[June 20, 2015] The U.S. Army just announced that it will open the Combat Engineers to enlisted female soldiers.1 This is part of a long campaign by senior women in Congress and many who believe that there is no basis for excluding women from any military job and that men-only jobs are discriminatory. Clearly, this is an important senior leadership issue being sorted out among our elected representatives and on Capitol Hill.
Here is my opinion with no outside influence or political correctness … this is a good move by the Army. Surprised? Here’s why I think so…
I don’t think this is a good idea lightly and here are two fundamental facts to consider. But I need to make it clear that these facts are not the same reasoning given by our political leaders. Social engineering, that which many are interested in doing, has little business in the military unless it can be tested in peacetime where lives are not at risk when failure inevitably occurs. And, when people use the specter of discrimination or lack of fairness to justify including or excluding women from combat roles, they have no idea how silly and ignorant they sound.
Having spent 25 years as an Engineer officer and experienced 3 years of combat in the field as an engineer, my thoughts are based on real-life familiarity with war and with how men and women perform under the stresses of combat, chaos, violence, and death. First Fact: The vast majority of men and women in our society simply cannot perform to the military standard required to be a combat engineer. We already know that about 75 percent of our youth are not qualified for military service at all. Of those who do qualify for service only a few meet the physical and intellectual qualifications or have the desire to be an engineer soldier.
Second Fact: War today is not war of the last century. Most wars today are conducted on a relatively small scale, not at all like World War II or Korea, and thus the level of violence is lower and the need for quick, creative problem-solving is greater. Don’t get me wrong here … war is brutal and death is final regardless of how it comes about. But the requirement to be a good engineer soldier is based as much on intellect and fast thinking than as physical ability. All the more reason that the requirements to be an engineer soldier should never be lowered. At this writing, the standard has not changed.2
For those women soldiers who can prove that they can meet all the demanding physical and intellectual standards, to endure and complete all the training requirements, and have the passion to achieve being a combat engineer it … then they deserve to be called a “combat engineer.”
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[2] http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/03/18/women-combat-engineer-school-army/1954149/