Mil News First 10 Women Graduate From Infantry Officer Course

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Ten female lieutenants completed the first step in becoming U.S. Army infantry platoon leaders on Wednesday by graduating from the first gender-integrated class of Infantry Officer Basic Leader Course.
Twelve women started the 17-week course at Fort Benning, Georgia, and 10 met the standards to graduate alongside 156 male classmates.
"The training of an infantry lieutenant is a process until they step in front of that rifle platoon, and this is but the very first step in that process," Lt. Col. Matthew Weber, battalion commander of the course, told reporters Wednesday at Fort Benning. "It's a critical one because we are very much focused on training and preparing the soldiers, the lieutenants, to ultimately lead a rifle platoon."
The graduation of first 10 women from the infantry course comes a little more than a year after Capt. Kristen Griest and 1st Lt. Shaye Haver became the first women to graduate Army Ranger School in August 2015. Maj. Lisa A. Jaster became the third woman to graduate from a gender-integrated Ranger course two months later.
Defense Secretary Ash Carter in December ordered all military jobs, including special operations, opened to women. His directive followed a 2013 Pentagon order that the military services open all positions to women by early 2016.
Army officials maintain that it hasn't taken long for gender integration to become the norm in training.
"We have been integrating women into the military for years; they have fought and bled beside us for years," said Maj. Gen. Eric Wesley, commanding general of the Maneuver Center of Excellence at Fort Benning. "This is an important moment, but this is something that is in many ways business as usual."
Fort Benning officials would not release the names of the 10 female graduates. Their next stop is Ranger School, Weber said.
Then, whether they are successful or not, they will go into other courses, including Airborne School, Striker Leader Course and then Mechanized Leader Course -- a process that will take about a year to complete.
"Once they have completed all those courses, then we will have deemed them fit to lead whatever type formation out in [Forces Command] and they will depart Fort Benning," Weber said.
Female infantry officers will leave Fort Benning and go to Fort Hood, Texas, and Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Wesley said.
Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley has directed that gender-integration first focus on leaders at those two installations, Wesley said.
"We are priming the pump and enabling success by initially focusing on two installations and then ultimately they will start to migrate out to other installations," he said.
Griest and Haver are following the same path.
Griest, a military police officer from Connecticut, was granted transfer to the infantry branch April 25, 2016. Haver, an AH-64 Apache helicopter pilot from Arizona, has been approved to transfer into the infantry, and "we are still awaiting final word on when that is going to come down," said Brig. Gen. Peter Jones, commandant of the Infantry School.
"Upfront, I will tell you this makes us a better Army and the reason it makes us a better Army is that this whole issue has driven us -- it has been a forcing function, to ensure that we had the right standards aligned to each occupational specialty in the Army," Wesley said.
Establishing gender-neutral standards has been the "culmination of two years of different work done by Training and Doctrine Command, with physical scientists looking at what is the physiology of moving weight and what is the difference between infantrymen and field artillerymen?" Jones said.
"We have the scientific data that shows these are the propensity skills that you have to do and the physiology to do those."
Benning officials maintain that gender integration has not lowered standards.
"There has been no change in the standards," said Infantry Officer Basic Leader Course Command Sgt. Major Joe Davis. "There is no change in the course ... we are in the business of producing leaders. It doesn't matter if they are male or females."
 
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Looks like this has come from Military.Com
Is this the full article?, if so please only post a short clip from the article and insert a link to the page it came from.

Glad to have you aboard and thank for sharing this information.
 
"With no notice and little formal explanation, the Marine Corps altered one of its notoriously grueling rites of passage late last year, changing the combat endurance test on the first day of its Infantry Officer Course from a pass/fail requirement to an unscored exercise.

Officials with Marine Corps Training and Education Command confirmed to Military.com on Friday that Commandant Gen. Robert Neller had made a decision in November to transform the test from a high-stakes hurdle to an assessment from which students can drop without risking their place in the course."

For more details see the linked article

 
Although that story is a couple of years old, it was a forgone conclusion that the USMC IOC would have to drop it's standards to allow females to qualify.
 
Although that story is a couple of years old, it was a forgone conclusion that the USMC IOC would have to drop it's standards to allow females to qualify.
Well, there's the difference between civil and ideological considerations right there… it's a civil consideration to let female recruits have a go at the qualification course, but it's a political one to find issue with only a few passing the course.

Then again, it's not like militaries around the world haven't lowered their standards to accommodate the ever-decreasing fitness of young people neither… ?
 
China nor Russia are impressed, carry on!
You do realise both the Russian and Chinese militaries are brimming with females? Heck, the Russians have been deploying females in combat specialities for decades.

As for the draft; being a former conscript myself, I wholeheartedly support the idea of ending the discrimination of men and forcing women to also give up some of their life time and career chances for the nation.

Funnily enough, feminists don't like that idea at all. Equal rights, sure. Equal duties? Nah! For that reason alone, I'm actually curious as to how Congress would position itself on the issue.
 
You do realize both the Russian and Chinese militaries are brimming with females? Heck, the Russians have been deploying females in combat specialties for decades.

As for the draft; being a former conscript myself, I wholeheartedly support the idea of ending the discrimination of men and forcing women to also give up some of their life time and career chances for the nation.

Funnily enough, feminists don't like that idea at all. Equal rights, sure. Equal duties? Nah! For that reason alone, I'm actually curious as to how Congress would position itself on the issue.
I do, however they are not intermixed with men nor in frontline units for a few practical reasons. I see no Russian women taking the trench's of Eastern Ukraine nor Chinese women on the border against Indian soldiers. Bottom-line: depends on the type of society you want to have? One with a nuclear family or some other imagined structure that does not survive the real world.

The US discriminants for plenty of reasons, you are NOT able to receive a drivers license until age 16, you are unable to enlist in the military until age 18 (you can enlist at age 17 with parent/guardian consent) you are NOT allowed to drink alcohol until age 21, a speed limit through a School Zone is 10-25 MPH, depending on the state. Discrimination is not a bad thing, limits are in place for a reason.

As for the USA, none of the top military commanders requested this change in 2015, the beta males pushed this agenda. But, be that as it may, warfare is gritty and the enemy will NOT conduct themselves like the Swedes or Swiss. Look no further than last falls attack of Nagorno-Karabakh against Armenia. Very brutal footage from then (and a number of war-crimes too!) not something I would wantonly subject women too. Quite a number of women (USA) left the Afghan and Iraqi theater due to pregnancy's and others did not deploy at all due to becoming pregnant. Gaging physicals fitness has been a tough pill to swallow, since men and women are not identical, imagine that? And all contrary to the beta male, SJW, & feminists advocates. Those are two realities no one wants to address, in addition, once an extended war campaign kicks off in the future most women's bodies will atrophy due lack of sleep, nutrition and hygiene, and thus they will be evacuated from the battlefield.

https://coffeeordie.com/female-marines-rifle-qualification/
 
Not US, Danish women will receive the equality the feminist have asked for...
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/20...-for-female-conscription-amid-russian-threat/

Pack your kit bag Marriane!
You're being weird about this. Female conscription is supported by Scandinavian societies as a whole. And much like in the case of Israel, it makes a lot of sense for them to broaden their recruitment pool considering their small populations. The left did ask for this, and just this once I say: Good for them.
 
@haze99, with all due respect, I think you should probably start a different thread about the “impact of feminism” on the armed forces of various countries.

It’s not fair for the original poster of this thread to have his post hijacked by those rants.
 
Whilst I'm sure and agreed that feminism is a bad influence in the military, I do think @haze99 is underestimating one thing here; what's more likely to be true: That standards are lowered to accommodate women (who represent maybe one in ten recruits), or their being lowered in deference to the fact that in the West (and the US in particular) more than four in ten young men are obese and have never walked a couple of miles at once or climbed a tree? This is something that bothers me about Van Crevelds complaints about women in the military as well: He just ignores that all militaries have been lowering their physical requirements regardless of whether or not they permit women to serve, or in which roles.
 

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