I saw this article linked maybe a couple months ago, but had trouble finding it again. Ilkka inspired me to go looking again, so I’m linking it here to remember. In my first link Mackubin Thomas Owens says “Contrary to common contention, Israel does not currently allow women in combat–they’ve been banned since 1948″. Indeed it is contrary to common contention, including wikipedia. Granted, he wrote that in 2005, but I haven’t heard anything about that changing since then.
UPDATE: In the process of writing this post I see Wikipedia has a portion elsewhere backing up Owens. I was placing greater weight on Wikipedia than NR, so now I’d like someone knowledgeable to clear this up for me.
May 12, 2011
May 13, 2011 at 2:24 pm
An Israeli friend of mine recently posted a FB pic of a female soldier, or what appeared to be one, holding a rifle and all. I suppose she could have been playing dress up.
May 13, 2011 at 3:38 pm
Just because you are assigned a weapon doesn’t mean that your regular military job entails combat.
May 13, 2011 at 4:36 pm
And just because you are assigned a weapon doesn’t mean you can perform to the same level as a male soldier (carry the same weapons and ammo load out, run as fast, etc) nor that you don’t have extra needs at that time of month and so forth.
May 13, 2011 at 7:48 pm
No doubt if Israel found itself in a fight for its survival, women soldiers might be put into combat. Of course given the military incompetence of its possible opponents that’s not too likely :)
Peter
May 19, 2011 at 1:11 am
My niece served in IDF. She was basically a secretary with a gun. No active combat for women there, period.
May 21, 2011 at 4:24 am
TGGP, feel free to make this a separate blog post here. I posted to yglesias, but it might be fun to discuss in your historically more philolibertarian space.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/19/us-mcdonalds-idUSTRE74I70B20110519
May 21, 2011 at 4:33 am
I’ve heard anecdotally that women have served as effective snipers for some militaries or resistance movements -I don’t know the veracity.
There’s also a lot of women police.
When talking about threshhold competencies that allegedly no woman can meet, I think three things are separable:
1. Load carrying capacity
2. mental toughness to “pull the trigger” and kill enemy combatants
3. hygenic durability (the “menstration” problem)
A separate concern is the effect of women in a combat team on the men in a combat team -I think these concerns are suspect given the general good performance of mixed gender teams in a variety of settings, but it’s an empirical question.
I think #1 and #2 are reasonable concerns, especially #1, and #3 and #4 are overblown. I suspect a fair standard would exclude almost all women and reduce the few who can meet the standard to token levels in the military (on the order of 1%-0.01% of combat personnel). But why exclude those few?
November 30, 2012 at 11:35 pm
Because i am speaking for the 167 marines of my company when i tell you its the men who dont want them here. the public never hears from us in the news. how about lawmakers make women enroll in the selective service like men and not allow women to server in any gov. jobs until they do.
when you say if they meet the same standards i would add the same standards all the way around. ie. Grooming, living, and showering. yes i said showers only because if i am made to take a shower with open gay men then women should be ok to live side by side with men.
December 1, 2012 at 12:12 am
How are troops reacting to the repeal of DADT? I suspect it may not be much of an issue simply because gay males don’t want to join. As Sailer has pointed out, most of the folks expelled under DADT are lesbians, and guys tend not to be bothered by lesbians much.
December 1, 2012 at 12:25 am
Haven’t had many problems with it. I did have to put boot to ass on one male wearing lip gloss and walking like a runway model. If we don’t nip shit like that in the bud we will be having RuPaul’s running all over our camps and bases. Not sure what will happen when the transgender group want to come out.
May 22, 2011 at 12:56 am
Check out this awesomely dystopian graph (h/t andrew sullivan)
http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2011/05/piomas-april-2011.html
May 22, 2011 at 5:15 pm
Hopefully Anonymous said:
I’ve heard anecdotally that women have served as effective snipers for some militaries or resistance movements -I don’t know the veracity.
Have you ever felt the recoil from a .308? A 30-06? A 7.64×54? A 50 cal?
Have you carried one of those rifles around with a load of ammo plus your other needs (another weapon and so forth) all day (or several days) until you got to your stake-out?
Please assure me that you have a clue as to what it takes.
May 22, 2011 at 7:15 pm
I had heard that many Russian women served during WW2. I don’t if it was as snipers. I’ve heard that their smaller weight is actually advantageous as pilots these days. I don’t favor explicit prohibitions on women serving, I think most will simply choose not to.
I take a dismissive attitude toward the obesity panic and don’t think the board of McDonalds should take it up as a concern.
Interesting Connections, it seemed pretty obvious that H.A was not claiming any confident knowledge but was just reporting hearsay and your question asking if he had experienced something was not serious. Just give the facts that others don’t have.
By the way, Mitch Daniels appears not to be in the presidential race.
May 22, 2011 at 10:35 pm
I’ve heard that their smaller weight is actually advantageous as pilots these days.
I’ve heard that the Nordics discovered that women’s skeletons, specifically their neck bones, meant that they were less able to handle high acceleration manoeuvres than men and were more prone to neck injuries.
I suspect that what I have heard is more useful than what you have heard.
May 22, 2011 at 10:52 pm
With respect to snipers, 50 cal sniper rifles weigh a lot. The Barretts weigh something like 23 lbs.
Even the semi-auto 7.62x51s weigh around 12lbs.
After putting 40 rounds through my 7.62×39 my shoulder was starting to feel it, and 60 rounds certainly left its mark.
That is not a 7.62×51 or 7.62×54 or .338 Lapua or 50 cal.
I have no doubt that females played a part in the war with Germany, since the Soviets were throwing men’s lives away in the early part of the war with inferior fighter planes and inferior tanks and so forth. Desperate situations lead to desperate tactics.
If I was fighting an integrated force I would have my snipers concentrate on the females we were facing, but only to wound. I would also concentrate on capturing females from the opposing side. I think that would lead to a considerable advantage over the opposing side. I would also engage in other, more subtle tactics. I am sure that eventually the males in the opposing force would be pissed about the females not putting in as much effort and possibly also concentrating on getting the females to put out.
May 23, 2011 at 11:11 pm
Yes, I think the bit about pilots was just conjecture from Sailer.
May 25, 2011 at 8:06 pm
There were three women air force regiments in the USSR during WWII. Total number of women involved was about 300. ALL roles in these regiments were performed by women – tech service, navigators, pilots. The fighters regiment was short-lived and quickly got diluted with men. The bombers were more successful. They were very celebrated for propaganda purposes. Their stats were respectable but not better than men’s. Few pics here:
http://www.armchairgeneral.com/forums/showthread.php?p=632360
May 26, 2011 at 3:53 pm
http://dover.idf.il/IDF/English/News/today/2011/03/0701.htm
May 29, 2011 at 8:48 pm
Thanks for the links, Nanonymous and anon.
May 31, 2011 at 7:36 am
Interesting Connections, no, I don’t have your apparent technical knowledge and first hand experience, but I think my post showed I share your skepticism of the load bearing capacity of almost all women.
Anecdotes I’ve heard about women being effective snipers in the past seemed suspect to me (mostly because I haven’t encountered much information about women being effective offensive killers with firearms, period), and seemed related for the purpose of pumping up the esteem of women, but even those versions didn’t involve women carrying and operating 50 cals for precision shooting (they seemed to me to imply women in resistence/survival scenarios sniping using lower caliber rifles from shorter distances).
I’m still skeptical mostly because I think women have a much stronger aversion to killing people (at least outside of crimes of passion) than men do.
But I’m sure there’s been good research in these areas to inform us.
November 30, 2012 at 1:07 pm
I remember reading an article years ago that the Israelis had tried women in combat roles but did away with it because of the danger that it posed. From the article, it was done away with because the males would take chances protecting women that they would not take with a male, putting missions in jeopardy. Logical.
November 30, 2012 at 6:51 pm
That’s the story I heard as well.
December 1, 2012 at 12:14 am
i would bet my life that there is not one female on Earth that could make it through BUDS, PJ’s, MARSOC ( which i am a member of). It’s simple and you don’t need to put in female snipers from a shit bag military as examples. It’s comparing low grade militaries to the US fighting force. That’s like putting a high school football team up against the super bowl champs. The shit you all see on TV and read in books doesn’t even come close because most of our training is classified. Women can get a straw and suck it the hell up like everyone else. The women suing need to go a different route. Fix the promotion problem in DC. They are just going to make our main force weaker just like the kids coming in now that get butt hurt when a drill instructor screams at them of PT’s until they puke their guts up for being shit bags. Going back to the women, if they have the upper body strength then they are too slow and if they are fast enough then they are too weak. They don’t need to get upset about it, it’s just how our bodies were made. Sorry if this comes as a surprise to some but when you sign that contract you give up a lot of your rights and freedoms. Try and quit your job by just not showing up for work anymore , or go out and protest in uniform like i witnessed during that march on wall street shit. Your ass goes to jail. i hope this gets the point across.
P.S. A 338 with a 220gr bullet would jack a female up unless she is a battle ax.