An eye-rollingly bad flick. But it's a movie and it was made for entertainment purposes and that comes first in any movie. Realism always has to take a back seat to exposition, after all. ;-)

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

So basically this could be nothing more than an illness and we get national media coverage to whip up controversy and more media coverage.

I'll tell you this: every day, every one of us (our class started with 75 candidates) ate Motrin like it was going out of style. We called that stuff "BUD/S Candy," in fact. Back then, we had no idea that it could also be potentially harmful over the long term, in some cases. All we knew was that we needed some way to deaden pain that would keep you from getting in any kind of normal sleep (sleep deprivation was a constant companion) and make you curl up and want to suck your thumb. ;-)

We got the Navy corpsmen on staff at the amphibious base to give us large bottles of Motrin and we passed them around. I was probably taking several thousand milligrams daily for stretches at a time, at one point. So was everyone else. And all of us doubled our normal daily intake during Hell Week if we could get away with it ("if you ain't cheating, you ain't trying, so we had it hidden all over the place and the instructors were turning a blind eye, as well). During a timed 'O' course event, I'd ripped big patches of skin off the palms of my hands (the instructors had wrapped friction tape on various rungs on some obstacles). Add sand, sweat and seawater to that raw skin and teeth clenching pain was the order of the day. The only relief I and others got was from blessed, blessed Motrin, hahahaha!. So, yes: you had to learn to suffer well and suffer long at BUD/S.

(The ability to "out-suffer" the enemy is a hallmark of the U.S. military, after all, going back to the Revolutionary War, when Washington and his men conducted a winter amphibious night assault and killed a bunch of German mercenaries in their sleep. ;-)

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

But then are they going to be able to run? The SAS I suppose have different requirements, but there probably are a lot of similarities in the selection process. My mates brother just went through selection. One of the first things they do when they arrive is run a 5km TT, if you're not sub 20, you're on the next plane outta there. 20% candidates don't make it past the first day. But as well as running at speed you're going to have to be able to haul 30kg packs. Any women I know that run sub 20mins 5km are small and lean, weighing little over 50kg, no chance they are going to be able to carry a pack weighing 60% of their body weight for a long distance. And likewise any women capable of carrying heavy packs aren't going to be able run sub 20.

I apologize for the length of this reply, but it's necessary to give a full picture of what's going on here in the SPECOPS/SPECWAR world:


The injury rate among the women who have made it into just the straight-leg infantry units in the Army -- and what the Marine Corps has found from studying the issue closely among the women Marines going through the School of Infantry -- is higher than average (sometimes much higher). A recent Marine Corps study found several worrying physical (and physiological) issues when it came to women in trigger puller infantry units. Plus, it found that infantry units having WMs in them were less combat-effective than all-male infantry units. And it wasn't really about the mental aspects of the career, because the WMs were as hardcore Marine Corps and as motivated as the male Marines.

Rather, it came down to those same issues we discussed earlier in the thread: on average, men are physically stronger than women. Infantry type activities -- and especially special operations and special warfare tasks -- require physical strength and endurance, over a long haul, that most women don't as yet, on an evolutionary basis, possess.

Now take that basic minimum physical strength and endurance requirement for straight-leg ("non-Airborne") infantry units and multiply it by five or 10 when it comes to U.S. SPECOPS/SPECWAR training courses (BUD/S shares similarities with the SAS course at Hereford (and what color is the boathouse at Hereford? ;-) ;-). One can see, then, that there may be an issue, or several of them, that will negatively effect combat effectiveness among those units.

Something else to consider in support of the above thesis:

The Israelis, who pioneered roles for women in infantry related combat units, have apparently only had mixed success when it comes to the effort. According to a December 2016 article in TheTower(dot)org website:

"This summer, the IDF revealed in its weekly magazine that some 40 percent of women in the Caracal battalion sustained some kind of injury, as did 70 percent of women serving in the Artillery Corps. That is about twice as many injuries as those sustained by male soldiers in the same units." (Israeli Military Looks to Open More Combat Roles to Women | The Tower)

Israel is also considering allowing women in its elite special operations unit, Sayeret Matkal. This is for reasons of both "fairness" (though combat and war isn't "fair") as well as the fact that many in Israeli society's upper echelons come from that world, including the current prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. The thinking is that not being a part of an Israeli infantry unit (such as Caracal) or not coming from an elite SPECOPS force such as Sayeret Matkal could hold women back from advancing as highly as their desire can take them in general Israeli society.

The above similar physical injury outcomes, by the way, have also been found in U.S. Army and Marine Corps combat arms units (artillery, armor, infantry...not so much in air) where women have been offered the opportunity to serve in an infantry military occupational specialty.

I've also seen it out in the field myself, and that was just in Marine Corps "in the rear with the gear" type units such as medical battalions, motor transport battalions and other combat support units. On forced marches of anywhere from 10km to 40km, with full packs and in full field gear (the Army calls it "Battle Rattle"), many women I observed on such events "fell out," meaning they had to ditch their packs and hop in the Humvees (to be fair, a number of males also did, but it was still a far lower number than the females). This is one of the little secrets many an Army or Marine Corps infantry troop can relate to others upon seeing such units training to do their part when it comes to rear area security, patrolling and so forth.

In the Marine Corps, it's true that "every Marine is a rifleman," and women Marines must meet the same rifle qualification, drill, proficiency and conduct (Pros and Cons) and other non-infantry-related requirements as male Marines (but not the same physical qualification standards), and they are definitely no less a Marine than any male who's serving, or has served, as a Marine. I'm glad we have women Marines (and Sailors and Airmen and Soldiers), believe me. I just don't think they'll be as effective an addition to 'leg (and airborne) infantry units as is hoped for by the various interest groups pushing for their inclusion in that world.

As far as SPECOPS/SPECWAR? I'm just not seeing how there's going to be any sort of good outcome when it comes to bringing women into those communities. The Army's already "normalized" the physical qualification standards for the black-and-gold Ranger tab training course ("normalized" means "lowered") in order to push female candidates through. And just because you're a Soldier and have the Ranger tab doesn't mean you're a Ranger. You're "Ranger qualified." To be a Ranger, you must be a member of the Army's 75th Ranger Regiment. My Guard officer wife, along with several Rangers I know who have heard back from both Ranger school training battalion and the 75th Ranger Regiment, has said that the women were cut several breaks by Ranger school staff on orders from Army uniformed higher-ups during some training phases to get them through...which is enraging some folks at 75th Ranger Regiment.





"Regiment" is the elite assault force in the U.S. Army (Special Forces is a different world and they're not constituted to serve in an assault capacity. Consider them to be similar to SAS in many ways...with many Delta Force folks coming from SF, as well as Ranger Regiment). It's where the special operations "rubber meets the road." To be a part of the 75th Ranger Regiment you have to be a "stud warrior," basically. To get to Regiment you first have to complete:

-- Basic Combat Training (the Army's "boot camp"), which every Soldier does (except former Marines, who are given a pass on BCT)

-- Infantry School (tough course)

-- Airborne School (tough course)

-- Ranger Assessment and Selection Program, or "RASP," a ball-buster of an 8-week assessment and training course held at Fort Benning, Georgia. If you don't make it through RASP -- and many Soldiers don't, for physical as well as mental reasons -- you don't get to go to 75th Ranger Regiment. You're sized up by training cadre and if they think you're not a good fit, you don't get to go to Regiment. So you have to be in outstanding physical condition, be well-equipped when it comes to infantry skills and be motivated to a very high degree. And even then, assessment and selection staff may decide you're just not going to be a good fit at Regiment.


What's funny is that you don't necessarily have to have the black-and-gold "Ranger" tab in order to do all this. Once you get to Regiment, the staff there will decide when you're ready to attend the Ranger course, which is an 8-12 week combat leadership training school that almost any Soldier (male and female now), from almost every Army career field (including cooks and bakers ;-), can attend. According to a member of the 75th Ranger Regiment's staff, the course is:


"...designed to teach small unit infantry tactics. It is also designed to simulate the stresses of combat, at least as far as sleep and food deprivation, and planning and execution. It cannot simulate being under fire or seeing members of your unit killed. Students are culled from all units in the army as well as a smaller number coming from other units, namely the Marine Corps." (ed. I've served with many RECON Marines who've attended Ranger School.)

The point to all the above hot air and hoohaw from me is that adding women to what's a deadly-lethal special operations/special warfare business doesn't seem to me to make any sense. U.S. military elite units never lack for male applicants, for one, and the physical qualification standards -- which have been refined over decades of experience and study (centuries, in the case of Rangers) -- seem to me to be appropriate, given the missions that these units are assigned.

Again, assuming that 1 out of 100 (maybe) women could successfully pound their way through such training, why are we doing it? There's never going to be a large-enough number of women to justify all the actions that are going to have to be taken to accommodate their needs, including lowering physical qualification standards. So what's the point?

NOT becoming a member of the U.S. SPECOPS/SPECWAR community has also never held back a military service member (officer or enlisted) from career advancement. In my era, in fact, being a SEAL may have actually hurt at least the officers in the Navy's ranks. In some cases many in the rest of the line officer community looked at SPECWAR officers with some suspicion or even disdain, sometimes because those units lacked military decorum and officer and enlisted members were overly informal with each other. ;-)

Given all the above, I again have to ask the question: Why would women want to do this? They're supposed to be smarter than the menfolks, right? I'm just not seeing the strategic or tactical wisdom in this push to put women in SPECOPS/SPECWAR units.

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."