How, then, does it make sense to integrate the genders in units actually engaged in combat?

To the Marine Corps, then, it makes sense to remove sexual distraction entirely. Recruits are physically and mentally exhausted for 12 weeks straight. In the Marine Corps, recruit training is designed to mimic, in many ways, the stress encountered in combat. These are issues the Army, Navy and Air Force co-ed recruit training units must routinely deal with, weakening the effectiveness of training and therefore overall military readiness. The reason? The Marine Corps does not want its recruits sexually distracted or disrupting training due to sexual interaction among recruits or criminal conduct by instructors who sexually assault recruits. military and it works exceedingly well the Marine Corps has an entirely separate recruit training battalion for women. Gender-based segregation currently exists in the U.S. I believe units comprised entirely of women integrated with their male counterparts at command levels would significantly reduce the issues related to sexual tension and generally increase military readiness. Divisiveness in a combat or combat support unit can cause friction in a finely-tuned killing machine, and ultimately cost lives.

The real issue is the dynamic of how males and females interact with each other while in a combat environment and the resulting problems.Ī combat unit isn’t a civilian company where a bad intra-office romance causes hurt feelings. In fact, after years of fighting insurgencies in which female service members deployed to combat zones and were routinely exposed to enemy fire and engaged the enemy in return, the question of whether to ‘allow’ women in combat or whether they can fight seems almost ludicrous-they are in combat and of course women are perfectly capable of killing other human beings. I fully support the concept of officially allowing women to serve in combat. Follow question isn’t should women be in combat - it’s how.Īs a male combat veteran of two tours in Iraq with infantry units, the view from here is that women should have their own, separate, combat units.

Combat modern versus female