The U.S. armed forces need to set a single standard for a job and stick to it. Not everyone can be a Ranger or a fighter pilot, but it doesn't have anything to do with gender.
Selecting future combat leaders is not a science; it is based on the judgment of the leaders of our armed forces at all levels. Those of us who have served in combat have some pretty strong convictions about this touchy subject, but we are quick to tell you that there is 00 way to predict who the real fighters will be until the rounds start to fly. And it does not matter whether the fighter is a man or a woman.
By now, almost everyone is familiar with the Tailhook affair—a group of carrier-qualified aviators who overdid their annual celebration. The aftermath of Tailhook is playing out now, with a lot of media hoopla to hell) it along. The Navy court-martialed some of its officers and censured some of its more-senior ranks. Assault, sexual or otherwise, is against the law, and from all reports, some women were assaulted—some of them fellow Officers of the culprits. That a few Navy senior officers' actions appeared to cover up this scandal is even more disturbing.
What brought this on? And, more important, why would the young officers involved believe they could do what they did? According to my good Navy sources, this was not an unusual Tailhook get-together, except for a larger turnout of women pilots. Is this assault the tip of the iceberg of gender prejudice found in all the military services? I believe it is.
Over the years, I have been a party to some barracks humor involving women in the military. I know for a fact there is considerable gender prejudice within the ranks of the military. Whether any of it is justified is the more serious question. Many people believe that when a quota system is grafted onto a selection process that is based on merit, some deep-seated prejudices will result, both overtly and covertly.
What is the "right" position on women in the military? That is a hard question with many answers. My opinion on this touchy subject is simplistic and straight forward: Women should be allowed to serve in any job for which they are qualified. And I use the word qualified in the strictest sense—no gender quotas, no social experiments, no double standards for physical ability, and no other fixes that would make the job definition require an asterisk. Make it just like the NFL: only the best need apply; only the best survive.
Let's start with the needs of the services at the current time. The armed forces need the best volunteers they can find to operate our fighting machines. We probably could do this with men only at this date—something that was not possible a few years ago when we first adopted the all-volunteer concept during the middle of the Cold War. We really don't need women to fill our ranks; in fact, we have an excess of both sexes. Eliminations are taking place right now, and although I doubt very much that there is any official or unofficial gender prejudice in this process, I suspect that women go first, if all other things are equal, which they never are. Army reduction-in-force board statistics disclose that women and minorities are being selected in percentages about equal to their numbers in the considered population—this probably was directed in board guidance.
However, what we have learned about women in the military is that many of them are damned fine soldiers, and many are as good as or better than many men. Many women can do the same jobs men traditionally have done and do them better. This should come as no surprise to anyone who stays abreast of what's going on in the world today. In the recent World Games, the gap between the physical performances of male and female track and swimming athletes was very small. In shooting, women went head-to-head with men and beat some of the very best. If you want to compare male and female aviators, watch the World Acrobatics Championships and try to spot any difference if you can. The only difference I've noted is that a woman won the most recent contest. To think that we previously have excluded women from flying in combat based on gender discrimination alone, without any hard evidence, seems almost ludicrous.
The primitive hostility that some military men feel toward women who encroach on their male turf is one of the grassroots causes of the Tailhook scandal. The bitterness that some officers felt toward the women pilots they attacked in Las Vegas is born of the belief that women don't have the "right stuff' to fly off carriers. What a crock of hooey! In 1966, I led my Army attack helicopter platoon in support of the Marine Corps near Ky Ha, South Vietnam. We refueled on the deck of the USS Valley Forge (LPH-8), a helicopter carrier sailing off the coast. Our carrier qualification was self taught both day and night, because Marine Corps instructor pilots were not available to check us out. We circled the carrier to watch the Marines landing and taking off, then called the tower for landing. It was a piece of cake; I was not impressed. Landing a high-performance jet in a power-on approach to a rolling deck at night in bad weather is probably more sporting—and having been initially trained in O-1s on short fields years ago, I understand the excitement—but tills still is not a gender-specific skill.
This kind of "right stuff' thinking is similar to the Army Airborne's mentality that anyone who doesn't jump out of airplanes is a "Leg"—someone not as well qualified to fight as the Airborne soldier. This is a myth if ever there was one, but it is worth perpetuating if we want the first on the ground to truly believe in their invincibility. It is also similar to the Marine mystique that causes that group to do a lot of chest thumping and frontal assaults.
None of this is all bad. I believe in and promote any reasonable thing done to improve a warrior's self-image. Any spirit-building or unit bonding that encourages people. to fight is a great plus in time of dangerous undertakings. It is absolutely necessary if we want people to go out and do the hard, dirty work of fighting and dying for our country. Tailhookers getting together is probably good for their spirit-building. Building up morale to get people to do a tough job is important.
But the success of the U.S. armed forces also depends on fair treatment and genuine respect. If a leader wants soldiers to follow in an occupation that can lead to death, mutual respect is critical. I have had the opportunity to lead many tremendous soldiers, especially in combat, and don't remember any whom I did not greatly respect and admire—for being a part of a fighting unit that would fight and for their willingness to stand in harm's way to get the job done. Certainly, not all of the soldiers under my command in combat were fighters. But those few who didn’t have the right stuff were quickly found out and removed. Combat is easy; it is peacetime service that is much, much harder to sort out. I am certain that we have a lot of fakers and grandstanders who survive the peacetime Army's kabuki dance, and many of them rise to very High rank. The Navy has the same problem; certain elements have not been in combat for more than 50 years.
All of this brings me back to the reason the Navy had the Tailhook debacle: a basic lack of respect for fellow—female—aviators by a select few men who saw them as encroachers on the mystical order of macho, carrier-qualified pilots. One solution to this, as I see it, is to set a single standard for a job and stick to it. We need to set tough standards for combat units and when people meet those standards, sign them on to do the job. Not everyone can be a Ranger and not every one can be an effective scout pilot, but it doesn't have anything to do with gender. I’ve seen some of the biggest men be unable to perform in combat. And some of the toughest soldiers I have known in recent years have been women. The old saying applies: "It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog that counts."
Our Army's double standard of physical fitness does our force a disservice in many cases. We need one standard, one set of criteria for tough jobs, and there shouldn't be any footnotes to explain the requirements as regards gender. If strength and physical ability are important in selected jobs related to combat, then let's not apologize for the requirement.
My wife, a regular Army lieutenant colonel, does 52 pushups, 71 sit ups, and runs two miles in a tad more than 17 minutes. On the Army's semiannual physical fitness test, that is a maximum score (300) under the women's standards for her age. Under the men's standard, she would score 272, a respectable score and certainly good enough to be qualified in her branch and specialty. That is my point: qualified in her chosen branch and specialty according to the required standards for the job. We need one standard for everyone, without regard to gender, with the requirements for the specific job clearly spelled out.
Are the women in the Army ready for that? Are the men? I believe that if we went to one standard for all jobs in the military, we would have fewer complaints about gender discrimination. Our Army would sort itself out, and the toughest performers in every specialty would survive. We would have a few crackerjack women attack-helicopter pilots but damned few women Rangers. We would have a very few superb women artillery soldiers, engineers, and tankers; and even fewer women as infantry soldiers—but they would be dynamite and qualified at the highest standard. Complaints would decrease dramatically once the requirements were spelled out clearly. There would be no gender prejudice in the majority of the jobs in the Army—just prejudice against those who would seek waivers or lower standards.
The hard part of my simple equation is going to be setting the standards: what is needed, why, and how much is enough. I do not have answers to these questions, but I know they must be based on more than emotion.
The key thought I want to push is fair treatment of everyone in the selection process against tough, unwavering standards. When bullets start to fly, the real fighters will emerge—and often you will be surprised at who those folks really are. We don't know enough about women in combat to prejudge the whole package. The crucible of sustained combat—longer than 100 hours and with a contingent of women greater than 10%—is the only qualifier that I know of for determining the real combat warriors, and I suspect it has nothing to do with gender.
All the issues of living and working conditions associated with men and women serving together in a particular unit will sort themselves out over time. There are some headaches involved with mixed-gender units, but if you have good men and women, all qualified and all highly trained, these problems can be minimized. Sexual harassment is akin to bullying and the age-old mistreatment of subordinates by superiors; it requires command attention all the time.
The problems of motherhood are a more serious issue and must be handled on a case-by-case basis. Decisions by women soldiers to have children should be discouraged in some assignments and should be cause for removal from certain key jobs where it might hazard mission accomplishment. There are many Army jobs where pregnancy is not a problem. The regulations on pregnancy need some hard, thoughtful work to close loopholes and to ensure that the needs of the service come first.
We need a few good men and women to serve our country and fight our wars. What we don't need is gender prejudice of any type. The services should not have to bend the rules and grant waivers to fill the ranks of our forces. The standards need to be clearly set and the performance criteria articulated; then it should be the responsibility of the appointed leaders to administer the rules based on their fair judgment.
General Bahnsen is a consultant to several defense companies and a prolific writer. Before his retirement from the Army in 1986, he served as Chief of Staff, III Corps and Ft. Hood and Combined Field Army (ROK/US), and as Assistant Division Commander, 2d Armored Division. During two combat tours in Vietnam, General Batmen commanded an attack helicopter platoon, an air cavalry troop, and an armored cavalry squadron. He has been awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, five Silver Stars, three Distinguished Flying Crosses, two Purple Hearts, and 51 air medals, among others.