<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span></span></div><div><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span></span></div><div><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span></span></div><div><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">Courtesy of the Army Times.</div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">-----------------------------------</div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br></div><div><div style="text-align: start;"><b style="text-align: justify; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Testing women for combat jobs</b></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; text-align: start;"><span style="text-align: justify; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; text-align: start;"><span style="text-align: justify; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">For the past month, female soldiers have been getting a taste of what it takes to serve in combat.</span></div><span class="abody" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: start;"><br></div><div style="text-align: start;">At Fort Stewart, Ga., 60 female and 100 male soldiers volunteered to spend the past month drilling on the most physically challenging tasks demanded of infantrymen, cavalry scouts, mortar launchers and tank crews. In March, scientists from the Army’s Research Institute for Environmental Medicine will have the troops perform those tasks while wearing heart rate monitors, masks that monitor oxygen intake and other equipment to study the effects of their physical exertion.</div><div style="text-align: start;"><br></div><div style="text-align: start;">By spending their days lifting 65-pound missiles and .50-caliber machine guns, while wearing 70 pounds of body armor, they’re helping make history as part of an Army study that will determine how women will be deemed fit to join combat roles.</div><div style="text-align: start;"><br></div><div style="text-align: start;">What you should know:</div><div style="text-align: start;"><br></div></span><span class="abody" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: start;"><span class="abody">1. Realistic standards.</span><span class="abody"> Testing at Fort Stewart and other U.S. bases is breaking away from the Army’s longtime standards for physical fitness— pushups, sit-ups and 2-mile runs— to focus instead on battlefield tasks, such as dragging a wounded comrade to safety or installing and removing the heavy barrel of the 25mm gun mounted on Bradley vehicles.</span></div></span><span class="abody" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: start;"><br></div><div style="text-align: start;">Some people think the Army is coming up with unrealistic requirements while others believe standards will be lower to let women fight on the front lines, said David Brinkley, deputy chief of staff for operations at the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command at Fort Eustis, Va. “We intend to do neither. That’s why we based this on the actual thing you have to do,” he said.</div><div style="text-align: start;"><br></div></span><span class="abody" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: start;"><span class="abody">2. Catching up with men.</span><span class="abody"> Giving soldiers a month to prepare meant women who have never been trained to scale a 6-foot wall or pull a casualty from a tank have had time to</span><span class="abody"> learn the proper techniques before they are tested for real over the next month.</span></div></span><span class="abody" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: start;"><br></div><div style="text-align: start;">Staff Sgt. Terry Kemp, a cavalry scout who’s helping train the volunteers, said female soldiers started to catch up with their male counterparts after two weeks. Missile toting drills that initially took the men seven minutes were taking women 12 minutes to complete, he said. But by week three, men and women had trimmed their times to about four minutes.</div><div style="text-align: start;"><br></div></span><span class="abody" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: start;"><span class="abody">3. It’s about the tasks.</span><span class="abody"> The Army took a lesson from fire departments by not focusing on soldiers’ ability to perform pushups or pullups, which favor men because they test upper body strength, Brinkley said. Officials realize women do physical tasks differently, using more core strength and legs, he said. By focusing on tasks rather than exercises, Army officials hope to eliminate gender bias from their study.</span></div></span><span class="abody" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: start;"><br></div></span><span class="abody" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: start;"><span class="abody">4. It’s for the 8 percent.</span><span class="abody"> In a recent Army survey of 30,000 female</span><span class="abody"> soldiers, only about 8 percent said they would want an infantry, armor, artillery or combat engineer job.</span></div></span><span class="abody" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: start;"><br></div><div style="text-align: start;">An overwhelming number of those who did want combat jobs said they’d like to be a Night Stalker, a member of the elite special operations helicopter crews.</div><div style="text-align: start;"><br></div></span><span class="abody" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: start;"><span class="abody">5. Get over it.</span><span class="abody"> Surveys have shown male soldiers fret that their unit’s readiness will be degraded because of what they term “women issues,” such as pregnancy and menstrual cycles. Or they worried that women incapable of the physical demands would be brought in anyway.</span></div></span><span class="abody" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; text-align: justify;"><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); text-align: start;"><br></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); text-align: start;">Maj. Gen. Mike Murray, commanding general at Fort Stewart, said it’s time to open combat jobs to women and “this is going to get studied to death” in order for the Army to prove to naysayers that female soldiers are physically capable.</div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); text-align: start;"><br></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); text-align: start;">Those who insist women can’t perform as well as men in combat “can beat their chests about it all day,” said Kemp, a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan. “But eventually it’s going to happen.”</div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); text-align: start;"><br></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); text-align: start;">--------------------</div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); text-align: start;"><br></div><div style="text-align: start;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Spc. Sheena Mature hoists a 44-pound section of a 50-caliber machine gun onto an M1 A2 Abrams tank during a physical demands study Feb. 25 at Fort Stewart, Ga</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); text-align: start;"><br></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); text-align: start;"><img src="cid:8D8F314B-13CF-4D69-91A6-0D2BFB6DE728" alt="image.jpeg" id="8D8F314B-13CF-4D69-91A6-0D2BFB6DE728" width="728" height="444"></div></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">-----------------------------------</div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Seeya 'round town, Moscow, because . . .</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"Moscow Cares" (the most fun you can have with your pants on)</span></div><div><a href="http://www.moscowcares.com/" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><font color="#000000">http://www.MoscowCares.com</font></a></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> </span></div><div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Tom Hansen</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Moscow, Idaho</span></div></div><div><br></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> </span></div></div></div></div></div></body></html>