Military Day at JAC!

Today I have three military related stories to share with you. The first is a dodged bullet, the second is a disturbing close bullet, and the third is a bullet with levels of awesome before only attainable by Chuck Norris.

Last week the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell, tucked away in a much larger spending bill, was filibustered to death in the Senate. From the SF Gate website:

"The vote fell three short of the 60 needed to move ahead on the defense authorization bill, which contained the repeal, and may kill, possibly for years, legislative repeal of the 17-year-old ban."

Of course, every interest group and their brothers and second cousins are railing against the injustice of it all. Fortunately, the military isn't about being fair, it's about being effective, and Congress has stood for just that. With any luck at all the Powers That Be will spend the time they've been bought actually working on a solution to the legitimate logistical problems. Perhaps they could do be classified similar to females and kept to non-combat roles, at least at first?

Oh, speaking of that...

A congressional panel is recommending that we go ahead and unrestrict the combat arms, and allow women into jobs like armor and infantry.

"A five-page analysis prepared for the commission concluded that women do not lack the physical ability to perform combat roles; gender integration will not negatively affect unit cohesion; and women are not more likely than men to develop mental health problems."

That's all well and good, so long as the military also abolishes the longstanding tradition of different scales for fitness. For example, in order to barely pass my APFT, or Army Physical Fitness Test, I have to run my two miles in at least 16:36. A woman of exactly my same age has 19:36 to accomplish the same task. Call me crazy, but in combat the enemy isn't going to run slower just because I have a woman along for the ride.

If women are to be allowed to serve alongside me when the bullets are flying, I need to be absolutely confident that she can run as fast, as far, and carry as much as I do. She needs to be held to exactly the same physical standards as a man. While that may not seem fair, because women are constructed differently, the hard truth is combat is an equal-opportunity killer, and the requirements to close with and destroy the enemy don't change based on your gender.

Of course, physical standards aside, there is the mental aspect. Here I'm not talking about the abilities of women to handle the stress of combat. I'm talking about men being able to handle women handling that stress. From Wikipedia:

"In On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society, Lt. Col. Dave Grossman briefly mentions that female soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces have been officially prohibited from serving in close combat military operations since 1948 (in 2001, subsequent to publication, women began serving in IDF combat units on an experimental basis). The reason for removing female soldiers from the front lines is no reflection on the performance of female soldiers, but that of the male infantrymen after witnessing a woman wounded. The IDF saw a complete loss of control over soldiers who apparently experienced an uncontrollable, protective, instinctual aggression.

Grossman also notes that Islamic militants rarely, if ever, surrender to female soldiers. In modern warfare where intelligence is perhaps more important than enemy casualties, every factor reducing combatants' willingness to fight is considered. Similarly, Iraqi and Afghani civilians are often not intimidated by female soldiers.
However, in such environments, having female soldiers serving within a combat unit does have the advantage of allowing for searches on female civilians, and in some cases the female areas of segregated mosques, while causing less offense amongst the occupied population. A notable example of this would be female US military personnel who are specially selected to participate in patrols and raids for this purpose.

Melody Kemp mentions that the Australian soldiers have voiced similar concern saying these soldiers "are reluctant to take women on reconnaissance or special operations, as they fear that in the case of combat or discovery, their priority will be to save the women and not to complete the mission. Thus while men might be able to be programmed to kill, it’s is not as easy to program men to neglect women."

Men, it seems, are instinctually programmed to be protective of women. If this is truly an instinct, and therefore is difficult to impossible to remove from the male soldier, does it make tactical sense to allow it? Can we give up any advantage over our enemy? Tough questions. I can only hope that Congress and the Pentagon ask "What will make our military most able to destroy the enemy?", and not "What is fair and equitable?"

Finally, on to the badass portion of the blog. As a good ol' US Army Infantryman, I am naturally inclined to recognize the Navy only as a repository for funny walks and unusually high levels of Don't Ask Don't Tell violation. However, in the face of this, even I must humbly submit to the Navy's awesomeness in this instance.

That is a railgun.

"An electromagnetic railgun offers a velocity previously unattainable in a conventional weapon, speeds that are incredibly powerful on their own. In fact, since the projectile doesn't have any explosives itself, it relies upon that kinetic energy to do damage. And at 11 a.m. today, the Navy produced a 33-megajoule firing -- more than three times the previous record set by the Navy in 2008.

"It bursts radially, but it's hard to quantify," said Roger Ellis, electromagnetic railgun program manager with the Office of Naval Research. To convey a sense of just how much damage, Ellis told FoxNews.com that the big guns on the deck of a warship are measured by their muzzle energy in megajoules. A single megajoule is roughly equivalent to a 1-ton car traveling at 100 mph. Multiple that by 33 and you get a picture of what would happen when such a weapon hits a target."

Because of it's ungodly speeds it can reach a target within 6 minutes. It can fire 6-12 rounds per minute. It hits the target with the force of thirty three friggin cars, all without explosives. Right now it's just ships. Imagine, if you will, once this technology is miniaturized into a mobile artiller platform. Artillery pieces safely in a green zone in Richmond, VA shooting rounds into Washington, DC.

It's nice, in this time of uncertainty, to know that the US military is still able to break stuff and kill people better than anyone else in the history of the planet.