MilPub

In the march to equality (androgyny?), this year saw the first three female graduates from Ranger school. Ranger agrees with those who feel that the admission of females will lower the standards of Infantry combat training as well as the effectiveness of combat units But he also believes Ranger training was being degraded long before women entered the school.

Ranger's Ranger experience (referred to henceforth as "RR") was a far cry from today's climate-controlled living experience. Barracks were uninsulated and unheated in the depth of winter; windows were nailed open.

Ranger School had no niceties. RR's candidates were allowed five minutes in the mess hall, so a meal consisted mainly of  what you could stuff in your field jacket pockets, like Hoffman's grubby "Ratso Rizzo" in Midnight Cowboy. That is probably not the case today, as the candidates all looked clean and rested when Ranger had an opportunity to view the camp several years ago. The men from RR's looked like extreme reality show escapees.

They traveled to Mountain Ranger Camp (MRC) in 2 1/2 ton truck with canvas top, freezing in the wind chill of a North Georgia winter. They lived in primitive huts. The showers were cold, and there was a central latrine. They seldom slept more than four hours, and usually that was in the field with only a sleeping bag cover allowed. Rations were C-type.

Compare Ranger school's 2015 three-hour, 12-mile forced march component (the same standard that a non-elite group like female MP basic trainees had to meet 30 years ago) to RR's 19-mile forced march off 1968 with rucksacks and all normally carried TO&E equipment.

The forced march requirement now is only 60% of the 1968 standard. (Note: RR's 1968 training was a degradation still from that of basic line unit training in WWII, when the 2/506/101 performed a 56-mile forced march from Toccoa, GA to Atlanta.) RR's required five-mile run and all p.t. was done in 2-lb boots, not sneakers. His medics gave the men Darvon 600's so they could numb themselves during the day. 

Why the degradation in training? Is it because today's All Volunteer Army does not need to be as tough?

The female Ranger graduates were recycled more than once (having not passed previous classes.) Though recycling was not uncommon in Ranger's experience, only one attempt at recycling was allowed, and it was never at Camp Darby, the patrolling component (as it was with these females) 

Why did they all the women fail at Darby? When RR's arrived they were branch-qualified and knew patrolling and how to use all TO&E equipment and weaponry. Darby was simply a polishing endeavor. There were no recycles at Darby because it was too early to identify the need for remediation.

Ranger school training has been degraded, and now women (with a little help from their friends) will be passing through. And though they will be assigned to units, it is doubtful that will ever be used as combat multipliers in actual Infantry combat scenarios.

These female Ranger's were raised with tough and buff movie characters like Lara Croft and G.I. Jane. Our all-inclusive society is allowing them to realize their dreams, but at what cost will this EOE effort come?

[Cross-posted @ MilPub.]

Richard Cohen has a worthwhile piece up in today's Washington Post.

"I was on active duty as a reservist, not for very long but long enough for the Army to have lost all its mystery. I found the Army to be no better and no worse than other large institutions. Some of its leaders were fools, and some soldiers were thieves, and everyone wasted money like there was no tomorrow. This is the truth and everyone once knew it.

No more. The military of today is removed from society in general. It is a majority white and, according to a Heritage Foundation study, disproportionately Southern. This is a military conscripted by culture and class - induced, not coerced, indoctrinated in all the proper cliches about serving one's country, honored and romanticized by those of us who would not, for a moment, think of doing the same."

Yep.

Like this or hate it, this is why a republic needs to have some way to connect its citizens with its Army. The only practical way this has ever been accomplished is through universal conscription. Yes, it's involuntary servitude. Yes, it's often cheated on and often unfair. Yes, it makes things more complicated for the professionals within the Army.

But Cohen makes some good points here. For all the "garsh, what a great Army we have now those cranky draftees are gone!" rhetoric (to which I would merely observe; really? Where are the heavyweight enemies this great Army has dispatched? The Panamanian Defense Force? The Republican Guard (I guarentee nobody calls those fuckers "elite" anymore)? The Somalian militias?) the only real difference I can see between the mass army of WW2, Korea, and Vietnam and the VolAr of Grenada and beyond is that the latter is "virtually worshipped for its admirable qualities while its less admirable ones are hardly mentioned or known."

The Founders and Framers were quite explicit in their antipathy towards a standing Army. In their opinion, an opinion formed not from airy philosophy but from having been in the impact area of Great Britain's last "little war" with France, a standing professional force made that sort of cabinet war, the same sort of cabinet wars we've been fighting in southwest and central Asia for the past eight years, much more likely.

And why is this a problem?

Because in a republic the law is supposed to be king. We're a "government of laws, not of men", remember?

But in wartime the civil law is nullified. The day of battle is a legal dies non in the common law; the only law that applies is the Law of War, and that law takes no notice of things like personal liberties or property rights beyond what is required to fulfill the minimal requirements of civilian safety. And as the great wars of the 20th Century showed, these requirements are disregarded as often as not; ask any civilian resident of Coventry, Dresden, or Hiroshima.

So when the military is worshipped and ignored, when the business of killing and dying is offshored like an automobile plant, when every President becomes a War President, and every day becomes just another day in the War on (Insert Name Here)...what becomes of the law?

What does this mean for the long term health of the Republic?