Norwegian warship accident raises questions on women in armed forces - "A multi-million dollar warship under the NATO command was entirely submerged after it struck an oil tanker in the early hours of November 8 in a Norwegian fjord.The KNM Helge Ingstad, dubbed as 'unsinkable', collided with a Malta oil tanker Sola TS. A 10-metre-long gash was torn into the side of the warship, which is one of the five in Norway's navy. The tanker, however, is said to be unharmed... Questions remain as to why the well-equipped warship could not avoid hitting the slow moving, 62,557 ton, 250-metre-long oil tanker. The KMN Helge Ingstad is one of the five Nansen-class frigates billed as “unsinkable” due to its construction with water-tight zones designed to keep the warship “intact and operable”... The crash and the subsequent sinking of the frigate has given rise to discussions on gender politics and political correctness in Norway.Sound recordings and radar logs have revealed crude, almost incomprehensible, human errors made by the crew. According to experienced naval officers, the mistakes make the crew look amateurs. This, too, seems to have supported the claim of sceptics who have wondered about the role of women in armed forces.In 2016, Norway introduced conscription for women. The Navy received the highest number of women after conscription duties were introduced.The Norwegian publication Armed Forces had in an article heaped praises on the KNM Helge Ingstad crew in which four out of five navigatos were women. “It is advantageous to have many women on board. It will be a natural thing and a completely different environment, which I look at as positive,” Lieutenant Iselin Emilie Jakobsen Ophus, a navigation officer at the warship, had said.Norwegian journalist, military expert and political analyst Helge Lurås has suggested that the dramatic incident is closely related to the proportion of women in the Norwegian Armed Forces.Luras claimed that the inclusion of women in the armed forces has had an effect on its professional culture. He writes that the armed forces prefer to be politically correct by increasing the number of women in the agency. "It is assumed that women make the Armed Forces better. Those who should think otherwise, receive a plain message that their opinions are undesirable," Lurås wrote. Luras questioned Navy's reluctance in giving out the details of the incident as to who were at the helm at the time. He asks whether the Navy's priority should be spending energy and resources on 'integration' and creating a 'balanced' work environment or defending the country with the best available resources.The uninsured frigate has cost the Norwegian Navy its entire annual budget, but the country also lost millions of dollars with several oil and gas fields being temporarily shut down due to the accident."
Get woke, go broke
Royal Norwegian Navy comes under fire in HNoMS Helge Ingstad collision report - ""The navy lacked competence requirements for instructors and procedures to ensure the functioning of the bridge team while administering training... As a consequence of the clearance process, the career ladder for fleet officers in the navy and the shortage of qualified navigators to man the frigates, officers of the watch had been granted clearance sooner, had a lower level of experience and had less time as officer of the watch than used to be the case"... This implies that due to a shortage of personnel, officers are being pushed through the process quicker than in the past, resulting in a lack of operational experience. The report recommends the navy undertake measures to ensure “that bridge teams have a sufficient level of competence and experience”.It also suggests that the navy review its bridge procedures and governance to solve issues of “organisation, leadership and teamwork” that played a role in the Helge Ingstad’s collision."
Deployed US Navy Has a Pregnancy Problem, and It’s Getting Worse - "A record 16 out of 100 Navy women are reassigned from ships to shore duty due to pregnancy, according to data obtained under the Freedom of Information Act... That number is up 2 percent from 2015, representing hundreds more who have to cut their deployments short, taxing both their unit’s manpower, military budgets and combat readiness. Further, such increases cast a shadow over the lofty gender integration goals set by former President Barack Obama. Overall, women unexpectedly leave their stations on Navy ships as much as 50 percent more frequently to return to land duty, according to documents obtained from the Navy... The evacuation of pregnant women is costly for the Navy. Jude Eden, a nationally known author about women in the military who served in 2004 as a Marine deployed to Iraq, said a single transfer can cost the Navy up to $30,000 for each woman trained for a specific task, then evacuated from an active duty ship and sent to land. That figure translates into $115 million in expenses for 2016 alone... “A pregnancy takes you out of action for about two years. And there’s no replacement,” said Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, a nonpartisan public policy organization. “So everybody else has to work all that harder,” adding that on small ships and on submarines, “you really have a potential crew disaster.”... The Navy has been dogged for years by lingering claims that some women get pregnant simply to avoid deployment... the Navy provided many lucrative incentives to men and women — including free housing, medical care, recreation and educational opportunities.But women got additional benefits, including free prenatal care, daycare, counseling, and special education for toddlers and children with disabilities or for other “special needs.”“Since benefits offered to recruits who are women are so very generous, it almost becomes an incentive,” said Donnelly. “One feminist advocate many years ago referred to the military as a ‘Mecca for single moms.’”... Obama, during his eight years in office, sought to increase dramatically the number of women on ships.In May 2015, Admiral Michelle Howard announced a quota of 25 percent of women on all ships... Former Navy Secretary Ray Mabus in September 2015 pushed the new policy, stating that the Navy SEALs and all other combat jobs in the Navy should be open to women, with no exemptions as part of the Pentagon’s new “gender-neutral” employment policy.Eden believes the policy of increasing women on ships results in failure. “It’s bad policy when you think of ships that have to be battle-ready and then have to transfer women off for pregnancy — something that has to do with controlled behavior or voluntary behavior”"
Presumably more gender diversity is needed so the navy can be even more exposed to operational risk
The US Marines tested all-male squads against mixed-gender ones, and the results were pretty bleak - "In 2013, the US military lifted its ban on women serving in combat. Shortly after, the Marine Corps began what it calls an “unprecedented research effort” to understand the impact of gender integration on its combat forces. That took the form of a year-long experiment called the Ground Combat Element Integrated Task Force, in which 400 Marines—100 of them female—trained for combat together and then undertook a simulated deployment, with every facet of their experience measured and scrutinized."
Debunking the Israeli 'women in combat' myth - ""it is a common misperception that Israel allows women in combat units. In fact, women have been barred from combat in Israel since 1950, when a review of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War showed how harmful their presence could be. The study revealed that men tried to protect and assist women rather than continue their attack. As a result, they not only put their own lives in greater danger, but also jeopardized the survival of the entire unit. The study further revealed that unit morale was damaged when men saw women killed and maimed on the battlefield"... Writes Edward Norton, a reservist in the Israel Defense Forces: "Women have always played an important role in the Israeli military, but they rarely see combat; if they do, it is usually by accident. No one in Israel, including feminists, has any objection to this situation. The fact that the Persian Gulf War has produced calls to allow women on the front lines proves only how atypical that war was and how little Americans really understand combat." "Few serious armies use women in combat roles. Israel, which drafts most of its young women and uses them in all kinds of military work, has learned from experience to take them out of combat zones. Tests show that few women have the upper-body strength required for combat tasks. Keeping combat forces all male would not be discriminatory, as were earlier racial segregation schemes in the military, because men and women are different both physically and psychologically"... Israeli historian Martin Van Creveld has written extensively about the failure of the IDF to successfully integrate and use women in combat.Finally, even Israeli citizens don't relish the thought of allowing their women into combat roles. In 1998, a survey conducted by the Jerusalem Post newspaper found that 56 percent of Israelis don't want women in combat."
DTIC ADA262626: Women in Direct Combat: What Is the Price for Equality - "Women fighting as members the Soviet Army during WWII and Israeli Army during the War for Independence form the historical basis for the evaluation. Current issues include: physiological and psychological studies to provide data to evaluate relative physical and mental capabilities, a comparative analysis of women serving as guerrillas, police, and firemen, as well as, a review of the Canadian Forces' experience with gender integration. From this assessment, the monograph concludes that allowing women to serve in direct combat units would reduce cohesion and subsequently combat effectiveness"
Female Marine and Army recruits suffer injuries from £79million battle kit designed for men - "The high-tech £79 million Virtus battle equipment system is causing women trying to become Britain's first commandos and infantry soldiers to endure agonising leg and hip problems, according to scientists.They say the 90-litre capacity rucksack is too big for most female troops while the webbing pouches used to carry ammunition and worn around the waist hurt their hips, which are naturally wider than a man's... In 2013, female RAF recruits were awarded £100,000 after suffering pelvic fractures caused by marching in step with taller male colleagues during basic training.
Clearly, the solution is for the women to carry less and let their male comrades carry the rest (since women get injured more than men regardless). And to introduce special kit designed not just for women's but also trans people's bodies.
Women in the Infantry: A Reflection on The Experiences of Allied Nations - "Tasks are deemed “essential” according to the consequences that follow from failure to complete them. Essential tasks are those whose failure would result in at least one of the following:
Injury or death to the Canadian Armed Forces or to the general public
Compromise the outcome of a mission or operation
Cause significant damage to Crown (i.e., government) property
Unless the CAF can show that one of these three consequences is reasonably likely to occur as a result of failure to perform a task, then they cannot enforce the task as an occupational standard... after reviewing after action reports from Afghanistan and training exercises, Canada found that using the fireman carry to extract a wounded comrade is a nice fantasy but dragging is overwhelmingly more common... The CAF occupational standards are also informed by the legal Duty to Accommodate, which states that Canadian employers must provide employees the leeway to complete occupational tasks with work methods to which they are individually suited. In other words, for the purpose of placing a heavy box on a high shelf, it is not the business of the CAF to dictate that a soldier favors the use of his/her arms or hips or legs. Their only business is whether the box makes it atop the shelf. (There’s a lesson here for the US Army, who recently found that despite a relative lack of upper body strength, women were able to load heavy objects by emphasizing their hips and core in the lifting movement.)... the US military community’s concern for women’s pullup strength seems out of proportion to the unique demands of combat. In the participating allied countries, upper body strength is measured with a more diverse set of exercises and in a smaller proportion to the rest of the PFT. Corporal Malin Tilfors, a female Combat Craft Driver in the Swedish Marine Corps, noted that the ability to stay awake without eating for days at a time has played a much larger role than upper body strength in her combat training"
US army halts gender neutral fitness test as women struggle - "The US army is considering scrapping its new gender neutral fitness test because women have been failing in much larger numbers than men.Research showed that the Army Combat Fitness Test (ACFT), which is the same for male and female soldiers, was leading to lower results for women with a knock-on effect for promotions.An early Pentagon study showed women were failing the ACFT at a rate of 65 per cent, compared with 10 per cent for men. Congress has halted implementation of the new test and the army has begun an independent review into whether it is fair. It has been suggested that the standard test could be evaluated differently for men and women... average scores for women so far are said to have been 100 points lower.Congress has now declared that the test in its current form should not be a factor in deciding whether someone gets promoted... An army officer told Military.com: "We have to figure out a way to make it fair to both genders.""
Good luck at the next war
So much for equal pay for equal work
With Equal Opportunity Comes Equal Responsibility: Lowering Fitness Standards to Accommodate Women Will Hurt the Army—and Women - "As the Army’s first female infantry officer, I have long awaited the elimination of a gender-based fitness test. The drastically lower female standards of the old Army Physical Fitness Test (APFT) not only jeopardized mission readiness in combat units but also reinforced the false notion that women are categorically incapable of performing the same job as men. The new Army Combat Fitness Test (ACFT) promised to alleviate these issues by finally assessing women on the same fitness scale as men and setting minimum physical standards based on branch requirements rather than gender.However, these gender-neutral standards have recently garnered criticism. Due to an initial ACFT fail rate of 54 percent among women, activist groups have raised concerns that the test will disadvantage female servicemembers. As such, lawmakers directed the Army to halt implementation of the ACFT until the service can prove it will not negatively impact the recruitment and retention of soldiers in critical support jobs, particularly those with large female populations... First, reverting to gender-based scoring could drastically reduce the performance and effectiveness of combat arms units. Specifically, without a separate, minimum standard for combat arms, the requirements to join the nation’s combat forces could soon be as low as performing ten push-ups in two minutes, running two miles in twenty-one minutes, deadlifting 140 pounds three times, and performing only one repetition of a leg tuck or, failing that, two minutes of a plank exercise. Proponents of this ACFT standard will undoubtedly claim that it is an appropriate predictor of success for combat arms soldiers; as a recent infantry company commander, I can promise you it is not. While these low standards may have seemed adequate in a controlled study, I know from experience that they will not suffice in reality.Indeed, the presence of just a handful of individuals who cannot run two miles faster than twenty-one minutes has the potential to derail a training exercise, not to mention an actual combat patrol. Entire companies of 130 soldiers will be forced to frequently halt operations in order to medically evacuate the ill-prepared as they succumb to fatigue and injury. Missions will be delayed and other soldiers will be overburdened with the weight of their unfit teammates’ equipment. This scenario is inconvenient and bad for morale during a training exercise; in combat it could be deadly. Instead of addressing the issue of having some soldiers insufficiently prepared for the physical rigors of combat, which sparked the APFT’s revision in the first place, a gender-based ACFT in combat arms will normalize it and make it unmanageable. It is wholly unethical to allow the standards of the nation’s premiere fighting units to degrade so badly, just to accommodate the lowest-performing soldiers. Reverting to gender-based scoring and reducing the minimum standard for combat arms will also hurt the women in those branches. Under a gender-based system, women in combat arms have to fight every day to dispel the notion that their presence inherently weakens these previously all-male units. Lower female standards also reinforce the belief that women cannot perform the same job as men, therefore making it difficult for women to earn the trust and confidence of their teammates. The original ACFT promised some respite from these perceptions, but a reversion to gender-based scoring threatens to validate them. While it may be difficult for a 120-pound woman to lift or drag 250 pounds, the Army cannot artificially absolve women of that responsibility; it may still exist on the battlefield. The entire purpose of creating a gender-neutral test was to acknowledge the reality that each job has objective physical standards to which all soldiers should be held, regardless of gender. The intent was not to ensure that women and men will have an equal likelihood of meeting those standards. Rather, it is incumbent upon women who volunteer for the combat arms profession to ensure they are fully capable and qualified for it. To not require women to meet equal standards in combat arms will not only undermine their credibility, but also place those women, their teammates, and the mission at risk."
Internalised misogyny!
What is the New 'Woke' Military Really Preparing Us For? - " social experimentation is directly undermining this readiness. This comes at a time when the military is already understaffed and overstretched, with fewer squadrons and active soldiers than defense experts—both inside and outside the government—recommend. The fitness of Navy ships and Navy readiness are also on the decline, as evidenced by the 2017 collision off the coast of Japan between a U.S. destroyer and a container ship. Presidents have deployed the military for all manner of objectives, which can only with great imagination be justified as defending national security, such as the 2012 hunt for Ugandan rebel leader Joseph Kony in the jungles of Uganda.Hasson is at his best when decrying the inanity of social justice initiatives imposed upon the armed forces. Our military academies, like secular academia writ-large, offer courses that attack America’s history and identity as backwards and corrupt, while promoting identity politics, the transgender agenda, and anti-religious sentiments. It fosters living arrangements that put people of all sexes and sexual identities together, a recipe for trouble...
'The credo of intersectionality is entirely incompatible with traditional military culture, with its hierarchy of command, its focus on duties rather than rights, and its emphasis on the merit, disciplined conduct, and professional competence of its members rather than their assumed victimhood.'
The military cannot afford to be a “safe space,” because it will never execute its mission in safe spaces. It cannot endure complaints about micro-aggressions, because the very nature of combat necessitates enduring acts of aggression. It cannot cater to all the unique variations of individual soldiers, because it is, in Hasson’s words, a “great equalizer” of men and women, regardless of race, ethnicity, sex, or economic status. The military now accepts transgender soldiers and even allows soldiers to “change” genders while in military service; it pays the bill for these treatments and accepts that those who undergo them will be unavailable for months. Not to mention that those who identify as transgender have much higher rates of psychological problems, including depression and suicide, than others. What is the military supposed to do when soldiers have these issues while deployed to places where they are consistently in combat? “These intensive medical procedures are simply incompatible with wartime service,” says Hasson. Unsurprisingly, a 2016 Military Times poll found that only 12 percent of active-duty troops thought the new Obama administration’s policy would improve readiness.Apart from this, according to Hasson’s documentation, there is also the lowering of standards in U.S. Army Ranger school, one of the most elite programs in the entire military. This allowed underperforming women to graduate. Women have also been allowed into combat units, despite mounting evidence compiled by the Marine Corps that co-ed units perform less well than their all-male counterparts. The harsh reality that men and women are physiologically different must be ignored to meet the demands of identity politics... Terrifyingly, 71 percent of Millennials are not even eligible for the military because they are obese, have criminal records, or lack high school diplomas or GEDs. The military is already granting waivers to many applicants to make up for their shortfalls. Meanwhile, our soldiers are being told that evangelical Christianity and Catholicism are forms of “religious extremism.”"
New Army hair and grooming standards allow for ponytails, buzz cuts and earrings - "The Army will make major changes to its hair and grooming policy, including allowing long ponytails, buzz cuts, earrings, lipstick and nail polish for women in uniform, in a push to be more inclusive... Another change also authorizes “professional” lipstick and nail polish, meaning no loud colors.Psychologists on the panel said such additions “allow the opportunity for a woman to still feel like a woman inside and outside of uniform,” Sanders said.“One thing we can never forget is that at the end of the day, our women are mothers, are spouses, they are sisters and they definitely want to be able to maintain their identity,” Sanders said.The changes also include cutting words from the existing regulations that are viewed as offensive or racist... The newest policies come after then-Secretary of Defense Mark Esper in July ordered a review of whether current grooming standards are racially biased, part of a directive aimed at stamping out racial discrimination within the military.While grooming regulations are meant to reinforce uniformity, many women of color have complained that the strict rules don’t allow for braids or other hairstyles that are easier for those with different textures and hair lengths.
How come it doesn't apply to men?
