwhelming majority of women. The remainder aren’t worth the justification that they will provide to lower standards or the negative social effects on previously all-male units.

Physical Differences

Strength differences between men and women are so great that only the very strongest women are around the average level of male fitness. A man of above-average strength will probably never encounter a woman stronger than him between puberty and senility. This gap can be “rectified” somewhat through the administration of androgenic hormones, but unless the treatment starts before puberty and continues indefinitely it won’t succeed in closing the gap and will probably only make the ersatz male more prone to injuries given differences in skeletal structure. (Differences in skeletal structure already account for some portion of the increased musculoskeletal injury rate of females under heavy loads).