Do you believe the 2 women Rangers passed on their own merits or were they given special treatment?

To be honest I do not know. I was not there, but the fact remains they graduated. Now, I may be way off base, but after reading many opinions I have come to a few conclusions. People always mention keep the standards. The standards probably were kept, that's not the issue I see. The course, as well as others have been modified over the years. There is no don't in my mind that a woman would have been hard pressed to pass this school as well as others, had the been the same course I attended years ago still been in place. This is just my opinion, but it seems to me, over the years, the Army has changed from wanting only the best for the whole, to having maybe "ok" to please individual wants and needs. I have said it before, let everybody do what they want. Example, I want to be an Apache pilot. Lets change the curriculum so that I can pass. I have bad eye sight, so what, I want to be An Apache pilot so I should be allowed to. Is it better to have just a few well qualified people under the toughest of situations or a lot of qualified people under less than tough conditions. I feel it will reflect in the future. Just one other question I have is now that women are allowed to attend Ranger School, how will the slots be divided. I know when I went in 1993 priority went to combat arms. Are we going to send those who would really benefit from this course, ie "combat arms", or those who just want to use to further their chances for promotion?

As a RS graduate, (class 12-94) I truly believe the RI's and the RTB Command would maintain the course standards. As Rangers we live by a creed and in paragraph 1 of that Creed it states " I will always endeavor to uphold the prestige, honor, and high esprit de corps of my ranger regiment". As Ranger's our word is our honor. If you haven't earned the TAB, and lived the Ranger life, you should reserve your comments to what you have accomplished.
This was a political experiment that currently will have no benefit to the Combat Arms (CA) career fields. Once again Congress has put the cart in front of the horse by allowing female to attend the course before they decide which MOS's they will allow them to fill. Don't misunderstand me, the skills that these two soldiers obtained will provide them with great leadership skills in non- CA organizations, but it also took RS slots away from soldiers that are serving in CA units.
Believe me these two soldiers accomplished an amazing feat and I would like to welcome them both to the Ranger brotherhood.

RLTW

Every generational Soldier has a perspective on this topic. I have a close friend of my fathers who once instructed at the Florida Phase of Ranger School in the 70’s, believe he told me he helped setup that phase. He was a Green Beret in Vietnam 1966-1967. Old school like my father, who served with Bill Bowman in Germany with 10th Special Forces in 1964. They both say no way this is possible, if the course was run according to the standards once set forth at its conception.

Times change and so do standards. Just look at our military now and then. Now you don’t even have to pass the physical fitness test to graduate basic? There are different HT/WT standards and PT test standards for females. If we all want to be honest, then if you want to be here then there is one standard for ALL and that’s it. Understanding age plays a part and those charts are age and gender dependent. When I went through Airborne School 1989, females ran in their own formations separate from the males. Pullups were on a lowered bar and their bodies were at an incline.

There is much luck involved in completing the Ranger course, as is skill with determination. It’s about knowing yourself or learning about what your mind is capable of accomplishing in some harsh training environments. How to overcome those fears and accomplish the mission. If my memory serves me, Ranger school entry was 52 PU 62 SU and I think under 14:00 2 mile run or close to that? 6 dead hang pullups after the run at the instructor’s cadence and then off to the pool for swim, blind drop into the pool with gear and equipment drop under the water. All while the instructors were harassing the shit out of us. There was a 5 mile run in there at 6.5 min miles , the worm pit and on in on during City Week. One smoke session after smoke session. All this with little or no sleep and less and less food each day. My squad was decimated after the first week and we were rolled into a new squad for the ruck-march out to Camp Darby.

There were underlying issues then. Ranger BAT Boys taking care of their own, the peer evals, Tab protectors and instructors who had a bad day and no one was getting a go. Even if you did it correctly, it was wrong. You can recycle once each phase and some get to repeat the entire course if the transgression was bad enough. If you could fly under the radar, not attract attention to yourself, not get injured, not quit – you were most likely going to complete the course eventually.

All this said, I just wonder what really happened?

On a personal level I do believe these women were given special treatment. I was stationed at 600 Quartermaster Company, Ft brag, NC when the first two women to go to jump school and several others joined our unit. By many of their own admission they were given special treatment as far as the physical training went. Call me biased, but it is what I believe unless proven otherwise.

The trickle continues...

A former Army Ranger instructor said on Tuesday that he has been in contact with the office of an Oklahoma congressman who is questioning if the women who passed Ranger School last month got special treatment.

Michael “Bubba” Moore said he talked to an aide in Rep. Steve Russell’s office about two weeks ago and put the office in contact with people “on the ground” in the Airborne and Ranger Training Brigade at Fort Benning...

Asked if he connected anybody on Russell’s staff with Ranger instructors, Moore answered, “F--- yeah.”

Moore referred to them as “people on the ground” and not Ranger instructors. He said they were in the Ranger Training Brigade.

“They’re everywhere,” he said. “There everywhere. They keep popping up.”

Read more here: http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/news/local/military/article36961158.html#storylink=cpy

Do you believe Carl Brashear passed Navy diver school on his own merit or was he given special treatment? Despite the special treatment he passed. The military has always been the place for individual and equal rights. We had a right to a fair trial, were intergraded, received retirement benefits, and healthcare before the our civilian counterparts.
Support service members and not bash them. Only 6% of the population are in the military or are veterans. We are the minority!

I do not believe that the female students were subjected to a different standard than their male counterparts. I believe that they completed the course based on the current course requirements.

If you were to survey Ranger course graduates from the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s, and 2010s, I think that you would find that the experiences are not comparable. A Ranger student from the 1960s era probably would not have had a similar experience to a Ranger student in the modern era. Ranger School is a course that evolves to compliment the current operational environment.

So, it is not the TASK nor the STANDARD that has changed, it is the CONDITIONS under which that task are performed that has changed. It is the CONDITIONS under which a task are performed that influence how well or poorly the task is performed.

As an example, conduct a 5 mile run is a Task, within 40 minutes or less is a Standard. Now, we need to understand the conditions under which the task is performed. There is only one task, and there is only one standard, but, potentially, there can be multiple conditions under which that task is performed. The following can be considered conditions: Wearing ACU pants, tan t shirt, and boots; in a military formation; calling cadence; while maintaining not more than one arm's length distance from the student to your front.

I believe these Female Officers passed on their own merrit. I know a gentleman who is a former Ranger and a West Point graduate. This gentleman knows people and asked questions. I believe him when he says the standard was met. I know a young Female Officer who was the first Female Officer in history to be assigned to an XO position in a line unit of the 82nd Airborne Division. She was also one of the first women if not the first woman to be granted a position to attend the Infantry Officers Course. If not for that fact she may have also been in that first group of women to attend Ranger School. If she had attended that course I believe she would have graduated. I have heard that these woemen who graduated Ranger school got second chances and extra training. Every Leadership School I attended in my nearly 21 years of service gave their students a second chance at a task or phase. Nothing unusual there. These two women were invited to repeat the course (actually, there were three) as were a greater number of men because the Cadre felt they had earned that invitation. How many Rangers are there out there who failed their first attempt at Ranger School but graduated on the second. Doesn't their repeated attempt give them an advantage over a first timer just because they know what to expect? Here is my point. Ranger School is a Combat Leadership School. Graduating from Ranger School does not gaurantee assignment to one of the Battalions in the 75th Ranger Regiment. In nearly 21 years of service I saw lots of Officers and NCO's wearing the RANGER tab. Some of them were in support units, perhaps they reclassified as a support MOS, who knows. There are probably 3-5 support soldiers for every combat soldier out there. The modern battlefield essentially has no "front line" . Support units are targeted more in modern war fare than in the past because it is a lot easier to do so. When these types of units come under attack, and they will be attacked. I gaurantee you that there will be women in leadership positions from the top down. Our soldiers deserve the best leaders they can possibly have when the attack comes. If there is a Female Officer or NCO in that unit that just happens to be a Ranger then her soldiers will be a lot better off when that attack comes because she graduated from the best Combat Leadership School out there.

Either is possible. In a Politically oriented Military any of all the allegations are possible.

If the POTUS, Congress, the Media and the Populace made up in part by DRAFT Dodgers men wants it, the Military Brass is there to deliver it and it will one way or another. Another possibility is that they're taking supplements maybe even steroids of sort.

There is one true test and that is the battlefield.