Female Marine Officers Not Cutting It in Combat Endurance Test

What a surprise:

Female Marines now 0-26 on officer infantry course

The failure of two Marine Corps officers to to pass the Jan. 8 first-day Combat Endurance Test of the infantry officer course brings the tally of female dropouts to 26. One more group of female officers will have a shot at graduation before the Marine Corps completes its integration experiment in June. The next IOC program begins in April.

Military Times reported Friday that of the current IOC class, 15 men out of a class of 118 were forced to drop the course.

You can read an earlier story about the 100 percent washout rate at the WaPo, including these first-person observations by a female Marine:

With body armor, Kevlar, a rifle and a huge pack on my 5’3’’ frame, I must have looked like a child next to the buff guys assembling for Day 1 of the Marine Corps’ Infantry Officer Course… but there came a point when I could not persuade my body to perform. It wasn’t a matter of will but of pure physical strength. My mind wanted more, but my muscles quivered in failure after multiple attempts. I began to shiver as I got cold. I was told I could not continue.

The question matters because Marine leaders have been watching female participants like me to help them decide how to integrate women into units and positions whose primary mission is to engage in direct ground combat. The Marines have until Jan. 1, 2016 , to request any exemptions from the Pentagon directive to open all combat roles to women.

Marine Sgt. Maj. Micheal P. Barrett, the senior enlisted adviser to the commandant, affirmed: “Our plan is deliberate, measured and responsible. We will not lower our standards.”

Not to worry, Obama and his tin-medal senior officers will do it for the USMC. Because women will do much better in actual combat, where their differently abled female strategies can come into play.