Last women fail Marine combat course.....now what?

[2aguy]

So, the last of the women trying to complete the Marine combat course have failed the physical end of the course.....now what? Is this where the politicians step in and lower standards...because that will be the only way to pass women through to ground combat units....

Last IOC in Marine infantry experiment drops female officers


But as the research continued, few volunteers took advantage of the opportunity. By July 2014, only 20 female officers had attempted the course. Only one made it through the Combat Endurance Test, and none made it to the end.

In an effort to achieve their goal of 100 female volunteers cycling through IOC, the Marine Corps opened the course to female company-grade officers in October 2014, making hundreds more Marines eligible for the course. The Corps also began requiring that volunteers get a first-class score on the male version of the service's Physical Fitness Test in an effort to better prepare them for the rigors of IOC.

The effort was a mixed success. In the October iteration of IOC, three of the seven female volunteers made it through the Combat Endurance Test, bringing the total number of women to pass the test to four. Two of those who passed the test were captains from the fleet. As time passed, no influx of volunteers materialized, however.

 

[BlackSand]

If the women cannot make the cut ... Then there is no need to reduce our standards.
Combat isn't necessarily a social engineering experiment.
If any women can make the cut in the future there shouldn't be a problem ... Plenty of men have been failed to qualify and alternate arrangements were not made for them.

.

 

[Delta4Embassy]

Is always the Army

 

[2aguy]

If the women cannot make the cut ... Then there is no need to reduce our standards.
Combat isn't necessarily a social engineering experiment.
If any women can make the cut in the future there shouldn't be a problem ... Plenty of men have been failed to qualify and alternate arrangements were not made for them.

.

I agree...but then we have the reality of our times.....

 

[SassyIrishLass]

The military is all about your brothers (or in this case sisters) having your back, if a female doesn't meet the standards it creates a dangerous situation. PC has no place in this

 

[BlackSand]

I agree...but then we have the reality of our times.....

Combat and flight requirements were not eased to put women in combat aircraft (outside of the gender requirement).
There is no need to assume that they will be eased for other combat positions.
They have messed with Physical Training requirements for women in non-combat related roles ... But that isn't a definite indication combat requirements will follow.

The measures you are talking about are associated with combat readiness and ground infantry qualifications.
The military takes their combat qualifications seriously ... They are not the same across the board as standard qualifications for non-combat roles.

.

 

[2aguy]

I agree...but then we have the reality of our times.....

Combat and flight requirements were not eased to put women in combat aircraft ... No need to assume that they will be eased for other combat positions.
They have messed with Physical Training requirements for women in non-combat related roles ... But that isn't a definite indication combat requirements will follow.

.

Flying a combat jet is still not the same as ground combat.....worlds apart......

 

[BlackSand]

I agree...but then we have the reality of our times.....

Combat and flight requirements were not eased to put women in combat aircraft ... No need to assume that they will be eased for other combat positions.
They have messed with Physical Training requirements for women in non-combat related roles ... But that isn't a definite indication combat requirements will follow.

.

Flying a combat jet is still not the same as ground combat.....worlds apart......

I know ... That is what I posted.

.

 

[Moonglow]

The military is all about your brothers (or in this case sisters) having your back, if a female doesn't meet the standards it creates a dangerous situation. PC has no place in this

Normally bolo no-goes were treated to a sock and soap bar party...

 

[whitehall]

The only option, based on the Clinton doctrine, is to lower the standards and call the Marines nasty names.

 

[waltky]

Granny gets out her old combat boots whenever anyone talks `bout womens in combat...

Marine Study: Women in Combat Injured More Often Than Men
Sep 11, 2015 | WASHINGTON -- Research on a test unit of male and female U.S. Marines suggests women in combat get injured more often and shoot less accurately than men, a study released Thursday said.

A summary of the results of a nine-month pilot test involving 400 male and 100 female Marines who volunteered to join the Ground Combat Element Integrated Task Force unit suggested women in combat conditions get injured twice as often as men, shoot infantry weapons less accurately and have more difficulty removing injured soldiers from the battlefield. The research was conducted at the Marines' Twentynine Palms, Calif., and Camp Lejeune, N.C., bases.

All-male squads demonstrated higher performance levels on 69 percent of tasks evaluated, compared to gender-integrated squads. Gender-integrated teams performed better than their all-male counterparts on two of the 134 tasks, the study said. All-male squads also had a "noticeable difference in their performance of the basic combat tasks of negotiating obstacles and evacuating casualties."

The study was carried out as the service departments prepare to submit recommendations to Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter on whether any jobs should be kept closed to women. In 2013, the Pentagon overturned a ban on women in combat roles, but gave the services latitude to decide how to better integrate women and decide if any jobs should be kept men-only. "This is unprecedented research across the services," said Marine Col. Anne Weinberg of the Marine Corps Force Innovation Office. "What we tried to get to is what is that individual's contribution to the collective unit. We're more interested in how the Marine Corps fights as units and how that combat effectiveness is either advanced or degraded."

The research suggests the Marine Corps may keep certain combat specialties closed to women. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus has indicated he has found no reason to discourage women in any infantry combat role.

Marine Study: Women in Combat Injured More Often Than Men | Military.com

 

[waltky]

Uncle Ferd says, "Womens always wantin' to fight...

Head of SpecOps Command: Decision on Women in Combat Imminent
Sep 16, 2015 | The commander of U.S. Special Operations Command said today that his recommendation on women serving in direct-action combat units would be ready in days.

Gen. Joseph Votel would not talk directly about the recommendation, but said that diversity was extremely valuable to special operations forces. "I expect to get our recommendation on the behalf of SOCOM to the secretary of defense probably here in the next week," Votel told an audience at the 2015 Maneuver Conference at Fort Benning, Ga. "I will tell you from a SOF standpoint, from a SOCOM standpoint, we value people. People are our most important resource. "We are an organization that the nation expects to be able to go out and work in a variety of different areas with a variety of different people. And so I would make the argument that diversity is extraordinarily important to us."

Votel's comments come on the heels of a recent speech by Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus, who said that Marine infantry, Navy SEALs, and all other combat jobs in the Navy Department will open to women by the end of this year. Mabus made his decision after criticizing a lengthy Marine Corps experiment that compared all-male combat units to ones that included women. The Marines released a four-page summary of results last week indicating that all-male units performed significantly better on 69 percent of tactical tasks, and female troops were injured at more than twice the rate as men. Votel did not reference the Marine study in his speech but said that SOCOM has "paid considerable amount of attention to not just our own studies, but we have looked at a lot of the other studies the other services have done."

Then Votel referenced the role females played in special operations raids in Afghanistan. "For years, we did raids and we did operations in Afghanistan, went into compounds and did stuff, and we missed 50 percent of the population every time we went," Votel said. "When we included small cultural support teams made up of female volunteers who went through a very specific training course that brought them to a level of a standard of performance where they could move with our strike forces … we changed the dynamic on the battlefield."

MORE

See also:

Early Tests Show Female Airmen Can Perform Many SpecOps Tasks: General
Sep 15, 2015 | Preliminary tests show female airmen can perform many of the same battlefield tasks as their male counterparts in Special Operations positions, a general said.

The Air Force ran a series of tests involving 170 airmen, including about 70 women, between May and July at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, Texas, to predict how they would perform on a series of physical tasks required on the battlefield and for Special Operations jobs, according to Brig. Gen. Brian Kelly, the service's director of military force management policy. "In lots of cases, they were able to compete and stay up with the men," Kelly said on Tuesday during a briefing with reporters at the annual Air and Space Conference held outside Washington, D.C. He later confirmed they did so most of the time. "There were some tasks and places where they would say had they known that that was the task and had they the ability to train to that over time they were pretty comfortable that they would be able to do that over time," he said. "They may have struggled that particular day because their job is maybe a desk job and they weren't able to do 100 pull-ups or whatever they were doing in that regard. "But there was confidence that if they really had a desire to do that career field, and had the ability to train to it, the test subjects all thought that they would be able to accomplish the task and be successful," he added.

The findings -- which have been submitted to Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James as she considers lifting restrictions on women serving in direct-action combat jobs -- will likely raise questions about a recent Marine Corps study that found female Marines struggled to perform some infantry tasks and were more likely to be injured on the job than their male peers. The service secretaries have until the end of the month to make recommendations to Defense Secretary Ashton Carter on whether to open direct-action combat jobs such as infantry to women. Under a 2013 directive from then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, the military services must open all combat jobs to women by next year or explain why any must stay closed.

Airmen with the 552nd Air Control Wing and 513th Air Control Group pose for a photograph prior to making an historic all-female flight

James has already signaled that she intends to open the remaining Air Force jobs closed to women. "I don't see any barriers to opening up those remaining career fields" that are still closed to women so long as gender-neutral standards are kept in place, she said on Monday to applause from the audience at the conference, which is being held this week in National Harbor, Maryland, by the Air Force Association. Her comments came a month after Army Capt. Kristen Griest and 1st Lt. Shaye Haver made history by becoming the first women to graduate from the Army Ranger School and earn the coveted Ranger Tab. The vast majority -- upwards of 99 percent -- of the Air Force's military occupational specialties are already open to women, Kelly said. "They Air Force had a shorter distance to go" than the other services, he said.

Indeed, there are just six MOSs -- all in Special Operations -- with about 4,000 positions currently closed to female airmen, Kelly said. They include two officer specialties (special tactics officer and combat rescue officer) and four enlisted specialties (combat controller, pararescue, special operations weather and tactical air control party, or TAC-P), he said. The Air Force conducted the gender-integrated tests at San Antonio because they didn't have enough time to enroll women into the training pipeline for Special Operations career fields, a process that can last two to three years, and wanted to develop a predictive model for performance, Kelly said. Tasks included two-man teams carrying a litter up a helicopter ramp, he said. "We know what the weights of those are and how steep that ramp is," he said. "Those operational tasks became the standard for our study. "When you use those as your standards and say these are the things that have to be accomplished that we know directly tie to the operational requirement on the battlefield, that's when you can say, 'A standard is a standard,'" Kelly said. "It doesn't matter what your gender is or who you are, as long as you can perform that standard."

Early Tests Show Female Airmen Can Perform Many SpecOps Tasks: General | Military.com

 

[waltky]

Marines want to reserve some combat jobs away from women...

Marines to Seek to Close Some Combat Jobs to Women, Officials Say
Sep 18, 2015 | WASHINGTON -- The Marine Corps is expected to ask that women not be allowed to compete for several front-line combat jobs, inflaming tensions between Navy and Marine leaders, U.S. officials say.

The tentative decision has ignited a debate over whether Navy Secretary Ray Mabus can veto any Marine Corps proposal to prohibit women from serving in certain infantry and reconnaissance positions. And it puts Gen. Joseph Dunford, the Marine Corps commandant who takes over soon as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at odds with the other three military services, who are expected to open all of their combat jobs to women. No final decisions have been made or forwarded to Pentagon leaders, but officials say Defense Secretary Ash Carter is aware of the dispute and intends to review the Marine plan. The Marine Corps is part of the Navy, so Mabus is secretary of both services.

The ongoing divide has put Dunford in the spotlight as he prepares to start his new job next week. And it puts him in a somewhat awkward position of eventually having to review and pass judgment -- as chairman -- on a waiver request that he submitted himself while serving as Marine commandant. The debate includes jabs at Mabus for his public criticism of the Marine plan that triggered a call for his resignation from a member of Congress. Officials say the Army, Navy and Air Force are expected to allow women to serve in all combat jobs and will not ask Carter for any exceptions. They say that Special Operations Command is also likely to allow women to compete for the most demanding military commando jobs -- including the Navy SEALs -- though with the knowledge that it may be years before women even try to enter those fields. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

Marine Sgt. Emma A. Bringas and Lance Cpl. Terrence A. Lay fire the MK153 shoulder-launched multipurpose assault weapon during a Ground Combat Element Integrated Task Force pilot test at Twentynine Palms.

Mabus on Monday made his position clear. "I'm not going to ask for an exemption for the Marines, and it's not going to make them any less fighting effective," he said, adding that the Navy SEALs also will not seek any waivers. "I think they will be a stronger force because a more diverse force is a stronger force. And it will not make them any less lethal." Mabus' comments angered Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., who has asked Carter in a letter to demand Mabus' resignation because he "openly disrespected the Marine Corps as an institution, and he insulted the competency of Marines by disregarding their professional judgment, their combat experience and their quality of leadership."

Hunter, who served as a Marine in Iraq and Afghanistan, said Mabus' comments raise questions about whether he can be objective and continue to lead the Marine Corps. And he said Mabus should have no role in any decisions about women in the Marine Corps. Under the current plan, the service chiefs will present their plans to the service secretaries, who will then forward recommendations to Carter. He will make the final decisions by the end of the year. If Dunford does seek the exception, it puts the new Joint Chiefs chairman at odds with public statements by Carter asserting that anyone, regardless of gender, who meets the standards and requirements for a job should be allowed to do it.

More Marines to Seek to Close Some Combat Jobs to Women, Officials Say | Military.com

 

[usmcstinger]

The reality of the times has not changed. Marine Grunts must rely on each other in Combat. Non Hackers have no place in combat. Let's not forget the biological issues between Men and Women. If you were not a Marine Grunt in Combat, your opinion is based on nothing.

The Secretary of Navy and his Admirals haven't participated in Ground Combat Operations and have no business second guessing the Marine Generals who have. However, God Bless the Navy Corpsmen who serve in combat with the Grunts.

C 1/4 0311 Vietnam 6/67 to 2/68 Northern I Corps fighting the North Vietnamese Army.

 

[HenryBHough]

What now?

Why lower the standards!

That's the ObAmerican way!

 

[bodecea]

If the women cannot make the cut ... Then there is no need to reduce our standards.
Combat isn't necessarily a social engineering experiment.
If any women can make the cut in the future there shouldn't be a problem ... Plenty of men have been failed to qualify and alternate arrangements were not made for them.

.

Right....if they can't make it, they can't make it. Someday, someone will.

 

[usmcstinger]

Uncle Ferd says, "Womens always wantin' to fight...

Head of SpecOps Command: Decision on Women in Combat Imminent
Sep 16, 2015 | The commander of U.S. Special Operations Command said today that his recommendation on women serving in direct-action combat units would be ready in days.

Gen. Joseph Votel would not talk directly about the recommendation, but said that diversity was extremely valuable to special operations forces. "I expect to get our recommendation on the behalf of SOCOM to the secretary of defense probably here in the next week," Votel told an audience at the 2015 Maneuver Conference at Fort Benning, Ga. "I will tell you from a SOF standpoint, from a SOCOM standpoint, we value people. People are our most important resource. "We are an organization that the nation expects to be able to go out and work in a variety of different areas with a variety of different people. And so I would make the argument that diversity is extraordinarily important to us."

Votel's comments come on the heels of a recent speech by Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus, who said that Marine infantry, Navy SEALs, and all other combat jobs in the Navy Department will open to women by the end of this year. Mabus made his decision after criticizing a lengthy Marine Corps experiment that compared all-male combat units to ones that included women. The Marines released a four-page summary of results last week indicating that all-male units performed significantly better on 69 percent of tactical tasks, and female troops were injured at more than twice the rate as men. Votel did not reference the Marine study in his speech but said that SOCOM has "paid considerable amount of attention to not just our own studies, but we have looked at a lot of the other studies the other services have done."

Then Votel referenced the role females played in special operations raids in Afghanistan. "For years, we did raids and we did operations in Afghanistan, went into compounds and did stuff, and we missed 50 percent of the population every time we went," Votel said. "When we included small cultural support teams made up of female volunteers who went through a very specific training course that brought them to a level of a standard of performance where they could move with our strike forces … we changed the dynamic on the battlefield."

MORE

See also:

Early Tests Show Female Airmen Can Perform Many SpecOps Tasks: General
Sep 15, 2015 | Preliminary tests show female airmen can perform many of the same battlefield tasks as their male counterparts in Special Operations positions, a general said.

The Air Force ran a series of tests involving 170 airmen, including about 70 women, between May and July at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, Texas, to predict how they would perform on a series of physical tasks required on the battlefield and for Special Operations jobs, according to Brig. Gen. Brian Kelly, the service's director of military force management policy. "In lots of cases, they were able to compete and stay up with the men," Kelly said on Tuesday during a briefing with reporters at the annual Air and Space Conference held outside Washington, D.C. He later confirmed they did so most of the time. "There were some tasks and places where they would say had they known that that was the task and had they the ability to train to that over time they were pretty comfortable that they would be able to do that over time," he said. "They may have struggled that particular day because their job is maybe a desk job and they weren't able to do 100 pull-ups or whatever they were doing in that regard. "But there was confidence that if they really had a desire to do that career field, and had the ability to train to it, the test subjects all thought that they would be able to accomplish the task and be successful," he added.

The findings -- which have been submitted to Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James as she considers lifting restrictions on women serving in direct-action combat jobs -- will likely raise questions about a recent Marine Corps study that found female Marines struggled to perform some infantry tasks and were more likely to be injured on the job than their male peers. The service secretaries have until the end of the month to make recommendations to Defense Secretary Ashton Carter on whether to open direct-action combat jobs such as infantry to women. Under a 2013 directive from then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, the military services must open all combat jobs to women by next year or explain why any must stay closed.

Airmen with the 552nd Air Control Wing and 513th Air Control Group pose for a photograph prior to making an historic all-female flight

James has already signaled that she intends to open the remaining Air Force jobs closed to women. "I don't see any barriers to opening up those remaining career fields" that are still closed to women so long as gender-neutral standards are kept in place, she said on Monday to applause from the audience at the conference, which is being held this week in National Harbor, Maryland, by the Air Force Association. Her comments came a month after Army Capt. Kristen Griest and 1st Lt. Shaye Haver made history by becoming the first women to graduate from the Army Ranger School and earn the coveted Ranger Tab. The vast majority -- upwards of 99 percent -- of the Air Force's military occupational specialties are already open to women, Kelly said. "They Air Force had a shorter distance to go" than the other services, he said.

Indeed, there are just six MOSs -- all in Special Operations -- with about 4,000 positions currently closed to female airmen, Kelly said. They include two officer specialties (special tactics officer and combat rescue officer) and four enlisted specialties (combat controller, pararescue, special operations weather and tactical air control party, or TAC-P), he said. The Air Force conducted the gender-integrated tests at San Antonio because they didn't have enough time to enroll women into the training pipeline for Special Operations career fields, a process that can last two to three years, and wanted to develop a predictive model for performance, Kelly said. Tasks included two-man teams carrying a litter up a helicopter ramp, he said. "We know what the weights of those are and how steep that ramp is," he said. "Those operational tasks became the standard for our study. "When you use those as your standards and say these are the things that have to be accomplished that we know directly tie to the operational requirement on the battlefield, that's when you can say, 'A standard is a standard,'" Kelly said. "It doesn't matter what your gender is or who you are, as long as you can perform that standard."

Early Tests Show Female Airmen Can Perform Many SpecOps Tasks: General | Military.com

We are talking about Ground Combat against enemy forces. It is up front and personal. The Air Force, Navy and Army Secretaries understanding of Ground Combat Operations is Zero. Comparing Navy Seals, Marine and Army Grunts to Air Force and Navy MOS's is complete idiocy. Such attempts will serve only to increase KIAS and WIAS!

 

[waltky]

KIAS=Killed in action...

WIAS=Womens in action?

 

[waltky]

Congressman against womens in combat...

Congressman Demands Navy Secretary's Resignation over Women in Combat
Sep 18, 2015 | A Republican congressman is demanding the resignation of the Navy’s secretary for his plans to open Marine Corps infantry positions to women despite a study that found that all-male units outperformed units with females on such tasks.

Rep. Duncan Hunter, a member of the House Armed Services Committee and Marine Corps veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, in a letter asked Defense Secretary Ashton Carter to demand Navy Secretary Ray Mabus’ resignation for disregarding the professional judgment of Marine leaders that women should not serve in certain direct-action combat jobs, the Associated Press reported. Mabus recently announced he intends to open Marine infantry, Navy SEALs, and all other combat jobs in the Navy by the end of this year with no exemptions to the new gender-neutral employment policy in the Defense Department. "Secretary Mabus is quickly proving that he's a political hack who cares more about doing the White House's bidding than the combat effectiveness of the Marine Corps," Hunter said in a statement. "Mabus is not only insulting the Marine Corps as an institution, but he's essentially telling Marines that their experience and judgment doesn't matter," the congressman added.

Despite the announcement from Mabus, the Marine Corps is expected to ask that women not be allowed to compete for several front-line combat jobs, military officials said. The tentative decision has ignited a debate over whether Mabus can veto any Marine Corps proposal to prohibit women from serving in certain infantry and reconnaissance positions. And it puts Gen. Joseph Dunford, the Marine Corps commandant who takes over soon as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at odds with the other three military services, who are expected to open all of their combat jobs to women. The debate has spilled out over social media as well. Many Military.com readers hold the opinion that politics is driving gender integration and that the services have no choice but to open up infantry and other close-combat jobs to women. In January 2013, then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta mandated that the services must open all direct-action combat jobs must be opened up to women by 2016, or explain why they must stay closed.

Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., a member of the House Armed Services Committee.

No final decisions have been made or forwarded to Pentagon leaders, but officials say Defense Secretary Ash Carter is aware of the dispute and intends to review the Marine plan. The Marine Corps is part of the Navy, so Mabus is secretary of both services. The Marine study found that all-male squads, teams and crews demonstrated higher performance levels on "69% of tasks evaluated (93 of 134)" as compared to gender-integrated squads, teams and crews, according to the executive summary of the study. The Marine study found evidence of "higher injury rates for females when compared to males performing the same tactical tasks," according to the study. The report acknowledged that "female Marines have performed superbly in the combat environments of Iraq and Afghanistan and are fully part of the fabric of a combat-hardened Marine Corps after the longest period of continuous combat operations in the Corps' history."

But the report also pointed to the 25-year-old report by a presidential commission on women in the armed forces that concluded: "Risking the lives of a military unit in combat to provide career opportunities or accommodate the personal desires or interests of an individual, or group of individuals, is more than bad military judgment. It is morally wrong." The services have been slowly integrating women into previously male-only roles, including as Army artillery officers and sailors on Navy submarines. Adding to the debate was the groundbreaking graduation last month of two women in the Army's grueling Ranger course.

Congressman Demands Navy Secretary's Resignation over Women in Combat | Military.com

See also:

Marines See Benefits to Women in Combat, as Well as Risks
Sep 24, 2015 | The Marine Corps general in charge of implementing a Pentagon plan to open ground combat jobs to women concluded there are benefits as well as significant risks to the proposal, and he outlined ways to eliminate most of an anticipated weakening of combat effectiveness during the transition, according to a document leaked Wednesday to The San Diego Union-Tribune.

The 14-page memorandum and 19 pages of enclosures by Brig. Gen. George Smith Jr., director of the Marine Corps Force Innovation Office, were submitted to the commandant to help the Marine leader decide how far gender integration should go. The assessment states that integrating female troops into the ground combat arms will add some risk of reduced performance in combat, as well as cost. "While this risk can be mitigated by various methods to address failure rates, injuries, and ability to perform the mission, the bottom line is that the physiological differences between males and females will likely always be evident to some extent," it says. Although it does not make a specific recommendation which units to keep closed to women, the risk is highest for infantry units, especially crew-served heavy weapons, and "significantly lower for the non-infantry combat arms," it says.

Among potential benefits that women could bring to ground combat units that are cited in the Marine Corps assessment are enhanced decision-making in the field and fewer disciplinary problems. The document signed and dated Aug. 18 has not been released by the Marine Corps, which did not dispute its authenticity but declined to comment on its contents. A senior Pentagon official who followed the Marine Corps research from the beginning said it accurately reflects the thinking of the Marine brass and previously undisclosed research findings. Marine officials also declined to share details of Gen. Joseph Dunford's recommendation last week to Navy Secretary Ray Mabus asking to keep some front-line combat units closed to women, a decision that was informed by the Force Innovation Office assessment.

Mabus had questioned the premise and methodology of the Corps' yearlong experiment on women in ground combat, saying the performance and physiological characteristics of female troops on average is not cause to bar all women from ground combat jobs. According to a 4-page selection of results released by the Marine Corps on Sept. 10, researchers found that all-male units were faster and more lethal than mixed-gender units on most combat tasks. The Corps has not released actual data from the experiment, only summaries. Mabus and other critics say it was not designed or executed in a way that would predict the effect on unit performance if women are allowed to compete against men for combat jobs. Outside of the task force experiment, the Corps' highest-performing women theoretically would replace its lowest-performing men, potentially increasing overall combat effectiveness.

The Marine Corps is following guidelines from the office of the Secretary of Defense regarding the release of its gender integration research, said Capt. Philip Kulczewski, a Marine spokesman at the Pentagon. Furthermore, the commandant "provided his recommendation to the Secretary of the Navy in private and believes that his best military advice should remain private during the deliberation process until the Secretary of Defense has reviewed all inputs and made a decision," Kulczewski said. The services are scheduled to brief Congress next Wednesday regarding prospects for eliminating all restrictions on women in combat by year's end. The Marine Corps is expected to make an additional presentation afterward in a closed-door session.

Marine conclusions

 

[Delta4Embassy]

So, the last of the women trying to complete the Marine combat course have failed the physical end of the course.....now what? Is this where the politicians step in and lower standards...because that will be the only way to pass women through to ground combat units....

Last IOC in Marine infantry experiment drops female officers


But as the research continued, few volunteers took advantage of the opportunity. By July 2014, only 20 female officers had attempted the course. Only one made it through the Combat Endurance Test, and none made it to the end.

In an effort to achieve their goal of 100 female volunteers cycling through IOC, the Marine Corps opened the course to female company-grade officers in October 2014, making hundreds more Marines eligible for the course. The Corps also began requiring that volunteers get a first-class score on the male version of the service's Physical Fitness Test in an effort to better prepare them for the rigors of IOC.

The effort was a mixed success. In the October iteration of IOC, three of the seven female volunteers made it through the Combat Endurance Test, bringing the total number of women to pass the test to four. Two of those who passed the test were captains from the fleet. As time passed, no influx of volunteers materialized, however.

No females this time. Presumedly men failed as well. Doesn't mean they lower the standards though. American Ninja Warrior is a good example. Women compete on the same course as the men with no changes. All have failed so far. But eventually one wont. And most of hte men fail too. Way it goes.

As depicted in "Babyblue Marine" is always the Army.