"Women will be allowed in all combat positions throughout the U.S. military, ending decades of exclusion from front-line jobs, Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced Thursday.
The decision comes despite the Marine Corps preparing a study earlier this year concluding that male-only units performed better overall than gender-integrated units. The Marine Corps study said male-only units performed better in certain combat situations and had lower injury rates."
On the bright side, this opens the door to co-ed showers like in Starship Troopers. Perhaps this will eventually trickle down to the civilian population.
That was a good scene…
Women are on subs now. I say deploy an Ohio-class for six months with nothing but female sailors and you’ll make me a believer.
IDF has been doing it all along
They really have no choice.
Dont forget Battlestar Galactica.
BS, I wonder if studies of racial integration would have concluded that racially segregated troops perform better I and around WWII. There may just be an issue with experience and expectations.
I agree that there’s no guarantee that that is the case, but it may reduce the differences in performance over time, perhaps substantially.
IDF fights entirely urban conflicts on home turf against what is largely guerilla terrorist factions and they still segregate elite units. The women function as essentially military police. Imagine you’re in Black Hawk down, extremely outnumbered with limited resources and many wounded and half of your troops are unable to carry or physically transport the other half of your troops. Also engaging in a foreign battlefield in a full on conflict requires carrying 50 lbs of equipment and ammunition over long hauls. Not the same as standing on a street corner snapping selfies with tourists while carrying 8 clips, no supplies and backup a block away.
I haven’t seen those studies
The success rates for women to achieve the same levels as men in the Marine training was abysimal, which in turn equals a lot of wasted resources.
If you honestly do not understand the role of physical conditioning in combat and you do not understand the differences between fully conditioned males and females then we’re wasting our time because you’re in denial.
I mean really, imagine yourself weighing 180 pounds with a bullet in your leg with the enemy closing in and your two fellow combatants show up to help you out, except they’re both <150 lbs, weaker per pound than the average male and neither one can carry you alone effectively.
.
I say all athletic teams should be forced to integrate women, not just warriors.
Is the motto “no man left behind” intended to encompass “no woman left behind”?
I see no reason to believe why an all female sub crew wouldn’t do just fine.
I really don’t like this idea. There better be the same PT tests for Spec Ops for ALL candidates. 
There is a reason why the Marines are no longer “A Few Good Men”, but rather, “The Few, The Proud”. (Hint - it was political pressure.)
And to BS’s third point - in five years in the military, I met maybe three women how I thought that could legitimately hold their own in a real combat situation, and all three of them eerily reminded me of Chyna from the old WWF.
I still find it strange that the military admits that women are physically inferior to men (based on the relaxed physical fitness standards), but continues to say that they’re just as battle ready as men are.
They might even do better. Female flight crews do fine, but an all xx sub would be a psychological experiment. Took a while to master the sub game when it was only males.
I’m picturing 100 women in a confined space for a period of months and it gave me the heeby jeebies. I choose the waterboarding.
More fairly though, they’d probably be fine on a sub. These are not the types of positions that I would worry about.
The types of positions you are worried about won’t attract women anyway. It’s hard to believe but we can be reasonable too
Even the most physically capable female soldier is going to be at the bottom of the barrel compared to male soldiers. However, if the selection process is fair, the female soldier would only have displaced an equally inept male soldier. So it is unclear if physical differences actually make the unit less effective.
There is the other question of whether female soldiers will cause cultural friction that affects team cohesiveness, but that’s another issue.