Army fitness tests to be lowered for women?
The Sunday Times has published a short article headlined, “Fitness test ‘relaxed’ to help put women on the front line” (link, behind a paywall). The Daily Mail provides a separate summary (link).
The Times states that current army PT is “optimised for male physiology” and that tests are based on “old and complete science”. In response, new physical standards will be introduced in 2019, to follow Fallon’s expected decision to open up close combat units to women. The Times, citing an MOD report it has seen, states that a research team is questioning the relevance of some tests, such as requirements for push-ups, sit-ups and 1.5-mile run.
The article doesn’t quite support the headline, though, as it does not present evidence that standards will be lowered. CGS is quoted: “I want to make it very clear that there will be no lowering of training or qualifying levels for soldiers in ground close combat roles.”
Well, we’ll see how that goes. Glad he’s so clearly on record.
As I wrote more nearly 18 months ago, admitting women into the infantry will lower standards (link). I assumed this would take some time. First we’d have women, then we’d have quotas, then we’d have lowered standards to meet those quotas (in addition to a bunch of other negative consequences). It never occurred to me that the army would just redefine the standards such that it was hard for an outsider to know if they were equivalent, or lower, to existing ones. After all, push-ups, sit-ups and timed run are the most fundamental fitness tests there are (in addition to pull-ups, which the army has already dropped): it’s hard to fiddle with them without giving the game away.
Certainly the army is not keen that voters and taxpayers know what it’s up to: “Top brass have told [Captain] Hamilton she’s not allowed to give a personal view on the review …” (link). That’s never a good sign. The military never struggles to find useful idiots in uniform to parrot the party line.
Time will tell.
Ironically, on the same day the Times published its article, I randomly came across this little story in Level Zero Heroes (link), written by US Marine operator Mike Golembesky:
I lit it and took a long drag. Pat looked wired and intense, his eyes wide.
“That could have gone bad. Real bad,” he said.
I thought of the fuel trucks. The headlights.
“Yep.”
“The Humvee in front of us …” Pat said, then paused.
“What about it?”
He exhaled a lungful of smoke. “Jesus Christ. They had a girl up there on the .50. When we took contact, she didn’t even have the strength to rack the bolt.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“Nope.”
We stood there, both in disbelief, staring into the black African night.
At length, Pat finally said, “Can you believe that? These 82nd [Airborne] guys put a girl in a turret that didn’t even have enough ass on her to charge the weapon.”
“Fucked up,” I agreed.
“One of the guys inside their truck had to get up in the turret to take over.”
A .50 caliber machine gun is one of the best and most effective casualty-producing weapons a convoy possesses. This wasn’t a trivial mistake.
We thought about that in silence for a while.
This stuff matters. The consequences of these policy decisions are not immediately felt, or evident — but they cannot be escaped.
