Women Fail Army Ranger Course

Originally posted by Bardock42
The question you are begging here is "does the test as it is designed ensure that superiority in the field is favored".

Originally posted by Time Immemorial
On another note..

Everyone here is busted who is complaining about sit up's and bench press.

Video flat out says basic physical test is a run, and pushups. No situps or bench press.

The video also says "The women themselves insisted the standard not be lowered to accommodate them."

So the question is why is everyone here saying it should, when they are not even in this program, and the people who are, do not want it lowered.

YouTube video

Originally posted by Time Immemorial
Np wasn't trying to be, really just trying to understand what the up roar is about. Even the women do want the standard changed or lowered. Its one thing if there was a huge out cry of women saying they were being treated unfairly, but it seems the opposite, they have been glad to get the opportunity and want to be treated equally. If there really was a case to be made for un equal rights, lets examine it, but nothing has been claimed or made by anyone other then the people in the thread.

Originally posted by Time Immemorial
On another note..

Everyone here is busted who is complaining about sit up's and bench press.

Video flat out says basic physical test is a run, and pushups. No situps or bench press.

Basic training for rangers involves push ups, sit ups and pull ups.

http://www.military.com/military-fitness/army-special-operations/army-ranger-pft

Originally posted by Surtur
I get what you are saying, but it sounds like this would not be a male/female problem, would it? I mean, wouldn't important factors in deciding what a person should be able to bench press depend more on weight and size, not gender?

Or are you saying even if you had a man and a woman who are identical in weight and size..the benchmark for the woman should still be lower?

I am saying that if the justification for things like sit-ups- which have no direct practical application in the field, unlike running with a heavy load- is that they indicate general fitness, then the numbers for men and women would indeed need to be different.

If you take a man and woman of pretty much the same general fitness, the man would almost certainly be able to do more sit-ups. As it is general fitness you are testing for, not the literal skill of 'how many sit-ups can you do' (which is a useless skill in isolation), you'd need to adjust the numbers to measure what you were actually trying to measure.

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I get a bit hazy about this "What if someone is stuck under a truck?" idea too- this was echoed in the firefighters debate.

Let's accept for a moment that women soldiers are, on average, less likely to be able to lift a truck to free someone than a male solider (though I'd also submit that a heck of a lot of men wouldn't be able to do it either). That would mean in a VERY specific situation (the tiny chance of someone being stuck under a truck where the margin of strength needed to lift it is the same margin of difference between equally fit men and women) you might get an issue.

But if such a specific situation is why you are disallowing a soldier who is fully capable in every single other way to do her job, that seems crazy to me. One of the big things to remember here is that you are opening up a massive talent pool to the armed forces by allowing women to serve.

That's why this debate has caused this focus on "What is it a soldier actually needs to be?" And it may well be that the exclusively male soldier culture of the past has skewed that a bit in some areas, and that changing some standards is not so much dumbing down but removing irrelevancy.

Originally posted by Star428
I know lots of people are going to give me flak for this and perhaps even ignorantly call me a sexist but, imho, women have no place in any kind of combat role. Especially not in any special forces like Rangers or SEALs.

Let the flaming begin. Won't change my opinion, regardless.

I just keep thinking if I was female and wanted to do this..I'd want to be able to say I passed the same test everyone else has to.

Originally posted by Newjak
Tell that to Israeli women.

Originally posted by Surtur
I just keep thinking if I was female and wanted to do this..I'd want to be able to say I passed the same test everyone else has to.

Now if that is not the case then everything is fine. All some people are saying is we need to reevaluate these things from time to time to make sure this is not the case.

Also to the people who say if we lower the standards we will produce inferior special units. That may or may not be the case. It could turn out you could lower the standards some certain degree and the effectiveness of the Ranger unit on the battlefield will not change.

EX) Say 10% of Ranger dropouts fail because they miss the timed run by 10 seconds or less. Say research has shown that a Ranger's combat effectiveness doesn't drop when you lower the timed run by 10 seconds.

In this hypothetical situation you have lowered the standards but the Ranger combat effectiveness is still the same. In fact your elite force has now increased 10% while maintaining it's deadliness.

Of course maybe research has shown that is not the case and you can not lower that number without lowering the effectiveness of your Ranger fighting force. I don't know and I doubt anyone here would really know either.

Originally posted by Newjak
Tell that to Israeli women.

Good for Israel. This isn't Israel though last time I checked.

Originally posted by Star428
Good for Israel. This isn't Israel though last time I checked.

To the point where they can not afford arbitrary testing. They have to research and make everything just right to maintain the appropriate combat effectiveness for the various combat forces and roles.

Originally posted by Star428
Good for Israel. This isn't Israel though last time I checked.

Yes, this is a multinational forum owned by a British guy.

Why is that relevant again?

Originally posted by Ushgarak
Basic training for rangers involves push ups, sit ups and pull ups.

http://www.military.com/military-fitness/army-special-operations/army-ranger-pft

I looked at several sources and no one said they failed because of some sit ups. On the contrary the women asked for no special treatment. Why are people claiming that things need to be changed when the actual women in the program insist on the same standard.

Originally posted by Bardock42
Yes, this is a multinational forum owned by a British guy.

Why is that relevant again?

He's talking about this being an American Military program. Or did you miss that.

Originally posted by Time Immemorial
I looked at several sources and no one said they failed because of some sit ups. On the contrary the women asked for no special treatment. Why are people claiming that things need to be changed when the actual women in the program insist on the same standard.

Are you actually following the discussion? I've had to mention this recently already- it is discourteous to pretend other people are saying what they are not. No-one at any point has said that they failed because of sit-ups- in fact I have specifically said I suspect they did not fail on pure physical strength tasks.

The original post asked whether standards need to be lowered. This started a discussion about how it is possible some physical standards are not necessarily relevant and/or appropriate. That's why that part of the discussion was going. If you didn't want a discussion about why maybe standards should be changed, it was rather ridiculous to join a thread asking that specific question.

You then later claimed that there were no sit ups in basic ranger training. I was simply posting to inform you that you were mistaken in that regard.

Pay respect to other posters by reading and following their posts in full, please, instead of trying to score cheap shots based on falsehood.

Originally posted by Time Immemorial
He's talking about this being an American Military program. Or did you miss that.

And Newjak is using an example of where female soldiers work very well as part of the mainstream as a potential means of criticism of the current state of that programme. Again, follow the argument.

Originally posted by Star428
Good for Israel. This isn't Israel though last time I checked.

Isn't Israel the chosen land and it's people the chosen people? Maybe we should take lessons from them?

The video didn't mention about situps, but the link you did said so. So I didn't bother to challenge it. I simple said they didn't seem to be an issue.

But no one has really countered with why people are concerned with the standard if the women who are actually in the program want it the same.

This seems like a non issue then.

Again, that is untrue- the whole discussion has been about potential reasons for changing the standard, and those reasons have been provided. Disagree if you want but don't pretend that the debate does not exist, particularly as it is a major debate with the US military right now.

Obviously the question of what standards to use for branches of the military (regardless of country) is one that's relevant to the population as a whole. As such people will have an opinion on it, and the opinions of people who are partaking in the program isn't really more valid. Additionally, you may say these women, rather than thinking about what is best for the military and society, are looking to prove that they can live up to the current standards, in that case their opinion is based on a personal desire, unrelated to what's the best course of action overall.

Originally posted by Ushgarak
Again, that is untrue- the whole discussion has been about potential reasons for changing the standard, and those reasons have been provided. Disagree if you want but don't pretend that the debate does not exist, particularly as it is a major debate with the US military right now.

Can you point out where the source says the standard needs to be changed, or are we basing this whole thing off OP's one hypothetical thought that it should. If that's true, this is my last post here.

The source post specifically opens up the question of whether standards should be lowered:

Originally posted by |King Joker|
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/05/30/ranger-women/28179303/

So 8 women failed the Army Ranger course -- 5 left and 3 are going to start over. Some people are asking themselves if the standard should be lowered or if women are fit to serve in combat roles. What does this mean in your opinion?