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 In 2014, the United States Marine Corps ran the most rigorous study of sex integration into ground combat units ever recorded. The results were clear. All male squads outperformed integrated squads on almost 70% of tasks. Female injury rates were more than double, and no woman was able to complete the infantry officer obstacle

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 course. Regardless, the Obama administration opened women to combat roles anyways. Welcome to the Restore the Military podcast, where we cover what it takes to restore the military to excellence and lethality. This episode's topic is combat fitness standards and the inclusion of women in ground combat units.

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 I think that study from 2014 is instrumental in a cornerstone of why this issue is so vexing and why this is such a flashpoint for the politicization of the military. The Ram Corporation you know no right-wing outlet conducted a rigorous well-documented study over the course of many months involving hundreds of Marines and almost a hundred female Marines in particular. And on nearly every category you know in 70% of individual tasks sex segregated all male squads outperformed sex integrated squads. You know one of the only things that one of the only categories that sex integrated squads outperformed those all male squads was in tasks requiring creativity. But in things like machine gun marksmanship, kazvac or casualty evacuation and then the tactical proficiency of those squads the results were apparent and all of that was written into those conclusions.

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 And so you have this assessment of lethality, you have top-of-the-line research to verify something is or is not better for the armed forces and nonetheless the Obama administration made the decision to integrate women into combat units in 2015 and really the entire military has not looked back for any serious examination until President Trump's second term.

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 Right seriously. Well you know

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 I on this one like we talked about in the last podcast for a minute it's like the move of the culture right the culture of the American culture is like well I've got to include everybody. Well there's a military culture and you can't include everybody. I mean this the study in a sense I'm grateful it's the data is there but what does it tell us it tells us common sense that women are not physically like men. I mean that's like what's this that's the bottom line here and so when you talk about it all right well we got to go to combat and do you think the Chinese talk about this stuff do you think they try to integrate the Russians try to integrate no they're just happy that we're even doing it because if we delude ourselves to the point to we're like no we're not gonna pay attention to the studies or common sense but let's just talk about study and we're gonna we're gonna pretend like everything's gonna be okay and I think too there's something brewing here with all these people especially some of these politicians that are veterans that are just like dying on this hill I can't imagine there you know there would be a day potentially we have serious you think about extended combat in the Pacific at the Chinese you know we have to fight them over Taiwan or whatever happens eventually and it's like extended ground combat and we take heavy heavy losses especially in units like this right and then we're done with that war hopefully we win there'd be a whole investigation well who was in charge of this and who said this was okay and all these people got slaughtered in these units because we were integrating them I mean that's like the long-term play out on this and it's just I can't believe we even got to this place but I'm glad we got the data.

[01:03:52;08 - 01:05:56;23]
 Well right and I think there's this bait and switch that's that happens you know what were we told right since this policy was made yeah is you know we want the best Americans to serve in these units regardless of sex regardless of race sexual orientation now trans identity now but that's perhaps another question we want the best Americans in these units and we're going to evaluate them on a universal standard and I was in the army and I was part of those initial test groups for the Army's Army Combat Fitness Test you know ten years of study tens of millions of dollars devoted to that study to accomplish this exact you know this exact goal an objective neutral measure of the kind of fitness that would be necessary in ground combat and again this was going to be the beacon and the evaluation metric to fairly measure men and women who would serve in these units but what happens the Army Combat Fitness Test rolls out in 2020-2021 and it has an event called the leg tuck I won't demonstrate it on the show but you know yeah you hang from a pull-up bar yeah exactly don't want to do it right don't embarrass anyone yeah there's hang from a pull-up bar touch your knees to your elbows do it as many times as you can without dropping well sure enough there were vast performance disparities between men and women even more so than other events to the point where it was implicating women's ability to you know perform on this fitness test well enough to earn consideration for high-profile high-value jobs and so what happens is the Army they don't adjust things that don't adjust the metric they take the leg tuck out of that event the leg tuck was how they measured the fitness required to pull risers on your parachute as you know Doug to pull yourself up to a window and over a wall let's say they replaced it with a plank which you know perhaps a tough a tough evaluation doesn't measure those things

[01:05:58;05 - 01:12:25;03]
 we were told that the tests would fairly evaluate people entering into these units but then what happened is that politics led the military to change those tests under the guise of equal opportunity I don't I don't know how more explicitly a politicization effort can be that's right well they don't care about the reality anymore they were just interested in making sure that they got in everything they wanted to make the military frankly more left-leaning I think is what's going on here too over time and you know you talk you mentioned what this is for I think about overall you know grip strength right that's like guys can you know have a have a stronger grip than women you know just in general and so but that's a very important thing when you're out there in combat right who knows what's going to be happening and so to so to even some of these tests where it's like well we're going to pull up like okay let's just be real all right we're not doing planks in combat all right there's like there's like things that this is really truly evaluating and and it's just it just gets ludicrous and I just you have to see through some of this stuff I mean just from a higher level right the morality of it and we'll get there in a second but the rest of this is just the constant push to be like you know we want the military to look more like the American culture so that we can control it on the left and make it ours one day which is I think highly dangerous and not only losing wars but losing the military from an ideological standpoint not that everybody has to be conservative in the military but you have to say we have to the starting point is lethality always every time no questions asked if you get away from that then what do you have here well that's exactly right and I don't think we can parse our way out of this when it comes to fitness tests and standards I do think this goes to the identity of the military and especially of these special operations infantry ground combat units and so you know the restoration of America's proposal for the 2027 NDA with respect to fitness standards and the nature of ground combat combat units it does a few things it calls for tough measurable neutral fitness standards that put everyone on the same playing field especially when it comes to entering ground combat units but then it does explicitly reestablish the combat exclusion ban that president Obama ended in his second term of office because I think you and I agree that these units are more than an accumulation of people who score high on fitness tests they are an accumulation of and even still largely men as it should be who are forged together to endure a crucible on behalf of the nation and that that all-male characteristic is is really unique that's right those units as you know you're up in tree I was filled artillery you have a special mission when you go down range and it's like you could be down there 90 days out in the middle of nowhere right so then we have all kinds of other things we're talking over time we're talking about data and physical abilities but also when you start mixing men and women together for a long periods of time like that that's not a good idea things happen right we're not gonna get into that but the other side of this too is just from a you know a restoration America we're very dialed in on you know what is God for us as a country and you know I don't want to be in any country where it was like oh we're gonna take our granddaughters to combat to defend our grandsons exactly well because throughout our society we've lost any sense of all-male institutions whether it's the Boy Scouts basketball teams football teams every space is seen as necessarily male and female and I don't think it's bigoted to say that we should walk some of that back you know but I think as many would know who are just watching us here this would be pretty controversial in Washington DC it's it's a well exactly but but but Washington DC as far as I'm concerned Congress is kind of you know parsed around the issue in the last few years without really remedying the the problem you know you've seen a lot of yeah I think good proposals you know former congressman now ambassador Mike Walz Senator Tom Cotton you know members again who are not right-wing extremists by any by any means but who have said hey we need to reestablish neutral fitness tests that are tough and rigorous again in this this mysterious conference you know legislative deep state the the real teeth out of those policies often seems to to fall by the wayside when it comes time for final passage of the bill but I think we should be clear that there is almost universal opposition to the notion that women should not serve in ground combat units and and that's why I think it's really important that the American people let their elected representatives know that this is this is something relevant to them that's right and you let off with the study that the Marine Corps did in 2015 new studies on the way right now and that's gonna that's gonna come out I think that this is the opportunity that all these politicians that are more in our camp on this need to take this opportunity to make this change right now because we already had the data and we don't need to get caught up in I think someone sometimes what happens is you have these veteran politicians that throw anecdotes out and let's talk about feelings and how does it make everybody feel this happens and stuff like that well we're obviously gonna be feeling pretty poorly if we lose a major war because we're not ready for it because these kinds of things but a lot of these politicians need to start saying to themselves now wow there's gonna be another study coming out and I bet it's gonna look like the last one because it's the reality of the situation so we might as well fix this now because if you if you don't fix it now guys like us will be back and say hey why don't you have you had a chance now there's another study I was the problem you know yeah and then and then they're gonna have to be answered even more questions from their constituents who don't live inside DC and right go to the cocktail parties and oh I can't believe that these guys these right wingers are talking about this thing it's like oh just take a breath okay just get back to common sense and morality

[01:12:26;15 - 01:18:07;11]
 and we're filming this kind of on the eve of America's 250th anniversary or 250th birthday and I think this is a point to highlight that the the culture does rest on the military in some sense right the the tale of military victory in the Civil War the World Wars and and now and in military defeat is a cornerstone of our American experience whether or not you served or whether or not a family member of yours served and so I think you know we should disabuse ourselves and each you know others of this notion that the military is only for veterans or you know those in DC to worry about because it's it's about everyone you know you mentioned though Doug that the administration has done some good things on this but I do think this is a particular case where the trap of an executive order can you know could come back to bite us we we could maybe have four maybe even eight years of good policies by way of administrative action and executive order but this will definitely have to be something that changes by force of law because you know that the first thing that a Democrat or even maybe a Republican a different Republican president does on day one of a new administration is to is to remove the combat exclusion policy and ensure that the military is once again an equal opportunity playing field which it is I think by definition not that's right and so every one of these episodes that we're doing has this concept around this has got to make it into law yes it's so important and this whole NDAA process is so vague and opaque to the public that you know you credit to you for all your work over the years and we're getting heavy into it over here now with your help there's a lot to this and they like to keep it secret they want to take it so they can you know trade and finesse things and stuff but if there ever was a thing to your point about the culture also the economy I mean everybody's oh well you know as long as the economy is fine well if your military goes downhill guess what your economy is not far behind because somebody's gonna start sticking it to you and you can't do anything about it because there are national interests that are economic that's right and so we have to say we can't let these guys just go year over year just toying with this process and not addressing the super important thing so that's why that's why we're doing this is this is this is two of six things you know we're digging in on it and we really need people to pay attention and help out where they feel you know led to help out you've hinted that this a few times the notion of what could happen in a future war and I think whether it is you know the recent conflict at the ran or even you know I think more approximately what war looks like between Russia and Ukraine is that the experience of my generation of veterans and yours too Doug of low intensity conflict against a an adversary that we have a lot of overmatch against in terms of numbers and technological superiority I think those wars are over for the time being and there's a much higher chance that a future conflict will be excruciating in its length and just how grueling it is and it will stress test ground combat units special operations units in ways that they haven't been tested because I think many would admit that we've we got away with a lot in the war on terror right I would not you know I my platoons my companies we got away with a lot because we were able to dominate battlefields in a basically uncontested environment and so maybe the effect of these policies was a little damper and you didn't see it as clearly but I think that's about to change Ukraine and you think about the Russia went in there was like oh the Russians are gonna roll through there no problem the craniums you know okay the drones that we talked about yeah about the need for them and stuff like that when you start the the battlefield starts getting a lot the intelligence level across the entire battlefield for everybody starts changing which then does lead to a much more grueling environment and I think that too with this mixing of the civilian culture into the military culture you know we're just a prosperous country everybody's got a pretty good gig yeah I mean we have our issues for sure some people live in poverty different places and stuff like that it's pretty good countries the most prosperous country in the history of the world right so so then it does create in our culture like oh everything's fine you know but one day one day we're gonna have something really difficult on our hands and if we spent this window of time just like you know don't worry about everything's gonna be fine there's gonna be a lot of folks are gonna have to answer somewhere down the line and you know credit to you will it's not gonna be you it's not gonna be me we're gonna do our part here that's right well and I think it's worth it's worth kind of returning to the foundation of this issue is that we can talk about fitness tests and deadlifts and pull-ups we can talk about studies and research that has been done on the issue of sex integrated combat units and their relative performance but at the end of the day you know what what kind of keeps me up at night is the notion that we live in a country that could ask my daughters to fight wars on behalf of American men and you know perhaps that's not a feeling or a notion that you can quantify and measure but to me the the fact that we are that kind of country right now should bother a lot of Americans

[01:18:21;03 - 01:19:15;12]
 you know I just I can't you know we get into like oh draft the women one day and you know no no stop we just need to like think about this differently because we don't want to end up in a situation where I mean you talk about the culture of our country if we had to get into that place where we're doing like what you just said sending women downrange to defend men I don't know it feels like the whole culture is just slipped away at that point so this is a real this is a real inflection point this thing and like you said it's it's controversial and everything but I think we have to this is where we have to stop and say the culture is turned into one thing okay get it it's fine I understand and there's we got political battles to fight on the culture in general but if we're gonna push this stuff into the military culture to the detriment of our own country and to the detriment of our moms and our wives and our daughters and our granddaughters I mean what kind of country are we at that point you know we

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 right it would almost be like it's not worth defending if that were the case

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