I debated a long time if I should respond to this post.  A lot of the attitudes here made me quite mad.

Instead of venting those feelings I'm going to say this:

If women can fight and train to the same standards, leave them alone and let them serve.  I was fortunate enough to be given that opportunity.

The reality is that from the (admittedly scant) exposure I have had to female marines and army recruits in the U.S. there is a decided double standard.

None of the American services have a real interest in "playing to the strengths" of female recruits.  Promoting one individual to three stars is good PR, but not good progress.

I know more women from the IDF then I do from U.S. services.  (There were a lot of girls at Sandhurst that went back to Israel).  They were determined, motivated, top performers and one ended up as a rifle instructor herself.  The IDF knows how to use them.  Women play important roles in the IDF, including combat roles, and are particularly effective when utilized as low profile forward observers, directing support fire, and in communication roles.  IDF is smart enough to know that the attitudes of Arabs with respect to women in combat, (how interesting that they are the same as those of American military powers that be) are a weakness.  In many units women complete the same training to the same standards as men from Basic to OCS.  It's not talked about much but female IDF vets often are used against Arab terrorist organizations as well- to great effect.

The best officers I encountered in my military experience knew their female troops played to our strengths instead of our weaknesses.  (None of us could benchpress 280 pounds, for instance- so what?).  There were a lot of women who did recon assignments and we were well suited to it.  There were two officers I knew of who put women on recon exclusively because we apparently did a better job sneaking around and keeping quiet than the guys.  ;)

This noise about menstruation reducing combat effectiveness is just as much crap.  You cheeseheads putting up Midol pictures need to get a better day job or something.  (Remember that we're more resistant to bouncing betties than you are too).  Generally under combat conditions we don't cycle regularly anyhow- same as athletes or marathon runners.

Swiss female marksmen (markswomen sounds so PC) more often than not win top prizes in the Feldschiessen competition.  (Over 200,000 compete in that each year- making it the world's largest).  In recent years the top 50 have been 31 and 28 women.  (This despite the fact that women compose less than 30% of entrants).

If you officers out there can't figure out how to play to our strengths, or have no interest in doing so, then your armed forces are weaker for it.  That's too bad.

Grow up.

Sorry, as a graduate of the Swiss marksmanship program, I have to disagree.  We shot regularly to 500 meters with 5.56 out of StG90s (Sig 550s).

The national competitions are at 300 and 600 meters respectively (also in 5.56).




How does this make any sense.  Results are unimportant, training meeting a certain subjective definition of "better" is all that matters?



Maybe so.  I can't speak to this either way.