ARmy Rumour SErvice

Originally Posted by FORMER_FYRDMAN

Personally I always found beasting very strange to trained soldiers in any halfways decent unit. Motivated soldiers do not need 'beasting' and invariably the 'beaster' in such circumstances is a twunt in urgent need of demotion and a penis enlargement. It's more effective, IMHO, to make your soldiers determined not to disappoint you and then be happily surprised at how seldom they do - that was the founding ethos of both my capbadges and what got hammered into me in my formative years - thank goodness.

Agree in general--if it is for stress inducing in a training environment I think it has a place if closely supervised.

FF - you are right of course, I didn't make myself clear.

Trying to take a 'beasting' attitude to professional soldiers who are doing what they've been trained to do is plain stupid.

I meant in a training/selection/weed out the chaff environment. I would have found 'silent running' quite disorientating.

Originally Posted by Buzz

The SEAL's are tasked with all sorts of stuff with a wide remit.

RECON are tasked with exactly what the title implies - force reconnaisance for the marine expeditionary force, the fact that that means they have to be able to do some of the sneaky beaky stuff is incidental.

COP platoons in the UK for instance train in what could be called an SF role if you liked but it doesn't make them SF.

Slight addition for USMC

While reconnaissance units (for example http://www.i-mef.usmc.mil/external/1stmardiv/1streconbn/) are organic to each of the three the Marine Expeditionary Forces and have a primary mission of close and deep reconnaissance with myriad secondary missions including direct action and in extremis hostage rescue, selected personnel from those units are also shifted after the requisite experience to Marine Special Operations units MARSOC - Official U.S. Marine Corps Web site who pass the even more rigorous MARSOC selection process.

MARSOC units are specifically tasked with providing qualified special operations forces to the Special Operations Command, a unified command under a four star that in turn provides SOF units as needed to the several combatant commands (also unified commands) such as CENTCOM. As such, the roles and missions among these SOF units (US Army Rangers/Special Forces; Navy SEALS and USMC MARSOC--the USAF also has outstanding SOF personnel but generally they are in a support role to the direct action units of the Army, Navy and USMC) often overlap although in an ideal world each would also have unit-specific missions that take advantage of the inherent service-specific skill sets of each.

Originally Posted by Micawber

NOT trying to compare the two, but having watched the Recon vid I also clicked on the aussie SAS selection vid that appeared on the same Youtube page.

Their selection contains no training, just tests, and they use what one of the DS described as a 'silent running' system.

No beasting, no praise, no encouragement and equally no criticism whatsover to the candidates who therefore have no real frame of reference as to how they are doing.

Coupled with having to carry a voluntary disharge form with them at all times it must play merry hell with the psyche.

Plus completing everything doesn't mean automatic entry either, so the ones that do make it must be of a very special type of individual.

Never been anywhere near any SF stuff but the lack of beasting must feel very strange to an ordinary trained soldier.

'Selection' methodology has changed from the 'can you hack it' phase to as you have alluded to more of the pyshocological testing. No feedback is by its very nature, to the current generation of soldiers, a very difficult concept to grasp. You only have to look at society, with it's 'every one wins a prize' philosophy, now to see that everyone craves (positive) feedback. By that very nature it has been found that the candidate just gives up, physically probably 'still in the game', mentally it's 'goodnight the fox', wants to go back to safer/comfortable happy space. Doesn't want to enter the world of hurt (mentally or physically) for 21 days.

This is all allegedly of course.

Originally Posted by Buzz

They are just very well trained infantry.

The USMC is fairly vast and covers all manner of trades so you can't asume they are all steely eyed killers who like tabbing, they have to sort the wheat from the chaff somehow.

While you are accurate that relative to the UK military, the USMC is "vast" and as such there are all manner of military occupational specialties from special operations to cooks, you are incorrect when you refer to support Marines as "chaff."

The raison d'etre of the USMC as contrasted to the US Army for example is that EVERY Marine (officer or enlisted and every MOS, I even know of some pilots who performed admirably as infantrymen when a certain airfield was threatened with being overrun) is at his or her core a rifleman. Indeed, if you take just a bit of time you will find numerous instances of clerks, cooks and all manner of "chaff" being pressed into duty as provisional infantry units that acquitted themselves quite well for mere chaff.

Don't want this to be a hijack, although, it is sorta on a tangent along selection - general enlistment. Apologies if not appropriate to thread, Mods can trash it.

Homeland Security Watch » It

This summer, for the first time in the Marine Corps’ 237-year history, women will be enrolled in the Officer Infantry Course, one of the most demanding training evolutions in the entire military. Women Marines now serve in a variety of combat support and combat service support roles splendidly, as they do in the Army, Navy and Air Force.
It should stay that way.
Not because men are superior to women, or because male Marines want to discriminate against female Marines. Marines are Marines. But men are different from women. And that difference, when exposed in combat will be deadly, not only for the fighting female Marine, but for her male and female counterparts.
The Infantry Officer Course (IOC) teaches Marine Officers to be better leaders and killers than their enemies. It’s where we build Marine Infantry skills to win our wars and lead our Marines. War is killing. Let that sink in. It is legal murder, encouraged, ordered and demanded. In order to be effective at it, proficiency must not only be gained, but practiced and perfected.
The Basic School is where all Marine Second Lieutenants go to become basically trained officers prior to their military occupational assignment. During one of their training exercises years ago, the evaluators “killed” a 6’1”, 195 lb. male Marine Officer. He was within prescribed height and weight standards, and in an excellent state of fitness. He was also 30 years old. The evaluator then assigned the only available Marine, a female officer to carry the “dead” officer from the training battle field. The female officer was within the “normal” or “average” range for size; she was 5’4” and 125-130 lb. She was in superior physical condition, was 23 years old, and had a perfect physical fitness score on her most recent test. Both were wearing typical combat loads of 65-80 lb. of gear.
What happened? The female could not lift the male Marine. She could barely move him. She removed her gear to improve her strength-to- weight ratio. She still was unable to manage the weight.
Then what happened?
In order to move the problem along, the evaluator “unkilled” the male and “killed” the female and reversed their roles. The male put back on all his combat gear. So did the female officer, both adding the additional weight. Even though the male was not in the same physical condition as his female peer, he bent over and scooped her up, gear and all, and carried her several hundred yards.
Years before the phrase entered the language, the evaluator engaged in what today is called “gender norming.”
Military gender norming is the practice of judging female military service members, applicants or recruits by less stringent standards than their male counterparts. Physical standards are lowered, modified, or just plain overlooked. Norming is all about fairness and equity. Norming metrics allow for “equal competition”.
But there’s nothing equal, normal or fair about war. Anyone who’s ever fought in one can tell you that.
Women Marines have every bit of integrity and are every bit as good and possibly better than their male counterparts in marksmanship, intellect, problem solving, managing stress, and leadership. But it’s for the same reason women don’t play in the NFL, NBA, NHL, or run marathons as fast as men, or bench-press 1,000+ pounds, nor will they ever be truly equal in combat.
The march of women’s rights simply cannot overpower the Laws of Physics. The average man is 5” taller and 50 lb. heavier than the average woman. Men have a lower body fat percentage than women, more lean body mass, and are anatomically different in terms of physical make up, angles of leverage, and skeletally. The physics favor the male species, not the female. Men create more force.
This is Newton’s second law of motion. Force is equal to mass times acceleration. Bigger things that go faster create more force. They always have and always will. There is no engineering feat or physics norming phenomena that can mitigate the capability of a male to lift more, jump higher, run faster, hit harder, and execute violence better than a woman. There is no formula to replicate the combination of force and aggression.
Combat is the most physically demanding, most mentally fatiguing, and most forceful violent interaction humans can perpetuate against one another. It is highly kinetic in nature; blunt force trauma if you will. And it’s final.
It follows, then, as sure as the laws of physics, that if women are introduced to Marine Combat Infantry Units the readiness and capability of those units will be denigrated. If women are not successful in completing the training, the uproar against the “sexist men’s club” and purposeful exclusion will rain down from the sky. In either case trust will be compromised, and trust is a vital element in successful combat.
Those who advocate that women and men are the same and can perpetuate physical brutality equally are far more abusive and anti-women than any group who advocates against putting females into this “opportunity”. There is nothing “Pro Woman” about making women second-class killers.
From a national security perspective, this latest experiment by the Marine Corps, conducted largely because of politics, will only damage and weaken our nation and our ‘Corps.
We have met the enemy, and it is us.
Dan O’Connor is a retired Marine officer with 22 years service. These are his opinions.

Makes for a pretty 'tight' argument.

Originally Posted by beagleboy

Don't want this to be a hijack, although, it is sorta on a tangent along selection - general enlistment. Apologies if not appropriate to thread, Mods can trash it.

Homeland Security Watch » It



Makes for a pretty 'tight' argument.

I do not comment on the "new model" Marines.

Originally Posted by jumpinjarhead

While you are accurate that relative to the UK military, the USMC is "vast" and as such there are all manner of military occupational specialties from special operations to cooks, you are incorrect when you refer to support Marines as "chaff."

The raison d'etre of the USMC as contrasted to the US Army for example is that EVERY Marine (officer or enlisted and every MOS, I even know of some pilots who performed admirably as infantrymen when a certain airfield was threatened with being overrun) is at his or her core a rifleman. Indeed, if you take just a bit of time you will find numerous instances of clerks, cooks and all manner of "chaff" being pressed into duty as provisional infantry units that acquitted themselves quite well for mere chaff.

Is that it? No slap across his visage with your gauntlet and arranging for your Seconds to meet?